Some interesting things to read this late July weekend

There’s a wonderful story that ran in The New Yorker in 1986. It’s about growing up poor in a place called Flat Creek Road, and it’s about a boy who gets his finger stuck in a gas can. But really it’s about the young boy’s love for his mother. “My love for my mother was absolute. It had no qualifications; nothing was held back. I loved her for every aspect of her nature.”

It’s a beautiful story, and its author, John Bennet, was a mentor of mine. He started working as an editor at the magazine the year I was born; he was editing features when I arrived and he was still doing so when I left. During my six years on staff, I was always in his office asking for advice. I’m right now remembering asking him how to handle an argument I was having with a writer. The writer had put a delicious detail into an early draft and he now wanted to take it out. I wanted to keep it in. (This is the opposite of the argument most editors and writers have, of course.) So I came to John to ask for counsel.

“Have you made your best argument?” John inquired.

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t persuade him?”

“That’s right.”

“So you have to take it out.”

“But it’s better for the readers to keep it in.”

“Maybe,” said John. “But your loyalty is to the writer.”

John passed away this month, and there’s a beautiful remembrance written by Nick Paumgarten, “John Bennet: Enemy of the ‘blah, blah, blah.’” It’s short and perfect and you should definitely read it. I wish he could have kept on editing features forever.

The big news this July at The Atlantic is that we finally finished digitizing our entire archive and we’ve made it public to all. I highly recommend browsing the new page dedicated to showcasing the best stories from our 165-year history. Since we’ve launched, the most read story is by Ralph Waldo Emerson on Old Age, “Skill to do comes of doing; knowledge comes by eyes always open, and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.”?

Today, I enjoyed discovering Hunter S. Thompson’s biting obituary for Richard Nixon, which includes this wonderful exchange:?

“Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. ‘Don't worry,’ he said, ‘I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you.’”

The best book I finished this past month is James Kirchick’s Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. It’s a detailed story about the gay men and women who shaped American policy, often from the closet, from the Roosevelt Administration up to Bill Clinton’s. It gives details to stories I knew a bit about (Sumner Welles, Terry Dolan) and others about which I knew absolutely nothing. I was captivated throughout. I’ve also been captivated, though in an entirely different way, by Mark Leibovitch’s hilarious Thank You for Your Servitude, which I’m now two-thirds through. It’s a history of Donald Trump’s tenure that will make you laugh out loud at least once a page. Here’s an excerpt for a taste.

For a dose of narrative hijinks, I recommend this Texas Monthly piece about a Houston socialite who had her husband murdered so she could continue her affair with her nephew. And after that relationship ends, things get weirder still. And for mesmerizing prose, I recommend this Nellie Bowles piece about the collapse of San Francisco.

Speaking of San Francisco, here is a superb episode of The Daily, reported by Jessica Cheung and my old friend and colleague Jay Caspian Kang, about the battle over admissions standards and race at one of the City’s elite high schools. And I loved this conversation between Malcolm Gladwell and Rich Roll, which is mostly about the unknown history of the protests at the 1968 Olympics, but which also includes a short snippet in which Malcolm explains why he does want to race a mile against LeBron James but does not want to race one against me.?

Lastly, thank you to Lincoln Caplan who, after reading the E.B. White essay I posted in the last edition of this newsletter sent me the following 1944 speech about liberty from Learned Hand. “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it,” Hand declared in front of 1.5 million people in Central Park.?

And one final piece of wisdom from John Bennet to end on: “Writing is taking life and reducing it to still life.”