Search Results for: health

Mary Gaitskill on Beauty and Permanence

What is [death]? It’s a fact that human beings—no matter who they are, no matter how healthy or strong or beautiful they are—are going to age and become weak and ugly by a certain standard, and die. And I think that’s a terrifying idea for people to get their minds around. It’s a very strange thing the way we exist: that we appear in the world out of another person’s body in this discrete, small form, and that we have all of this life force pouring through us—as does everything alive, animals, insects—yet it must take this very specific form of a personality, a body that looks a certain way and that functions a certain way. Our eyes and our mouths and our noses are so particularly formed. Human beings look so different from each other, voices are so different, everything about us is so individual, and that’s so exciting and juicy and appealing, and we’re attached to these things and they’re so fascinating and beautiful—I don’t just mean model-beautiful, but all the individual forms that people can take.

And yet in another way, we’re going to fall apart, kind of dissolve back into this vast soup from whence we came, whatever that is. It’s almost like these beings pop out of this massive sludge and then they get sucked back into it, and that’s a really hard thing to comprehend.

I think people try to make the most of their time on earth and also to fix their time on earth. They try to fix external verities, things that are true for all time, ideas that are true for all time: Rome will last forever! America will last forever! Beauty, as defined by the fashion industry, is one of those things—this is beautiful. This will always be beautiful—and hold it in a way that has some sense of permanence about it, and absoluteness. And yet it’s not.

-Mary Gaitskill, in The Believer (2009).

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Photo: David Shankbone, Wikimedia Commons

All You Have Eaten: On Keeping a Perfect Record

Illustration by Jason Polan

Rachel Khong | Lucky Peach | Spring 2014 | 20 minutes (5,009 words)

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Over the course of his or her lifetime, the average person will eat 60,000 pounds of food, the weight of six elephants.

The average American will drink over 3,000 gallons of soda. He will eat about 28 pigs, 2,000 chickens, 5,070 apples, and 2,340 pounds of lettuce. How much of that will he remember, and for how long, and how well? Read more…

Curses: A Tribute to Losing Teams and Easy Scapegoats

Barry Grass | The Normal School | Spring 2014 | 18 minutes (4,537 words)

 

1st

Late in every February, Major League Baseball players report to Spring Training.

Every year in Kansas City this is heralded by a gigantic special section in The Kansas City Star crammed full of positive reporting and hopeful predictions about the coming season. Each year it is another variation on the same theme: “This is Our Year” or “Is This Our Year?” or “Can the Royals Win it All?” or “Our Time” or “How Good are these Royals?” or “How Good are these Royals” or or or. It gets tiresome after growing up hearing it year after year, because the answer has always been the same. The answer is no. It’s not our time. It’s not our year. No, the Royals aren’t going to win it all. These Royals are not very good. No. Read more…

The Story of H.M.: The Amnesiac Who Profoundly Changed the Way We Think About Memory

Sam Kean | The Tale of Dueling Neurosurgeons | 2014 | 12 minutes (3,008 words)

 
For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share a story from The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, a new book from science reporter Sam Kean looking at stories about the brain and the history of neuroscience. Here’s Kean:

In our minds, we more or less equate our identities with our memories; our very selves seem the sum total of all we’ve done and felt and seen. That’s why we cling to our memories so hard, even to our detriment sometimes—they seem the only bulwark we have against the erosion of the self. That’s also why disorders that rob us of our memories seem so cruel.

In the excerpt below, I explore one of the most profound cases of amnesia in medical history, H.M., who taught us several important things about how memory works. Perhaps most important, he taught us that different types of memories exist in the brain, and that each type is controlled by different structures. In fact, H.M. so profoundly changed our ideas about memory that it’s hard to remember what things were like before him.

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Yes, All Women Part II: A Reading List of Stories Written By Women

My last Yes, All Women reading list was a hit with the Longreads community, so here’s part two. Enjoy 20 pieces by fantastic women writers.

1. “When You’re Unemployed.” (Jessica Goldstein, The Hairpin, June 2014)

“The first thing to go is the caring…You develop a routine: changing out of sleeping leggings and into daytime leggings.”

2. “No Country for Old Pervs.” (Molly Lambert, Blvrb, June 2014)

Dov Charney, Terry Richardson…and the Iraq War? The 2000s were rough.

3. “For Writers with Full-Time Jobs: On the Work/Other Work Balance.” (Megan Burbank, Luna Luna Mag, June 2014)

Seven helpful tips for living practically and creatively. I’m particularly fond of “use your commute.”

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Meet Your New Boss

Longreads Pick

Claudine Ko’s notorious 2004 profile of former American Apparel CEO Dov Charney:

“Masturbation in front of women is underrated,” Dov explains to me later over the phone. “It’s much easier on the woman. She gets to watch, it’s a sensual experience that doesn’t involve a man violating a woman, yet once the man has his release, it’s over and you can talk to the guy.” And, Iris adds on another day, “I think it’s really healthy to have an orgasm four times a day. It’s got to be great for business.” In his apartment that night, when he finishes, he promptly turns back to reading the rest of his e-mail. His in-box holds 21,547 messages. He clicks on one that displays a photo of a twentysomething Asian girl wearing tight jeans, lying in bed. Her message reads, “I’m 5’4″, 106 pounds, bust size 32B-C. Plus, I’m professional, artistic…” Dov says he gets an email like this every 48 hours from women wanting to work for him.

Source: Jane Magazine
Published: Jun 1, 2004
Length: 11 minutes (2,980 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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A Brief History of Disney

Walt Disney, from the 1937 trailer for "Snow White," via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s a reading list exploring Disney’s more than 80-year grip on popular culture—the animation, the music, the princesses, and the parents killed off in the First Act. Read more…

Mother’s Mind

Longreads Pick

A look at new findings on postpartum depression and maternal mental illness:

In New York, State Senator Liz Krueger has introduced a bill to encourage screening and treatment, a proposal that will most likely pass and be approved by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who vetoed a 2013 bill on technical grounds but encouraged the revised legislation.

Jeanne Marie Johnson, in Oregon, may have benefited from state laws encouraging awareness of postpartum mental illness. At her daughter, Pearl’s, two-week pediatric checkup, Ms. Johnson received a questionnaire. Her answers raised red flags and were forwarded to her midwife and a social worker. Ms. Johnson also called a number for a hotline the hospital gave her after a panic attack.

She saw a social worker, but resisted taking medication for months. Afraid to be alone with Pearl, she would insist her mother come over when her husband was out. “I called the doctor hotline constantly,” with nonexistent concerns, “because if I was talking on the phone I wouldn’t do anything harmful.”

Part Two: A Case Study

Published: Jun 16, 2014
Length: 21 minutes (5,482 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…