Six months after Gattino disappeared my husband and I were sitting in a restaurant having dinner with some people he had recently met, including an intellectual writer we both admired. The writer had considered buying the house we were living in and he wanted to know how we liked it. I said it was nice but it had been partly spoiled for me by the loss of our cat. I told him the story and he said, ‘Oh, that was your trauma, was it?’

I said yes. Yes, it was a trauma.

You could say he was unkind. You could say I was silly. You could say he was priggish. You could say I was weak.

From Mary Gaitskill’s wonderful #longreads/#sadreads “Lost Cat” in Granta’s summer 2009 issue.

The Longreads team worked really hard to put this ebook together, and I am proud to see it listed as a bestseller in Amazon’s “Essays” category among names like David Sedaris, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Joan Didion. Buy, buy, buy!

Please come to this so I can see all your pretty faces.

(Source: longreads)

longreads:

Mike Dang is editor of Bundle and managing editor for Longreads. See his longreads page here.

***

I’ve read a lot of great longreads this year, but I know that a longread is truly special when I become its biggest cheerleader. I’ll casually slip the story into conversations, teasing…

Oh, I guess it’s my turn to point out things I’ve read and liked.

longreads:

It had taken a while for the world to realize what an amazing treasure Steve Jobs was. But Jobs knew it all along. That was part of what was so unusual about him. From at least the time he was a teenager, Jobs had a freakish chutzpah. At age 13, he called up the head of HP and cajoled him into giving Jobs free computer chips. It was part of a lifelong pattern of setting and fulfilling astronomical standards. Throughout his career, he was fearless in his demands. He kicked aside the hoops that everyone else had to negotiate and straightforwardly and brazenly pursued what he wanted. When he got what he wanted — something that occurred with astonishing frequency — he accepted it as his birthright.

“Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011.” — Steven Levy, Wired

See also: “Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An Asshole).” Brian Lam, The Wirecutter

Both of these pieces made me cry at my desk this morning. To be fair, I also cry when I come to the office and there IS NO COFFEE.