[{"id":258975,"date":"2026-09-25T10:50:59","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258975"},"modified":"2026-09-25T13:13:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T17:13:02","slug":"today-the-september-rumpus-book-club-selection-the-odyssey-with-emily-wilson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/25\/today-the-september-rumpus-book-club-selection-the-odyssey-with-emily-wilson\/","title":{"rendered":"Rescheduled: The September Rumpus Book Club Selection: \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d with Emily Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our fourth installment of the relaunch The Rumpus Book Club* has been postponed due to weather and travel delays. The conversation will now take places this Sunday, September 27, at 4:00 PM ET. Host Debbie Millman will be speaking with\u00a0Emily Wilson<\/a>\u00a0about her New York Times Bestselling translation of\u00a0The Odyssey<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written in iambic pentameter verse, Emily Wilson\u2019s Odyssey is a lean, fleet-footed translation that recaptures Homer\u2019s \u201cnimble gallop\u201d and brings an ancient epic to new life. The New York Times named Wilson\u2019s translation as one of its 100 notable books of 2018<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Debbie will be joined this month by Roxane Gay, and together they will be speaking with Emily for 45 minutes and then will open up the conversation to include questions from the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emily Wilson is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies<\/a> at the University of Pennsylvania<\/a>, holding the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities<\/a>. Wilson attended Oxford University (Balliol College B.A. in Classics and Corpus Christi College M.Phil. in Renaissance English Literature) and Yale University (Ph.D. in Classics and Comparative Literature). She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome<\/a> in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow<\/a>, and a Guggenheim Fellow<\/a>. She has published four books<\/a> on ancient literature, philosophy and translation, an edited volume on tragedy, and many essays and articles, as well as verse translations of Seneca, Sophocles, Euripides and Homer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please\u00a0register here and join us<\/a>\u00a0at 4:00 PM ET on Sunday<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*PSA: <\/strong>There have been some scam e-mails purportedly sent from The Rumpus<\/em>, soliciting authors for our book club for a fee. Please disregard these e-mails. Official Rumpus<\/em> e-mails will always come from therumpus.net, from a senior editor on our official masthead, and we do not charge authors to be featured in our book club. Money flows to the writer. Never forget!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Poemas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>RA\u00cdCES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Me oculto en el espesor de la selva<br \/>donde he vivido milenios<br \/>en la mirada hambrienta del jaguar<br \/>en la lengua b\u00edfida de la serpiente<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Soy ra\u00edz hoja lluvia<br \/><em>lengua madre<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Me encuentro en las ruinas de mis pasados<br \/>que son los tuyos<br \/>en las coronas pulverizadas de los pueblos poderosos<br \/>que olvidaste<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Estoy en tu piel<br \/>en los p\u00e1rpados que esconden tu mirada indiferente<br \/>en tu lengua<br \/>que ha olvidado sus ra\u00edces<br \/>y ahora llora en el idioma for\u00e1neo del ultrajante<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Encu\u00e9ntrame<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">En el fuego que has alimentado con codicia<br \/>h\u00e1blale a \u00e9l y al r\u00edo<br \/>p\u00eddeles que te recuerden qui\u00e9n soy<br \/>qui\u00e9n eres<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perm\u00edtenos rugir contigo<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Ya temi xoa, a\u00ea, \u00eaa<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> A\u00fan estoy vivo<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>SOY PORQUE FUIMOS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hondo en m\u00ed<br \/>me abr\u00ed paso entre la selva<br \/>y encontr\u00e9 a mi tatarabuela<br \/>moliendo ma\u00edz en el patio<br \/>con las rodillas manchadas de tierra<br \/>y el sudor brillando como ofrenda<br \/>al sol del mediod\u00eda<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Escuch\u00e9 el canto que no aprend\u00ed<br \/>pero mi cuerpo a\u00fan pronuncia<br \/>la lengua robada que arde<br \/>el grito que mi boca olvid\u00f3<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Pashomou<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">En la espesura<br \/>tambi\u00e9n vi a los otros<br \/>quienes trabajaron el barro<br \/>y sembraron ca\u00f1a,<br \/>los que continuaron rezando al sol<br \/>para no olvidar del todo<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Yo no nac\u00ed sola<br \/>fui parida por un continente<br \/>y cada rostro ajeno<br \/>me revela un pedazo que cre\u00ed perdido<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Regreso al peque\u00f1o apartamento<br \/>donde mi abuela frota Vicks en sus manos<br \/>y lo unta en el pecho de mi hermana<br \/>como si pudiera ahuyentar con mentol<br \/>las penas del mundo<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tambi\u00e9n ella conserva los hechizos<br \/>los cuidados suaves y persistentes<br \/>de esas mujeres iletradas<br \/>que levantaron imperios de ternura<br \/>con los pies llenos de barro<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cuando me busco<br \/>ellas me miran<br \/>desde todos los espejos<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>BAJO LA PIEL DEL TIEMPO<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2013 Poema para Carlota<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">M\u00e1s all\u00e1 de este camino<br \/>hay un gran bosque<br \/>donde el tiempo dej\u00f3 de ser r\u00edo<br \/>y se abri\u00f3 en espiral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despertaron tus pupilas infinitas<br \/>que guardan un centenar de galaxias<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Loba de mar<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Destejiste la oscuridad ancestral<br \/>de la luz que te habita<br \/>tus cuerdas vocales parieron un ave<br \/>d\u00e1ndole voz al dolor<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ra\u00edz<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Eres amazonas<br \/>un cosmos contenido por tendones y piel<br \/>tu lengua besa la lengua de tus antepasados<br \/>tu cuerpo semilla<br \/>ahora es trueno<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Encu\u00e9ntrame en el fuego que has alimentado con codicia<br \/>\nh\u00e1blale a \u00e9l y al r\u00edo\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88920],\"author_categories\":{\"88920\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"140487\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88920,\"display_name\":\"Angie Roby\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[88860],"tags":[88861],"ppma_author":[88920],"class_list":["post-258946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poesia","tag-poesia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tres Poemas - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Encu\u00e9ntrame en el fuego que has alimentado con codicia h\u00e1blale a \u00e9l y al r\u00edo\u2026\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/25\/tres-poemas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tres Poemas - The Rumpus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" 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Rumpus"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","https:\/\/x.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/therumpus.tumblr.com\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4","name":"Juliana Luna","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=gc90dbb975d959e35091c18702a00709e","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Juliana Luna"},"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/author\/jnluna\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":88920,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"angie-roby","display_name":"Angie Roby","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"<p><span data-sheets-root=\"1\">Angie Roby es una publicista y poeta venezolana quien reside en EE.UU. desde el 2004. Su obra explora la identidad, la memoria, la migraci\u00f3n, el instinto y la vida interior. Es cofundadora, junto a Carlota Roby, de la comunidad cultural Vocales Verticales, cuya misi\u00f3n es hacer de la poes\u00eda una parte de la vida cotidiana.<br \/><br \/>Su escritura est\u00e1 influenciada por la literatura latinoamericana, sus ra\u00edces venezolanas y la relaci\u00f3n entre el cuerpo, la naturaleza, la ancestralidad y la espiritualidad. A trav\u00e9s de la poes\u00eda, Angie busca crear espacios donde la literatura se sienta viva, capaz de devolvernos a nosotros mismos.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/5F397F2F-CC08-4154-9CD7-176BD7AD9B75-Angie-Roby.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258946"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258969,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258946\/revisions\/258969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258946"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258958,"date":"2026-09-25T08:35:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T12:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258958"},"modified":"2026-09-24T15:39:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:39:30","slug":"like-my-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/25\/like-my-father\/","title":{"rendered":"Like My Father"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Like My Father<\/strong><br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I will spill my bag of allen wrenches<br \/>on the garage floor, remain even<br \/>as the mowed lawn. My father<br \/>smiles when he\u2019s coated<br \/>in oil. Cars remind him<br \/>there\u2019s always something<br \/>to be fixed. He chooses<br \/>not to replace what he can<br \/>resurrect. I\u2019ve seen him<br \/>swim in motor oil, turning<br \/>his drawn-out body<br \/>to coat every scar<br \/>and knotted muscle.<br \/>Silence, he\u2019s taught me,<br \/>is the ultimate surrender<br \/>to the realities of love.\u00a0<br \/>Slim aluminum sheets,<br \/>we are all bent<br \/>with desire,<br \/>but we can still be<br \/>fixed by the quick<br \/>mallet of gravity.<br \/>Science is spiritually<br \/>significant: There is always<br \/>a ritual to answer to. Romance<br \/>is a question of humor,<br \/>grace. His father pulled<br \/>a hamstring trying to race him.<br \/>Humility is an embrace of the red<br \/>oil that flows out of us all. In the end,<br \/>I will hold his soldering iron against<br \/>the empty room, fuse my breath to his<br \/>absence. I will press my forehead into<br \/>every oil stain on the concrete floor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> \u2026\u2026\u2026.My father<br \/>\nsmiles when he\u2019s coated<br \/>\nin oil. Cars remind him<br \/>\nthere\u2019s always something<br \/>\nto be fixed. He chooses<br \/>\nnot to replace what he can<br \/>\nresurrect. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139812,"featured_media":258959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88923],\"author_categories\":{\"88923\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"139812\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88923,\"display_name\":\"Lucy Murrell\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[10691],"tags":[667],"ppma_author":[88923],"class_list":["post-258958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Like My Father - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u2026\u2026\u2026.My father smiles when he\u2019s coated in oil. 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They recently received an MFA in poetry from The Bennington Writing Seminars. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, they received their Bachelor of Science in Philosophy and Creative Writing from the University of Oregon. Lucy has contributed pieces to a number of literary journals and magazines including the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Unbound Journal<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oregon Voice<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Evocations Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">manywor(l)d<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">s.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Lucy-Murrell-Author-Photo-Lucy-Murrell.png?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258958"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258966,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258958\/revisions\/258966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258958"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258850,"date":"2026-09-24T12:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T16:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258850"},"modified":"2026-09-25T02:52:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T06:52:53","slug":"the-mexican-trojan-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/the-mexican-trojan-horse\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mexican Trojan Horse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many disliked the blunt disregard for Homer\u2019s epic poem in Christopher Nolan\u2019s adaptation of <em>The Odyssey<\/em>, altering and even eliminating altogether some of its most famous passages. It is true that in Nolan\u2019s adaptation, there is little of Odysseus\u2019s hubris, his contradictory ways, his cunning survival, and even his love exploits with nymphs and goddesses. Instead, Nolan plays a trick on us: He makes the hero look inward, in deep and painful agony, far from Homer\u2019s protagonist, presenting a guilt-ridden Odysseus with an anachronistic, Christian anti-war stance. He must reckon with the sack of Troy because it has precipitated a spreading horror. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Famously, Homer\u2019s Odysseus builds the wooden horse as a clever device to breach the otherwise impenetrable wall of Troy. It is a peace gift from the retreating Greeks, a sacred offering to appease the goddess Athena. A majestic scene in the film shows a gigantic, apparently harmless wooden horse half-sunk on the beach, recalling the ending of <em>The Planet of the Apes<\/em> (1968), when the Statue of Liberty sticks out of the sand on the beach of what used to be New York City. It echoes the sense of the apocalyptic. The wooden horse was a monstrous deception signaling the end of an era. It\u2019s an unprecedented abomination, violating all conventions, disavowing the shared religion with the Trojans, and even betraying his own comrades to conduct collective punishment against innocents inside their own homes. The sequence of the soldiers enduring the heat, the rising tide, and their own bodily fluids as they wait inside the horse emphasizes the barbarity. An unforgivable war crime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I will not be the first to notice the parallel between this version of the Trojan War and the forever war the United States has unleashed across the world. But I want to focus on one single perverse gift the US empire has offered its southern neighbor: the war on drugs. We may call it a <em>Mexican<\/em> Trojan Horse, as it was a ruse that caused\u2014and keeps causing\u2014death and destruction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Implanting a War <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is often repeated that Felipe Calder\u00f3n, then Mexico\u2019s president, decided of his own accord to launch the now-infamous war on drugs in December of 2006, soon after winning a dubious, widely contested presidential election. As I argue in my book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/717742\/la-guerra-en-las-palabras-una-historia-intelectual-del-narco-en-mexico-1975---2020--war-put-into-words-by-oswaldo-zavala\/\"><em>La guerra en las palabras<\/em><\/a>, the idea was implanted in Calder\u00f3n, who never campaigned on a drug security platform, but nevertheless called for a national antidrug militarization strategy days after taking office. Calder\u00f3n underwent a process of inception\u2014in Nolan\u2019s sense of the word\u2014through which the US persuaded him to escalate the drug war instigated with virulence for at least three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Starting in 1975, the US pushed for a military campaign to <a href=\"https:\/\/kellogg.nd.edu\/operation-condor-war-drugs-and-counterinsurgency-golden-triangle-1977-1983\">attack poor peasants<\/a> in Northern Mexico, spraying herbicides to defoliate poppy and marijuana crops, resulting in the exodus of thousands while failing to curb drug production. In 1989, the US forced Mexico to accept that drug organizations were a \u201cnational security\u201d threat, even creating a new intelligence institution to repeat those false claims. In 2007, Calder\u00f3n negotiated a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.everycrsreport.com\/reports\/IF10578.html\">cooperation agreement<\/a> with then-President George W. Bush: the M\u00e9rida Initiative, which funded a national military campaign against so-called cartels.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">President Calder\u00f3n recalls how, to enhance the drug war in M\u00e9xico, he personally <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cfr.org\/event\/conversation-felipe-calderon\">asked<\/a> President Bush for the \u201cinstruments\u201d of Jack Bauer, the counterterrorist agent in the TV series <em>24.<\/em> As US cultural productions shaped the Mexican president\u2019s mind, the US also trained thousands of police officers and soldiers in the art of killing. The US government has since spent over $3.6 billion on military equipment and training through the M\u00e9rida Initiative, which has contributed to the killing of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cfr.org\/backgrounders\/mexicos-long-war-drugs-crime-and-cartels\">460,000<\/a> people and more than <a href=\"https:\/\/versionpublicarnpdno.segob.gob.mx\/Dashboard\/ContextoGeneral\">134,072<\/a> disappearances, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/report\/2025\/02\/19\/double-injustice\/how-mexicos-criminal-justice-system-fails-victims-and-the\">disproportionate number<\/a> of them young, poor, brown men, in what at times appears to be a targeted social cleansing campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The M\u00e9rida Initiative was modeled after Plan Colombia, a US-backed $10 billion aid package to instigate counternarcotics operations from 2000 to 2018. Journalist Dawn Paley calls the Latin American drug war a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/24574871\">neoliberal Trojan horse<\/a>\u201d with transnational military policies meant to bring peace and security, in reality, instrumentalizing violence to access resources and untapped markets. This type of binational agreement, Paley argues, \u201ccombines terror with policy making in a neoliberal mix, cracking open social worlds and territories previously unavailable to globalized capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Kill the Narcos<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The drug war has been told as an epic in which modern heroes\u2014DEA agents, brave Mexican soldiers, even if only a few\u2014have fought the barbarians, the Mexican narcos. In the 2018 Netflix series <em>Narcos: Mexico<\/em>, Walt Breslin is a persistent DEA agent who journeys into a land of many adventures and horrors, who fights his share of battles, and who mourns his friends killed in action. It is a story that transforms other men\u2014frequently poor Mexican men\u2014into rats and peasants into bloodthirsty armies, the lotus flower into valuable cocaine and marijuana shipments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The plot is simple: In 1985, DEA agent Enrique Camarena is kidnapped and killed in Mexico by Mexican traffickers in retaliation for his investigative work, which led the authorities to one of the largest marijuana busts in history. At the end of season one, agent Breslin crosses the southern border posing as a tourist and drives an RV to smuggle a small arsenal of weapons. Once in Mexico, he gives a group of other agents\u2014or perhaps mercenaries\u2014a hit list of Mexican traffickers. \u201cWe knew we were in a war,\u201d Breslin says. \u201cNow it was our turn. Pretty soon, they were going to know they were in one too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Aligned with the official US narrative\u2014a DEA agent directly intervened in the production, to the point of offering <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/tv\/tv-news\/narcos-mexico-real-dea-agent-what-expect-season-2-1170213\/\">spoilers<\/a>\u2014the series distorts the events and naturalizes the killing of traffickers as a type of justified war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mexican viewers will point out that Breslin did not need to breach a wall to sneak into Mexico, as it is mostly defenseless against invasions from the north. The DEA agent comes from the country that built the only standing fortification, so it is hard to believe that he had to smuggle weapons when the US armed the Mexicans traffickers he now intends to kill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The plot becomes even more distorted when you learn that, according to the DEA officer assigned to investigate the agent\u2019s murder, the CIA <a href=\"https:\/\/english.elpais.com\/elpais\/2013\/10\/15\/inenglish\/1381856701_704435.html\">tortured and killed<\/a> Camarena after he learned that US covert agents used drug money and properties owned by Mexican traffickers to sponsor the Contra insurgency in Nicaragua. It is also documented that US-trained Mexican soldiers committed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/05\/27\/world\/americas\/mexican-militarys-high-kill-rate-raises-human-rights-fears.html\">extrajudicial killings<\/a>, and that the militarization has enabled lucrative gas, oil, and mining <a href=\"https:\/\/phenomenalworld.org\/analysis\/militarized-business\/\">projects<\/a> across Mexico, with transnational energy companies working undisturbed even in those regions most ridden with drug-related violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Narcos: Mexico<\/em> omits all this, of course, and like its DEA protagonist, it smuggles back its distorted narrative, blaming the traffickers while erasing all the alleged CIA tracks in the crime. This Mexican Trojan Horse is not a trick to win one war: It is the fundamental mechanism of a forever war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>All the Trojan Horses<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Barbarous tricks are found in most US interventions since World War II. We see it in the <a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/en\/story\/2024\/02\/1146332\">false evidence<\/a> of weapons of mass destruction presented at the United Nations to justify the invasion of Iraq, and more recently, in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/05\/us\/trump-venezuela-drug-cartel-de-los-soles.html\">made-up<\/a> drug cartel that the Department of Justice used to legitimize the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today, with the resurgence of right-wing governments across the region, the US has expanded its violent interventionism by creating the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/map-shows-all-shield-of-the-americas-nations-as-trumps-alliance-grows-12320331\">Shield of the Americas<\/a>,\u201d a \u201ccounter-cartel\u201d coalition of Trump sympathizers. They claim Latin American drug cartels are now popping up everywhere in the region, much like the faceless \u201cpeople of the sea\u201d in Nolan\u2019s film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As of now, nineteen countries have joined the alliance. With the political and financial backing of the US, Colombia\u2019s right-wing President Abelardo de la Espriella\u2014the newest member, a millionaire with dual US-Colombian citizenship\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/abelardo-de-la-espriella-us-pledges-1-billion-security-assistance-colombia\/\">promised<\/a> to bomb cocaine labs in the jungle and to build megaprisons in the style of those built by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. The Trump administration has dramatically intensified violence by designating drug cartels as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/01\/24\/g-s1-44644\/trump-drug-cartels\">terrorist organizations<\/a>, justifying unilateral strikes in Latin America as part of a program the Pentagon calls \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/23\/trump-operation-total-extermination-ecuador-colombia-cuba\/\">Operation Total Extermination<\/a>.\u201d It has already killed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/nation\/u-s-forces-strike-vessel-in-pacific-killing-2-accused-of-trafficking-drugs\">223 people<\/a>\u2014many still unidentified\u2014off the coasts of the Caribbean and the Pacific. Ecuador <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/24\/world\/americas\/us-ecuador-drug-camp-bombing-dairy-farm.html\">bombed<\/a> a dairy farm that US intelligence identified as a \u201cnarco terrorist camp,\u201d while the CIA is reportedly running another bombing operation against fishing boats near the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands, <a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/cia-involved-in-covert-strikes-on-ecuadorian-boats-report-says\/\">killing<\/a> at least eight men. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If we pay attention to all this violence, we will soon see the identity of the \u201cpeople of the sea.\u201d They are the ones willing to kill their own citizens for \u201cnational security\u201d reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Gift of Death<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Mexican Trojan Horse, however, inverts the premise of <em>The Odyssey.<\/em> As Helen explains in the film, the Greeks used her affair as a pretext to attack Troy and displace it as the region\u2019s hegemon in control of all trading routes. Conversely, the US pretends to generously help Latin America to maintain its century-old political and economic dominance in the region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The \u201cwar on drugs\u201d is a double-edged sword gift that literally kills you twice. It ignites the conflict from a distance by flooding Mexico with the annual contraband of as many as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/17\/world\/americas\/mexico-us-guns-trafficking-cartels.html\">500,000 guns<\/a>, many of which end up in traffickers\u2019 hands. Then, it gifts money and training for the Mexican army to go after the criminals the US armed in the first place. As it pushes for antidrug militarization all over Latin America, the US takes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unodc.org\/documents\/wdr\/WDR_2010\/1.3_The_globa_cocaine_market.pdf\">85% of the profits<\/a> from illegal narcotics sales in the country, leads the world in <a href=\"https:\/\/taxjustice.net\/press\/us-tops-ranking-of-real-estate-destinations-for-dirty-money\/\">money laundering<\/a> schemes, and maintains the single largest drug market on the planet. The US is considered, in fact, the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/worldpopulationreview.com\/country-rankings\/drug-use-by-country#which-country-consumes-the-most-illicit-drugs\">drug capital of the world<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The war\u2014the killing\u2014happens in Mexico. The drugs and the money remain in the US. There are no enemy walls to penetrate, but the US has built its own to curb undocumented migration fleeing the violence and the uninhabitable Latin American regions torched by the \u201cwar on drugs.\u201d The US wall is breached daily, but the migrants are not foreign invaders\u2014they make a cheap labor force that fuels the economy, pays taxes, yet is still criminalized, scapegoated, and marginalized. Unsatisfied, the US exploits Mexico\u2019s precarious labor force on both sides of the wall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is true, as Grant Morgan writes in <em>Jacobin<\/em>, that Nolan makes a <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2026\/08\/nolan-odyssey-conservatism-liberalism-trump\">conservative turn<\/a> as he imagines the empire repenting for its crimes without calling to subvert imperial politics. Odysseus finds forgiveness while allowing the next generation to inherit the throne and continue ruling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The current state of politics in the US, however, is closer to Homer\u2019s wicked poem than to Nolan\u2019s wishful adaptation. It is led by a bragging king, ready to cause the demise of others because he cannot stop himself from mischief, from taunting the Cyclops, from hearing the Sirens\u2019 song, from destroying the prosperous Troy over a man\u2019s wounded pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>There Is No Epic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In his poem \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/users\/00\/pwillen1\/lit\/art.htm\">The Art of Poetry<\/a>,\u201d Jorge Luis Borges compares Odysseus\u2019s island of Ithaca\u2014and not his epic journey home\u2014with the essence of art: \u201cThey say Ulysses, wearied of wonders, \/ wept with love on seeing Ithaca, \/ humble and green. Art is that Ithaca, \/ a green eternity, not wonders.\u201d Like Borges, Nolan\u2019s rewriting of <em>The Odyssey<\/em> does much more than present Odysseus as a sober old man ready to make amends: It interrupts the very logic of the epic, it robs the hero of his adventurous <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2026\/07\/film-review-nolan-odyssey-epic\">landscape<\/a>, it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/the-paper\/v48\/n14\/emily-wilson\/an-uncomplicated-man\">uncomplicates<\/a> the complicated hero, it even decapitates the gods. In sum, it relocates art in the green eternity of the land and the sea, away from the wonders of imperial killing. Stripped of its magnificent mythology, the film reduces Western culture to a society of murderous thieves craving the next bloody plundering, with only a few good men willing to admit that they are in desperate need of forgiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For those of us on the outskirts of the Western tradition, watching the film from the perspective of the conquered, there was a certain relief in looking down on the gringo Odysseus accepting his <em>mea culpa<\/em>, even if it\u2019s only done to allow the empire to wash away its sins the old Christian way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Matt Damon\u2019s Odysseus makes us realize who the real \u201cpeople of the sea\u201d are and what kind of destruction they are bringing to our city gates. The film\u2019s leading cast is revealing in that sense: Damon played a CIA-trained assassin in the <em>Bourne<\/em> trilogy; Jon Bernthal, a police officer, mobster Johnny Soprano, a mercenary for a private army; Robert Pattinson, the resourceful time-travel agent in Nolan\u2019s <em>Tenet<\/em>; and as Odysseus\u2019 son Telemachus, Tom Holland, whose first installment of <em>Spider-Man<\/em> was titled <em>Homecoming<\/em>. They are all echoes and variations of the same motif: the brave man trying to return home or build a new one while ravaging other people\u2019s land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is also very telling to look at the minorities in the film: Eumaeus, the blind and wise servant, is beautifully performed by John Leguizamo; Zendaya is the nameless, decapitated Trojan young woman who haunts Odysseus as a spectral Athena; both the disfigured Helen and Clytemnestra, killing Agamemnon to avenge the murder\/sacrifice of her daughter, are played by Lupita Nyong\u2019o; and Anne Hathaway, as Penelope, speaks for the abused and harassed woman married to a missing soldier. They all seek justice, but they do little to disrupt white masculine power relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nolan\u2019s film does not dare to speak truth to power to the fullest. In our cruel contemporary Odyssey, there is no epic, no homecoming, and no redemption. There is certainly no atonement. No one will pay. No one will be exiled. The wall will stand because it was built by those who conceived the Trojan Horses as tools to preserve an empire, not to destroy one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let us silence the muse and extract the tricksters from within the Trojan Horse of the drug war. Let us interrupt its epic tale of wonders. If the perpetrators don\u2019t offer to atone for their sins, we should make them. We are weary of wonders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The drug war has been told as an epic in which modern heroes\u2014DEA agents, brave Mexican soldiers, even if only a few\u2014have fought the barbarians, the Mexican narcos. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139812,"featured_media":258857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88917],\"author_categories\":{\"88917\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"140487\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88917,\"display_name\":\"Oswaldo Zavala\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[88701],"tags":[9416],"ppma_author":[88917],"class_list":["post-258850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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His most recent book is <em>Drug Cartels Do Not Exist<\/em>.<em> Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture<\/em> (2018).<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/CT-02725_MSGR.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258850"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258972,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258850\/revisions\/258972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258850"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258433,"date":"2026-09-24T11:31:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T15:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258433"},"modified":"2026-09-21T13:43:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T17:43:41","slug":"two-poems-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/two-poems-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Gap Year<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>after Frank O\u2019Hara<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Blaze drops me at the side of the road where a trail cuts through volcanic rock to the nude beach, but not before he pockets my Mountain Goats CD as a memento, a thing he does with everyone, I find out later. I stub my toe on the way down to the water because I\u2019m carrying a heavy edition of <em>Gravity\u2019s Rainbow<\/em>, nothing else, not even a purse, and I sit in the sand with a bloody foot as the Kenosha Kid asserts, questions, addresses what I did and didn\u2019t do. Late-morning, Lloyd from the dolphin school stops by and drives me to his bungalow,\u00a0where he wants to watch <em>The Secretary<\/em> with Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2014which IYKYK, but I didn\u2019t know\u2014and afterwards he shows me the swimming hole at the back of his yard and says you have to strip and dive in or the mosquitoes will eat you alive and he\u2019s stripped and in, and I\u2019m walking myself and my book up to the road to thumb a ride. A tourist in a rental van drops me at home, where Dennis is harvesting chard with Angel the cockatoo on his shoulder, Angel who turns and bites a divot from his ear just as Matty offers me an amaretto sour and invites me on a walk. I swab my toe with\u00a0 alcohol and grab my book, and Matty leads me to the grove of guavas near a stream where a god once washed her hair, and he leaves me there in the green with Tyrone Slothrup, and when guavas drop their bombs onto my head, I feel them first and recognize them later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Still Life (Fruits of the Earth, 1938)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I arrange us in the night and try to wipe away the fingerprints. Your kernels chant the violence back to me, demand their missing husk. I set them to the side, hide the plump fruit of your eyes at the bottom of a bowl. They swivel\u00a0to the light.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The melon shares a single spot of gold, withholds the rest.\u00a0<br \/>When I knock, it makes a hollow sound.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My eyes unlatch like halves of a plum, a neat split down the\u00a0middle. Your outline doubles and duets. I trace the pit to find the whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A pear cored and flipped on its back could be chayote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Once I thought a bowl of sweetness could be motionless. Then sky dragged on my cigarette and exhaled, flipped perspective on its edge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The table grows an eye each time I think of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I cut myself in two to feel the wind, to bare my longing to the elements. It ripens, breathes its spores into your mouth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pan dulce, unattended, weeps red sugar. When chiles dry, I save them, change their names.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once I thought a bowl of sweetness could be motionless. 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Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in <em>Beloit Poetry Journal<\/em>, <em>Gulf Coast<\/em>, <em>32 Poems<\/em>, <em>Southeast Review<\/em>, and elsewhere.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/headshot-oaxaca-Elizabeth-Martinez.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258433"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258855,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258433\/revisions\/258855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258433"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258493,"date":"2026-09-24T10:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T14:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258493"},"modified":"2026-09-24T15:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:30:09","slug":"negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Negotiating Contradictions on the Dance Floor: Power, Exclusion, and the Nightlife in Kyle Carrero Lopez’s “Party Line”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Party Line<\/em> by Kyle Carrero Lopez invites readers to think critically about the many kinds of parties one is beholden to throughout life. As this poetry collection depicts, political parties and pool parties have more in common than one thought possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both nostalgic and incisive, these poems use modern nightlife as a prism to illuminate devastating truths about the social politics that determine one\u2019s very personhood (and who gets on the guest list for the hottest nightclub in town).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A party promoter is more than just an affable marketer. As the narrator puts it in \u201cI\u2019m Asked a Lot What a \u2018Party Host Means,\u2019\u201d it\u2019s a sociological niche in which he becomes \u201cthe locus of power\u201d who \u201cempowers patrons to <em>stay, have \/ another.<\/em>\u201d <em><\/em>The transition between the description and a phrase one often hears in nightlife is smooth, almost flirtatious. This playful register speaks to the amiable nature of one of nightlife\u2019s many foot soldiers\u2014a carefully constructed persona that belies its real interest: capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Money\u2014who has it and how it\u2019s acquired\u2014becomes a throughline for many of the poems throughout the book. Behind every drag-queen bouncer and \u201clengthy manifestos on community care and \/ the impermissibility of all \u2018-isms\u2019 within the space,\u201d declares the same speaker, who is now off the clock and on the dancefloor in the lengthy \u201cPublic Policy\u201d poem, lies a microcosm of the capitalist economy to which partygoers subject themselves. Readers can imagine a wry smile on Carrero Lopez\u2019s face as he writes with a sharp frankness that nevertheless remains graceful throughout. He\u2019s not indignant (as so many critics of modern nightlife are labeled); instead, his poems strike a fruitful balance between sardonic and candid as they uncover the hypocrisy inherent in converting nightlife into a political project\u2014with the scruples of an investigative journalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Under a system as omnipresent as late-stage capitalism, it becomes easy to abandon hope that one could ever foster meaningful change in any direction and blame forces beyond one\u2019s control. Partying\u2014however passionately it\u2019s been politicized in the last decade\u2014breeds a complacency distinct from that of people who never thought about these things in the first place. But that\u2019s decidedly not what Carrero Lopez embodies with these poems\u2019 narrator. If anything, he\u2019s happy to implicate both the rabblerouser who narrates \u201cPublic Policy\u201d and the blithe gays who run amok in \u201cI\u2019m Asked a Lot What a \u2018Party Host\u2019 Job Means\u201d in the killing of the cash cow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In \u201cPhragmites,\u201d the same speaker has left the club and heads east toward Fire Island, a popular gay travel destination notorious for its white-male crowds and prohibitively expensive logistics. He then admits that \u201c[m]yself included, close to everyone here \/ has a body of one approximate build.\u201d Though he may not share a racial identity with most attendees, the speaker understands himself to be a cog in the machine that manufactures inclusion based on an almost fascistic taste for fitness. The singularity of the phrase \u201cone approximate\u201d echoes the uniformity previously emphasized by the description of the \u201ctall, same-faced\u201d reed plants (and attendees) often associated with this particular summer colony. These compound modifiers work harmoniously to impart the humor, humility, and mathematical precision necessary to deliver a meaningful critique of queer social life\u2019s racial-capitalist trappings. The poem itself is named after the scientific label for the slender and indistinctly beige plant that grows in crowds around Fire Island. Coy? Maybe, and I relish it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Other poems address entirely distinct aspects of queerness, far from the club\u2019s jubilee, but the consistently (and delightfully) petulant tone implies that they too are narrated by the same speaker. He\u2019s a young man dutifully aware of greater forces always at work even in the most minute of interactions\u2014both outside of the nightclub and in the imperious presence of one\u2019s parents. Thus, this prism also brings familial relationships into focus and shows how these dynamics reflect larger socio-political forces that shape our ability to live up to ideals of the nuclear family. In \u201cSanctions,\u201d the reader is transported back to the speaker\u2019s childhood when he notes that he\u2019s \u201cat a party where there\u2019s a dance track on that [his] father \/ used to play in his DJ studio, [their] basement, low \/ ceiling over checkered black-and-white tile.\u201d He doesn\u2019t dwell on the past for its own sake. He is, however, deeply concerned with the censorship that blots one\u2019s memories as a queer youth, and how he learned his \u201cfirst sanctions:\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">no \u201cgirl toys\u201d don\u2019t walk like that   stand like that<br \/>talk like that  sit like that    come downstairs like that<br \/>Look at men like that like that<br \/>like that that that. His anthem, his law<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the same way that global powers like the United States exact brutal economic restrictions on the nations it deems a threat to its hegemony, so too do male caretakers deprive queer children of the self-expression that allows them to achieve full personhood as adults. Call it homophobia or self-preservation, this poem-as-metaphor clarifies how asymmetrical power works within both interpersonal bigotry and imperialism. Further along in the same poem, the speaker smugly remarks that \u201cthese old head colds, \/ pile in on tempo as I dance \/ on another man.\u201d The unmistakable wit evoked by the double entendre of \u201cold head colds\u201d is a humble but necessary reminder that the narrator is not bound by anyone\u2019s ignorant notion of manhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Subjugation (interpersonal or otherwise) is a recurring theme throughout the book. But for Carrero Lopez, to merely state that it exists isn\u2019t enough. Instead, the material conditions that allow people to jeopardize or <em>determine<\/em> the autonomy of others serve as centerpieces, offering a perspective squarely rooted in this physical world. These poems aren\u2019t against the abstract. But when the thesis is so clearly an analysis of how individual relationships to labor manifest in social and political relationships, linguistic clarity and unrelenting humor become assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To enrich the anti-capitalist framework laid out in this collection, Carrero Lopez often invokes his ancestral homeland of Cuba. Despite the richness of the island\u2019s culture, American discourse often flattens Cubans into one of two stereotypes. On one side are fair-skinned conservatives whose families flocked to Miami in the 1960s, ostensibly because the revolution came and took their sugarcane plantations. On the other are Black and brown Castro fanatics who\u2019ve ostensibly been brainwashed by Soviet-era propaganda. The American notion of Cuban people is stuck in the Bay of Pigs as it imagines them split neatly into two groups stuck in a tug of war for Cuba\u2019s political destiny. Nevertheless, it\u2019s a conflict often dwarfed by the true belligerents of the Cold War, \u201cbetween Kremlin and Pentagon,\u201d as summarized by the speaker in \u201cThe Red Telephone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cuba then becomes a symbol of the power struggle between the left and right wings of the Global North, or the \u201cMoscow-DC hotline\u201d as Carrero Lopez aptly puts it. These poems are guided by an ideology that doesn\u2019t pledge allegiance to leftist forces despite their collectivist aspirations. By going beyond optics, one learns how \u201csome sunny, skinny \/ island could lift so much, \/\/ store at least enough power \/ to spark the giants\u2019 red line.\u201d Emphasizing Cuba\u2019s size relative to the tremendous stature of the United States and Russia clarifies its role as an unwilling stage for one of the most transformative conflicts of the twenty-first century. This is the truth of Cuban society that goes unacknowledged in favor of incendiary headlines that fuel (and are fueled by) reductive political tropes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The discursive effect of these poems reveals a keen awareness of the colonial machinations that grant societies power over others. But in \u201cGay Travel, or Music Makes the People Come Together,\u201d Carrero Lopez is at his most critical as his itinerant speaker exposes the invasive tendencies common even among his left-leaning acquaintances. Actually, I <em>do<\/em> \u201cwant to know how B\u2019s trip \/ to the settler colony went.\u201d To which \u201c[h]e says: What can I say? \/ It was a lot like the settler colony \/\/ where I live.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The enjambment makes the nature of the speaker\u2019s inquiry surprising\u2014downright delightful, actually. By using a common noun instead of a proper noun (such as Havana, Cuba), the poem implicitly emphasizes the material similarities between societies around the world that were forged through settler colonialism. A nation\u2019s name and tourist districts then become fig leaves obscuring brutal histories of extraction. Even in the throes of the realization that the partiers he rubs elbows with funnel money into neo-colonial systems of travel, the speaker remains observant, further noting that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the club, B met a twunk<br \/>in a harness who would shout things like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>We\u2019re so lucky to be alive<\/em>\u2014meaning: under<br \/>the molly under the red lights<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Under the ceiling<br \/>Under the missile defense system<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This poem carefully dramatizes how capitalist reality means that pleasure and safety often come at the expense of others\u2019 well-being. It invites queer people to disentangle the comforts they get to enjoy from their roles within a racial-capitalist economy. Like other poems throughout, it engages mass complicity with a matter-of-fact tone that doesn\u2019t care to insult. Rather, it offers a material analysis that empowers readers to locate themselves within economic systems that dole out safety and danger in accordance with structures of oppression that arch across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nowhere else in this collection is capitalism\u2019s omnipotence thrown into greater relief than in \u201cEmbargo (ADDENDUM).\u201d It\u2019s a poem that corresponds with other historical moments captured throughout the book. Just as the United States induces strife in Cuba through economic embargos and the father in \u201cSanctions\u201d coaxes intrapersonal anguish within the narrator, so too does the Israeli state render life utterly inhospitable in Gaza as symbolized in \u201cSurgeon Without Anesthetic.\u201d This final addition to the narrative of manufactured strife reminds onlookers that suffering in a capitalist\u2019s world is never a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jumbled into one claustrophobic stanza, the speaker repeats essential questions: \u201cWith what syringes? \/ With what hormones?\u201d They\u2019re queries that invoke the healthcare crises that define modern life. It\u2019s no coincidence that many of these poems\u2019 interrogations relate to physical well-being\u2014a low, and therefore vital, component of the hierarchy of needs. It\u2019s by design that the very course of countless lives is determined while asking something as simple as \u201c[w]ith what gauze?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite the bleakness of the material world articulated in this collection, <em>Party Line<\/em> isn\u2019t trying to dissuade its readers from living in the world just as its speaker does. In the last poem, \u201cI Saw Assata in Havana\u201d (I read it as \u201cI Saw Assata in Heaven\u201d at first), the speaker leaves the audience with the poignant symbol of a woman who dedicated her life not only to resisting the United States\u2019 carceral apparatus but also to actively risking her life fighting it. Many will finish the collection with the image of Shakur\u2019s \u201csmile \/ that filled her face and laughs that grew \/\/ in strength, upward upward\u201d and a shameless hope that one can rebel and live to tell the tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What brings joy\u2014and at what cost\u2014can be frightening questions. At least there are writers like Carrero Lopez to make one wonder why some partygoers get in for free while others have to wait down the block.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Subjugation (interpersonal or otherwise) is a recurring theme throughout the book. But for Carrero-Lopez, to merely state that it exists isn\u2019t enough. Instead, the material conditions that allow people to jeopardize or determine the autonomy of others serve as centerpieces, offering a perspective squarely rooted in this physical world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88896],\"author_categories\":{\"88896\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"140487\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88896,\"display_name\":\"Alejandro Villa V\u00e1squez\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[88628],"tags":[8535],"ppma_author":[88896],"class_list":["post-258493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-criticism","tag-criticism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Negotiating Contradictions on the Dance Floor: Power, Exclusion, and the Nightlife in Kyle Carrero Lopez's "Party Line" - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Subjugation (interpersonal or otherwise) is a recurring theme throughout the book. 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Instead, the material conditions that allow people to jeopardize or determine the autonomy of others serve as centerpieces, offering a perspective squarely rooted in this physical world.","og_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/","og_site_name":"The Rumpus","article_publisher":"https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","article_published_time":"2026-09-24T14:05:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-09-24T19:30:09+00:00","og_image":[{"width":365,"height":547,"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/partyline.jpeg?wsr","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Alejandro Villa V\u00e1squez","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@the_rumpus","twitter_site":"@the_rumpus","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Juliana Luna","Est. reading time":"10 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/"},"author":{"name":"Juliana Luna","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4"},"headline":"Negotiating Contradictions on the Dance Floor: Power, Exclusion, and the Nightlife in Kyle Carrero Lopez’s “Party Line”","datePublished":"2026-09-24T14:05:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-09-24T19:30:09+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/"},"wordCount":1926,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/partyline.jpeg?wsr","keywords":["criticism"],"articleSection":["Criticism"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/","name":"Negotiating Contradictions on the Dance Floor: Power, Exclusion, and the Nightlife in Kyle Carrero Lopez's \"Party Line\" - The Rumpus","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/partyline.jpeg?wsr","datePublished":"2026-09-24T14:05:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-09-24T19:30:09+00:00","description":"Subjugation (interpersonal or otherwise) is a recurring theme throughout the book. But for Carrero-Lopez, to merely state that it exists isn\u2019t enough. Instead, the material conditions that allow people to jeopardize or determine the autonomy of others serve as centerpieces, offering a perspective squarely rooted in this physical world.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/partyline.jpeg?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/partyline.jpeg?wsr","width":365,"height":547},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/24\/negotiating-contradictions-on-the-dance-floor-power-exclusion-and-the-nightlife-in-kyle-carrero-lopezs-party-line\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Negotiating Contradictions on the Dance Floor: Power, Exclusion, and the Nightlife in Kyle Carrero Lopez’s “Party Line”"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","name":"The Rumpus","description":"An independent arts and culture magazine for risk-taking voices.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization","name":"The Rumpus","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","width":2560,"height":1707,"caption":"The Rumpus"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","https:\/\/x.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/therumpus.tumblr.com\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4","name":"Juliana Luna","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=gc90dbb975d959e35091c18702a00709e","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Juliana Luna"},"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/author\/jnluna\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":88896,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"alejandro-villa-vasquez","display_name":"Alejandro Villa V\u00e1squez","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alejandro is a writer who studied English Literature and Creative Writing at NYU. He was born in Medell\u00edn, Colombia, and grew up in New York. He has bylines in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Daily Beast<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">FilmDaze<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Washington Square News<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn. You can find him on X and Instagram at @b3ttylafea, or on Medium at @bettylafea, where he writes about politics and culture.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/partyline.jpeg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258493"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258957,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258493\/revisions\/258957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258493"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258867,"date":"2026-09-23T16:06:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T20:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258867"},"modified":"2026-09-23T16:06:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T20:06:27","slug":"love-and-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/love-and-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"Love and Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I expected Dr. Robert Lamb to be a brash, quick-moving former pre-med like the ones I\u2019d slept with just after college. But when I met him in the exam room, he had Teddy-bear eyes, large and approachable. He was pudgy and long-limbed, somewhere in his mid-thirties. I loved him immediately. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat can I do for you?\u201d he asked, when I sat on the crinkly paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019ve been having intense stomach pain,\u201d I said. \u201cOn and off for the past year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr. Lamb smiled and the skin around his eyes folded like batter coming out of a mixing bowl. He asked if I\u2019d done any elimination diets, and I rattled off the various foods I\u2019d attempted to isolate in my search for a cure: soy, dairy, gluten, legumes, nightshades, and once\u2014palm oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou\u2019ve done your homework,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I glowed. I had an urge to call him Robert, to praise him like he was one of my students. Then he said he wanted to do a fecal test. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSo we can see what kind of inflammation is happening,\u201d he said, \u201cand whether it\u2019s happening in your stomach or your intestines.\u201d He handed me a clear plastic baggy full of tubes and pointed the way to the bathroom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the bathroom, I wept. I do not like shitting into tubes, but of course I have been through it before: the shaking thighs as I crouch above the toilet seat, hand at an awkward angle to catch the shit, the latex gloves they give you to convey sterility. There is nothing clean or precise about scooping your own feces into tiny tubes. The stench, for one, is unbearable. And the shame of playing with your own excrement follows you the rest of the week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I couldn\u2019t look Dr. Lamb in the eye when I brought my baggy full of shit back to him. We did not have an auspicious beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I arrived at school the following day, Asmeret knew something was up. Asmeret is my co-teacher. She\u2019s calm and whip-smart, and has a way with our more volatile students. As we pushed the desks into islands of four, I told her about meeting Dr. Lamb. If I took out the part about shitting into a cup, it almost sounded like a date. Asmeret knew I\u2019d been going through a dry spell since moving back to New Jersey, spending far too many nights alone on my couch. I\u2019d even Googled <em>how to foster a dog<\/em> before remembering I was allergic and my teaching schedule would never permit all those early morning walks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHe\u2019s a gastroenterologist,\u201d I added, over the screech of rusted metal on linoleum. \u201cSo maybe he can help with my stomach issues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Asmeret rolled her eyes. \u201cJulia,\u201d she said. \u201cYou know love and medicine don\u2019t mix.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our students burst in then, and I had to shout over the roar as they took their seats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWho can read aloud the poem on the board?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leticia raised her hand and read about the icebox and the plums, so sweet and so cold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat\u2019s not a poem, Miss,\u201d she said when she finished. \u201cThat\u2019s a note.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cGood,\u201d I said, waving my arms enthusiastically. \u201cWho can tell me\u2014what\u2019s the difference between a poem and a note?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Several students sighed audibly. Finally, Alberto raised his hand. Alberto is old for eleventh grade and not so skilled at writing. He works as a mechanic when he\u2019s not in school, and he saunters into my class with greasy hands. I swoon a bit for students like Alberto\u2014the ones who try, who smell good and take notes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA poem says something important,\u201d he said. \u201cI dunno if this is a poem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOkay,\u201d I said, switching the slide to a poem by William Carlos Williams. \u201cRead this one aloud.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alberto did as I asked, stumbling over the words. It was about an old woman sitting in the street, devouring a plum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey taste good to her,\u201d Alberto said slowly, squinting at the screen. \u201cThey taste good to her. They taste good to her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I should say that my parents are doctors. This has always been a defining fact of my life. They are both intense, fit people with above-average intelligence. My mother is a gynecologist, trained in the former Yugoslavia before emigrating to America in the chaos of the late \u201980s. She answers all questions from government officials with a fervent \u201cGod bless America,\u201d even postal workers and parking cops. She still harbors massive guilt at not having been there for the Siege of Sarajevo. She was a gynecology resident in New York, treating wealthy women struggling to conceive while her family in Sarajevo went without meat, without fruit and vegetables, and then finally without bread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My dad is a gastroenterologist, descended from a line of Jewish-American intellectuals, many of whom were also gastroenterologists. He and my mother met during their second year of residency and married two years later, the same year my mother\u2019s mother died of complications from pneumonia. My grandmother was only fifty-eight. Had she been in New York City\u2014where chocolate milk and half-priced chickens were abundant, where you couldn\u2019t walk down an avenue without stepping on a doctor\u2014she would not have perished. As it was, she slipped out of this life in an apartment building with no heat, and now I have her name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Needless to say, I had a very well-monitored childhood. I was a chubby kid, and so I was weighed more frequently than most. My difficulty breathing was taken as a symptom of a larger issue related to stamina and lung capacity. When I turned eighteen, my mom insisted I see a gynecologist. I could go to a friend of hers, she said, but it would be easier if she saw me herself. When I climbed onto her examination table, her shoulders relaxed. The doctor-patient relationship has always made more sense to her than the mother-daughter relationship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAnd are you sexually active?\u201d she asked, her eyes flicking down to her notes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOh,\u201d I said, thinking of my first boyfriend, who insisted I give him a hand job, and of the second, who slipped into me before I was ready. \u201cSort of,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My mother raised her eyebrows. \u201cThe pill doesn\u2019t prevent STDs,\u201d she said. \u201cWho are these boys anyway?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was about to answer when she shook her head. \u201cNever mind,\u201d she said. \u201cMedically speaking, I don\u2019t need to know. But we should test for STDs.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She called in her nurse to draw my blood as she continued her recitation of my body compared to other bodies. The nurse gave me a consoling smile. She removed the needle and pushed a cotton swab into the crook of my arm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019ll do the pap next,\u201d my mom said, rolling into place and putting a papery blanket across my lower half. I shifted myself down the table and she pushed my knees apart. Then she probed, slipping her fingers inside and palming my abdomen. I disconnected my brain from my body. It helped to separate myself like that. I thought of the two red oak trees in our backyard, how when you looked up at them from below, their leaves were like hands waving hello.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOvaries are good,\u201d she said. \u201cUterus feels fine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She took the speculum from the tray and her fingers were replaced by cold metal. Then the long brush went in and scraped, a sensation that made my toes tingle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt itches, right?\u201d she said, her face hidden from me by the paper blanket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYeah, it does,\u201d I said, surprised by my sudden tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wore perfume to my follow-up appointment with Robert, a fresh, peachy scent that smelled like domesticity and sex. When Robert pointed out elevated levels of calprotectin in my lab results, I quoted from a Web MD article I\u2019d read before my appointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCalprotectin is an indicator of inflammation,\u201d I said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cRight,\u201d Robert said, and I preened. \u201cYou may have an inflammatory disease or a bacterial infection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat do you recommend?\u201d I leaned toward him on the pretext of looking at my chart, my heart-shaped necklace dangling over my cleavage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Robert sat back in his chair. \u201cAn endoscopy would be the next step,\u201d he said. \u201cShall I schedule you for next week?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019ll find a sub,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We stood, and on impulse I went in for a kiss. I meant for my lips to brush his cheek in a sort of European ambiguity, but he turned his head to say something, and my mouth collided with his teeth. He pulled back, surprised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m going to see <em>Moonstruck<\/em> at The Frederick on Saturday,\u201d I said, recklessly. \u201cYou should come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe Frederick?\u201d Robert echoed, sounding dazed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCher and Nicholas Cage, I don\u2019t know how you could resist,\u201d I went on, hoping my tone was teasing and light, but it might\u2019ve sounded desperate. I slipped out of the room before I could make a bigger fool of myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Saturday, I hung around the lobby of the movie theater until I started to feel pathetic, then went inside and took a seat. I would stay for ten minutes, I told myself, and then I would leave. Robert arrived after the opening credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSorry I\u2019m late,\u201d he whispered, stepping over my knees to the seat next to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I barely paid attention to the film. At one point, I rested my head on his shoulder and he put an arm around me. It was both paternal and romantic. Afterward, I invited him to my place for tea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI don\u2019t usually do this,\u201d he said, following me up the three flights of stairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou\u2019ve already gone through my shit,\u201d I said, laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We were in bed before the kettle whistled. I found myself weeping when I came. He was surprisingly rough, which is how I like it. He held me afterward, sweaty and spent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCould you lie on top of me?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He chuckled, but did as I requested. The air left my lungs. I felt both sated and aroused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhy gastroenterology?\u201d I asked. The effort of speaking made my head swim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019ve always liked internal medicine,\u201d he said. \u201cThe gut is the deepest part of a person, the most interior system. My patients come to me when they\u2019re experiencing discomfort or embarrassment. They\u2019re vulnerable. It\u2019s an incredibly intimate thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He shifted off me and ran his hand from my collar bone over my breasts to my stomach. A series of emotions danced across his face: desire, pride, possession. Then he covered my mouth with his and I pulled him back on top of me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I tried to be a doctor, I really did. The heroism of the medical profession had been drilled into me my entire life: medicine was the ultimate calling, the most challenging, admirable thing a person could do. But I was not a stellar student, and my advisor encouraged me to major in the humanities. He said he was only looking out for my happiness. When I told my parents I\u2019d switched my major to English, they asked if I was still pre-med.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNo, but I\u2019m studying the great American poets,\u201d I said. \u201cEmily Dickinson. William Carlos Williams.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWilliam Carlos Williams was a doctor,\u201d my dad said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The bar was always so high, and I was always so far below it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After graduation, I did a teacher-training program in Chicago. I lived on coffee and granola bars and, for the first time in my life, I had a lot of sex. In my euphoria at being noticed and desired, I was not always gentle with my body. I slept with older men, with sad men, with finance bros and community organizers. I liked the med students best, the angry orthopedists-in-training and the fuckboys clawing their way to anesthesiology. My body to them was something to be tested. I was a mouth to bite, a pair of legs to wind around their waists. I began to think of myself as a collection of organs and limbs, and by the end of my first year in Chicago, I had a pain in my stomach I could no longer ignore. When I flew back home for the holidays, I mentioned my symptoms to my dad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCome in for a check-up,\u201d he said. He had me do a breath test that involved exhaling into a bag. Then he took my blood. In a few days, the results came back. I had an ulcer, he said, treatable with a series of antibiotics. He was pleased; he loved problems that had neat solutions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe body is like a book,\u201d he said. He was standing outside my childhood bedroom, my lab results clutched in his hand. \u201cIt\u2019s not too late to do a post-bac.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Back in Chicago, I read William Carlos Williams\u2019s <em>Doctor Stories<\/em> and came across an essay written by his son. Apparently, William Eric Williams became a doctor, too. He wrote about his dad\u2019s wild schedule, how he saw patients from dawn until well past nightfall, visiting hospitals, making home visits, and delivering babies\u2014and still, he found time to write. A stolen moment between patients to bang on the typewriter, or a scribbled note on the way to a delivery. <em>Here is a man making his living at medicine who has given up medicine for poetry,<\/em> the younger Williams wrote. <em>It demanded time and energy,<\/em> <em>and he would supply both bountifully, often at the expense of his family.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wondered at the difference between a body and a book, between medicine and poetry. I wondered about this when I slept with the eighth-grade history teacher. We did it in his classroom right before a long weekend, and I was too distracted to insist on protection. The burning sensation and the blistering sore on my vagina emerged when I was home for the summer a few months later, just in time for my annual with my mom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cJulia,\u201d she said, when she had me on the table. \u201cWere you ever going to tell me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI thought it would go away on its own,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She prescribed antiviral pills for the worst of the herpes symptoms, but I would never be free of this latest mistake. I would have to be more careful, she said, looking at me with restrained scorn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When my parents drove me to the airport at the end of the summer, I told them I wanted to see other doctors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI just think it\u2019s time,\u201d I said, as my dad merged onto the highway. I tried to catch my mom\u2019s eye in the passenger seat, but she was looking out the window at the trees zipping by. When I was little, she\u2019d take me on walks and point out the red oaks, the silver maples, the gingkos and ash. She liked to collect pine cones and smooth slips of birch bark and line them up on the table until they disintegrated into wood chips and dust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When my mom finally spoke, she didn\u2019t take her eyes from the trees. \u201cWho would care for you better than your parents?\u201d she asked. I didn\u2019t know how to respond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Three months later, in the chaos of moving apartments for the fourth time, I missed the window to pick up my birth control pills. I visited pharmacy after pharmacy, begging them to call my doctor for a refill. Each one insisted that the patient had to make the call. I couldn\u2019t tell them that my doctor was my mother, that we were currently enduring an icy patch in our relationship. In the end, I wanted contraceptives more than I wanted to prove a point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat do you need?\u201d my mom asked when she picked up my call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m a week behind on my pills,\u201d I said, \u201cand I haven\u2019t found another doctor yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I gave her the phone number of the pharmacy near my new apartment. I sensed she was biting back a torrent of feelings: annoyance at my chronic carelessness, smugness that I still needed her. When I moved back to Newark at the end of my teacher training, I went to her office for a check-up. Aside from my herpes, she gave me a clean bill of health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Robert and I went on two more dates after my endoscopy. I took him to a ramen place by my house, and was taken aback when he ordered for me. I\u2019d been a vegetarian for years, but when the beef udon arrived, I ate it without comment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI knew you\u2019d like that one,\u201d Robert said, watching me slurp the noodles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the next date, he took me to an arcade where he played Pac-Man. Each time the little yellow man sank to the bottom of the screen, he pounded the machine with his fist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s okay, babe,\u201d I said, as if calming a child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI swear I used to be good at this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I stood in front of the screen and wrapped my arms around his neck. He sighed, and whispered an apology into my hair. I felt such power then, that I could subdue him, make him liquid and contrite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When his name popped up on my phone the following week, I thought he was calling to ask me on another date. I was on my lunch break, sitting at my desk in an empty classroom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYour results are back from the endoscopy,\u201d he said when I picked up. \u201cThis is, ah\u2014hard to say.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOh?\u201d I heard tapping, maybe his pen against a pad of paper. I picked at my sandwich, pinching the soft wheat bread into bits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou have stomach cancer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I waited for my body to respond to this news. I waited for the panic, the heart-plunging surprise. But I felt nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAdenocarcinoma, stage two,\u201d he went on. \u201cThe best course of action would be surgery. I think we should move quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI thought you were calling to flirt,\u201d I said, managing a laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Robert didn\u2019t speak for several long seconds. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he said. \u201cWe should really concentrate on your health.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And there, finally, was the panic. Was he breaking up with me? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou\u2019re upset,\u201d he said, reading my silence. \u201cCome to my office and we\u2019ll talk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI have to call my parents,\u201d I said, and hung up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I dialed my mom\u2019s office before I had time to chicken out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI have stomach cancer,\u201d I said, when her receptionist patched me through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I heard the clunk and rustle as she switched me off speakerphone. Of course, she wanted to know which doctor I\u2019d seen. \u201cI\u2019m calling your father,\u201d she said, and got off the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I clutched my stomach as my students filed into class. Asmeret was in front, leading the eleventh-graders from their lunch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCan you take over?\u201d I asked her. \u201cI have to deal with an emergency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Asmeret nodded, bewildered. I drove to Robert\u2019s office, then dialed his number when I arrived. He emerged five minutes later, scanning the parking lot for my car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI wanted to ask you,\u201d I said, when he climbed into the passenger seat, \u201cnot to leave me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He opened his mouth, then closed it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI mean as my doctor,\u201d I clarified. \u201cCould you please still be my doctor?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYour dad just called,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you tell me you\u2019re Dr. Friedman\u2019s daughter? He\u2019s extremely well-known in the field.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He was breathing hard, and I could tell he was only barely holding onto his control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDid you tell him about us?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDid I say that I\u2019m sleeping with his daughter?\u201d He laughed dryly. \u201cNo, I did not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I reached across the console. What I wanted more than anything was not to make a scene. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After several long moments, Robert seemed to gather himself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe should go over the plan for surgery,\u201d he said. He explained the process of removing half of my stomach and reattaching it to the small intestine, how everything could be done laparoscopically, with small incisions and a camera. I was impressed and in love all over again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI think we can avoid chemotherapy,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the surgery is successful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I repeated this plan to my parents when I saw them later that night. My dad, it turned out, disagreed. He folded his hands on the table in front of him, glasses sliding down his nose. We were at a Thai place near their house, a restaurant I knew would be packed. I didn\u2019t want to be alone with them if things got emotional. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou have to be aggressive in these cases,\u201d my dad said. \u201cYou\u2019ll do chemo.\u201d He looked like his own father then, at once authoritative and removed. I wondered if he could see me, or if I had transformed in his gaze into someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI looked into this Dr. Lamb,\u201d he went on. \u201cHe\u2019s inexperienced. I have a colleague, Dr. Rosetti. He\u2019s been treating patients with gastric cancer for forty years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDad,\u201d I said, holding up my hands. \u201cI\u2019m not switching doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis is my area of expertise,\u201d he said. \u201cI would feel much better\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDr. Lamb found the cancer, didn\u2019t he?\u201d I said. This shut him up. My dad had been my doctor once. He\u2019d missed the cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019ve taken the week off work,\u201d Mom said, changing topics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou don\u2019t have to do that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWho\u2019s going to take care of you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m seeing someone.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou have a boyfriend?\u201d Her voice was clipped, her Eastern European accent more pronounced when caught off guard. I knew she hated to be left in the dark, knew her worst nightmare was that I\u2019d suffer for lack of care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYes,\u201d I said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAnd he\u2019ll clean your wound? Help you go to the bathroom?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHe\u2019s very good at those things.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou\u2019ll still need your mother,\u201d she said, and she spooned more curry onto my plate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During the two weeks leading up to my surgery, my mother sent me texts. They\u2019d come randomly throughout the day. <em>Hi Julia<\/em>, she would say. <em>I ordered too many socks. Do you want some? x Mom.<\/em> She always signed her texts like that, as if I didn\u2019t have her number saved. Sometimes, her texts came at night, after I had Robert lie on top of me. I\u2019d see my phone light up on the bedside table. <em>Came across a quote from Anton Chekov,<\/em> she said the day before the surgery. <em>\u201cMedicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.\u201d x Mom.<\/em> Sometimes, I\u2019d respond. More often than not, I left her texts unread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My parents drove me to the hospital on the morning of the surgery, and Robert met us in the waiting room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDr. Friedman and Dr. Friedman,\u201d he said, shaking both their hands. \u201cWe\u2019ll take good care of your daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The surgeon came over then. She was around my parents\u2019 age, short and direct. Everyone shook hands again. Four doctors grinned at me, their eyes like glittering water, unknowable and strange. I wished they would go away. It was a relief to go under. I dreamt nothing at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I woke, everything from my hairline to my ankles ached and I had to re-learn eating. My esophagus was traumatized\u2014that was the official medical term\u2014and my stomach grossly misshapen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen is your boyfriend coming?\u201d my mother asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m tired,\u201d I croaked. \u201cAre there more ice chips?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then the curtain moved aside and Robert was there. He untied the strings of my hospital gown and felt my abdomen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHow is this?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cTender,\u201d I said, shivering at his touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My parents took me home the following week. They waited until I was settled on the couch to start badgering me about chemo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDr. Lamb says I won\u2019t need it,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHe\u2019s inexperienced,\u201d my dad said. \u201cYou should start chemo right away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCould we talk about this later? My boyfriend is coming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSo we\u2019re finally going to meet him?\u201d my mom asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My phone buzzed at my thigh. Robert was outside. <em>One minute,<\/em> I texted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHe\u2019s actually a doctor, too,\u201d I said to my parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Robert and I had decided we would wait until I was home to tell them, and then he would come over as my boyfriend. I was deluded enough to think this would work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAre you crazy, Julia?\u201d my mother hissed as my dad went to answer the door. \u201cHe could leave you in a second.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou and dad were my doctors,\u201d I said. \u201cI don\u2019t see how this is different.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Robert kissed me when he came in, then greeted my mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen did you start seeing each other?\u201d my mom asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAbout a month ago,\u201d Robert said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBefore or after the diagnosis?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBefore,\u201d I said, though I wasn\u2019t sure if that was the right answer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis a blatant conflict of interest,\u201d my dad said, breathing heavily. \u201cJulia, you need a new doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cRobert is my doctor,\u201d I said. Then I screwed my eyes against a new stab of pain. Robert and my mother both rushed toward me, but Robert got there first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d he said. \u201cJust breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So began the long recovery. Mostly, my parents and Robert traded shifts. I could only be left alone for a few hours before I needed help to eat or pee. I was losing hair and losing weight. Shitting was still impossible, so there was a scooper and a bag. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Asmeret dropped by with a giant cardboard sign from my students. They had attempted a poem. <em>This is just to say<\/em>, they wrote. <em>We hope you feel better, not worse. We don\u2019t want to see you in a hearse.<\/em> Then they signed their names in purple and red marker around the poem: <em>Leticia. Karim. Alberto. Jackie.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Asmeret stayed until I had to use the bathroom, then walked me to the toilet and hovered outside while I peed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m going crazy,\u201d I said, through the door. \u201cSo many doctors, and all this pain.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cJust listen to your body,\u201d Asmeret said. \u201cYou know yourself better than anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMy body and I aren\u2019t on speaking terms at the moment,\u201d I said. I flushed and washed my hands, elbows resting on the sink for balance before Asmeret helped me back to the couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After the second week, I told my parents they didn\u2019t need to come every day. I had Robert, I insisted. He was very attentive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou need to start chemotherapy,\u201d my dad said, for the hundredth time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cRobert wants to wait,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My dad left the room, fuming. Later, when Robert stopped by with a container of soup, my dad confronted him directly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI could sue you for malpractice,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cJesus, Dad,\u201d I said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cJulia\u2019s treatment plan is based on emerging research,\u201d Robert said, \u201cresearch that says chemotherapy this early on might do more harm than good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYour negligence will kill her,\u201d Dad shouted. \u201cYou cannot be her doctor and her boyfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOh, and being her parent and her doctor is better?\u201d Robert shouted back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat\u2019s enough,\u201d I said. I used my teacher-voice, and it reverberated around the tiny kitchen. I made my parents go home. My mom was tearful when she left. She said I was exhibiting post-surgical psychosis, which sounded like a made-up term. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Robert was still blowing off steam when I returned to the kitchen. He stirred the soup vigorously, splotches of yellow broth landing on the stovetop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou trust me, don\u2019t you?\u201d he asked, turning from the stove to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I nodded, and he held my face in his hands. His grip was too strong, and I felt like a peach just past ripeness. When he released me, I ran my fingers along my jawline, feeling for a bruise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I went back to teaching the following month. My students shrieked when they saw me at my desk. I hadn\u2019t realized they missed me so much. Or perhaps they were alarmed at my weight loss; I\u2019d had to tie my pants up with string. I took my place at the front and opened my mouth. But there was a sheen in front of me, and I didn\u2019t know what was supposed to come next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey were about to start Poe,\u201d Asmeret prompted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Somehow, I made it through the lesson, and then the rest of the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSomething\u2019s not right,\u201d I said to Asmeret after the last bell. We were collecting spare print-outs from the desks. \u201cI think the cancer\u2019s back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Asmeret froze, Poe\u2019s story about the tell-tale heart clutched in her hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDo you think it\u2019s possible Robert and I can just be lovers?\u201d I asked. \u201cLike, not doctor and patient, just\u2014boyfriend and girlfriend?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI don\u2019t know, Julia,\u201d she said, biting her lip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I made an appointment at an oncology clinic in Philadelphia. The doctor was a kind-faced woman with an Indian accent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou were right to come in,\u201d she said. \u201cMost doctors would\u2019ve started chemo right after surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I felt my resected stomach drop even lower. \u201cDo you have a daughter?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2014no,\u201d she said, taken aback. \u201cI have a son.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDoes he want to be a doctor?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She gave me a concerned look, like I wasn\u2019t asking the right questions. \u201cCome back for the first round of chemo next week,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had to tell Robert about the chemo. He would notice my symptoms, and I needed someone to drive me to appointments. I hoped, naively, that this would be no big deal. But his face turned red when I told him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m trying to take care of myself,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBullshit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI still want to be your girlfriend,\u201d I insisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wasn\u2019t prepared when he pushed me against the wall. My head collided with the door frame, and I blinked stars out of my vision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI knew it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t trust me. You never did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His eyes were glassy, his expression one of despair. I was about to disappear, about to disconnect from my body until it was over\u2014when he started crying. Then he pummeled his own chest with his fists until I could wrestle his arms to his sides. I had an impulse to speak to him as I would to a student, stern yet kind. But he wasn\u2019t my student, and I couldn\u2019t treat him like one of my boys. When he left several hours later, he told me not to call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was too proud to tell my parents about the doctor in Philadelphia. They thought I was still with Robert, biding my time until the cancer returned, and I didn\u2019t correct the assumption. I went to my first chemo appointment alone and stared out the window as a nurse attached the IV. I was about to drift off when my phone buzzed. It was a message from my mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Hi Julia,<\/em> she said. <em>I read an article about a fungus attacking trees in New Jersey. Beware of falling branches. x Mom.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I unlocked my phone, squinting at the blurry screen. I was woozy from the drugs, but I wanted to respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>How do I know if a tree is sick?<\/em> I typed. I only had to wait a minute for her response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>There are signs,<\/em> she said. <em>You just have to keep looking up.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was not always gentle with my body. I slept with older men, with sad men, with finance bros and community organizers. 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She was a 2023-2024 Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction and has an MFA from Brooklyn College. Her work has been published in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Catapult<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Harvard Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Essay Daily<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Breakwater Review<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and NPR, and her podcast for Brooklyn Public Library was nominated for a Peabody Award. She\u2019s received support from Cill Rialaig and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland, where she continued work on a novel about women who turn into deer.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/quilia-7ttdoSqHlrI-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258867"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258925,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258867\/revisions\/258925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258867"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258498,"date":"2026-09-23T11:08:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T15:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258498"},"modified":"2026-09-14T08:01:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T12:01:48","slug":"in-the-future-everyone-will-be-famous-a-conversation-with-john-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/in-the-future-everyone-will-be-famous-a-conversation-with-john-green\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIn The Future, Everyone Will Be Famous\u201d: A Conversation with John Green"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To say there is an inherent tension in John Green writing about fame, given his own level of public recognition, is to acknowledge the pull all of us feel to seek visibility and validation, often through social media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The bestselling author\u2019s adult fiction debut and first novel in nine years, <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/hollywood-ending-john-green\/2d581ecdc96ae1d4?ean=9780525426073&bkshp-astro=t\"><em>Hollywood, Ending<\/em><\/a> (Dutton Books, 2026), travels through the looking glass to Hollywood\u2019s darker side, examining the costs and rewards of fame and how love and art can help us survive trauma, even as we break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We meet two young actors\u2014Juniper, an ambitious former child star seeking legitimacy as a serious actress, and Kai, a charismatic newcomer with a traumatic past\u2014who have been cast in the biopic <em>Andy Warhol Never Gets Old<\/em>. Together, they contend with the realities of the film industry, find hope in each other, and confront the tug of war between the pressure to be seen and the need to be known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Green\u2019s previous books include the <em>New York Times<\/em> bestselling author of YA novels <em>The Fault in Our Stars<\/em> (Penguin Books, 2012) and <em>Turtles All the Way Down<\/em> (Dutton Books for Young Readers, 2017), as well as the nonfiction works <em>The Anthropocene Reviewed<\/em> (Dutton, 2021) and <em>Everything Is Tuberculosis<\/em> (Crash Course Books, 2025). His books have won numerous awards and have been published in more than fifty-five languages. With his brother, Hank Green, he has co-created several online video projects, including Vlogbrothers and Crash Course.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.johngreenbooks.com\/\"> <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I recently spoke with the Indianapolis-based author over Zoom about the book\u2019s origins, fame and public life, the strange relationship between interviewer and interviewee, and the ways art and connection help us survive what life throws at us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> Where did you get the idea for this book?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>John Green:<\/strong> Well, I think of two for the book. Initially, I thought I was writing about what we exchange when we give aspects of our private lives to the public for attention, which is something that used to be a problem mostly for movie stars and now is a problem for almost everyone who participates in the social internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But eventually I discovered that I was writing about trauma, and eventually the question that was at the center for me was about how we survive what we have to survive and how we find the relationships that carry us through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> This is your first adult fiction novel. What made you want to write fiction for an adult audience for the first time? Was it a challenge you set for yourself, or did the book just become adult fiction as you wrote?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green<\/strong>: Yeah, it definitely was not a challenge I set for myself or anything. I mean, I\u2019ve been writing for adults for ten years, just in the form of nonfiction. And when I started writing this book, I realized pretty quickly that the problems the characters had were not seventeen-year-old problems. They were problems of being in your twenties, and so that defined the direction of the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> What was the trajectory of writing <em>Hollywood, Ending<\/em>, which you started in 2018, and <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/everything-is-tuberculosis-signed-edition-the-history-and-persistence-of-our-deadliest-infection-john-green\/57e35f61394b6daf?ean=9780525556572&bkshp-astro=t\"><em>Everything Is Tuberculosi<\/em>s<\/a>? Did they develop alongside each other?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green<\/strong>: I kept putting <em>Hollywood, Ending<\/em> to the side. I put it to the side when I was writing it throughout the period of writing my book of essays, <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/the-anthropocene-reviewed-essays-on-a-human-centered-planet-john-green\/4c790fd2c5e9caee?ean=9780525555247&bkshp-astro=t\"><em>The Anthropocene Reviewed<\/em><\/a>, but I kept putting it to the side. I kept not finding the right way into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I didn\u2019t have the big question yet, which is: How do we love art and each other in a way that allows us to survive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, without that question, I was floating around, not really grounded in anything, exploring a world that I found interesting, but not in a particularly propulsive way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so <em>Hollywood, Ending<\/em> was something I kept coming back to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then with the tuberculosis book, the tuberculosis book just demanded to be written. And sometimes books are like that. And so, I put everything else aside, and for a few years I only read about tuberculosis and only thought about tuberculosis and still spend a lot of time thinking about tuberculosis, to be fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But in the wake of that book being finished, I went back to <em>Hollywood, Ending<\/em> because I really missed writing fiction. I really missed what fiction can give you. And it was so joyful. It was the most fun I had writing in a very long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> The book moves between the perspectives of your two main characters. How did you approach finding the voices of Kai and Juniper, and how did you settle on the book\u2019s four-part structure?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green<\/strong>: Well, the great thing about spending eight years writing is that I had an opportunity to space out the Kai parts from the Juniper parts. And so I was almost a different writer when I was writing Juniper\u2019s sections than when I was initially writing Kai\u2019s sections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Initially, I thought I was only writing from Kai\u2019s perspective, but eventually I realized that I wanted the camera turned around on both of them. I wanted to see Juniper as Kai sees her and to see Kai as Juniper sees him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the four-part structure emerged from a map, from the knowledge that I needed to hear from both of them and give them both a voice in the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s that great line in <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/ulysses-james-joyce\/b4863a88bcaebf10?ean=9780679722762&bkshp-astro=t\"><em>Ulysses<\/em><\/a> about seeing ourselves as others see us, and I wanted you to be able to see them as they see themselves, but also see them through the lens of the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Juniper is a former Nickelodeon child star in her early twenties who\u2019s trying to establish herself as a serious actress\u2014to have that credibility to play an adult character in films. Do you see any parallels between that transition she\u2019s trying to make and this transition you\u2019ve made in writing this book for an adult audience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green<\/strong>: Oh, that\u2019s interesting. No, I never thought about that before, because I\u2019m forty-eight. I\u2019m like an old man. But she\u2019s young and super ambitious, so I never really connected with her on that front. But that\u2019s interesting. I never thought about that before. Maybe that was there subconsciously. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I think I do relate a lot to her ambition and her carefulness, which are often seen as negatives, especially in women, I think. And I\u2019ve seen that through the lens of my spouse\u2019s career. So my point of connection with Juniper is really that we\u2019re both pretty determined, sometimes overdetermined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> As a writer who\u2019s been published for more than twenty years, can you tell me a bit about your writing process as it\u2019s evolved over time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green<\/strong>: When I started, I had a day job through my first two novels, and so I wrote at night or on the weekends. And I really enjoyed writing late at night. I still enjoy writing late at night, but now I have kids, and so I mostly stick to their schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When the kids are at school, I\u2019m either writing or doing other work related to my other jobs. And that\u2019s worked pretty well for me. I\u2019m really, really fortunate that I have these school hours to write, and I try to use that well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the time has changed. The other thing that\u2019s changed is that I used to have a lot of very specific opinions about things I needed to do and places I needed to be in order to write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wrote <em>The Fault in Our Stars<\/em> almost entirely at a coffee shop. I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/paper-towns-john-green\/a7e062ad01fc3a33\"><em>Paper Towns<\/em><\/a> (Penguin Books, 2009) almost entirely at home in my basement. And I had all these ideas about why I needed to be with people or away from people, depending on the subject matter and the themes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And now I\u2019m just delighted to have time to write. So, whether I\u2019m on an airplane or in a car somewhere or at home, I\u2019m just happy to get lost in the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> What was your research process like when it came to Warhol? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green:<\/strong> My first source for understanding Warhol was definitely my wife, who is a Warhol scholar. So there\u2019s a big advantage there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She wrote a book called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/9783775726764\/Andy-Warhol-Enterprises-3775726764\/plp\"><em>Andy Warhol Enterprises<\/em><\/a> about Andy Warhol\u2019s relationship with money and with business, which was of interest to me in writing the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I also read all of <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/the-andy-warhol-diaries-andy-warhol\/e9f6acc7486baee2\">Warhol\u2019s diaries<\/a>, edited by Pat Hackett, and <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/the-philosophy-of-andy-warhol-from-a-to-b-and-back-again-andy-warhol\/78584a229a457d03\"><em>The Philosophy of Andy Warhol<\/em><\/a>, the stuff he published. I went to the Warhol Museum a few times, went to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, like the characters in the book do, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was lucky to be able to go to most of the places the characters go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I also love doing research. I love learning more about Warhol, but I also feel that when you\u2019re writing fiction, sometimes you\u2019re just making things up? And that\u2019s okay, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I tried not to make anything up. I\u2019ll give you one example. It\u2019s unlikely that Warhol would have welcomed an interviewer into his childhood home for a variety of reasons. But I like that idea. It fits narratively and thematically, and so I did it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s a great line in <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/the-amazing-adventures-of-kavalier-clay-michael-chabon\/d922e66684a5e667?ean=9780679450047&affiliate=3546\"><em>The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay<\/em><\/a>, I think in the acknowledgments [Author\u2019s Note], where Michael Chabon says thanks to such and such and so and so for all the research help, which I cheerfully ignored when it suited me. And I think one does need to cheerfully ignore sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> This book is mostly set in Hollywood. How did you draw on your personal experience with your books being turned into movies and filmmaking culture to write these sections?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green<\/strong>: I\u2019ve gotten to know a lot of young actors through the process of seeing my own books adapted into movies, and I\u2019ve seen some of the opportunities and challenges that come with being a child actor, being a young adult actor. And so inevitably, that helped me understand Juniper and Kai a little bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then I\u2019ve been on movie sets, so it\u2019s a comfortable place for me to write about. It\u2019s a place that I have spent some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I don\u2019t know anything about acting. So I read a lot of books about acting. I talked to people who are actors and tried to understand the magic trick that they\u2019re doing, but I don\u2019t understand the magic trick. To me, it\u2019s still magic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I think that there\u2019s a benefit in writing from the perspective through which it is magic because, in talking to actors, a lot of times, when it\u2019s at its best\u2014and this is true for writing, too, I think\u2014it doesn\u2019t feel like a trick. It feels like magic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It doesn\u2019t feel like I\u2019m imagining what it\u2019s like to be other people. It feels like I\u2019m actually outside of myself, which is a lovely, lovely gift that art can bring us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Having your books adapted into movies, were you ever at all like Valentina, author of <em>Gods of Andromeda<\/em>, whose book is being adapted into the movie Juniper auditions for, and who\u2019s the type of author who wants to be \u201cvery involved\u201d in the project?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green<\/strong>: I would not be like Valentina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I tried not to be very involved, but I was on set a lot. And I have been on set a lot, and I really\u2014 always\u2014I\u2019ve worked with the same group of people for every movie adaptation in terms of producers, and they always welcomed me on set. They always welcomed my voice and conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I am very conscious of the fact that I am not a decision-maker when it comes to movie adaptations of my books. And I don\u2019t want to be a decision-maker. I don\u2019t know how to direct movies. I don\u2019t know how to act in movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I mean, I got cut out of <em>The Fault in Our Stars<\/em>. My acting was so bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don\u2019t know how to make movies. But I do really, really love movies, and I wanted to reflect that love even as I also wanted to reflect my own concerns about the machine that turns trauma into celebrity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Could you name a couple of your favorite movies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green:<\/strong> My favorite movie of all time is this movie <em>Harvey<\/em> from 1950, written by Mary Chase, starring Jimmy Stewart. And it\u2019s about a guy named Elwood P. Dowd, who has a best friend who\u2019s a six-foot-tall invisible white rabbit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I think it came to me at a very important part of my life. But also, I\u2019m a person living with chronic mental illness, and the character in <em>Harvey<\/em> is living with chronic mental illness. And at the time when I first watched it, I felt like a big failure. I felt like I wasn\u2019t contributing to society, and I felt like I was extremely limited by my brain disorder. Watching that movie, I realized that people like me and people like Elwood P. Dowd also have a place. So that\u2019s my favorite movie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I also love bad movies. I\u2019m very indiscriminate when it comes to movies. I try to write that way in <em>Hollywood, Ending<\/em>, that I love a lot of bad movies, and so I got to write about some bad movies I love and make jokes about them. But also, I just love the movies. I\u2019m not going to say the title, but I was watching a terrible Netflix movie last night, and Sarah [my wife] was like, \u201cThis is awful.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cI love it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Given your own experience of being publicly known through your books, social media, and vlogging, what makes sharing something publicly feel worthwhile to you? And how do you decide what you want to keep private?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green:<\/strong> Well, sometimes you don\u2019t decide what you keep private. And that can be really hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For me, I remember when it became clear to me that I was going to have to talk about having OCD in the context of my novel <em>Turtles All the Way Dow<\/em>n, which is about a person with OCD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And there was a real cost to that because once you started talking about it, everybody asks you about it. And then you can\u2019t get control back of the narrative, and the exposure can feel extreme and overwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But there\u2019s also a gift to it, which is that you feel less alone. People come up to me all the time and say, that book helped me understand myself or helped me understand someone I love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I think part of that is because I shared my own experiences with OCD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So it\u2019s a really complex value exchange. It\u2019s not clear to me to what extent it\u2019s worth it, but it\u2019s a value exchange. Now we\u2019re all participating in it. You\u2019re right that I have a public life, but even people without public lives are posting medical updates to Facebook or Instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And there\u2019s a cost to that, and there\u2019s also a gift to it. And I wanted to explore both the cost and the gift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Do you feel like interviews with the press, whether it\u2019s for one of your books or a movie adaptation, ever get easier? Is it easier now for you than when you first started?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green<\/strong>: Well, when I first started, nobody wanted to interview me. I remember that very vividly. And I would have loved to be interviewed! I would have loved the opportunity to talk about my book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so, in that sense, it\u2019s a gift, right? In the same way that it\u2019s a gift for Kai and Juniper to have a hit movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But does it get easier? Not really, because the weird thing that\u2019s happening right now is that there\u2019s a meta-narrative in your mind of what the piece is going to look like. And there\u2019s a meta-narrative in my mind of what the piece is going to look like. We both want what we would want, which isn\u2019t always aligned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They talk about this in the <em>New Yorker<\/em> profile that\u2019s happening in the book. And I just think it\u2019s a weird situation. We both want the piece to turn out well. And so we\u2019re both collaborating in that sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But, yeah, it\u2019s so weird. It\u2019s such a weird relationship between interviewer and interviewee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Do you think fame can be addictive for some people? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green<\/strong>: Fame is absolutely an addiction for some people, and I think the urge comes from a desire to receive outside affirmation that we all have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It feels good when our teachers tell us that we did a good job or our parents tell us that we did a good job, and then we want more of that because something that feels good, you want more of. And when a stranger tells you you did a good job, it feels even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But there\u2019s this great acceptance speech for an award where Mr. Rogers\u2014Fred Rogers\u2014says, \u201cFame is a four-letter word,\u201d and then he pauses for a long time, and then he says, \u201cLike love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think that a lot of fame is in how you use it, how you use the platform. But it is a lot more complicated than I thought it was going to be when I merely wanted all the outside affirmation that I could get in the world. And that was the only thing I wanted when I was in my twenties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And now I look back on that and I think, \u201cWell, that kid was trying to fill a hole that no amount of outside attention can fill.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> Do you think social media has given everybody an opportunity to seek that kind of validation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green:<\/strong> I mean, when I started writing novels, it was before Twitter and Reddit, and Facebook was still a website for college students that you couldn\u2019t access unless you had a college email address. And now things are very different. And, yeah, everybody has the opportunity to seek that outside affirmation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And with that comes these easily quantifiable metrics of how good or successful you are: How many followers you have. How many likes you get. How many comments you get. And, like a lot of things, it\u2019s easy to confuse what\u2019s actually important with what\u2019s quantifiable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rumpus:<\/strong> In the book, your characters consider the meaning and purpose of art, suggesting, among other things, that art allows us to feel together, or gives form to the formless. Do either of those descriptions align with the way you think about art?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Green:<\/strong> Yeah, I think that art does give form to the formless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I also think that art is a site of joint attention. When Sarah and I are looking at the same painting, in some ways it\u2019s more connective than when we\u2019re looking at each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I wanted to write about how art, as a shared site of attention, can help us understand and love each other more deeply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Initially, I thought I was writing about what we exchange when we give aspects of our private lives to the public for attention, which is something that used to be a problem mostly for movie stars and now is a problem for almost everyone who participates in the social internet. 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But eventually I discovered that I was writing about trauma, and eventually the question that was at the center for me was about how we survive what we have to survive and how we find the relationships that carry us through.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/in-the-future-everyone-will-be-famous-a-conversation-with-john-green\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/in-the-future-everyone-will-be-famous-a-conversation-with-john-green\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/in-the-future-everyone-will-be-famous-a-conversation-with-john-green\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/John-Green_Credit-Marina-Waters_2026-scaled.jpg?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/John-Green_Credit-Marina-Waters_2026-scaled.jpg?wsr","width":2048,"height":2560,"caption":"Photo Credit: Marina Waters"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/in-the-future-everyone-will-be-famous-a-conversation-with-john-green\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"\u201cIn The Future, Everyone Will Be Famous\u201d: A Conversation with John Green"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","name":"The Rumpus","description":"An independent arts and culture magazine for risk-taking voices.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization","name":"The Rumpus","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","width":2560,"height":1707,"caption":"The Rumpus"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","https:\/\/x.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/therumpus.tumblr.com\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/b322aed00362723cf0f5cd21737fb08e","name":"Annelies Zijderveld","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f13424f1da583335f62e4aebe00ab41ca4608be60cc0d1c061be8c365a7f1e75?s=96&d=mm&r=g0f7c75cafd500b2dde070f2488d41848","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f13424f1da583335f62e4aebe00ab41ca4608be60cc0d1c061be8c365a7f1e75?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f13424f1da583335f62e4aebe00ab41ca4608be60cc0d1c061be8c365a7f1e75?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Annelies Zijderveld"},"description":"Annelies Zijderveld is a poet, cookbook author, and writer of arts, food, and culture based in Oakland. Her cookbook, Steeped: Recipes Infused with Tea (Andrews McMeel, 2015) was selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of their favorite cookbooks. Her poetry has appeared in Scapegoat Review, The Acentos Review, Ethel Zine, L.A. Taco, and more. You can find her articles in epicurious, Eater SF, San Francisco Classical Voice, the Kitchn, and others. She is Assistant Editor of Interviews for The Rumpus and holds an MFA in poetry from New England College. While she doesn't really tweet anymore, you can find her there @anneliesz or on Instagram.","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/author\/annelies-zijderveld\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":83511,"user_id":118845,"is_guest":0,"slug":"liz-button","display_name":"Liz Button","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/86b53615c415010d66e60bd0cff5ae5de06804604afff5ec6776014383f9049c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"Liz Button is a marketing copywriter in Boulder, Colorado. While working as senior writer for the American Booksellers Association, she interviewed authors such as Michael Chabon, Ottessa Moshfegh, Colson Whitehead, and Tara Westover. She has also worked as a reporter for several newspapers in Westchester County, New York."}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/John-Green_Credit-Marina-Waters_2026-scaled.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119608"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258498"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258592,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258498\/revisions\/258592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258498"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258486,"date":"2026-09-23T08:52:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T12:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258486"},"modified":"2026-09-22T17:33:05","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T21:33:05","slug":"dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Dinner Party at the End of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My partner and I have been trying to have people over more often. We recently hosted a dinner party where the conversation found its way to retirement. Our acquaintances, all in their late twenties and early thirties, laid out various strategies\u2014maxing out 401ks and IRAs, inheriting property, practicing radical acceptance. They slipped in terms like \u201cNVIDIA\u201d and \u201cindex funds\u201d to make it sound like they might know what they\u2019re talking about. Someone read a paragraph verbatim from CNBC\u2019s website about the ideal investment portfolio for <em>Zillennials<\/em>. My partner shared our plan of evacuating to his home country, where things are slower and our dollars might go further, to spend our final days. Despite the conviction with which we spoke, these were all fictions. The room was full of air. In a financial reality burdened with runaway student loan interest, where entire industries gain and lose funding overnight based on a president\u2019s ever-evolving grievances, and where there\u2019s no reasonably affordable housing (or anything) to be had, none of us truly have any idea how we\u2019re going to make it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When the conversation reached my best friend, perhaps my only real friend at the table, she joked her plan is to \u201ckill herself\u201d before 40. A voice three seats down then politically corrected her, \u201c<em>Unalive<\/em> yourself before 40.\u201d The conversation lost all momentum. Save for Bad Bunny bumping in the background, the room fell into silence. People matched this silence with other forms of silence\u2014fiddling with their food or studying cracks in the wall which we\u2019d never gotten around to covering with thrift-store art. An introvert fled the room in search of our cats. Others reached for their phones without intention\u2014just to scroll, to stim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019d locked my devices in the bedroom as a sincere attempt to be more present for our guests. This was an obvious mistake that left me behind in the moment, unpacking my friend\u2019s financial plan alone. Because it involved premature death, this can only mean she was unable to envision a future where retirement\u2014rest and joy\u2014is even a possibility. I don\u2019t envy her. In fact, I worry she comprehends our generation\u2019s futurelessness better than the rest of us at the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My friend and I met years ago, pursuing semiserious dreams at the third best art school in Chicago. She wanted to be a writer full-time and so did I. We wrote painfully personal (Horvathian) essays about our dates, our drugs, our fatherless upbringings, and surface-level metaphysical interconnectedness. No one blamed us for our vanity; it was the early 2010s. We still had <em>capital H<\/em> Hope. We had a future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019d found each other in Writing Dreams, a class I\u2019d taken to get to the bottom of why I kept dreaming about an ex-boyfriend. (The answer was simpler than I\u2019d hoped. I still loved him. I still do.) Real dreams, we quickly discovered, are not nearly as interesting as everyone brands them to be. By the end of the course, we were lying in our journals to impress our peers. My friend wrote of a dream where her vibrator came to life, but he was too clingy, too jealous, too cringe. The class applauded her for the nuanced take on modern dating dynamics. I wrote of a dream where I entered a pet shop to find a room full of fish tanks containing miniature dioramas of my youth playing out in real time: my tooth making contact with the ball in little league; slipping into an algae-filled above-ground pool, almost drowning in the pit of green and slime; losing my virginity, lubeless in my mom\u2019s suburban basement while <em>World War Z<\/em> raged on a screen in the background. Whenever I think of this \u201cdream,\u201d I envision it in third person\u2014a diorama of dioramas\u2014and I feel envious of a former self who had access to these visions so freely, who contained the mind space to attempt to make sense of them\u2014a keycard to the backrooms of my brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When we lived together, my friend and I hardly did anything alone. We decorated the apartment with street furniture and Salvation Army photography. We enabled each other, convincing ourselves we were too busy with art to clean. Generations of fruit flies cycled through life and death in the pantry; constellations of mold spores spread across the ceiling over the shower. In my memory we never did anything other than write, but we wrote about everything. We couldn\u2019t afford streaming services or going out for inspiration, so we\u2019d pull chairs over to the window and observe the street for content. We paid witness to fistfights and hurried Grindr hookups, appearances from the missing pets on the posters around the neighborhood, and more parallel parking disasters than I could catalog. We\u2019d often read our writing aloud. Fearing stagnation more than anything, we pushed each other to cut everything that didn\u2019t read genuine, that didn\u2019t feel real. Though we couldn\u2019t quite define what qualified something as genuine, as real, we agreed we knew it when we heard it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The topography of our dining table was cluttered with pages from discarded drafts. I once hosted a late-twenties consultant from the West Loop for a hookup, for the story. He sat at the table, drank cheap wine, and told me our apartment reminded him of \u201ca <em><\/em>halfway house.\u201d I told him I preferred to think of it as a petri dish. When I read the write-up of the encounter to my friend, she smiled and corrected the consultant\u2019s assessment: \u201c<em>Our<\/em> halfway house.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the dinner party table, I looked toward my friend. She had also turned to her phone, where an endless compilation of rare Labubu unboxings played on the screen. I resisted the urge to tell her I hold a conspiracy that Labubus are a government psyop, like Russian internet bots or Big Glitter. Instead, I said nothing. A teacher once let me in on the seven second rule: If you can wait out an awkward silence for seven seconds, someone more anxious than you will speak. This used to always deliver, but post-pandemic, people seem more willing to let a moment suffocate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As the silence compounded, I began to use it, as I use all silence, to further dissociate. In a recent telehealth visit I fished for Adderall by describing how intrusive thoughts come to me like notifications in even the shortest periods of non-stimulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cLike watching Reels?\u201d my psychiatrist asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More like a low-voltage lobotomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She tells me this is a common symptom of those terminally online. On more than one occasion she\u2019s suggested going dark for an entire week to reset, recenter\u2014no phone, no internet, no anything. I\u2019m not going to do that. What if something happens while I\u2019m in the darkness\u2014something that changes the trajectory of everything\u2014and I miss it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the table, I cycled through what I might look up if I had the ability: aesthetics of the Roman Empire, fluoride, methods to mitigate the socio-economic imbalance and traffic build-up in the virtual city-state I\u2019m constructing on my desktop, do spiders believe in the sanctity of monogamous relationships?, can spiders marry their cousins?, r\/spiders, is the dark web the outer space of the internet?, what happens when all the polar bears die?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tonight was the first time I\u2019d heard \u201cunalive\u201d offline. I initially came across it when I downloaded TikTok midway through the pandemic as a final Hail Mary to feel part of something. The word had been popularized to circumvent the app\u2019s automated censorship triggers for the words \u201ckill,\u201d \u201cmurder,\u201d \u201csuicide,\u201d and their synonyms. And while \u201cunalive\u201d allows for conversations on such topics to occur on the platform, it comes at the price of undercutting the sting of the words it\u2019s replacing, leading to a censorship of its own\u2014the <em>frick<\/em> vs. <em>fuck<\/em> dilemma. One can talk about death, one can talk about violence, but only in a manner the algorithm finds palatable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The more I thought of my friend\u2019s financial plan, the more I worried our generation has become comfortable with the passivity that \u201cunalive\u201d offers. Suicide jokes are very much back from the dead. It\u2019s not at all abnormal to hear heavy language used carelessly: \u201cI\u2019d unalive myself if this or that happened\u201d (when imagining an embarrassing scenario), or \u201cI wanted to kill them\u201d (when someone commits a minor annoyance that most certainly didn\u2019t warrant extrajudicial execution). For example, just before the party, my partner realized he\u2019d forgotten to invite one of his coworkers and texted an overzealous apology. His coworker replied, \u201clmao no worries, I\u2019m not gonna kms \ud83e\udd2a.\u201d Another acquaintance had called in sick from their \u201cdeathbed\u201d with Covid. When asked if they needed anything, they replied: \u201ca gun.\u201d Distilled, the rhetorical flippancy toward human life in our generation\u2019s humor reads dystopically medieval. And, like any almost-joke, it never feels entirely euphemistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I contemplated breaking the dinner party silence by announcing I\u2019d recently seen an X post about a YouGov poll that found 9% of Americans have a \u201csomewhat or very favorable\u201d view of the Black Plague. However, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to stop myself from overexplaining this fun fact. I hypothesize that the 9% splits evenly: 4.5% to those who\u2019d like to gift Earth mercy via human extinction; 4.5% to those who have convinced themselves they\u2019re immune to plagues. And that the latter just might find pleasure in the prospect of watching other people suffer in 4K from the safety of their couches, between shifts, before bed, or on their phones in the quiet moments at parties surrounded in stillness among almost friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sharing this poll, or any poll, would\u2019ve been too doom-filled. It risked killing the vibe beyond repair\u2014worse than saying nothing. Up to the retirement conversation, we had done a decent job of keeping doom off the table. We small-talked vacations and sports, how good the food was, how strong the drinks were, laughed over the spitefulness of Chicago weather. For the most part we\u2019d been having what others in a different time might call \u201ca nice time.\u201d There had been pockets of doom, of course, but those were palatable. For example, someone\u2019s plus-one had shared a viral news story about an orphaned monkey in a Japanese zoo who had adopted a stuffed orangutan as his mother. However, after being dragged around the enclosure all day, the toy mother became worn down, so the zookeepers tried replacing her with an identical one, but the orphaned monkey noticed. Although I\u2019ve chosen to read this as a parable for the modern world, on its face, it contained an acceptable level of doom. It wasn\u2019t too political or didactic, and avoided the realm of nihilism I can\u2019t seem to convince myself isn\u2019t true reality. Conversation kept moving. Time kept getting later. People laughed. Post-pandemic, post 2024 election, I\u2019ve been having difficulty with mundane conversation, with being a person in a room. At the risk of minimizing: It\u2019s all too much not to think about all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The silence broke when it broke. It lasted somewhere between seven seconds and forever, but felt much longer. One of my partner\u2019s coworkers, an entry-level university researcher, announced she\u2019d received an email regarding the precarity of her lab\u2019s NIH funding. (The funding had somehow become even more precarious.) The table, full of scientists, argued over the university\u2019s remaining funding\u2014who should be funded and who should be cut, which studies were useful and which were not, what illnesses deserved to be cured and what people we\u2019d have to accept dying needlessly. As they debated, I looked to my friend, who was already looking toward me. We communicated in faces as we listened to the inflections of desperation in the scientist\u2019s voices, as we studied their exaggerated gestures when they each gave an impromptu pitch as to why their life\u2019s work mattered. Their doom felt genuine, felt real. The conversation concluded when they came to the natural agreement that the bulk of the bloat needing to be cut lived in humanities administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Around 10:00 p.m., I regretted having people over. I always do when the hour reaches double digits. As someone who doesn\u2019t get much social interaction, I know it\u2019s good for me, but I can\u2019t stomach more than a few hours at a time. Eventually I stop looking for opportunities to insert myself into the conversation, and then shortly after that I stop participating entirely. I\u2019m present and so are other people with their words, but it feels like I\u2019m attending the event from underwater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In my silence, I fixated on a couple who\u2019d kept their shoes on despite all the signals we kept a shoeless household\u2014a graveyard of Vans and Nikes on the mat outside the door, the unmissable reality that everyone else was in socks. I grew irrationally angry at their social unawareness until I fell into a full spiral. In my void, I developed a hyperawareness of our guests\u2019 street clothing resting against the furniture. I began sensing shifts in the atmospheric pressure whenever someone exhaled a plume of smoke from the communal weed pen. Everything anyone touched, anywhere anyone stepped, I cataloged. I\u2019d recently been diagnosed with contact OCD\u2014a learned behavior that spawned from instinctively sanitizing groceries during the pandemic long after the news told us we could stop. It scares me how quickly everyone moved on. I still don\u2019t know how we did it. All I know is that once people leave, I\u2019ll be up late, erasing traces anyone was ever over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The scientists moved on to a new discussion regarding a piece of equipment so technical I couldn\u2019t visualize it. My friend, the weed pen, and I escaped to my office\u2014a small pocket room where I spend most of my time. It contains my desk and its many papers, a litter box, and a used Peloton. The compactness of the space turned claustrophobic when we slid the door shut behind us. My friend sat on the bike, I sat on the desk, and we passed the pen back and forth, catching up between our inhales and exhales. She asked about our cats. I asked about her \u201csituationship,\u201d as she calls it, about her bartending job that won\u2019t give her enough hours to live. She said they were both fine and didn\u2019t elaborate. She asked if I still try to write in quiet moments at my office job. I try. I asked if she still dreams of her vibrator. We used this as an opportunity to shift the conversation permanently to the past. From here we reminisced on random 2000s movies we\u2019d almost forgotten and gossiped about social media updates from art school friends. (They\u2019re all married, underemployed, dead, or dead to us.) My friend and I don\u2019t talk futures. We survive almost entirely on nostalgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDo you remember Trash Lady?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course I remember Trash Lady\u2014the bird-bodied elderly woman across the street we watched from our apartment window. She\u2019d exit her building every night at 3:00 a.m., turn down the alley, and transport all the trash from her building\u2019s dumpster to another building\u2019s dumpster one block over. We were always jealous of how she moved with absolute conviction, like a spider weaving a web. I can only imagine what it\u2019s like to be so clearly aware of your purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We spent many nights observing Trash Lady gathering garbage by the armful. We contemplated what might compel someone to make one man\u2019s trash another man\u2019s trash. We had our theories. Perhaps she was suffering from compulsions, committing a nightly act of neighborly protest, or our favorite: She\u2019d conjured her own theory the other dumpster was somehow better for the environment, and she was on a quest to save the world from impending climate doom one used napkin at a time. (In this theory, we also allowed ourselves to believe she was correct, that she was, in fact, saving our world.) Most likely we were searching for answers where there were only stories. But still, we searched. We used to be so enamored by the corners of society, in awe of how niche the world could be for no reason at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou think she\u2019s still alive?\u201d my friend asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAbsolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After months of watching Trash Lady, she disappeared. We lost our minds when weeks went by without a sighting. We joked about her in class, at chaotic parties hosted by theater majors, but alone we worried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One night, months after we last saw her, we were up late binging pirated JonBen\u00e9t Ramsey documentaries when we heard the unmistakable echo of a dumpster hood slamming shut in the alleyway. We ran to the window only to discover a racoon fleeing, holding a trash treasure of its own. Although we didn\u2019t voice it, this is when we gave up on ever seeing Trash Lady again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I recently revisited the journal entry I made the next morning. I wrote something clich\u00e9, but felt like it might be true: \u201cI think I miss everyone I\u2019ve ever met.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI really never thought you\u2019d be thirty with a Peloton.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA Peloton from Facebook Marketplace,\u201d I corrected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I try not to confront this reality so directly. It\u2019s not abnormal for me to witness the sun rise and set from my office. Often the only humans I interact with are the people on the Peloton screen. Last winter, in the thick of a vortex, I found myself almost buying into one of the toxic positivity speeches instructors lodge between difficult intervals and subtle product placements. He told us that in this space, on that screen, we\u2019re never alone. There are thousands of people struggling and sweating alongside us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis is your home,\u201d he said. \u201cYour community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He encouraged the people in the live studio to put their hand on the person\u2019s shoulder next to them, and the people taking the class virtually to high five those close to them on the leaderboard. With nothing to lose, I followed his orders only to find the leaderboard empty. It had been a recording of a live class streamed years earlier. The community the instructor spoke of had long climbed down from their bikes and wiped the sweat off their foreheads. They\u2019d gone home to loved ones, to their empty walls and compact rooms. Some might have given up on exercise altogether. I didn\u2019t relay this story to my friend. It\u2019s an unacceptable dystopic doom that I\u2019m not ready to confront aloud. In the moment, I never have the words.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite not being a hugger, I hugged the scientists as they left. My partner is a hugger; it would\u2019ve been weird\u2014wrong\u2014if I didn\u2019t. My friend departed last after pretending she would help clean. My partner, knowing we would just clean again after she left regardless of whether she helped or not, assured her it wasn\u2019t necessary. She promised to text us when she made it home alive. They hugged, we waved, she left, and our guests were gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As much as I\u2019d like to believe I\u2019m still someone who misses everyone they\u2019d ever met, I was relieved our company had left and I looked forward to not having to see them again for a while. My partner and I split the chores. He took the kitchen, and I took the dining room. I streamed the news through headphones as I robotically completed tasks. I didn\u2019t learn anything I didn\u2019t already know, but I welcomed having another voice narrating the horrors of our world. This has become the only way I can get anything done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I often worry I\u2019ve saturated myself in doom for so long that I\u2019ve become doom embodied. Who would I be without the feeling of the end of the world looming? I\u2019m not sure. It\u2019s become an obsession, almost my only hobby. I tell myself my dread might be temporary, that maybe we can go back to before everything was so awful, but whenever I attempt to envision what comes next, remember what it was like before, or try to identify what exactly is so awful, I come up blank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the start of the pandemic, I had a writing mentor who told me existential dread wasn\u2019t the excuse I thought it was for not producing pages. \u201cThe world has always been ending,\u201d is what she typed on a virtual discussion board. I thought of her, along with all the pages I never wrote, as I stacked used plastic cups into a tower. Obviously, she was right. The world will be ending until it isn\u2019t, but that doesn\u2019t make it any better. And because it feels like we\u2019ve been edging cataclysm for so long now, I find it difficult to experience the world fully. I\u2019m perpetually anticipating a fall that never seems to come\u2014a final boss we cannot yet name. Perhaps I\u2019m na\u00efve, but I never dreamed of an ending this bleak, and I can\u2019t look away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The recycling bin was full when I arrived with my tower of plastic, so I threw it in the trash. I know it\u2019s not what I should\u2019ve done, but it\u2019s what I did. My partner, choosing his battles, didn\u2019t correct me. We quickly debriefed the party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWas I okay?\u201d he asked. \u201cDid I act okay?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I assured him he adequately performed normalcy. He always does. He returned the favor and promised the silence wasn\u2019t as long, or as awkward, as I was remembering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He offered a hug, but I declined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later, while vacuuming, I returned to my friend\u2019s financial plan. The more I crunched hypothetical numbers and circumstances, the more rational the math became, so I stopped crunching and went autopilot. My mind matched the whirr of the vacuum as I suctioned the fabric on the dining chairs. I thought of everything and nothing simultaneously\u2014headlines drenched with doom, AI anxieties, passwords I\u2019d thought I\u2019d long forgotten. Vacuuming is a void\u2014a loud form of silence. It\u2019s my favorite chore. When I\u2019m vacuuming, I\u2019m nowhere else. It\u2019s just me and the dust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the dinner party table, I looked toward my friend. She had also turned to her phone, where an endless compilation of rare Labubu unboxings played on the screen. I resisted the urge to tell her I hold a conspiracy that Labubus are a government psyop, like Russian internet bots or Big Glitter. Instead, I said nothing. A teacher once let me in on the seven second rule: If you can wait out an awkward silence for seven seconds, someone more anxious than you will speak. This used to always deliver, but post-pandemic, people seem more willing to let a moment suffocate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88898],\"author_categories\":{\"88898\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"140487\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88898,\"display_name\":\"Matthew Hawkins-Santana\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[81576],"tags":[9465],"ppma_author":[88898],"class_list":["post-258486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","tag-essay"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Dinner Party at the End of the World - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"At the dinner party table, I looked toward my friend. She had also turned to her phone, where an endless compilation of rare Labubu unboxings played on the screen. I resisted the urge to tell her I hold a conspiracy that Labubus are a government psyop, like Russian internet bots or Big Glitter. Instead, I said nothing. A teacher once let me in on the seven second rule: If you can wait out an awkward silence for seven seconds, someone more anxious than you will speak. 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This used to always deliver, but post-pandemic, people seem more willing to let a moment suffocate.","og_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/","og_site_name":"The Rumpus","article_publisher":"https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","article_published_time":"2026-09-23T12:52:00+00:00","og_image":[{"width":2560,"height":1707,"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/m-f-fb0_wj2MZk4-unsplash-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Matthew Hawkins-Santana","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@the_rumpus","twitter_site":"@the_rumpus","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Juliana Luna","Est. reading time":"19 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/"},"author":{"name":"Juliana Luna","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4"},"headline":"Dinner Party at the End of the World","datePublished":"2026-09-23T12:52:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/"},"wordCount":3799,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/m-f-fb0_wj2MZk4-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","keywords":["essay"],"articleSection":["Essays"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/","name":"Dinner Party at the End of the World - The Rumpus","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/m-f-fb0_wj2MZk4-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","datePublished":"2026-09-23T12:52:00+00:00","description":"At the dinner party table, I looked toward my friend. She had also turned to her phone, where an endless compilation of rare Labubu unboxings played on the screen. I resisted the urge to tell her I hold a conspiracy that Labubus are a government psyop, like Russian internet bots or Big Glitter. Instead, I said nothing. A teacher once let me in on the seven second rule: If you can wait out an awkward silence for seven seconds, someone more anxious than you will speak. This used to always deliver, but post-pandemic, people seem more willing to let a moment suffocate.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/m-f-fb0_wj2MZk4-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/m-f-fb0_wj2MZk4-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","width":2560,"height":1707,"caption":"Photo Credit: M F via Unsplash"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/23\/dinner-party-at-the-end-of-the-world\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Dinner Party at the End of the World"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","name":"The Rumpus","description":"An independent arts and culture magazine for risk-taking voices.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization","name":"The Rumpus","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","width":2560,"height":1707,"caption":"The Rumpus"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","https:\/\/x.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/therumpus.tumblr.com\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4","name":"Juliana Luna","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=gc90dbb975d959e35091c18702a00709e","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Juliana Luna"},"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/author\/jnluna\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":88898,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"matthew-hawkins-santana","display_name":"Matthew Hawkins-Santana","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"<p><span data-sheets-root=\"1\">Matthew Hawkins-Santana is a writer from West Virginia. Their work has been named notable in <em>The Best American Essays<\/em> and has appeared in <em>Passages North<\/em>, <em>Salt Hill Journal<\/em>, and <em>The Southampton Review<\/em>. Matthew holds an MFA from Florida Atlantic University and lives in Chicago, where they are currently at work on a collection of essays about living through late-stage capitalism.<\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/m-f-fb0_wj2MZk4-unsplash-scaled.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258486"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258607,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258486\/revisions\/258607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258486"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":258488,"date":"2026-09-22T09:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T13:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?p=258488"},"modified":"2026-09-14T08:11:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T12:11:21","slug":"literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/","title":{"rendered":"Literature as Linguistic Event: A Conversation with Hernan Diaz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hernan Diaz\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/ply-a-novel-hernan-diaz\/67a40ffcb4267c04?ean=9780593719541&bkshp-astro=t\"><em>Ply<\/em><\/a> (Riverhead Books, 2026) is a work of unapologetic maximalism. It is a Dickensian story of an orphan mastering an illicit trade; a plot-driven noir; a pointed exploration of our current political moment; and a meditation on reality and humanity\u2019s relationship to time. It is at the same time a tender story of friendship and motherhood. Also, the punk-rock music scene. And, of course, Quantum mechanics and advanced particle physics. It is impressive enough that all of these elements coexist in a single work but what really astounds is the fact that the novel <em>needs<\/em> these elements. Remove any of them and <em>Ply<\/em> would be a lesser work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After speaking with Diaz, this approach made even more sense. We talked over Zoom, Diaz in front of the kind of mammoth bookshelf that populates my dreams. He would pause, often, to point to a book \u2014aware of its exact location on the shelf\u2014and use it to illustrate an idea. His knowledge of literature seemed encyclopedic: he gives the impression of having read nearly everything that has ever been printed and, judging by the bookshelf, owning all of it too. While that kind of intellectual rigor can often be distancing, Diaz is anything but. He was funny, candid and remarkably generous. When the interview ended, he stayed on the call and turned the questions back on me, asking about my own novel in progress and offering genuine encouragement and guidance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We spoke over zoom for nearly two hours about following up the titanic success of <em>Trust<\/em> (Riverhead Books, 2022), punk rock, physics, and what a novel can ask of its reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"350\" height=\"529\" src=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/HERNAN-DIAZ-ply-book-cover-350x529.png?wsr\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-258602\" srcset=\"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/HERNAN-DIAZ-ply-book-cover-350x529.png 350w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/HERNAN-DIAZ-ply-book-cover-600x907.png 600w, https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/HERNAN-DIAZ-ply-book-cover.png 654w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> The book drops us <em>in medias res<\/em>, directly into the pincher\u2019s world with very little explanation. Was that immersive approach something you planned from the beginning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Hernan Diaz:<\/strong> To create a sense of verisimilitude, a believable reality within the text, what works for me is to take that reality a little bit for granted, without relying on explanatory scaffoldings. I\u2019ve done this when writing about the 1850s and the 1920s, for example. If you read a Charles Dickens novel or a Raymond Chandler novel\u2014two entirely different periods on different continents\u2014they don\u2019t describe their societies in great detail unless it\u2019s part of the plot. There\u2019s no need to explain how the British Postal Service worked in the 19th century or what a rotary dial is. Letters are simply mailed; phone calls are just made. I\u2019ve taken this approach to the past, and part of the formal experiment in <em>Ply<\/em> was to take a similar approach to the future\u2014to make this future feel as present as possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> Did that require you to build this whole world out for yourself\u2014even if it didn\u2019t make it into the novel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> Yes. Especially when it came to the political context, of which very little is given, and that was a tough decision. There are a couple of dialogues and a character who speaks briefly to the political situation, but it\u2019s fleeting. I wrote it all out\u2014I know how this world got to where it is. I just thought it was wiser not to include it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> Music is also\u2014a little surprisingly, given the way the novel has been marketed\u2014a major part of <em>Ply<\/em>. What role does music\u2014specifically the punk rock scene the pincher is adjacent to\u2014play to the novel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> From the very beginning, I always thought of <em>Ply<\/em> as a punk novel\u2014thematically, formally, emotionally, and, if this makes any sense, gesturally. I\u2019m mostly interested in post-punk rather than the first wave of punk, particularly the scenes in New York, Manchester, and London. I read a lot of memoirs and first-person accounts by musicians from the mid \u201970s through the early \u201980s. The city described in <em>Ply<\/em> actually existed here in New York not that long ago: nature reclaiming buildings, squatters, sub-economies functioning outside institutionally regulated financial systems, and an almost limitless sense of freedom. That\u2019s part of why I don\u2019t see the novel as dystopian. Yes, some of those forms of decay have brought and will bring real suffering, and I\u2019m not romanticizing that, but they can also create space for new collective configurations, radical art, and ways of living that are less commodified. I\u2019m also very interested in constraints. These bands made incredibly intense, moving music with very limited means\u2014little formal training, bad instruments, no money. Putting those precarious material conditions alongside the extremely high-tech machine in the second part of the book created a <em>dissonance<\/em>\u2014I\u2019m using this word quite deliberately\u2014that I found very appealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> Writing about music seems like a particular narrative challenge, especially because you\u2019re actually describing the experience of listening to music, and because these are songs that don\u2019t exist. Did you have a clear sense of what those songs sounded like as you were writing them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> That was one of the scariest things, because you don\u2019t want to sound like a Brooklyn dad writing about rock and roll. I could absolutely hear the music in my head\u2014I used to be a musician and have written about music in the past. But I wanted the descriptions to be physical rather than psychological, because the novel is so concerned with the material world and with physics. This kind of music is something you experience with your ears, but also on your skin. Volume, repetition, sound waves moving through the atmosphere and affecting their surroundings\u2014that material experience was what I tried to focus on. But it was hard. I can think of rather embarrassing rock-related novels by writers I otherwise really admire that I held up as terrifying counterexamples\u2014like, \u201cnot this.\u201d I think intensity is hard to write about. It\u2019s why sex is hard to write about, and violence too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> That is something I wanted to touch on. There are actually a lot of memorably, disturbingly violent moments in the novel\u2014several of which stayed with me for weeks afterward\u2014but the pincher having her pinky deliberately broken as a child was especially haunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> I was drawn to the contrast between the sheer brutality of the act and the smallness of the limb. There\u2019s this almost delicate violence to it. Now, I\u2019m a very linear writer. I don\u2019t draft in the usual sense\u2014I write the book in the order you read it, and when I\u2019m done, I\u2019m more or less … <em>done<\/em>. But the pinky was different. I went back and introduced these moments where the pincher\u2019s little finger bothers her before the reader knows why. It becomes a minor motif that, to a limited extent, articulates the narrative: First you wonder what\u2019s going on with the pinky, then you learn what happened, and afterward the pain keeps returning in very specific situations. It plays an important role\u2014to avoid spoilers, I\u2019ll speak discreetly\u2014by becoming a marker of the pincher\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> So you don\u2019t draft? I\u2019m a little in awe of that, especially given the complexity and interconnectivity of <em>Ply<\/em>. Can you walk me through your process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> It\u2019s very simple, utterly uneconomic, and most likely unsuitable for anybody else. I put enormous pressure on each sentence as I go. I don\u2019t typically allow myself to move to the next sentence if the one I\u2019m finishing doesn\u2019t work. That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s done, but it does mean it isn\u2019t a placeholder. I don\u2019t have those. I tend to write longhand, and then I transcribe the day\u2019s work into a Word document. That transcription is already a very, very big editorial pass. Things change: lexical choices, punctuation, syntax. But it is, in essence, kind of the same sentence. Then, the following morning, I go back to my pen and repeat. It\u2019s a very slow process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> I find that fascinating, especially from a plotting perspective. Both <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/trust-pulitzer-prize-winner-hernan-diaz\/70a75e5793ba9043?ean=9780593420324&bkshp-astro=t\"><em>Trust<\/em><\/a> and <em>Ply<\/em> are so intricately plotted. How do you keep track of the larger plot? Do you have a master document, or is it all in your head?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> I\u2019m almost philosophically against plotting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> Because plotting assumes there is some kind of Platonic idea of the novel\u2014disembodied, ethereal, existing outside of language. For me, literature is a linguistic event. There is no plot. There are no characters. There are no places. The only thing there is in a novel is sentences. This means that so much will be dictated by the texture of language, by syntax, by the pacing imposed by punctuation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s also the exhilaration of discovering what is going to happen through the act of writing. Plotting feels too tidy to me. It takes away the mystery of the trajectory. Sometimes I don\u2019t know where it\u2019s going, and that can be painful and anxiety-inducing, but I prefer it that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That said, it\u2019s not as though I\u2019m a goldfish living in a perpetual present. I have an idea of where the book is going. I\u2019ll make little side notes about what\u2019s going to happen in the next paragraph or a couple of chapters ahead\u2014something as simple as, \u201cThese two characters should meet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> What happens if, while writing a scene, you realize there is a gap or the narrative requires something that needs to be set up earlier? Do you go back and revise immediately, or keep moving forward and return to it later?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> Two answers. The first is that, as they\u2019re being written, my books are very slow-moving ships. Think of a big oil tanker: It doesn\u2019t turn on a dime. So there\u2019s a lot of time for me to look at the consequences of a turn and what is needed to make it more effective. The second is that, of course, sometimes I do need to go back and write inserts\u2014little bits, maybe a paragraph\u2014in order to make the causal cogs turn smoothly. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever gone back and written a full chapter. If I have (and I can\u2019t recall doing so), it\u2019s an exception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> Related to plot is the question of exposition. There are two moments in the novel where the pincher sort of recedes, and we\u2019re caught up on the larger events unfolding around her. I used to write screenplays, and I always found those scenes incredibly difficult to write well, but you handle them very effectively. How do you approach exposition?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> Oh, I love this question. Thank you for your exceedingly kind words. It\u2019s essential to understand and embrace that \u201cexposition\u201d has always been central in the modern novel, at least since the 17th century, and not a cumbersome supplement of sorts. This \u201ccatching up\u201d you refer to is very important, since it plays both with scope and time. In addition, the novel has always been drawn to ideas and to presenting them within a narrative frame. These two urges often become one single gesture in exposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The curious thing is that, at some point we\u2019ve been told, I\u2019m not sure by what higher literary authority, that exposition and plot are at odds with each other. But you can see so many of these expositional moments in hyper-classic plot-driven \u201cadventure\u201d novels by, say, Defoe, Scott, Dumas, Verne, Stevenson, and so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> Formally, you do something very interesting by shifting tense in the middle of the novel. As the book progresses, the reason for that becomes clearer, but I wondered why you chose to make the shift at that particular moment when its function is far less clear narratively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> Time is important to me. This is a book about time as a physical entity, and the most immediate way we experience time in language is through tense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In all of my books, including <em>Ply<\/em>, I have paragraphs where time is suspended because there are no conjugated verbs\u2014only infinitives and participles. I try to do it unobtrusively. If you don\u2019t notice, that\u2019s mission accomplished. You don\u2019t have to know grammar to experience it, just as you don\u2019t have to know meteorology to experience weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Suspending conjugation creates a kind of lifting of time\u2014to quote the novel, we are \u201cstepping out of the river of time.\u201d There are still actions, but they exist outside of tense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In <em>Ply<\/em>, I took that further because the novel is also concerned with identity: how \u201cI\u201d relates to \u201cyou,\u201d and what really separates those categories. Rather than simply talking about those ideas, I wanted the shifts in tense and grammatical person to embody them in the language and form of the book. The placement of the shift was something I deliberated over and experimented with on the page. I considered making it happen after a more obvious causal event, but it felt too tidy. I wanted the shift to happen earlier. It is intentionally a bit disjointed because <em>time is out of joint.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> And that brings me to Pola, the scientist in <em>Ply<\/em> who is exploring the manipulation of time. She enters the book with a fairly long and dense monologue. I actually studied chemistry at university and have a very basic familiarity with quantum mechanics, so I was able to follow her, and I enjoyed it. I don\u2019t mean to suggest that the section is flawed in any way, but it does feel like readers may respond to it very differently. I can see it becoming a talking point among both those who loved it and those who found it more difficult to engage with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> With Pola, it was paramount to present her as the embodiment of scientific thought precisely so I could play with the border between the apex and the nadir of reason. Is she truly that brilliant, or is she insane? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But you can\u2019t create that tension without first establishing her expertise. That\u2019s why her little lecture is there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> When you\u2019re making a choice like that, how much are you thinking about what you can reasonably ask of the reader?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> I care immensely about the reader, but it\u2019s twelve pages in a 450-page book which seems to me like a very reasonable thing to ask of the reader. I try not to shape things around those readerly expectations though, because they would ultimately be made up by me, wouldn\u2019t they? And that would be vainer than not caring at all, because it would presume that I know what a vast swath of readers want. Who the fuck am I to know that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> <em>Trust<\/em> feels like a good example. Its middle section asks a lot of the reader and I can imagine editors suggesting toning it down or removing it. Yet, that was as popular as a book could be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> <em>Trust<\/em> was exactly the book that I wanted to write. I got representation very late in life and was published very late, and <em>Trust<\/em> went to auction, which was a completely new process to me. During COVID, I had all these meetings over Zoom, and there were editors who said, \u201cLove the book, would love to move forward\u2014but maybe we should cut that second section.\u201d And it was like, \u201cOkay, this has been a good meeting.\u201d It was a deal breaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We live in a world where everything tends to follow the line of least resistance. I happen to be interested in literature, music, films, and art in general that pushes back a bit, that makes you think about the medium you\u2019re experiencing. In this case, language: the materiality of it, the sentence, how meaning is constructed, how conceptual horizons can be stretched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I\u2019m also interested in the flipside of that, where you forget that you\u2019re reading entirely. That\u2019s beautiful too\u2014when you forget you\u2019re holding a book and are instead held by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because I\u2019m greedy, I want both experiences. I want moments where you disappear into the text, and other moments where you become intensely aware of a certain semantic density, syntax, punctuation, the sentence as an event. Why not aim for both?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So if physics is not your thing\u2014and I understand that for most people it probably isn\u2019t\u2014the concepts are presented quite gently and concisely. There are metaphors. There are plenty of comparisons for scale. There\u2019s no algebra or equations. If you have a modicum of patience, I think it\u2019s pretty lucid. But if not, if it sounds a little like gibberish, I think that\u2019s great, because it enhances the \u201cmad\u201d part of the mad scientist. If your reaction is, \u201cI don\u2019t know what she\u2019s saying; this sounds crazy,\u201d that works too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> There\u2019s an interesting parallel I noticed in the novel. And if this is way off base, just let me know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> I have no problem saying no. I\u2019m very good at saying no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> I noticed that both the pincher and Pola could, in a way, be viewed as artists. They\u2019re working without much concern for money, driven instead by a particular goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> Right. I can see where this is heading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Rumpus:<\/strong> And that passion becomes complicated once success arrives and the various money-men begin to swarm around them. I talk to a lot of writers about what it\u2019s like to follow a transformational success like <em>Trust<\/em>\u2014the kind we all hope to have at some point in a career. I wondered whether any of that was consciously or unconsciously connected to your own experience after <em>Trust<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Diaz:<\/strong> Yeah, no, I mean, look, I\u2019m not going to lie to you. It\u2019s a mix. On the one hand, I started thinking about <em>Ply<\/em> before I started writing <em>Trust<\/em>, so it\u2019s not that. That\u2019s normally the way I work: Something is stewing in the background, and I start vaguely reading toward it. It\u2019s a very long process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So in that sense, it lives in the void that is me. I\u2019m interested in technology. I\u2019m interested in mad scientists. When I was a university professor, I taught a semester-long class on mad scientists. This is something I\u2019ve been thinking about seriously for a long time, independent of any \u201csuccess\u201d I may have been lucky enough to experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The second part is, for sure, that I\u2019m not going to pretend I\u2019m so pure that I just write my own thing without thinking about expectations. By sheer coincidence, not design, I had written two\u2014please put this in quotes\u2014\u201chistorical novels\u201d in succession, <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/in-the-distance-hernan-diaz\/27e648838ea94964?ean=9780593850565&bkshp-astro=t\"><em>In the Distance<\/em><\/a> (Riverhead Books, 2024) and <em>Trust<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I thought the expectation might be that, if I kept moving forward chronologically, I\u2019d write something about the Cold War or whatever comes next. And I knew it couldn\u2019t be that. I knew I had to go against both myself and expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That part was deliberate, like a self-imposed cliff that I built for myself and then jumped off. I think risk and honesty are two very important things. I would rather stop writing than have a formula for emitting novels. I\u2019d rather quit and open a cheese shop. It is in this additional sense that I spoke of <em>Ply<\/em> as a punk novel. I never want to have a formula or simply build on the thing I wrote before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course I\u2019m building in the sense that I\u2019m learning how to write better for myself\u2014not objectively better, but for myself. But I don\u2019t want anything that could be perceived as a formulaic continuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every project, to me, should be completely ad hoc. There shouldn\u2019t be a preexisting set of rules you apply to it\u2014only rules that are valid for that particular case. So I could see an emerging pattern because of the nature of those two novels, and I felt very, very strongly the urge to break with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don\u2019t believe in manifestos. I don\u2019t believe in rules or dogmas for art. I think that\u2019s noxious and destructive. I only believe in freedom and feeling and extreme discipline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In all of my books, including Ply, I have paragraphs where time is suspended because there are no conjugated verbs\u2014only infinitives and participles. I try to do it unobtrusively. If you don\u2019t notice, that\u2019s mission accomplished. You don\u2019t have to know grammar to experience it, just as you don\u2019t have to know meteorology to experience weather. Suspending conjugation creates a kind of lifting of time\u2014to quote the novel, we are \u2018stepping out of the river of time.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140487,"featured_media":258600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"secondary_featured_image":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[88897],\"author_categories\":{\"88897\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"140487\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":88897,\"display_name\":\"Michael Costaris\",\"is_guest\":1,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[81578],"tags":[219],"ppma_author":[88897],"class_list":["post-258488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","tag-interview"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Literature as Linguistic Event: A Conversation with Hernan Diaz - The Rumpus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In all of my books, including Ply, I have paragraphs where time is suspended because there are no conjugated verbs\u2014only infinitives and participles. I try to do it unobtrusively. If you don\u2019t notice, that\u2019s mission accomplished. You don\u2019t have to know grammar to experience it, just as you don\u2019t have to know meteorology to experience weather. 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You don\u2019t have to know grammar to experience it, just as you don\u2019t have to know meteorology to experience weather. 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Suspending conjugation creates a kind of lifting of time\u2014to quote the novel, we are \u2018stepping out of the river of time.\u2019","og_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/","og_site_name":"The Rumpus","article_publisher":"https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","article_published_time":"2026-09-22T13:20:00+00:00","og_image":[{"width":564,"height":849,"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/HERNAN-DIAZ-photo-credit-Pascal-Perich.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Michael Costaris","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@the_rumpus","twitter_site":"@the_rumpus","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Juliana Luna","Est. reading time":"17 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/"},"author":{"name":"Juliana Luna","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4"},"headline":"Literature as Linguistic Event: A Conversation with Hernan Diaz","datePublished":"2026-09-22T13:20:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/"},"wordCount":3449,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/HERNAN-DIAZ-photo-credit-Pascal-Perich.png?wsr","keywords":["interview"],"articleSection":["Interviews"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/","name":"Literature as Linguistic Event: A Conversation with Hernan Diaz - The Rumpus","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/HERNAN-DIAZ-photo-credit-Pascal-Perich.png?wsr","datePublished":"2026-09-22T13:20:00+00:00","description":"In all of my books, including Ply, I have paragraphs where time is suspended because there are no conjugated verbs\u2014only infinitives and participles. I try to do it unobtrusively. If you don\u2019t notice, that\u2019s mission accomplished. You don\u2019t have to know grammar to experience it, just as you don\u2019t have to know meteorology to experience weather. Suspending conjugation creates a kind of lifting of time\u2014to quote the novel, we are \u2018stepping out of the river of time.\u2019","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/HERNAN-DIAZ-photo-credit-Pascal-Perich.png?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/HERNAN-DIAZ-photo-credit-Pascal-Perich.png?wsr","width":564,"height":849,"caption":"Photo Credit: Pascal Perich"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/2026\/09\/22\/literature-as-linguistic-event-a-conversation-with-hernan-diaz\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Literature as Linguistic Event: A Conversation with Hernan Diaz"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#website","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","name":"The Rumpus","description":"An independent arts and culture magazine for risk-taking voices.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#organization","name":"The Rumpus","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","contentUrl":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Rumpus-Logo-FC.png?wsr","width":2560,"height":1707,"caption":"The Rumpus"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/facebook.com\/TheRumpusDotNet","https:\/\/x.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/the_rumpus","https:\/\/therumpus.tumblr.com\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/#\/schema\/person\/623ef0cfc02d1f2e01dc4cbfe666e1a4","name":"Juliana Luna","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=gc90dbb975d959e35091c18702a00709e","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/23e7bcd4306ff58a34eb2645e984b76bf58a1517ff3259ac94f80fe088dcacbf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Juliana Luna"},"url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/author\/jnluna\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":88897,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"michael-costaris","display_name":"Michael Costaris","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"<p><span data-sheets-root=\"1\">Michael is a fiction editor at<em> The Adroit Journal<\/em>. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in <em>The Kenyon Review<\/em>, <em>The Common<\/em>, <em>The Missouri Review<\/em>, <em>The Baffler,<\/em> <em>Pleiades<\/em>, <em>The Florida Review<\/em>, <em>Michigan Quarterly Review<\/em> and many more. <\/span><\/p>"}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/HERNAN-DIAZ-photo-credit-Pascal-Perich.png?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258488"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258603,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258488\/revisions\/258603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258488"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therumpus.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=258488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}]