2015
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Critique through Juxtaposition
To interrogate what causes popular things to be popular is to focus on the responses to art offered by regular people with no expertise at all, which is to be, by definition, common. Your favorite tumblog became a book and…
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(Almost) Meaning
Over at Granta, Greg Jackson thinks about fiction in contrast with nonfiction, and how writers choose to write fiction precisely because they do not know exactly what they want to say, although it is expected that they do and are…
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Journalism and the Content Farm
For The Awl, Sam Stecklow writes a detailed history of the Chicago Sun-Times‘s recent structural and cultural shift from a “gritty, urban, crime and fire and investigation daily newspaper” to a Sun-Times-branded national aggregated content network.
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Notable Los Angeles: 10/12–10/18
Monday 10/12: David J. Peterson discusses and signs The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building. 7 p.m. at Book Soup. Sarah Weinman, Elizabeth Little, Christa Faust, and Steph Cha discuss Women & Crime…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
In a focused and engaging Saturday Interview, Arielle Bernstein talks to essayist Karrie Higgins—the author of a 2015 Best American Essay titled “Strange Flowers”—about the generative quality of chaos within the creative process. Higgins points to the influence of forensic science on her approach.…
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In the Wind Like Singing
Over on Kill Your Darlings, Angela Meyer writes a lovely reflective essay on her time spent in Barnhill, where George Orwell stayed while he wrote 1984. She explores Orwell through the mess that might be 1984, the perfection of his…
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With Animal by Carol Guess and Kelly Magee
Kelsie Hahn reviews With Animal by Carol Guess and Kelly Magee today in Rumpus Books.
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Learning From the Worst
The representation of writing students in film is an interesting one, as Leah Schnelbach explores for Electric Literature. There exists a trend in which writing students are shown to be young and innocent, learning from inadequate teachers. Schnelbach attempts to explain…
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The Rumpus Interview with Matt Bell
Author Matt Bell talks video games, fiction, nonfiction, politics, empathy, and his new books, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn and Scrapper.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Greater Than Themselves
Stephen Dau writes from Brussels on the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe, and how average citizens are stepping up to meet the needs that the government cannot.
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Notable NYC: 10/10–10/16
Saturday 10/10: Katie Degentesh and Katy Bohinc join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Christopher Lee, Sarah Thomas, Nathan Myers, Karen Less, Bradman, Nicole Basta, Christian Polanco, Katie Haller, and Padty join the Say Yes series. 1013 Pacific…
