Deux articles longform remarquables sur le plastique, son ubiquité, notre addiction, son rôle dans la destruction de l’environnement, notre inconséquence.
The Common Reader, How Plastic Liberated and Entombed Us, by Jeannette Cooperman
The Atlantic, How Bad Are Plastics, Really?, by Rebecca Altman
Déprimant et révoltant.
Alex Ross, The Naysayers — The New Yorker, 15 sept. 2014
“Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and the critique of pop culture.”
Si un génie m’avait accordé un texte (brillantissime) sur un sujet criminellement vague pour moi et un auteur pour le clarifier, j’aurais probablement choisi Alex Ross sur l’Ecole de Francfort.
L’internet des longreads c’est un peu la lampe magique.
Update : justement sur (un peu) le même thème, ceci :
Adam Leith Gollner, An Investigation Into the Reappearance of Walter Benjamin — 11 sept. 2014
“Now, seventy-four years after his death, Walter Benjamin is releasing Recent Writings, a new collection of nine essays written between 1986 and 2013.”
Sophie Brickman, The History of the Ramen Noodle — The New Yorker, may 2014
C’est ce que, souvent, j’ai l’impression que la presse américaine, dans ses incarnations les plus brillantes, est capable de faire, et que la presse française est tellement navrante qu’elle n’a même pas l’idée d’essayer, même pas l’idée que c’est possible.
Etre passionnant et érudit en parlant de quelque chose d’apparemment trivial. Tout en étant drôle, tout en étant respectueux de son sujet. Tout en écrivant avec style.
Christian Donlan, Inside Monopoly’s secret war against the Third Reich — Eurogamer, january 2014
DISCUSSED: Harry Houdini, prisoners of war playing Monopoly, stage magicians in the secret services, compasses and maps hidden in boots and games’ boards
Paul Tough, A Speck in The Sea — The New York Times Magazine, january 2014
DISCUSSED: a stupid move, Long Island fishermen, a fun-loving loudmouth riding an unicycle literally losing his best friend, letting something for your parents to bury
Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of Minneapolis — McClure’s Magazine, january 1903
DISCUSSED: hating strict laws, charity for the destitute, disorderly houses & opium joints, regulating lawlessness, wanting to accomplish
MY POINT: like a whole season of The Wire, but written in 1903. One of the seminal articles of « muckracking » journalism, that « shaped investigative journalism in America ».
Jeff Sharlet, Voice and Hammer — The Virginia Quarterly Review, fall 2013
DISCUSSED: Harry Belafonte, outsolding Elvis, the safest Negro in America, $800.000 to stop putting black and white backup singers together on TV, the best band in jazz, the scandal of marrying a white woman, one of the Civil Rights Movement’s biggest donors
« All attempts at world domination begin with weak, evasive, impersonal language. » — George Saunders
Il y a quelques mois je lisais Lightning Rods, d’Helen Dewitt, et chaque nouvelle page tournée me rendait de plus en plus frénétique dans mon admiration pour cet incroyable écrivain, pour ses idées, pour son style, pour sa joie communicative envers le mot, la phrase, le texte. Lightning Rods n’est peut-être pas à mettre entre toutes les mains : l’idée principale creusée par ce roman est que, enrobée dans suffisamment de marketing, de corporate bullshit et de newspeak, une certaine forme de rapports sexuels tarifés et anonymes pourrait acquérir une bienfaisante normalité dans l’espace de l’entreprise moderne, donc de la société. C’est une satire, d’un humour et d’une rigueur littéraire à peine croyables (et donc jouissives — ah ah), une satire du désir masculin, de la religion de la littérature de self-help, de l’esprit business (dans lequel quiconque a déjà été « vendu » par un commercial inculte retrouvera son expérience). Le livre m’a transporté de gloussements de ridicule en roulements d’yeux d’outrage, du haussement de sourcils complice à des réflexions sur le possible, sur la morale, sur le féminisme ; comme tout véritable roman, a fortiori comme toute bonne satire, Helen Dewitt s’y abstient jusqu’à la dernière ligne de tout jugement moral, plongeant avec béatitude et style indirect libre dans les méandres superficiellement rationnels de la pensée de son narrateur, refusant toute position personnelle (sur)plombante.
Mais enfin, tout cela restait sagement de la fiction.
Jusqu’à cet exceptionnel article :
Nitasha Tiku, My Life With The Thrill-Clit Cult — Gawker, october 2013
Je n’ai absolument aucun avis (en dehors du fait que c’est diaboliquement bien écrit et que j’y ai appris de nouveaux mots utiles comme pulchritudinous), et certainement aucun jugement moral. Juste, voilà : il y a en 2013 des gens qui recommandent et pratiquent une forme de stimulation sexuelle au travail.
And now for something completely different.
Marshall Sella, The Year of Living Carlos Dangerously — GQ, november 2013
DISCUSSED: Anthony Weiner’s sexting addiction, a Malaysian cameraman, 125 ideas, pensive Kennedys, Mutually Assured Destruction
Willy Staley, 22 Hours in Balthazar — The New York Times, october 2013
DISCUSSED: a highly efficient, well-oiled potato-chipping machine, 10 000 guests per week, $38 steak frites in SoHo, waiters and busboys, the bass player for Metallica
Joshua Davis, How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses — Wired, october 2013
DISCUSSED: a place of punishment, mind-numbingly boring teaching, intermittent electricity, curiosity-fueled exploration, kids hacking Android, the highest math score in the country
David Graeber, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs – Strike! Magazine, august 2013
DISCUSSED: fancy sneakers, the conveniency of work as a moral value, an ex-indie rock frontman turned corporate lawyer, a century of trial and error
David Pogue, Glasses That Solve Colorblindness, for a Big Price Tag – New York Times’ Blogs, august 2013
DISCUSSED: enchroma.com, the Ishihara test, an old brown Vermont barn roof, a surge of emotion, breath-catching wonder
Rose George, ‘Like Being in Prison with a Salary’: The Secret World of the Shipping Industry – Longreads Blogs, august 2013
DISCUSSED: 746 million bananas, queen Hatshepsut of Egypt, the vast and dizzying interests of a global corporation, astonishing abuses of human rights
« There are at least three themes which are utterly taboo as far as most American publishers are concerned. [Besides Lolita,] the two others are: a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 1o6. »
« Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity. »
«But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions. »
— Vladimir Nabokov, On a book entitled “Lolita”
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Laurie Penny, Of course all men don’t hate women… – New Statesman, august 2013
DISCUSSED: semantic squabbling, rotting cauliflower, a wall of defensiveness, simple sexual equality
Laura Agustín, Prostitution Law and the Death of Whores – Jacobin Magazine, august 2013
DISCUSSED: stigma and disqualification, prestige for helpers, how to manage the women, essentialist notions of morality, fixing sexual relations
Vladimir Nabokov, On a book entitled “Lolita” – Encounter, april 1959
DISCUSSED: the copulation of clichés, æsthetic bliss, philistine vulgarity, a book as a constant comforting presence, les amours de milord grosvit, a second-rate brand of english
What’s a « longread » ?
A: Longreads can be any story over 1,500 words—this includes long-form journalism, fiction, book excerpts, historical texts, interview transcripts, screenplays, and academic or science papers. Pretty much any outstanding reading that can be enjoyed on a couch, a commute, or an airplane.
My answer : longreads are the real journalism.
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Michael Lewis : Did Goldman Sachs Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer? – Vanity Fair, september 2013
DISCUSSED: high-frequency trading, erasing one’s bash history, a twenty-four hour crash course on computer programming, paucity of informed outsiders, secret sauce
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc : The Comedian Comedians Were Afraid Of – New York Magazine, may 2012.
DISCUSSED: patrice o’neal, stand up, malcolm xxl, white guilt, insults
Ryan Jacobs : The Strange Sexual Quirk of Filipino Seafarers – The Atlantic, august 2013
DISCUSSED: brazilian prostitutes, tiny plastic balls inserted in the penis, upward mobility, asserting masculinity
John Mahoney : The Notorious MSG’s Unlikely Formula For Success – BuzzFeed, august 2013
DISCUSSED: monosodium glutamate, 100 fucking percent sure, racist undertones, the North Korea of glutamate, an ethnically neutral sandwich, david chang
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Also, (anonymous) quote of the week: « The plural of anecdote is not data. »