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From Stephen Elliott
For the Atlantic‘s “By Heart,” “a series in which authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature,” Jim Shepard discusses Flannery O’Connor, James Joyce, and the painfully fleeting nature of epiphany:
...moreThis kind of conversion notion is based on a very comforting idea—that if only we had sufficient information, we wouldn’t act badly.
The Story Prize announced their choices for outstanding and notable story collections of 2011. TSP features Rumpus columnist Steve Almond’s God Bless America, along with a number of Rumpus Book Club selections, including Daniel Orozco’s Orientation and Other Stories and Jim Shepard’s You Think That’s Bad.
...moreElissa Schappell has assembled her own list of books that have not received all the love they deserve during this 2011 “best of” season. Her endorsements includes Rumpus Book Club pick You Think That’s Bad by Jim Shepard, and Rumpus contributor Laura Goode’s Sister Mischief.
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The Rumpus Book Club talks with Jim Shepard about his story collection You Think That’s Bad, alpine life, the empathetic reach, and imperial Rome.
Rumpus Book Club member Josh Anastasia reviews the club’s February pick, You Think That’s Bad:
You Think That’s Bad is a collection of short stories from one of my favorite writers, Jim Shepard.
There are eleven stories in the collection, ten of which were previously published in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, and Electric Literature among other.
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A short story by Jim Shepard, author of the forthcoming collection You Think That’s Bad, our Rumpus Book Club pick for February.
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Her envelope had hearts where the o’s in my name should have been and I tore it open and read her letter right there in the sun.
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In his introduction to the issue, guest editor Jim Shepard says, “I’ve been drawn to protagonists who are geniuses at knitting together self-indictment and self-exoneration in ways that are both unconscious and calculated. Protagonists who leave us to sort through what they’ve figured out, what they can’t figure out, and what they won’t try to figure out about themselves.”
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Rumpus Books asked some of our favorite writers what they will be reading as we leave the aughts behind and sally forth into a new decade.
“The first worry writers have when they consider working with something like historical events has to do with the issue of authority: as in, where do I get off writing about that? Well, here’s the good and the bad news: where do you get off writing about anything? Where do you get off writing about someone of a different gender? A different person? Where do you get off writing about yourself, from twenty years ago?
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“But What I Really Love About This Is This Amazing Game That You’ve Invented”