Frances Glessner Lee was the U.S.’s first female police captain, but also a pioneer of forensic science. Through her miniature macabre dioramas, Lee helped train homicide investigators to search for clues, assess crime scenes, and use scientific techniques. Lee’s tiny handcrafted dollhouse scenes, known as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, had been on exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in the past, and are currently used privately in forensics training classes. I wouldn’t categorize Bachor and Moorhouse’s article as one of our typical longreads; the piece compiles a number of Lee’s dioramas, with photographs and brief descriptions of the “crime scenes,” in a somewhat desensitizing way. However, it highlights the influential work of an early female forensic scientist (and talented miniaturist), and in this regard is worth a look.
Living Room
On Friday, May 22, 1941, Reginald Davis said he discovered his wife dead on the stairs. The previous evening his wife had gone upstairs to bed shortly before he had. On Friday, he awoke a little before 5 a.m. to find that his wife was not beside him in bed. After waiting a while, he got up to see where she was and found her body. He at once called the family physician who, upon his arrival, immediately notified the police.
Clues: Is it significant that there are so many cigarettes and stubs on the side table? Or that all those newspapers are scattered on the floor, in what is otherwise a very tidy house?
Notes: Lee hand-rolled the cigarettes herself using real tobacco, and she also made the covers of the magazine and newspapers, which are readable despite their minuscule size.
Keith Holyoak says that computers have long surpassed our math calculation skills. Could artificial intelligence eventually produce authentic creative work too?
A successful poem combines compelling content (what Coleridge called “good sense”) with aesthetically pleasing wordplay (metaphor and other varieties of symbolism), coupled with the various types of sound similarities and constraints of form.
Though I remain officially agnostic, for the purpose of the specific question that presently concerns us — can AI write authentic poetry? — the preponderance of evidence leads me to answer “no.” AI has no apparent path to inner experience, which I (and many others) take to be the ultimate source of authentic poetry. A major corollary of this conclusion deserves to be stated: Inner experience can’t be defined as a computational process.
The absence of inner experience also means that AI lacks what is most needed to appreciate poetry: a sense of poetic truth, which is grounded not in objective reality but rather in subjective experience.
Here are five stories to kickstart your weekend of reading: Seyward starts us off with story close to her heart, set in her hometown of Greenville, North Carolina; Krista shares a remembrance of the longest siege in modern history; Peter recommends a deeply reported piece on Andrew Luck; Cheri takes us behind the scenes of an art fraud; and Carolyn offers a light and fluffy take on “The Great Canadian Baking Show.”
Lenny Bernstein and Jordan-Marie Smith | The Washington Post | December 2, 2022 | 3,289 words
This story is about my hometown. It could be about yours, too. Not because an outsize percentage of readers are from Greenville, North Carolina, a small, unremarkable city situated in the flat plains of what was once tobacco-growing country. It could be about where you’re from because stories like this are ubiquitous: stories of opioid overdoses depleting families and friend groups; of beloved mentors like Joe Hughes, my middle school history teacher, quoted in this piece, who has spoken at the funerals of three of his former students and attended five others; of natives like reporter Jordan-Marie Smith, who on trips home heard that a person she grew up, then another, then another had died. Smith is younger than I, as are many of the dead in this story. But just two weeks before it was published, over drinks, I asked a childhood friend if I was crazy in thinking that a lot of people who were in our year in school had died of suspected or confirmed overdoses. I could think of three off the top of my head; she added a fourth to the list. This is their story, too. —SD
Miljenko Jergović (translated by Mirza Purić) | The Baffler | November 17, 2022 | 4,783 words
Thirty years after the Siege of Sarajevo, Miljenko Jergović, “one of the most prolific and widely read and translated ex-Yugoslav writers,” reflects on that first week of the war. In this essay first published on his blog and translated for publication at The Baffler by Mirza Purić, Jergović recounts being plagued by the misery of a toothache — a harbinger of the horrors to come — and the sickening realization that, as the bullets and shells whistle overhead and nearby, nothing will ever be the same. Jergović’s perception is irrevocably altered by the immediacy and proximity of violence over the coming 1,425 days, in what would become the longest siege in modern history: “What struck me then with clarity, however, while the Tramadol was still working, before the pain returned with all its vengeance, the thought that changed my life passing through my forehead like a lobotomy blade, was the realization that, after those first bursts and blasts, I was no longer me, nor was that house my house, nor was that city my city…The war had started with the first explosion. And the war, I felt, would last a long time, it would in fact never end.” —KS
Seth Wickersham | ESPN | December 6, 2022 | 8,533 words
Sports journalism is one of those sub-disciplines that contains multitudes. If you’re not familiar with the sport or the team or the athlete being discussed, it can seem designed specifically to drive you away. (Case in point: the actual headline on this is “Why Andrew Luck Finally Reveals Why He Walked Away From the NFL.”) But when it’s done right, it transcends the field of play to become a universal human story. The minutiae of tactics and statistics fall away, revealing something anyone can connect with. That’s the case with Seth Wickersham’s deep profile of Andrew Luck, the Stanford architectural design major and quarterback who became the first pick in the 2012 draft. It’s a story about how the ways we protect ourselves can harm others, about how a lifetime of competitive sports can turn a shoulder injury into a gradual unraveling of the self. Wickersham and Luck clearly spent an inordinate amount of time together over the five months of reporting, and it shows in the piece’s emotional core: For every piece of scenework, there’s an interior reconstruction as well. Luck came into the league burdened by unimaginable expectations; he left it with a clear conscience. Now, after affording himself the time and space to find a path, he’s moving toward something that might just be his true purpose. This is the kind of piece that offers something for people who don’t follow athletes — but perhaps more importantly, it’s a reminder that athletes are people too, as plagued by doubt and fear as the rest of us. —PR
Sam Tabachnik | The Denver Post | December 1, 2022 | 7,593 words
Ever since reading this Bloomberg piece about disgraced art collector Douglas Latchford, I’ve been interested in learning more about how he spent decades trafficking priceless archaeological treasures out of Cambodia and into museums and private collections around the world. But Latchford didn’t do it alone. This piece by Sam Tabachnik is the first in a three-part series that investigates the role of a Colorado scholar in this illicit antiquities trade. In part one, Tabachnik introduces us to Emma C. Bunker, who was known as a prominent Asian art scholar and a consultant, board member, and volunteer at the Denver Art Museum for six decades. (Bunker died last year at age 90.) Tabachnik weaves a fascinating narrative that paints Bunker not as a well-respected scholar but a fraud and Latchford’s sidekick. She was integral to his smuggling operation, enabling the falsification of documents and legitimizing his stolen collection through her academic work and publications. Court documents and recreated emails are sprinkled throughout for readers who want to dig deeper. And you will. —CLR
Alex Tesar | The Walrus | September 29, 2022 | 2,238 words
While not the weightiest story in the world, this essay debating the merits of The Great British Bake Off compared to The Great Canadian Baking Show was the soul-soothing read I needed as we stumble toward the end of the year. Besides, Alex Tesar is right: The Great Canadian Baking Show just isn’t as good. As a British expat currently living in Canada, I consider myself in a lofty position to judge this issue, and I nodded along, self-importantly, as I read Tesar’s delicious arguments. While I have devoured all the offerings from the British side of the Atlantic, I limped through one season of the Canadian version and, with Dan Levy no longer presenting, could make it no further. Tesar explains that the “bucolic village fete,” which provides the setting for both shows, makes sense against the backdrop of English history (although dwelling on a tweeness that does not always exist), but not for Canada. He continues that trying to emulate British culture, rather than “showing us what Canada is and what it could become … reveals profound insecurities about what sticks us together besides maple syrup.” I also have something to say about (most) North American versions of British shows: No. Tesar offers a more nuanced perspective. It may be as light as whipped cream, but what a fun read. —CW
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Helen Warrell interviews three top female British Secret Intelligence Service officers about what it’s really like to be a woman in a world of espionage. It’s not a surprise that female spies experience misogyny and sexism on their way up, while pop-culture depictions in Bond films and Le Carré novels enforce sexy spy and secretary stereotypes. This is the first time that female SIS officers are going on the record; Kathy, Ada, and Rebecca (which are not their real names) agreed to speak with Warrell to help recruit more women and ethnic minorities to apply. The women are tight-lipped about some areas of their work, which makes this insightful and fun read all the more fascinating.
Still, it is not a job with universal appeal. While Q branch now has more women than men at senior levels, they are under-represented in the department as a whole. Ada is keen to change this, but the wider shortage of women in science and engineering makes recruitment more difficult. She is not from a technical background herself. Her strength is operational expertise honed on a series of overseas postings, where she learnt Arabic and ran agents, including in war zones. For some of this time she was also raising a family, which presented unusual practical problems. At the start of one posting, she was given an armoured car and became the first officer in the service to ask where the Isofix points were so she could insert her baby’s carseat. “There was a lot of scratching of heads and people saying, we haven’t had a request for one of those things before,” she says. “And actually, it turns out it’s very difficult to do.” (They did, eventually, find a way.)
Everyone remembers Jake Angeli, the “the QAnon shaman” who participated in the January 6 insurrection wearing bison horns and carrying a spear, and Stewart Rhodes, the militia leader with the eyepatch who just last week was convicted of sedition in connection with the violence at the Capitol. Fewer people might recognize the Munns, a family based in the small panhandle town of Borger, Texas, five of whom—father, mother, son, and two daughters—were indicted for entering the Capitol that day. Who are they, and why don’t we know more about them? Why, indeed, don’t federal prosecutors? Robert Draper investigates:
“American Family Needing Help,” blared the title of the GiveSendGo account established by one of the Munn daughters in the summer of 2022. The web page included a lengthy elucidation by Tom of how he had tried to instill in his children his deep commitment to the Constitution, often focusing on the First Amendment. He wrote that the 2020 election results had left him doubting the process. Following what he termed “a frustrating display of political maneuvering, to obstruct the verification of the vote,” Tom “felt compelled to let my voice be heard and obligated to demonstrate to my children, the vital importance of doing so.” He described a Gestapo-like raid by armor-clad federal agents on his peaceful home. He said that his family had lost friends and now struggled to find work.
Tom’s synopsis of the family’s legal predicament was misleading at best. “Having no other ‘real’ recourse, we accepted the ‘plea deal’ offered by the prosecution,” he wrote. In truth, each of the Munns were provided free legal counsel from the federal public defender’s office. The children, beginning with Josh, eventually indicated their willingness to plead guilty. Though Tom and Dawn waited ten months to acknowledge their guilt, they offered no legal challenge to their indictment at any point.
When the GiveSendGo page went live, Tom lamented that the Munns lacked the means to travel to Washington for their sentencing hearing in October, and as a result, “we are greatly fearing being held in contempt of court,” he wrote. This appeal, which raised the Munns more than $33,000 in donations, evoked a familiar trope, that of a patriotic and Trump-loving American family suffering under the bootheel of a deeply partisan criminal justice system.
Today’s list compiles our editors’ picks for personal essays. While our team is small, we have a wide range of interests and are drawn to very different types of personal writing. It’s often hard for each of us to select a single “favorite” for these lists, but we enjoy coming together each December to look back on all the stories we’ve picked to create these year-end lists.
Similar to last year, we asked our writers, featured authors, and readers to share their favorite stories across categories. You’ll see their recommendations alongside ours in this list and others to come this month. Enjoy!
Jonathan Tjarks | The Ringer | March 3, 2022 | 2,738 words
Jonathan Tjarks was 33 years old when he learned he had cancer. Thirty-three. He had a wife and a baby son and a sportswriting career that was humming along, and then he had cancer. What he didn’t have was the willingness to go gently into that good night. So he wrote about his fear, and he wrote about his faith and his friendships; how difficult those things were, how important they were. He’d lost his own father when he was young, and he wanted more than anything for his son to avoid the slow erosion of community that he had known in the wake of his dad’s death. “I don’t want Jackson to have the same childhood that I did,” he wrote. “I want him to wonder why his dad’s friends always come over and shoot hoops with him. Why they always invite him to their houses. Why there are so many of them at his games. I hope that he gets sick of them.” Jonathan Tjarks was 34 years old when he died of cancer just a few short months after this essay was published. He’d done what he could to fight, and he’d done what he could to make sure that the friends he’d made would help his son navigate the world. To the rest of us, he left this spare, frank, moving essay. —Peter Rubin
Annie Sand | Guernica | May 23, 2022 | 2,821 words
“Only sometimes will the ice hold my weight,” writes Annie Sand in this powerful essay at Guernica, in which she considers the meteorological metaphors she uses to understand and cope with mental illness. “Metaphor rushes in to fill gaps, to make meaning, and to conceal,” she says, as she attempts to assess the cost of a bout of anxiety in “hours of writing lost, hours of grading lost, hours of exercise lost, hours of sleep lost, hours of joy lost.” While metaphor can be a convenient way for us to attempt to understand the pain of others, language in all its power often comes up short, diminishing the complexities of human perception and experience with inadequate comparisons. “When we use metaphor to conceal the unknowable, we make symbols out of human beings and allegory out of experience. We reduce our own pain to a precursor, a line item, a weather report,” she says. The key, Sand suggests, is to define pain and suffering for yourself: “I wonder instead if the answer is not to abstain from metaphor, but rather, each time society tries to wheat-paste an ill-fitting metaphor over our lives, to offer one of our own.” If you’ve ever tried to explain how you really feel — mentally or physically — to someone, you’ll appreciate Sand’s thinking. —Krista Stevens
Annie Sand on the most impactful longform story she read this year:
For me it has to be “Final Girl, Terrible Place” by Lesley Finn. She talks about the concept of the final girl in horror: the young woman who makes it to the end of the movie, but is nonetheless objectified within the story. Her body is put on the line so the male psyche can experience threat from a distance. Reading the essay, I felt a flash of desperate recognition I hadn’t experienced since Leslie Jamison’s “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain.” Finn captures so much of the uncertainty of being a teenage (and even preteen) girl: the way you feel the noose of culture and power closing in on you but have no name for it. Now in my early 30s, I’m helping to raise a teenage girl who is obsessed with horror, I suspect for similar reasons as Finn. I think she sees herself in the final girl. Maybe over Christmas break we’ll read it together.
Mstyslav Chernov | Associated Press | March 21, 2022 | 2,400 words
We tend to think of personal essays as marathons rather than sprints, feats of the written word that require time, training, and endurance to complete. But sometimes a brilliant essay is a mad dash because it has to be. Case in point, this harrowing piece that begins, “The Russians were hunting us down. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were closing in.” Video journalist Mstyslav Chernov’s account of witnessing and escaping the siege of Mariupol, Ukraine, is an essential first draft of history, penned in collaboration with Lori Pinnant, an AP colleague, and punctuated by photographer Evgeniy Maloletka’s chilling images. In spare, unflinching language, Chernov describes Russia’s campaign to suppress the truth about its brutal assault on civilians. What lingers most vividly in my memory, though, are the essay’s interior parts, where Chernov conveys a raw mix of shock, fear, anger, and guilt about what, as a journalist, he saw, did, and couldn’t do. These moments are what make such an otherwise immediate piece timeless: Chernov captures the essence of both conflict reporting and what it means to be the person doing it. —Seyward Darby
Alyssa Harad | Kenyon Review | July 29, 2022 | 6,113 words
When it was time to select an essay for this category, I immediately knew the type of piece I wanted to highlight. Week after week, it’s so easy to get lost in #sadreads, especially about the state of the planet. I’ve found some comfort in writing about the Earth and the climate crisis that, while urgent and often dismal, ultimately challenges me to think in new ways — and which helps me see a path toward a better future. I count Alyssa Harad’s gorgeous braided essay about the end of the world and the language of the apocalypse as one of this kind of piece — I’ve kept thinking about it for months. Instead of relying on catastrophe narratives or thinking of the end as a singular event, Harad considers life as a series of “nested crises,” and explains that “worlds end all the time.” I love the way she artfully weaves her observations about the world with musings that trace her own thinking since she was a child, and reflects on how she’s come to make sense of the uncertain times in which we live. It’s an essay, but it’s also a journey, and it deeply inspired me, as both a writer and a human. —Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Alyssa Harad recommends a piece that made her smile this year:
“Unconditional Death Is a Good Title,” a selection in The Paris Review from the pandemic journal kept by the late-but-always-and-forever-great poet Bernadette Mayer, surges with the life and joy typical of Mayer’s work: “not growing old gracefully,” Mayer writes, “i’ve chosen to grow old awkwardly, like a teenager.”
Laurie Penny | British GQ | September 18, 2022 | 3,415 words
The Queue to see Queen Elizabeth’s coffin seems particularly bizarre now that the moment has passed. Looking back at it is akin to waking up after too many beers and analyzing the deep connection you thought you shared with the bartender. Laurie Penny found it awkward even at the emotional height of the time, and she approaches the Queue with a healthy amount of cynicism (and snacks). However, within the Queue, she finds incredible camaraderie and a shared sense of loss, not just for the Queen, for, as Penny states, “almost everyone I speak to turns out to have recently lost someone, or something important.” The loss from COVID-19 is also apparent as the Queue shuffles past the National COVID Memorial, naming the people who succumbed to the pandemic, and Penny realizes, “about as many people queued past that wall as there are names on it.” The passing of Elizabeth II created something that, for a brief moment, allowed people to come together and mourn and grieve in solidarity. Mourn and grieve for many things after some difficult years. With barriers down — for whatever reason — there can be tremendous release in shared emotion. This essay made me think about many things beyond the Queen: community, loss, and loneliness, to name a few. It also made me laugh, which is the splendid thing about Laurie Penny’s writing — she can make you ponder through a chuckle. —Carolyn Wells
If you made it past the headline, it’s because you care enough to know — and after you read this intimate, searching portrait of an athlete struggling to find clarity, you will. Seth Wickersham spent Gary-Smith-in-the-’90s amounts of time with the now-retired Colts quarterback, and it shows. You don’t need to be a sports fan to appreciate a profile this compelling.
At first, Luck wasn’t in the mood to hear it. He couldn’t hear it. He wasn’t sleeping well, he was in pain, he was fighting with Nicole, the team was halfway across the globe without him, and if he stopped to examine his life, the entire world he had constructed might start to unravel, perhaps revealing it to be fatally flawed all along. “I understood myself best as a quarterback,” Luck says. “I felt no understanding of other parts of myself at all.”
