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From Stephen Elliott
A Rumpus Lamentation on What We Lost
Say you took the long view of September 11, 2001, the view from the heavens, the view of a compassionate celestial being. From up there, you’d see that approximately 150,000 earthlings died that day.
...moreAfter decades of unlimited wealth and power, Gadhafi’s on the run. Such a steep decline from rich to running can only incite the imagination. Salon.com got a slew of authors to imagine the intricacies of Gadhafi’s current reality. Steve Almond imagined the unrequited love story of Gadhafi and Condoleeza Rice.
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The Rumpus and the Bay Citizen are excited to announce our next monthly event, “We Love You From the Start.”
August’s event features a slew of brilliant writers: Melissa Febos, Brendan Constantine, Steve Fainaru, and Steve Almond.
...moreFrom our Pacific Northwesterly neighbors, a new Tin House podcast featuring Steve Almond for your enjoyment.
Steve Almond provides a lecture from last summer’s Writer’s Workshop, “Everything They Told You in MFA School Was Wrong, Except For The Debt.” He poses questions like, “What is writing?” It’s not “making shit up” but “decision-making.” There’s humor, there’s sarcasm, strong opinions and poignant life-lessons, true to Almond form.
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Gil Scott-Heron died on May 27, at age 62. As I write this, there’s no official cause of death. We’ll know soon enough. This is America, after all. Whatever the medical details suggest, I’m listing his official cause of death as grief.
David Sirota writes a weekly column that appears in dozens of newspapers. He has his own radio show. And he’s a frequent guest on cable TV gabfests. These facts should qualify Sirota as a pundit.
But it feels wrong – and slightly dirty – to use that word.
...morePublishing Perspectives covers Rumpus contributor and “literary rock star” Steve Almond’s D.I.Y. success.
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(Yet Another) Rumpus Lamentation:
It’s a sunny winter day in Tucson, Arizona. There’s an event being held in the parking lot of a supermarket called Safeway.
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“You will have to imagine my confusion when Ms. Nutting’s debut story collection, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, appeared on my doorstep. She had chosen to defy all reasonable laws of feminine desire by spurning me as a sexual object.
How I Became a Music Critic:
At age 19, I was assigned to review Bob Dylan in concert, despite the fact that I had very little sense of who Bob Dylan was. I was doing a summer internship at my hometown paper, and the regular critic had fallen ill.
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A Rumpus Meditation on Editors, Ambition, and Angry Dependence (in 33 loosely jointed parts):
1. On July 30, the managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, Kevin Morrissey, took his life. His note stated that he “just couldn’t bear it anymore.”
...moreThere’s been a lot of new people here lately, so if you’re new to the Rumpus (or if you’re not), Sunday’s the day where you can catch up with what Rumpus Books has been up to this week.
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Porn, Christopher Hitchens, snacking on weaker humans … You name it, Rumpus Books has got it. Our weekly roundup below the fold.
Man, Rumpus Books has been busy. This week, we published quite a number of must-read reviews, excerpts, interviews, and even a reprint, all conveniently rounded up for you below the fold.
Happy spring, Rumpusers! Come see what you missed in Rumpus Books this week.
“If asking contributors to write for free then collecting 50K is good karma, what’s bad karma, Mark?”
I know we’ve been linking to a lot of Rumpus contributor Steve Almond lately, but the guy’s on a truth-to-power roll. Also, he’s awesome.
...more“Am I suggesting that music criticism is a pointless exercise? Yeah, I guess I am.
In many cases it’s even worse than that. Because critics are, by their very job description, charged with being hypercritical. I certainly was. It was as if my critic credibility depended on my not being fooled into actually enjoying myself.”
Rumpus contributor Steve Almond takes on music criticism over at The Boston Globe.
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This week in New York a tribute to George Carlin, James Wood reads a book he’s never read before, Shya Scanlon gets other people to read his poems, NYC Twestival 2010, Huggabroomstik, Jeff Lewis and others cover songs by Major Matt Mason USA, Victor Lavalle and Maud Newton talk, and Lapham’s Quarterly holds a panel discussion on creativity.
Steve Almond’s self-published This Won’t Take But a Minute Honey is now a best seller at Harvard Bookstore.
Check out Steve’s self-publishing story here.
...more(Writing wretched verse so you don’t have to since 1995)
Juice
Today the jury voted to “acquit”
though the way the word leapt forth
was the way a Southern gentleman cedes
a game in frustration
This week, Rumpus Books reviewed a book on Girl Power and the music of the nineties, a novel about the American dream, and an homage to Sylvia Plath.
To say that I’ve had a checkered history in publishing would be like saying Elizabeth Taylor had a checkered history in marriage.
Come catch up! Highlights from this week in Rumpus books are below the fold.
Many years ago (perhaps as many as eight) Jason Mulgrew took my advanced fiction workshop at Boston College. In fact, Jason was one of only two students ever to take my class pass/fail. If you are now thinking that Jason must have been a lazy, drunken, irresponsible dickweed, you are right.
I couldn’t really write a Daily Rumpus today (not a long one certainly, until I decided not to). Why? Last night I was with rock stars.
“For the past nine months, ever since a certain somebody seized the White House, conservative pundits have dominated the ranks of nonfiction. …
It would be easy enough, and rather predictable, to lament this state of affairs and to find in it evidence of an anemic literary culture, a dangerously aggrieved minority, or at the very least the diabolical efficacy of bulk sales.
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I first heard about Stoner back in grad school. I’d been on a Denis Johnson jag (weren’t we all?) and so naturally assumed the novel was a florid account of reefer madness. This is how Stoner begins:
...moreWilliam Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen.
