Adventure narratives thrive on the nearness (or near miss) of doom’s heavy paw, but Eva Holland gives readers something other than a saga of suffering and survival in her recent account of her slog across the frozen sea near … Read more
It’s hard to cull just one sentence from Sedaris’ embedded reporting on being a helper at Santaland, a place he describes as “a real wonderland” with a path taking visitors through the “ten thousand sparkling lights, false snow, train sets, … Read more
Why is it great? Yesterday was Dorothy Parker’s birthday. (She would have been 124, reminding me of her classic line, “Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.”) The line above is one of my favorites, because … Read more
Whoever said “It is better to travel than to arrive” wasn’t sitting next to Sarah Lyall aboard American Airlines Flight 1886 en route from Iowa to Arizona at the moment she tried to open her single serving of yogurt. Read more
Why is it great? We annotated this wonderful story last year, and the focus of the annotation was the rarity of humor in longform. This line makes me laugh even without the context of the story, which is … Read more
When you read a lot of longform stories, you can’t help noticing something: They tend to be very, very serious. Think fast: How many made you laugh? Epic magazine’s “The Cold War,” by David Wolman and Julian Smith, made … Read more
