Unfinished Business
Isaiah Wall wants to get his life on track. But first, he’s gotta buy drugs for the police.
Isaiah Wall wants to get his life on track. But first, he’s gotta buy drugs for the police.
Mitch Ryals The Inlander Nov 2016 20min Permalink
How a Madrid workshop is perfecting the art of copying imperiled art, from Egyptian tombs to Renaissance paintings.
Daniel Zalewski New Yorker Nov 2016 40min Permalink
An interview with the elusive Frank Ocean.
Jon Caramanica New York Times Nov 2016 15min Permalink
Leonard Cohen’s 2 A.M. set at the disastrous Isle of Wight festival, 1970.
Liel Leibovitz Tablet Jan 2012 15min Permalink
An artist at the end of his life.
David Remnick New Yorker Oct 2016 45min Permalink
On the road with Billy Bob Thornton and his band The Boxmasters. Twenty years after Sling Blade all he wants to do is direct but “but none of those Hollywood assclowns will give him the keys anymore.”
Taffy Brodesser-Akner GQ Nov 2016 25min Permalink
“We take it that all young writers overestimate their work. It’s impossible not to—I mean if you recognized what shit you were writing, you wouldn’t write it. You have to believe in your stuff—every day has to be the new day on which the new poem may be it.”
John Berryman, Peter A. Stitt The Paris Review Dec 1972 40min Permalink
Excerpted from Last Girl Before Freeway.
Leslie Bennetts Vanity Fair Nov 2016 15min Permalink
"His friends remembered when Richard became famous. It was the year the hippies came to San Francisco. Richard had published one novel, A Confederate General from Big Sur, but it had sold miserably 743 copies and his publisher, Grove Press, had dropped its option on Trout Fishing in America."
Lawrence Wright Rolling Stone Apr 1985 30min Permalink
How Atlanta-born Davido, the son of a wealthy Nigerian businessman, hopes to break the international market with his brand of Nigerian pop.
Rawiya Kameir The Fader Feb 2016 Permalink
How dancing can inspire a writer.
Zadie Smith The Guardian Oct 2016 15min Permalink
Memories of Marilyn Monroe.
Truman Capote Music for Chameleons Jan 1980 20min Permalink
The deserted villages of Senegal.
Kieran Guilbert Thomson Reuters Foundation Oct 2016 15min Permalink
A profile of “the internet’s boyfriend.”
Michael Schulman Vanity Fair Oct 2016 15min Permalink
On Elena Ferrante:
Different names, every time, but the reaction is the same: a momentary light in the listener’s eyes that fades to bored disappointment. An Italian woman from Naples, whose name you wouldn’t know. Who did you expect?
Dayna Tortorici n+1 Mar 2015 40min Permalink
Shirley Jackson wrote 17 books while raising four children — and she couldn’t have had a successful career without them.
Ruth Franklin New York Sep 2016 15min Permalink
A profile of the filmmaker Errol Morris as he prepared to release The Thin Blue Line after a decade of limited distribution, semi-poverty, and a side career as a private detective.
Mark Singer New Yorker Feb 1989 1h10min Permalink
“I took my son to Paris fashion week, and all I got was a profound understanding of who he is, what he wants to do with his life, and how it feels to watch a grown man stride down a runway wearing shaggy yellow Muppet pants.”
Michael Chabon GQ Sep 2016 20min Permalink
A conversation with the anonymous novelist.
Elena Ferrante, Sandro Ferri, Sandra Ferri The Paris Review May 2015 30min Permalink
A profile of the comic.
Ariel Levy New Yorker Sep 2016 15min Permalink
“Miles Davis was a deeply competitive artist, and the idea that he was losing audiences to white rock musicians with inferior skills—and, worse, had to open for them at concerts—inspired him to beat them at their own game. But he did so very much on his own terms.”
Adam Shatz NY Review of Books Sep 2016 15min Permalink
She has convinced her followers she is a pretty-in-pink naïf, an escort, an unhinged ex, an office drone, and, most recently, an expectant mother. None of it is real.
Molly Langmuir Elle Oct 2016 15min Permalink
“The final evaluation of a play has nothing to do with immediate audience or critical response. The playwright, along with any writer, composer, painter in this society, has got to have a terribly private view of his own value, of his own work. He's got to listen to his own voice primarily. He's got to watch out for fads, for what might be called the critical aesthetics.”
William Flanagan, Edward Albee The Paris Review Sep 1966 35min Permalink
“As my acting career developed, I was no longer cast as a radical Muslim – except at the airport.”
A profile of Hank Williams III.
Elizabeth Gilbert GQ Dec 2000 35min Permalink