October 2016
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Into Paradox
Over at the New York Review of Books, Peter E. Gordon writes about Søren Kierkegaard’s legacy through the lens of Daphne Hampson’s biography, Kierkegaard: Exposition and Critique, which she dedicates to S.K. for helping her grasp “with greater clarity why…
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Dedicate Your No-Trump Vote: Morris Collins
Trump is on the ballot; we don’t need weapons to repudiate him, but the Blackshirts are marching in our streets.
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Travel Writing as Artifact
At the Public Domain Review, Nandini Das revisits The Principle Navigations and argues that the massive folio of travel writings compiled by Richard Hakluyt in 1589 is more than an artifact of British colonialism. It also memorializes, “the elusive traces of those…
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The Copyright Saga Continues
A new copyright lawsuit has been initiated against Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson for their single “Uptown Funk.” Collage, a funk band out of Minneapolis, alleges that the hit rips the instrumentals of their 1983 song “Young Girls”: Upon information and belief,…
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Fire, Magic, and Flash Fiction
At WhiskeyPaper, Linda Niehoff writes briefly and beautifully about fire and magic, hinting at post-apocalyptic worlds with lines like, “We’d spent long evenings sewing together old bedsheets and nightgowns, the last pillowcase.” “Elsewhere” brings to mind Ray Bradbury and autumn…
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Hard to Kill
Now everything finally made sense. I had practically died and woken up, resurrected. That’s why everyone was looking at me funny. Like its cousin Death, Near-Death leaves a stench that makes people uncomfortable.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #56: Patricia Engel
I met one of my favorite writers before she ever published a single story. We were classmates vying for our MFAs in Creative Writing from Florida International University and would smile at each other from across the room. She was…
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Who Are These Girls?
At FiveThirtyEight, Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven, provides another perspective on books with “girl” in the title, complete with statistical analysis and fantastic graphs.
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Notable Los Angeles: 10/31–11/6
Monday 10/31: Happy Halloween! Get drunk and watch horror movies. Tuesday 11/1: Sonya Chung reads from her novel The Loved Ones, in conversation with Julia Fierro. 7 p.m. at Chevalier’s Books. Roland Lazenby discusses and signs Showboat: The Life of…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Brandon Hicks shares a special Halloween essay he’s illustrated for us. Meanwhile, in the Saturday Essay, Evan Lavender-Smith reveals takes a frank and humorous look at self-image. “Character Evan” is attractive, fit, responsible, and mature; a good husband and father. But “real…
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The Truth of Brushstrokes or Brushstrokes of Truth?
Autofiction is in these days. Discussing her first novel Fantasian at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins blog, Larissa Pham unpacks her perspective on inserting autobiographical elements into fiction: I knew that no matter what I wrote in my…
