Search Results for: Details

The Holy Junk Heap

Solomon Schechter studying the fragments from the Cairo Geniza, Photo via Cambridge University Library.

Adina Hoffman & Peter Cole | Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza | Schocken | April 2011 | 18 minutes (4,838 words)

 

Below is an excerpt from the book Sacred Trash, by Adina Hoffman & Peter Cole, as recommended by Longreads contributor Dana Snitzky.

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Cambridge, May 1896

When the self-taught Scottish scholar of Arabic and Syriac Agnes Lewis and her no-less-learned twin sister, Margaret Gibson, hurried down a street or a hallway, they moved—as a friend later described them—“like ships in full sail.” Their plump frames, thick lips, and slightly hawkish eyes made them, theoretically, identical. And both were rather vain about their dainty hands, which on special occasions they “weighed down with antique rings.” In a poignant and peculiar coincidence, each of the sisters had been widowed after just a few years of happy marriage to a clergyman. Read more…

A Conversation With Writer Colm Tóibín on the ‘Close Imagining’ of Fiction

Jessica Gross | Longreads | February 2015 | 17 minutes (4,283 words)

 

The Irish writer Colm Tóibín has written eight novels, two books of short stories, and multiple works of nonfiction. His latest novel, Nora Webster, follows a widow in 1970s Ireland as she moves through her mourning toward a new life. That book was almost 15 years in the making, and Tóibín’s previous novel, Brooklyn, which centers on an Irish immigrant to the United States, grew out of Nora Webster’s early pages. Both novels—like all of Tóibín’s work—subtly portray their characters’ complex inner lives, the details accruing slowly to finally reveal an indelible portrait. I spoke with Tóibín, who splits his time between Dublin and New York, by phone about the protagonists he’s compelled to write about and how he goes about creating their worlds. Read more…

The House Made of Sugar

Silvina Ocampo, 1973.

Silvina Ocampo | The House Made of Sugar: a short story from the collection Thus Were Their Faces | NYRB Classics | January 2015 | 13 minutes (3,235 words)

 

Our latest Longreads Exclusive is a newly translated short story from Thus Were Their Faces, a collection by Silvina Ocampo, as recommended by Longreads contributor A. N. Devers, who writes: 

“Long before ‘Real Housewives of New Jersey’ castmember (and Danbury Federal Correctional Institution Inmate) Teresa Giudice infamously stated, ‘I don’t want to live in somebody else’s house. That’s gross,’ the late Argentinian writer Silvina Ocampo wrote “The House Made of Sugar,” a story about a woman named Cristina who is too superstitious to live in a house that had been previously occupied. Her husband deceives her and when they move into their dream home based upon his lie, strange and worrisome things start to happen that suggest Cristina’s fears were warranted. Newly translated into English by Daniel Balderston, with a preface by Borges, Ocampo’s stories are unsettling and off-kilter, revelatory and readable. Novelist Helen Oyeyemi writes in the collection’s introduction, ‘Love is as fearsome in an Ocampo story as it is in Wuthering Heights; emotion has a way of sealing us into a charmed circle that makes us incomprehensible to everyone who stands outside it.'”

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Glamorous Crossing: How Pan Am Airways Dominated International Travel in the 1930s

Meredith Hindley | Longreads | February 2015 | 18 minutes (4,383 words)

 

In August 1936, Americans retreated from the summer heat into movie theaters to watch China Clipper, the newest action-adventure from Warner Brothers. The film starred Pat O’Brien as an airline executive obsessed with opening the first airplane route across the Pacific Ocean. An up-and-coming Humphrey Bogart played a grizzled pilot full of common sense and derring-do.

The real star of the film, however, was the China Clipper, a gleaming four-engine silver Martin M-130. As the Clipper makes its maiden flight in the film, the flying boat cuts a white wake into the waters off San Francisco before soaring in the air and passing over a half-constructed Golden Gate Bridge. As it crosses the Pacific, cutting through the clouds and battling a typhoon, a team of radiomen and navigators follow its course on the ground, relaying updated weather information. The plane arrives in Macao to a harbor packed with cheering spectators and beaming government officials. Read more…

Taking the Slow Road: An Interview with Author Katherine Heiny

Photo by Leila Barbaro

Sari Botton | Longreads | February 2015 | 14 minutes (3,683 words)

 

 

Ed. note: Katherine Heiny will be in conversation with Sari Botton at McNally Jackson in New York on Wednesday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m.

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In the fall of 1992, I found myself very much affected by “How to Give the Wrong Impression,” a short story in the September 21 issue of The New Yorker about a twentysomething psych grad student who’s trying hard to seem satisfied keeping things platonic between her and her handsome roommate.

To begin with, I had a lot in common with the protagonist, more than I’d have wanted to admit at the time. I was in my twenties, too—27 to be exact—newly divorced from the second person I’d ever so much as dated, and most importantly, I was very busy trying to seem satisfied keeping things platonic with a rakish “friend.” I didn’t just recognize that young woman, I was her at that moment in my life. Read more…

Friendship Is Complicated

Illustration by Pat Barrett

Maria Bustillos | Longreads | January 2015 | 15 minutes (3,706 words)

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Angela Merkel’s Rise to Power: ‘If You Cross Her, You End Up Dead’

John Kornblum, a former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, who still lives in Berlin, said, “If you cross her, you end up dead. There’s nothing cushy about her. There’s a whole list of alpha males who thought they would get her out of the way, and they’re all now in other walks of life.”

German politics was entering a new era. As the country became more “normal,” it no longer needed domineering father figures as leaders. “Merkel was lucky to live in a period when macho was in decline,’ Ulrich said. “the men didn’t notice and she did. She didn’t have to fight them—it was aikido politics.” Ulrich added, “If she knows anything, she knows her macho. She had them for her cereal.”

-After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Angela Merkel went from unknown East German scientist to the most powerful woman in the world, a rise due to equal parts analytical ability, political tactics, and patient opportunism. George Packer details the incredible evolution in The New Yorker.

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How an Illness Changed the Way Laura Hillenbrand Wrote Her Bestselling Books

Your inspirational story of the day is Wil S. Hylton’s New York Times Magazine profile of bestselling author Laura Hillenbrand, who’s written both Seabiscuit and Unbroken while suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. The illness left her unable to leave the house—which, rather than hamper her ability to do research or interview sources, gave her different advantages: Read more…

I Kissed Christianity Goodbye: Four Stories About Leaving Religion

Deconversion isn’t easy. There’s backlash from family—confusion, anger, shame. It’s something I think about during the holiday season, especially. Christmastime can feel like an inundation of traditions left behind. In the world I grew up in, there were Advent Sundays and Christmas Eve services (five, actually) and cantatas and caroling. It was beautiful, and I still cherish many of those traditions. Deconversion is different for everyone. It’s a slow coming-of-age, or an existential crisis, or post-traumatic stress disorder, or none of those things. Today, I want to honor the stories of women who left religion (the Christian faith, in particular), and these are four thoughtful, poetic meditations.

1. “Why I Miss Being a Born-Again Christian.” (Jessica Misener, BuzzFeed, May 2014)

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Longreads Best of 2014: Science Stories

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in science writing.

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Virginia Hughes
Science reporter and soon-to-be science editor at BuzzFeed.

The Itch Nobody Can Scratch (Will Storr, Matter)

I’ve thought about this story (an excerpt from Storr’s book, The Unpersuadables) many, many times since reading it. It’s superficially about Morgellons, a disease in which people think that they’re infected with bugs or fibers. But it’s really about the nature of disease and diagnosis, evidence and belief. It’s creepy, fascinating, and profound. The best part about it is the way Storr describes these patients and their delusions. It would be easy to make them seem stupid or crazy or worse. But Storr’s writing creates empathy and understanding. The not-insignificant downside of this piece: it makes you feel itchy. Read more…