The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
November 08, 2024 at 03:30PM
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In this edition:
- The endorphins of community
- Environmentalism and the far right
- Richard Gadd, post-Baby Reindeer
- Documenting graves as a hobby
- Revolutionary bike riders in Afghanistan
1. What I Learned From Destroying Myself at the NYC Marathon
Will Leitch | New York Magazine | November 5, 2024 | 2,186 words
I read this piece on Wednesday. This is an important fact. All I wanted to read on Wednesday was something that affirmed the idea that decency existed in the universe. Is that histrionic? Probably a little. Does it matter? Probably not. Because Will Leitch’s story about running the NYC Marathon is eminently decent. It is about the very real, very uplifiting sensation of being cheered on in a very difficult pursuit. Look, the people running a marathon are not the healthcare workers heading back to the hospital in the spring of 2020. (I’m sure some are, but you know what I mean.) For the most part, they’re not heroes simply because they’re running 26.2 miles. (Again, some are.) But on race days like this one, the air is suffused with something special. “Much has been written about the joyous lovefest that is the New York City Marathon, but I’m not sure it can be emphasized enough,” Leitch writes. “People can be mean and cruel and inconsiderate; we all see it every day. But this was something basic and elemental: human beings supporting other human beings, simply because they are other human beings.” It feels good to be cheered, especially when you’re in mile 19 and you feel like the next seven miles are an impossibility, but it also feels good to cheer. It feels good in a way that is, sadly, rare. It feels like community. And it’s exactly what I needed to be reminded of. —PR
2. The Ghosts of John Tanton
Abrahm Lustgarten | ProPublica | October 19, 2024 | 7,634 words
In a previous job, I had the task of editing a regular feature entitled “Think Again.” The magazine picked a topic (sex work is one I remember) and invited a contributor to critique conventional wisdom about it. Most of the results read like white papers, which is to say they were painfully boring. (I disliked that job for a reason—OK, many reasons.) Abrahm Lustgarten demonstrates a better way to “think again” in this masterful unpacking of the relationship between environmentalism and the far right. The conventional wisdom he tackles is the assumption that people who support the farthest right flank of US politics are climate change deniers. To be sure, plenty are. But, as Lustgarten shows, some racists muster legitimate environmental concerns to make the case for anti-immigration policies, as well as eugenics. Their obsession with purity extends from race to soil. Lustgarten illuminates this reality by way of John Tanton, a prominent white supremacist who founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform, designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Tanton was also an environmental activist who promoted population control, at one point from a prominent perch inside the Sierra Club. “It was an environmental appeal he crafted not just in earnest—which he certainly was—but also because he thought it was one of the strongest rationales that the United States should remain predominantly white,” Lustgarten writes. Tanton died in 2019, but his influence remains potent. “Eco-fascism” is one of many strains of thought comfortably sheltering under the big tent that is the US far right. It has informed the ideology of at least two mass shooters. Reading Lustgarten’s piece at the same time I was scanning exit polls this week, I couldn’t help but wonder if there is a seed of fear for the environment tucked inside Trump voters’ concerns about immigration, and what it would take for that seed to grow. —SD
3. Richard Gadd On Life After Baby Reindeer
Hayley Campbell | GQ | November 4, 2024 | 3,081 words
I am not sure I can say I enjoyed Netflix’s Baby Reindeer. It is uncomfortable viewing at times. But there is no doubt that Richard Gadd’s adaptation of his autobiographical play about having a stalker is highly compelling—I could not stop watching. In this profile, Hayley Campbell reveals how Gadd turned trauma into hit TV (Baby Reindeer was no. 1 on Netflix worldwide). Being stalked wasn’t his only impetus; Gadd also drew elements from his previous one-man show, Monkey See, Monkey Do, about sexual abuse. Sitting on a plastic garden chair in his “fixer-upper” London flat, Gadd wrote “thousands” of drafts combining these experiences into dark comedy drama. Campbell deftly explains the result as a “nuanced, messy, human story with no clear victim and no clear perpetrator, which explored the complexities and far-reaching radiation zone that is the aftermath of abuse.” The reaction to the show has left Gadd feeling “windswept.” He talks to Campbell fresh from collecting three Emmys, and you can feel his bewilderment—and fear. Campbell notes, “If you’ve been following [Gadd’s] interviews, you’ll notice the scope becoming smaller.” After exposing all, Gadd is retreating. The frenzy following the show led internet detectives to attempt to track down perpetrators Gadd had tried to keep anonymous. (His alleged stalker, Fiona Hervey, has filed a £130 million lawsuit against Netflix). Prepared to mine himself for material, Gadd was not so ready to have attention turned on others. Campbell’s sensitive portrayal goes beyond profiling Gadd’s success—she explores what success can mean. —CW
4. My Weekends With the Dead
Tony Ho Tran | Slate | October 24, 2024 | 3,930 words
Tony Ho Tran is a graver. He visits Chicago cemeteries to photograph gravestones, monuments, and plot markers to upload to findagrave.com—what he calls a “social media site, but for the dead.” I had to know: what motivates someone to pursue such a hobby? For Tran, it’s personal. He set out in 2017 to learn why his grandfather left his family in Vietnam without warning, after the war. Eventually the author found his grandpa’s page on findagrave.com, solving part of the mystery: Keith Cornell Brown had another family waiting for him in the United States while he served overseas. As Tran explains, gravers come in three categories: those that photograph specific graves to fulfill requests posted to the site; those who “mow the lawn” in cemeteries by documenting markers row by row; and those who research individual grave sites to create memorials at findagrave.com. While many find comfort and closure on the site, it’s not without controversy. Some gravers collect obituaries and photos from recent deaths and for some survivors, this can cause trauma and a sense of violation when they discover their loved one’s memorial page online. For Tran—whose visit to his grandfather’s grave is a poignant anchor in this piece—participation is more than just paying it forward. “While we stumble upon Find a Grave for different reasons, we end up finding out there’s more to it than just pictures,” he says. “It’s also a community of researchers and archivists who are dedicated to the singular goal of memorializing and preserving the memory of as many people as possible. . . . It gives me a profound sense of peace that, at least in this small way, I can help these people stay remembered—and keep their memory alive—just a little while longer.” Given the world today, it’s refreshing and uplifting to know that altruism is alive and well. —KS
5. The Alchemists
Kim Cross | Bicycling | October 23, 2024 | 6,503 words
It was tough to read anything this week, but this feature on the women who led a cycling revolution in Afghanistan was an enjoyable distraction from all the doomscrolling. Cycling was forbidden for women there, until a grassroots movement emerged. Cross introduces us to a few fearless athletes who were at the center of it: teenage girls who rode bikes despite the rocks that boys hurled at them for doing so, despite the anger it provoked in men and elders in their community. For them, a bike was not simply a mode of transport; it was a symbol of freedom. Cross chronicles their coming-of-age journeys: How sisters Zakia and Reihana, whose family owned a bike shop in Bamyan, were in natural positions to take up cycling. Or how Zahra, stubborn and confident, taught herself how to ride on an adult-sized bike when she was a girl, frustrated that boys around her could travel swiftly and freely on wheels. Zakia and Zahra became friends and began to teach others to ride: “They were simply girls teaching other girls a skill that expanded their world.” In 2013, they formed the first coed cycling club and team in Afghanistan, which then led to winning races and slowly changing attitudes. “Afghan men cheering Afghan women in sports was itself a revolution,” writes Cross. In 2021, when the US withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban returned to power, those freedoms gained through cycling were erased. The women and their loved ones managed to escape with the help of an American cyclist and activist who had worked in the country, and Cross recounts their evacuation stories in nail-biting detail. Ultimately, this is a story of great loss—the loss of dreams, of rights, and even one’s homeland—but it is also a story of great courage and inspiration. —CLR
Audience Award
Here’s the story our readers loved most this week:
Ancient Jars
Leo Kim | Cleveland Review of Books | September 17, 2024 | 5,365 words
A meditation on boxes, borders, pottery, the Container Store, and much more. If you, like me, find solace in organization—hello, fellow Virgos!—this essay will prompt you to take a step back and weigh its true value. —SD
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/11/08/the-top-5-longreads-of-the-week-539/
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