Best American Crime Writing: Long-Lost Magazines
the true crime that's worth your time
I finally got my mitts on a copy of the February 1994 issue of Vibe. The mag isn’t that rare, but to find it in readable condition for under $100 is tough — probably because memorabilia dealers still do a very brisk business in Tupac Shakuriana, and he’s the cover boy on the issue.
But the Tupac article by Kevin Powell (yes, “that one”) isn’t the reason I’ve had my eye on a decent copy of the issue for so long; it’s another longread therein, on the murder of Michael Jordan’s father. I’ve come tantalizingly close to scans of it, read the same summary of it half a dozen times, even marveled at the fact that the author, Kathy Dobie, is now a writer for Law & Order: SVU…but I’ve never actually read the damn thing. I couldn’t. It’s not online; it’s not in a collection.
I can think of a number of pieces like that from the 1989-1995 period, that stuck with me as hall-of-fame pieces of magazine writing but somehow missed the digitization window, and didn’t end up in any anthologies somehow (I’ve heard several examples on Listen To Sassy of pieces from a bit earlier that nevertheless only exist in the LTS visual aids). There’s also a handful of old-school pieces like Truman Capote’s so-called hit job on Brando in The New Yorker that aren’t true crime, but in the genre that concerns US around here, what’s your long-lost magazine issue? What Vanity Fairs do you wish you’d saved?
If we put together a Best American Crime Writing: Goddammit Ma I Told You Not To Recycle That Pile, what articles or issues go in the book? — SDB