Grantland
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Grantland: A Rumpus Roundup
At the end of October, ESPN announced that Grantland, the sports and culture website it had acquired, would cease publication. Some commentators claimed the site should have been shuttered sooner when Bill Simmons, the “voice” of Grantland, parted ways with…
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Birdwatching
Over at Grantland, Mark Harris looks back on the stories Hollywood told this year, why marquee films are gridlocking the industry, and what that sort of thing can do to your head: “I did not begin 2014 by imagining that the…
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Fantasy Football for Poets: Dispatch #1
I’m not supposed to be an NFL fan. I like writing, books, wine, condiments, ambient music, and US Presidents.
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What Was Left
Down at Grantland, Brian Phillips gives us an elegy in search of sumo, closure, and the lasting ennui of Yukio Mishima: It’s a dream city, Tokyo. I mean that literally, in that I often felt like I was experiencing it…
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Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Shaelyn Smith reviews Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric today in Rumpus Poetry.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Steve Almond
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Steve Almond about his new book, Against Football, One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto, the complicity of fans in the violence of the NFL, the sports media’s role in the discussion (or lack of one) and…
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Ferguson, Personally
Rembert Browne flew to Ferguson last week. Out of interest in the town’s newfound notoriety, the crowds contesting it, and the general ennui surrounding Contemporary Black Youth, the usual-sports writer compiled the meat of his thoughts in an essay for…
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Over the Hill
What’s really fascinating about the end of an athlete’s career is not his decline; it’s what comes next.
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When Journalistic Ethics Aren’t So Ethical
In the course of writing a story about a golf club, a Grantland journalist named Caleb Hannan discovered that the club’s inventor was a transgender woman. She ended up committing suicide, which, though he doesn’t seem to realize it’s a…
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Sports Writing Goes North
A long but magnificent read from Grantland: “Out in the Great Alone.” It’s an intense and unbelievably detailed story about the Iditarod, by Brian Phillips, a sports writer who “hate[s] snow” and is “not even a dog person.” Choosing a passage…
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“Hard Times in the Uncanny Valley”
Colson Whitehead went on a London Olympics adventure, which you can read all about in his multi-part dispatch for Grantland. “I started scoring events in terms of what they’d offer in a human-annihilation-type scenario. Offensewise, archery skills seemed like an…