Angela Carter’s short story “The Merchant of Shadows” first appeared in The London Review of Books in 1989. Set in Hollywood, the narrator is a young, male student conducting research on a famed but mysterious director. The story bends and twists, ricocheting between dark comedy, deep camp, and Carter’s signature surreal, Gothic sensibility. Carter was an ardent fan […]
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Posted inFiction, Quotes
How Michael Cunningham Writes About the Pains, Pleasures, and Psychedelia of Childhood
Michael Cunningham’s short story “White Angel” (The New Yorker; paywalled) is a vibrant masterpiece in miniature about two young brothers in suburban Cleveland pursuing the promises and pleasures of the sixties. Told through the eyes of 9-year-old Robert, the story travels an elegant curve – from the wonder, joy, and power imbalance of the brothers’ […]
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Little Government in the Big Woods
Melissa Gilbert’s lost bid for Congress and the forgotten political history of ‘Little House on the Prairie.’
Posted inUncategorized
‘Let’s Suck This Week Less Than We Did Last Week’: An Oral History of The Stranger
Twenty-five years after its debut, here is the story of an independent newspaper in Seattle that spawned Dan Savage and won a Pulitzer Prize.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
This Better and Truer History
On memory, therapy, and cats in the dryer: A discussion with J.M. Coetzee
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Fiction and Revolution
At the time, the stories we read seemed to me a means to an end, grueling exercises for the tender muscles of my developing Arabic. Only more recently have I wondered what it might feel like to read them as someone living under the Assad regime. A story, at its best, can make us feel less […]
Posted inNonfiction
The Shaming of the Cherry Sisters
How “Vaudeville’s worst act” fought for fame and respect on the stage.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Who Gets to Be a Genius? A Reading List
Why does it often take decades, even centuries, for work by women to be “discovered” and appreciated?
Posted inFeature, Fiction
Desperate Characters
An excerpt from the 1970 novel by Paula Fox: Status-conscious Sophie and Otto Bentwood attend a dinner party in Brooklyn Heights in the late sixties, shortly after Sophie sustains a bite on her hand from a stray cat.
Posted inBlog Post, Books, Uncategorized
The Summer People of Shirley Jackson and Kelly Link
Black Cardigan is a great newsletter by writer-editor Carrie Frye, who shares dispatches from her reading life. We’re thrilled to share some of them on Longreads. Go here to sign up for her latest updates. * * * There’s a wonderful, creepy Shirley Jackson story—you may already know it—called “The Summer People.” It’s about a couple from New York […]
