It’s not clear what the Audubon Society did to piss off Jonathan Franzen. But the Audubon that emerges from Franzen’s essay is a band of once-scrappy conservationists who have grown content to peddle squeaky plush toys and holiday cards; we’ve seized on climate change, apparently, in a last grab at relevance. In order to gin up […]
The New Yorker
Posted inReading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our favorite stories of the week, featuring, Cincinnati magazine, The New Yorker, 5280 Magazine, Orion, and the Washingtonian.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How McLovin Was Cast From a Camera Phone Headshot
[Allison] Jones began her career with the two-beats-and-a-punch-line sitcoms of the nineteen-eighties, but, in working with Feig and the director Judd Apatow, she was required to try something revolutionary: find comedic actors who, more than just delivering jokes, could improvise and riff on their lines, creating something altogether different from what was on the page. […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our favorite stories of the week, featuring The New Yorker, California Sunday, n+1, Boston Magazine, and Collectors Weekly.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Inside Scientology: A Reading List
Alex Gibney’s much-talked about new documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief—based 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 […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Inside Scientology: A Reading List
Alex Gibney’s much-talked about new documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief—based 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 […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Did Harper Lee Write a Book Called ‘The Reverend?’
“Though Alice said that her sister had never written the book, for years Harper told Tom Radney that it was near completion. In 1997, Radney told a newspaper reporter, “I still talk to Nelle twice a year, and every time we talk, she says she’s still working on it.” Madolyn Radney told me that while […]
Posted inQuotes, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our favorite stories of the week, featuring, The Atlantic, California Sunday Magazine, Pacific Standard, a co-investigation by NPR and ProPublica, and The New Yorker.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
In Honor of National Grammar Day: What It Was Like to Copy-Edit Pauline Kael
When Pauline Kael typed “prevert” instead of “pervert,” she meant “prevert” (unless she was reviewing something by Jacques Prévert). Luckily, she was kind, and if you changed it she would just change it back and stet it without upbraiding you. Kael revised up until closing, and though we lackeys resented writers who kept changing “doughnut” to “coffee cake” then back to “doughnut” and then “coffee cake” again, because it meant more work for us, Kael’s changes were always improvements.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Story Business: Four Stories About Independent Bookstores
“Job title: bookseller.” Every time I sneak a glance at the sheaf of employment forms and tax information, I can’t believe it. That job title is mine, now. It’s a lifelong dream come true, as cliche as that sounds. True to millennial form, I’m going to do Online Things for my local indie: blogging, tweeting, […]