The Rumpus Interview with Terry McDonell
Terry McDonell talks about his new memoir The Accidental Life and his career in the magazine business, which spans the beginning of New Journalism through the digital revolution.
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Posts Tagged: Longform
Lover as Audience, Twitter as Community
At Electric Literature, poet and critic K. Thomas Khan walks through the unraveling of a relationship, deliberate isolation from online life, and the questions both raise in a lyrical, longform piece that pushes and pulls at the concepts of personal and professional connection. In-between 3 a.m. fights and fortune teller visits and literally and metaphorically going […]
...moreFreezer Burn
There’s always money in the banana stand. Until another one shows up. As the summer heat dies down, Epic Magazine presents a tale of two ice cream vendors, both alike in dignity: What’s the world coming to if you can’t depend on an ice cream truck?
...moreHow Has the Internet Changed Longform Journalism?
Ideally, online longform nonfiction combines the strengths of the print world with those of the Internet, granting writers the rigorous editing and reporting resources they’d get at a magazine but freeing them from the constraints of word limits and limited audiences. So what’s with the backlash against longreads? Buzzfeed’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith explains at Medium.
...moreMr. Bad News Who?
It can be a harrowing experience, Whitman knows, requiring that the writer become an instant historian, assessing in a few hours the dead man’s life with lucidity, accuracy, and objectivity. Gay Talese believes “Mr. Bad News” is one of the best pieces he ever wrote. Talese wrote the profile on New York Times obituary writer Alden Whitman […]
...moreThe Women of Ward 3B
[Alice’s] brown eyes are comparatively lucid in a room filled with women alternately sedated or enraged. She comforts Shania, who believes a bulldozer is parked inside her forehead, and Sabrina, who thinks an ex-boyfriend has taken custody of their nonexistent septuplet babies, whose names she cannot always remember but each of whom is called a […]
...moreA Longform Safari
Longform.org has been highlighting some amazing stories about animals lately. Like this one about the soulfulness (literally?) of elephants. Or this one about polar bears as creatures, as symbols of global-warming guilt, and as subjects for Martha Stewart’s Hallmark Channel TV show. Or this one about taxidermy. All are great pieces to help you get in […]
...more“Talk Dirty and Live Clean”
If reading our interview with Peter Rock (and getting psyched for his reading tomorrow) has whetted your appetite for cult stories, check out this piece on Synanon by George Pendle, highlighted by Longform earlier this week. Things start out all right, with a recovering alcoholic named Chuck Dederich meeting with some Alcoholics Anonymous pals for […]
...more“So Are You Helpless, Tragic, or Stupid?”
You may remember, from when it was featured on Longform.org, Vanessa Veselka’s GQ essay “The Truck Stop Killer,” about her life as a teenage hitchhiker and her narrow escape from a man who might have been a serial killer. Now, for the American Reader, Veselka pulls back for a more analytical take on the subject of road […]
...moreRemember the Phoenix
The latest casualty in the decline of print media is the Boston Phoenix, a beloved alt weekly that is already sorely missed. To help lay it to rest, Slate and Longform.org compiled a list of some of the Phoenix‘s best stories about drugs, riots, legal trials, and of course, family. “The Trials of Nadia Naffe,” published just last […]
...moreOn the Internet, No One Knows You’re A Liar
Slate‘s recurring feature “The Longform Guide to…,” curated by Longform.org, is usually fascinating, and the most recent installment is no exception. In “honor” of the revelation that Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o’s girlfriend never existed, Max Linsky leads us through a maze of stories on Internet hoaxes. Especially unsettling is “The Lying Disease,” a recent […]
...more“The Cold Hard Facts of Freezing to Death”
If this holiday season has filled you with a few too many warm fuzzy feelings, you can banish them instantly with this longform piece about freezing to death. Putting the bulk of the article in second person makes it especially chilling (pun…kind of intended). Breath rolls from you in short frosted puffs. The Jeep lies […]
...moreThe King of the Word Nerds
Via Longform.org, a must-read ten-year-old New Yorker piece on the rarefied world of elite crossword-puzzle solvers. Warning: unless you are mentioned by name in the article, you will probably have to face some hard truths about how your own crossword-puzzle prowess is not as impressive as you thought. Ripstein got off to an early lead, and managed to […]
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