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We’d like to know the last book you loved and why. Send us a writeup of the last book you truly loved — a little bit book review and a lot about why you loved it — along with a short bio. We’ll publish our favorites in The Rumpus blog. No length requirements, but please refrain from reviewing books written by people you know.
Email to: Marie AT therumpus.net
I can’t believe it took me so long to check for Big Picture’s eclipse photos.
This has been a weird week for things on auction. exhibit b: Reagan’s blood.
Holy wine Jesus popsicles (sacrilicious).
The obvious solution to weeds is a laser.
Robot fish will save the world.
On Christmas Eve, I arrange the carrot sticks on half of my mother-in-law’s narrow scalloped dish, stack pale ribs of celery on the other side.
Last time. Read the rest of this entry »
This week’s Letter In The Mail is from Rumpus founding editor Stephen Elliott.
Stephen is the author of seven books, including The Adderall Diaries and Happy Baby. His first feature film, About Cherry, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year and will be released theatrically in North America by IFC beginning September 21.
His essays and short fiction have appeared in the New York Times, Esquire, Tin House, The Believer, and many anthologies.
Recent letter writers have included Padma Viswanathan, Claire Bidwell Smith, and Janet Fitch.
More about Letters In The Mail.
“Recent research and reports on violence against transgender women have found that, in 2010, 44 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and HIV-affected hate-crime murder victims were trans women. In 2009, trans women accounted for 50 percent of LGBTQH hate-crime murder victims.”
Mother Jones reports on the case of CeCe McDonald. In accepting a plea deal of second-degree manslaughter, McDonald was forced to give up her assertion of self-defense. However, many believe that she was prosecuted for “surviving a hate crime,” and activists have rallied around her as the June 4th sentencing date approaches.
At Full Stop, Stephanie Bernhard weighs in on the literary gender imbalance, arguing that today’s literary marketplace is “identity-driven,” which makes it more difficult for women writers to succeed.
“Our culture still offers men a broader spectrum of acceptable personality types than it does women. Wolitzer quotes poet Katha Pollitt saying ‘For every one woman, there’s room for three men.’ We might amend her statement slightly to say ‘for every female identity, there’s room for three male identities.’”
KCRW talks with Adam Levin about his latest collection of short stories, Hot Pink, behaviorism, the Marx brothers, strange sentences, and his affinity for big drama without sappiness.
(Via Electric Literature)
Hey ladyfriend, are you going through a breakup? Is your job really hard right now? Is your life nothing more than all-consuming darkness and regret? Read the rest of this entry »
We’re very excited for our next Rumpus event, “Letters In The Mail: A Celebration of Written Correspondence.” Join us on Monday, June 4th at The Verdi Club (2424 Mariposa Street), 6:30pm.
Featuring readings from Lorelei Lee, Ariana Reines, D.A. Powell, and artist MariNaomi! Comedy by Nato Green! Music by David Berkeley!
A performance of literary letters by The Rumpus Ensemble Players!
Plus typewriters to type your own letters, and a chance to read them onstage. Come early (doors at 6:30pm) and pound some keys!
Also chances to win great prizes in our Porn Raffle!
$10, cheap! You can’t afford not to go.
Hosted by Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott.
Our April poet, Carmen Giménez Smith, was featured on NPR’s NewsPoet series. (NewsPoet has featured Rumpus Poetry Book Club poet and recent Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith as well.) Check it out.
And if you’d like to become a member of the Poetry Book Club–we’re talking about Rowan Ricardo Phillips’s collection The Ground right now–click here.
Randy Packs are “hand drawn improbable sex-act trading cards.” Each card is the work of a different artist, who, after being assigned an improbable sex-act, drew a non-explicit representation of the chosen act.
Series #1 contains 20 collectible cards that come in random packs of five with a cover/checklist card listing all the acts. The first five readers to inquire will receive a free complete set of Randy Packs Series #1! Use this form for your email, and remember to include “Rumpus” in the subject line.
In The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov, Paul Russell imagines the life of the not-famous Nabokov and delivers a novel that lives outside the legacy. Read the rest of this entry »
Jeremy Thal, who serves as a band leader for Briars of North America, is one of my oldest friends. We took Suzuki violin lessons together in Madison, Wisconsin, and our first instruments were fruit roll-up boxes with rulers taped on them. Read the rest of this entry »
Rumpus artist Jason Novak continues his Paris Review literary panoramas with a new, ten-foot-tall panel illustration of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables.
Episode 70 of Brad Listi’s Other People podcast features Emily St. John Mandel.
Mandel discusses the genesis of her new novel, The Lola Quartet (which was our April Rumpus Book Club selection), dual-citizenship, multi-genre books, and more.
THE INVISIBLE MAN
★★★★★ (2 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing the Invisible Man. Read the rest of this entry »
Artist Takeshi Miyakawa’s public art installation was meant to be a city-wide tribute to New York.
Strangely, the project, which involved hanging illuminated plastic bags with the ‘I ♥ NY’ slogan, prompted a call to the bomb squad and landed Miyakawa in jail on Saturday. He has been charged with reckless endangerment and placing “a false bomb or hazardous substance.” Furthermore, the judge ordered him held pending a psychological evaluation. Absurd.
A couple great Rumpus essays went up over the weekend. Saturday editor Michelle Dean brought us a history lesson, “The Unrequited Yeats.” And don’t miss Tara Ison’s “Flesh and Bones,” a powerful piece on body image.
Laura Gibson
La Grande (Barsuk; Jealous Butcher)
I recently heard someone on NPR use the term “desert noir” to describe the band Calexico. Having never heard the term before, I immediately took to it. Read the rest of this entry »
This week in San Francisco!
Monday 5/21: Lit Slam hosts Karrie Waarala, a “”a multifaceted, sword-swallowingly sharp writer not to be missed.” $5, 8pm Viracocha.
Tuesday 5/22: Two time Man Booker Prize winner Peter Carey reads from his recently released The Chemistry of Tears. Hosted by City Lights and Litquake. Free, 7pm, Cafe Tosca.
Thursday 5/24: Poet and SFSU professor Jennifer Arin reads from Ways We Hold. Free, 8pm, Farleys.
Friday 5/25: Miranda Mellis and Anna Joy Springer are on for a doubleheader at Green Apple. Mellis reads from her latest None of this is Real, and Springer from her memoir The Vicious Red Relic, Love, described as “a coming-of-age in the mid 90s Bay Area queer and punk scene, tackling issues of sex work, HIV and identity in a hybrid method of storytelling.” Free, 7:30 Green Apple.
Saturday 5/26: Gay Shame hosts the Queer Vegan Anti-Social at Modern Times Books. All orientations welcome. Free, 6pm.
Sunday 5/27: Free movie day at Castro Theater (Hemingway and Gellhon, 5pm) and Berkeley Underground.
“I had a cartoon in my high school newspaper magazine. Terrible, terrible shit.”
A sneak preview of The Comics Journal’s interview with Maurice Sendak.
James Vance Marshall’s 1959 book Walkabout tells a unique story of two stranded children who are rescued from the Australian outback by another young boy on a wilderness quest. Read the rest of this entry »This week in NYC:
MONDAY 5/21: Bookcourt hosts a reading by the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, with performances by Nick Dybek, Madeline McDonnell, Eric Sasson, and Julie Innis. 7pm, free.
Roxane Gay (Ayiti) and Brian Evenson (Windeye) read at the Center for Fiction. 7pm, free.
TUESDAY 5/22: Granta launches its new issue, “Britain,” at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe with a reading by Tania James, music from DJ Blue Logan, and Britain-themed refreshments. 7pm, donations to Housing Works get you a tote bag and a copy of the magazine.
Elizabeth Nunez (Boundaries) reads and discusses her books and writing at the Clarendon branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. 6pm, free.
WEDNESDAY 5/23: PANK invades Brooklyn’s WORD bookstore, featuring readings by Mensah Demary, Sean Doyle, Jennifer Pashley, Robb Todd, M.G. Martin, Tess Patalano, and Roxane Gay (again!). 7pm, free.
Dave Hill discusses his latest, Tasteful Nudes, with Ira Glass at McNally Jackson. 7pm, free.
THURSDAY 5/24: WORD hosts a launch party for Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, The Lola Quartet, featuring a reading by the author and a musical performance by Tzvi Skolnik. 7pm, free.
Sideshow Goshko, at KBG Bar, features storytelling by John Flynn, Caitlin Brodnick, and Evan Morgenstern, music by Dr. Michelle-Leona Godin, trivia, and a wine giveaway. 7pm, free.
Apparently this weekend is for backyard barbeques, not readings or launches. Happy Memorial Day?
**
If you would like to be listed in Notable New York, please send requests to NotableNYC@therumpus.net.
Happy Monday, let’s talk about ichthyosaurus’s breathing troubles.
Midcentury Modern luggage labels!
Flavorwire has your week’s worth of ruin porn with these abandoned rail stations from around the world.
Way to be bad-ass, 73 year old Tamae Watanabe.
Fact: some orangutans delay puberty (to be more attractive).
By Gary Groth
I had the great good fortune of spending an afternoon with Maurice Sendak in October of 2011. And fortunately, I brought my tape recorder.
But, to begin at the beginning: I had previously spoken to Maurice nearly a dozen times by phone over the previous three years: initially desultorily, and later, when I decided that I was prepared to interview him forThe Comics Journal, more earnestly and purposefully. When I formally approached him about an interview — perhaps in 2009 — he didn’t decline, exactly, but he was standoffish. He told me he didn’t like talking on the phone, and he politely but firmly declined my offer to conduct it at his home, which left me without many (that is to say, any) options. I finally persuaded him to do several short interviews by phone. He asked me how much time I needed, and I explained to him that my interviews could go on for hours because I wanted to do a thorough job. I heard a visible gasp on the other end of the line. He told me he couldn’t talk that long on the phone because he got tired. I quickly regrouped and suggested that we could talk for, oh, say 30 minutes at a time and just do a number of different sessions (hoping, even as I said it, that I could slyly turn 30 minutes into 60). He grumbled. He would commit to a couple. I remember mentioning to him that we’d already been talking that day for 40 minutes without any signs of his slowing down, which was true (I wish I’d had my tape recorder on at the time!), but which didn’t seem to impress him as an argument in favor of two hour interview sessions. Once he’d realized we’d been talking for 40 minutes, he quickly got off the phone.
From King Grisley-Beard; pictures by Sendak
The fact is, we got along incredibly well. We had several 30-40 minute conversations that ranged all over the place, but which usually centered on the state of the world and how much he loathed it. He was quite cheerfully and gregariously grumpy about it all, an attitude and a point of view that I appreciated, and even shared. It was obvious that he took no small measure of delight in inveighing against contemporary degradations, and I have to admit that I took no little delight in listening to him. He would cite specifics about the world going to hell in a hand-basket and I would inevitably, and truthfully, concur. I can’t say we became fast friends, but I can say that we got on and established a genuine rapport. (We also talked about more substantial matters —such as politics— and about things he loved— mostly old cartooning and old films.)
He agreed to sit still for a phone conversation and perhaps more than one. But each time we set a date, something came up to thwart it. He had to cancel twice, once due to a deadline and once due to momentary health problems. On the third date that we’d agreed upon, I was sitting at my desk, my notes in front of me, the recorder plugged in, prepared to keep the imminent conversation chugging for as long as I could. I dialed the number — and discovered that Hurricane Irene had downed his phone lines! Truly, it appeared as though the fates were conspiring against us, or at least, against me. I was becoming demoralized. Perhaps it was not meant to be.
When I casually mentioned to his assistant and close friend, Lynn, that I was planning a trip to New York the following week, she told me to come on up and conduct the interview in person. This surprised me because I’d learned, subsequent to my offering to visit him earlier, that he was wary of visitors and never let anyone he didn’t know visit his home. My theory is that he simply took pity on me and distrusted any future attempt to communicate by modern or semi-modern technology. The following week, on November 8, I boarded a train from Penn Station headed for Ridgefield, Conn. I had with me my trusty three-ring binder full of notes, ready to get as much of a career-spanning interview as I could, but nervous because I wasn’t entirely certain he wouldn’t throw me out after 20 minutes; he didn’t seem like the kind of artist who would sit still for a conventional interview.
He didn’t throw me out; in fact, quite the opposite, he spoke animatedly all afternoon and into the evening, mostly while we walked around his property, sat on a bench in his sprawling backyard (more like a private park), and strolled down the street, the tape recorder going much the time, and yielding the most unconventional, conversational interview I’ve ever done. (I could’ve left my binder full of notes at home.)
I had an unforgettable time. Maurice and I spoke a half-dozen times since; he’d agreed to a few follow-up questions, but all our conversations were casual, consisting of good-natured badinage. His fatalism was couched in a blithe spiritedness, and he was funny. The last time I spoke to him, in April, he actually sounded robust despite suffering from flu-ish symptoms, and told me to call him back in a couple weeks to ask him short follow-up questions. I put it off, and then learned that he passed. I had hoped to see him again soon, and despite knowing him briefly, I will miss him.
The full interview will appear in the next print Journal, #302, but below are a few choice excerpts.
Gary Groth, May 10, 2012
SENDAK ON HIS COMICS CAREER
SENDAK: I would take my stack of papers back home, shut the door, make [my parents] believe I was doing my homework, and what I was doing was backgrounds for Scribbly, backgrounds for Mutt and Jeff, backgrounds for Tippy and Captain Stubbs. And there would be a weekly down below, one strip, and I would take it and cut it up, and make it fit on a comic page so that I would have to extend the drawing to fit the size of the comic box. Oh, God. I loved it. But I lost that because — What did they ask me to do? They asked me to do a more moderate thing, where the drawing was more Prince Valiant-ish. And girls were sexy, and it’s like, “You can’t draw sexy girls.” I failed. I failed. I loved it. I was really gonna be a cartoonist. I had a cartoon in my high school newspaper magazine. Terrible, terrible shit. [...]
GROTH: Didn’t you work on Mutt and Jeff? In comic books?
SENDAK: Yes, yes: small things like smoke coming out of heels.
GROTH: This is one of the things I wanted to ask you, which was how you became the artist you became and how you had the career you did. When you were a kid, you read comic strips. You must have read comic strips.
SENDAK: Yes, yes.
GROTH: And comic books came along around the mid-1930s, and you read comic books as well. But you didn’t become a comic-strip artist or a comic-book artist. You went an entirely different direction.
SENDAK: I would have liked to become a Big Little Book artist.
GROTH: But they died. [Laughter.]
SENDAK: They died, yes, they died. Although I have my collection.
Kenny’s Window, Sendak’s first book
GROTH: But I was curious as to why you didn’t — I mean, the dream of many artists back then was to have a syndicated strip. That was the Holy Grail. And those who couldn’t do that went into comic books. And so I’m wondering why you didn’t move in either direction.
SENDAK: I have no idea. I think part of why it happened had nothing to do with the actual craft. It had to do with meeting Ursula Nordstrom at Harper’s [Harper and Row] and knowing instantly my life was with her.
GROTH: I see.
SENDAK: And she said, “You do a book.” I would do anything she said. If she said do a comic book, I would have done a comic book. So she was integral, she was so important to my life.
IN HIS TIME
SENDAK: We cannot, I think, separate ourselves from our time. Like when I began in the ’50s … Of course, I’d had the privilege of having great siblings. So me as an artist was with my brother as an artist, learning from him, copying him, living in the same house with him. It was unbelievable to have such a brother, and on top of that, I had such a sister. She wasn’t an artist. She had no impulses in that direction, but she was a great sponsor of. She was delighted with me and delighted with my brother and her brother. And then I grew up and lived through all of that Auschwitz time, and then we won the war. Hitler might have won the war, but he didn’t. That doesn’t sound like much now, but it sounded like a hell of a lot then. We won the war! My God! And we ran from Brooklyn to New York City to get ahead of the soldiers, and those doors opened, and we were welcomed. Young people were welcomed. New things were happening, a surge of energy: a surge of hope. A surge of happiness. And now it’s all dwindled. And so I say, look, I’m very lucky that’s when my time was. What a blessing that I could be there then and be with editors and people in the publishing world who appreciated young people and wanted them to be crazy like I was. Nobody wants them now.
WHY SO SERIOUS
SENDAK: Well, I get criticized for doing too serious books. Why is there a dead child in so many of your books? Why is there a chagrined mother? Because that’s the way it is. It works both ways. You either become very superficial, and do it strictly for the money, or you become very serious and turn people off. And if it’s a book for children, my God! I would not know how to write a book for children. I’ve never written a book for children. And yet I’m known as a children’s book writer and illustrator, OK? Why did they define me that way? I used to object much more when I was younger, much more. But I don’t care any more. I’ve thought that’s all part of this third-rate worldly thinking that should not be of interest to me and truthfully it’s not. Thank God I can still read. Thank God I can still hear music. Thank God I don’t mind being alone. I am very alone, and I’m lonely and there are very few people who satisfy me and what do they have to be, they have to be artists, for the most part [rooster crows]. They have to understand what it means to be a serious person in an unserious society.
Drawn while listening to Brahms: from The Art of Maurice Sendak
SENDAK THE ANARCHIST
SENDAK: Bush was president, I thought, “Be brave. Tie a bomb to your shirt. Insist on going to the White House. And I wanna have a big hug with the vice president, definitely. And his wife, and the president, and his wife, and anybody else that can fit into the love hug.”
GROTH: A group hug.
SENDAK: And then we’ll blow ourselves up, and I’d be a hero. [Groth laughs.] To hell with the kiddie books. He killed Bush. He killed the vice president. Oh my God.
GROTH: I would have been willing to forgo this interview. [Sendak laughs.]
SENDAK: You would have forgotten about it. It would have been a very brave and wonderful thing. But I didn’t do it; I didn’t do it.
Check out some other stories now featured at The Comics Journal:
Tezuka, Mickey Mouse and post-WWII Japan.
UPA and the life of the animated cartoon.
I moved to New York the week I turned twenty. I lived on the fifth floor of an East Village walk-up with a boyfriend I was too young to realize I shouldn’t have been with, and I got a job waiting tables in Union Square. A year and a half earlier, during my freshman year at a tiny liberal arts college in Vermont, my mother died of cancer. Read the rest of this entry »
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