Best of 2022: Reported Essays

The reported essays that grabbed our editors’ attention this year demonstrate the craft of the form: immersing yourself in a new world and finding other people’s voices and expert knowledge to help tell a story.

今年引起我们编辑注意的报道文章展示了这种形式的技巧：让自己沉浸在一个新世界中，寻找其他人的声音和专业知识来帮助讲述一个故事。

We have drawn from all our picks of the year, and also asked some of these talented writers for their own insights.

我们精选了今年所有的精选作品，并向其中一些才华横溢的作家询问了他们自己的见解。

Enjoy reading this eclectic range of pieces that report from around the world.

享受阅读这些来自世界各地的不拘一格的报道。

## On Death and Love

## 关于死亡与爱

Melanie Challenger | Emergence Magazine | January 20, 2022 | 3,605 words

梅兰妮挑战者 |新兴杂志| 2022 年 1 月 20 日 | 3,605 字

In this poignant and incisive essay at Emergence Magazine, Melanie Challenger grapples with grief and loss in her life and the irony of a general human ambivalence to death in the plant and animal kingdoms that has allowed us to harm the planet over time.

在《Emergence》杂志上发表的这篇辛酸而深刻的文章中，梅兰妮·查林杰 (Melanie Challenger) 努力应对生活中的悲伤和失落，以及人类普遍对动植物王国死亡的矛盾心理，这种矛盾心理使我们随着时间的推移对地球造成伤害。

Speaking of grief, my own life has changed exponentially since I first read and shared Challenger’s piece back in January.

说到悲伤，自从我一月份第一次阅读并分享挑战者的文章以来，我自己的生活发生了指数级的变化。

I met death face-to-face when it came calling in August, and like Challenger, “I didn’t leave that room the same person.” She’s right when she suggests that we hurt so much when someone dies because we are so very privileged to love: “Among the many lessons Hannah taught me that day, and in the days to come, was the significance and seriousness of grief in human lives — which is another way of saying the significance of love in our lives, because it is the fever of our attachment to one another that charges grief with its intolerable brilliancy.” Now, if only we could love the planet the way we love and grieve for one another: “When we are closer to the animals and plants that accompany us in this life, we share in their demise and in their aim to flourish, which raises the force of their deaths and softens the force of our own.” —Krista Stevens

当死亡在八月召唤时，我面对面地遇到了它，就像查林杰一样，“我离开那个房间时并不是同一个人。”她说，当有人去世时，我们会受到如此大的伤害，因为我们非常有幸去爱，她是对的：“汉娜那天以及在未来的日子里教给我的许多教训中，就是悲伤在人类生活中的重要性和严重性——这是表达爱在我们生活中的重要性的另一种方式，因为正是我们对彼此依恋的狂热让悲伤变得难以忍受的光辉。”现在，如果我们能像彼此相爱和悲伤一样爱这个星球就好了：“当我们更接近今生陪伴我们的动物和植物时，我们会分享它们的灭亡和它们蓬勃发展的目标，这会增强它们死亡的力量，并软化我们自己的力量。” —克里斯塔·史蒂文斯

Melanie Challenger on her reported essay recommendations from 2022:

Melanie Challenger 谈及她报告的 2022 年论文推荐：

“The Turbulent Brain” “by Morten Kringelbach and Gustavo Deco for Aeon: I was very struck by this article in Aeon which presented new theories and findings on non-equilibrium states, and how we respond to the external world.

莫滕·克林格尔巴赫 (Morten Kringelbach) 和古斯塔沃·德科 (Gustavo Deco) 为 Aeon 撰写的《动荡的大脑》：Aeon 上的这篇文章让我非常震惊，它提出了关于非平衡状态以及我们如何应对外部世界的新理论和发现。

It made me think hard, which, for me, is the best thing a piece of work can do.

这让我认真思考，对我来说，这是一件作品所能做的最好的事情。

“Two Weeks in Tehran” by Azedah Moaveni for The London Review of Books: I’m an ideas-based writer rather than a reporter but I have huge admiration for quality reportage, and this is a piece that matters.

Azedah Moaveni 为《伦敦书评》撰写的《德黑兰两周》：我是一位以想法为基础的作家，而不是记者，但我非常钦佩高质量的报告文学，这是一篇很重要的文章。

And, as we now see, this article was prescient.

而且，正如我们现在所看到的，这篇文章是有先见之明的。

## Our Animals, Ourselves

## 我们的动物，我们自己

Sunaura Taylor and Astra Taylor | Lux | January 6, 2022 | 6,846 words

苏娜拉·泰勒和阿斯特拉·泰勒 |勒克斯| 2022 年 1 月 6 日 | 6,846 字

From a young age, we’re shown and sold the bucolic version of a farm, but in reality, a modern factory farm is a horrific place of reproductive violence on a massive scale.

从很小的时候起，我们就被展示并出售了田园风格的农场，但实际上，现代工厂化农场是一个大规模生殖暴力的可怕场所。

What would it mean to truly respect and honor animals?

真正尊重和尊重动物意味着什么？

What will it take to radically shift the way we think about animal consumption, and to break up and abolish Big Meat and Big Milk?

怎样才能从根本上改变我们对动物消费的看法，并打破和废除大肉类和大牛奶？

In this thought-provoking essay, Astra Taylor and Sunaura Taylor call for cross-species solidarity and make a socialist-feminist case for veganism.

在这篇发人深省的文章中，阿斯特拉·泰勒和苏娜拉·泰勒呼吁跨物种团结，并为素食主义提出社会主义女权主义的论据。

“We are all caught in the same racist, sexist, colonial, and ecologically catastrophic capitalist system,” they write.

他们写道：“我们都陷入了同样的种族主义、性别歧视、殖民主义和生态灾难性的资本主义体系之中。”

Vegans get a bad rap, but the authors urge people, especially those on the left, to join alongside them — and to expand their visions of democracy, reproductive choice, and egalitarianism to include pigs, cows, and other animals that we exploit for profit.

素食主义者名声不好，但作者敦促人们，尤其是左翼人士，加入到他们的行列，并扩大他们对民主、生殖选择和平等主义的愿景，将猪、牛和其他我们为了牟利而剥削的动物包括在内。

This is an eye-opening piece making clear that the liberation of humans and the liberation of non-human animals are interconnected.

这是一篇令人大开眼界的文章，它清楚地表明人类的解放和非人类动物的解放是相互关联的。

I’ve returned to it numerous times this year during and after tough conversations with loved ones, and often think about it as I reconsider my own habits.

今年，在与亲人进行艰难的谈话期间和之后，我多次回到这个话题，并且在重新考虑自己的习惯时经常思考这个问题。

—Cheri Lucas Rowlands

——切里·卢卡斯·罗兰兹

## Deep Time Sickness

## 严重晕车

Lachlan Summers | Noema | July 14, 2022 | 3,699 words

拉克兰·萨默斯 |诺埃玛| 2022 年 7 月 14 日 | 3,699 字

Mexico City is built on soap.

墨西哥城是建立在肥皂之上的。

After the Lago de Texoco was drained (the coda to a centuries-long process of colonialism and development), what was left behind was a 70-meter deep layer of soil known as jaboncillo, “like moisture soap.” Jaboncillo is squishy, effectively hollow, and is no small reason why earthquakes in 1985 and 2017 so devastated the city.

特克索科湖（Lago de Texoco）被排干后（长达几个世纪的殖民主义和发展过程的尾声），留下的是一层 70 米深的土壤，被称为 jaboncillo，“就像保湿肥皂”。 Jaboncillo 很软，实际上是中空的，这也是 1985 年和 2017 年地震对这座城市造成如此严重破坏的一个重要原因。

It also ensures that seismic damage continues to pervade the city’s landscape.

它还确保地震破坏继续遍及城市景观。

As Lachlan Summers writes, CDMX “reflects the strangeness of the earth on which it sits.

正如拉克兰·萨默斯 (Lachlan Summers) 所写，CDMX“反映了它所处的地球的奇异性。

Footpaths undulate.

步道起伏。

Potholes suddenly appear in the street and begin consuming the road.

街道上突然出现坑洼并开始吞噬道路。

A fissure slyly burrows under a building to do unseen work to its foundations.” Such instability also lives on in the psyches of residents, and Summers’ fascinating essay unpacks the staggering effect it has on Mexico City’s tocado, or “touched.” The tocado are beset by vertigo, loss of appetite, and a fear that one day the building they walk past every day will finally buckle and fall.

一条裂缝狡猾地在建筑物下面挖洞，对其地基进行看不见的工作。”这种不稳定也存在于居民的心理中，萨默斯引人入胜的文章揭示了它对墨西哥城托卡多（或“感动”）的惊人影响。托卡多受到眩晕、食欲不振和恐惧的困扰，担心有一天他们每天经过的建筑物最终会倒塌。

Conventional medicine has no easy answer for them, dismissing such symptoms as a “cultural concept of distress,” but with insight and empathy Summers maps it as the inevitable result of human experience colliding with geologic time.

传统医学对此没有简单的答案，将此类症状视为“痛苦的文化概念”，但萨默斯凭借洞察力和同理心将其视为人类经验与地质时间碰撞的必然结果。

Scales so disparate are never meant to overlap, of course — but as we’ve seen so many times, human intervention has a way of hastening end-time scenarios.

当然，如此不同的规模永远不会重叠——但正如我们多次看到的那样，人类干预有一种加速末日情景的方式。

—Peter Rubin

——彼得·鲁宾

Lachlan Summers recommends two polar opposite reported essays from this year:

拉克兰·萨默斯推荐了今年两篇截然相反的报道文章：

“Dead Man Living” by Elizabeth Bruenig in The Atlantic: Bruenig’s account of the Alabama state’s repeated efforts to kill Alan Eugene Miller is a bleak story of incompetence, indifference, and the unending horror of state-sanctioned murder.

伊丽莎白·布鲁尼格 (Elizabeth Bruenig) 在《大西洋月刊》上发表的《死人活着》(Dead Man Living) 中：布鲁尼格对阿拉巴马州一再试图刺杀艾伦·尤金·米勒 (Alan Eugene Miller) 的描述是一个关于无能、冷漠和国家批准的谋杀的无尽恐怖的凄凉故事。

“Banana Nation” by Jasper Craven in The Baffler: A hysterical story about the insane worlds being built and destroyed by crypto-bros as they fight to convince everyone (including themselves) that crypto is the future.

《The Baffler》中贾斯珀·克雷文 (Jasper Craven) 的《香蕉国度》(Banana Nation)：这是一个歇斯底里的故事，讲述了加密货币兄弟们努力让每个人（包括他们自己）相信加密货币是未来的过程中建立和摧毁的疯狂世界。

## This House Is Still Haunted

## 这所房子仍然闹鬼

Adam Fales | Dilettante Army | February 15th, 2022 | 5,200 words

亚当·法尔斯 |业余军队 | 2022 年 2 月 15 日 | 5,200 字

Calling all English majors who love the horror genre and whose nation’s many ghosts keep them up at night — and anyone else with a yen for a great literary read.

召集所有热爱恐怖类型、其国家的众多鬼魂让他们彻夜难眠的英语专业学生，以及任何渴望阅读伟大文学作品的人。

Adam Fales’s brilliant essay about the motif of the haunted house in American fiction and film comprises seven sections, which he calls “gables” in a nod to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

亚当·法尔斯（Adam Fales）关于美国小说和电影中鬼屋主题的精彩文章由七个部分组成，他将其称为“山墙”，以向纳撒尼尔·霍桑致敬。

Fales casts a wide net for source material, incorporating Ari Aster’s movie Hereditary, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, and many more works of art.

法尔斯广泛收集素材，包括阿里·阿斯特的电影《遗传厄运》、托妮·莫里森的《宠儿》、埃德加·爱伦·坡的《厄舍屋的倒塌》以及更多艺术作品。

Fales argues that the haunted house tale, a staple of U.S. culture for hundreds of years, “lets Americans concentrate the past’s wrongness,” from genocide to slavery to capitalist exploitation.

法尔斯认为，鬼屋故事是数百年来美国文化的主要内容，“让美国人集中注意力”过去的错误，从种族灭绝到奴隶制再到资本主义剥削。

Problem is, these stories have often “failed, if not outright refused, to heal the wounds they simultaneously abhor and celebrate.” What does a better haunted house tale look like?

问题是，这些故事往往“即使不是完全拒绝，也未能治愈他们同时憎恶和庆祝的伤口”。更好的鬼屋故事是什么样的？

In the answer to that question might be kernels of a wider revolution in how we talk about and, indeed, stop reconstructing our collective sins.

这个问题的答案可能是一场更广泛的革命的核心，即我们如何谈论以及实际上停止重建我们的集体罪恶。

—Seyward Darby

——西沃德·达比

## Super-Prime Mover: Britain’s Most Successful Estate Agent

## Super-Prime Mover：英国最成功的房地产经纪人

Sophie Elmhirst | The Guardian | January 27, 2022 | 6,380 words

苏菲·埃尔姆赫斯特 |卫报| 2022 年 1 月 27 日 | 6,380 字

A delightful piece by the ever-witty Sophie Elmhirst, plucked from the murky depths of time — January 2022.

机智的索菲·埃尔姆赫斯特 (Sophie Elmhirst) 从 2022 年 1 月的黑暗时光深处创作了一首令人愉悦的作品。

Before the war in Ukraine.

乌克兰战争前。

Before sky-rocketing bills.

在账单飞涨之前。

Early 2022 was a whole different landscape.

2022 年初，情况完全不同。

Rereading this essay, I wondered how things had changed for Gary Hersham’s British real estate company, Beauchamp Estates: Russian Oligarchs, fond of buying up London properties, are now sanctioned, and interest rates in the U.K. (and around the world) have reached giddy heights.

重读这篇文章，我想知道加里·赫舍姆（Gary Hersham）的英国房地产公司博尚庄园（Beauchamp Estates）的情况发生了怎样的变化：喜欢购买伦敦房产的俄罗斯寡头现在受到制裁，英国（以及世界各地）的利率已达到令人眼花缭乱的高度。

Despite this essay feeling like a time capsule, I still loved revisiting the indomitable Hersham.

尽管这篇文章感觉就像一个时间胶囊，但我仍然喜欢重温不屈不挠的赫舍姆。

He has operated through ups and downs for decades; I bet he is doing just fine.

他经营几十年，风风雨雨；我敢打赌他做得很好。

Elmhirst tags along as he blusters his way through viewings, sales, interactions with his “fantastic” secretary, and many, many phone calls.

埃尔姆赫斯特在看房、销售、与“出色的”秘书互动以及许许多多的电话中一路狂飙。

It’s a riveting insight into a world where who you know absolutely matters, and Britain is sold as a brand.

这是对一个你认识的人绝对重要的世界的引人入胜的洞察，而英国是作为一个品牌出售的。

As Elmhirst eloquently puts it, “[a] slice of fictional England, a portal to aristocracy, yours for £10,000 a square foot.” While we glimpse Indian billionaires and Chinese industrialists, it is Hersham who remains the most fascinating character.

正如埃尔姆赫斯特雄辩地指出的那样，“一片虚构的英格兰，通往贵族的门户，只需每平方英尺 10,000 英镑。”当我们瞥见印度亿万富翁和中国实业家时，赫舍姆仍然是最迷人的人物。

He is another snapshot in time, confidently telling Elmhirst: “‘I always call it WhatsUp.’ As if the app had got it wrong.” —Carolyn Wells

他是另一个及时的快照，自信地告诉埃尔姆赫斯特：“‘我总是称它为 WhatsUp。’就好像应用程序弄错了一样。” ——卡罗琳·威尔斯

You can also browse all of our year-end collections since 2011 in one place.

您还可以在一处浏览我们自 2011 年以来的所有年终系列。