And there I was, last night, watching a YouTube livefeed of a state Senate filibuster, something I never thought I would do.
-Roxane Gay
Let’s start with Roxane Gay’s Let’s Recap What Happened in Texas and When Twitter Does What Journalism Can’t. I agree that Wendy is a Feminist Superhero. Would you like a Rumpus recap on this week’s victories and defeats?
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Part of her was hoping to get mugged–a major trauma would simplify everything. Her responsibilities, though dreary and minor, were all-consuming, and a nonfatal stab would seemed like just the thing to get people off her back for a while.
-Jim Gavin’s Middle Men
At a literary event that took place inside a masonic lodge at a cemetery, Jim Gavin read an excerpt from his book, and the next night I started and finished Middle Men, his collection of short stories that are mostly set in Los Angeles.
The collection made me laugh aloud and the characters made me cringe several times, too. Two questions I asked myself while reading the stories were 1) Are the characters sad and stuck and stagnant? and 2) Am I?
While in bed, I would read one of his stories and then watch an X-Files episode, back and forth, a kind of ping-ponging. I finished both the series and the book and what I decided is that I’m not getting emotionally invested in a TV series ever again. It’s just too much work watching hundreds of episodes. As far as answering the question about being sad and stuck and stagnant? The answer is yes, in some ways.
Jim Gavin describes the collection as very autobiographical and says that his characters “have lost, and will continue to lose, but I don’t think that makes them losers.”
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The panic that pervades these stories arises from a shared consciousness that there is too much cause for fear and worry. Who, exactly, is to be held responsible for the deteriorating environment? What, precisely, causes terrorism? Most importantly, what ought we to do? Enter the bugbears and scapegoats, enter a reliance on metaphor to say what can’t be confidently said.
-Reese Okyong Kong’s The Monster Impulse
Last night I reread all the essays from The Blurb. Allow me to highlight some essays from The Rumpus archives: The Monster Impulse, The Complete Thing, Mourning the Book, and Managing Writers in the Workplace.
If you’re looking for something more recent: The Mini-Interview with Miranda July, The Empty-Nest Yard Sale, Spotlight: Alexander Rothman, and The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Rage.
