The Daily Rumpus
Get Overly Personal Emails
From Stephen Elliott
Last week, in the keynote speech at the 2012 Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference, China Miéville spoke about the novel’s many possible futures in cultural, political and digital terms – and concluded with a demand for state-supported salaries for writers:
“So an unresentful sense of writers as people among people, and a fidelity to literature, require political and economic transformation.
...more
China Miéville’s latest genre-bending book, Embassytown, unites science fiction and heady wordplay in a universe literally constituted by language.
In late August the Melbourne Writers Festival cranked up again, celebrating its 25th anniversary. There were ten days of scheduled programming, most events jostled tight into two weekends. The official maxim of the festival this year was to ‘Expect the Unexpected’ and silly as that aphorism is, it also proved true.
“‘No two persons ever read the same book,’ the writer and critic Edmund Wilson said. Let me expand that sentiment outward into the geography of experience: it seems increasingly clear to me that no two persons live in the same city.”
At The Millions, an insightful commentary on China Mieville’s The City And The City.
...moreGreetings and salutations! I’m Michael Berger, today’s guest-editor. I’ve spent my last few days off sipping coffee and drifting through the labyrinth of book blogs. Which was terrific, because most of my work week was spent moving a bookstore. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the 25 year old San Francisco used bookstore Phoenix Books is not only not going out of business but they are now in a place that is twice as big and beautiful.
...more