The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
Journalist Joe Mozingo digs deep into his ancestral history to uncover the origin behind his surname, and discovers it’s one of the few African names to survive not only the Middle Passage, but the history of American slavery itself.
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Of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Haiti, and V.S. Pritchett…
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Richard Stern has died. Stern was a short story writer, novelist, and essayist. I’ve always been particularly fond of Stern’s short stories, which are as emotionally raw as they are comic.
...moreWhy do we incorporate our personal lives into works of fiction? And how do we know when to stop?
In a post for the New York Times‘s “Draft” series, “about the art and craft of writing,” Rumpus columnist Peter Orner recalls a long-ago event that his psyche can’t shake: as a child, he stole a pair of nice gloves from his father.
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Another bookstore closes and San Francisco yawns. But Adobe Books on 16th Street, between Valencia and Guerrero isn’t another bookstore. It is a haven, a port for lonely souls, readers.
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This morning I threw Julian Barnes’ Sense of an Ending out the window of my car.
...moreIf you’re in the Bay Area, don’t miss Rumpus columnist Peter Orner‘s reading at Booksmith this Thursday to celebrate the paperback release of his novel Love and Shame and Love.
It will include a conversation with fellow author (and occasional Rumpus contributor) Michelle Richmond and, of course, deep-dish pizza.
...moreBay Area readers, listen up: Rumpus columnist Peter Orner is doing a reading Thursday evening at 5:00 in UC Berkeley’s Morrison Library as part of the Story Hour series.
Will he read from his latest novel Love and Shame and Love?
...moreAt The New York Times, Rumpus columnist Peter Orner reviews Adam Levin’s new story collection, Hot Pink.
“Life in Hot Pink is raw, messy, yet replete with moments of awkward grace. There are times when these characters hold steady amid the mayhem, when the long, crazy struggle makes fleeting sense.”
...moreOver at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Rumpus contributor Lauren Eggert-Crowe reviews columnist and Book Club author Peter Orner’s Love and Shame and Love.
“…All the love that permeates the story is alight with shame, as if shame is an enzyme that unlocks and activates an otherwise useless nutrient.”
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In an essay called “The I Without a Self,” W.H. Auden tells us about a rumor “which if true might have occurred in a Kafka story.” That is that Kafka, without knowing it, fathered a child.
My lung was fair at least out there, here where I’ve been for the last fortnight. I’ve not been able to see the doctor. But it can’t be so bad considering for instance that I was able – holy vanity! – to chop for an hour and more without getting tired, and yet was happy, for moments.
...moreRumpus columnist and Book Club author Peter Orner’s Esther Stories will be presented by Word for Word, “San Francisco’s premiere producer of short stories on stage.” The event will take place at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on Monday, Feb 27 at 7:00 pm.
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Wherever he went, the man of God carried his shotgun…
Christopher Goffard’s You Will See Fire is a tense and harrowing look at the life and mysterious death – of a brave, at times, recklessly so – American priest living and working in Kenya.
...moreThe Jewish Daily Forward reviews November’s Rumpus Book Club selection, Peter Orner’s Love and Shame and Love.
“Part epic, part bildungsroman, Peter Orner’s “Love and Shame and Love” is a refreshing departure from the shtetl nostalgia shtick that has come to typify contemporary American Jewish fiction.
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I mourn him like a lost brother. I’ve no right to say this. It’s ridiculous. Yet some voices, we convince ourselves, can’t be lived without.
...more“Teeming yet not hyperactive, full of emotion without being mushy, elegant yet intimate, this is a book that gets into your head and makes itself at home there.”
That is praise from The New York Times’ review of Peter Orner’s Love and Shame and Love (November’s Rumpus Book Club pick).
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November’s Book Club selection is Love and Shame and Love (Little, Brown), a novel by Peter Orner (whose column you can follow here on the Rumpus). Orner traverses three generations of the Popper family, through which he considers the intricate realities of the American family. The esteemed and hilarious Daniel Handler called it “epic like Gilgamesh and epic like a guitar solo,” which is both apt and all-encompassing praise.
The Rumpus Book Club is proudly presenting Zipper Mouth, Laurie Weeks’s debut novel as our October pick. Published by the Feminist Press, it tells the story of a New York junkie, along with the “exalted night-club epiphanies” and “devastating morning-after hangovers.” And the book comes with a ringing endorsement from Michelle Tea.
There are few things more riveting than watching people gossip in a language you don’t understand.
Greatest American short story writer? Ever? For me, it’s not even an interesting question. Welty in a landslide.
Two boys are fighting. Neither is especially interested in beating the other up but once these things start, sometimes you’ve got no choice but to go ahead with it.
I’ve been hearing the short story is dead again. The real money is in novels. Screenplays! A short story? Why don’t you go and write a haiku while you’re at it.
This happens sometimes. I got murder on the brain this morning.
Some stories cut so close you can only tell them in shards. Try getting at it directly and the thing – call it some kind of unspeakable personal tragedy – breaks apart on the page.
There is a line of James Wright I have always loved: “Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness of the Midwest?”
Re-reading one of the great modern sea stories, “The Tramp Steamer’s Last Port of Call,” by the Columbian writer Alvaro Mutis, I thought of this line of Wright’s.
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