Tag Archives: Esquire Magazine

Current Affairs, Memories & History, Pleasures, Sports

Coach K on Retirement, Redeem Team, Dream Team, North Carolina

Even without his whistle, it turns out that the greatest hoops coach of all time still likes to let you know who’s in charge.

By Brady Langmann, Published: Oct 7, 2022

“In retirement, although I’m not retired,” clarifies Krzyzewski, “I’m doing all the things I want to do.”
Tom Pennington//Getty Images

Exactly 142 days after Coach K became Mr. K for the first time in nearly 50 years, Mike Krzyzewski is telling me about his MasterClass. John Legend did one! So did Robin Roberts. The next day, he’ll jet off to Vegas, speak at a convention, play video poker, and take his wife, Mickie, out to eat. When Krzyzewski returns to Durham, you’ll find the man in his yard, pruning trees and handing out kibbles to his puppy—named . . . wait for it . . . Coach—who, of fucking course, “is actually a really good athlete.” Retirement! It happens. Even for a guy who won 1,202 college basketball games.

“In retirement, although I’m not retired,” Krzyzewski, 75, clarifies, “I’m doing all the things I want to do.” I’d take a wild guess that talking to me wasn’t numero uno on his post-Duke bucket list. But he picked up the phone to promote Netflix’s The Redeem Team, out now, which gives the Last Dance treatment to the 2008 men’s U. S. basketball team. In a documentary with mega personalities like Carmelo Anthony wisecracking throughout, it’s the team’s head coach, Krzyzewski, who gets all the holy-shit moments—like, for example, scaring LeBron James straight by bringing in Iraq vets to talk to the squad about their idea of service. “I was very emotional at different points,” Krzyzewski says of reliving it all, “obviously in watching the footage of Kobe and his little girl and his wife.”

Source: https://www.esquire.com/sports/a41456545/coach-k-interview-retirement/

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Food & Drink, Memories & History, Television

Unauthorized Anthony Bourdain Biography Publishes His Final Texts

“I hate my fans, too. I hate being famous. I hate my job,” Bourdain wrote to his ex-wife, Ottavia Busia-Bourdain.

By Brady Langmann, Published: Sep 27, 2022

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Bourdain

More than four years have passed since the death of Anthony Bourdain, who died by suicide in June 2018 while on location in France filming his CNN series, Parts Unknown. Since then, questions about his death have fueled explorations of the late chef’s life and work, from the documentary film, Roadrunner, to Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, both released last year.

On October 11, we’ll see the release of what’s reportedly the first unauthorized biography of Bourdain: Charles Leerhsen’s Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain, published by Simon & Schuster. On Tuesday, The New York Times published a preview of the book, which details Leerhsen’s reporting of the biography, many of the sources who spoke to the author for the book (and some who refused), and texts Bourdain sent in his final days. According to the Times, Bourdain’s family is already unhappy with the book, with his brother, Christopher, emailing the publisher in August, “calling the book hurtful and defamatory fiction, and demanding that it not be released until Mr. Leerhsen’s many errors were corrected.”

Source: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a41412445/anthony-bourdain-unauthorized-biography-texts/

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Libraries, Memories & History, Times They Are A-Changing

80 Books Every Man Should Read | Esquire

These books will change you and challenge you, but above all entertain you.

By The Esquire Editors, July 11, 2022

By Mike Kim

Back in 2015, Esquire published a list of “80 Books Every Man Should Read.” It wasn’t our finest moment. The list claimed to be “utterly biased,” and indeed it was.

We received criticism from every corner of the Internet, and we deserved it. Only one title (A Good Man Is Hard to Find) was written by a woman, and fewer than ten were written by men of color. It was also a pretty boring set.

In 2016, we published a new and improved list: “80 Books Every Person Should Read,” selected by eight female literary luminaries including Michiko Kakutani, Roxane Gay, and Lauren Groff. It was a good list: surprising, dynamic, and inclusive.

But this spring, when we started planning Esquire.com’s first ever Summer Fiction Week (a digital spin on the Summer Reading Issues we published back in the eighties), we asked ourselves: should we not just make our own amends?

Source: 80 Books Every Man Should Read

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Pleasures

50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time – What Is The Best Science Fiction Book Ever Written? | Esquire

Plenty of imitators have tried to match the heights of our No.1, but none have come close.

By Adrienne Westenfeld, March 21, 2022

Courtesy

Since time immemorial, mankind has been looking up at the stars and dreaming, but it was only centuries ago that we started turning those dreams into fiction.

And what remarkable dreams they are—dreams of distant worlds, unearthly creatures, parallel universes, artificial intelligence, and so much more. Today, we call those dreams science fiction.

Science fiction’s earliest inklings began in the mid-1600s, when Johannes Kepler and Francis Godwin wrote pioneering stories about voyages to the moon. Some scholars argue that science fiction as we now understand it was truly born in 1818, when Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, the first novel of its kind whose events are explained by science, not mysticism or miracles.

Now, two centuries later, sci-fi is a sprawling and lucrative multimedia genre with countless sub-genres, such as dystopian fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, and climate fiction, just to name a few. It’s also remarkably porous, allowing for some overlap with genres like fantasy and horror.

Sci-fi brings out the best in our imaginations and evokes a sense of wonder, but it also inspires a spirit of questioning. Through the enduring themes of sci-fi, we can examine the zeitgeist’s cultural context and ethical questions. Our favorite works in the genre make good on this promise, meditating on everything from identity to oppression to morality. As the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing said, “Science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.”

Source: 50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time – What Is The Best Science Fiction Book Ever Written?

Current Affairs, Film & Movies, Memories & History, Television

William Hurt Was a Weird, Sensitive, Complicated Guy in the ’80s | Esquire

On the brink of greatness with Curse of the Spider Woman, William Hurt struggled to get free of his web.

By Jack Kroll, Mar 14, 2022

With Blair Brown in Altered States, 1980
Moviestore/ShutterstockEsquire

This article originally appeared in the October 1986 issue of Esquire. You can find every Esquire story ever published at Esquire Classic.

“Look, I’m not a talented man,” says William Hurt. “You know it and I know it.”

“I don’t know it,” I say.

“Well, you should know it,” says Hurt.“You’re not a talented man?” I press him.“Well, I’m not that talented a man,” he says.“Well then, what are you?” I ask.“I’m a focused man,” he says.

We are sitting in an Italian restaurant on New York’s Upper East Side, and Bill Hurt is engaged in one of his favorite pastimes—putting himself down. Few who have seen him act would agree with his estimate of his ability. And as for being “focused,” well, that’s the last word many people would use to describe Hurt.

The actor is a walking paradox: the owner of one of the cleanest, clearest, least self-indulgent acting styles in the business, Hurt is legendary for the far-out, labyrinthine, metaphysical flights of fancy that have driven interviewers on several continents into a state of mumbling meemies. WILLIAM HURT: ACTOR WITH THE ATOM BRAIN! blazed a headline in one English magazine.

Another interviewer succinctly summed up the experience of listening to Hurt: “He sounds like a man who has just smoked his first joint.”

Source: William Hurt Was a Weird, Sensitive, Complicated Guy in the ’80s

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Love & Relationships, Web & Technology

Why Novelists Are Embracing Substack – Can Substack Reinvent the Social Internet?

But the success of their migration depends on whether—or not—the social Internet can function like a writing workshop.

By Adrienne Westenfeld, Mar 9, 2022

Getty Images

When George Saunders went out to his writing shed to start a Substack newsletter last fall, for the first time in a long time, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, famous for such works as Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December, didn’t know what he was doing.

“I’ll just write 80 posts and then take a vacation,” he thought to himself.

But upon hitting publish, something surprised him: the comments section exploded, with thousands of readers chiming in on his inaugural post (that still-growing comment count currently sits at 3091).

Everywhere from Scotland to India to Australia, devoted followers and aspiring writers wrote in with passionate messages, eager to connect with one of their literary heroes.

Suddenly “don’t read the comments,” that old digital age chestnut, felt like the worst advice in the world. There was nowhere else Saunders would rather be than here, chopping it up with commenters young and old, near and far, longtime fans and first-time callers.

Source: Why Novelists Are Embracing Substack – Can Substack Reinvent the Social Internet?