I went to the kind of college that really does say, “Here is the Western canon, read it.” Which is definitely not the only thing you want to do with your English major, you definitely want to reach beyond that, but it was pretty traditional in that sense. So I read the Western canon and […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
William S. Burroughs on Why He Stopped Taking Drugs
What Burroughs revealed in his 1965 conversation with The Paris Review.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Tolstoy’s Writing Mirrored His Own Life
There are a number of reasons a writer may waffle on the question of which events in the book match up with her life. Most writers receive the question of whether something in their fiction “really happened” as an accusation, without being exactly sure what they are being accused of. There can be the egotistical […]
Posted inFiction, Quotes
Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’: ‘The Longest and Most Charming Love Letter in Literature’
Orlando has long had a towering, and very much deserved, reputation in the LGBT community; it was published the same year Radclyffe Hall’s controversial The Well of Loneliness, depicting lesbianism as a tragic curse, became a bestseller. Woolf’s creation of a figure who effortlessly changes sex casually upends any notion that biological sex is related […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
When the Messiah Came to America, She Was a Woman
On the rise and fall of American utopia.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
A Dead Superhero Is a Marvelous Corpse
A theory of superhero suffering and death.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Eudora Welty on Moving from Writer to Reader
What her 1972 Paris Review interview reveals about her approach to the craft.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Friends 4 Ever: Five Stories About Friendship
Inspired by this week’s Longreads Member Pick (“Friendship is Complicated,” Maria Bustillos), this week’s Reading List is about the joy, power and struggles of friendship.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Columbia University’s Investigation Reveals About the Rolling Stone UVA Rape Story
Columbia University’s School of Journalism has released its report investigating what went wrong with Rolling Stone’s story of a rape at UVA, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely. Among its conclusions: Rolling Stone’s senior editors are unanimous in the belief that the story’s failure does not require them to change their editorial systems. “It’s not like […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
A Reading List for My 25-Year-Old Self
This list is a birthday gift to me and, I hope, of use to you, too.
