Search Results for: Guardian

A writer visits the home of Bryan Saunders, an artist known for his self-portraits created under the influence of a variety of drugs:

We turn to the next one. ‘Whoa,’ I say. This one could not be less Xanax-like. The drawing is spindly and paranoid, and the page is patterned with real-life bullet holes. They pepper Bryan’s stomach and neck. I ask Bryan how they got there and he explains that he used a gun borrowed from a friend. He propped up the page from the sketchbook and repeatedly shot it. ‘I remember bouncing into the walls like a fly going bong, bong, bong,’ he says. The drug that elicited this reaction was called Geodon.

‘Geodon?’ I say.

Bryan Googles it. ‘It’s for symptoms of schizophrenia,’ he reads, ‘so it’s an anti-psychotic agent, I guess.’

‘Did you get it from somebody with schizophrenia?’ I ask.

‘No, I got it from a doctor,’ Bryan says. And this is when Bryan tells me the other way he acquires many of his drugs. He sometimes visits psychiatrists, tells them about the art project, and asks them for ‘samples of some pain pill or sedative I’ve never tried. I say, ‘Can you write me a prescription for just one so I can do my drawing?’ And I take my book with me and show them my art project. And they always give me some crazy, crazy anti-psychotic pill instead.’

“Bryan Saunders: Portrait Of The Artist On Crystal Meth.” — Jon Ronson, The Guardian

Longreads Member Exclusive: A Visit to Havana

This week, we’re proud to feature a Longreads Member Exclusive from Alma Guillermoprieto and The New York Review of Books.

Born in Mexico City, Guillermoprieto has covered Latin America for NYRB since 1994, and she has also written for The New Yorker, The Guardian and the Washington Post. Today’s feature, “A Visit to Havana,” is about her return to Cuba for Pope John Paul II’s arrival in 1998.

See an excerpt here.

p.s. You can support Longreads—and get more exclusives like this—by becoming a member for just $3 per month.


(Illustration by Kjell Reigstad)

Longreads Member Exclusive: A Visit to Havana

Longreads Pick

(Subscribe to Longreads to receive this and other weekly exclusives.) This week, we're proud to feature a  Member Exclusive from Alma Guillermoprieto and The New York Review of Books. Born in Mexico City, Guillermoprieto has covered Latin America for NYRB since 1994, and she has also written for The New Yorker, The Guardian and the Washington Post. Her books include Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution and Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America, which includes the below story, "A Visit to Havana," about her return to Cuba for Pope John Paul II’s arrival in 1998.

Published: Mar 26, 1998
Length: 35 minutes (8,874 words)

Top 5 Longreads of the Week: Financial Times, Grantland, Rany Jazayerli, The Baffler Magazine, The New Yorker, fiction from The Guardian, and a guest pick from Mark Berman.

A brief history of the political cartoonist, whose job is endangered in the digital age:

Martin Rowson in particular seems to revel in mixing allusions to obscure literary texts with lashings of excrement. A cartoon he drew last month for the Morning Star features a ‘fivearsed pig’, shitting turds emblazoned with the logos of London 2012 sponsors through sphincters coloured like the Olympic rings.

Occasionally, the digestive obsession becomes a bit too much even for left-wing papers. Rowson tells me that his fellow Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell always files as late as possible to make the staff grateful that the picture has arrived at all. ‘There’s a wonderful story about Georgina Henry, when she was deputy editor, going past the comment desk at about eight o’clock one evening and Steve’s cartoon had just come in,’ he says. ‘It was a wonderful one of [George W] Bush as a monkey, squatting on the side of a broken toilet, wiping his arse with the UN Charter. And there’s all this shit splattered on the wall behind it, and she looks and says, “Oh God, no.” [Alan] Rusbridger had put down this edict saying less shit in the cartoons, please – you know, the editor’s prerogative – and she and Steve had this eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation.’ What happened? ‘He finally caved in. In one of the greatest betrayals of freedom of speech since Galileo, he tippexed out three of the turds.’

“Ink-Stained Assassins.” — Helen Lewis, New Statesman

Ink-Stained Assassins

Longreads Pick

A brief history of the political cartoonist, whose job is endangered in the digital age:

“Martin Rowson in particular seems to revel in mixing allusions to obscure literary texts with lashings of excrement. A cartoon he drew last month for the Morning Star features a ‘fivearsed pig’, shitting turds emblazoned with the logos of London 2012 sponsors through sphincters coloured like the Olympic rings.

“Occasionally, the digestive obsession becomes a bit too much even for left-wing papers. Rowson tells me that his fellow Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell always files as late as possible to make the staff grateful that the picture has arrived at all. ‘There’s a wonderful story about Georgina Henry, when she was deputy editor, going past the comment desk at about eight o’clock one evening and Steve’s cartoon had just come in,’ he says. ‘It was a wonderful one of [George W] Bush as a monkey, squatting on the side of a broken toilet, wiping his arse with the UN Charter. And there’s all this shit splattered on the wall behind it, and she looks and says, “Oh God, no.” [Alan] Rusbridger had put down this edict saying less shit in the cartoons, please – you know, the editor’s prerogative – and she and Steve had this eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation.’ What happened? ‘He finally caved in. In one of the greatest betrayals of freedom of speech since Galileo, he tippexed out three of the turds.'”

Source: New Statesman
Published: Aug 23, 2012
Length: 24 minutes (6,057 words)

Inside the groundbreaking investigation by Columbia professor James Liebman, on the case of Carlos DeLuna, who was executed in 1989 for a crime he didn’t commit:

At the trial, DeLuna’s defence team told the jury that Carlos Hernandez, not DeLuna, was the murderer. But the prosecutors ridiculed that suggestion. They told the jury that police had looked for a ‘Carlos Hernandez’ after his name had been passed to them by DeLuna’s lawyers, without success. They had concluded that Hernandez was a fabrication, a ‘phantom’ who simply did not exist. The chief prosecutor said in summing up that Hernandez was a ‘figment of DeLuna’s imagination.’

Four years after DeLuna was executed, Liebman decided to look into the DeLuna case as part of a project he was undertaking into the fallibility of the death penalty. He asked a private investigator to spend one day – just one day – looking for signs of the elusive Carlos Hernandez.

“The Wrong Carlos: How Texas Sent an Innocent Man to His Death.” — Ed Pilkington, The Guardian

More #longreads from The Guardian

Survivors and crew members recount the Costa Concordia crash, in which 32 people lost their lives: 

The Concordia’s loss is also a landmark moment in naval history. It is the largest passenger ship ever wrecked. The 4,000 people who fled its slippery decks—nearly twice as many as were aboard the R.M.S. Titanic in 1912—represent the largest maritime evacuation in history. A story of heroism and disgrace, it is also, in the mistakes of its captain and certain officers, a tale of monumental human folly.

‘This was an episode of historic importance for those who study nautical issues,’ says Ilarione Dell’Anna, the Italian Coast Guard admiral who oversaw much of the massive rescue effort that night. ‘The old point of departure was the Titanic. I believe that today the new point of departure will be the Costa Concordia. There has never been anything like this before. We must study this, to see what happened and to see what we can learn.’

“The Costa Concordia Sinking: Inside the Epic Fight for Survival.” — Bryan Burrough, Vanity Fair

See also: “Rebecca Coriam: Lost at Sea.” — Jon Ronson, The Guardian, Nov. 11, 2011

Featured: Andrew Hart’s #longreads page. See his story picks from The Seattle Times, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, plus more.

Memories of an early pioneer in New York public access television: 

By all accounts, public access television is dead, or dying, or just living an anonymous existence in the lesser-trolled channels of cable. But despite its decrepit state, I became mildly obsessed with, and then fully addicted to, The Grube Tube—a live talk show on Time Warner Cable New York’s channel 35. The show followed a simple and well-known format: a number was displayed on the bottom of the screen, and callers were instructed to dial in. The host answered these calls from a landline phone on his desk. The caller, who was now being broadcast live on air, could say anything he or she pleased. It was the host’s decision to converse with said caller or hang up. That host was Steve Gruberg. The callers were a mix of eccentric Manhattanites, adolescents with an unusual fondness for the c-word, and longtime viewers who refused to let the program lose relevance. I fell somewhere in between.

“Steve Gruberg and the ‘Grube Tube’.” — Jeremy Elias, VICE

See also: “Live Television Is ‘a High-Wire Act with No Safety Net’.” — Jon Henley, Guardian, Sept. 3, 2011