Voices of Addiction #5: Surrender
Somewhere along the way, the salty fresh sea breezes of the beach are replaced by the drier, more metallic air of my mother’s neighborhood. It might as well be a different continent. ...more
Posts Tagged: addiction
The Ever-Present Now
Music contextualizes our feelings, clarifies them, gives them new meaning. ...more
Visible: Women Writers of Color #4: Jaquira Díaz
Jaquira Díaz discusses the challenge of writing about family members, her greatest joy as a writer, and her literary role models. ...more
This Week in Short Fiction
Rion Amilcar Scott’s debut collection Insurrections—our July Rumpus Book Club pick—comes out from University Press of Kentucky on Tuesday and is a timely and vital look into the daily struggles of individuals in the mostly black community of Cross River, Maryland, a fictional town that was founded by slaves in 1807 after a successful revolt.
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Voices of Addiction #3: Mother’s Day
I will always feel a little broken. Intellectually, I know her disease is “not my fault.” But I’m her mother. I will always partially feel the blame. ...more
My Life with Annie Lennox #5: A Christmas Cornucopia
Perhaps part of what prompted me to get clean and sober was the fact I kept making myself uncomfortable. ...more
The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #1: Are We Amused Yet?
Here is something I’ve always believed: Just knowing I am an artist, asserting that identity, is more important than what I produce. It is a victory in itself.
...moreThe Desire for Distraction
For The Millions, Mike Broida revisits David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, arguing that the work’s claims about addiction and the media presaged the influence of “television culture” on the digital age:
...moreThe final “joke” of Infinite Jest is that the book is intended to be almost as endless and mirthful as the addictions it depicts.
Voices of Addiction #2: Too Much Hope
I wanted more time with him, but I didn’t want to hope. Too much hope will mess you up. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Jamie Brickhouse
Jamie Brickhouse discusses Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir of Booze, Sex, and My Mother, a memoir that chronicles his intimate, near-fatal journey through alcoholism, and living HIV positive. ...more
On Playing Games, Productivity, and Right Livelihood
One week last spring I said it out loud for the first time: “Sometimes I play so long, my fingers go numb.” ...more
An Actress Recommends Five Classic Films to Her Child
Surprise is only one of many aspects of human behavior. There are dozens. Maybe even a hundred. ...more
Keeping Secrets from the Stupid
I was four years old when my mother taught me to lie. There were certain instances, she explained, when lying was acceptable, when it wasn’t even lying, really. ...more
Voices of Addiction #1: Baby’s Home
I got to thinking about home. What the fuck is home anyway? ...more
Podcatcher #1: Oh No, Ross and Carrie!
In the first installment of our new column all about podcasts, we talk with Ross Blocher and Carrie Poppy of Oh No, Ross and Carrie!. ...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: A Brief History of a Bad Heart
She studies you, still panting with an energy that consumes the room, and whispers in a reedy voice: “They say you fucked up your heart.” ...more
Romancing the Cure
Homer understood in the 8th century BCE what modernity has yet to accept—love can be an addiction, and when it is, we need substantial outside help.
Angela Chen writes for Aeon on romantic love as addiction, and the taboos around “curing” people of romantic love.
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The Rumpus Interview with Rob Roberge
Rob Roberge talks about his new memoir, Liar, the differences between writing fiction and writing memoir, and why every narrator is an unreliable narrator. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Elizabeth Kadetsky
Elizabeth Kadetsky talks about her new novella On the Island at the Center of the Center of the World, writing about trauma and external forces, and coming to fiction from journalism. ...more
Are We All Our Own Vanishing
We will never be an exclamation point, an ellipses, a question mark. We must all leave with this: a period—solid, and utterly irrefutable. ...more
Rumpus Exclusive: An Excerpt from Rob Roberge’s Liar
Rob Roberge's new memoir, Liar, is out February 9 from Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House. ...more
Plankton (A Body of Stars)
Plankton either grows into something other than plankton—a strong swimming non-planktonic adult, like a crab or a fish, or it stays the same—forever drifting with the shifting tides. ...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: All The Time Every Minute
I lost a best friend and that means something, but you cannot deny that to go on the grief has to stop killing you, eventually. ...more
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Reginald Dwayne Betts
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Reginald Dwayne Betts about his new book Bastards of the Reagan Era. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Zarina Zabrisky
Zarina Zabrisky talks about her new book, Explosion, the art of the short story, Russia and Ukraine, and being "a Jewish pessimist in the spirit of Shalom Aleichem." ...more
Learning From the Worst
The representation of writing students in film is an interesting one, as Leah Schnelbach explores for Electric Literature. There exists a trend in which writing students are shown to be young and innocent, learning from inadequate teachers. Schnelbach attempts to explain why this trend exists, and wonders if it can be changed:
...more…the public image of the writer is one of endless debauchery, drinking problems, deadline problems, and fuming ex-wives.
Song of the Day: “Jump Off The Roof”
One of the least talked-about and most heartfelt tracks off Vince Staples’s identify-defining album, Summertime ’06, dispenses with the bravado of his other lyrics. At the same time, “Jump Off The Roof” showcases the fatalism and lyrical prowess that have garnered the 22-year-old Staples so much praise.
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