#OTD JFK informed the American public of the Cuban missile crisis. Just four days later, a mistakenly-ordered pork chop may have saved the world: #DCHistory https://t.co/DssHrP50UN #OTD JFK informed the American public of the Cuban missile crisis. Just four days later, a mis…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 22, 2022
Check out what I'm selling: Vintage Goebel Mitzi the Persian Cat with Gorgeous green eyes West Germany: Get up to $30 off* when you use my code PJI750 to sign up for Mercari. *Terms apply #mercari https://t.co/kdd929bwvT
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 22, 2022
Check out what I'm selling: Old Chinese Porcelain Ginger Jar Hexagon Tea Jar: Get up to $30 off* when you use my code PJI750 to sign up for Mercari. *Terms apply #mercari https://t.co/4DSWBjAUb9
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 22, 2022
⚠️ A warning to rock fans everywhere, tales of this epic 1969 concert may cause extreme FOMO! #MarylandHistory @MerriweatherPP https://t.co/yzl8Z5HEot https://t.co/CecMrwkxm2 ⚠️ A warning to rock fans everywhere, tales of this epic 1969 concert may cause extreme FOMO! #Mary…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 22, 2022
You’ve heard of a mall Santa, but have you ever heard of a mall chimpanzee? You could have seen one in the 1950s at Ballston Common (now Ballston Quarter) in the 1950s! #VirginiaHistory https://t.co/6d2x9oabFB https://t.co/vv2d0duB3P You’ve heard of a mall Santa, but have y…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 22, 2022
1940s matchbook cover from Wong's Chow Mein at 2623 Connecticut Ave NW in Woodley Park. @chineseeateries https://t.co/DC41R9zPsf 1940s matchbook cover from Wong's Chow Mein at 2623 Connecticut Ave NW in Woodley Park. @chineseeateries https://t.co/DC41R9zPsf — Streets of Wash…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 22, 2022
Today in History - October 22 https://t.co/8sVKaBuXYI The Metropolitan Opera House (the Met), then located on Broadway at 39th Street in New York City, opened on October 22, 1883, with a performance of Charles Gounod's Faust. Continue reading. Click here to search Today i…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 22, 2022
IXPE Measures Exploded Star Remains via NASA https://t.co/8Nc3AedJ3o https://t.co/S2z8izTN5j
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 21, 2022
Meet the groundbreaking @HowardU educator who was one half of the most prominent same-sex female couple in Washington in the early 20th century. #DCHistory https://t.co/NVTrx6NaZ6 Meet the groundbreaking @HowardU educator who was one half of the most prominent same-sex femal…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 21, 2022
Explore this fascinating two-part map of the volcanoes of the Kamchatka peninsula, part of the seismically-active Pacific Ring of Fire. Many volcanoes are illustrated in profile view. Take a closer look: https://t.co/75rEK6R9Vs https://t.co/1vUd1e2rkp Explore this fascinating …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 21, 2022
Katherine Rundell on the majesty and increasing scarcity of tuna as a species.
Atlantic bluefins swim in vast shoals of five hundred and more: to witness it, in all its speed and frothing water, is akin to seeing a migration of stampeding oceanic buffalo.
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Today in History - October 21 https://t.co/g872nFdYWM On October 21, 1960, American viewers were riveted to their television sets for the broadcast of the fourth and final debate between Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy. Conti…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 21, 2022
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Melissa del Bosque | The Intercept in partnership with Type Investigations | October 12, 2022 | 3,479 words
Readers of this newsletter probably already know that I feel a great deal of despair about the future of America. Reading this excellent report by Melissa del Bosque did nothing to assuage my despondency. Del Bosque travels to a Texas county where officials are more or less invoking war powers to round up, prosecute, humiliate, fine, and in many cases deport people who cross the border. This isn’t something they’re legally empowered to do, but no matter. It’s a devastating, infuriating read, and there are two moments that made my blood run cold. The first is when an official says he wants to open “prosecution camps” (read the story to find out exactly what that means). The second is when armed militia members, eager to help county authorities on their mission, record themselves detaining a frightened migrant so that they can post the video online. “At one point,” del Bosque writes, “the Nicaraguan man asks for asylum and apoyo, or help. A militia member in an American flag headband responds, ‘Chicken?’ Finally, a Kinney County sheriff’s deputy arrives and takes him away.” The dehumanization, cruelty, ignorance, and performance of that moment is, I fear, a harbinger of our collective future. —SD
Jeff Maysh | The Atlantic | October 17, 2022 | 6,831 words
Who buys 500 identical lottery tickets for the same draw? You do if you’re Viktor Gjonaj and you think you’ve cracked the system. On June 18, 1981, Gjonaj bought 500 tickets with the same combination — 7-8-0-0 — in Michigan’s Daily 4 lottery, winning $2.5 million. It was the first time Gjonaj won big. He went on to win another $30 million before it all went south. But how exactly did Gjonaj achieve this when Michigan lottery draws came from ping pong balls pulled from a machine? In a story reminiscent of one of my all-time favorite pieces of narrative journalism — “Jerry and Marge Go Large” by Jason Fagone — Jeff Maysh profiles Gjonaj, introducing us to his spreadsheets and his system, explaining what motivated him to parlay numerical hunches into millions of Michigan lottery winnings. —KS
Nathan Munn | Popula | October 5, 2022 | 3,266 words
I hated scary stories when I was a kid. Hated urban legends, hated organ music, hated seeing or hearing anything I considered remotely frightening. (This was a very long list that included the “near, far” Sesame Street monsters, Lois Lane dangling from a helicopter in the original Superman, and my father’s acting debut as “The Running Professor” on an early-’80s public-access TV show called Haunted Indiana, in which he was chased through the woods by a malevolent spirit. Yes, really.) That was then, though; somehow, horror has become a mainstay of my genre fiction reading. Which may explain why I come to you now, in this season of all things spooky, bearing Nathan Munn’s presumably true tale of the questionable flat he leased 20 years ago. The piece follows the beats of the greatest hits, but it’s the specifics that make it work — especially the dream that came to Munn on one of his first nights in the apartment. Shudder. The unexplained phenomena come fast and curious, so even with the built-in assurance that Munn is writing this from a safe distance, you’ll find yourself wondering how the hell this building is still standing. Assuming that it is. —PR
Katherine Rundell | Granta | October 18, 2022 | 1,774 words
I didn’t know that an homage to tuna was exactly what I needed to read today. In Katherine Rundell’s thoughtful essay at Granta — excerpted from her book, The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasures — she regales us with their strength, speed, beauty, and increasing scarcity. Despite how mighty tuna seem, this essay imbued me with a sense of precarity, not simply the increasing pressure on tuna as a species due to our insatiable appetites, but also the tingling uncertainty of life itself. “Atlantic bluefins swim in vast shoals of five hundred and more: to witness it, in all its speed and frothing water, is akin to seeing a migration of stampeding oceanic buffalo … each mating season, they return for the ‘broadcast spawning’: large groups of males and females simultaneously release eggs and sperm into the water in a hopeful cascade and leave them to fare as best they can. The vast majority of the ten million eggs a female produces a year will never be fertilised, but those that are will hatch two days later, barely the size of an eyelash. It’s an unusually precarious beginning for a life that can last forty years, if we, or a very few species of sharks and toothed whales, don’t catch them first.” —KS
Tom Lamont | GQ | August 17, 2022 | 6,715 words
I once lived very close to Fulham football club. On Saturdays, when there was a home game, the streets would swell with fans, their faces shiny with sweat and blue shirts stretched tight over bellies expanded from an afternoon’s beer intake. They would happily shout chants — never deviating far from the classic “Ful-HAM, Ful-HAM!” The chanting shifted up a notch if they won, but whatever the outcome they seemed delighted to be out supporting their club. It looked fun, and covers the extent of my football knowledge, making it on par with what Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney knew when they decided to purchase Wrexham AFC. Fascinated by, if not fully comprehending, football leagues (where a team can freely move up and down different tiers depending on their performance), this glitzy pair was drawn to the rundown Welsh club, determined to boost it up. Tom Lamont explores the takeover in this lovely piece, conjuring some memorable visuals along the way. (I particularly enjoyed the image of the owner’s lounge, when, despite some valiant improvement efforts, the Hollywood stars arrive to find a broken toilet and beer pumps that are “only cut-out photographs of pumps.”) It’s a feel-good read, with Reynolds and McElhenney making up for their lack of knowledge with a pure enthusiasm that extends beyond the club to the town itself, a place so invested in the team that “it might be lifted, wholesale, by that team’s improving results.” The purchase has also inspired some more creative singing, and a new favorite has a rousing chorus of “Bring on the Deadpool and Rob Mc – El – Henney!“ —CW
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As host of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, Brendan O’Meara is no stranger to talking about the art and craft of storytelling. In this craft-focused excerpt, we’re digging into Episode 336, in which he interviewed Atavist editor Jonah Ogles and freelance writer Cassidy Randall about her work on the latest issue of The Atavist.
Cassidy Randall, a freelance writer based out of Montana, sees herself more as a writer than a reporter, or a writer first then a reporter. There isn’t any question she can report, as evidenced by her Atavist Magazine piece “Alone at the Edge of the World,” but take a look at this opening sentence — read it aloud — and you will hear a writer at work:
“In the heaving seas of the Southern Ocean, a small, red-hulled sailboat tossed and rolled, at the mercy of the tail end of a tempest.”
The alliteration is beautifully embedded in this 25-word sentence.
“I love rhythm in sentences,” Randall says. “One of the reasons I had chosen some of those longer sentences was that I wanted it to feel dreamlike, so that you have a long time to be in this moment.”
Randall’s story charts the story of Susie Goodall as she competed in the Golden Globe Race, a race to sail solo around the world. By this piece’s very nature (Randall was not in the boat with Goodall), it’s a masterclass in recreating scenes, something vital to this kind of storytelling.
“I like to spend a lot of time saying, ‘Tell me what happens. Do you remember this?’ And if there’s a detail that I want to hear about that maybe gets a little glossed over, I always make time to go back. I’m constantly writing these notes that say, ‘Go back to this one thing. What was this? Be sure to follow up on this.’ And so it’s just a series of questions.”
Randall also digs into how she deals — or doesn’t deal — with rejection, as well as myriad other struggles common to the freelance-writer experience.
Please enjoy this excerpt below, and listen to the full episode for more.
These interviews have been edited for clarity and concision.
* * *
Brendan O’Meara: If I had a harrowing boat-journey story, should I turn to you to edit it?
Jonah Ogles, Atavist articles editor: The answer is, you should turn to Cassidy to write it. Man, she nailed this story, it was so much fun to work on. She had a really good handle on her character, and clearly knew what she was doing when it comes to adventure writing. Yes, the writing is good, but I’m talking about pure narrative, the arc of the story itself — Susie Goodall’s experience. When you get something like this, you just let it do its job. You tell the story, and you get out of the way, except for the parts where you absolutely need to be there.
One of the more chilling aspects of the story is that you really feel like you’re in the boat with Susie, and you feel the power and terror of this wave. When I spoke with Cassidy, she said that in an earlier draft there’s — not a set piece, but several paragraphs explaining rogue waves, which sounds fascinating. But to your point, it might have been a little hiccup among what were already very good story blocks.
This is a story where we cut things — not because they were bad, but because Susie’s story on its own was so good. Rogue waves are a fascinating phenomenon, and especially when it comes into play in this story, because statistically speaking it shouldn’t have occurred during this race.
Cassidy had all this really fascinating stuff about rogue waves and the scientific consensus about whether they’re predictable in some way. The problem is, it happened during the storm, when Susie is out there on her own. As a reader, I’m already there. I’m invested. If you’re watching a movie, it’s like reaching the climax, and then stepping away for a second to have some narrator speak to you about the context of the scene. That’s fine, but what we want to know is, is the dude going to fire the gun or not?
The peril of nonfiction in so many ways.
I do this a lot: When I’m cutting early in a piece I’ll say, “there may be a place for this later in this particular story.” We didn’t end up reinserting it but there were other things that we did find a home for elsewhere. But in that moment, I just didn’t. And this is maybe selfish because as a reader, I just didn’t want to be away from Susie and her experience.
We often talk about how these Atavist stories are puzzle-like in nature. What were some of the challenges that were unique to this piece as you were bringing it to life?
This was less of an editing challenge than a challenge for Cassidy, although she really pulled it off: The majority of the words occur with Susie alone on a boat. It’s like that Robert Redford movie Alone, where he’s sailing alone on a boat, and there’s virtually no dialogue. That’s a difficult thing to do. How do you write thousands of miles of solo sailing, which includes periods of time in which nothing happens? How do you make readers feel close to this character when you don’t really get to see her interact with anyone else? You have to be really deep inside Susie’s head. Originally, Cassie had these snippets: Here’s 200 words about marine wildlife she saw; here’s 400 words about this piece of equipment malfunctioning. All of it has value and lets you know Susie in different ways, but as a reader it felt like getting postcards from somebody on a trip. “Having fun, had a good dinner.” It was hard to feel like you were on the boat with her. So we tried to streamline.
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Another challenge was that her family becomes very concerned for her once she goes through the storm. After something like 12,000 words next to Susie, all of a sudden we need to be away from Susie to experience what’s happening outside of her little bubble. So it was really a trial and error situation: Let’s try dropping in with her family right here, and let’s try 400 words. How does that feel? Not quite right. Let’s move it, let’s shorten it up, let’s lengthen it. And we just did that until it felt like we’d gotten it to a point where you’re never away from Susie so long that you’ve forgotten where you are in the narrative. But you’re with the family long enough that there’s some emotional resonance with them as well. You’re not just hearing what they feel; you feel it too.
You said this was one of the more fun stories that you’ve been able to work on. What makes a story fun for you as an editor?
I’m still totally an Outside magazine guy at heart. I like adventure stories and survival stories and feats of human endurance. It checked that box for me naturally. Originally, Seyward [Darby, The Atavist editor in chief] was going to run lead on this, but I’m really glad it worked out that I got to jump in.
Cassidy had strong opinions about what she wanted the piece to do, but was also very happy to collaborate and listen to differences of opinion, so it felt like we were always pushing the story forward in a good way. But part of it, too, is that Susie is just a really interesting character. She’s not only doing this interesting thing, but she has an interesting perspective on it. And maybe this is another testament to Cassidy, but it seemed like they really had a good connection, and that Cassidy had a good sense of how to convey Susie’s thoughts and experiences in the story. “Can you get us closer to this character?” was never a note I had to give during this story; we were just close to her from the beginning.
* * *
Cassidy, what are some of the inspirations that you draw from so you can synthesize pieces of this nature?
Cassidy Randall: In preparing for this piece, I actually read some sailing books. The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier about his journey in the Golden Globe. So many of the other competitors in that original Golden Globe were having a horrific time with loneliness and leaking boats and weather and dealing with a lot of mental stuff — and he was just gazing at the Aurora and watching dolphins frolic. I also read Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, which also chronicles the logs of those sailors in the original Golden Globe, and is a pretty propulsive read. If you’re a sailor, he uses a lot of sailing terminology that ocean people absolutely love. But if you’re not a sailor, it might be kind of harder to get through that.
I wish I could write fiction, honestly. I have trouble personally getting through a lot of nonfiction books, so to ask what influenced me in writing this, I would just list fiction book after fiction book. It’s like my entire upbringing of reading to figure out how to weave together several different arcs into a single … arc, for lack of a better non-repetitive word.
What novels or short stories do you return to again and again?
I’m rereading some Louise Erdrich. I just think that her books are just incredible. She came to speak in Missoula recently. I reread Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry recently. Holy moly, what a tour de force; that’s an incredible one.
Your Instagram bio just says, “writing stories on environment, adventure, and people exploring the bounds of human potential.” And I was like, “well, that about sums up her Atavist story.”
So true.
How did you arrive at it?
My family is a family of sailors. I’ve never been able to get into bluewater sailing — I love the mountains, I love skiing — but my sister is an avid sailor, my dad taught us how to sail, my uncle’s a sailor. I had a friend who was following Susie Goodall around the time the Golden Globe was coming back, and that introduced the story to me. I pitched it around; my Time editor had really wanted a story on the race, but we couldn’t fit it in. When Susie pitchpoled, I ended up reporting about that for Adventure Journal. And then I had written about Jean-Luc Van Den Heede for Men’s Journal. So I was familiar with the race. And in reporting that story on Susie, I had noticed that she never really talked to anybody. When she got back, no news outlets had anything beyond her statement, which I thought was really interesting.
The podcast 59 North is now known as On the Wind.
I reached out to her last year, because I was thinking about writing a book on women and sailing. I had no idea that she would check this email that goes through her website, but I sent a note saying that I was really compelled by her journey, that I’d heard her talk about it on this podcast called 59 North, and that I’d love to just talk to her and see where she was in life now. We had a lot of conversations before she agreed to work on a story with me. We built up a lot of trust together, I think because she’d had some bad experiences with the way that her story was told.
As your story illustrates, Susie was dangled out in front as the lone woman in the race, and it ended up being a real study in gender and media. When you were getting that trust that you mentioned, how did you gain her confidence to be able to tell her story in a way that honored her place in the Golden Globe?
I think that’s almost something to ask Susie, but I actually did ask her that, too, towards the end. She said she liked that I didn’t have some pre-thought-out narrative in mind — that I wanted to hear everything that she had to say, essentially. Even as I was formulating some of these arcs, I would run things past her, like “Does this seem like what you were actually feeling?” So much of the story, it feels like you’re in her head, and that’s a huge responsibility. I think the fact that I was really collaborative with her even after we’d had hours upon hours of conversations, I think that that made her feel more at ease, too.
The real challenge in third-person nonfiction is to get in the head of your principal figure. As a reporter, how did you go about interviewing her so that you were getting between her ears?
I wanted to know so much about her background. I mean, we spent so much time talking about just the prep for a voyage like this before we even got into setting off. I wanted to know about her love of sailing, how the ocean had obsessed her, and maybe that helped a bit with building trust. I’ve only done one blue water crossing ever, but I could at least understand the pull of the ocean. And so I asked her a lot about that.
I always want to know how something feels in someone’s body when they’re scared or when they’re thrilled. I want to know how those emotions feel, and where people feel them. She had this beautiful way of talking about celestial navigation, where she talked about how some sailors used to be so in tune with the ocean that it would speak to them, that before compasses Vikings would mark where on the horizon the sun rose, or how Polynesians knew which direction they were going just based on swells and currents. That’s how we got into the fact that she had read all of these books, and how the books had influenced so much of why she wanted to sail solo and find this connection.
But the other thing is that I just love to let a subject go on. I don’t like to interrupt, and I often find that people will go in the best directions when they’re just allowed to talk.
Robert Caro famously wrote in the margins in his notebooks, SU SU — as in, “shut up, shut up” — anytime he was interviewing a source, be it for his Robert Moses biography any of his volumes of Lyndon Johnson. Oftentimes reporters and writers want to interject to prove how smart they are, prove how much they know. But oftentimes, the best interviewing tactic you can do is to just shut up. Silence can do a lot of the heavy lifting.
Oh my gosh, absolutely. Sometimes thoughts take a while to process, and a lot of people have never been interviewed. I mean, Susie obviously had quite a lot, but I don’t know how much people had given her space to actually speak, either, because I think a lot of things were time-sensitive. A lot of us in general aren’t used to being listened to, and by asking the next question we might cut something off that hasn’t been fully formed. You have no idea what could possibly come out when somebody fully processes a question that you’ve asked. I think that’s really fascinating.
This story is really a masterclass in recreating scenes; you weren’t in the boat with her, but it felt that way. Let’s talk about how you went about getting that degree of recreation.
I think that also comes from having enough time to speak to somebody that you can say, “walk me through what happened.” You’re not always lucky enough to be writing with or about somebody who remembers so much. And honestly, if she hadn’t written down what happened to her during the wave, she might not remember either. But she did remember so much of the actual voyage and the prep, which is incredible.
But I also think that since I’ve been in a small sailboat, I’ve experienced some things that are similar to what Susie experienced in different mediums. Like, I’ve felt my stomach drop like that before — not because I’ve been involved in an 80-foot wave, but it helps to be able to run that past somebody and say, “does this translate?”
One particularly chilling scene was when she’s in the middle of a storm, then all of a sudden it goes quiet — because a giant wave that is approaching is blocking all the sounds. How do you even begin to build a scene like that?
This is almost exactly how she described it to me in the lead-up to that moment. She remembers exactly how that felt, that moment when she thought that someone had turned the wind off — and then had this feeling of no, no, no, no. It’s like gold for writers when somebody remembers something like that. That’s like a privilege. Jim Harrison talked about how he wrote Legends of the Fall in nine days, and it was like taking dictation from the gods. If you’re a nonfiction writer, when you have a source like this, and somebody who’s willing to talk about it like that, it is like taking dictation. It’s incredible.
What do you think it is about long journeys — be it the Pacific Crest Trail or circumnavigating the globe — that draws us to them, and that we find so much meaning in?
I mean, I think that we evolved with the natural world. And we’ve been so removed from it in such a geologically short timespan that I think we mourn that in a lot of ways. That’s often what people are seeking when we head out into the woods, the ocean, the mountains: it’s where we feel more alive. When you talk to people, particularly in adventure sports, there’s this thin line between life and death, and proximity to the elements brings us so much closer. I think that’s a morbid way to put it, but it’s this idea that we’re part of something bigger — and we aren’t at the top of this bigger thing.
Well, there’s an element of our modern lifestyle that’s very sedentary. We fall into very grooves of our everyday routines, and it’s very hard to break out of that and to find comfort in discomfort. It’s at our core to be able to push our physical limits, but there’s a lot pulling at us not to do that, be it social media or television. As an outdoor person, how do you try to make a good partnership with discomfort?
I’ve made it a priority to live somewhere where I have access to less development. There’s wilderness a mile up the road, but of course, these things are disappearing very quickly, too. I think it’s a conscious thing that we have to make time to go out and be far away from cell service, which also is harder and harder to do these days. For our honeymoon — and most people would think this was horrible — my husband and I walked across the Bob Marshall, the biggest wilderness in Montana, for seven days.
That’s amazing.
We’re the only people who would honeymoon with mosquitoes and blisters. But it was so important for us to go and do that, right? We sacrificed what could have been a European vacation or something in order to just reconnect, to have that time with our thoughts. To have to just take care of yourself, I think, is such a powerful thing. But it takes intentionality for sure.
In the story you write that what often drives people to quit a race of this nature is the loneliness — it really breaks people. Being a writer is often an exercise in loneliness, also, especially if you’re a freelancer in somewhat remote locations. What’s your relationship to loneliness?
I used to say that I was a raging extrovert, but I’m now married to more of an introvert and I think he’s made me realize I have more introverted tendencies. I mean, as an extrovert, I’m not good with loneliness. And, again, I’ve done nothing like what Susie has undertaken. On the History Channel’s hit show Alone, where people are dropped in the wilderness to survive by themselves, the longest anybody has ever gone is 100 days. Susie spent 160 alone. I mean, that’s just incredible.
I think we all have different relationships to loneliness, and it’s finding that line between solitude and loneliness. For me, I know that being around people and relationships feed me so, so much that I can’t be alone for more than 24 hours. And you’re right — there are different kinds of loneliness, right? There’s this idea that it can be lonely being a freelance writer, because you feel like you’re the only one who’s getting so much rejection with all your pitches, or it seems like everybody else is making it and you’re not.
I started this podcast roughly 10 years ago, to appease a lot of the loneliness I was feeling — but also to maybe metabolize the toxic feelings of jealousy and competition I was feeling. Because it did feel, like you just said, like everybody else was just killing it. And I was writing about the Daytona 500 for Bleacher Report. I’m like, “This isn’t the longform journalism that my heroes are doing, my peers are doing.” It took doing the show to realize that maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe I need to try to celebrate other people’s work and have these kinds of nourishing conversations to realize that we’re all wrestling with these feelings. We can look beyond the veneer of social media and get to the ugliness that we’re all dealing with and be like, “Okay, I’m not really alone in this endeavor.”
My God, I wish we talked about that so much more. I always think I’m the only one who struggles with it, and I know I’m not, because my husband is also a freelance writer. It’s just this pervasive thing. Maybe there are those writers who don’t struggle with impostor syndrome or rejection, but it seems unlikely. When you’re a creative person, I think you never think that your work is good enough, or that it’s done, or that it’s worthy; we all struggle with that. But we don’t talk about it enough.
And you’re seeing on Twitter that everyone is getting these great bylines. And you’re like, “Damn, why am I struggling here? I’m spinning my tires in the mud.” But there’s also any number of writing gigs that people aren’t tweeting about that subsidize some of those more prestige pieces — and no one really talks about the writing we don’t tweet about.
Or the other income! I have a friend who is a great writer, she’s an award winner. She’s told me that she couldn’t write without the income from her Airbnb, right? Or the people who are writing for some weird company on the side to make the narrative reporting work. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they couldn’t freelance unless their partner was making good money.
I think that way all the time: “Wait a second, how have you had three stories in The Atlantic?” But there’s such a range of what a writer looks like. It could be the night janitor, whose novel he hasn’t sent out because he’s so terrified. It could be the person who’s only writing notes on the back of a napkin. It could be the full-time New York Times journalist. There’s so many different ways to be a writer. I wish that we all talked about that more, so we didn’t feel this pervasive “I haven’t made it” thing.
How have you made peace with or even embraced rejection?
Oh, God, I have not embraced rejection at all. That is so hard. Quite honestly, I’ve decided that I have to be really judicious about what stories I actually want to pitch. And I want to work on bigger projects like this Atavist story, because then you don’t have to hustle so much. And you don’t have to face so much rejection when you’re trying to get work. And in some sense for me, that’s really heartbreaking. There was a time when I used to have to write down what I had out, and when to follow up, because I had so many stories I’d pitched. I guess it’s like killing a lot of your darlings before they have the chance to be killed.
I’ve come to see rejection, or even silence, almost as a gift. Maybe this is just my own Jedi mind trick on myself, but if a piece finally is accepted, I’m like, “If it had been accepted five times ago, the pitch wouldn’t be nearly as good or fleshed out. So thanks for those four other rejections because now it’s actually stronger because of it.”
That is a far healthier mindset than the one I’ve had, I’m going to start adopting that.
Something struck me about your Atavist piece right off the bat. I’m gonna read just the first sentence here, because I think this piggybacks on a lot of things that we were talking about already. “In the heaving seas of the Southern Ocean, a small red-hauled sailboat tossed and rolled at the mercy of the tail end of a tempest.” It seems like there was a lot of attention put into the wordplay and construction of that sentence. What’s your eye for detail when you’re starting to construct sentences of that nature?
I actually try to avoid outright alliteration. I love rhythm in sentences — I actually talked a lot with Jonah about this. As I was writing it, there were a lot more long-ish sentences throughout; in the top edit, Seyward cut a few of them up and made them shorter. I think she was right, but one of the reasons I had chosen some of those longer sentences was to give the piece a dreamlike feel. That’s why that sentence starts out long, right? So that you have this long time to be in this moment.
You said in working with Jonah and Seyward that you learned a thing or two about pacing.
I told both of them that I wanted this to be a learning experience. I wanted to use this story-editing process with them to learn how to elevate my craft, and they both were very open to that. And they actually have the time to do that and are very willing to do that, which I’ve thanked both of them for. But it’s rare to find editors who have time to do that these days. So that’s a huge, amazing experience if you want to learn as a freelance writer.
I had written Susie’s journey originally, when she set off, in a series of very short vignettes. I had done that because I wanted to convey that not much really happens when you’re sailing, right? And when it does, it happens in bursts. But Jonah had this great point that you can’t really expect your readers to trust you at that point. He said that readers typically take around 750 words — not all the time, but in general — to really drop into what the writer wants them to feel and what the writer wants to tell them. So that was huge for me to understand, in terms of pacing and passage construction.
As we bring this down for a landing, I always like asking writers to offer a recommendation of sorts to the listener.
Well, since we were talking about fiction, I want to recommend to anybody who loves reading joyous writing — have you ever read any Brian Doyle?
Some of his essays.
I just actually read Martin Marten twice. The way he spends pages upon pages, creating this whole world before you even know why he’s brought you into it, and you become so close to these characters. It’s just incredible.
The other one I’d recommend: my husband and I read out loud to each other, and reading a book out loud is such a different experience. It’s so cool. We just read out loud Tom Robbins’ Skinny Legs and All; my God, what a masterpiece.
We’ve published hundreds of original stories, all funded by you — including personal essays, reported features, and reading lists.
The post The Rhythm of Writing: A Chat with the Writer and Editor Behind The Atavist’s New Issue appeared first on Longreads.
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It’s not every day that a Congressman commits cold-blooded murder in broad daylight on a city street… and gets away with it: #DCHistory https://t.co/x8hedeVA0u It’s not every day that a Congressman commits cold-blooded murder in broad daylight on a city street… and gets …
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Mark Twain probably wouldn’t have left DC a very favorable Yelp review 😬 #DCHistory https://t.co/820iMCy4pF Mark Twain probably wouldn’t have left DC a very favorable Yelp review 😬 #DCHistory https://t.co/820iMCy4pF — Boundary Stones (@BoundaryStones) Oct 20, 2022
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Crew-4 Members Pose for Pre-Return Photo via NASA https://t.co/YZbgIXJUCv https://t.co/6KV61zMxwk
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Spies, secret weapons, and codebreakers, oh my! More on the telegraph’s role in the Civil War: #DCHistory https://t.co/FUR4iB3MIE Spies, secret weapons, and codebreakers, oh my! More on the telegraph’s role in the Civil War: #DCHistory https://t.co/FUR4iB3MIE — Boundary St…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 20, 2022
Space rocks, anyone? This map shows the geology of various planets & moons of our solar system. Check it out: https://t.co/TcUSVwBDaV https://t.co/SIsafIt7EL Space rocks, anyone? This map shows the geology of various planets & moons of our solar system. Check it out: https://t…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 20, 2022
Ever had the urge to take a dip in one of DC’s many fountains? These kids took a dip for a cause in 1966 when they protested for more (and more equally distributed) swimming pools in DC. #DCHistory https://t.co/oSv1dHY8lG Ever had the urge to take a dip in one of DC’s many f…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 20, 2022
Today in History - October 20 https://t.co/DRvdY19kW1 On October 20, 1803, the Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase Treaty by a vote of twenty-four to seven. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Oct 20, 2022
By Joshua N. Miller
In 2019, Marvel Comics was getting ready to celebrate its 80th anniversary. It had begun as Timely Comics, and quickly came to dominate the landscape with superheroes like the Human Torch and Namor the Submariner; now, for a special graphic-novel collection, the publisher invited superstar writer Art Spiegelman to write an introduction reflecting on Marvel’s legacy. There was just one issue: They asked him to compromise his own legacy to do so.
Spiegelman is best known for his independent graphic novel Maus, which retold his father’s experience surviving the Holocaust. Yet, when he compared then-president Donald Trump to the Red Skull, the fascist supervillain leader of a Nazi organization known as Hydra, Marvel balked. Demanding that a Jewish writer revise his material for the sake of remaining apolitical felt particularly disingenuous, given that Captain America made his 1941 debut punching Hitler in the face on the cover of his first issue. Over the years, Marvel writers had used superheroes to explore myriad political and social issues — sometimes explicitly, sometimes by merely existing. The success of 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and the Spidersona trend that followed it, attests to the positive impact diverse representation can have on audiences.
Superhero comics aren’t only political, but they’ve nearly always been political. Since Superman’s debut first made the genre mainstream, superheroes and their stories have advocated for social justice. And while some writers (and the corporations that employ them) may have lost sight of this reality, the communities these heroes represent can see when the forces that be abdicate the responsibility the heroes gladly shoulder. The essays collected below explore how superhero comics capture the lived experiences of marginalized communities — as well as how some comics have only served to stigmatize them.
In recalling the origins of the superhero genre, Spiegelman stresses that the immaturity often ascribed to comic books was as prevalent in the 1930s as it is in the present. If there’s any notable difference, it likely lies in the fact that publishers themselves were aware of this and consequently chose not to prioritize making the high-quality products we see today. (“Just give them a lot of action and don’t use too many words,” publisher Martin Goodman once told Stan Lee.) Though Superman’s debut shifted the medium by introducing an archetype that captured the hearts (and dimes) of millions of readers, the sentiment that comic books were for immature audiences endured. But the adventures of these heroes and the lives of the creators who made them tell a different tale.
Bold as it was to introduce Captain America by having him punch Hitler on the cover of his first issue in 1941, the impact of his debut is better appreciated if you understand how tolerant the U.S. was toward Nazi sympathizers until the country properly entered World War II. Just two years prior to Cap’s debut, thousands of members of the German American Bund rallied in New York to express their approval of Hitler’s antisemitic sentiments. The sales of superhero comics began to dwindle after the war, which not only suggests that consumers were aware of their political nature, but implies that publishers were willing to exploit those politics for profit.
The pioneers behind this embryonic medium based in New York were predominantly Jewish and from ethnic minority backgrounds. It wasn’t just Siegel and Shuster, but a whole generation of recent immigrants and their children – those most vulnerable to the ravages of the great depression – who were especially attuned to the rise of virulent antisemitism in Germany. They created the American Übermenschen who fought for a nation that would at least nominally welcome “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Much of Michael Chabon’s The Adventures of Kavalier & Klay is based on the lives of Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Stan Lee, and other comic-book creators.
Straight to the point, Goldstein opens his essay by making an important observation: Superman owes his stranger-in-a-strange-land origin to the Jewish heritage of his creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. But his roots are often overshadowed by his association with American culture. Contemporary comics frequently depict Superman with American iconography, even though he’s repeatedly acted as a hero for Earth and beyond. So it’s not surprising to think that readers would try to compare him to Jesus Christ, given the important role that Christianity plays within traditional American values. Yet, hyper-fixating on Clark’s Christlike attributes serves to obfuscate the superhero’s Jewish origins.
Here was a being who had immigrated to a land that supposedly offered the prospects of a better life, and changed his name (Kal-El to Clark Kent) to do so — just as some Jewish families who immigrated to the U.S. changed their names to avoid prejudice. Goldstein posits that the antisemitic sentiments of the time would have gotten Superman’s comic cancelled before it even began, and invites the reader to question how warmly the character would have been received if his Jewish influences were more explicit. More importantly, however, his article affirms the fact that the creation of Superman — and the rise of the superhero genre — should be credited to the imaginations of Jewish creators who produced a hero that stood against the oppression they faced.
Superman is as American as apple pie, in that both have their origins in the Middle East. Apples, because they are thought to have been first domesticated in Turkey, and Superman, because of his oftentimes overlooked Jewish heritage.
Even those largely unfamiliar with superhero comics are likely aware of the X-Men. But before the blockbuster sales and long-running film franchise, the beloved mutants came to prominence thanks to the efforts of Len Wein, who created characters like Storm and Wolverine, and Chris Claremont, who confronted them with dilemmas that blurred the traditional lines of good and evil. At the heart of the franchise’s moral ambiguity is the ideological schism between the X-Men founder Charles Xavier (Professor X), who seeks to protect mutants and mankind despite the latter’s extreme prejudices against the former, and Erik Lensherr (Magneto), who prioritizes the well-being of mutants above all else. The duo has often been compared to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X for the characters’ respective beliefs, but since the X-Men were created any significant strides toward the dreams of either camp have been brief — if they existed at all.
That changed in 2019 with the debut of House of X / Powers of X. Spearheaded by creators Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, and R.B. Silva, HOXPOX offered mutants a way forward that appeased both Xavier’s accomodationism and Lensherr’s hardline approach: separation. The first issue lays out a broad-based mutant-led effort to create a culture detached from mankind. As Williams notes in her review, part of the appeal of the comic’s premise lies in the fact that mutants finally “get out of their own way”; recognizing how paralyzed they’ve been, they acknowledge that the only way to advance is to de-center the desires of the community that so despised them. Three years after their new culture’s founding, the mutants still face opponents bent on their destruction. The difference now is that extinction no longer lurks in every defeat. On the contrary, every victory against those who seek to destroy them asserts that they, and the marginalized communities they’ve been thought to represent, owe nothing to their oppressors when it comes to their survival.
The safety and future for all mutants becomes the only goal, and there is no trying to continue to convince humans they are worthy of occupying the same space. It’s proven time and time again to be lethal to incorporate humans into their plans. The focus is now Krakoa and making sure it remains a place where mutants can truly be free — all mutants, not just the ones who adhere to a specific ideology. There are still mutants who lose their lives in order to secure the future of Krakoa, but at least it’s for the greater good and not for selfish men.
While Wanda Maximoff’s popularity has certainly been bolstered by her appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, her character has a deep history within the Marvel comics. Introduced in the first issues of X-Men, Wanda (Scarlet Witch) was originally a villain operating with her brother Pietro (Quicksilver) as a member of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Over the decades, however, her allegiances changed, and she became a prominent member of the Avengers. Like most other characters, she’s gone through her fair share of ups and downs over the course of the past few decades, but none quite compare to the hardships she faced during the 2005 event House of M.
Most Marvel comics fans recall the event as the time when Wanda experiences a mental breakdown and loses control of her reality-changing powers. The consequences for these episodes are dire: She’s manipulated into creating an alternate reality where mutants aren’t hated, and subsequently depowers nearly all mutants when that reality is compromised. While all superhero parties involved were aware of Wanda’s poor mental state and how she was manipulated, since the comic’s release she has shouldered most of the blame for the tragedy. By dissecting the story, Williamson opens a dialogue regarding the treatment of the mentally ill in comics — and concludes that, much like Professor X and Magneto’s ideological conflict, there is rarely an effort made to properly address the issues. House of M failed Wanda on multiple levels: narratively, because it suggested that for all the crises the world’s mightiest heroes faced, they were helpless to support one of their own; and conceptually, because it places the onus of the fallout on a character who was robbed of her agency.
House of M is a low point for Wanda and how comics deal with the topic of mental illness overall, vilifying a woman’s mental breakdown by having her virtually wipe out a species (one she also belonged to in 2005, mind you) and kill several of her own teammates. The story strips her of her own agency while making her the sole bad guy left to pick up the pieces years later. It’s a story that says the mentally ill are dangerous, that we’re capable of horrible things and maybe we should be “put down” before those things can happen.
One of the most notable examples of comic book media to emerge in the pandemic has been the Cerebro podcast. Hosted by literary agent Connor Goldsmith, each episode welcomes a guest to talk about the many characters of the X-Men franchise. These discussions often entail a discussion of the queer subtext at work throughout the characters’ histories (since explicit queerness was traditionally taboo in mainstream comics). In the past decade, one of the benefits of the increased push for diverse representation in comics has been increased visibility for queer characters. As Chan notes in this piece, both major and minor characters have been confirmed as queer either by their creators or within their comics — which raises the question of why there’s been so little effort to do the same for the major characters in their film and television incarnations.
But our world is no utopia, and so Chan’s essay raises the issue of how exactly queer characters are being portrayed in their respective comics. They note the cancellation of Al Ewing’s Guardians of the Galaxy run, which is interesting not only because it marked the second cancellation of a series in which Star-Lord was queer, but because the Guardians’ handling in the comics has been heavily impacted by their portrayal in their movies. With this essay, Chan has exposed yet another display of disingenuity in regard to Marvel and DC’s handling of marginalized characters. Their halfhearted approach to depicting queer characters suggests that their priority is to avoid upsetting intolerant audiences.
While there is very limited visibility — Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman in The Batman was played as bisexual and Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool could be interpreted as pansexual — they still weren’t seen as queer by the larger public. And the queer hints in Wonder Woman 1984 were only supposed to be just that, and the odds for Star-Lord to be visible as queer in his upcoming MCU movies is low for multiple reasons. It seems DC and Marvel don’t want to risk disrupting the ubiquitously popular mainstream image of these characters to not deter their straight, cisgender male audience. Translations to the screen would be more likely if their queerness was more prominent in the source material.
Many heroes have taken up the mantle of Captain Marvel in the Marvel universe. In the 2019 film about the character, we were introduced to two of them: Carol Danvers, who became closely associated with the role since she took it on in 2012, and Monica Rambeau. If the movie was the extent of your exposure to either character, you might assume that Monica wouldn’t follow in Carol’s footsteps when it came to being a superhero. And you’d have good reason not to, because Monica was actually Carol’s predecessor. Introduced as the second Captain Marvel in the same year the original died, she quickly rose to prominence as an Avenger, even becoming the team leader during Roger Stern’s tenure on the book. However, she was sidelined soon after losing her powers and relinquishing her title to a newer character that was made to have stronger ties to the original Captain Marvel.
Since then, there have been various periods in the comics when Monica struggled to stay afloat appearance-wise. The past decade has seen a renewed effort to return her to the spotlight in titles like Ultimates, Damage Control, and her upcoming solo series. Unfortunately, her appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far have failed to capture her might in more ways than one. In this piece, Pulliam-Moore delves into the issues with Monica’s portrayal in her second MCU appearance, 2021’s WandaVision. It’s bad enough that Monica has been reduced to playing second fiddle as often as she has, but it’s much more problematic that she’s been portrayed in a way that suggests her heroic nature is heavily influenced by her white peers.
While it’s very nice to think that one would choose to be the bigger person after being possessed and attacked by a witch, this characterization for Monica given everything else that happens to her in the series felt like an unnecessary misstep that cast an unignorable shadow over the series as a whole. By not sticking its landing, all of WandaVision’s subtle sleights against Monica lose their ability to work as dynamic texture to the story and more like a reminder of how the show missed a choice opportunity to point out how Black sitcoms were huge for a hot second before disappearing almost entirely from network television.
When Stan Lee was asked why Spider-Man (Peter Parker) was one of his favorite characters, he responded that a key factor was Spider-Man’s relatability. “He’s the one who’s most like me,” he said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, “he’s got a lot of problems, and he does things wrong and I can relate to that.” This sentiment is likely one that resonated with fans: Spider-Man became one of Marvel’s most popular characters shortly after his 1962 debut. Readers could see themselves in Peter Parker’s everyday struggles when he wasn’t wearing his mask. However, for legions of nonwhite readers, that relatability was only partial — at least until Miles Morales came along in 2011 to embody Lee’s vision for the rest of the world.
For a time, Miles lived in his predecessor’s shadow. Fans knew that he was created in an offshoot universe that allowed creators to be more flexible with Marvel’s iconic heroes. But he rose out of that shadow with the help of his unique powers and distinct background. Standing as his own hero when he was folded into the canonized main comics, Miles’ existence embodies the importance of diverse representation in comic books. Like Captain America’s debut long before him, Miles’ success shows that for all the scrutiny a character may be subject to because of prejudice, there will always be an audience for characters whose identities are treated respectfully on the comic book scene.
Miles Morales’ journey to becoming Spider-Man isn’t a straight line. It’s the strands of being black, Latino, a son, a nephew, an honors student, a graffiti artist, a hip-hop fan, all woven together to create the web that is the wide demographic of Spider-Man — a union of many of the best parts of humanity. There’s a shot in the movie of Miles Morales starring up at a glass display case containing Spider-Man’s uniform. It’s a brief moment without dialogue, but it resonates as one of the film’s most powerful moments because it represents Miles so well, and the tremendous legacy of carrying more than one identity. For all the kids of color who dream of being superheroes, and all the adults of color still grappling with power and responsibility, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse leaves us with a clear message: We could always be Spider-Man with the mask on, but now, and perhaps more important, we can be Spider-Man with the mask off as well.
* * *
Joshua N. Miller is a cultural critic who aims to dissect prevalent social issues through his analysis of comics, film, television, and video games. His writing is available at his website joshuanaimiller.com and he has content forthcoming in Mangoprism.
Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Copy editor: Peter Rubin
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Circa 1925 postcard of U Street NW facing east from approximately 13th Street. https://t.co/2bIfNcmJA6 Circa 1925 postcard of U Street NW facing east from approximately 13th Street. https://t.co/2bIfNcmJA6 — Streets of Washington (@StreetsOfDC) Oct 19, 2022
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