When Piper optioned her book to Jenji Kohan, the creator of Weeds, a number of people were asked to sign over something called “life rights.” In short: Some version of our lives could be depicted on the show, and we each agreed not to sue its creators if, for example, the character based on one […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Uncategorized
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 […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
An Environmental Disaster in Chicago
Chicago is no stranger to the hazards of being an industrial town, and residents of the Southeast Side have lived with the more pervasive realities of industry for over a century. Petcoke is the latest iteration of this struggle: another chapter of confusion, ignorance, and inconsistent government action. The wind that blows along Lake Michigan’s […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Honey, I Want To Move To Mars
My wife is a semifinalist to board a one-way mission to the Red Planet. I’m proud, happy, and thrilled for her. Now, do you want to know how I really feel about i? I might have suggested another couple of words in response to that particular question, but I know better than most that the […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
I Was A Love-Letter Ghostwriter
The writer on working on art piece called the “Love Letter Project,” in which she ghostwrote love letters fro strangers: I listened until he was finished talking. Then I arranged the sentences he’d spoken on the page. It was more like transcribing than writing. I will never in my life not regret that we didn’t […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Dangerous Mind
Examining the case and trial of Gilberto Valle, AKA the “cannibal cop,” a New York police officer who fantasized about kidnapping, killing, and eating women he knew with strangers, but who never acted on any of his plans: On August 24, they discussed ways that Valle might kidnap another woman, Kristen Ponticelli, a recent graduate […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Shit Actually
A scene-by-scene reassessment of Love Actually. It’s not positive: Okay. Seriously. Is this Colin Firth storyline actually about human trafficking? Colin Firth shows up in France and this woman just gets dropped off at his house and he “falls in love with her” even though they cannot communicate and the only thing he knows about […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Where It Hurts: Steve McQueen on Why ’12 Years a Slave’ Isn’t Just About Slavery
Dan P. Lee on the director and Oscar contender: I’d seen 12 Years the night before, at the huge cineplex in downtown L.A. My friend sobbed quietly through a good portion of it. At least one black couple left midway. As we walked out of the Âtheater, no one seemed to be speaking; breaking the […]
Posted inNonfiction
A Birth Story
Meaghan O’Connell had a perfect pregnancy and the perfect birth plan—and then she went into labor.
Posted inNonfiction
#Nightshift: Excerpts from an Instagram Essay
Jeff Sharlet | Longreads | September 2014 | 12 minutes (2,802 words) 1. Snapshots Dunkin Donuts, West Lebanon, New Hampshire The night shift, for me, is a luxury, the freedom to indulge my insomnia by writing at a Dunkin Donuts, one of the only places up here open at midnight. But lately my insomnia doesn’t […]
