Articles Tagged with #longreads
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Birnbaum V.
Russell Banks
Our man in Boston sits down for the sixth time with Russell Banks to discuss his latest novel, the movie business, Mitt Romney, the emigration of investigative journalists, and why it’s wise to wait until your 70’s before writing about obsessive love.
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Letters From Canada
Why I Won’t Be Screeching
Life in Newfoundland is changing. Fish are down, oil is up. Nostalgia abounds for simpler, harder times. So when outsiders arrive, they’re ordered to worship a fish—literally kiss a big cod on the mouth. But not everyone’s drinking the rum.
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Birnbaum V.
Sven Birkerts
Our Man in Boston sits down for this third conversation with author, critic, and book-world majordomo Sven Birkerts to talk about the current reviewing situation, the best books of 2000, and Amy Winehouse.
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Personal Essays
Along the Horizontal
The link between Occupy Wall Street, the environmental doom of Czech villages, and the noise of a wailing child on a freezing, black morning in Sweden is not obvious—but it does count for everything.
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Personal Essays
Now That Books Mean Nothing
When you’ve long been identified as a “literary type,” how can it be that receiving books as get-well gifts leaves you feeling empty, angry, and determined to chug YouTube straight?
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Anatomy of a Scene
Standup Comity
If a person tells a joke in a forest and doesn’t get a laugh—that’s how you know he or she’s a true comic. A report from the 2011 International Society for Humor Studies Conference, where so-called experts of comedy submit themselves to professionals to be critiqued.
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Our Battles, Ourselves
Fight Night
The recent Pacquiao-Márquez match was full of lust, anger, calculation, sport—the same as what’s occurring across America, in Zuccotti Park, in Congress, in every household with a bullet-skulled parent. Boxing is the sport of the now, and its lessons will be useful tonight.
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Personal Essays
The Demands of Cold Blood
When a crime reporter is told an outlandish account, his first obligation is to establish the facts. But when the story turns out to be far more shocking—a conspiracy, in fact, of appalling darkness—it can knock his sense of duty until it cracks.
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Gonzo Geography
Handheld Time Machines
Cities are full of noise and scuffle, and they don’t always reveal their history. Armed with a fistful of maps from 1901 and a smartphone bristling with data-recording apps, one man tries to uncover a city’s secrets.
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Birnbaum V.
Geraldine Brooks
Our man in Boston sits down with the Pulitzer-winning novelist to discuss Australian literature, Harvard’s (neglected) charter to educate American Indians, and those residents of Martha’s Vineyard who say no to Chardonnay.
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Letters From Spain
We Must Walk the Camino Together
For centuries, the Camino de Santiago has drawn religious pilgrims to northern Spain. But those guys never did it with walkie-talkies, GPS, taxis, and Wonder Bread.
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Of Dice and Men
PAX Primer
Every year, tens of thousands of gamers descend on Seattle to attend a convention that began as a webcomic, and has grown into the epicenter of gaming culture. An account from this year’s event, which encompassed nearly every imaginable game genre—and a few never before imagined.