The Irresistible Illusion
Rory Stewart’s LRB article “the Irresistible Illusion,” analyzes the language current Western leaders use when speaking about Afghanistan. Then he compares it to similar speeches made by others since 1868.…
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Rumpus Articles
VQR Interviews Michelle Orange
The Rumpus’s own Michelle Orange has a contribution in the Virginia Quarterly Review‘s most recent issue. The piece, entitled “Beirut Rising,” “entertains with its amusing depiction of the Lebanese passion…
The Rumpus Interview with Robert Sullivan
Journalist Robert Sullivan often documents unlovely corners of the natural world: The Meadowlands (1998) turned a naturalist’s eye on a dispiriting region of northern New Jersey notable for its Mafia…
Morning Coffee
Social networking sites as art installation. Light-test.com collects photographer’s, uh, light tests. The results are playful and fascinating. A Journey Round My Skull takes a rare trip outside its selfimposed…
An Author’s Experience of Cover Design
Earlier this month, the subject of book cover design, and who the final design should speak to, blipped across the blogs for a day or so after Seth Godin reasonably opined…
Infinite Summer Roundup
I’ve been collecting articles and links connected to the Infinite Summer challenge, and Infinite Jest itself, and three weeks in seems like a good time to share them: if you’d like…
The Rumpus Long Interview with Jessica Anthony
Jessica Anthony’s first novel, The Convalescent (McSweeney’s Books) is the first recipient of McSweeney’s Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award. It’s about a really short guy who sells meat out of…
THE EYEBALL: Vicky Cristina Barcelona
When you grow up being called a faggot by farm boys because you like to read books, Woody Allen can appear as something of a savior. That’s my story, anyway.…
Novel Tweets
Matt Stewart is hoping to make history this Bastille Day by becoming the first author (“as far as he can tell”) to publish his entire full-length novel via Twitter. The…
A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #11: The Auxiliary Father
My high school soccer coach was a Guatemalan immigrant who had made his way to the States when he was in his twenties. At first he’d earned his living as…
Why I Write
A 20 page essay on “Why I Write” by Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott. Part memoir/part tips and insight. $3 from Scribd, read online or download. (He says he’s going to…