No One Is Innocent
Yiyun Li’s arresting debut novel, The Vagrants, should be required reading for anyone interested in political fanaticism and state-sponsored tyranny.
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Rumpus Articles
FUNNY AMERICA: Bye American
Can we stop with the waving of the sharp instruments for a minute and speak rationally to this whole ugly recession mess we find ourselves currently mired in? C’mon. You…
Jesse Nathan: The Last Book I Loved
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Sasa Stanisic was the last book I love love loved. It’s explosive, a text that’s sinewy and daring. It tears open the marks…
High Fidelity: The Rumpus Review of Watchmen
It is the comic book movie equivalent of Gus Van Sant’s Psycho: a technically accurate but dramatically inert copy of its source.
Bootleg/Out of Print Comedy Records
At the A Special Thing message board, users have devoted a thread to posting bootlegged standup comedy shows and out of print comedy records. Many of these shows feature familiar…
Nobody Can Enjoy Art Anymore
Vigilante justice: the new counterculture. Until it gets, like, totally commercial. That’s the premise of DeLeon DeMicoli’s novel, Lick Me, a spunky murder mystery saddled down with dull culture critique.
The Last Book I Loved: The Wordy Shipmates
I fall in love pretty easily, so for me right now it’s Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates, which is her take on John Winthrop, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson of…
BAD MOMMY BLOG: Why Can’t Men Say, “Ow?”
“Ow. That hurts. I’m in pain.” These are a few things Andy (the husband) will never say. After a snowboarding mishap he blacked out, woke and noticed it hurt when his…
Woke Up Way Too Late
The genius of Ben Folds is not just the albums he releases. You don’t understand the intense creativity and expression of the man until you see or hear him perform…
A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Blog: Battling Against Castro
“In 1951 you couldn’t get us to talk politics. Ball players then would just as soon talk bed-wetting as talk politics.” These are the opening lines of Jim Shepard’s 1994…
How Did It Come to This?
An oral history of May 3, 1987, the day The Butthole Surfers came to Trenton, New Jersey.