Posts by author
Lauren O’Neal
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Brazilian Poetry Takes a Weird Turn for the Normal
Brazil has a nearly two-hundred-year-old poetic history, during which various poets have fought to define Brazilian identity, criticize the injustices of capitalism, and catalog “the joys and miseries of being young in a military dictatorship.” Now that Brazil has become…
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Do Authors Use Symbols on Purpose?
In 1963, a high-schooler named Bruce McAllister decided he would prove to his English teacher once and for all that the symbols she was asking students to find in books like The Scarlet Letter were not actually put there on purpose by…
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Black Quotations from Marion Berry to Natasha Trethewey
For Guernica, Lauren K. Alleyne interviews Retha Powers, editor of the new Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations, which collects quotes by a rainbow of black sources, from Zora Neale Hurston to NWA to ancient Egypt. It’s a really interesting glimpse at the necessity…
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Taking a Break from the Internet
We at the Rumpus love the Internet. We are, after all, a place to read, on the Internet (just check our Twitter bio). But sometimes it’s good to contemplate how exactly you’re using the Internet and why, as Matthew Gallaway…
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On Reading “the Midcentury Misogynists”
In a piece flawlessly titled “Reading While Female: How to Deal With Misogynists and Male Masturbation,” four female writers talk to each other about how women in college try to make sense of the male-dominated literature they’re taking in. One…
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Yumi Sakugawa Goodness
Our resident cartoonist extraordinaire Yumi Sakugawa has some very exciting stuff coming up. 1. She’s the author of our next Letter in the Mail, going out December 4. For more information about Letters in the Mail, click here. 2. She has a…
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Italian Librarian Steals and Deals Rare Books
Who says librarians can’t also be the leaders of organized crime rings? The very man charged with protecting these treasures, Marino Massimo De Caro, a politically connected former director of the library, is accused of being at the center of…
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The Internet Is Really Creepy Sometimes
If, while posting selfies to Twitter and reblogging Pacific Rim GIFs on Tumblr, you ever feel a pang of nostalgia for the Wilder Westier days of the Internet, here’s a story for you: In January of 2012, a mysterious series of…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
Hope your Thanksgiving was bountiful and your travel experience wasn’t too terrible! Here’s what we had going on on the Rumpus this weekend. Lydia Kiesling’s review of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch has stirred up a little controversy, but it’s thoughtful and…
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Give Thanks for this Book Flowchart
Thanksgiving can be a trial sometimes, but one can always turn to books for comfort. Here’s a fun Thanksgiving flowchart from Bookish to help you determine which book you need to help you through any holiday situation.
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The Copycat Lolita
A few weeks before Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita came out, the New Yorker published a short story about a man consorting with a young woman named Lolita instead of her mother—but this story was by Dorothy Parker, whose career was entering its last-gasp…
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PJ Harvey Tuesday #5: “This Mess We’re In”
Thom Yorke and PJ Harvey sit in New York and contemplate their doomed love and suffer, and it’s all terribly stylish and sexy. What really makes the song crackle, though, is the fact that neither one of them had sung…