Evan Kindley: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Evan Kindley is the managing editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books.

埃文·金德利 (Evan Kindley) 是《洛杉矶书评》的总编辑。

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Ariel Levy, “Basta Bunga Bunga” (June 6, 2011) – The New Yorker

Ariel Levy，“Basta Bunga Bunga”（2011 年 6 月 6 日）——《纽约客》

A great piece about what proved to be the Last Days of Berlusconi’s Italy, with all the virtues of the typical artfully triangulated New Yorker profile (as recently codified by John McPhee) plus a refreshing willingness to let Levy herself play a crucial role.

这是一部关于贝卢斯科尼意大利最后日子的伟大作品，具有典型的巧妙三角剖析的《纽约客》形象的所有优点（正如约翰·麦克菲最近编纂的那样），再加上让利维本人发挥关键作用的令人耳目一新的意愿。

(Difficult to avoid, perhaps, when the people you interview say things like “I see you are a girl—I want to kiss you!

（也许很难避免，当你采访的人说“我看到你是个女孩——我想吻你！

…

……

This is nature.”)

这就是自然。”）

Adam Plunkett, “King of the Ghosts” (October 7, 2011) – n+1

Adam Plunkett，“幽灵之王”（2011 年 10 月 7 日）- n+1

Moving, passionate, yet determinedly unsentimental remembrance of David Foster Wallace by one of his students at Pomona that doubles as a review — the best I’ve seen — of his frustrating posthumous semi-opus The Pale King.

大卫·福斯特·华莱士在波莫纳的一位学生对大卫·福斯特·华莱士的追忆令人感动、充满激情，但绝对不带感情色彩，同时也是对他令人沮丧的遗作《苍白之王》的评论——这是我见过的最好的评论。

Whether or not you care a whit about Wallace, there’s a lot to be learned here about the anguish of mentorship: “He expressed some of the most meaningful things he said to me in some of his sentences most likely to seem meaningless.

无论你是否关心华莱士，关于导师的痛苦，这里有很多值得学习的地方：“他在一些看似毫无意义的句子中表达了他对我说过的一些最有意义的事情。

‘It means a lot that it means a lot,’ ‘I feel for you.’”

“这意味着很多，这意味着很多，”“我对你有感觉。”

Drake Bennett, “David Graeber, the Anti-Leader of Occupy Wall Street” (October 26, 2011) – Bloomberg Businessweek

德雷克·贝内特 (Drake Bennett)，“大卫·格雷伯，占领华尔街运动的反领袖”（2011 年 10 月 26 日）——《彭博商业周刊》

“David Graeber likes to say that he had three goals for the year: promote his book, learn to drive, and launch a worldwide revolution.

“大卫·格雷伯喜欢说他今年有三个目标：推广他的书，学习驾驶，并发起一场全球革命。

The first is going well, the second has proven challenging, and the third is looking up.” I, too, have failed to learn to drive in 2011.

第一个进展顺利，第二个被证明具有挑战性，第三个正在抬头。” 2011年我也未能学会开车。

Rob Horning, “The Failure Addict” (November 18, 2011) – The New Inquiry

Rob Horning，“失败瘾君子”（2011 年 11 月 18 日）——新调查

I’m not sure I buy Horning’s fundamental premise, that “Papa” John Phillips was “a harbinger of what microcelebrity may do to the rest of us,” but the two halves of this neatly turned essay — a knowledgeable account of Phillips’s sordid solo career and a lucid analysis of how an increasing amount of our (increasingly internet-dependent) sociality is getting redefined as “sharing” (“It’s sharing when we confess something; it’s sharing when we link to someone else’s work; it’s sharing when we simply express approval for something; it’s sharing when a social-media service automatically announces some action we took”) — are each worth the price of admission.

我不确定我是否相信霍宁的基本前提，即“爸爸”约翰·菲利普斯是“小名人可能对我们其他人做的事情的先驱”，但这篇巧妙转变的文章的两个部分——对菲利普斯肮脏的个人职业生涯的知识渊博的描述，以及对我们越来越多的（日益依赖互联网的）社交如何被重新定义为“分享”的清晰分析（“当我们坦白某件事时，它是分享；当我们链接到别人的作品时，这就是分享；当我们只是表达对某件事的认可时，这就是分享；当社交媒体服务自动宣布我们采取的某些行动时，这就是分享”）——每一个都值得入场。

Sy Montgomery, “Deep Intellect: Inside the Mind of an Octopus” (November/December 2011) – Orion Magazine

Sy Montgomery，“深层智慧：章鱼的内心深处”（2011 年 11 月/12 月）– Orion 杂志

My nickname around the Los Angeles Review of Books office is “the Octopus.” Read this and draw your own conclusions.

我在洛杉矶书评办公室的绰号是“章鱼”。 阅读本文并得出您自己的结论。

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Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December.

整个 12 月，分享您自己的 2011 年 5 首长读作品。

Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook.

只需在 Twitter、Tumblr 或 Facebook 上标记#longreads 即可。