A Year in Reading: Power to the People
December 13, 2024 at 01:30PM
Thoughtful stories for thoughtless times.
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“You know you’re going to die—today, tomorrow, within fifty years. . . . What is it that you want to do with your life before that happens?” Back in January, cave dweller Beatriz Flamini posed this question to D.T. Max in a piece for The New Yorker (Flamini chose to spend five hundred days of her life alone in a cave). Contemplating my favorite stories of 2024, I realized I had been drawn to many pieces that asked something similar: What are people doing with their time on this little blue planet? Perhaps it’s traveling to as many places as possible. Maybe it’s running across sporting events naked. Whatever it is, I want to know. For me, this has been the year of the life story.
I have always found myself enthralled by people. In my 20s, I worked in documentary film, and what I loved most about that field was meeting people from all walks of life: NASA scientists. Tornado chasers. The Pope. Bronies (men with a fondness for My Little Pony). I once interviewed a surfer, a physics professor, and someone who claimed to have seen fish falling from the sky (long story), in one day—a good day. Peeking into someone else’s existence is a privilege. I still encounter people I would not meet in my regular life, just now through words. I am grateful that in 2024 so many writers have gone out to meet interesting individuals for me: Some kooky. Some extreme. Some famous. All fascinating.
A particular favorite of the year was Abe Beame’s profile for Taste on Chef Angel Jimenez, who runs a highly successful food truck in the South Bronx. Jimenez relates his story “with a grin, a Heineken deuce bottle in his hand and a half-smoked, clipped joint sticking out of his mouth.” Swimming in meat fat and sweat in his converted van, there is joy in Jimenez’s chaotic systems. In another pick from Taste—on cookbook editor Judith Jones—Sara Franklin peers in a different direction. Jones greets Franklin serenely, in her “pressed slacks and a gorgeous, cream-colored silk blouse, with pearl studs in her ears.” They get to know each other over genteel lunches in Jones’ apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Flip sides of New York—equal delight in food.
Across the pond, it fell to Sophie Elmhirst to enlighten me on some ebullient characters. In a piece for The Economist, Elmhirst meets Gary, a call center worker for Vision Direct in Manchester, England, whose job is under threat from the looming tidal wave of AI. After being questioned about robot agents, Gary grumbles, “Why is it all of a sudden everything has to be 100% beautifully perfected responses? It reminds me of processed cheese, Sophie.” I love Gary. For The Guardian, Elmhirst moves on to Guy Toyn, a member of a dying breed of court reporters and someone who has mastered dashing around the courts of London’s Old Bailey with maximum flamboyance. I was captivated by these old guards—both in changing industries. Elmhirst has a knack for making characters bustle off the page right into your front room. Both Guy and Gary are clinging to ways of life they love. I hope they can hold on a little longer.
Then there are the athletes: A tennis player. A bull rider. A climber. An extreme skier. I have devoured and picked all their stories. The sports are loved, but the costs are high. J.B. Mauney—the bull rider—tells Sally Jenkins for The Washington Post how a bull broke his neck, ending his career. In The Guardian, Conor Niland bemoans the loneliness of life as a low-ranking tennis player. Also for The Guardian (yes, I know, I do have a penchant for this British paper), Simon Akam reports on how too much time in the world of skier Jérémie Heitz “is to encounter something like the normalisation, even the banalisation, of premature death.” In his essay for Alpinist, climber Michael Gardner wrestles with whether his sport is worth the losses. (A hard read—Gardner himself tragically passed away during a climbing expedition in October.) These pieces all offer powerful insights into lives lived on the edge. All question if it is worth it.
Even celebrities can doubt their choices. When Hayley Campbell interviews Richard Gadd for GQ, she finds a man retreating from his fame, his “scope becoming smaller.” Ironically, Gadd’s show about his experience with a stalker, Baby Reindeer, fueled internet sleuths into tracking down those he wished to protect. In an interview with Susan Dominus for The New York Times Magazine, Kate Winslet also reflects on the harrowing nature of fame, having become famous in the ’90s—an era when “waif-like” was the acceptable body size for women. Winslet has shaken it off though, and her stoicism shines through in a rather jolly time spent with Dominus, topped off when she coerces her into a swim in the freezing British sea.
Many huge world events have happened this year. We could easily disregard the granular stories of chefs, tennis players, and call center workers. But they do still matter. First-person accounts are profound, intimate, and reflective. Reported profiles allow authors to seep into their writing, often learning something about their own lives through those of their subjects. And, as the world grows heavier, delight can be found in the eccentricities and achievements of our fellow humans. Stepping into someone else’s life can be a blessed piece of escapism. It is also an education. “People pieces” have taught me what drives us: our passions and weirdness. I may never run a food truck, live in a cave, ride a bull, or win an Oscar; but discovering more about those who have has given me a greater insight into what it is to be part of this bonkers, wonderful, sometimes terrifying, species. Go back and read a few of the splendid life stories from 2024. Then imagine the even more bizarre and brilliant things people could do in 2025. —CW
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