<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"FacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterestHunger Reads Badge.jpg \n\nYou don\u2019t need me to tell you to read Norman Mailer\u2019s &amp;quot;Superman Comes to the Supermarket&amp;quot; or David Foster Wallace\u2019s &amp;quot;The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys, and the Shrub,&amp;quot; or George Saunders GQ story about living in a tent city. The canon\u2019s the canon. But I wanted to try to remember some of the stuff that gave me a jolt, a charge, that changed my sense of what writing could do. Here are just a few:\n\n &amp;quot;This Monumental Battle,&amp;quot; Michael Welch, OpenLetters.net, Nov. 7, 2000 \n\nPaul Tough used to run Open Letters, an online magazine, and for the half a year or so that it existed, it was my absolute favorite thing. You should go back and read all of it. But start with Michael Welch\u2019s dispatch from a very, very early morning rally for Al Gore in Tampa, Florida, just before the polls opened. This is how everyone writes about political events nowadays, like they\u2019re Seinfeld episodes built on hilariously mundane details, but back then this vantage point felt intimate and radical and abrupt. And even though it was written and published before anyone knew there would be a recount, there\u2019s a weird, silly giddiness here that presages the weird, silly, giddy 36 days when nobody knew what the fuck was going to happen next.\n\nBack in the car I tried to think of ways to get out of going. &amp;quot;5:30 in the morning?&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;That\u2019s an hour and a half from now. By the time Gore speaks our hangovers will be taking effect. And there\u2019s nowhere to get more alcohol. At my house, there\u2019s beer.&amp;quot; But she still wanted to go, and I still wanted her, so we headed back downtown.\nThe scene at Tampa Democratic Headquarters, across the parking lot from Jimmy\u2019s Sod, looked like an indie-rock concert was about to start: small P.A., small crowd of 150 people gathered in front of a small outdoor stage while another 200 lined up outside the gate to be frisked. Security weeded out the possible protesters and let campaign volunteers, the converted, in first, as &amp;quot;Love Train&amp;quot; blasted over the P.A.Three eight-year-old girls ran weaving in and out of the line screaming about Gore, more impatient to see the man than their parents were. &amp;quot;When can we see Al Gore?&amp;quot; the girls yelled. Hearing their little voices say his name reminded me that last week, I had reluctantly entered a conversation about the election and realized halfway through that I had been referring to Al Gore as &amp;quot;Bob Dole.&amp;quot; Nobody corrected me.\n\n&amp;quot;The Starr Report,&amp;quot; Independent counsel Kenneth Starr, Sept. 11, 1998\n\nThis was back when pornography was mostly still photos that took a long time to load and filthy Star Trek slash fiction, back when newspapers broke stories on newsprint, back when politics still had a kind of glamour and distance. But all of a sudden, one Friday afternoon, here was this thing, so massive it took a free afternoon and an Ethernet connection to download, so much dirtier than whatever Kirk was doing to Spock in the captain\u2019s cabin, so personal it immediately collapsed the distance between readers and the Oval Office, so hugely important it changed, well, everything, at least for a little while. And it was so much fun to read, and quote from, and read out loud, and generally get stupid with.\n\nIn the study, according to Ms. Lewinsky, the President &amp;quot;started to say something to me and I was pestering him to kiss me, because . . . it had been a long time since we had been alone.&amp;quot; The President told her to wait a moment, as he had presents for her. As belated Christmas gifts, he gave her a hat pin and a special edition of Walt Whitman\u2019s Leaves of Grass.\nMs. Lewinsky described the Whitman book as &amp;quot;the most sentimental gift he had given me . . . it\u2019s beautiful and it meant a lot to me.&amp;quot; During this visit, according to Ms. Lewinsky, the President said he had sent her Valentine\u2019s Day message in the Washington Post, and he talked about his fondness for &amp;quot;Romeo and Juliet.&amp;quot;Ms. Lewinsky testified that after the President gave her the gifts, they had a sexual encounter:[W]e went back over by the bathroom in the hallway, and we kissed. We were kissing and he unbuttoned my dress and fondled my breasts with my bra on, and then took them out of my bra and was kissing them and touching them with his hands and with his mouth.And then I think I was touching him in his genital area through his pants, and I think I unbuttoned his shirt and was kissing his chest. And then . . . I wanted to perform oral sex on him . . . and so I did. And then . . . I think he heard something, or he heard someone in the office. So, we moved into the bathroom.And I continued to perform oral sex and then he pushed me away, kind of as he always did before he came, and then I stood up and I said . . . I care about you so much; . . . I don\u2019t understand why you won\u2019t let me . . . make you come; it\u2019s important to me; I mean, it just doesn\u2019t feel complete, it doesn\u2019t seem right.Ms. Lewinsky testified that she and the President hugged, and &amp;quot;he said he didn\u2019t want to get addicted to me, and he didn\u2019t want me to get addicted to him.&amp;quot; They looked at each other for a moment. Then, saying that &amp;quot;I don\u2019t want to disappoint you,&amp;quot; the President consented. For the first time, she performed oral sex through completion.\n\n&amp;quot;WHO\u2019LL STOP THE DRAIN? Reflections on the art of going broke,&amp;quot; Vince Passaro, August 1998.\n\nThis isn\u2019t politics writing exactly, but it is political, this story about how a family of five found themselves $63,000 or so in the hole. Check the date: this was 10 years before unwieldy, untenable, booby-trapped debt brought down the entire economy. That was how much warning we had, or would have, if economists and bankers and White House officials had thought to read Passaro\u2019s last few funny, sad, dead-on paragraphs.\n\nNow that we are, in fact, broke on $100,000 a year, some will respond that I should have planned better, I should have spent less, I should send my children to schools I can afford.You can\u2019t argue with the logic or the morality of prudence. You can only point to a world where so many people find themselves incapable of practicing it. We look at other people we know, with their children in the same schools and living even more expensive lives than ours (better homes, better furniture, vacations, etc.) and the question is\u2014because in New York the silently mouthed question always is\u2014where\u2019s the money coming from? Parents? Grandparents? A trust? The way our parents taught us to live (if we had frugal parents, which many of us didn\u2019t) doesn\u2019t seem possible. The life they acquired, under a more favorable tax structure and sane real estate values, with one wage and a home and summer vacations, doesn\u2019t seem possible either.\nWhat does seem possible, as Beckett once wrote, is going on\u2014accepting joy where you can get it and fending off fear. If the debt of the country heaps up like so much slag during the economic good times, if the savings rate hits an all-time low during this boom, then what can we expect later, when the stock market finally, frightfully, &amp;quot;corrects,&amp;quot; when interest rates begin to rise, when people start to lose their jobs and wonder what they\u2019re going to do with a near-ghetto apartment they paid more than half a million dollars for? Perhaps we can call in the IMF, like Indonesia. Or simply charge up one last pile of goodies\u2014tents and Coleman stoves, lanterns and hunting knives, an almanac, a Bible, a dictionary, and a copy of the Gettysburg Address\u2014before we really do head for the hills.\n\nRead more on Death Race 2012\n\n&amp;quot;I just love him, and I knew when I heard he was coming that if I had to be standing on top of one of those little houses I\u2019d be somewhere near where he was.&amp;quot; They Really Love Obamacare in Pennsylvania \n\nBack When Presidents Looked Cool: George H.W. Bush\n\nToday\u2019s Political Firestorm: New Month, New Batch of Job Numbers\n\nResponding to Jobs Numbers in Poland (Ohio)\n\nFollow us @GQPolitics on Twitter for more updates on the campaign trail"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/hunger-reads-all-star-edition>