Rumpus Originals

California Dreaming

Catherine Brady  ·  February 8th, 2010

Eric Puchner’s first novel exposes the faultlines and frustrations beneath the shining American dream. …more

Ted Wilson Reviews the World #22

Ted Wilson  ·  February 8th, 2010

JOHNNY TREMAIN’S HAND
★★★★ (1 out of 5)

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing Johnny Tremain’s hand. …more

The Rumpus Funny Women Interview with Julie Klausner

Elissa Bassist  ·  February 8th, 2010

Some people say men aren’t funny. In her memoir I Don’t Care About Your Band, comedienne Julie Klausner says it a few times: (1) “I was tired of pretending I thought he was funny”; (2) “I knew I was funnier and smarter than [insert man's name here].”

Here are a few things to know about Julie Klausner that will help you get the most out of this interview: …more

Super Hot Prof-on-Student Word Sex: The Rumpus Interview with Jason Mulgrew

Steve Almond  ·  February 5th, 2010

Many years ago (perhaps as many as eight) Jason Mulgrew took my advanced fiction workshop at Boston College. In fact, Jason was one of only two students ever to take my class pass/fail. If you are now thinking that Jason must have been a lazy, drunken, irresponsible dickweed, you are right. …more

Defending Memoir, or, The Problem with Taylor

Stephen Elliott  ·  January 28th, 2010

Taylor Antrim, author of The Headmaster Ritual, takes easy shots at memoir zeroing in on Nick Flynn’s The Ticking Is The Bomb and Alex Lemon’s Happy. …more

Crimson Colored Raunchiness and Terror

Sean Singer  ·  January 28th, 2010

Taste of Cherry is a beautiful, carefully crafted, and sensual display of poetry; the verbal, pyrotechnical, unabashed bravery of the poems is their most significant quality.

…more

The Rumpus Original (Supersized) Combo with Kara Candito

Christian Anton Gerard  ·  January 28th, 2010

How do you supersize a Rumpus Original Combo? That’s easy—just take a book review and an interview with the author, and add a Rumpus Original Poem to it!

Kara Candito is the author of Taste of Cherry (University of Nebraska Press), winner of the 2008 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. She has received an Academy of American Poets Prize and scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. …more

Stirring Coffee with a Feather

Brian Beglin  ·  January 27th, 2010

Margo Berdeshevsky’s work straddles the line between fiction and poetry. Her characters grieve, dream, punish themselves, and try to find harmony between who they are and who they might still be. …more

The Country Where No One Ever Dies

Adam Gallari  ·  January 25th, 2010

The Albanian, in Ornela Vorpsi’s comic novel, is someone prone to megalomania, and who has one obsession “dearer to them than death… Fornication.” …more

The Rumpus International Rivers Interview #3: Sasa Stanisic on the Danube

Michael Zelenko  ·  January 25th, 2010

Sasa Stanisic was born in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina and lived there until 1992, at which point his family fled the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. He currently resides in Germany.

How The Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (2008), Stanisic’s first book, is a self-portrait of a precociously creative young boy as he wades through the ugly swamp of ethnic violence and political destabilization of the Balkans during the 90s. …more

Fucking and Writing: The Rumpus Conversation with Jami Attenberg

Kate Christensen  ·  January 22nd, 2010

“Perhaps we should talk about fucking. Fucking and writing, fucking and talking, fucking and thinking, fucking and whatever else it is that fucking goes with…” …more

The Divot

Alec Niedenthal  ·  January 21st, 2010

(A review of A Common Pornography in the style of A Common Pornography, by Kevin Sampsell)

This friend of mine, Justin, loaned a book to me. It was titled A Common Pornography, by this guy Kevin Sampsell. I got the book on the condition that I had to finish it before this party he’d be at that Thursday, because I’d be leaving New York on Saturday, heading back home to Birmingham. …more

The Rumpus Long Interview with Jonathan Lethem

Ronnie Scott  ·  January 19th, 2010

“I don’t go down wrong paths, I’d rather stare at the screen and delete until I’ve put something down that is working. So, I don’t discard material; I don’t have a lot of false starts or unfinished stories or novels lying around.…more

The Professor

Margaret Eby  ·  January 14th, 2010

The Professor and Other WritingsIn a new book of essays, Terry Castle rips through literary and cultural allusions at breakneck speed, citing obscure folk musicians and cult novelists in the same breath. …more

My Imaginary Interview with Elaine Showalter

Elissa Bassist  ·  January 12th, 2010

In March of 2009, I wrote to Elaine Showalter on behalf of The Rumpus, saying she inspired me as a writer, editor, and feminist. She agreed to an interview, the focus of which would be her latest book, A Jury of Her Peers. Ranging from the instigators to contemporary innovators, Jury is the first (yeah, first) history of American women writers. …more

Usher

Barbara Berman  ·  January 9th, 2010

172_usherB. H. Fairchild fuses mundane with spiritual in resolute ways, as “in the silent prayer for the grace of rain abundant,” a glorious line that would have been less so if the words “rain” and “abundant” were switched …more

The Rumpus International Rivers Interview #2: Dubravka Ugresic on the Danube

Michael Zelenko  ·  January 8th, 2010

Born in the former Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), Dubravka Ugresic began her career writing children’s television programs and books. In nearly four decades of writing and editing, she has published books on Russian contemporary fiction, edited anthologies of Russian avant-garde writing, translated texts into Croatian, written more than half a dozen books and published countless articles in European and American magazines. …more

Where the God of Love Hangs Out

Jeff OKeefe  ·  January 6th, 2010

Amy Bloom’s characters are glorious, endearing wrecks—vain, horny, bullheaded, and brave. They resemble everyone we’ve ever known intimately. …more

Katie Roiphe’s Big Cock Block

Steve Almond  ·  January 5th, 2010

So some of you may have seen Katie Roiphe’s long and sometimes-sharp-and-other-times-kind-of-annoying piece in the New York Times Book Review about literary S-E-X. …more

Reading in the New Year

Andrew Altschul  ·  January 1st, 2010

Rumpus Books asked some of our favorite writers what they will be reading as we leave the aughts behind and sally forth into a new decade. …more

Malcolm Gladwell, James Wood, and Christine Smallwood Get Evangelical

Emma Silvers  ·  December 28th, 2009

At a recent n+1 panel discussion, Malcolm Gladwell, James Wood, and Christine Smallwood discussed God as trade, unmetaphysical writers, and intellectualism versus how religion makes you feel. …more

The Rumpus Holiday Internet Roundup

The Rumpus  ·  December 25th, 2009

‘Tis the season, so we’re taking a day or two off. Here are a few wonderful things from around the web to keep you busy (don’t worry, we’ll be back): …more

Lie to Me

Rachel Weiner  ·  December 23rd, 2009

I Am Martin EisenstadtThe latest memoir of the 2008 Presidential campaign is a fake book about fake events by a fake political operative. …more

The Rumpus International Rivers Interview #1: György Dragomán on the Danube

Michael Zelenko  ·  December 23rd, 2009


“For me writing is indeed very close to collection, but it is not a process of collection, much rather a way for cataloging your collection.” …more

The Bigness of the World

Matt McGregor  ·  December 22nd, 2009

The Bigness of the WorldLori Ostlund masters the sadness of breakups, the empty inevitability of doors closing: “For at each turn, the people we hold close elude us.” …more

Notes From Book Tour #18: Numbers

Stephen Elliott  ·  December 22nd, 2009

A couple of days ago a friend wrote and told me my psychiatrist was crazy. Work on getting close to people, he said. The rest will follow. …more

Pete Seeger–The Voice that Belongs to the Body

Nell Boeschenstein  ·  December 21st, 2009

He picked me up at the Cold Spring train station: a tall, lone and gawky, slightly bent, grizzled, yet still unmistakable figure at the other end of the platform shading his blue eyes from the rain. …more

“I tried to remember your scent as your own”

Barbara Berman  ·  December 18th, 2009

ohio violenceA collection like Ohio Violence is best consumed in small doses, so that its imaginative density, which is never ponderous, can be absorbed.

…more

The Truth is Out There

Caleb Cage  ·  December 14th, 2009

Wormwood, NevadaDavid Oppegaard’s novel takes readers to a fictional town in the Nevada desert, where the earthly and the otherworldly mingle. …more

Notes From Book Tour #17: Describing Beautiful Women

Stephen Elliott  ·  December 12th, 2009

(Note, these go out as part of The Daily Rumpus email. Most of them aren’t posted on the site so consider subscribing to get all the Notes From Book Tour.) …more

THE RUMPUS BLOG

Rick’s Kindle

“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.

15 hours ago (0)

Kailyn McCord: The Last Book I Loved, The Ticking Is the Bomb

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

17 hours ago (1)

Neither Luddite nor Bilonite

“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.



20 hours ago (0)

“The future of literature is safe”

“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.

1 day ago (0)

Stephen Elliott Interviews Stephen Elliott, Insults Fly

“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.

1 day ago (0)

The Sunday Rumpus Book Blog Roundup

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)

2 days ago (0)

The Rumpus Books Sunday Supplement

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

2 days ago (0)

Have you always wanted to write for The Rumpus?

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

3 days ago (0)

LIVRENBLOG

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

3 days ago (0)

Patti Smith Reads Just Kids

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.

3 days ago (0)

Timothy McSweeney

“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.

3 days ago (1)

The End of Free or the Death of Harpers

“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.

3 days ago (0)

Robert Walser’s Microscripts

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

3 days ago (0)

“Murse”

“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.

4 days ago (0)

Writing While (Not) Loving, Loving While (Not) Writing

“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.

4 days ago (0)

Using Genre As A Tool

“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

4 days ago (0)

Are Printed Literary Journals Imperiled?

“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.

4 days ago (0)

Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Aim Ray Guns at Amazon

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.”

4 days ago (3)

Les Fleurs du Skull

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

From the collection of Richard Sica: …more

5 days ago (1)

“Unoriginal Poetry Based on Junk”

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

5 days ago (0)

Read more from the blog »

The Blurb

THE BLURB #13: The Anxiety of Influence

THE BLURB #13: The Anxiety of Influence

Instead of writing this book review, I’ve been pacing around my apartment and slugging absurd quantities of coffee and snarling to myself about slinging postmodern bullshit all over the page.

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