The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
We talked to composer-performer Missy Mazzoli about the sometimes invisible world of new classical music, her relation to it, and what she’s doing to help to redefine what it means to be a composer in the 21st century.
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A day of celebration for many, Mother’s Day is a more complex holiday for people who have lost their mothers–or their children.
...more“Confessional” poet Diana Salier (whom we love) confesses to misusing cafe space and more in this interview at Monkeybicycle.
...moreIt’s basically a snapshot of that time in my life, which is kind of cool now when it feels so far away.
Nick Tosches’ writing is dark, gritty, and has guts. Tosches has written 18 books, and is best know for his Dean Martin biography, Dino.
In a recent Esquire interview by Scott Raab, Tosches discusses his new book, boozing, opium, poetry, and the weather.
...moreMcSweeney’s recently published How Music Works, a book by David Byrne that explains all aspects of music, from creation, to distribution, to performance.
In recent years, Byrne has released chapters of the book as individual works: this TED talk about architecture’s effect on music; and this piece for Wired about record distribution, in which he interviews Radiohead about their [then] recent “pay what you wish” release of In Rainbows, as well as explains exactly how the money, in a traditional major label record deal, from an album purchase is distributed.
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Carl Adamshick is the author of Curses and Wishes, winner of the 2010 Walt Whitman Award, selected by Marvin Bell. He is a cofounder of Tavern Books. His poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, The Harvard Review, The Missouri Review, American Poet, and Narrative magazine.
Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010), recently noted as a finalist for the California Book Award. She was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of two previous collections of poetry,
Like most things I liked when I was 16, I first got into Adrian Tomine’s comics because of my older sister, who let me borrow her early issues of Optic Nerve.
Tom Gauld is an illustrator, cartoonist, and publisher. His finished pieces range from animated advertisements to book illustrations, as well as the weekly comic strips he produces for the Guardian. Whether he’s drawing a campaign for one of the UK’s largest drug stores or illustrating a book of monsters, Tom’s drawing style is intimate and concise, reflective of an artistic process that uses technology without relying on it.
Today would have been the 112th birthday of Jorge Luis Borges, the esteemed Argentine writer who championed the science fiction genre with his depictions of unreality.
This is an archived Paris Review interview he did back in July of 1966 that tracks his daily routine, notes the idiosyncrasies of his speech and the epic qualities that he admires in West Side Story.
...moreAustralian children’s book illustrator, Shaun Tan speaks through illustration in his interview with Spiegel.
He captures his first impression of Hollywood, the imagined readership of his books, the presence of loneliness that pervades his books—all in pen and paper. It’s surprising how well his illustrations translate into heartfelt answers, all without words.
...moreThis 2006 interview with David Foster Wallace has been published for the first time in English.
The conversation was part of a larger collection of pieces that highlighted foreign authors, movie directors and artists who were not well known in Russia.
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In 2009, Traci Brimhall won the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award for her collection Rookery. Rumpus Contributor Evan J. Peterson interviewed Brimhall for this half of what we call a Rumpus Original Combo
When Faulkner addressed English classes at the University of Mississippi in 1947, he offered some interesting advice (there is always time for writing, it’s not good to wait when feeling inspired, the peak age for fiction writing is 35-45, etc.). Supplementing his literary guidance was some personal history and sharp opinions (he wrote Sanctuary because he needed money, prefers Florida to Hollywood, women and rich people have optimal conditions for getting reading done).
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“Now, 23 years later, I’m a broke poet with two books and a small fan base that digs my shit. Not too shabby for a half-ass, lazy, somewhat smart guy like myself.”
I met Lauren (whose last name we are suppressing here) at a writing workshop in Provincetown almost fifteen years ago. She was shy, funny, brilliant, and very, very talented, and she dressed like one of those kids who had been to every show that Mission of Burma ever played.
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!
The world is just going to continue to fragment, and that’s a great thing. We’ll be fine. Tiny Telephone will be fine.
Sophia Raday’s new book, Love In Condition Yellow–A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage, is a beautifully rendered, often hilarious, account of how opposites can attract, and maybe even should. It’s also insightful meditation on America after 9/11 as it struggles with its Red State/Blue State animosities.
Jessica Anthony’s first novel, The Convalescent (McSweeney’s Books) is the first recipient of McSweeney’s Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award. It’s about a really short guy who sells meat out of a bus in Northern Virginia and is in love with his pediatrician doctor, and contains flashbacks to medieval Hungary.
James Ellroy says that, “My Abandonment is an electrically charged, bone-deep, and tender tale of loss and partial redemption.”
“I’m totally engaging in cultural stereotyping, no question about it. But I think it’s OK because I’m doing it for a reason, for a good reason…
So long as the stereotype is used as a way of understanding how to fix the problem as opposed to demonizing a people or writing them off, then I think it’s OK.”
Rumpus: Let’s start by defining Outliers for the five people left who haven’t heard of it.
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“I’m writing books. They’re still a mix of fact and fiction and will continue to be. I think it’s an interesting place to work, especially now. What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and categories and labels mean nothing.”
James Frey on the things he wishes he hadn’t said, getting older and getting wiser, writing, being lucky, and making art, by Stephen Elliott
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