From way back in ’80s Philadelphia, Elizabeth Isadora Gold remembers her first writing teacher, the mail art artist/lyricist Stu Horn.
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This Week in Books: Several Nihilistic Frenchmen
This week critics have looked to Huysmans, Camus and Jean-Philippe Toussaint for COVID-era inspiration.
Longreads Best of 2020: Music Writing
Music has been a salve this year, helping us cope with the myriad challenges that 2020 brought. Here are some favorite pieces of music writing we picked in 2020.
Removing Beethoven’s Wig: A Classical Music Reading List
Classical music is more than dead Europeans in wigs, starched collars, and stuffy concert halls.
What classical music is, where it’s going, and what it still can be.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Ben Taub, Paige Blankenbuehler, Alex Horton, Victoria Gannon, and Gustavo Arellano.
Debt Demands a Body
“The future that debt chose for me — indeed the future it chooses for many people — included a lot of shame, confusion, and pain.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Caroline Chen, Keri Bertino, Ann Friedman, Allison Williams, and Brian Payton.
My Childhood in a Cult
Actor, writer and screenwriter Guinevere Turner recalls growing up in a cult called “The Lyman Family,” and reveals its lingering effects on her, many years after her departure from it.
What Cancer Takes Away
As she goes through treatment for breast cancer, Anne Boyer considers what being sick has cost her — physically, financially and emotionally — along with the societal and environmental costs of high-priced treatments.
Editor’s Roundtable: Shorthand, Looking Away, Getting It Wrong (Podcast)
Longreads editors discuss stories in The Cut, The New Yorker, and The California Sunday Magazine.

