EDITORS' NOTE: Welcome back! We've got another special guest editing duo today: two of Jacob's favorite writers and Don's closest friends (and ESPN colleagues): Wright Thompson and Seth Wickersham. Wright is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi and Clyde Park, Montana. (Here are somelinks to his fine work.) Seth is also a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, and along with Don Van Natta Jr. is the co-author of the forthcoming NFL book Powerball. (You can read his goodstuffhere.) Plans for a podcast with these two were put on hold by Hurricane Irma, but that means you have an opportunity to suggest topics of discussion via email. In the meantime, we think you are in good hands!
Enjoy,
Don and Jacob
Seth: When Don and Jacob asked us to do this, you had a very simple question for them: What is a long read? It was a smart question, too, because long reads have simply come to symbolize something that’s long—and might be read. It doesn't always have to have all of the narrative nonfiction elements that you and I, as 21-year-olds at the University of Missouri, embedded in our souls as a religion. We might be selfish, single-minded, ruthless, we might eat poorly, drink too much, have bad credit, have relationships that end badly, and generally neglect elements of our lives that well-rounded people cherish, but we would never betray the ideals of story. It sounded good at the time, at least.
And yet, it’s betrayed all the time. Just because a story is called long form doesn't mean it’s formed well, and just because a story is short—or shorter—doesn't mean that it doesn't have the ideals of a long form story. I believe now—as I did in college—that generally the best writing usually ends up appearing on a physical page, because that means that it couldn’t go on forever. Each word had to be considered, stewed over, cut, added back, fact-checked, reconsidered, and it would survive only if it served the larger purpose. It is a painful, excruciating process, and every time the writer swears that this is it, never again … but it ends up producing the best story possible. In fact, even when I can’t get out of my own head and am struggling to write, I’ve come to rely on the process for reassurance. It’ll all work out in the end, because it always does. We might not achieve all of our goals in every story, but we always achieve the goal of it being about something beyond the subject. We’ve both seen it happen with 1,500 word stories and with 11,000 word ones. A story doesn’t have to be long to be a “long read.” So, what is a long read?
Wright: There have always been different names in vogue for the kinds of stories we write. I usually just call them magazine stories, although the newspaper reporter in me sometimes still slips up and calls them takeouts. I love that newspaper lingo: takeout, doubletruck, jump space. The longread thing makes me roll my eyes a little, and I can't tell if that's because it feels like an affectation or if I'm just becoming (more of) a grumpy old man. Whatever you call it, these stories are cinematic and are about characters encountering obstacles and being changed by them. The stories chronicle that change, and take you inside the lives of the people, and into the heart of the place, and if they're done well, they will linger long after you finish reading them. I find that more and more I want them to be muscular and tight, no matter the length, with the idea that the perfect magazine story is the printed version of Darkness on the Edge of Town, where the most important things live in the space between words and sentences.
Seth: In honor of that, we give you the shortest Sunday Long Read in the newsletter’s history. You might disagree with ones we included and ones we left off, but our idea was that if we were publishing a magazine and had limited space, what stories would make it? Which ones were worth the money that it costs to print each page. Love or hate it, this is what we found.
Nobody has written about race in the past two years like Coates. The most common narrative from the Left during the 2016 campaign was, "Yeah, but Trump can't win," and then they woke up the day after the election wondering if the country was not the country they thought it was. Coates explains that the president's most diehard supporters have always been here, and from Coates' point of view, the "deeper existential reckoning" is not going to be solved by a Democrat lecturing about class struggles. The country is deeply and profoundly at war. Still.
Speaking of taking our jobs ... this story (a little old but this is our list) is in the classic SI tradition of Bill Nack and Mark Kram and all the writers who really invented and perfected the jobs so many of us do today. Ben Baskin has established himself as the latest in the great longform tradition of Sports Illustrated.
There is almost never an average story that tries to tie sports to tragedy. It's either great or it sucks, either moving or every cliché before your eyes. Our colleague Dave Fleming nailed this one, on the Astros returning to Houston, by finding the tiny details that elevate a report into a story, a glimpse into a dispatch.
We might be biased, because Wright and I saw U2 earlier this year, but I loved how this story gave a glimpse at the humanity required to pull off an iconic band trying to make its most iconic album seem new.
The bar is high for a story on Colin Kaepernick, because any author can envision the reader comments before a word is written. Kent Babb takes a hard look at why Kap risked his NFL career to take a stand by taking a knee, and more importantly, looks at how a quarterback's simple protest became larger than he ever imagined, to the point that he both can't give it up, even if he's promised to stand for the National Anthem to work again as a quarterback in the NFL.
This story is classic Oxford American, which manages to peel back the sweet tea and Finebaum caller pornography that passes for southern journalism and reveals the messy, complicated place as it is: deeply flawed and yet still trying to find a way forward.
With this and his Kirk Cousins story, GQ writer Clay Skipper is establishing himself as a leader in the newest wave of young practitioners of longform. Which means we hate him, obviously, since he and his peers are coming to take our jobs.
This is excellent journalism, as usual, and, also as usual, when The New Yorker sends one of its big guns to reveal something long hidden from view, the result is astonishing and f------ terrifying.
Dan Wetzel is consistently the best sports columnist in America, writing nearly every day with strong opinions and great reporting. He remains the gold standard.
There's no reason to remember President George H.W. Bush's budget director, Richard G. Darman, except for this irreverent profile by Marjorie Williams, which jukes and skitters and reveals like a Martin Amis novel. Drink deep from this landmark profile, y'all, or taste not.
I’m not sure how big the Venn diagram overlap is between Chris Gethard fans and Katie Couric fans, but they jibe really nicely as they take a phone call together. A nice wrinkle to one of the simplest, and best, podcast conceits.
Jody Avirgan is the host of FiveThirtyEight's politics podcast and is heading up the new "30 for 30" podcast documentary series from ESPN.
"Purple reign? Petition calls for Prince statue to replace Columbus at Minnesota Capitol"
From Tim:
A mob at the state capitol tore down the sacred bust
Of Christopher Columbus, treading on it in the dust.
They said he was a tyrant and a murderer supreme
Who merited no statue and should not have their esteem.
They did not waste a moment nor remorse at all evince;
Instead they put a statue up of Paisley Park’s dead Prince.
Grasping a guitar and facing towards the golden dome,
it appeared quite arrogant and thoroughly at home.
But then another crowd appeared, with news that made men stagger—
They wanted to replace ol’ Prince with a statue of Mick Jagger!
Soon the hubbub reached a pitch that called for intervention,
And like good Minnesotans they all called for a convention.
Consensus was not possible with such diversity—
And so all statues were destroyed—which surely was a pity.
So now there’s nothing on the grounds except some dusty grit—
For even fescue cannot grow with such a lack of wit.
Tim Torkildson is a retired circus clown who fiddles with rhyme. All his verses can be found at Tim's Clown Alley.
Founder, Curator: Don Van Natta Jr. Producer, Curator: Jacob Feldman Senior Recycling Editor: Jack Shafer Senior Limerick Editor: Tim Torkildson Senior Podcast Editor: Jody Avirgan
Header Image: Michael Starghill, Jr. for ESPN
Contributing Editors: Bruce Arthur, Alex Belth, Sara J. Benincasa, Sara Blask, Greg Bishop, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Chris Cillizza, Rich Cohen, Pam Colloff, Maureen Dowd, Brett Michael Dykes, Lea Goldman, Maggie Haberman, Reyhan Harmanci, Virginia Heffernan, Matthew Hiltzik, Jena Janovy, Bomani Jones, Peter Kafka, Mina Kimes, Peter King, Tom Lamont, Glynnis MacNicol, Drew Magary, Jonathan Martin, Betsy Fischer Martin, Ana Menendez, Kevin Merida, Eric Neel, Joe Nocera, Lizzie O'Leary, Ashley R. Parker, Anne Helen Petersen, Joe Posnanski, S.L. Price, Julia Rubin, Albert Samaha, Bruce Schoenfeld, Joe Sexton, Jacqui Shine, Rachel Sklar, Dan Shanoff, Ben Smith, Matt Sullivan, Wright Thompson, Pablo Torre, Kevin Van Valkenburg, John A. Walsh, and Seth Wickersham
You can read more about our staff, and contact us (we'd love to hear from you!) on our website: SundayLongRead.com. Help pick next week's selections by tweeting us your favorite stories with #SundayLR.