“Why is the Kindle my enemy, you ask? Because I mostly write books, and when the list price of my book is $27.95, I make 15% of list price if it sells more than 15,000 copies. But if my book sells for $9.99, or some such, which is, more or less, a Kindle price, then I make quite a bit less and get a lower royalty rate. Ergo, for someone who is trying to make a living at this stuff, suddenly I am giving my shit away, and getting less for it besides.”

Rumpus contributor Rick Moody received a Kindle for Christmas.

An old professor from college writes me and asks for my snail mail address. It isn’t such a strange request – we have developed a kind of friendship since I graduated. I babysit his daughter on occasion; we meet at the corner store for coffee when we can both find time, which is almost never.

A week later a package arrives at my mother’s house, where I am staying for a month to sort some things out. The package is addressed in my professor’s handwriting, and inside is Nick Flynn’s The Ticking Is the Bomb. The book is yellow, with a silver and blue graphic on the paperback cover, drooping in my hand as I hold it, standing in the middle of my mother’s hallway. …more

“Just about everyone I know complains about the same thing when they’re being honest—including, maybe especially, people whose business is reading and writing.”

Facing a stream of criticism for questioning Twitter and other new technologies, George Packer responds to his critics.



“I do believe that literature and storytelling has a safe future. The medium is still being negotiated, but I believe that we evolutionarily developed to speak and use language, and as an extension of that I think there is an inherent need for human beings to tell stories and also to hear stories or perceive stories. As long as there’s language, I think the future of literature is safe.”

— Alexander Hemon at Guernica Magazine talk about exile, the future of literature, and the revival of short stories.

“Stephen Elliott: I don’t generally hook up with people when I first meet them. And also, when you’re on the road, I don’t know, it’s kind of awkward. What I long for when I travel isn’t sex, it’s intimacy. I don’t know if you can have intimacy with someone you just met. Why are we talking about this?

SE: You’re interviewing yourself. You know that don’t you?

SE: Yes. I’m sorry.”

Our own Stephen Elliott’s got a pretty damn funny Self-Interview over at The Nervous Breakdown.

My relationship with the book blogs has hit a snag. Today, we got in a throw-down fight, and I came pretty close to breaking some china.

It’s just that the blogs whine and worry and complain a lot, and they always seem to want to cheat on me with famous writers, like Martin Amis or David Foster Wallace or Marquis de Sade, and then it rubs off on me, and I end up whining and worrying and complaining more than they do, and then I stop liking myself.

So today, the book blog roundup will be made up entirely things that I think are awesome. No Amazon, no “last days” worrying, no whining, no literary celebrity fetishizing. Just things that rock.

If you only click on one link, this roundup at Pank of short stories and poems and things is really phenomenal.

Newspaper blackout poetry is one of my new favorite things. (via Bookslut)

Literary burlesque.

At Vice, a very cool photography/written collaboration between Brian Evenson and John Sellekaers. (via GIANT)

And finally, here’s a final passive-aggressive blow: “This is the title of a typical incindiery blog post.” (via @electriclit)

Come catch up! Highlights from this week in Rumpus books are below the fold. …more

No? Why not?

We’d like to know the last book you loved. Send us a writeup of the last book you truly loved, along with a short bio. We’ll publish our favorites in The Rumpus blog. No length requirements.

Email to: Isaac AT therumpus.net

I first featured Livrenblog back in January 2009. Since that time I’ve been ogling many more treasures from this wonderful French blog. Here is a taste of what you will find in their archives.

Copying what I wrote back then: …more

Yesterday we published Blythe Sheldon’s review of Patti Smith’s Just Kids, her memoir about life with Robert Mapplethorpe.

Now you can hear Smith herself read from the book, thanks to KQED’s reading series podcast, The Writers’ Block.

“Readers of this site and of McSweeney’s generally may be aware that this enterprise was named after a real man named Timothy McSweeney. [...]  We bring today the news that Timothy McSweeney passed away on January 24.”

McSweeney’s has announced that Timothy McSweeney died recently at the age of 67 (be sure to click the link and read The McSweeney family’s moving note).

The story behind the man and the name can be read here.

“But for a long time there was anger and denial. How could we be on the web and not give everything away?”

There’s a great interview up at The Awl between Paul Ford, web editor for Harper’s and Choire Sicha: Paywalls, Blogs, Comments, Editing and Magazines.

The Center for the Art of Translation has an interview up with Susan Bernofsky, translator of Robert Walser’s novel The Tanners, among other works. She talks about the six volumes of Robert Walser’s miniaturized shorthand that has come to be known as the “Microscripts.” Her translation of selections from these are forthcoming from New Directions.

But wait, what are Microscripts?
…more

“Enjoy your final moments of freedom and independence. Go to movies as often as possible. Do a lot of things that you know are not going to be possible once you’ve got a baby around. Go to two movies in one day. That will never happen again.”

Michael Chabon’s advice for expectant fathers-to-be from his recent interview with Here. Also covered: comics, writing, what Chabon’s reading, and why he can’t live without his man purse.

“Edmund Wilson encouraged his second wife Mary McCarthy’s first forays into fiction by shutting her in a room for three hours and asking her to write a story.

Author Shirley Jackson’s husband Stanley Hyman, a literary critic and writer for The New Yorker, devised strict writing schedules for her. And with the money from Jackson’s royalty checks, he purchased a dishwasher to make more time for her writing.”

At The Millions, a provocative essay on the joys and difficulties of balancing relationships and writing.

“But the idea that genre is a tool, not a prophecy goes beyond combating genre snobbery, I think — it’s actually helpful for writers to think about when crafting their next novel.

Just because there’s this marvelous tool for helping readers to understand your story, doesn’t mean your story has to be crafted around the tool.”

At io9, they’re talking about the advantages of using genre as a tool, especially in regards to sci-fi. …more

“For me, if there’s a piece of writing that I care about, I want to have the physical object,” says Brigid Hughes, editor of the literary journal A Public Space. “There’s a permanence to it, a different kind of permanence than if you find it on a website. You’re bringing together these different voices and pieces, and the way those pieces interact between those two covers is essential.”

Jacket Copy today ponders the future of printed literary journals.

Citing Amazon’s recent hissy fit over its dispute with Macmillan Publishers’ over e-book pricing, The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America are removing all Amazon.com links from its website.

The SFWA was founded in 1965 and is made up of  “over 1500 authors, artists, and allied professionals” and is “widely recognized as one of the most effective non-profit writers’ organizations in existence.” The group hosts the Nebula Awards, and past and present members include Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, and Ray Bradbury.

Not only is the SFWA removing Amazon links from its site, but the group is strongly encouraging members and readers to “seek out new places to find their books.”

Carlo Farneti’s illustrations for a 1935 edition of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal.

From the collection of Richard Sica: …more

D.A. Powell wrote – a few years ago now – a column for The Poetry Foundation in which he dabbles with the idea of street poetry (think along the lines of the tape poetry of Elvis Christ).

Powell’s article was called “Conceptual Poetics: A Practicum.” In it he writes: …more