[Fiction] A teenager’s grief and its aftermath: Years later, you would wonder if it hadn’t been for your brother would you have done it? You’d remember how all the other guys had hated on her—how skinny she was, no culo, no titties, como un palito, but your brother didn’t care. I’d fuck her. You’d fuck […]
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A new book explains how “social jet lag” is interfering with our internal clocks: Modern human beings are not much like mimosas. It’s true that both have biological clocks, but only one of us has culture. And culture, delightful as it is, turns out to radically complicate—“fuck up” would not be an overstatement—our relationship to […]
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Break All the Way Down
[Fiction] A baby’s arrival stirs up difficult memories: I sat with the baby in the living room, setting her on a clean blanket. When I tired of watching her, I stretched out, resting my hand on her stomach. I fell asleep with the baby staring at me, her eyes wide open. In the morning, my […]
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A lost weekend, or several weeks, with Fiona Apple: A week later, my phone beeped. It was a heavily pixelated video. She was wearing glasses, looking straight at me: ‘Hi, Dan. It’s Fiona. [She moves the camera to her dog.] This is Janet. [She moves it back.] Um, are you coming out here tomorrow? Um, […]
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Entrepreneurs continue to reflect on the lessons of Steve Jobs—is his story ultimately a cautionary tale about a person obsessed with the wrong things in life? Soon after Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO in 1997, he decided that a shipping company wasn’t delivering spare parts fast enough. The shipper said it couldn’t do […]
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A trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, joining a UN mission to investigate the massacres there: In the last few months, I’ve spent time in the Democratic Republic of Congo where I used an embarrassing fuck-up by one of the world’s most publicly accountable organizations as a bargaining tool to get a story. A […]
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A look at tour bus drivers, who hold the lives of musical acts in their hands on a daily basis, and what it’s like to drive around music’s biggest stars: Providing a band with a smooth ride, free of sharp turns and unexpected pit stops, isn’t just a matter of comfort. Good drivers get work […]
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I Was A Teenage Narc
A writer recalls being employed by the Washington State Liquor Control Board as a teenage informant who bought cigarettes and alcohol without an ID: The convenience store was on a suburban street in West Seattle. Kelly parked in the front, in view of the counter, instead of around the corner like she usually did. I […]
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The Top 10 Longreads of 2012
About This List Thanks to everyone who has participated in the Longreads community this year, and to all of our guests who shared their favorite stories of 2012. The below list represents our editors’ favorite stories of the year, for both nonfiction and fiction. Longreads is edited by Mark Armstrong and Mike Dang, with Kjell Reigstad, […]
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Mary Gaitskill Recommends Saul Bellow
recommendedreading: Vol. 8, No. 3 EDITOR’S NOTE Years ago I had a conversation with a friend comparing John Updike and Saul Bellow. At the time I liked Updike a little better, but she said something on Bellow’s side that nearly changed my mind on the spot. “Updike sees,” she said. “He sees the world and […]
