When Alexander Chee was a struggling young writer, working as a cater-waiter for William F. and Pat Buckley.
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The Box and the Basement
“On the last day of my old job, I stumbled out the door, holding aloft that iconic emblem of termination: The Box. Though from the outside it might look wholly indistinct, we who have felt its symbolic weight know this is no ordinary box; this is a box that can make grown men cry.”
A Woman on the Margins
An interview with Vivian Gornick about the problem with writing programs, the memoir’s potential for dishonesty, and finding her way as a writer.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. *** 1. Ghosting: Confessions of a WikiLeaks Ghostwriter Andrew O’Hagan | London Review of Books | February 23, 2014 | 105 minutes (26,390 words) […]
Longreads Best of 2013: Best Listicle By Another Name
A Pianist’s A-V Alfred Brendel | New York Review of Books | July 2013 | 17 minutes (4,233 words) *** Robert Cottrell is editor of The Browser. The best writers about classical music are professional musicians: think of Jeremy Denk, Stephen Hough, Nico Muhly. (The exception that disproves the rule is Alex Ross.) Charles Rosen, […]
Mr. and Mrs. B
When Alexander Chee was a struggling young writer, working as a cater-waiter for William F. and Pat Buckley.
Who Was the Poet Frank Stanford?
With the recently released What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford, the work of a brilliant, difficult, much-mythologized and little-known American poet is finally widely available. Frank Stanford’s short life was a study in contradictions: his childhood was divided between the privilege of an upper-crust Memphis family and summers deep in the Mississippi Delta; he was a […]
Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. *** 1. This Is Danny Pearl’s Final Story Asra Q. Nomani | Washingtonian | January 23, 2014 | 30 minutes (7,639 words) Asra Nomani, […]
Longreads Best of 2013: The Best Story About Storytelling
In Conversation: Robert Silvers Mark Danner | New York magazine | April 2013 | 28 minutes (7,063 words) Nicholas Jackson is the digital director at Pacific Standard, and a former digital editor at Outside and The Atlantic. These year-end lists tend to be like the Academy Awards in that only work released during the […]
Hell—Nothing Less—And Without End: Six Days in Warsaw
“The uprising,” we told each other immediately, like everyone else in Warsaw. Strange. Because no one had ever used that word before in his life. Only in history, in books.

