Search Results for: Review

Making the Magazine: A Reading List

Longreads Pick

Magazine nerds, here we go: A starter collection of 27 behind-the-scenes stories from some of your most beloved magazines, including The New Yorker, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair and the New York Review of Books, plus now-defunct publications like Might, George, Sassy and Wigwag.

Author: Editors
Source: Longreads
Published: Jun 16, 2014

Making the Magazine: A Reading List

Magazine nerds, here we go: A starter collection of behind-the-scenes stories from some of your most beloved magazines, including The New Yorker, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair and the New York Review of Books, plus now-defunct publications like Might, George, Sassy and Wigwag. Share your favorite behind-the-magazine stories with us on Twitter or Facebook: #longreads. Read more…

Beverly Cleary on Fatherhood, via 'Ramona and Her Father'

At Avidly, Stephanie Lucianovic rereads the ‘Ramona’ books from Beverly Cleary and gains a new appreciation for Cleary’s writing, as well as a new perspective on the theme of parenting found within the books. Here’s Lucianovic on Ramona’s father:

Running throughout the entire Ramona and Beezus oeuvre, and illustrated by Mr. Quimby’s ill-fated career, is the recognizably adult theme that quite often, parents set aside pre-kid dreams for post-kid necessities because making their kids’ dreams come true is the new dream.

What we learn in the Ramona books is that Mr. Quimby was once an art major, but when Mrs. Quimby got pregnant with Beezus, he dropped out of school and got a job. We can acknowledge that some of the Ramona books were a product of their time (Cleary wrote them between 1955-1999) when getting married while in college was not as mind-boggling as it might be today, yet also still recognize that having a baby at any stage of life forces a family to completely change their life around in order to accommodate it. Dropping out of college and not finishing his art degree is the first data point in Mr. Quimby’s realistic if depressing career trajectory.

Bit by bit we find out about all the jobs Mr. Quimby has held. In Beezus and Ramona, he has an unnamed position at Pacific Gas & Electric, and in Ramona and Her Father he loses his job in an office of a small moving and storage company, and everything appears to go downhill from there. For what feels like a painfully extended time (all of Ramona and Her Father), Mr. Quimby is standing in line at unemployment, waiting by the phone for interviews and job offers, and smoking. By the close of Ramona and Her Father, Mr. Quimby has finally secured a job as a checker at a grocery store chain with management potential. In other books, we’ll learn how much he hates his checker job — once again a concept which may not mean much to the kids for whom the books were written but one which resonates far too loudly for adults — and how he’ll leave that checker job to go back to art school and then get a teaching certificate while also working part-time at another hated job in a frozen foods warehouse.

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The Secret Life of an Obsessive Airbnb Host

Longreads Pick

Determined to quit his tired government job, one D.C. office drone saves $25,000 by renting his apartment nightly and secretly sleeping on the office floor.

I was on track, according to a slap-dash Excel budget, to resign in a year. An extra $1,350 a month was flowing into my coffers. Although it wasn’t raining cash, I was matching what I made with what I saved by paring down my lifestyle expenses. The final factor in my favor was that my plan coincided with Airbnb’s asymptote-like upsurge in popularity. After receiving my first batch of positive reviews, the reservations poured in. Sleep came easier on my camping mat, and I dreamed in eighties montages about being a runaway Airbnb success story.

But there is a reason it’s not called Murphy’s Theory.

Source: Narratively
Published: May 22, 2014
Length: 14 minutes (3,550 words)

When Groucho Marx Quoted ‘The Waste Land’ to T.S. Eliot

Strange but true: Groucho Marx and T.S. Eliot were pen-pals. Their correspondence began in 1961, when T.S. Eliot sent Groucho Marx a fan letter. It continued for several years, with them finally meeting for dinner in 1964. From a recent post on Daybook:

The much-postponed event took place just seven months before Eliot’s death at the age of seventy-six. In a letter afterwards to Gummo, Groucho describes finding his “celebrated pen pal” to be “a dear man and a charming host,” though the evening not quite the literary event he’d imagined:

During the week I had read Murder in the Cathedral twice, The Waste Land three times, and just in case of a conversational bottleneck, I brushed up on King Lear. Well, sir, as the cocktails were served, there was a momentary lull — the kind that is more or less inevitable when strangers meet for the first time. So, apropos of practically nothing (and not with a bang but a whimper) I tossed in a quotation from The Waste Land. That, I thought, will show him I’ve read a thing or two besides my press notices from Vaudeville. Eliot smiled faintly — as though to say he was thoroughly familiar with his poems and didn’t need me to recite them. So I took a whack at King Lear…. That too failed to bowl over the poet. He seemed more interested in discussing Animal Crackers and A Night at the Opera. He quoted a joke — one of mine — that I had long since forgotten. Now it was my turn to smile faintly…. We didn’t stay late, for we both felt that he wasn’t up to a long evening of conversation — especially mine. Did I tell you we called him Tom? — possibly because that’s his name. I, of course, asked him to call me Tom too, but only because I loathe the name Julius.

Yours,
Tom Marx

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Photo of T.S. Eliot via Wikimedia Commons
Photo of Groucho Marx via Wikimedia Commons

Yes, All Women: A Reading List of Stories Written By Women

This week, a lot happened. A misogynist went on a violent rampage. #YesAllWomen took off on Twitter. Dr. Maya Angelou, feminist author and all-around genius (and don’t get me started on her doctor honorary), died at 86 years old. This week, I present a long list of essays, articles and interviews written by women. Many are about women, too. Some are lighthearted; others reflect on the events of the past week. I included a variety of subjects to honor those who might be triggered by the deadly violence of last week’s shooting, because women do not only write in the wake of tragedy—we write, we exist, for all time. So in this list there is reflection and humor; there are books and music and religion; there are all kinds of stories, fiction and non. Read what you need. Engage or escape.

1. “Summer in the City.” (Emma Aylor, May 2014)

Aylor, author of Twos, uses #YesAllWomen to write about about the sexual harassment she experienced as she researched her dissertation on the work of Wallace Stevens.

2. “In Relief of Silence and Burden.” (Roxane Gay, May 2014)

The author of An Untamed State and critically acclaimed badass gives her “testimony … so we can relieve ourselves of silence and burden” in the vein of #YesAllWomen, sharing stories of harassment, abuse and more.

3. “Not All Women: A Reflection on Being a Musician and Female.” (Allison Crutchfield, Impose Magazine, May 2014)

A wide range of female musicians react to a depressingly misogynistic article in Noisey about how to tour in a dude-dominated band. They share what they’ve learned on the road, emphasizing self-care, communication with bandmates, and doing what you need to do to feel safe and be your best self.

Read more…

On Going Back Home: A Reading List

We are expats and nomads. We are products of multiple countries. We run away from places that don’t feel quite right, only to never find where we belong. These stories celebrate the journey of returning to (or discovering) our roots, and the elusive, ever-evolving concept of home. Read more…

Submissions

If You’ve Published a Story and Would Like Us to Consider It for an Editor’s Pick

To submit an already published story for Editor’s Picks consideration, the best way to share it with us is via  @Longreads on Twitter, or tagging a tweet with the #longreads hashtag. 

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If You’d Like to Pitch Us an Original Story for Publication

Longreads accepts pitches for original work and pays competitive rates. We’re not accepting any fiction at this time.

We are a very small team and receive many pitches and submissions each day. We only respond if we are interested in publishing your piece, so we strongly recommend submitting simultaneously to other publications. Please email story pitches, essay submissions, and other queries to hello@longreads.com. Adding a bit of detail and context in your subject line helps to make your message stand out.

Essays and Features

Our pieces typically run between 2,000 and 6,000 words, but can be longer or broken up into a series depending on the length and subject matter. 

Personal essays should be submitted on spec, and we pay $500 per essay. We look for smart, original angles and fresh, unique voices. Here are some of our favorites: 

We accept pitches for critical essays and columns. Rates start at $500, with the rate varying depending on the level of reporting and research required.  Here are a few examples:

Longreads features that require original reporting should also be submitted as pitches. These features are edited and fact-checked. We are interested in collaborating with artists and photographers on stories, and are open to working with partners you may have in mind. Tell us what makes your story incredible and urgent, why you have the goods to write it, and why Longreads is the place to tell it.

We pay competitive rates for features depending on the degree of reporting required and the complication of your proposal. Base payment begins at $1,500, and we will work with you to pay you a solid fee and also cover expenses. Here are examples of this type of work:

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Some Tips

It can take us a considerable amount of time to review pitches and read submissions, which means we are unable to respond to everyone. For this reason, we think it’s a great idea for you to pitch your stories to other publications in addition to Longreads — but please include a note to us if you are doing so.

If you do decide to pitch something exclusively to Longreads, give us a deadline to consider your idea before taking your pitch to other outlets.

If we don’t accept your initial pitch, pitch us again! We reject stories for a variety of reasons: a story may not be quite right for us, and sometimes it’s all about timing.

A Well-Rounded Scholar: The Many Alter Egos of A. D. Harvey

Photo by Nicholas Boos

Charitably, we can see the practice of reviewing one’s own works as a kind of knowing critique of the insider trading that can occur among authors and reviewers. Why bother to solicit reviews for your books when you can write them yourself? There may, however, be something more poignant here. Even for holders of tenured university positions, scholarship can make for a lonely life. One spends years on a monograph and then waits a few more years for someone to write about it. How much lonelier the life of an independent scholar, who does not have regular contact, aggravating as that can sometimes be, with colleagues. Attacking one’s own book can be seen as an understandable response to an at times intolerable isolation. How comforting to construct a community of scholars who can analyse, supplement and occasionally even ruthlessly criticize each other’s work. I’ve traced the connections between A. D. Harvey, Stephanie Harvey, Graham Headley, Trevor McGovern, John Schellenberger, Leo Bellingham, Michael Lindsay and Ludovico Parra, but they may be part of a much wider circle of friends.

—Russian literature scholar Eric Naiman wanted to track a minor literary hoax to its source. What he found instead is an ever-expanding network of hard-to-trace scholars citing, reviewing, and plagiarizing each other’s work. Could they all be the fictional creations of one A. D. Harvey, an isolated British researcher? Naiman recounts his detective work in this 2013 story from the Times Literary Supplement.

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Maya Angelou: 1928-2014

Years ago I read a man named Machado de Assis who wrote a book called Dom Casmurro. Machado de Assis is a South American writer—black father, Portuguese mother—writing in 1865, say. I thought the book was very nice. Then I went back and read the book and said, Hmm. I didn’t realize all that was in that book. Then I read it again, and again, and I came to the conclusion that what Machado de Assis had done for me was almost a trick: he had beckoned me onto the beach to watch a sunset. And I had watched the sunset with pleasure. When I turned around to come back in I found that the tide had come in over my head. That’s when I decided to write.

Maya Angelou, in a 1990 Paris Review interview with George Plimpton. Angelou died in 2014.

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Photo: bc-burnslibrary, Flickr