Longreads Best of 2013: Best Old Story That I Didn't Read Until This Year

## Is John Lindsay Too Tall To Be Mayor?

## 约翰·林赛 (John Lindsay) 太高了，不能当市长吗？

Jimmy Breslin | New York magazine | July 28, 1969

吉米·布雷斯林 | 吉米·布莱斯林纽约杂志 | 1969 年 7 月 28 日

Mark Lotto (@marklotto) is a senior editor at Medium, and a former editor at GQ and The New York Times Op-Ed page.

Mark Lotto (@marklotto) 是 Medium 的高级编辑，也是《GQ》和《纽约时报》专栏的前编辑。

In the month since I happened upon Jimmy Breslin’s story about the 1969 New York City mayor’s race, I’ve probably reread it a dozen times; I’ve recommended it to college kids, writers of mine, fellow editors, and when Marshall Sella and I were working on our own story about Anthony Weiner’s tragicomic run, I thought about it every single damn day.

自从我偶然读到吉米·布雷斯林 (Jimmy Breslin) 关于 1969 年纽约市市长竞选的故事以来的一个月里，我可能已经重读了十几遍了。我把它推荐给大学生、我的作家、编辑同事，当我和马歇尔·塞拉在写我们自己的关于安东尼·韦纳悲喜剧的故事时，我每天都在思考它。

My love of it is almost hard to explain, but: It’s an adventure.

我对它的热爱几乎很难解释，但是：这是一次冒险。

It starts in a leisurely and apathetic place, ends with a startling announcement, and in between twists and turns through gossip, memoir, poetry, politics, polemic.

它从一个悠闲而冷漠的地方开始，以一个令人震惊的公告结束，并在八卦、回忆录、诗歌、政治、辩论之间曲折。

It’s beautiful; it’s funny; it’s angry; it’s self-lacerating; it looks at the city from 10,000 feet and then zooms in at the ice in a glass.

很美丽;这很有趣；它很生气；它是自撕裂的；它从 10,000 英尺的高空俯瞰这座城市，然后放大玻璃杯中的冰块。

Nowadays, most magazine features hit you with a nut graph somewhere near the bottom of the first section or the top of the second, and then spend 4,000 words fulfilling your exact expectations.

如今，大多数杂志专题都会在第一部分底部或第二部分顶部附近的某个地方用坚果图来吸引您，然后用 4,000 字来满足您的确切期望。

But Breslin surprises, again and again.

但布雷斯林却一次又一次地给人带来惊喜。

You don’t even know what the story is really about until you’ve read the last line.

在读完最后一行之前，你甚至不知道这个故事的真正含义。