[Fiction, not single-page] A lawyer can’t stop walking:
He worked past ten most nights, and most nights found him sufficiently absorbed in something that required only the turn of a page or the click of a mouse — too little activity for the sensors to register. The lights frequently switched off on him. He’d look up, surprised again — not just by the darkened office. By his re-entry into the physical world. Self-awareness. Himself as something more than mind thinking. He’d have to stand, a little amused by the crude technology, and wave his arms around, jump up and down, walk over and fan the door, sometimes all three, before the lights would return.
A selection of all-time favourite articles from Wired contributing editor, former Slate and New York Times columnist, and the author of 2 excellent books, Brendan I. Koerner:
The Hunger Warriors by Scott Anderson – The story of Turkish women starving themselves to death for the most head-scratching of causes. Behold the sinister power of peer pressure.
Does a Sugar Bear Bite? by Lynn Hirschberg – A classic profile of Suge Knight at the zenith of his power. Maybe the best intro scene of any celebrity profile in history.
Pat Dollard’s War on Hollywood by Evan Wright – Rob Capps, my editor at Wired, turned me onto Wright’s work. This is my personal favorite—a portrait of a man blessed with bottomless energy and ambition, though only the smallest trace of empathy for his fellow man.
Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser – A master class in narrative contrarianism. Deeply and elegantly reported, with a real human tragedy at its core.
A Better Brew by Burkhard Bilger – Perhaps the best story ever by one of my favorite writers. (His piece on cockfighting from several years back is a classic, too.) Bilger does a tremendous job of creating real tension, while never losing sight of his primary duty as an explainer of business and science.
And a few you’ll need a subscription to read:
Rock is Dead by David Samuels – This is what it felt like to be young in the ’90s. A terrifying portrait of morality adrift in a sea of excess.
Gangland by Jon Lee Anderson – There is no more badass reporter working in journalism today. No one else could have set up an interview with the most violent (yet complex) gangster in all of Rio’s slums. Truly intrepid reporting.
After Welfare” by Katherine Boo – The story that got me into Boo’s now much-heralded work. Still haunted by the scene of the two kids eating ramen and boiled eggs.
For more from the man himself head over to his blog or sign up for updates via Twitter.
(Not single-page) A writer recalls the disappearance of her adopted cat, and links the event to other experiences of loss in her life.
Six months after Gattino disappeared my husband and I were sitting in a restaurant having dinner with some people he had recently met, including an intellectual writer we both admired. The writer had considered buying the house we were living in and he wanted to know how we liked it. I said it was nice but it had been partly spoiled for me by the loss of our cat. I told him the story and he said, ‘Oh, that was your trauma, was it?’
“I said yes. Yes, it was a trauma.
“You could say he was unkind. You could say I was silly. You could say he was priggish. You could say I was weak.
[Fiction, not single-page] A father, his sons, and what he teaches them:
When we got home from school Paps was in the kitchen, cooking and listening to music and feeling fine. He whiffed the steam coming off a pot, then clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly. His eyes were wet and sparkled with giddy life. He turned up the volume on the stereo and it was mambo, it was Tito Puente.
“Watch out,” he said, and spun, with grace, on one slippered foot, his bathrobe twirling out around him. In his fist was a glistening, greasy metal spatula, which he pumped in the air to the beat of the bongo drums.
[Fiction] A family of children escape starvation in North Korea:
The day the siblings left to find their mother, snow devoured the northern mining town. Houses loomed like ghosts. The government’s face was everywhere: on the sides of a beached cart, above the lintel of the post office, on placards scattered throughout the surrounding mountains praising the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il. And in the grain sack strapped to the oldest brother Woncheol’s back, their crippled sister, the weight of a few books.
The younger brother Choecheol ran ahead. Like a child, Woncheol thought, frowning, though he too was still a child, an eleven-year-old with a body withering on two years of boiled tree bark, mashed roots, the occasional grilled rat and fried crickets on a stick.
I’m a thousand percent certain that I’ll wake up in a cold sweat tonight, having suddenly remembered a slew of tremendous stories that I really should have given some year-end love. With that important caveat, I do hope you’ll check out the five tales below; each one is guaranteed to occupy a hallowed place in your brain.
I was sorely tempted to fulfill my New Yorker quota by shouting out David Grann’s “A Murder Foretold,” about the assassination of a powerful Guatemalan attorney. As with all Grann stories, I literally cut that piece apart with a pair of scissors, then pinned the various sections to a cork board in an effort to better understand his mastery of structure. But Anderson’s account of the Tamil Tigers’ violent twilight gets the nod, primarily because it features the year’s most chilling scene: an alleged female spy is dragged in front of the author by a louche guerrilla commander, then carted away to be shot in the head. That brief passage may well be the most vivid description of casual brutality ever committed to the page.
The official story was that surfing superstar Andy Irons died of dengue fever, allegedly contracted during a competition in Bali. But the reality, carefully concealed by friends and family alike, was that Irons was an addict, one whose self-destructive habits had nearly killed him at least once before. Melekian’s heartbreaking story illustrates how the deeply troubled Irons was failed by those around him, who felt that no real harm could possibly come to such a prodigiously talented athlete.
When I first read this story, about the young activists who helped launch Egypt’s revolution, I was bowled over by the characters’ bravery and gumption—it’s no small thing to risk torture for the sake of righteous principles. But in light of how Egypt’s political situation has changed in recent weeks, the piece reads quite differently now—you can see the haziness of the activists’ idealism, and perhaps even a dash of arrogance in their tactics. The fact that “The Instigators” contains such varied narrative strands at its core is a testament to its expert craftsmanship and deep reporting. And the use of video in the iPad version is an object lesson in how storytelling can be enriched by digital technology—one brief glimpse of the central character in the thick of the protests adds volumes to the yarn.
Confessional writing seems so easy in theory, especially since there is seldom any original reporting involved. But, man, is it ever hard to pull off with any appreciable degree of success. The vast majority of such stories get bogged down in artificial sentiment or cheesy philosophizing. But that’s not the case with Baker’s glorious tale of adolescent mendacity, in which she recounts a minor scam she ran on an older guy—a scam that ended in hilariously embarrassing fashion. As The Great Gatsby showed, there are limits to America’s tolerance for personal reinvention, a lesson that Baker had to learn the hard way. But there is also solace to be had in the company of like-minded souls, a task now easier than ever thanks to the power of the Internet—a realm that, as Baker so eloquently puts it, provides “a clean, well-lighted place for your real self.”
The Homicide Report, an online project of The Los Angeles Times, tabulates and describes every single killing in my native city. When it first began, I focused on the brief accounts of each death—there’s no better way to be overwhelmed by the senselessness of daily violence. But I’ve since become a devotee of the project’s comments, which are frequently provided by acquaintances of the deceased—as well as blog regulars who possess, shall we say, hard hearts. When those two sides clash, the resulting mess makes for some epic reading. This year’s best example is the thread that follows the entry on Michael Nida, killed by the Downey police in bizarre circumstances. Was he involved in a bank robbery? Targeted because of his race? The victim of out-of-control cops? The commenters battle it out, and in doing so provide a snapshot of the fundamental beliefs that divide us. The comments admittedly contain large heapings of idiocy, insensitivity, and racism. But keep reading—the unabashed rawness of the views on display is what makes the “story” so compelling.
I love short stories, so I decided my picks should be mostly short fiction. It’s no secret that the likes of The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, One Storyand Tin House publish great fiction, but there are also a lot of excellent online literary magazines, so I wanted to include work from a couple of them here. I had to include one story from The New Yorker, though, because Alice Munro is one of my favorite writers.
Mother comes back one evening and she starts up at supper about feng shui, how our house isn’t organized for a happy life, how the front door should never line up with the back door like ours does – never. One of her colleagues in Parks and Recreation told her that.
They’re all dipshits down there, I said.
And the boy said, talking with his mouth full like he always does, That’s why you’re not supposed to have a crucifix in the bedroom. Is a cross the same as a crucifix? he says.
Mother comes back one evening and she starts up at supper about feng shui, how our house isn’t organized for a happy life, how the front door should never line up with the back door like ours does – never. One of her colleagues in Parks and Recreation told her that.
They’re all dipshits down there, I said.
And the boy said, talking with his mouth full like he always does, That’s why you’re not supposed to have a crucifix in the bedroom. Is a cross the same as a crucifix? he says.
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