The scene could fit nicely into a Harry Crews novel: A legless man with a “beatific look of ecstasy on his thin, pale face” sits on a dolly outside the airport in Valdez, Alaska. Crews initially understands the look to … Read more
Jean McConville had just taken a bath when the intruders knocked on the door. The rasp of knuckles at a West Belfast flat would jar many people at night in 1972. That sound for so many – fathers, young men, … Read more
It had been three months since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and stories probing the life and possible influences of the shooter Adam Lanza were still all over the news, so when I opened my … Read more
Joe Rhodes pulls off the nearly impossible in “How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze,” an edgy New York Times magazine piece. He takes a horrific event—the murder of a family member, an … Read more
It’s hard to know where to begin when attempting to grapple with the sprawling legacy of racial discrimination and oppression in America. But Ta-Nehisi Coates knows there to start. “The Case For Reparations,” Coates’ latest tour … Read more
David Foster Wallace grew up in the Midwest but it was not really his home. Yet in September 2001, he was teaching at Illinois State University and living in Bloomington. He had attended college in Massachusetts and graduate school in … Read more
Tom Wolfe and I met twice, in his Upper East Side home, and to answer the inevitable question, no: He never wore a white suit. Dark blazer, dark pants, no hat. We talked for four hours over two days … Read more
At the end of 2013, everyone I knew was talking about a single essay: Ariel Levy’s “Thanksgiving in Mongolia: Adventure and Heartbreak at the Edge of the Earth,” published in the New Yorker in November. Read more
Twenty-nine years ago today, Sports Illustrated ran George Plimpton’s “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch,” about a mysterious, unknown major league pitching recruit who threw a fastball at jet speed. Published on April Fools’ Day 1985, the … Read more
My friend Matthew Power, wondrously excellent human and magazine journalist, died recently while on assignment in Uganda. Like so many others, in recent days I have missed Matt, older-writing-brother Matt, in part by revisiting his work. Read more
