The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
Want to see the new film version of The Great Gatsby but afraid it won’t live up to the book?
At The Millions, five English professors pass judgment on the success of the adaptation.
Read it to find out what additional source material Baz Luhrmann drew on and whether Carey Mulligan breathed a life into the role of Daisy that “honestly, Fitzgerald didn’t.”
...moreArguably, no other story has been made to express absolute black and absolute white as clearly as World War II. So how can an artist integrate the textures of grey that make a story truly poignant?
In an essay for The Millions, Charles-Adam Foster-Simard reviews an Art Spiegelman exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery called “CO-MIX: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics and Scraps.”
It’s as good a reason as any to explore the medium of graphic novels and the difficulty of making art about the Holocaust, and Foster-Simard does so in a way that really illuminates Spiegelman’s impact on comics and literature.
...more“Why are they still bothering with paperbacks?” This came from a coffee-shop acquaintance when he heard my book was soon to come out in paperback, nine months after its hardcover release. “Anyone who wants it half price already bought it on ebook, or Amazon.”
At The Millions, Nicole Bernier writes about the point of the paperback.
...moreVia The Millions, an Atlantic blog post on the death of “America’s least favorite pronoun”: the dreaded “whom.”
It always feels like society is crumbling when big linguistic changes occur, but as Megan Garber points out, even notorious grammar stickler William Safire advised rewriting sentences to avoid using the objective-case equivalent of “who.”
If “whom” really did die out, traditionalists would mourn, but at least they wouldn’t have to deal with people overcorrecting in an attempt to sound formal.
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Mark O’Connell, author of the first original e-book from The Millions, talks about why he is interested in and troubled by what he calls this “frictionless sharing and flattening of affect,” particularly when it comes to what Internet inside jokes have nicknamed Epic Fails.
...moreThere is much more to Truman Capote than just being the man behind Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood.
Beyond the slow, warbling flamboyant character that has been portrayed in the movies, he was one of the last self-invented writers.
...moreTeenagers aren’t exactly renowned for pouring out their feelings to the adults in their lives.
“It makes me think that this is why The Catcher in the Rye is a classic,” writes Carolyn Ross at The Millions. “People are just so thrilled to hear a teenage boy’s thoughts.”
But you can always get at least a little insight into someone’s thoughts by looking at the books they like, and as a high-school teacher, Ross knows what books teenage boys like.
...moreOur friends over at The Millions are branching out: in addition to the features on their fantastic website, they’re starting to publish ebooks.
The inaugural volume is called Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever, but judging by the excerpt they’ve posted, there’s nothing fail about it.
...moreInstead of trying to wrestle a year’s worth of literature into one tidy little list, The Millions has asked various writers to simply discuss anything good they read this year, whether it was new or old or in between.
So far, people like Emma Straub, Choire Sicha, and Jeffrey Eugenides have weighed in (who knew Sicha was such a sci-fi fan?), and we’ll get more as the month continues.
...moreMark O’Connell tells a fascinating story in The Millions about his encounter with a recently released murderer, Malcolm MacArthur.
O’Connell grew up hearing and reading stories about MacArthur murders, but his favorite is a fictional novel, The Book of Evidence, whose main character, Freddie Montgomery, is based on MacArthur.
...moreLast week was the National Book Foundation Awards Ceremony.
At The Millions, Bill Morris narrates the event and cheers on underdog Domingo Martinez, author of the memoir The Boy Kings of Texas who lost in the non-fiction category to Kathrine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
...moreFor those of you who are trying to make the slow transition from political anxiety back to the relative feather mattress of literary intrigue, The Millions has a list of “The Unelectable in Literature,” a delicious selection of characters (fictional or not) who wouldn’t stand a chance.
...moreOver on The Millions, Thea Lim takes an analytical look at Junot Díaz and his book, This Is How You Lose Her, shedding some light on the reactions it has inspired, from the accolades and awards, to feminist criticism and the influence of race.
...moreThe Millions interviews Cheryl Strayed about grief, Sugar, rejection, setting boundaries, and much more.
“That’s what authority is. When you’re actually writing from that deepest place within you, if you tell the truth, you’re using your greatest power and your greatest authority.
...moreIf you’ve ever been curious about what it’s like to be a cataloger of an author’s work, much less David Foster Wallace’s final book, you may want to give Jenn Shapland’s gorgeous essay, “The Human Heart is a Chump: Cataloging The Pale King” a going over.
...more“As an NYC neophyte, it seemed to me that The Rumpus really does love New York. And from my vantage at the back of the crowd, enjoying some of my favorite authors (and decent drinks) while rubbing elbows with fellow members of the literati, it looked as though New York loved The Rumpus right back.”
That’s the The Millions on last night’s event.
...moreThe Millions featured David Abrams in their Post-40 Bloomer column and chronicle the 49-year-olds long road to literary success.
Fobbit, Abrams’s first novel, came out from Grove/Atlantic on Sept. 4 and is “is a tale of the Iraq war that manages to be as dark as it is funny, which is to say considerably.” Abrams spent 20 years as a active duty Army journalist recounts his time in Irag as a fobbit, army speak for desk jockeys who stick close to the relative safe haven of a Forward Operating Base.
...moreThe Millions allows readers the opening paragraphs of DT Max’s David Foster Wallace biography:
“The Wallaces ate at 5:45 p.m. Afterward, Jim Wallace would read stories to Amy and David. And then every night the children would get fifteen minutes each in their beds to talk to Sally about anything that was on their minds.
...moreThe Millions has excerpted the first lines of Zadie Smith’s forthcoming novel NW.
Set in northwest London, this book is Smith’s first novel since the publication of On Beauty in 2005. NW will be released this September.
...moreAt The Millions, Jessica Gross reviews Tiny Beautiful Things, Cheryl Strayed’s forthcoming collection of Dear Sugar columns.
“Sugar forces us to swallow sometimes painful realizations about what we want, who we are, and what we therefore must do — or, if not that, the choices we must make.
...moreWe’ve always loved The Millions, but when they gave our redesign a shout-out, and described us as “everyone’s favorite scrappy San Francisco literary web site,” we swooned.
So the secret’s out: Call us “scrappy” and we’ll fall hard for you.
...more“The Rejection Generator rejects writers before an editor looks at a submission. Inspired by psychological research showing that after people experience pain they are less afraid of it in the future, The Rejection Generator helps writers take the pain out of rejection.”
Here’s a handy tool to support “rejection immunity” and ease the fear of sending submissions into the wild.
...moreThe Millions interviews Eugene Cross about the role of violence in his writing, being pulled away from home, running a creative writing workshop for refugees, and his debut story collection, Fires of Our Own Choosing.
“There are fires (obviously), drownings, robberies, break-ups, impending imprisonments, and all nature of tragedy, and through it all many of these characters are looking to blame anyone around them, anyone but themselves.
...moreEdith Pearlman’s interview over at The Millions is worth a gander whether your familiar with the author of recent collection, Binocular Vision, or just becoming acquainted. The interview includes ambling thoughts on Pearlman’s work and interests, and includes mention of Hermes typewriters, polar expeditions, gun collecting, Pearlman’s stylistic influences, and the task of literature.
...moreThe forthcoming paperback edition of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King contains four previously unpublished scenes. The Millions shares the full text of one of those additional scenes.
...moreAt The Millions, Alan Levinovitz provides us with a brief history of blurbs, touching on their propensity for hyperbole, fakery, and shameless cronyism.
“When did this circus get started? It’s tempting to look back no further than the origins of the word “blurb,” coined in 1906 by children’s book author and civil disobedient Gelett Burgess.
...more“They say fiction requires conflict; well, when New York was a war of all against all, you had all the conflict you could handle any time you put your feet on the street.”
At The Millions, Madison Smartt Bell reflects on arriving in New York “without a literary footprint,” and the subsequent years of reading and writing the city.
...moreA new social networking site allows you to share snippets from longer pieces (so long as the source is electronic). With the help of a bookmarklet installed in your browser, text-sharing can be completed at the click of a button.
“By adding a Twitter-like interface layer to Highlights, Findings gives e-books an innovative edge on their paperbound ancestors: Here’s a social network that literally lets you actively read over other bookworms’ shoulders and watch their thought processes coalesce in real time.”
(Via The Millions)
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