IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and comfy chair. We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour this Sunday.
1. What’s it really like to work in an Indian call centre?
Andrew Marantz on his summer in a Gurgaon telephone farm (Mother Jones).
At work, Lekha explained, we would answer to non-Indian names. Some people picked names that sounded like their own (Adarsh became Adam), while others took the name of a favorite celebrity. One young man, a smoker, chose “Joe” in honor of Joe Camel.
2. The loneliness of the speed hot-dog eating champion
Luke O’Brien on the strange existence of Takeru Kobayashi, eater extraordinaire (Deadspin).
When I’d asked to see the contents of his refrigerator the day before, Kobayashi demurred. This was his inner sanctum. It was where he prepared himself for what he viewed as “combat — my stomach against the food.”
3. How to find love on the internet
Nick Paumgarten on the rise and rise of online dating sites (New Yorker).
They post old photographs of themselves, or photos of other people, or click on “athletic” rather than “could lose a few pounds,” or identify themselves as single when they are anything but.
4. The men who would make you invisible
Bruce Barcott on the strange science behind camouflage, and the art of not being seen (Atlantic).
A woman entered the room and walked behind the screen so that her head stuck out above it. And then I watched as her body disappeared.
Adam Haslett signs up for a luxury boat ride with a group of right-wing Christians and a former US presidential candidate (Prospect).
Earlier, I saw Debby from Kansas City and Wendy from Phoenix shake their asses before a cheering crowd to win a Raspberry Crème Brûlée Martini.
6. The man who pretended to be a boy
Michael J Mooney on the strange case of Jerry Joseph, a high-school basketball star who turned out to be somebody else entirely (GQ).
Principal Garcia remembers Jerry vividly, even among the 2,500 kids at Permian. It wasn’t just his height. He was full around the chest; his face was thick. “Like, well, like a full-grown man,” he says.
…AND A CLASSIC READ FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Last year, Jay Caspian Kang wrote about the dizzying highs and numbing lows of gambling, in The Morning News
I was sitting in the driver’s seat of my Subaru Outback, in a massive parking lot in Commerce, California. Twelve thousand dollars lay wadded up in the glove compartment. I was trying to decide if I had what it took to drive home.
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