Longreads Best of 2012: David Roth

David Roth is a co-founder of, writer for and editor at the sports website The Classical.

大卫·罗斯 (David Roth) 是体育网站 The Classical 的联合创始人、撰稿人和编辑。

He writes columns for Sports On Earth and Vice, co-writes The Daily Fix blog-column for the Wall Street Journal online, and writes for The Awl, GQ and other places when there’s time and when they’ll have him.

他为《Sports On Earth》和《Vice》撰写专栏，为《华尔街日报》网络版共同撰写博客专栏《The Daily Fix》，并在有时间时为《The Awl》、《GQ》和其他地方撰稿。

He’s on Twitter, a lot, @david_j_roth.

他经常使用 Twitter，@david_j_roth。

I don’t keep track, although I probably should, but I’m fairly certain that I read more words in 2012 than I have in any of the previous years of my life.

我没有记录，尽管我可能应该记录，但我相当确定我在 2012 年读到的单词比我一生中任何一个年份都多。

Some of this is because I think that’s the best thing to do when presented with words and most of it is because I’ve read so much stuff for The Classical, which I started with some other people a little over a year ago; a really healthy (or unhealthy, depending) percentage of the words I’ve read have been for that site, and I’ve read a lot of them as an editor.

其中一些是因为我认为这是在用文字呈现时最好的做法，而大部分是因为我读了很多关于《古典》的东西，一年多前我和其他一些人开始了这本书；我读过的单词中有相当一部分是针对该网站的，而且我作为编辑读过很多这些单词。

I suppose I should recuse myself from mentioning any of these pieces, and I’ll do so after acknowledging that the majority of my favorite new writers of 2012 were people I worked with on essays written for The Classical.

我想我应该避免提及这些文章中的任何一篇，并且在承认 2012 年我最喜欢的新作家中的大多数都是与我一起为《古典》撰写论文的人之后，我才会这样做。

That’s all the plugging-of-site I can do without getting embarrassed.

这就是我在不感到尴尬的情况下可以做的所有网站堵塞工作。

Best Crime Story

最佳犯罪故事

The New Yorker is The New Yorker, and generally seems to operating at a level a tick or two above virtually any other magazine.

《纽约客》就是《纽约客》，其运营水平似乎比任何其他杂志都高出一两点。

I am always amazed at the way it turns itself into an ultra-fatuous luxury publication, all drollery about shopping and famous people’s kids and whatever, for a couple of issues a year, but the depth of the talent on that invisible masthead, and the quality of the work that all those people do, is astonishing.

我总是对它变成了一本超级愚蠢的奢侈品出版物感到惊讶，一年出版几期，全都是关于购物和名人的孩子的滑稽故事，但那个看不见的报头上的人才深度，以及所有这些人所做的工作质量，是令人惊讶的。

The stories that have stuck with me the most from the magazine over the past year, and which are thus pretty much the best thing I read in a magazine over that period, both have to do with crime.

过去一年里，这本杂志上最让我印象深刻的故事，也是我那段时间在杂志上读到的最好的故事，都与犯罪有关。

One is Sarah Stillman’s piece on the unconscionably irresponsible misuse and exploitation of wildly unprepared (and very much in danger) informants by law enforcement.

其中一篇是莎拉·斯蒂尔曼（Sarah Stillman）关于执法部门对毫无准备（且非常危险）的线人的不合理、不负责任的滥用和剥削的文章。

The other is Nadya Labi’s story on the bleak, wild life of Detroit hit-man Vincent Smothers.

另一个是娜迪亚·拉比 (Nadya Labi) 讲述底特律杀手文森特·斯莫瑟斯 (Vincent Smothers) 荒凉、狂野的生活的故事。

(The latter is, sadly, only available to subscribers in the magazine’s online archive.)

（遗憾的是，后者仅提供给该杂志在线档案的订阅者。）

There are several larger critiques embedded within each piece—the drug war and its warping effect on a wide array of priorities, in both cases—all of which emerge organically and forcefully through the simple forward movement of the stories.

每篇文章中都嵌入了一些更大的批评——在这两种情况下，毒品战争及其对一系列优先事项的扭曲影响——所有这些都通过故事简单的前进运动有机而有力地出现。

There isn’t necessarily a dazzling sentence or an image or anything similarly flashy that still sizzles in the memory months or even days after reading, but the stories stick all the same.

不一定有令人眼花缭乱的句子、图像或任何类似的华而不实的东西在读完数月甚至数天后仍然在记忆中嘶嘶作响，但故事仍然如此。

So, yeah: two great New Yorker stories, in a year that had a great many.

所以，是的：《纽约客》的两篇精彩故事在这一年里发生了很多。

Best Political/Media/Political Media Story

最佳政治/媒体/政治媒体故事

There was, certainly, a great deal of good political writing done during the endless election season.

当然，在无休无止的选举季节里，写出了很多优秀的政治文章。

I don’t remember any of it, and what I remember I don’t remember particularly fondly, but given the number of words written—all those anonymous strategists and undermine-y underlings speaking tartly off-the-record; the reverent profiles and irreverent takedowns; the trends and themes and memes and so on—it would be surprising if some long piece or two in there wasn’t especially good.

我什么都不记得了，我所记得的也不是特别美好地记得，但考虑到所写的字数——所有那些匿名的战略家和破坏性的下属在私下里尖酸刻薄地说着；虔诚的形象和不敬的击倒；趋势、主题和迷因等等——如果其中有一两篇长篇文章不是特别好，那将是令人惊讶的。

Much better and more illuminating, at least to me, was Alex Pareene’s essay for The Baffler on the pervasive and mostly pernicious influence of the repellent and vexingly influential Politico seemed to distill all the things that were infuriating, facile and otherwise wrong about the way we read the election, day by day.

至少对我来说，亚历克斯·帕林（Alex Pareene）在《迷惑者》（The Baffler）上发表的文章更好、更有启发性，这篇文章探讨了令人反感且具有令人烦恼影响力的《政治报》（Politico）的普遍且大多是有害的影响，似乎提炼出了我们日复一日解读选举的方式中所有令人愤怒、轻率和错误的东西。

It was also a lot of fun to read.

读起来也很有趣。

Which, about that:

哪一个，关于那个：

Best Stylistic Trend

最佳风格趋势

There’s no fixed way to write anything, of course.

当然，写任何东西都没有固定的方法。

There’s a way that some types of pieces generally sound—a profile reads like this, a review reads like that—and many magazines have a house intonation and perspective, if not necessarily a house style.

某些类型的文章通常听起来是这样的——简介是这样读的，评论是这样读的——而且许多杂志都有一种家庭语调和视角，即使不一定是一种家庭风格。

What I’ve enjoyed most about the essays I’ve most enjoyed over the last year, though, is the way in which they reflect an emerging style of colloquial, unpretentious, deceptively erudite writing that’s flourishing on the web.

不过，去年我最喜欢的文章中，我最喜欢的是它们反映了网络上盛行的一种新兴的口语、朴实、博学的写作风格。

This is there in Pareene’s essay on Politico or John Lanchester’s consideration (it’s adapted from a speech) of Karl Marx at 193 years of age in the London Review of Books.

帕林在 Politico 上发表的文章或约翰·兰彻斯特 (John Lanchester) 在《伦敦书评》上对 193 岁的卡尔·马克思的思考（改编自一篇演讲）中都有这样的内容。

It’s also in Adrian Chen’s dazzling piece for Gawker on Reddit, its troll culture and the man who was its foremost embodiment, or in the writing of Maria Bustillos at The Awl—start with her thumbnail history of James Thurber’s Walter Mitty and its weird afterlife, or on the deathless and wearying discursive concern with irony.

Adrian Chen 为 Reddit 上的 Gawker 撰写的令人眼花缭乱的文章、巨魔文化及其最重要体现的人，或者 The Awl 的 Maria Busstillos 的文章中也体现了这一点——从她对詹姆斯·瑟伯 (James Thurber) 的沃尔特·米蒂 (Walter Mitty) 的简略历史及其怪异的来世开始，或者对讽刺的永恒而令人厌倦的话语关注。

Of those, only the latter two live entirely on the web.

其中，只有后两者完全存在于网络上。

They’re not about similar things, or written for similar publications or audiences, or really even written in ways that outwardly have much in common.

它们并不是关于相似的事情，或者是为相似的出版物或读者编写的，甚至是以表面上有很多共同点的方式编写的。

But there’s an energy and vitality to all of them, a sense that the people writing respect their obligation to tell the stories they’ve chosen, but also that they’re intensely into those stories.

但他们所有人都充满活力和活力，感觉写作者尊重他们讲述自己选择的故事的义务，而且他们对这些故事有着强烈的兴趣。

There are some good jokes and striking sentences and a great deal of elegant (or infuriating) and illusion-free (or opinionated) thought in all of them, but there is not show-offery or grandiosity or stuffiness.

其中有一些很好的笑话和引人注目的句子，还有大量优雅的（或令人愤怒的）和不带幻想的（或固执己见的）思想，但没有炫耀、浮夸或古板。

They’re stories told and arguments made by people who seem impassioned and informed, and told in the voices—different-sounding, as they should be—of people alive in and engaged with the world and the ideas loose in it, and conversant with both in the fast, open way of the web.

它们讲述的故事和论点是由那些看起来充满激情、见多识广的人讲述的，他们的声音——听起来应该是不同的——是生活在这个世界和其中的思想的人们，他们在快速、开放的网络方式中熟悉这两者。

I don’t know, maybe it’s just good writing.

我不知道，也许只是写得好。

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

阅读 Longreads 2012 年度最佳嘉宾精选。