What kind of guys read gq

The late, great GQ editor in chief Art Cooper urged him to confront his demons, and the result was this gripping tale in which Ellroy attempts to gain closure, not only by re-opening the murder investigation but through reflecting on his troubled relationship with his mother. This story is nominally about coal—where does it come from? How is it produced? How can there just be this giant economy on which the country depends and yet we never really see it or hear about it? Why do they do what they do?

What do they dream of? And how do they react when a reporter comes down, underground, and shines a headlamp directly into their eyes? What I love about them is their humanity: they are stories about big structural things that are told on the most specific, personal, and empathetic level.

That Coast Guard rescuers are trained to make casual conversation with their targets, so as to keep survivors calm. That you can fit sixteen men in frigid-water suits—12 wreck survivors and the air staff—into a helicopter cabin with a five-foot ceiling. That it takes approximately three hours for a foot boat to sink, and approximately a lifetime to figure out what it means to survive the ordeal. Through the jokes and personal asides and relentlessly uncomfortable reporting, Taffy nails down a universal truth: that everyone tells themselves a story to cover up their own insecurities.

This is, to my mind, the best essay ever published in a magazine. As a revelatory piece of writing, it crackles. It explodes the wobbly parameters of what the concept of masculinity is supposed to look like. It surprises you, over and over again. And it does it all while taking you inside a contained world most of us will never frequent: the world of obscenely rich people.

The filmmaker picked this selection himself, all inspiring his masterpiece: The Grand Budapest Hotel. Stefan Zweig is an acclaimed Austrian writer with quite the life story: he rose to success in the Twenties through his natural eloquence with words, conversed with the likes of Freud a good few times and, tragically, took his own life alongside his wife, Lotte, in Cinema and literature have never been more at one.

If you want to see just how long Brits have gone there for a good time, you need to read The Berlin Novels. Story number two is Goodbye To Berlin , which, I must say, is the most gripping evocation of Nazi terror in literary form that my mind has absorbed. Both are pioneering tales not just for the German capital, but for understanding the societal shifts upon the brink of war.

Our top pick: In Watermelon Sugar , the text by Richard Brautigan, which explores life on the sweeter side literally. Tom Wolfe just gets satire. Baudelaire should be on your bookshelf — period. This collection of writings is a stimulating companion for anyone who basks in all things art. Baudelaire bases his ideas around the life of a painter, but incorporates all kinds of concepts — from fashion and literature to music and beauty — to relay his beliefs on expression.

The collated result is a vital lesson in the origins of modern selfhood. What's a good novel without some autobiographical context? Though the man may be renowned for his extensive discography, his impressive writing reached narrative forms too.

This publication traces the development of Lawrence Breavman, son of a Jewish Montreal family who seeks love and pleasure though not necessarily in that order. He parades through the streets of Montreal, embarking on a series of misadventures and slowly transitioning into adulthood in the process.

If you know Cohen's lyrics, it's not hard to guess how much beauty lies in these sentences. Oh, and if you're a diehard fan of JD Salinger's work, this is very similar and therefore a must. Published back in , it follows the lives of two girls in university who form an unconventional bond to say the least with an older, married couple. Frances and Bobbi are compelled by the intriguing orbit of two superiors: Melissa, a journalist, and Nick, a semi-fulfilled actor.

Joan Didion has long been praised for her raw outlook on American life. Still slotting into her favoured subject matter a dissection of societal intensity in late Sixties Los Angeles it explores the ironic downfalls of having complete freedom.

The narrative is centred around Maria Wyeth, a Hollywood actress who has lost control of her life and been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Didion is quick to delve into the backstory of her disaster, relaying her somewhat graceful descent into tragedy through dark circumstances and alternating perspectives. David Levesley. Deborah Levy has dubbed this her second "living autobiography" and it delves into the nuances of writing and womanhood with an enlightening voice that is bound to educate any reader.

She uses her self-focus to relay artistic approaches to work, all the while balancing the socially shifting ideas of what it means to be a woman with a family in our current century. Peace, love and creative freedom lie at the forefront of this fictionalised autobiography, which follows Pirsig and his son on a motorcycle journey through America.

The plot is simple enough, but Pirsig laces reflections of life, relationships, art and human values across it. This is an uplifting text and a compelling meditation on life itself. He went from being committed to a psychiatric hospital by his own parents to writing groundbreaking texts that are filled with magical explorations, bound to inspire any reader.

Exhibit A: The Alchemist. It follows the story of Santiago, a shepherd boy who embarks on a search for treasure through the Egyptian pyramids. It's about embracing the good omens that come your way and settling for nothing less than what you desire.

This is a very disturbing tale of isolation, desire and the line between heroism and vigilanteism. That lens disregards the sentimental threads of adulthood, causing them to unleash a ferocity upon men who betray their glory in the name of love.

Each is eight or nine pages long; he begins with Buddha and ends with Mumbai billionaire Dhirubhai Ambani. SE Hinton wrote her acclaimed coming-of-age tale at the incredibly apropos age of He falls into the latter group, having long accepted his social status as an outsider until one significant event causes him to reevaluate the conflicting attitudes that surround him.

All things pleasurable come from Paris. Oh, to live in the past. For an insight into some of the greatest writers of all time, fly to Paris via the Papa of literature. In University, I spent words arguing that Virginia Woolf pioneered a modern consciousness of clothing.

Trust me, I stand by it. Orlando was my main point of call for this and FYI, I would recommend this novel a thousand times over , but this week, I urge you to embark on one of her more transcendent reading experiences. Aka: The Waves. Pretty stimulating, though. Disclaimer: years kind of flies by as soon as you pick up this novel.

This is a world-renowned piece of literature, guaranteed to shape your outlook on history and offer a complex understanding of the passing of time. The reason: they are pure insanity. And so I recommend his psychotic classic, Naked Lunch. Thought On The Road by Kerouac was wild? Give Naked Lunch a try — your brain will be on the floor. Navigating desire and sense of self within a heteronormative public sphere, this novel offers questions about society, but also answers for those who need them, from its very first page.

Is he a monster, as many of the characters find him? Centred around an American sergeant and a young British girl during the Second World War, it infuses compassion with neglect, peace with war, vulnerability with power. Salinger was a pretty private author during his time, but the events of his own life map this narrative almost perfectly. Held by few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded. New Power : operates like a current.

Made by many. It is open, participatory and peer-driven. We asked them three questions. Apple is still wildly successful. In fact, for most brands operating today, learning how to get closer to their consumers or constituents and engaging them as they would a community — with transparency, openness and a willingness to collaborate — is key to their success. There are many missteps, some funnier than others. If they had embraced the name Boaty McBoatface despite its absurdity and engaged a community of people around the world, they might have been able to energise a whole new generation of people.

If you could give the Democrats one piece of advice for beating Trump at the next presidential election, what would it be? Trump was able to harness the intensity of his crowd. The biggest spike in positive sentiment for Trump came when the Access Hollywood tape was released, which shows how intense his supporters were. The Democrats should encourage progressives to be creative in developing their own messages.

They are more likely to spread in a world of meme drops, not sound bites. An elegy for a lost city — Eighties New York — that still seems strangely prevalent. Bill Prince.

Since , Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist on both the page and the screen have given Mohsin Hamid a global audience, from the US, where he was educated, to Britain, where he was born, via Lahore, where his family come from. In a departure from his first three novels, Hamid uses magical realism to describe how displaced people move around the globe refugees seek passage through secret "doors" opening in their dangerous home cities to safer locations, whether it's the beaches of Mykonos or the refugee camps of mainland Europe.

It's a bold narrative move but one which allows him to focus the reader's attention on his real subject: a textured examination of what it's like for ordinary people to live through a city moving from liberalism to extremism, and a subtle and moving examination of how human relationships endure and falter under unimaginable pressures.

I might have to dump my life time subscription of Mens Health and trend into that instead. I once flicked through a copy whilst waiting in the doctors though and, well its why that was my one and only experience of said magazine. I used to read GQ in the 80s. The mix of short fiction, together with the aspirational fashion content used to inspire me a bit.

Once Reagan was out of office, though, I lost interest. A time came when I realised I looked a twonk and that I read a magazine for twonks — it all stopped. Oh yeah, I discovered drugs and raves. Viewing 31 posts - 1 through 31 of 31 total. Pigface Free Member. Posted 9 years ago. It found that 63 per cent of Instagram users were miserable and that social media in general was more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol. Rates of anxiety and depression, it noted, had risen 70 per cent among young people as a result.

Our results back that up. Every single age group saw social media more negatively than positively, with Instagram users, particularly, the most likely to see social media negatively — 40 per cent of them, compared to 28 per cent of Facebook users. The most negative corner of the web? Step forward users of Reddit, who should know. Suddenly, many of us have found ourselves an awkward fit for a world that used to be tailor-made.

Even our role models are not quite what you would imagine. Is masculinity in crisis? Handily, we asked that too. Almost a third 32 per cent of all respondents agreed, in some form or another, that it was. But just over a third 35 per cent disagreed. Most, in fact, agreed with neither strongly. Alternatively, choose from one of our fantastic digital-only offers, available across all devices.

From November see a month's worth of content on what it means to be a man, on GQ. It just didn't work. My experience of interviewing Jordan Peterson. It's time to be grown up about surrogacy.