Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Here are our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also save them as a Readlist. Read more…

Here are our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also save them as a Readlist. Read more…

Every week, Longreads sends out an email with our Top 5 story picks—so here it is, every single story that was chosen as No. 1 this year. If you like these, you can sign up to receive our free Top 5 email every Friday.
Happy holidays! Read more…

–David Raether, a former sitcom writer who went from a $300,000 income to being homeless in Los Angeles, in a Priceonomics excerpt from his new book. Read more on being homeless.
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Gabrielle Gantz (@contextual_life) is the blogger behind The Contextual Life, a frequent longreader, and a fan of podcasts.
In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Chuck and Josh discuss the history of hip-hop, from The Sugar Hill Gang to the present. They add their own personal history, which includes stories of attempted breakdancing and well-intentioned clothing choices.
Co-authors Jeff Weiss and Evan McGarvey speak with host Colin Marshall about their book 2pac vs. Biggie: An Illustrated History of Rap’s Greatest Battle. They talk about the artists’ rivalry, their beginnings, how their styles differed, and why you’re missing out if you only listen to one and not the other.
The drummer for The Roots talks about his influences growing up, how he listens to music, and his favorite part of Soul Train. (Bonus: Also check out Terry Gross’s classic 2010 interview with Jay-Z.)
Dan Charnas, a veteran hip-hop journalist and one of the first writers for The Source, talks with Jesse Thorn about the history of the hip-hop music business and how executives and entrepreneurs turned an underground scene into the world’s predominant pop culture.
Andrew Rice, contributing editor for New York magazine, spoke about his article on Jay-Z’s business acumen with James Braxton Peterson, director of Africana Studies, professor of English at Lehigh University, and founder of Hip Hop Scholars. Together they delve into the financial side of Jay-Z’s career.
If you were around in the ’90s, you might recognize Michael Rapaport from movies like Zebrahead, Poetic Justice, and Higher Learning. In 2011, he came out with a documentary on A Tribe Called Quest. He talks to The Treatment’s Elvis Mitchell about his love of hip-hop, his childhood in New York City, and his experience filming his favorite artists.
Got a favorite podcast episode on hip-hop? Share it in the comments.

Below are some of my favorite #longreads that fall under the umbrella of “the lives of the poets.” Each is paired with a favorite poem by the poet in question. Quite a few of these stories are personal, not just about the poet, but about the authors of the pieces themselves. Which is unsurprising, especially because, as Billy Collins put it in a 2001 Globe and Mail piece: “You don’t read poetry to find out about the poet, you read poetry to find out about yourself.”
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David Berman is perhaps best known for his work with the indie-rock band Silver Jews, but his poetry is a thing to behold, as accessible as it is awesome (in the true sense of the word). Beller’s piece, a “tribute to the free-associating genius of the Silver Jews,” delves not just into the beauty of Berman’s free-association, but also his Judaism, his place in the New York literary scene of the 1990s, and his public pain.
Poem: “Self Portrait at 28” by David Berman
The details of poet Frank Stanford’s life are as labyrinth-like as his most famous work, an epic poem titled, “The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You.” His life was in many ways a series of contradictions: his childhood was divided between the privilege of an upper-crust Memphis family and summers deep in the Mississippi Delta; he was a backwoods outsider who maintained correspondence with poets ranging from Thomas Lux to Allen Ginsberg; and posthumously, he is both little-known and a cult figure in American letters. In seeking to unravel the man behind the myth, Ehrenreich heads deep into the lost roads of Arkansas: the result is a haunting and vivid portrait of both Stanford’s life and his own quest.
Poem: “The Truth” by Frank Stanford
Dana Goodyear’s profile of Gary Snyder provides a rich rendering of the Beat poet, Buddhist, and California mountain man.
Poem: “Night Song of the Los Angeles Basin” by Gary Snyder
It is likely that if you have made it this far down the list you already know a fair amount about Sylvia Plath, but what makes this piece interesting is Elizabeth Hardwick’s take on her, and her lovely, clear-eyed prose. Hardwick, who co-founded the New York Review of Books, was herself no stranger to the lives of poets, having spent 23 years married to Robert Lowell. It is also—maybe—of interest that the same girls who fall mercilessly hard for Plath at 16 and 21 and often discover Hardwick with a similar fervor a few years down the road (myself included).
Widely considered one of the most important 20th century American poets, Lowell’s biographer called him “the poet-historian of our time.” Parker’s piece examines a much more personal history, that of Lowell’s relationship with her father, painter Frank Parker.
Julia Wick is a native Angeleno who writes about literature, Los Angeles, and cities. She is currently finishing an Urban Planning degree at USC. Read her picks from Tablet Magazine, The New Yorker, and more.

Emily M. Keeler is a writer and the founding editor of Little Brother Magazine.
Best Pair of Essays on Loneliness
Emily Cooke, “The Lonely Ones” – The New Inquiry
Susan Sontag is a force that continues to be reckoned with, and the publication of her second volume of journals this year occasioned this incredible piece. I think I’ve re-read this essay three or four times now, and I just keep coming back for more.
Sonya Chung, “On Loneliness” – The Millions
Tacking a different walk down the same path, Chung looks to DFW’s adage about being a fucking human being and unpacks it until all that’s left is that intense feeling of being alone, but together. The problems of how to be alone and how to be with others are not new, but at the same time both Chung and Cooke cast reassuring lights onto this well worn and sort of depressing path.
Would’ve been a contender in this category, but for it being six years too early: Sheila Heti’s 2006 Trampoline Hall talk, “Why Go Out.”
Best Essay on the Museum of Innocence
Elif Batuman, “Pamuk’s Museum” – London Review of Books
Batuman has a bit of a magic touch in her ability to put you right on the scene, and she generously seems to fill your head with her knowledge and enthusiasm beforehand. For a diary entry, it’s surprising how quickly Batuman comes to seem just slightly out of frame, revealing instead the mysterious world of Orhan Pamuk’s strange, physically embodied and built literature.
Best Pair of Bookish Essays on Pornography
Josh Lambert, “James Deen vs. the Nebbishes” – Los Angeles Review of Books
It seems as though 2012 could’ve been called the year of James Deen. The charming porn star received so much media attention, and was the cause of so much hand-wringing this year, that for a time it seemed like he and his widely beloved penis were all anyone could talk about. Or maybe that was just my particular Twitter feed. Anyhow, this LARB piece was my favorite of the ones I read about Deen.
Avi Steinberg, “Checking Out” – The Paris Review Daily
Steinberg is a perpetual favorite of mine, in part because of the offbeat and unexamined subjects he chooses to write about, but mostly because of his thoughtful and good humored sensibility. On the topic of the relationships between librarians and pornography, he is simply without parallel. Who else could trace pretty much everything great in this world back to pornos? From who else would I be able to take a question like “What was the relationship between these library fuckers and what I had been reading?” completely on its face?
Best Profile of Jay-Z
Zadie Smith, “The House that Hova Built” – New York Times T Magazine
Duh. One of Smith’s many gifts is her ear, and it was thrilling to see one of my favorite language manipulators enraptured fannishly before another dextrous word slinger.
Most Likely To Lead You Down a Penn and Teller YouTube Rabbit Hole
Chris Jones, “The Honor System” – Esquire
Seriously, this Chris Jones story radically altered the texture of my life; for weeks afterward I became obsessed by magic. I watched at least one episode of Penn and Teller’s Fool Us per night, but usually more than one. I sacrificed a thing I tend to hold pretty sacred (my sleep) in order to feed a hunger I haven’t felt since I was child. This story made me ravenous for real magic, for showmanship, for being told the right kind of lies. The key to the joy of this story is, I think, in how Jones refuses to give away any of his or Teller’s tricks and instead zeroes in on the delight that the magician imparts on his audience—how pleasurable it is to revel in our own foolishness, for a change, to feel that ticklish sense of wonder.
An oral history of Burning Man, which started as an effigy burning in 1986 on San Francisco’s Baker Beach, and moved to the Black Rock Desert in 1990 to become one of the largest annual gatherings of inventors, artists and free spirits:
ALAN “REVEREND AL” RIDENOUR (head of Los Angeles Cacophony): In ’96, Burning Man was at its peak. We did the Damnation of Tinseltown and the flaming Helco tower. Burn Night felt like a scary, transformative ritual. Flash played Satan, and he came through with a gas can and doused Doris Day and John Wayne. I was on acid when I heard Flash’s booming laugh. He was Satan.
ELIZABETH GILBERT (author of Eat, Pray, Love who wrote about Burning Man ’96 for Spin): Honestly, I was scared of it. I remember the way the camp turned from this playful thing by day—beautiful and fanciful and Narnia-like—to this menacing thing at night. Being around all that fire, people with guns, and a lot of people on drugs, I was like, “They’ll be eating each other soon!” And in some ways they were—more sexually than anything else. I understood that Burning Man was waking something up. That awakening might lead to transcendent creativity—or it might be savage and ungovernable once it’s released.
On the role of nannies in a child’s upbringing, and the complications (emotional and financial) and joy that come with it:
Seeing Michele Asselin’s portraits, I remember the heightened sensitivity of my first months as a parent. The pictures are beautiful and idealized. The women look at the children with love. No one looks frustrated. No one looks bored. No child is having a meltdown. They conjure the dome of tender air that encloses a mother, whose body is coursing with hormones, and a newborn.
But these moments of private contentment, with the serenity and depth borrowed from the portraiture legacy of the Madonna and child, do not depict mothers with their infants. The women holding the children are nannies. Part of what’s striking about the pictures is that they position front and center a person who is often left on the editing-room floor when a family’s memories are being assembled. Nannies have told me that their employers crop them out of photographs of their children. On the wall of a West Los Angeles home, I noticed a blown-up photo of a baby in a pretty white dress, held by a pair of hands of a darker color. In her photos, Asselin captures a radiance between caregivers and children, often of different races.
“Love, Money and Other People’s Children.” — Mona Simpson, New York Times Magazine
Japanese-pop star Hatsune Miku has millions of YouTube hits, sells tickets to her concerts at $76 a pop and has adoring fans from all around the world. She’s also not human:
Created by Crypton Future Media, Miku is the most popular avatar created to sell Vocaloid 2, the singing synthesizer application originally developed by Yamaha. In Japan, it is common to create a character associated with software, and at first glance, Miku may seem like little more than an animated mascot, not unlike the Pillsbury Doughboy or the Snuggle fabric softener bear. But Miku inspires an unparalleled creativity.
Instead of passively worshipping her, fans have mobilized into an interactive artistic community. Using Vocaloid 2, they write melodies and lyrics, sharing their songs on YouTube or the Japanese equivalent, niconico (“smilesmile”). Since Miku’s ‘birth’ in August 2007, amateurs have used her likeness in hundreds of thousands of songs, illustrations, videos, games, animations—and one rather creepy, dead-looking Miku robot. She’s a cosplay (costume role play) favorite at anime conventions and elsewhere.
“I Sing the Body Electric.” — Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times Magazine
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