Hunter Thompson lobbied Jann Wenner, the publisher of Rolling Stone to hire George, who had been writing freelance music reviews. In a letter to George, Thompson wrote, “I want Wenner to have the experience of dealing with someone more demonstrably crazy than I am—so that he’ll understand that I am, in context, a very reasonable person.”
Wenner apparently felt one Hunter Thompson was all he needed, so George headed instead to the Boston Phoenix, that town’s version of the Village Voice. It was the ideal place for his freewheeling reviews of poetry, books, and music. His passion, however, was sports.
Hunter Thompson lobbied Jann Wenner, the publisher of Rolling Stone to hire George, who had been writing freelance music reviews. In a letter to George, Thompson wrote, “I want Wenner to have the experience of dealing with someone more demonstrably crazy than I am—so that he’ll understand that I am, in context, a very reasonable person.”
Wenner apparently felt one Hunter Thompson was all he needed, so George headed instead to the Boston Phoenix, that town’s version of the Village Voice. It was the ideal place for his freewheeling reviews of poetry, books, and music. His passion, however, was sports.
Because there are three of us, we trilaterally decided to go for 15. But it’s not really five each; that becomes complicated, too, but… well, anyway, no matter how you cut it, surely at least one of us hated some of these stories. Also to be fair, this list, which is not in order, should really be called “The 15 Best Longreads That We Can Still Remember From 2011—What A Year, Am I Right, Oh Man, It’s December Somehow—After Extensive Googling and Mind-Nudging (Also Only Stories That We Didn’t Publish Ourselves, Because We Could Easily Cough Up 25 Longreads From Our Own Archives That Are Totally As Good Or Better And Also Have Better Gender Parity Probably But Anyway We Don’t Roll Self-Promotionally Like That).” FUN BONUS: Only three of the 15 best stories of the year (yes, sure, that we can remember) were in The New Yorker, so they are ranked in order. — Alex Balk, Carrie Frye, Choire Sicha of The Awl. (See their #longreads archive here.)
Paul Collins’ “Vanishing Act” (Lapham’s Quarterly), about Barbara Newhall Follett, was published in the last twelve months, but on December 18, 2010, so to avoid the problem of the year-end list that’s published before the end of the year, ahem, we include it here honorarily.
While I was raging through the Miami airport, Tim Chapman, a husky twenty-eight-year-old photographer for the Miami Herald, was doing some of the best work of his life. In Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, he had talked his way onto a flight to Jonestown, where the bodies still lay, three days after the massacre that culminated in the death of more than 900 members of the Reverend Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple.
From the helicopter it looked as if there were a lot of brightly colored specks around the main building. At 300 feet the smell hit. The chopper landed on a rise, out of sight of the bodies. Other reporters tied handkerchiefs over their faces. Chapman didn’t have one, so he used a chamois rag. It turned out to be a good idea.
What ever happened to your signature laugh, by the way?
I don’t laugh like that anymore, somehow it doesn’t come out. It’s weird to change something that’s as natural as that. But it started out as a real laugh, then it turned into people laughing because they thought my laugh was funny, and then there were a couple of times where I laughed because I knew it would make people laugh. Then it got weird. People came up to me and said, “Do that laugh,” or if you laugh, someone turns around and goes, “Eddie?” I just stopped doing it.
The president answered these arguments himself. According to one participant’s summary, Obama said: Look, the question of who rules Libya is probably not a vital interest to the United States. The atrocities threatened don’t compare to atrocities in other parts of the world, I hear that. But there’s a big “but” here. First of all, acting would be the right thing to do, because we have an opportunity to prevent a massacre, and we’ve been asked to do it by the people of Libya, their Arab neighbors and the United Nations. And second, the president said, failing to intervene would be a “psychological pendulum, in terms of the Arab Spring, in favor of repression.” He concluded: “Just signing on to a no-fly zone so that we have political cover isn’t going to cut it. That’s not how America leads.” Nor, he added, is it the “image of America I believe in.”
Rob Sheffield and company at Rolling Stone Longreads (Taken with Instagram at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe)
such a wonderful discussion tonight! sammie rubes and i were sitting way in the back but still really enjoyed the journalism war stories and advice
Thanks everyone for a fun night with Rolling Stone, Longreads and Housing Works. Packed house and excellent audience questions for Rob Sheffield, Jeff Goodell, Brian Hiatt and Will Dana.
To get you ready for the panel, we’ve collected a couple great stories from each of the three panelists: Jeff Goodell, Brian Hiatt and Rob Sheffield.
Jeff Goodell:
The Dark Lord of Coal Country, Nov. 29, 2010: The Rolling Stone investigation that forced the resignation of Don Blankenship, the coal industry’s dirtiest CEO
As the World Burns, Jan. 6, 2010: How Big Oil and Big Coal mounted one of the most agressive lobbying campaigns in history to block progress on global warming
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