Search Results for: fiction

Upstairs

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] A man reaches out to the woman who lives above him:

“Peter was an agoraphobic. He couldn’t tell you what that was a year ago, but he could describe to you now what it feels like to stand by the front door and feel the heat radiate off of the knob, so sure it could burn you if you touch it. He never would have guessed when he rented this one-bedroom basement apartment that it could become his waking coffin, that he would let her death bury him alive. It was the first place he found on Craigslist, the woman who owned the house was the first landlord to return his call, and he took it without inspecting the toilet or looking closer at the cracks in the ceiling.”

Source: Vol. 1 Brooklyn
Published: Apr 16, 2013
Length: 11 minutes (2,999 words)

Bettering Myself

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] A woman struggles to deal with personal problems:

“My classroom was on the first floor, next to the nuns’ lounge. I used their bathroom to puke in the mornings. One nun always dusted the toilet seat with talcum powder. Another nun plugged the sink and filled it with water. I never understood the nuns. One was old and the other was young. The young one talked to me sometimes, asked me what I would do for the long weekend, if I’d see my folks over Christmas, and so forth. The old one looked the other way and twisted her robes in her fists when she saw me coming.”

Published: Apr 1, 2013
Length: 16 minutes (4,145 words)

Interview: Renata Adler

Longreads Pick

The author on writing nonfiction and fiction, and the current state of criticism:

“BLVR: There has been a lot of talk recently about the rules of criticism. When is it too mean? When is it too nice? The internet makes it so that you’re very much aware of the human you’re writing about—you don’t want to see them in pain. It’s good for the critic’s psychology, but maybe not so great for criticism.

“RA: Well, it used to be one way a young writer made it in New York. He would attack, in a small obscure publication, someone very strong, highly regarded, whom a few people may already have hated. Then the young writer might gain a small following. When he looked for a job, an assignment, and an editor asked, ‘What have you published?’ he could reply, ‘Well, this piece.’ The editor might say, ‘Oh, yeah, that was met with a lot of consternation.’ And a portfolio began. This isn’t the way it goes now. More like a race to join the herd of received ideas and agreement.”

Source: The Believer
Published: Apr 10, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,161 words)

The Thinking Molecules of Titan

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] A previously unpublished sci-fi story by the writer and film critic, who died on April 4 at age 70:

“‘This is a vague idea,’ said Regan. ‘I’m still working on it. Titan evolves molecules that group in such a way that they, oh, get together, like, and don’t actually communicate, like, but prowl around in non-self-conscious collective-information patterns. That’s what we’re hearing, now that we’re closer to the source.’

“‘There’s only one way this is going,’ Alex said. ‘A lunar intelligence.’

“‘Intelligence is not required,’ Regan said. ‘All that’s needed are patterns that move more easily than other patterns. Patterns that lend themselves to pattern-originators. The way of least resistance. We don’t like sulfur, but it’s yummy for the deep-sea plumes.'”

Read more from the Longreads Roger Ebert Archive

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Apr 4, 2013
Length: 9 minutes (2,410 words)

Longreads Is Joining Forces with The Atlantic

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We have some big news to share today: Longreads is teaming up with The Atlantic, in a partnership that will allow us to expand our site and membership model—and continue to serve this community of readers, writers and publishers. 

When I first started the #longreads hashtag four years ago, The Atlantic was one of the earliest publishers to embrace it, and they understood what makes it special—the diversity of readers’ tastes, sharing the stories they love, from a mix of well-known and undiscovered publishers and writers, across both nonfiction and fiction.

We’re excited about the opportunity to work together with The Atlantic, and to continue expanding this site and community.

If you’re curious about the business side of things, here are some specifics about how the partnership is set up:

Longreads remains an independent company and editorial team, just as we always have been. We’re six people who have invested our time and resources into building Longreads—and we will continue to do what we do best, which is spotlight the best work from magazines, newspapers, books, and across the web.

Our site will be featured alongside the rest of The Atlantic’s growing network of sites, and their team will be helping us with business and operations.

By now, you’ve already seen the two big pieces of the Longreads business model, and in the spirit of transparency, I’m outlining it here:

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Our goal has been to create a business that supports readers, writers and publishers in different ways, through a mix of paid memberships and advertising.

With paid memberships, we’re creating a system where you, our subscribers, are helping to pay writers and publishers for rights to stories and book chapters that are featured as “Longreads Member Picks.” (Here’s this week’s Member Pick, a short story from Amelia Gray and Tin House.)

Through our membership, we want to keep building a secondary market for publishers and writers to make money off licensing, and we’re doing so with your financial support. (You can join for $3 a month or $30 a year.)

On the advertising front, we teamed up with Virgin Atlantic last year on Travelreads, and we’d like to continue pursuing these types of creative initiatives. Advertising, done thoughtfully, will help support new channels like Travelreads, as well our daily editor picks across Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and the weekly Top 5 Longreads email.

We’re excited for what’s next, and we’re so thankful for this community’s continued support. We can’t do this without you, and we’ll share more details as things come together.

Mark and rest of the Longreads team (Mike, Kjell, Hakan, Jodi and Joyce)

articles read & loved no. 47

dietcoker:

  1. An Oddly Modern Antiquarian Bookshop in Toronto specializes in the strangest, most wonderful books.
  2. Katherine Arcement writes about her adolescent love of fan fiction.
  3. Monica Torres writes about majoring in English while not being white.
  4. Dating While Feminist and Christian

Emily Perper’s always excellent reading list. 

The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones

Longreads Pick

[Fiction, National Magazine Award finalist, 2004] A girl is sent to stay with her cousin in Israel:

“My cousin says that when I go home I should encourage my parents to keep kosher, that we should always say b’rachot before and after eating, that my mother and I should wear long skirts and long-sleeved shirts every day. She says all this will help my mother recover, the way it helped her mother recover from the divorce. I try to tell her how long it’s been since we’ve even done the normal things, like go to the movies or make a big Chinese dinner in the wok. But Esty just watches me with a distant, enlightened look in her eyes and says we have to try to do what God wants. I have been here a month, and still I haven’t told her any of the bad things I’ve done this year—sneaked cigarettes from my friends’ mothers’ packs, stole naked-lady playing cards from a street vendor on West 33rd, kissed a boy from swim team behind the bleachers after a meet. I had planned to tell her all these things, thinking she’d be impressed, but soon I understood that she wouldn’t.”

Published: Mar 1, 2003
Length: 36 minutes (9,145 words)

The Woman of the House

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] Two men are hired to paint a couple’s farmhouse in Ireland:

“They were distantly related, had been together in the farmhouse since his mother died, twelve years ago, and his father the following winter. Another distant relative had suggested the union, since Martina was on her own and only occasionally employed. Her cousin—for they had agreed that they were cousins of a kind—would have otherwise had to be taken into a home; and she herself had little to lose by coming to the farm. The grazing was parcelled out, rent received annually and now and again another field sold. Her crippled cousin, who since birth had been confined as he was now, had for Martina the attraction of a legal stipulation: in time she would inherit what was left.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Mar 23, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,571 words)

Brief Encounter with the Household Gods

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] A daughter talks about her father and his favorite TV Show:

“It’s the political woman who’s responsible for his new phase. I see him watching her on her TV show. With her husband & her kids, she’s traveling around her totally backward state. My dad loves that show. He gets all excited because sometimes she climbs out of their obnoxious vehicle & somebody hands her a rifle & she shoots a dog or a moose. ‘This woman’s real, Juby,’ my dad says. ‘You’ve got to sit down and watch this. This is how women used to be in this country.’

Source: Ploughshares
Published: Mar 11, 2013
Length: 6 minutes (1,617 words)

Summer of ’38

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] A Spanish woman revisits a wartime romance:

“The week after Ana had mentioned the man from the electric company, Montse saw him waiting at the front door of her building when she came home with a bag of fruit. She did know him, she realized; he was someone she often saw on the street. She must have been aware, too, that he worked for fecsa, although she couldn’t think how she knew this. She didn’t think she knew his name or anything else about him.

“Once he had introduced himself, she realized that he wanted to come up to the apartment with her. She was unsure about this. Since Paco died, she had become protective of her own space and she disliked surprises. She even asked her daughters to phone at appointed times. But there was something both eager and easygoing in this man’s manner and she knew that it would sound rude if she asked him to say whatever he had to say in the hallway of the building.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Mar 7, 2013
Length: 27 minutes (6,913 words)