Best great articles of the year on non-ordinary topics
The outgoing year sparkled and imbued with events in politics, economics and culture, forcing even the most inert readers to update news portals. However, the press was remembered by longrids - huge articles and in fact mini-books telling about the stories of people outside of time: jugglers, eco-activists, criminal leaders, blues researchers and desperate scholars. We have compiled a list of ten outstanding Longrid 2014, published without a news occasion, from which we learned about the world much more than we could have imagined. The authors of some of them have already managed to leave us, but the texts written by them will forever remain in the memory of readers.
Dropped
The history of downshifting the world's best juggler
The best article of this year is dedicated to the juggler - also the best in the world - and there is perhaps no single obvious reason to read a text of forty thousand characters about him. This is honestly warned by the author, Jason Fagon, in a small introduction, where it is recognized that he himself almost jumped off several times from writing it. She talks about the 40-year-old living juggler Anthony Gatto, owner of 11 world records and a former member of Cirque du Soleil, who decided to quit juggling and open a company to grind and polish concrete. The main character of the article, whose life has been investigated with documentary accuracy, never appears voluntarily in the text, and Fagon builds a great story from the comments of eyewitnesses, old YouTube videos and rumors.
Fagon's story, though it tells about an amazing circus art, almost tragically underestimated, is still more about the eternal parable about an extra person who is lost in the world of Internet record holders, ubiquitous adolescents with whom it is impossible to compete, because they are fourteen years younger, and you are a wife, a baby and a bad back along with universal exhaustion. This is a complex and delicate canvas about juggling, but in fact, like all good stories, everything at once.
You're 16. You're a Pedophile. You Don't Want To Hurt Anyone. What do you do now?
An extraordinary look at the tragic problem of pedophilia
American Adam is 20 years old, he is a pedophile and does not want to offend children. For this, he created a support group for the same teenagers who did not have time to violate the law, pedophiles, whose leader has been for three years. All the other details of the August feature on Medium can be considered spoilers, but this outstanding text in all respects is the first one, which tells about teenage pedophilia, and not middle-aged, faceless men in a trailer and with sweets.
In the press of all times and peoples, there are definitely win-win topics - most often about horrific events and nightmarish people as universal triggers of the sanctimonious “we are not like that”. The topic of pedophilia tops the list as a generally recognized major sin and the most disgusting deviation that can happen to a person. Therefore, in writing such stories, it is important not to bend over with documentary and not to be overwhelmed with condemnation or, conversely, with understanding. The text of Luke Malone can be considered an exemplary example of a balance between the obviously opportunistic topic and the most unusual perspective of its coverage, where the reader, like a cancer patient, has time to go through all the psychological stages - from denial and depression to acceptance and humility.
The sea of crises
Epic about the sumo wrestler in particular and Japan in general
Usually great sports texts are built on the principle of biopic: a team, game or athlete is taken, whose stories resonate at much higher levels than the sport they represent. In his November ficher, Brian Phillips pushed off the same principles - the Mongol Hakuho Shô, a professional sumo wrestler and the 69th yokozuna in the entire history of this single combat, were taken as the basis. In parallel with the story of an exceptional athlete, in which there are more Japanese than the Japanese themselves, an unfortunate hara-kiri flashes, followed by decapitation, Sumoists, who decided to become rappers, and a trip to Japan in search of a forgotten person.
The author is so often distracted from the main outline of the narrative, embarks on memories or simply philosophizes that sometimes you want to crack him lightly and ask him to accelerate. It’s impossible to read an article without a credit of credit issued to Phillips in advance: his deliberate meditativeness is a sign of quality that does not imply a fussy reader. This is not an article, but an essay, not a note, but a story in which there are no global conclusions, but a sumo and Japan are just a background against which many small stories about this, that, the most important thing unfold.
The Craigslist Killers
Investigation of absurd and creepy criminal history
"We need someone to look after the farm in Southern Ohio. Living free in the trailer, of the duties, nothing but observing the silence of the village and the change of seasons, well, we'll have to make sure that no one is stealing agricultural machinery or Something bad. Payment is $ 300 a week, ”a couple of years ago a couple of Americans (a 50-year-old street preacher and his 16-year-old accomplice) were caught by desperate people who wanted to start everything from the beginning. Only one of four survives.
Why lure people to rob them later on an ad that will surely attract only the poorest? Why kill someone for five dollars? In search of answers, Devin Friedman, a master of long form, reportage and human souls, will go over the classics: mother, "I know it’s my fault," for parishioners, "signals that we didn’t notice," and father, "I guess I wasn’t quite as it should. " A seemingly ordinary criminal story becomes a novel about the feeling of piercing anxiety among people who have decided to ignore this feeling - when you know for sure that these two will now be eaten out of the way, taken to the forest, killed and take your five dollars, but you still think that will carry you, this route has a number and if you put your shoulder on this unpleasant type when it stumbles, then nothing will happen to you today.
Blood in the Sand: Killing a Turtle Advocate
Another investigation - the murder of an eco-activist
Last year, Jairo Maura Sandoval, a 26-year-old eco-activist, was beaten and strangled to death by poachers for guarding the laying of leatherback eggs on the beach, huge, endangered reptiles. Some time after the news spread around the world, journalist Matthew Power bought a ticket and went to investigate the beach on the deserted coast in Costa Rica, which became a crime scene. Six months later, a story was published - a half-detective half-story about the life and death of an ardent activist who simply loved turtles. Seeming at first glance, the passing episode of the series "Hawaii 5-0", the article "Blood in the Sand" is first of all a very good journalistic investigation with unobvious social overtones.
Longrid Matthew Power got on the list as a kind of obituary and recognition of merit - the 39-year-old Power, who passed away in March of this year, represented the very ideal journalism about which serials are usually filmed, but which almost no one actually does. This Power dressed in a sunflower suit in protest against the closure of public gardens, he traveled with homeless anarchists along the Mississippi, it was the drone pilot who told him about the number of murders. In general, it is better to boldly open a link with Matthew Power's publications - timeless, perfectly tailored texts about strange people, strange places, adventurism and curiosity as a way of life.
The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie
Incredible revision of musical history
A very niche, but magnificent story: as one journalist went in search of information about two almost unknown women who influenced the blues, he visited a stubborn old collector, found out (almost by chance and through second hands) incredible details and released a huge detective story with an incredible denouement . Only then The New York Times Magazine cover story will acquire dramatic details with deceived (or not?) Participants, family intervention and questions about journalistic ethics, but this longrid is a must-read for music lovers and musical studies, complete humanity and unmistakable types.
This feature is also interesting as a kind of structure - the author John Jeremiah Sullivan has to constantly make excuses and justify his desire to learn the truth, on the road to which there is literally one and only person - a desperate 80-year-old collector and digger, who has driven his collection crazy. The knowledge and collected material of this person is so great that it does not fit in the room or in the head, but it is absolutely useless, as it is completely absorbed, making it impossible to share them. Although this particular story has a good ending, it serves as another reminder of the painful status of collectibles: “You can't just sit on these things for half a century, not when culture has decided that they are important. I know he didn’t want to sit on them - he was trapped by them. I let both of us go. "
The New Face Of Richard Norris
The story of a man who literally lost his face and found a new
Richard Norris was 22 when he shot himself in the face. Accidentally or on purpose, this happened; none of the witnesses and participants in the event already remembers, except that Richard's mother remembers the pieces of his face on her dress. After fifteen years of forced hermit life, Richard was offered a full face transplant, and this operation, which lasted 36 hours, was successful. Already from these details, an incredible text can be woven, but the author of the GQ ficher Gian Marie Laskas went the other way and explored the life of Norris after an operation, which in fact could have ended in death.
Do not be deceived - in GQ they put a photo of the new face of Norris on the cover and made a super fisher about him not because of the sacrifice, but because of his absolutely star status. Therefore, Laskas wonders what life is like with a stranger, the inability to smoke, drink, sunbathe and even drive a car and the need to take at least five medicines a day for the immune system for the rest of his days. And what if you can not drink, and you drink, really, through a syringe? Your mother claims that you can not smoke, and you go out for a smoke in five minutes? What is better: life without a face and without limits, or star status and lifelong dependence on drugs with a constant threat of death? Laskas explores the phenomenon of a miracle, not denying it, but not hiding its real price.
Keys to Your Front Door!
Mad plots from the world of rental real estate
The seven-page profile of Airbnb, which is going through hard times, is literally created for those who are tired of reading one-time notes about another startup that has become a big business. Of course, the text also includes signs of the times, such as a start-up who shoots non-existent quotations from Picasso, the mayoralty who defended disgruntled citizens, a mandatory comparison with Hitler and New Yorkers who hate upstarts.
Written by Jessica Pressler is actually engaged in rampant fact-check, without even trying to hide a smirk. In a city where everyone has his own opinion, and former students of the Faculty of Arts earn billions, it’s hard not to be sarcastic: "If we know something about the true spirit of New York, this is what it’s a windy bitch." A terribly witty story about a time, "when people stop being polite. And they take on the mind."
Laborers Out Of Your Facebook Feed
What Facebook moderators see and hide from us, and how they live with it
"People holding pictures with members and beheadings away from your facebook feed" - people, of course, unhappy. In the Wired article, the topic of outsourced moderator work is fully disclosed, with documentary details about where the moderators are located, what exactly they have to remove and why, despite very satanic work, they are treated as second-rate even in closed professional communities.
The text of Adrian Chen, written on the patterns Wired, almost accidentally touches another very important topic. Companies that prefer not to recognize the practical efforts necessary for moderating social media give people the wrong views on how the Internet works. The legion of unnamed moderators from developing countries is ignored in favor of the concept of technology as something magically automated, although in practice it is a process that is as human as possible and fully controlled by people.
Arrested development
The study of the real problems of eternal youth
What if aging can be avoided? Accepted by the majority as a norm and a natural physiological process, which is easier to put up with than fight, it became the idea of fixing several scientists. The amazing text of Virginia Hughes tells about girls with the so-called syndrome X - a disease recorded in just six people in the world, in which a person is stuck forever in infancy, which is physiological, which is psychological. With their help, researchers are trying to find the key to the problem of aging - so that adults can always remain young.
A textbook article about white spots in modern science, obsessed with scientists who refuse to accept the laws of nature, and inconsolable parents whose children will never survive them - this is a table reading for those concerned with ageism. "The concept of aging as a natural and inevitable part of life is so entrenched in our culture that we rarely question it. However, biologists have questioned it for a long time."
Photo: cover photo via Shutterstock
