Living Outside the Narrative in Elif Batuman’s The Idiot
The Idiot dramatizes the alienation, and even heartbreak, of losing the narrative thread of your existence.
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Posts by: Sean Carman
The Rumpus Review of Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra
But the problem of making fiction is just one of the many problems a reborn country must figure out.
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The Prank by Anton Chekhov
Sean Carman reviews The Prank by Anton Chekhov today in Rumpus Books.
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The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret
Sean Carman reviews The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret today in Rumpus Books.
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Get in Trouble by Kelly Link
Sean Carman reviews Get in Trouble by Kelly Link today in Rumpus Books.
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MFA vs. SNL
The best writers learn their craft in unexpected places, even from the foot of an improv stage.
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A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip by Kevin Brockmeier
Sean Carman reviews A FEW SECONDS OF RADIANT FILMSTRIP by Kevin Brockmeier today in The Rumpus Book Reviews.
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The Rumpus Interview with Bill Cotter
Writer Bill Cotter talks about his new novel, the joy of discovering writing a bit later in life, and the dangers of accidental self-plagiarism.
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Words Will Break Cement by Masha Gessen
Sean Carman reviews WORDS WILL BREAK CEMENT by Masha Gessen today in The Rumpus Book Reviews.
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Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart
Sean Carman reviews LITTLE FAILURE by Gary Shteyngart today in The Rumpus Book Reviews.
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The Rumpus Interview with Kevin Barry
Irish writer Kevin Barry sits down for a chat about life in County Sligo, not knowing what your stories are about until years after you’ve written them, and the summer he spent in a camping trailer on a West Cork beach.
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The Rumpus Interview with Laura van den Berg
Writer Laura van den Berg talks about her newest collection, The Isle of Youth, being drawn to locations “with a potential for magic and strangeness,” and how to create a continuous dream for the reader.
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The Stench of Honolulu by Jack Handey
Sean Carman reviews Jack Handey’s THE STENCH OF HONOLULU today in The Rumpus Book Reviews.
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American Spirit by Dan Kennedy: A Conflict-of-Interest Review
Sean Carman reviews Dan Kennedy’s AMERICAN SPIRIT today in The Rumpus Book Reviews.
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The Rumpus Interview with John Brandon
My favorite thing about John Brandon’s writing are his sentences. They take weird left turns and are compelling for reasons you can’t quite name.
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The Rumpus Interview with Elliott Holt
Writer and Rumpus contributor Elliott Holt sits down to discuss her debut novel, You Are One of Them, her preoccupation with secrets, and working in 1990s Moscow during Russia’s economic transition.
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The Rumpus Interview with Ben Greenman
Humor and experimental fiction—charting the meaning of charts, playing with ideas like a slippage between the gears of perception and reality—have been Ben Greenman’s stock in trade.
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The Rumpus Interview with David Shields
Essayist and lauded thinker David Shields talks about his new book, whether it’s necessary to draw sharp distinctions between literary forms, and his celebration of literature that collapses the distance between the artist’s life and work.
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The Rumpus Interview with Craig Nova
Powerhouse novelist Craig Nova discusses his newest work, the terrors of the universe, the solaces of fiction, and his influences, from Albert Camus to Alice Munro.
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Inside by Alix Ohlin
At some point in Inside, Alix Ohlin’s elegant second novel, you will probably notice, as I did toward the end, that her characters have a lot of sex. I mean a LOT of sex.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Elif Batuman
Elif Batuman’s The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them combines genres to tell stories about Batuman’s adventures as a graduate student.
...moreSean Carman: The Last Book I Loved, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Mario Vargas Llosa’s 1977 novel, begins with an epigraph–a quote from Salvador Elizondo’s The Graphographer–about the watery line between reality and its representation in language. “I write,” it begins. “I write that I am writing. Mentally I see myself writing that I am writing and I can also see myself […]
...moreMissing Tiles in the American Mosaic: The Rumpus Interview with Alia Malek
In late October 2000, Alia Malek, the American daughter of Syrian immigrant parents, started work as a civil rights lawyer in the U.S. Justice Department. She then watched the newly-elected Bush Administration re-direct
...moreSean Carman: The Last Book I Loved, Stories I Stole
Wendell Steavenson’s memoir of her time as a freelance foreign correspondent in Tblisi, Georgia, begins in her former Time Magazine office, where she and her friend Nina spin escape fantasies under the world map tacked above their desks. Nina has stuck her pin in Pamplona. Steavenson has chosen Tblisi, capital of the former Soviet Republic […]
...moreThe Rest of the Story: The Rumpus Interview with Chris Tarry
I met Chris Tarry on the Thursday of AWP, on the mobbed second floor of a popular blues bar in Adams Morgan, after a friend and I had been gonged out of a literary talent show by Pam Houston.
...moreHarlem Blues
Between 1915 and 1970, six million African-Americans left the oppression of the Jim Crow South to find freedom in California and the northern states. Most traveled by rail, with those in the Southeast taking the Seaboard Air Line up the East Coast to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York. The most popular destination for southern […]
...moreLounge Music
This is a book meant to bring poetry to the masses, in other words, and so [Editor A. J.] Rathbun has thrown in something for every taste, if only to ensure that every reader will find something to love.
...moreSean Carman: The Last Book I Loved, The Master and Margarita
A poet named Homeless and his friend Berlioz, the editor of a literary magazine, sit on a park bench at the Patriarch Ponds in Moscow, drinking apricot soda and discussing a poem Homeless has written about Jesus.
...moreSean Carman: The Last Book I Loved, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
The great thing about Russian literature is how strange it is. The characters in Dostoevsky are always breaking out in histrionics. They bustle about, shake their fists, and call each other scoundrels. They “fly” to wherever they are going and “fly at” each other when they get there. “What on earth does it mean to […]
...morePaperback Writer: The Rumpus Interview With Michael Greenberg
The problem is that there is no clear path to literary success, no way to know what you’re supposed to do.
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