Articles Tagged with #longreads
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Our Passions, Our Day Jobs
Down and Out in a Repurposed Troop Carrier
Stunt memoirs are ubiquitous: writers who eat, pray, and love straight into their bank accounts. But what happens when the material for your book—for which you took a dozen amusement park jobs to acquire—isn’t all hijinks and zany locals? What if it’s rather nice?
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Reading Roulette
Nikolai Klimontovich
Our series of contemporary Russian literature continues—six months, six stories from some of Russia’s best working writers, plus interviews with their authors, all of it sponsored by Powells.com. This month we feature one of Moscow’s finest chroniclers.
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The American Artist
Go Away
Artist colonies are mysterious places. Available only to a select few, supposedly teeming with alcohol, affairs, and creative hoodoo. But the rumors aren’t true—if only because they lack detail. Scenes and lessons from three residencies.
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America, America, Burning Bright
Soldier’s Heart
A post-World War II documentary, banned by the military in 1946 but lately released online, is one of the earliest depictions of psychotherapy. But it says even more about contemporary Americans’ interest in the veterans they love to praise.
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Birnbaum V.
Jess Walter
Our man in Boston sits down with the author of The Financial Lives of the Poets to talk about his latest novel, how to survive in Hollywood, the ins and outs of contemporary publishing, and that unheralded Paris of the Northwest, Spokane.
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Palliative Measures
Songs in the Key of Death
America’s funeral parlors rely on one man to provide the theme music for your grandmother’s memorial service, the pop radio for your cousin’s wake. Welcome to “semi-spiritual” ambient music and the stuff of contemporary mourning.
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Profiles
The Heretic
For decades, the U.S. government banned medical studies of the effects of LSD. But for one longtime, elite researcher, the promise of mind-blowing revelations was just too tempting.
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Our Passions, Our Day Jobs
The Bull Passes Through
Every year in July, people are injured—some killed—during Spain’s San Fermín festival when bulls run the streets. So what inspires someone to participate? A report from inside one man’s skull just before last week’s rocket went off.
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The Business Desk
Entertainment for Women
When it launched, Playboy was a literary power and a force for change. The magazine’s offices also happened to be an interesting place to work—for women. The author interviews her mother about life as a secretary in 1960s New York City.
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Notes From the Exit Row
Eyes Wide Open
The next time jet lag ruins your day—exhausted, yawning, blurry-eyed, fiending for any means of correction—what if you were to stop looking for a cure inside purgatory and, instead, embrace the cloud?
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Personal Essays
Big Blue Nights
After a rape, the world is remade. A story of violence, true love, cars, defeat, madness, the road from New York to Lexington, and the religion that is college basketball. Victory has many faces—some of them just happen to be painted.
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Our Passions, Our Day Jobs
Therapist, Know Thyself
For psychotherapists, maintaining a stable, flawless public image is critical. But when a marriage and family counselor actually goes through a mid-life crisis herself, all bets are off and here come the tattoos, affairs, and professional infidelities.