“In coming out, my life ended. It was a personal apocalypse of many smaller revelations. The struggle that had defined me had reached its denouement of freedom—and what comes after freedom?”
Search results
Posted inNonfiction
‘Are We Breaking Apart, Or Is There Enough Left to Bind Us?’
Conversations and revelations about an ailing nation along Interstate 95.
Posted inEditor's Pick
If Proust Ate Pringles — On Memory, Loss, and the Persistence of Heineken
“That was the definitive goodbye, but when a loved one dies of a terminal illness they don’t die just once. They are, instead, dying over and over again, as grim milestones accumulate with you powerless to arrest the dawning inevitability of the final, conclusive death.”
Posted inNewsletter
A Trip to Twin Peaks and the Week’s Top 5
“I’d taken for granted how strange his work is—in the defiantly non-naturalistic performances he elicits from his actors and the surreal sheen of his stories and characters—until I started trying to explain the plot of Twin Peaks to Riley on our drive to Washington.” This week, we pay homage to director David Lynch, with Katherine […]
Posted inNewsletter
The Unappreciated Blog, Ghost Stories, and our Top 5
“To watch any ghost story set in a city like New York requires this kind of sensitivity, an awareness that every building is haunted, and that these hauntings happen in layers: as much as each generation tries to wipe out the traces of those who’ve come before, those memories are always there.” As we approach […]
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending memorable pieces by Seth Freed Wessler, Stuart McGurk, Jon Mooallem, Ben Lerner, Kiese Laymon, and Amelia Tait.
Posted inUncategorized
10 Short Stories, The Power of Music, and Our Top 5
“I always admired how my father could play so delicately with such brutal hands. They were rough, mired with patches of psoriasis, calloused from playing the charango and the guitar, and scarred, scarred all over.” I have fond memories of playing the violin when I was a child, and over the years I’ve considered returning […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The History of Fireworks, Gunpowder, and Why We Love Big ol’ Fire
“Our Bommy Nights certainly felt like more of a folk event than being strongly allied to the Gunpowder Plot. And that’s probably because there’s some primal instinct in all of us, some genetic memory, that draws us to a bloody good fire.”
Posted inUncategorized
Taming Water, Embracing Fire, and the Week’s Top 5
“Deep in the valley below us, in the middle distance, gaped the great black cauldron of Litli-Hrútur, its insides awash in a churning fiery stew. We stood in silence on the observation mound with our hands on our hips, faces cast in childish masks of wonder and awe. ” This week, we have two beautiful essays […]
