Best of 2023: Profiles
Profiles dig deep, assembling original details to convey the essence of a person or place—and sometimes both—as you’ll see.
个人资料深入挖掘，组合原始细节来传达一个人或一个地方的本质（有时是两者），正如您将看到的。
These are the stories that gave us keen insight into the lives of others, drawn from hundreds of editors’ picks selected in 2023.
这些故事让我们能够敏锐地洞察他人的生活，这些故事来自 2023 年编辑精选的数百个故事。
## Amor Eterno
## 永恒之爱
Skip Hollandsworth | Texas Monthly | May 8, 2023 | 7,531 words
跳过霍兰兹沃斯 |德克萨斯月刊| 2023 年 5 月 8 日 | 7,531 字
Before May 24, 2022, Kimberly Mata-Rubio, a part-time local reporter and mother of six children living in Uvalde, Texas, was shy and quiet.
2022 年 5 月 24 日之前，住在德克萨斯州尤瓦尔迪的当地兼职记者、六个孩子的母亲金伯利·马塔-卢比奥 (Kimberly Mata-Rubio) 害羞而安静。
After that horrific day at Robb Elementary School, when two teachers and 19 children were murdered—including her daughter, Lexi—Mata-Rubio was forever changed.
罗布小学发生了可怕的一天，两名教师和 19 名儿童（包括她的女儿莱克西）被谋杀，玛塔-卢比奥彻底改变了。
She was overwhelmed with grief, but also felt compelled to speak, to do anything she could to fight for justice for Lexi.
她悲痛欲绝，但也觉得有必要说话，尽其所能为莱克西争取正义。
Shortly after the shooting, she testified in a hearing about gun violence.
枪击事件发生后不久，她在有关枪支暴力的听证会上作证。
She then started to speak at rallies, at home and in Washington DC.
然后她开始在集会上、家里和华盛顿特区发表讲话。
She became a fierce advocate for gun control, even meeting with Ted Cruz to push him to support an assault weapons ban.
她成为枪支管制的坚定倡导者，甚至会见特德·克鲁兹，敦促他支持攻击性武器禁令。
(Not a spoiler: he didn’t.) In those months that followed, she realized that she had a voice.
（不是剧透：他没有。）在接下来的几个月里，她意识到自己有发言权。
(Recently, in fact, she ran for mayor of Uvalde, though she lost the bid last month in a special election.) I’ve sat down several times to write why I picked this story by Skip Hollandsworth, but have scrapped numerous attempts.
（事实上，她最近竞选了尤瓦尔迪市长，尽管她在上个月的一次特别选举中失败了。）我已经好几次坐下来写为什么我选择了斯基普·霍兰兹沃斯的这个故事，但已经放弃了无数次尝试。
They all read hollow and repetitive, because I’ve written versions of them before.
它们读起来都空洞且重复，因为我以前写过它们的版本。
My Best of 2022 pick in this category was also a Uvalde profile, about student Caitlyne Gonzales, so it seems that I can’t help but return to this town, to this tragedy.
我在这一类别中选择的 2022 年最佳作品也是尤瓦尔德大学的简介，内容是关于学生凯特琳·冈萨雷斯 (Caitlyne Gonzales) 的，所以看来我情不自禁地回到了这个小镇，回到了这场悲剧。
Perhaps immersing ourselves in the narrative of tragedy is a form of emotional retreat, a way of numbing the constant onslaught of violence in the world.
也许沉浸在悲剧的叙述中是一种情感退却，一种麻痹世界上不断发生的暴力的方式。
Hollandsworth’s piece reminds us that these stories do not end when the spotlight of our attention moves on, but continue to transform communities, families, and individuals.
霍兰斯沃斯的文章提醒我们，当我们的注意力转移时，这些故事并不会结束，而是继续改变社区、家庭和个人。
This is an emotional, difficult, but necessary portrait of a grieving mother finding meaningful ways to honor her daughter’s life, and perhaps help birth a better world for all of us.
这是一幅情感丰富、艰难但必要的肖像，描绘了一位悲伤的母亲寻找有意义的方式来纪念女儿的生命，或许还能帮助我们所有人创造一个更美好的世界。
—CLR
—CLR
## Ginni and Clarence: A Love Story
## 吉尼和克拉伦斯：爱情故事
Kerry Howley | New York Magazine | June 21, 2023 | 7,555 words
凯瑞·豪利 |纽约杂志 | 2023 年 6 月 21 日 | 7,555 字
For the second year in a row, my favorite profile was written by the inimitable Kerry Howley, one of the great chroniclers of America’s right-wing resurgence.
连续第二年，我最喜欢的简介是由无与伦比的克里·豪利（Kerry Howley）撰写的，他是美国右翼复兴的伟大编年史家之一。
Last year, I adored—and seethed over—her profile of anti-abortion activist Marjorie Dannenfelser; this year, Howley turned her attention to Clarence and Ginni Thomas.
去年，我很喜欢她对反堕胎活动人士马乔里·丹南菲尔瑟 (Marjorie Dannenfelser) 的描述，并对此感到非常兴奋。今年，豪利将注意力转向了克拉伦斯·托马斯和吉尼·托马斯。
The former, of course, is the conservative Supreme Court justice confirmed to the bench despite being credibly accused of sexual harassment—laying the groundwork for the Brett Kavanaugh fiasco a quarter-century later—who more recently was exposed for accepting expensive gifts from various billionaires.
当然，前者是保守派最高法院法官，尽管他被可信地指控性骚扰，为四分之一个世纪后布雷特·卡瓦诺的惨败奠定了基础，但他最近因接受各亿万富翁的昂贵礼物而被曝光。
Ginni, Thomas’s wife, started a political consulting firm with money provided by one of those billionaires, and used her influential perch inside the Beltway to support the January 6 insurrection.
托马斯的妻子吉尼 (Ginni) 用其中一位亿万富翁提供的资金创办了一家政治咨询公司，并利用她在环城公路上的影响力支持 1 月 6 日的起义。
In this profile, Howley illuminates how the Thomases’ almost alchemical bond as a couple makes them such a potent, ruinous force in the American project.
在这篇简介中，豪利阐明了托马斯夫妇作为一对近乎炼金术的纽带如何使他们成为美国项目中如此强大的毁灭性力量。
The insight here is as sharp as the prose.
这里的洞察力和散文一样敏锐。
“There was something in Ginni and Clarence that reinforced and refined a shared extremism, something beyond their shared intolerance for ambiguity,” Howley writes.
“吉尼和克拉伦斯身上有某种东西强化和完善了共同的极端主义，这种东西超出了他们对模糊性的共同不容忍，”豪利写道。
“There was an interlocking set of beliefs, a fatalism born of the lived experience of racism and the entire heavily manned edifice of white ignorance.” When I got to the end of this piece, I whispered under my breath, to no one in particular, damn.
“有一套环环相扣的信仰，一种源于种族主义生活经验的宿命论，以及整个由白人无知组成的重兵大厦。” 当我读到这篇文章的结尾时，我低声嘀咕了一句，该死的，没有对任何人。
—SD
—SD
## Lucinda Williams and the Idea of Louisiana
## 露辛达·威廉姆斯和路易斯安那州的想法
Wyatt Williams | The Bitter Southerner | September 4, 2023 | 6,303 words
怀亚特·威廉姆斯 |苦涩的南方人 | 2023 年 9 月 4 日 | 6,303 字
The stories I love best are slow and savor-y, served with a love that can transcend pain.
我最喜欢的故事是缓慢而有品味的，充满了超越痛苦的爱。
Wyatt Williams’s ode to his mother, the state of of Louisiana, and the songwriter Lucinda Williams is a piece I reread often.
怀亚特·威廉姆斯 (Wyatt Williams) 对他的母亲、路易斯安那州和词曲作者露辛达·威廉姆斯 (Lucinda Williams) 的颂歌是我经常重读的作品。
I return to remember how great writing disappears in serving a story, or when I’m struggling with how to get my point across just so.
我回想起伟大的写作是如何在为故事服务时消失的，或者当我努力思考如何表达我的观点时。
I’m rewarded with new resonance every time.
每次我都会得到新的共鸣。
Williams’s mother and Lucinda were born in 1953 in Louisiana, a place known most often for the destruction wrought by hurricanes; both families endured the stormy weather of violence, alcoholism, and generational trauma.
威廉姆斯的母亲和露辛达 1953 年出生于路易斯安那州，该地区因飓风造成的破坏而闻名。两个家庭都经历了暴力、酗酒和代际创伤的暴风雨。
When Williams writes, “She had been through crisis before.
威廉姆斯写道：“她以前经历过危机。
She had her ways of getting through it,” he’s talking abut his mother but alluding to Lucinda and the state of Louisiana, all three of which, on deeper inspection, reveal a special kind of resilience.
她有她自己的方式来度过难关，”他在谈论他的母亲，但也暗指露辛达和路易斯安那州，经过更深入的观察，这三个州都显示出一种特殊的韧性。
Writers grapple with how to convey inchoate and entangled ideas and feelings but Williams creates beauty out of the chaos by sheer repetition, just like listening to a song on repeat and discovering something new with each spin.
作家们努力思考如何传达不成熟的、纠结的想法和感受，但威廉姆斯通过纯粹的重复从混乱中创造出美，就像听一首重复的歌曲并在每次旋转时发现新的东西一样。
“It seems almost impossible that someone could spend 14 years writing 34 lines of poetry,” he writes.
“一个人花 14 年时间写出 34 行诗似乎几乎是不可能的，”他写道。
“But one of the things to understand about the work is that it isn’t as much about putting down words as it is about learning to see, reteaching yourself to look at the world, your own life, and find the shapes and patterns.” This story is about working hard to make something out of nothing, about naming things you don’t yet understand, about doing the work and paying deep attention in an attempt to find meaning and perhaps even earn a kind of peace.
“但关于这项工作需要理解的一件事是，它并不是要写下文字，而是要学会观察，重新教会自己观察世界、自己的生活，并找到形状和模式。”这个故事是关于努力从无到有地创造出一些东西，关于命名你还不理解的东西，关于做工作并高度关注以试图找到意义，甚至可能赢得一种平静。
These are universal truths so bold, you know you can’t let go.
这些都是如此大胆的普遍真理，你知道你不能放手。
—KS
—KS
## Dril Is Everyone.
## 钻头是每个人。
More Specifically, He’s a Guy Named Paul
更具体地说，他是一个名叫保罗的人
Nate Rogers | The Ringer | April 12, 2023 | 5,170 words
内特·罗杰斯 |铃声| 2023 年 4 月 12 日 | 5,170 字
When you ask people to name the profiles that have stuck with them, they nearly always point to pieces that hinge on proximity.
当你要求人们说出那些让他们印象深刻的个人资料时，他们几乎总是会指出那些取决于距离的部分。
That’s for good reason.
这是有充分理由的。
Spending hours or days in deep conversation with a subject (or simply fishing) generally works to break down the walls of image maintenance, creating enough unvarnished moments for a good writer to plumb.
花几个小时或几天的时间与一个主题进行深入对话（或者只是钓鱼）通常可以打破形象维护的壁垒，为优秀作家创造足够的朴素时刻来探索。
But there are many other ways to write a meaningful profile, as Nate Rogers’ piece about Paul Dochney proves.
但正如内特·罗杰斯 (Nate Rogers) 关于保罗·多赫尼 (Paul Dochney) 的文章所证明的那样，还有许多其他方法可以撰写有意义的个人资料。
Dochney is known by a large swath of the internet simply as Dril, a Twitter persona who for 15 years has polished satirical shitposting to a high sheen and in the process helped architect online culture’s dominant comic voice.
多赫尼在互联网上被大部分人简称为 Dril，他是一个 Twitter 人物，15 年来一直将讽刺性的垃圾贴打磨得光彩夺目，并在此过程中帮助构建了网络文化中占主导地位的喜剧声音。
It was a nearly uninterrupted piece of performance art, which makes the profile’s quotidian backdrop—an anonymous old-school L.A.
这是一件几乎不间断的行为艺术作品，这使得该简介的日常背景——一个匿名的老派洛杉矶。
greasy spoon—all the more delightful.
油腻的勺子——更令人愉快。
Like any profile, Rogers gives you the broad beats of Dochney’s upbringing and CV, dutifully threading in secondary interviews for texture and context, but the profile’s real value lies in how he contends with the idea of art in the age of social media.
与任何个人简介一样，罗杰斯向您介绍了多赫尼的成长经历和简历，尽职尽责地在二次采访中穿插了内容，以了解其质感和背景，但该个人简介的真正价值在于他如何应对社交媒体时代的艺术理念。
Dochney/Dril isn’t a provocateur; he’s a guy who likes making stuff.
多赫尼/德里尔不是一个挑衅者；他是一个煽动者。他是一个喜欢制作东西的人。
It’s just that in a twist of fate, Twitter became the place where that stuff first connected with people.
只是命运的转折，Twitter 成为了这些东西最初与人们联系的地方。
And with that platform teetering ever closer to obsolescence, Dochney’s next steps become even less certain.
随着该平台越来越接近过时，多赫尼的下一步行动变得更加不确定。
Amid a sea of stories that seek to examine the role of the “creator,” Rogers’ profile instead sets out to examine the creative urge—and is stronger for it.
在大量试图审视“创造者”角色的故事中，罗杰斯的简介却着眼于审视创造性的冲动——而且这种冲动更为强烈。
—PR
——公关
## Casual Luke Rides the Big Wave
## 休闲卢克乘风破浪
Gabriella Paiella | GQ Sports | June 13, 2023 | 5,175 words
加布里埃拉·派埃拉 |智群体育| 2023 年 6 月 13 日 | 5,175 字
Everyone loves a good underdog story, and this one is particularly delightful.
每个人都喜欢优秀的失败者故事，而这个故事尤其令人愉快。
The Eddie Aikay Big Wave Invitational is a surf contest that relies on the whims of nature—the waves in Waimea Bay must reach a butt-clenching height of a minimum of 40 feet for it to go ahead.
Eddie Aikay Big Wave Invitational 是一项依靠大自然奇思妙想的冲浪比赛——威美亚湾的海浪必须达到至少 40 英尺的高度才能举行。
When conditions are right, competitors race across the world to get there.
当条件合适时，参赛者会在世界各地竞相到达那里。
For North Shore local Luke Shepardson, the commute was less of an ordeal (although he still got caught in traffic, leaving his wife in the car and running down the road).
对于北岸当地人卢克·谢泼德森 (Luke Shepardson) 来说，通勤并没有那么痛苦（尽管他仍然遇到交通堵塞，把他的妻子留在车里，沿着路跑）。
It also happened to be his commute to work.
这也恰好是他上班的通勤时间。
That’s right: Luke worked as a lifeguard at the event, taking his turn to ride the waves between patching up other competitors.
没错：卢克在比赛中担任救生员，轮流在海浪中帮助其他参赛者。
He won the competition after riding a wave the size of a four-story building, beating the world’s greatest surfers without even being a professional on the circuit.
他在四层楼大小的波浪中赢得了比赛，甚至在没有成为职业选手的情况下击败了世界上最伟大的冲浪者。
After the win, Luke finished his shift and headed home to watch The Lion King with his kids.
获胜后，卢克下班回家，和孩子们一起观看《狮子王》。
As Gabriella Paiella explains in her enchanting profile, this was all very Luke, who “is known as ‘Casual Luke.’ In Hawaii.
正如加布里埃拉·帕伊拉 (Gabriella Paiella) 在她迷人的个人资料中所解释的那样，这一切都非常卢克，她“在夏威夷被称为‘休闲卢克’。”
Which is like being called ‘Neurotic Matt’ on the island of Manhattan.” Luke’s down-to-earth nature pervades this piece, with Paiella clearly coming to respect an attitude so different from other sports stars.
这就像在曼哈顿岛上被称为“神经质的马特”。”卢克的脚踏实地的本性贯穿了这件作品，帕埃拉显然开始尊重这种与其他体育明星截然不同的态度。
Luke got some money from the Eddie, but not enough for his life to be easy.
卢克从埃迪那里得到了一些钱，但还不足以让他的生活变得轻松。
Living with his wife and two kids in a one-bedroom apartment—in an ever more expensive area—he dreams of “descending back into obscurity” and buying his own home in this little slice of paradise.
他与妻子和两个孩子住在一套一居室的公寓里——在一个越来越昂贵的地区——他梦想着“回归默默无闻”，在这片小小的天堂里买下自己的家。
Nothing more.
而已。
You can see why, with Paiella painting a lovely picture of family life in this beautiful surf town.
您会明白其中的原因，Paiella 为这个美丽的冲浪小镇的家庭生活描绘了一幅可爱的图画。
Sure, it’s expensive, but the height of elegance is a flip-flop, and everyone knows everyone.
当然，它很贵，但优雅的高度是人字拖，而且每个人都认识每个人。
(“As Luke’s mom put it after the Eddie: I changed first- and second-place’s diapers.”) This profile oozes sun, sand, salt, and joy.
（“正如卢克的妈妈在埃迪之后所说的那样：我换了第一名和第二名的尿布。”）这个轮廓渗透着阳光、沙滩、盐和欢乐。
Everyone loves an underdog story, and everyone loves Casual Luke—after all, he has all the big stuff figured out.
每个人都喜欢失败者的故事，每个人都喜欢休闲卢克——毕竟，他已经弄清楚了所有的大事。
—CW
—CW
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。