Leopard

[Fiction] A young boy plays with the truth as he skips school one day:

“Your stepfather walks toward you. He takes your chin in his thumb and forefinger, and turns your face back and forth, as though it were a piece of merchandise he was thinking about buying.

“‘You must have fallen pretty easy,’ he says. ‘When you faint, you go down hard. You don’t have any cuts.'”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 10, 2008
Length: 18 minutes (4,559 words)

Streaming Dreams

Google and YouTube exec Robert Kyncl’s plans for the future of web TV—and the company’s big bet on professional content:

“Kyncl’s relationships in Hollywood would help in securing premium content; and, more important, he understood entertainment culture. He brought ‘the skill set of being able to bridge Silicon Valley and Hollywood—an information culture and an entertainment culture,’ he told me. The crucial difference is that one culture is founded on abundance and the other on scarcity. He added, ‘Silicon Valley builds its bridges on abundance. Abundant bits of information floating out there, writing great programs to process it, then giving people a lot of useful tools to use it. Entertainment works by withholding content with the purpose of increasing its value. And, when you think about it, those two are just vastly different approaches, but they can be bridged.'”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jan 7, 2012
Length: 26 minutes (6,547 words)

Creative Writing

[Fiction] A couple, and a writing workshop:

“Her third story started out funny. It was about a woman who gave birth to a cat. The hero of the story was the husband, who suspected that the cat wasn’t his. A fat ginger tomcat that slept on the lid of the dumpster right below the window of the couple’s bedroom gave the husband a condescending look every time he went downstairs to throw out the garbage. In the end, there was a violent clash between the husband and the cat. The husband threw a stone at the cat, which countered with bites and scratches. The injured husband, his wife, and the kitten she was breastfeeding went to the clinic for him to get a rabies shot. He was humiliated and in pain but tried not to cry while they were waiting. The kitten, sensing his suffering, uncurled itself from its mother’s embrace, went over to him, and licked his face tenderly, offering a consoling ‘Meow.’ ‘Did you hear that?’ the mother asked emotionally. ‘He said “Daddy.” ‘”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jan 2, 2012
Length: 6 minutes (1,687 words)

Nothing Left: Is North Korea Finally Facing Collapse? (2010)

“We all knew there was no hope for anything to get better in North Korea,’’ she told me. “Sometimes we’d say, ‘Hey, if we crossed the river we’d be in China, but there are too many soldiers.’ ’’ Song-hee also knew that, if she crossed the border, she could be picked up by the Chinese police and sent back to face sentencing in a labor camp. The customary term is anywhere from six months to three years. But her friend had a relative living in China, and contacts who knew the best places to cross. “I decided if I did not take this opportunity I might not have another,’’ Song-hee said.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jul 12, 2010
Length: 20 minutes (5,037 words)

Postscript: Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

We were friends for more than thirty years, which is a long time but, now that he is gone, seems not nearly long enough. I was rather nervous when I first met him, one night in London in 1977, along with his great friend Martin Amis. I had read his journalism and was already in awe of his brilliance and wit and couldn’t think what on earth I could bring to his table. I don’t know if he sensed the diffidence on my part—no, of course he did; he never missed anything—but he set me instantly at ease, and so began one of the great friendships and benisons of my life. It occurs to me that “benison” is a word I first learned from Christopher, along with so much else.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Dec 16, 2011
Length: 9 minutes (2,394 words)

A Massacre in Jamaica

“Dear Residents of Tivoli Garden,” the don had written. “I hope you are all fine and this letter reaches everyone in the best of health. As for me I’m doing all right and my health conditions are fine.” Coke thanked Tivoli for sending him postcards and said he was sorry for the pain of the past year. For the future, he looked to God. “My deepest sympathy and condolences goes out to the families who loss their love ones and to those that were injury. . . . When the community cry, I cry too.” One sentence could be construed as a warning: “Don’t let anyone mislead you to do anything that is not right in the sight of God.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Dec 12, 2011
Length: 30 minutes (7,567 words)

The Civil Archipelago

Putin had a kind word for Monson (“a real man”) and paid Yemelianenko the ultimate compliment of Russian masculinity, calling him a “nastoyashii Russki bogatyr”—a genuine Russian hero. As Putin spoke, and as the national audience watched, many in the crowd started to jeer and whistle. This had never happened to Putin before, not once in two four-year terms as President, not in three-plus years as Prime Minister. And yet now, having announced his intention to reassume the Presidency in March, possibly for another twelve years, he was experiencing an unmistakable tide of derision.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Dec 19, 2011
Length: 34 minutes (8,674 words)

Where’s Earl?

Profile of the hip-hop group Odd Future, and the mysterious disappearance of one of its members:

“For the past year, though—since shortly after the release of the ‘Earl’ video—Earl Sweatshirt himself has been missing. He hasn’t been making public appearances with the group, and it seems he hasn’t been making private appearances, either. Last summer, a gnomic message appeared on the group’s Tumblr page: ‘Free Earl.’ In July, when the group announced its first proper home-town concert, at the Key Club, in West Hollywood, the official flyer had Earl’s name crossed out and a terse explanation: ‘Will not be there due to mom.'”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: May 23, 2011
Length: 32 minutes (8,112 words)

Pre-Occupied: The Origins and Future of Occupy Wall Street

This is how Occupy Wall Street began: as one of many half-formed plans circulating through conversations between Kalle Lasn and Micah White, who lives in Berkeley and has not seen Lasn in person for more than four years. Neither can recall who first had the idea of trying to take over lower Manhattan. In early June, Adbusters sent an e-mail to subscribers stating that “America needs its own Tahrir.” The next day, White wrote to Lasn that he was “very excited about the Occupy Wall Street meme. . . . I think we should make this happen.” He proposed three possible Web sites: OccupyWallStreet.org, AcampadaWallStreet.org, and TakeWallStreet.org.

“No. 1 is best,” Lasn replied, on June 9th. That evening, he registered OccupyWallStreet.org.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 21, 2011
Length: 22 minutes (5,700 words)

The Tweaker

Was Steve Jobs a Samuel Crompton or was he a Richard Roberts? In the eulogies that followed Jobs’s death, last month, he was repeatedly referred to as a large-scale visionary and inventor. But Isaacson’s biography suggests that he was much more of a tweaker. He borrowed the characteristic features of the Macintosh—the mouse and the icons on the screen—from the engineers at Xerox PARC, after his famous visit there, in 1979. The first portable digital music players came out in 1996. Apple introduced the iPod, in 2001, because Jobs looked at the existing music players on the market and concluded that they “truly sucked.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 14, 2011
Length: 11 minutes (2,986 words)