Search Results for: profile

Football as a Barometer of Italian Society

“Football is a very simple barometer of a society,” says Paddy Agnew, an Irish Times correspondent and former RAI television commentator who has covered Italian soccer since the 1980s. “And if the red light is flashing in society, the red light is flashing in football. That’s what it is here, they’ve run out of petrol. This is a society — and it is not just football — that has stood still for 30 years.”

You can see many the troubles of Italian life through a lens of Italy’s favorite sport. A struggling economy exerts pressure on the country’s social fabric. High unemployment means plenty of young men living in their parents’ homes with little to do. To cope, many simply dive deeper into their calcio [Italian for football].

Peter Simek, writing in SB Nation about Italian football culture and the Rome-based football club A.S. Roma.

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Who Was the Poet Frank Stanford?

With the recently released What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanfordthe work of a brilliant, difficult, much-mythologized and little-known American poet is finally widely available.

Frank Stanford’s short life was a study in contradictions: his childhood was divided between the privilege of an upper-crust Memphis family and summers deep in the Mississippi Delta; he was a backwoods outsider who maintained correspondence with poets ranging from Thomas Lux to Allen Ginsberg; and posthumously, he is both little-known and a cult figure in American letters. He was a “swamprat Rimbaud,” “one of the great voices of death,” and “sensitive, death-haunted, surreal, carnal, dirt-flecked and deeply Southern.” He shot himself in 1978, just shy of his 30th birthday. Reviewing the new collection for the New York Times, Dwight Garner wrote about the enigmatic nature of Stanford himself, as well as why his work has been so difficult to find:

Even before his death, Mr. Stanford was an emerging cult figure among Southern writers, the kind of man whose life is difficult to untangle from his work. He was charismatic — “as beautiful as the sun,” in the words of the Arkansas poet Carolyn (C. D.) Wright, who was also among his lovers. He was prolific, writing 11 books before his death, one of them a 450-page narrative poem, and leaving behind a steep pile of unpublished work.

He was enigmatic in a hundred ways. He didn’t do readings. He didn’t teach. He didn’t like big cities. As a baby, he’d been abandoned at the Emery Home for Unwed Mothers near Hattiesburg, Miss. His well-to-do adoptive father built levees along the Mississippi River’s tributaries. When [Lucinda] Williams met Mr. Stanford, he was working as a land surveyor.

Since Mr. Stanford’s death, his cult has grown, but it’s never come close to metastasizing. In large part, that’s because his work has been hard to find, issued by tiny presses and often out of print. The long-awaited publication this month of “What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford” gives us a chance to see him whole.

Several years ago, Ben Ehrenreich wrote about Stanford for Poetry Magazine. His searching and searing 6,000-word piece is both a profile of Stanford and the story of Ehrenreich’s own quest to unravel the man behind the myth. Not only is it a beautiful read but it also offers the most comprehensive portrait of Stanford’s life available online. Below is a short excerpt:

Some lives are too easy to read backward. Frank Stanford’s is one of those: the last page is now read as the first page—sometimes as the only page—and the first becomes illegible without the last. You may already know how Stanford’s story ends; I won’t spoil it for you if you don’t. Let it suffice to say that a literary reputation once glittering with promise has faded into a myth that grew larger than the man himself—the hard-living, fast-loving Ozark sage, spawn of Lao-Tzu and Whitman by way of Vallejo and Breton.

What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanfordedited by Michael Wiegers and with an introduction from former Texas Poet Laureate Dean Young—was published by Copper Canyon Press on April 14. NPR described the release as “the big event in poetry for 2015.”

See the sources:
1. “The Long Goodbye” (Ben Ehrenreich, Poetry Magazine, January 2008)
2. “Review: ‘What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford’” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times, April 2015)

America’s Journalism Scandals Can Be Divided Into Three General Categories

Photo by Bob Mical

Now that the facts have been laid bare, “A Rape on Campus,” published in November, joins America’s rogues’ gallery of journalism scandals. For ease of reference, the scandals can be divided into three general categories (excluding the recent phenomenon of television figures telling tall-tale war stories).

The first two are straightforward. There is pure fabrication, for which high-profile culprits include Jayson Blair (The New York Times), Stephen Glass (The New Republic) and, going back a little further, Janet Cooke (The Washington Post). And there is the act of plagiarism (culprits too numerous to list).

“A Rape on Campus” falls into a third category: lack of skepticism.

It is the most complicated of the three, and in many ways the most insidious. It is a crime no single journalist — reporter or editor — can be completely inoculated against committing.

—Jonathan Mahler, writing in The New York Times about the newly released report dissecting Rolling Stone’s story about campus rape, which the magazine has now retracted. The 12,600-word report was commissioned by Rolling Stone and authored by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

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Death on the Edge

Longreads Pick

A profile of the late journalist Steven Sotloff, tracing his path from funny, rebellious middle-class kid in Florida to war reporter in the Middle East. Sotloff was executed by ISIS last year.

Source: Village Voice
Published: Mar 31, 2015
Length: 21 minutes (5,380 words)

All Dressed Up: Five Stories About Style

In my not-so-past life as a fashion magazine addict (let’s be real—I bought seven of last month’s fashion mags for a quarter each at a recent library sale), this time of year was crucial to me. What kinds of skirts would appear on the pages of Seventeen? Would I be able to afford them? Would one-piece swimsuits finally be cool? Was this the year I started blow-drying my hair?! Each issue was a mini-New Year’s. Anything was possible.

These days, I love fashion for its feminist and political sensibilities, and I am far more into comfort than trends. I work at a job where I push the style envelope, but hey, no one said anything to me when I wore combat boots every day this winter. (That doesn’t mean I’m going to start wearing shorts to the office, though, much as I crave a temperature-sensitive dapper aesthetic. Even I have my limits.) But style? Style has no limits. Wear socks with sandals. Dress as a different character every day. Admire your reflection in the subway windows. Here are five stories about our connection with the clothes we wear. Read more…

The Teenager & The Porn Star

Longreads Pick

An in-depth profile of a then-18-year-old Sasha Grey, detailing how she found her way into the adult film industry. Grey would go on to become one of the biggest names in porn before retiring at the age of 21.

Published: Nov 1, 2006
Length: 25 minutes (6,430 words)

Inside Scientology: A Reading List

Alex Gibney’s much-talked about new documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Beliefbased on Lawrence Wright’s similarly titled 2013 exposé—has been making headlines since it made its Sundance debut in January. It opened on limited screens across the country last Friday and will premiere on HBO in two weeks. In the meantime, the Church of Scientology has gone into overdrive attacking the film: taking out full page ads in major newspapers to denounce it; buying up Going Clear-related search results on Google; and trying to discredit the filmmakers and their subjects in a series of videos on the Church’s website. Scientology has long been shrouded in mystery—doubtless in large part due to the Church’s secretive practices—but the Church is also notorious for terrorizing critics and defectors. Suffice it to say they are not an easy institution to investigate. In honor of their inscrutable reputation, and with Scientology-talk nearing zenith zeitgeist, I decided to put together a reading list of stories that explore the Church from a variety of angles. Please don’t kill my dog.

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1. “The Apostate” (Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker, 2011)

Wright is nothing short of a master reporter (he won a Pulitzer for The Looming Tower, his 2006 history of al-Qaeda), and his deep investigative skills shine in this epic piece, a profile of Hollywood director and screenwriter Paul Haggis. Haggis was once one of Scientology’s most prominent members; he is now one of the Church’s most prominent defectors. This article eventually became part of Wright’s 2013 book Going Clear.

2. “The Tip of the Spear” (Joel Sappell, Los Angeles Magazine, 2012)

Starting in the mid-1980s, journalists Joel Sappell and Robert Welkos spent five years examining the Church of Scientology for the Los Angeles Times, ultimately producing a six-day, 24-article series (available here in its entirety) that ran in June 1990. Here—more than two decades after the fact—Sappell reflects on his unnerving experiences reporting on the Church.

3. “What Katie Didn’t Know” (Maureen Orth, Vanity Fair, October 2012)

An exquisitely creepy behind-the-scenes look at the Church of Scientology’s 2004 search for the next Mrs. Tom Cruise.

4. “Scientology’s Hollywood Real Estate Empire” (Daniel Miller, The Hollywood Reporter, July 2011)

Little known fact: the Church of Scientology owns more historic buildings in Hollywood than any other entity. Miller’s decision to examine the Church’s relationship to Hollywood in the context of its real estate empire makes for fascinating reading.

5. “Escape from Sea Org” (Astra Woodcraft, as told to Abigail Pesta, The Daily Beast, July 2012)

Astra Woodcraft was seven when she was indoctrinated into the Church of Scientology via an arm of the church known as Sea Org. This is the story of what she endured, and how she escaped.

6. “Are Academics Afraid to Study Scientology?” (Ruth Graham, JSTOR Daily, November 2014)

Scientology attracts an extraordinary amount of media attention, but scholars have been slow to devote time and research to its study—Why?

See Also: “A Scientology Glossary” (David Sessions, The Daily Beast, July 2012)

Don’t know the difference between an engram, an E-meter, and an operating Thetan? Don’t worry, The Daily Beast has your back.

 

Vanity Fair’s Early Look into the Alleged Crimes of Robert Durst

Photo by HBO

The Jinx—a six-part documentary miniseries about alleged murderer and real estate scion Robert Durst—aired its final episode this past Sunday, a day after Durst’s real life arrest for the murder of his close friend Susan Berman. Berman was killed in 2000. In 2002, Ned Zeman profiled Durst (and his alleged crimes) for Vanity Fair. The excerpt below offers a window into Durst’s early friendship with Berman:

The second influence was Susan Berman. Acerbic and lively, talking a mile a minute, controlling the room, Berman was, by almost any standard, an exotic. She had shiny, black Louise Brooks-style hair, and she had stories. She’d spent her childhood in Las Vegas and Hollywood, where her classmates included Liza Minnelli and Jann Wenner. Her late father, Dave Berman, had run the biggest hotels on the Las Vegas Strip—the Riviera, the El Dorado, and, most notably, the Flamingo, where his only daughter’s portrait hung over the reservation desk. That Dave Berman had been a confederate of Mob bosses Meyer Lansky’s and Bugsy Siegel’s—that, in fact, he was a notorious gangster whom one detective called “the toughest Jew I ever met”—was Susan’s obsession. Bobby was fascinated. They’d both lost their mothers. They both had paternal issues. They became fast friends. He doted on Susie, as he called her.

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The Fugitive Heir

Longreads Pick

A 2002 profile of real estate scion and alleged murderer Robert Durst. Durst has been the subject of a documentary miniseries airing on HBO called The Jinx.

Author: Ned Zeman
Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Feb 1, 2002
Length: 31 minutes (7,890 words)

Jane Goodall Is Still Wild at Heart

Longreads Pick

A profile of the legendary scientist and conservationist, who turns 81 next month.

Published: Mar 16, 2015
Length: 21 minutes (5,465 words)