Protected: The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat 29 – Camille Guthrie
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
...moreMonthly Archives:: January 2012
By the Time You’ve Seen It, It’s Too Late
Our best shot at understanding the foundation of obscenity law is through watching Sam Raimi’s 1981 horror film, The Evil Dead. In it, a group of (who else?) students stay (where else?) at a cabin in the woods. Amidst the jokes and sexual tension, they uncover a book of demonic spells and rites.
Unreliable Narrators
In reviewing RENEGADE: Henry Miller and the Making of “Tropic of Cancer,” Jeanette Winterson explores mythmaking in cultural criticism, unearthing who and what gets ignored in the process.
“There is beauty as well as hatred in “Cancer,” and it deserves its place on the shelf.
...moreEveryday Strangeness
“Her stories are distorted mirrors of domesticity, not because they skew the world but because they provide a magnified lens through which we can see what’s always been present but generally escapes notice.”
At The Millions, Anne K. Yoder reviews Diane Williams’ Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty, which was January’s Rumpus Book Club selection.
...morePublishing Anxieties
The Authors Guild argues that the book publishing “ecosystem” is in a precarious situation, largely due to Amazon’s growing industry dominance, which they put in the context of a more general abandonment of protections for non-consumer markets against monopolies.
...moreBen Marcus Reading Tonight
Ben Marcus will read from his new novel The Flame Alphabet at City Lights Bookstore. Tonight, 7 p.m.
“The Flame Alphabet invites the question: What is left of civilization when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love?
...moreW. Kamau Bell on Laughing, Thinking
KGO News’ Finch Files features comedian W. Kamau Bell, who discusses his use of humor to get people thinking about–and discussing–racism. Also, if you are in San Francisco, take note: this Thursday, Bell will be performing with Laughter Against the Machine at the Eureka Theatre as part of SF Sketchfest.
...moreA Peaceful, but Very Interesting Pursuit
Even after he published Prufrock and The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot continued to work his day job at a bank.
Donald, the Play
Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott co-wrote a novella about Donald Rumsfeld with Eric Martin. Now Donald is a play, in Durham, North Carolina.
Review in the News Observer and the Independent Weekly.
...moreA FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #41: Ferlinghetti Super Bowl Preview
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the iconic poet and co-founder of City Lights bookstore, was just warming up to pro football again when his home team, the San Francisco 49ers, lost this year’s NFC conference championship in heartbreaking fashion to the New York Giants.
A People of Savage Sentimentality
John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead should be hailed not simply as a fabulous piece of writing but as a landmark debut of a new genre, invented by others but perfected here.
...more
Mistress
Mistress, the second in a series of short movies based on the novel Happy Baby, directed by Stephen Elliott.
...moreDan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Science has determined aliens are probably being reclusive dicks.
Oh hello, albino hummingbird.
It is well documented that world’s fairs are awesome.
Here is a look at one of the first sound installations. It is pretty neat too.
...moreNew Kid in Town
My family moved to Lake Ronkonkoma in February, a time when friendships have already been formed and being the poor, shy new kid doesn’t really have the mystique to attract would-be friends that children’s novels lead you to believe. Instead, I quietly took my seat at the end of the long row of paired desks, kept my head down, and spoke to no one, like a dude just trying to get by in court-ordered rehab.
Protected: The Rumpus Book Club Discussion 33 – George Saunders
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
...moreOccupy Banned Books
In response to Arizona’s decision to ban ethnic studies and expunge associated texts from school shelves, the Occupy Wall Street Library is planning to flood Tucson with copies of the blacklisted books.
“Acting in solidarity with OccupyTucson and the students, parents, and teachers of the Tucson Unified School District we are going to send copies of the banned texts to Tucson for distribution.
...moreThe Rumpus Review of Sleeping Beauty
The opening image is of a young girl, twenty going on twelve, pale enough to make you worry if she’s ever seen the sun. She’s sitting in an antiseptic lab having a tube shoved ever so slowly down her mouth, inch by inch.
Ben Marcus Talks Speech Fever
SF Weekly interviews Ben Marcus about his new novel The Flame Alphabet, which we reviewed last week.
“I’m drawn to the ways that family members can speak to each other. It’s safer within a family, in general, to say the worst things, and get away with it.
...moreTed Wilson Reviews the World #121
SAND DOLLARS
★★★★★ (4 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing sand dollars.
...moreSunday Shifts
“I’ve had a night self, a secret self, for as long as I can remember.”
In case you weren’t around these parts yesterday, don’t miss Elissa Wald’s powerful essay “Night Shifts.”
...morePoem Forest
“Urban planners, artists, and citizens around the world must open poetic space within increasingly cramped, increasingly bottom-line-driven cities. Our political animalness gets claustrophobic. We require the commons to encounter each other and the physical landscape.”
Poem Forest involved participants reciting 15 lines from 2500 years of poetry at pre-established locations throughout the 50-acre old-growth forest that was recently renovated in the New York Botanical Garden.
...moreNotable San Francisco: 1/30-2/5
This week in San Francisco
Monday 1/30: The Public Library’s Sunset Branch holds a discussion with local historian Lorri Ungaretti on the neighborhood’s not-so-distant past as San Francisco’s wild lands. Free, 7pm.
...moreWrite What You Don’t Know
Ann Beattie’s collagist new novel, Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life, questions the inherent value of fiction.
...moreNotable New York, This Week 1/30-2/05
This week in New York, poet Phil Kaye at Louder Arts, Corset Busters reading, Dave Isay at Greenlight, poet Billy Collins at Strand Books, Nerd Nite speed-dating, James Shapiro on William Shakespeare, and KGB Bar Sunday Night Fiction.
The Rumpus Interview With Alex Gilvarry
Alex Gilvarry’s From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant (Viking) is an original, smart, and incisive novel about a Filipino fashion designer, Boyet Hernandez, who is held at Guantanamo Bay after authorities discover his ties to an alleged terrorist, Ahmed Quereshi, the man who funded Boyet’s fashion label.