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From Stephen Elliott
When I became a father myself, I swore my son would never feel my absence like that—not if I could help it. I’d talk to him. I’d listen, ask questions. I’d teach him things, too, and share in the joys of his discoveries. It didn’t occur to me that what he might need would be something entirely different.
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My connection to my Puerto Rican heritage seemed as tenuous as my connection to my white skin. I didn’t feel white, didn’t believe I had the privileges that came with whiteness.
...moreWhat’s the difference between an essay and a novel? Teju Cole considered that question in his 2012 essay, “The White Savior Industrial Complex,” writing that essays have points, while novels do not.
While Cole continues to stand by this essay, he admits that there are exceptions to this rule.
...moreRumpus essays editor and author of the forthcoming essay collection Bad Feminist Roxane Gay sat down to talk with The Empathy Exams author Leslie Jamison and Michele Filgate; the three women had an insightful conversation about essays, sexuality, and nuance over on Salon.
...more“Writers serve as the memory of a people. They chew over our public past.”
Read an essay on Annie Dillard’s philosophy of the essay and its writer over at Brain Pickings.
...moreGila Lyons has a strikingly vulnerable essay at The Millions about her decision to start taking anti-anxiety medication. Typically, artists who suffer from mental health issues opt to ride against the current and let their creativity take precedent. Yet, Lyons took the road less traveled and chose mental stability over waxing genius.
...moreIdeally, online longform nonfiction combines the strengths of the print world with those of the Internet, granting writers the rigorous editing and reporting resources they’d get at a magazine but freeing them from the constraints of word limits and limited audiences.
...moreToday’s vocationally minded students view World Lit 101 as forced labor, an utterwasteof their time that deserves neither engagement nor effort. So you know what else is a waste of time? Grading these students’ effing papers.
In a prickly and provocative essay for Slate, Rebecca Schuman argues that universities should stop forcing students in required classes to writer papers and instead give them “old-school, hardcore exams, written and oral.
...moreLA Rockers! Go to Stories Books and Cafe tonight at 7 pm for the release of Two Dollar Radio’s Frequencies #3, a biannual journal of artful essays.
The release party features the stylistic readings of Rumpus contributor Grace Krilanovich and Sara Finnerty, as well as Trinie Dalton, Anne-Marie Kinney, and Aaron Shulman.
...moreThe topic of essayism—one especially relevant to the Rumpus—is granted the meticulous attention it deserves in this opinion piece Christy Wampole wrote for the New York Times.
Wampole artfully weaves the essay’s deep history through a narrative about the development of a “meditative deficiency” in modren essay-writing.
...moreIf you’re a regular Rumpus reader, you probably like essays. And if you like essays, you’ll probably enjoy this New York Times opinion piece about their literary and social value:
...moreEver since Michel de Montaigne, the founder of the modern essay, gave as a motto his befuddled “What do I know?” and put forth a vision of humanity as mentally wavering and inconstant, the essay has become a meadow inviting contradiction, paradox, irresolution, and self-doubt.
Earlier this month, we spoke with Davy Rothbart about the his new collection, My Heart Is an Idiot, lauded in this week’s Rumpus review as “16 essays that read like early Jack Kerouac, if you substituted Charlie Parker for Dr.
...moreIn the current issue of BookForum, Christian Lorentzen, an editor at the London Review of Books, writes about “the perils of money fiction” in the twenty-first century.
“There are a few ways out of these traps—ersatz journalistic gap filling, hapless gesturing at the system’s perversity, and ogling fortune with envy and scorn—of writing about bankers.
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Rumpus Books had one hell of a week this week, and today’s a good day as any to catch up.
It’s Sunday again, that day where you get to see what Rumpus Books has been up to this week, all in one handy little roundup.
A Review of Writing in the Dark, by David Grossman
BY BRIAN SCHWARTZ
In the Hebrew language, I am sure, there are several different ways to say “enemy.” I have little grasp of what these words might be. I imagine that there are milder entries
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