The Last Book I Loved: The Glass Castle
The problem with reading a modern memoir is that often they suck. The influx of reality shows and confessional writing (ahem, Tori Spelling) has placed an emphasis on story and…
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Rumpus Articles
Glenn Kenny on Editing David Foster Wallace
Film writer and former Premiere editor and critic Glenn Kenny talks about his experience editing David Foster Wallace for that magazine in the mid-to-late 90s and his friendship with the…
Looking for a Hole to Hide In
Illustrator Nat Russell can’t remember a time he didn’t draw. Taking in Peanuts and Mad Magazine like popcorn and then the works of printmaker Antonio Frasconi and Ben Shahn,…
Scrawl Girl
What does it mean to draw outside the lines? Allison Benis White sketches it out in Self-Portrait with Crayon.
That Old Philogelos—Up To His Old Tricks!
Classicist Mary Beard has discovered a joke book from the 4th century AD, filled with rib-ticklers from the late Roman Empire. Just like today, the old egghead is a source…
Border War Goes Both Ways
Last year, my pal James Verini wrote an extensive piece in Portfolio about the problem — and related policy hypocrisy — that allows the entire discussion of “border protection” to…
A Tree Grows in Detroit
If you thought there was an odd brilliance in Steven Soderberg setting Out of Sight‘s stirring first love scene against snow settling over the ruins of Detroit, and that Robert…
Show Your Work!
Matthew Zapruder proposes we meet the current explosion of variety coursing through contemporary poetry head-on with a new kind of criticism. Zapruder wants critics to talk a little less about…
The Ground Beneath Their Feet
Aaron Gwyn’s novel describes a world in which people can fall through the surface of the earth and be snatched by a mythological creature, never to be heard from again.
It’s No Bullshit!
Although George Carlin is renowned for his standup comedy, a career more prolific than that of any other modern practitioner of the form, he had some fascinating detours along the…