Search Results for: The Stranger

‘It Is An Opportunity for Great Joy’: The Power of Narration & Medicine

Longreads Pick

Jalees Rehman, a cell biologist and physician at the University of Illinois at Chicago, on his grandfather’s surgery, and what he learned about humanity and healing:

“Since that time I spent with my grandfather and the other patients on the eye ward, I have associated medicine with narration. All humans want to be narrators, but many have difficulties finding listeners. Illness is often a time of vulnerability and loneliness. Narrating stories during this time of vulnerability is a way to connect to fellow human beings, which helps overcome the loneliness. The listeners can be family members, friends or even strangers. Unfortunately, many people who are ill do not have access to family members or friends who are willing to listen. This is the reason why healthcare professionals such as nurses or physicians can serve a very important role.”

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 12, 2012
Length: 7 minutes (1,957 words)

‘He’s Our Baby’: What Happens When a Child Is Placed in Foster Care

Cris Beam | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | August 2013 | 23 minutes (5,787 words)

 

Below is the opening chapter of To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care, by Cris Beam, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Julia Wick. Thanks to Cris and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for sharing it with the Longreads community.

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The Child Exchange

Longreads Pick

An investigation into America’s underground market for adopted children. Using online forums like Yahoo and Facebook groups, parents often advertise their unwanted children—who have a tendency to have been adopted abroad and have special needs—and give custody rights to strangers in a practice called “private re-homing,” which has little or no government regulation:

“As the Puchallas drove away, Melissa sobbed. She calls the decision ‘the hardest thing we’ve ever done in our lives.’ Quita still can’t reconcile it. ‘How would you give me up when you brought me to be yours?’ she asks.

“In the days that followed, two puppies scampered through the trailer, gifts from the Easons to Quita. The dogs lifted the teenager’s spirits, but they weren’t housebroken and no one cleaned up after them. No one did the dishes, either, or the laundry.

“More troubling, Quita says, was that the Easons took her into their bed: ‘They call me in there to sleep … to lay in the bed with them.’ In bed, “Nicole used to be naked and stuff. It was not right to me.'”

Source: Reuters
Published: Sep 9, 2013
Length: 91 minutes (22,903 words)

5 Great Stories on the Lives of Poets

Sylvia Plath. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

“If I knew where poems came from, I’d go there.” —Michael Longley

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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1. ‘River of Berman,’ by Thomas Beller (Tablet Magazine, Dec. 13, 2012)

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

2. ‘The Long Goodbye,’ by Ben Ehrenreich (Poetry Magazine, Jan. 2008)

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

3. ‘Zen Master: Gary Snyder and the Art of Life,’ by Dana Goodyear (New Yorker, Oct. 20, 2008)

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

4. ‘On Sylvia Plath,’ by Elizabeth Hardwick (New York Review of Books, Aug. 12, 1971)

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).

Poem: “Cut” by Sylvia Plath

5. ‘Robert Lowell’s Lightness,’ by Diantha Parker (Poetry Magazine, Nov. 2010)

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.

Poem: “History” by Robert Lowell

Our Longreads Member Pick: The Prophet, by Luke Dittrich and Esquire

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For this week’s Member Pick, we’re excited to share “The Prophet,” the much-talked-about new story from Luke Dittrich and Esquire magazine investigating the claims made by Dr. Eben Alexander in the best-selling book Proof of Heaven, about Alexander’s own near-death experience.

Dittrich, a contributing editor at Esquire since 2008, has been featured on Longreads many times in the past and his work has appeared in anthologies including The Best American Crime WritingThe Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and his article about a group of strangers who sheltered together during a devastating tornado won the 2012 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. He is currently writing a book for Random House about his neurosurgeon grandfather’s most famous patient, Henry Molaison, an amnesiac from whom medical science learned most of what it knows about how memory works.

Read an excerpt here. 

Become a Longreads Member to receive the full ebook. 

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Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Our Longreads Member Pick: The Prophet, by Luke Dittrich and Esquire

Longreads Pick

For this week’s Member Pick, we’re excited to share “The Prophet,” the much-talked-about new story from Luke Dittrich and Esquire magazine investigating the claims made by Dr. Eben Alexander in the best-selling book Proof of Heaven, about Alexander’s own near-death experience.

Dittrich, a contributing editor at Esquire since 2008, has been featured on Longreads many times in the past and his work has appeared in anthologies including The Best American Crime WritingThe Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and his article about a group of strangers who sheltered together during a devastating tornado won the 2012 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. He is currently writing a book for Random House about his neurosurgeon grandfather’s most famous patient, Henry Molaison, an amnesiac from whom medical science learned most of what it knows about how memory works.

Read an excerpt here. 

Become a Longreads Member to receive the full ebook. 

Source: Esquire
Published: Jul 23, 2013
Length: 42 minutes (10,525 words)

What the Hell Are You Doing?!

Longreads Pick

Tess Vigeland spent 11 years at her dream job at Marketplace. And then she decided to leave for an uncertain future:

“You guys — I had fans. Yeah. I had fans. People who would recognize me in elevators just by my voice. Perfect strangers who thought I was awesome and had the coolest job in the world. Who doesn’t love that?!

“And after 11 years of that… 11 years at Marketplace… I walked away.

“What. The Hell. Are you doing.”

Source: Medium
Published: Jul 7, 2013
Length: 17 minutes (4,360 words)

Podcast Pick: 'Dec. 31, 1995'

Random Tape is a podcast by David Weinberg, and it’s exactly what its name implies—it’s audio from a random tape. The most recent episode (discovered via @samlistens) is “Dec. 31, 1995,” and it records a troubling argument between what appears to be an older couple, Kenneth and Miriam. 

We asked Weinberg for some context:

“The Kenneth and Miriam tape came from a stranger—a guy who liked the podcast and sent it to me. He picked the cassette up at an estate sale, I can’t remember where though. The unedited tape is so dark. It just goes on and on. There’s no redemption in it. Kenneth and Miriam just get drunker and drunker and meaner and meaner. There’s little forensic evidence of anything other than a bitter marriage and Fox news is playing in the background. Not one sweet moment in the whole recording.

“The first time I listened to it I was in an airport. I distinctly remember watching a stream of people emerge from a plane and feeling really sad for Miriam and disgusted with Kenneth and wondering which of the people walking past me were actually monsters. It was one those recordings that haunted me. (In a strange coincidence I found out later from the man who sent me the tape that Kenneth was an airline pilot.) And at the same time I was a little elated. I had the feeling I get when I come a cross a really great piece of undiscovered tape. And of course I wanted to know more more about Kenneth and Miriam. So I made it up. It’s the first time I tried to do a kind of hybrid piece of writing fiction around found tape.”

Check out more from Random Tape here.

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How I Met My Wife

Longreads Pick

Novelist Robert Boswell tells the story of how he met his wife, the author Antonya Nelson, and uses the story to explore how fiction is crafted:

“Why are we drawn to stories about people falling in love? There are likely a host of reasons, but here’s a good one: marriage, when observed from a place of solitude, has the power of dream. Solitary people fall in love with couples, imagining their own lives transformed by such a union. And once the transformation finally happens, people need to talk about it, telling not only their families, friends, and strangers on the bus but also themselves—repeating it to make it real, to investigate the mystery of marital metamorphosis. And they get good at the telling. People who cannot otherwise put together an adequately coherent narrative to get you to the neighborhood grocery will nonetheless have a beautifully shaped tale of how he met she (or he met he, or she met she) and became we.”

Source: Tin House
Published: Jun 3, 2013
Length: 29 minutes (7,468 words)

Reading List: Where the Witty Things Are

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Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps.

1. “This Wedding Season, Say Yes to Strangers: What I Learned From My Craigslist Date” and “A Brief Addendum to Our Craigslist Wedding Story.” (Lindsey Grad and Nick Hassell, The Hairpin, June 2013)

When a bridezilla demanded that Grad find a date to her wedding, she made the best of the situation—she took to Craigslist.

2. “The Amazing Atheist: The Full Interview.” (David Luna, The Annual, May 2013)

Traditional interviewing with a twist: Luna interviews T.J. Kincaid, better known as YouTube’s The Amazing Atheist. (Full disclosure: I am the editor-at-large for The Annual, a monthly humor magazine founded by my childhood friend and comedy connoisseur, Kevin Cole.)

3. “Jokes Taught Me About Sex.” (Andrew Hudgins, The Rumpus, June 2013)

To everyone who didn’t understand the dirty jokes their friends told in middle school: Hudgins understands you. And he may have had it a bit worse.

4. “And … Scene” “An Oral History of Upright Citizens’ Brigade Theater Partying and ‘Awkward Sexuality.’” (Brian Raftery, New York magazine and Vulture, 2011 and 2013)

Their former venues include a bloody delicatessen basement and a low-fi burlesque club frequented by Hasidic Jews. Upright Citizens Brigade has produced some of the wildest and funniest folks in comedy today. Here, Raftery compiles the experiences of the early days of Amy Poehler, Ed Helms, Bobby Moynihan, Horatio Sanz, Janeane Garofalo and many more.

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What are you reading (and loving)? Tell us.

Photo: Marcin Wichary