Defeating the Celluloid Axis By JW McCormack Feature The invisible language of film permeates Christian Kracht’s “The Dead,” prose that is neutral and shot through with so much darkness, you occasionally can’t find the light.
The Last of the Live Reviewers: An Interview with Nate Chinen By Matthew Kassel Feature Nate Chinen may have been the last full-time jazz reviewer at any American newspaper. He says jazz hasn’t been in a better place since the ’60s — but the commercial infrastructure is broken.
Ancestor Work In Street Basketball By Onaje X. O. Woodbine Feature The basketball court is a place where young black men feel comfortable mourning death, but are there crucial elements missing from their grieving practices?
On Not Being Able to Read By Tajja Isen Feature In law school, they told me I wouldn’t be able to read anymore. That the pleasure of the text, like a lover in a non-law degree, would slowly grow opaque to me.
Michelle Tea and the Betrayal of Queer Memoir By Alana Mohamed Feature Memoir is always a betrayal. When writing about life in queer subcultures, the harm of honesty can feel even greater.
A British Seaweed Scientist Is Revered in Japan as ‘The Mother of the Sea’ By Longreads Feature Kathleen Drew-Baker died never having set foot in Japan, and never knowing what an impact her research would make. Plus, how to build a lazy bed, how to cook Irish blancmange, and other surprising seaweed stories.
This Month In Books: ‘Name the Very Specific Situation Around You’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter has a lot to say about truth and lies, fact and fiction.
How Women Survive the World: An Interview with Ingrid Rojas Contreras By Naomi Elias Feature To this day, when my mother is driving a car, she will only use the blinkers to indicate that she’s turning at the last second — just so that people behind her don’t know where she’s going.
‘I Loved God, I Loved Believing’: An Interview with R.O. Kwon By Victoria Namkung Feature Not only will I never get my faith back, but I’m going to keep missing it. I’ll always have that longing — but there’s no going back into the garden.
Leaving a Good Man Is Hard To Do By Kelli María Korducki Feature When women end relationships, it seems like the emotion we most acutely feel is the guilt of having pushed it away.
Bridget Jones’s Staggeringly Outdated Diary By Rebecca Schuman Feature Nineties relationship books had some serious issues, man.
What Ever Happened To the Truth? By Bridey Heing Feature Michiko Kakutani is interested in how the distinction between fact and fiction has blurred — and how this makes us all complicit.
Dead Girls: An Interview with Alice Bolin By Hope Reese Feature It’s clear we love the Dead Girl, enough to rehash and reproduce her story, to kill her again and again. But not enough to see a pattern.
Oregon’s Racist Past By Longreads Feature Starting in the mid-19th century, and extending through the mid-20th century, Oregon was arguably the most racist place outside the southern states, possibly even of all the states.
This Month in Books: ‘What Used To Be Me Before the World Buried It’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary Everyone is feeling very alone in this month’s books newsletter.
Getting Tricked by Helen DeWitt By Brittany Allen Feature Helen DeWitt’s hectic, disruptive style reflects the content of her stories: the difficulty of living an authentic life, or telling anything like a “story,” in a ruthlessly disruptive world.
Eating Alone By Longreads Feature We’re eating alone more often than in any previous generation. But why should a meal on our own be uninspired? Why shouldn’t the French saying “life is too short to drink bad wine” still apply?
A Person Alone: Leaning Out with Ottessa Moshfegh By Hope Reese Feature Leaning in doesn’t work in real life. When I was writing, I kind of hoped that it would. I think I hoped that the answers are always within me. And when I reached the end of the book, it was like: there are no answers.
Your Best Work Comes from Scaring Yourself By Ryan Chapman Feature Essayist Chelsea Hodson had to give herself permission to be uncomfortable.
The Inward Empire By christiandonlan Feature A new father with early-stage MS sets out to understand the interiors of his daughter’s mind, and his own.
Angrily Experiencing the Best Days of Our Lives By Linda Kinstler Feature Ukrainian author and poet Serhiy Zhadan writes about resisting corruption and coping with loss in a society that is spiraling senselessly into conflict.
Author Carmen Maria Machado on the Next Phase of #MeToo By Danielle Jackson Highlight Carmen Maria Machado discusses the nuances of “benevolent sexism,” who gets to define the #MeToo movement, and how it should progress.
‘I Had Nothing To Do With It But Have Been Punished’: Issac Bailey On His Brother Moochie, the Murderer By Tori Telfer Feature Issac Bailey wants us to recognize that the families of perpetrators need just as much support as the families of victims.
The Camouflage Artist: Two World Wars, Two Loves, and One Great Deception By Mary Horlock Feature In the first war, Joseph Gray used his art to reveal his fellow soldiers. In the next war, he used it to hide them.
Old In Art School By Longreads Feature At 64, Nell Painter left a secure teaching position and went back to school to study art.
Viv Albertine on Dating Again in Her 50s By Longreads Feature In my teens I was upset that I was too young to go out with any of the boys in my favorite bands. Now they’re all with women who weren’t even born when I had that thought.
Ghost Writer: The Story of Patience Worth, the Posthumous Author By Joy Lanzendorfer Feature The most remarkable thing about Patience Worth wasn’t that she was dead. It was that all she wanted to do was write books.
This Month in Books: ‘We Have Nothing to Weigh Our Hearts Against’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary When I look at this month’s Books Newsletter, all I can think about are borders, crossings, the terrible distances between people who have been separated.
Fairy Scapegoats: A History of the Persecution of Changeling Children By Longreads Feature Distraught over a sick or disabled child, parents would torture — sometimes even kill — what they believed to be a malevolent stand-in for a stolen baby.
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