“Well, it used to be one way a young writer made it in New York. He would attack, in a small obscure publication, someone very strong, highly regarded, whom a few people may already have hated. Then the young writer might gain a small following. When he looked for a job, an assignment, and an […]
Books
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The Non-Mysteries of the Female Orgasm
“My initial forays into oral sex were a crutch, a way of compensating for my sexual inadequacies, and they were approached with the assumption that cunnilingus was a poor man’s second to the joys and splendors of ‘real sex’–like many, I took it for granted that intercourse was the ‘right way’ for couples to experience […]
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'A Kind of Emotional Terrorism': Or, How the 'Game Change' Reporters Get Sources to Talk
“Once a critical mass of conversations is reached, a kind of network effect kicks in, with every additional source begetting the participation of other sources suddenly concerned about their version getting left out. Meanwhile, Halperin and Heilemann are scrupulous about not letting anyone know who else is squealing. ‘They keep it like a VP selection,’ […]
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Building a Car from Scratch
“Kevin turned serious for a moment and admitted that, yes, he was ‘paranoid’ about something breaking. It wasn’t just the welds. Much of the car was made from used parts that Kevin and his friends had scavenged from local junkyards. The rear suspension came from a Dodge Neon. The struts were a combination of Nissan, […]
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The Man Whose 'Nonfiction Novel' Came Before Truman Capote
“Rodolfo Walsh was a rare man of words and action, though by all accounts he struggled to reconcile the two. In a relatively short and restless life, he was a masterful chess player, a self-taught sleuth and code breaker, an award-winning fiction author turned investigative reporter, an artist and intellectual who took up a gun […]
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What the Smartphone Is Doing to Fiction
“There’s nothing worse for plots than cellphones. Once your characters have one, there’s no reason for them to get lost or stranded. Or miss each other at the top of the Empire State Building. If you want anything like that to happen, you either have to explain upfront what happened to the phones or you […]
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“As a boy, I wanted to be a train. I didn’t realize this was unusual—that other kids played with trains, not as them. They liked to build tracks and have trains not fall off them. Watch them go through tunnels. I didn’t understand that. What I liked was pretending my body was two hundred tons […]
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A Longreads Guest Pick: Tim Cigelske on Clive Thompson's "Is Google Wrecking Our Memory?"
Tim is Director of Social Media at Marquette University and writes about beer and running for DRAFT Magazine. “Whenever I hear people talking about how technology is ruining our attention spans and turning our collective brains to mush, I like to tell them about #longreads. This article is a perfect example. I saw a link […]
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‘You’re in Trouble. Am I Right?’: My Unsentimental Education
Debra Monroe | 2012 | 20 minutes (5,101 words) Debra Monroe is the author of six books, including the memoir “My Unsentimental Education” which will appear in October 2015. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The American Scholar, Doubletake, The Morning News and The Southern Review, and she is frequently shortlisted for The […]
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On Muppets & Merchandise: How Jim Henson Turned His Art into a Business
“He viewed money as energy, the energy that makes concrete things happen out of worthy ideas.”