Linda Saetre | The Believer | 2004 | 26 minutes (6,574 words) The below interview is excerpted from The Believer’s new book, Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence: The Best of the Believer Music Interviews. Thanks to The Believer for sharing this with the Longreads community. * * * ‘Music Is a Mirror of What […]
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Posted inFirst Chapters, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
Jesus Land
“They don’t know the first thing about us; they just hate us because we’re black.”
Posted inNonfiction
A Birth Story
Meaghan O’Connell had a perfect pregnancy and the perfect birth plan—and then she went into labor.
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg
An intimate recollection of a Beat legend.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Story
Curtis Sittenfeld’s ‘Prep,’ 10 Years Later
Sittenfeld’s smart debut novel about social dynamics at an exclusive boarding school remains relevant—and not just as a “coming of age novel”—a decade after it was first published.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
A Birth Story
Meaghan O’Connell had a perfect pregnancy and the perfect birth plan—and then she went into labor.
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Posted inReading List
A Kurt Cobain Reading List in Reverse Chronological Order
Every generation has that one unforgettable death that bears the question, “Where were you when ____ died?” For baby boomers, it was JFK. For the cool music-minded baby boomers, it was John Lennon. And, for Generation Xers, like myself, it was Kurt Cobain. Like generations past, you never forget where you were when a cultural […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Factory Girls
The making of the boy and girl groups that are leading the international K-pop explosion: “Lee founded S.M. in 1989. His first success was a Korean singer and hip-hop dancer named Hyun Jin-young, whose album came out in 1990. But, just as Jin-young was on the verge of stardom, he was arrested for drugs. Russell […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
We Are Alive
A rock icon at age 62. A look inside Bruce Springsteen’s life, at home and in preparation for another tour, following the losses of bandmates Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici: “For the next hour and a half, the band plays through a set that alternates tales of economic pain with party-time escape. While the band […]
