Things I’ve Been Silent About
Azar Nafisi‘s first book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, chronicles an underground book club reading Western Classics under the oppressive Islamic government of Tehran (it subsequently became a favorite book-club book…
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Rumpus Articles
At the Intersection of Football and Porn
By now everybody has heard that last night football fans in Tuscon got thirty free seconds of Jenna Jameson doing what she’s famous for in a mistake that was the…
THE EYEBALL: Guy Maddin
I held out for just the right time to watch Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain! and caved this weekend, experiencing it like I do so many movies now, on…
Terrifying Nixon-Era Children’s Books
Ever since shoving Bush into his helicopter with an expletive and fantasizing about letting go of Cheney’s wheelchair at the top of a long, steep hill, I find I have…
A Review of Deb Olin Unferth’s Vacation
Obsession distorts the lens through which we view the world; things that once seemed unfathomable become terrifically and terrifyingly plausible.
The Rumpus Interview with Andrew Sean Greer
I've heard other novelists say this, which makes me feel like I'm not crazy, that the problem with every novel is finding the key to it, finding the way in.
Jorge Luis Borges: “Reading has to be a happiness”
“For me death is a hope, the irrational certitude of being abolished, erased and forgotten,” says Borges in this 1984 interview conducted by Professor of Philosophy Tomas Abraham, translated here…
The High Definite: Definitely Awesome
It’s rare to wade through the kiddie pool of the Internet and be taken out at the ankles by a website that’s the equivalent of a great white shark. The…
The New York Times Tackles Lesbian Separatism
Keeping the fires of fledgling feminism stoked is the responsibility of the Alapine lesbian community in the region of the Appalachians in northeastern Alabama. “Community” has become a loose term…
Everything Reminds Me of Everything
About two weeks after I leave Costa Rica, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake will ravage an area about twenty miles outside the capital.