Search Results for: forgiveness

Our Longreads Member Pick: The Faithful Executioner (Excerpt), by Joel F. Harrington

For this week’s Longreads Member Pick (sign up here to receive it), we’re excited to share an excerpt from The Faithful Executioner, a book by Joel F. Harrington, Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, published this year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Harrington explains:

“My book is based on the personal journal that German executioner Frantz Schmidt (aka Meister Frantz) kept during his forty-five years in the profession, from 1573-1618. During this time, he executed 394 individuals by various methods, and also flogged, disfigured, or tortured many hundreds more. This was clearly an amazingly prolific executioner, but what has been even more intriguing to me since my first encounter of this manuscript is the unexpected portrait of Meister Frantz that emerges: a man forced into an unsavory occupation, who appears to never lose his commitment to fairness, forgiveness, and other humane values. The following passage provides the social and legal background for the era of European history I’ve called ‘the golden age of the executioner.’ The chapters that follow then trace the experiences and thoughts of Frantz Schmidt from his own perspective, largely in his own words, particularly his lifelong quest to restore his family’s honor and free his own children from his cursed profession.”

Read an excerpt

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Longreads Best of 2012: Maria Bustillos

Maria Bustillos is a Los Angeles-based writer whose work for The Awl and Los Angeles Review of Books was featured on Longreads this year.


In the essay “Freedom Is Overrated,” the theologian and scholar Sancrucensis contrasts the humanism of Jonathan Franzen with that of David Foster Wallace. A transcendentally beautiful and heartbreaking meditation on self and other.

I’ve enjoyed a number of essays from The American Conservative this year, but my favorite may have been Mike Lofgren’s “Revolt Of The Rich”. It’s a blistering reproof of our moneyed classes and their disconnect from the historic aspirations of our country.

The tagline of Andrew Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish, is “Biased and Balanced.” An earlier incarnation of the Dish bore another, equally good: “Of No Party Or Clique.” I consider Sullivan an indispensable companion, not least because his views so often diverge from my own. I can’t choose just one entry from his heady, rapid-fire mix of opinion, reporting, photographs, jokes, poems, ideas. But Sullivan’s great heart, his compassion and intellect, are a salutary test of my own convictions most every day.

The scholar Aaron Bady exposes the fatal weaknesses in the arguments of those promoting “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, in a resoundingly persuasive and passionate essay in Inside Higher Ed. Absolutely crucial reading for anyone remotely interested in the academy.

Mike Konczal, known on Twitter as @rortybomb, led a breathtaking debate on debt relief at the Boston Review that blew my wiglet sky-high. In the lead essay, Konczal makes an ironclad case that a strong social safety net, including debt relief, is crucial to the economic health of the country. Splendid, limpidly clear, beautifully reasoned.

It’s scarcely too much to say that The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson single-handedly rescued my sanity from the maelstrom of this year’s election. I pretty much hop on Twitter and start banging out exclamation points every time she posts, but her recent column on the public confrontation of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia by a gay Princeton University student will serve as well as any to demonstrate her unwavering clear-mindedness, her sensitivity, fairness and brilliance.

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

‘More Will Be Revealed’: Advice to a Grieving Father

Cheryl Strayed’s collection of advice pieces, Tiny Beautiful Things, is one of our favorite collections. Here, she responds to a father who is grieving the loss of his son, who was killed by a drunk driver:

17. You have the power to withstand this sorrow. We all do, though we all claim not to. We say, ‘I couldn’t go on,’ instead of saying we hope we won’t have to. That’s what you’re saying in your letter to me, Living Dead Dad. You’ve made it so fucking long without your sweet boy and now you can’t take it anymore. But you can. You must.

18. More will be revealed. Your son hasn’t yet taught you everything he has to teach you. He taught you how to love like you’ve never loved before. He taught you how to suffer like you’ve never suffered before. Perhaps the next thing he has to teach you is acceptance. And the thing after that, forgiveness.

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Dear Sugar: The Obliterated Place

Longreads Pick

Cheryl Strayed’s collection of advice pieces, Tiny Beautiful Things, comes out today. Here, she responds to a father who is grieving the loss of his son, who was killed by a drunk driver:

“17. You have the power to withstand this sorrow. We all do, though we all claim not to. We say, ‘I couldn’t go on,’ instead of saying we hope we won’t have to. That’s what you’re saying in your letter to me, Living Dead Dad. You’ve made it so fucking long without your sweet boy and now you can’t take it anymore. But you can. You must.

“18. More will be revealed. Your son hasn’t yet taught you everything he has to teach you. He taught you how to love like you’ve never loved before. He taught you how to suffer like you’ve never suffered before. Perhaps the next thing he has to teach you is acceptance. And the thing after that, forgiveness.”

Author: Dear Sugar
Source: The Rumpus
Published: Jul 1, 2011
Length: 9 minutes (2,380 words)

A man attempts to track down his middle school teacher and offer a long-overdue apology:

Only by chance was I curious enough about the subject line — ‘Customer Feedback’ — to open the email from a man named Larry Israelson. 

You published an item involving retired teacher James Atteberry and the CASA program. Mr. Atteberry was a teacher of mine in the early ’70s, and I wish to apologize to him for a regrettable incident that occurred when I was his student. Can you provide any contact information for him, or would you be willing to serve as an intermediary and deliver a message on my behalf? Thank you for your time, and I await your reply.

“A Teacher, a Student and a 39-Year-Long Lesson in Forgiveness.” — Tom Hallman Jr., The Oregonian

See also: “Could You Forgive the Man Who Shot You in the Face?” — Michael J. Mooney, D Magazine, Sept. 22, 2011

Judt’s widow Jennifer Homans reflects on her husband’s life and the making of his last book:

I lived with him and our two children as he faced the terror of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It was a two-year ordeal, from his diagnosis in 2008 to his death in 2010, and during it Tony managed against all human odds to write three books. The last, following “Ill Fares the Land” and “The Memory Chalet,” was “Thinking the Twentieth Century,” based on conversations with Timothy Snyder. He started work on the book soon after he was diagnosed; within months he was quadriplegic and on a breathing machine, but he kept working nonetheless. He and Tim finished the book a month before he died. It accompanied his illness; it was part of his illness, and part of his dying.

“Tony Judt: A Final Victory.” — Jennifer Homans, New York Review of Books

See also: “The Forgiveness Machine.” — Tim Adams, Guardian, April 10 2011

“He felt something leaving his body. He felt forgiveness. What had been pure fear, pent up for years, was now compassion. He didn’t hate Mark Stroman. He pitied him. Thinking of this man sitting in a prison cell, counting down the days he has left on this planet, he wondered if he could help him in some way. He remembered what the prosecutor had told him, and he didn’t want to break the law, but Bhuiyan wanted to talk with the man. He wanted to tell the monster haunting his dreams that he had forgiven him.”

“Could You Forgive the Man Who Shot You in the Face?” — Michael J. Mooney, D Magazine

See more #longreads from Michael J. Mooney

Could You Forgive the Man Who Shot You in the Face?

Longreads Pick

Rais Bhuiyan felt his heart soften; he felt the pouring forth of something warm, something invigorating. He felt something leaving his body. He felt forgiveness. What had been pure fear, pent up for years, was now compassion. He didn’t hate Mark Stroman. He pitied him. Thinking of this man sitting in a prison cell, counting down the days he has left on this planet, he wondered if he could help him in some way. He remembered what the prosecutor had told him, and he didn’t want to break the law, but Bhuiyan wanted to talk with the man. He wanted to tell the monster haunting his dreams that he had forgiven him.

Source: D Magazine
Published: Sep 22, 2011
Length: 25 minutes (6,380 words)

After Suicides, a Family’s Journey Toward Grace

Longreads Pick

He grew up the middle of three brothers. By his 25th birthday, he was the only one left. Brett, the youngest, killed himself in December 2005, two months before he turned 20. His depression could appear with a stunning swiftness. On that final night, he talked of forgiveness and the future. And then, like the flipping of a switch, something changed. The oldest, Beau, struggled for years with depression. In the final few months of his life, mounting problems pulled him into a downward spiral. His family tried to help, but nothing could keep him from slipping farther into darkness. Four years after his brother’s death, Beau told his stepfather that Brett, who had shot himself in the head, had done it wrong. Days later, he went up to the attic of his family’s home and shot himself in the chest.

Published: Sep 18, 2011
Length: 11 minutes (2,808 words)