Features & Reviews Archives - Page 30 of 768 - The Rumpus

The Sense of Words: Reverse Engineer by Kate Colby

. . . language is duplicitous. To be broken is perhaps to be part of a process (or a metaphor for life), where to bend (and survive) also leads to being broken. In this context, the word “broken” in “Reverse Engineer” might well point to a hard-won success.

Telling our necessary truths: A Conversation with Janet Rodriguez

Only after this memoir was I able to see the Kafka truth: We are telling our necessary truths. We are the necessary heroes of our own narratives. Somewhere inside all of it, there is a collective truth, one we can safely tell.

The Story and the Truth: Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation

. . . a scathing, satirical campus novel about academia, orientalism, the Western commodification of Asian cultures, and the lengths to which institutions will go to protect their reputations and their darlings.

We’re more powerful if we’re not so embroiled in illusion: A Conversation with Irene Silt

Love is just extremely terrifying and kind of abysmal.

How to Write an Honest Memoir: A Conversation with Evette Dionne

I don’t ever do anything from a place of fear—which is an odd place for me to be in because I have anxiety—but I have to [step into places of discomfort] because that’s where growth happens. If you’re comfortable, you’re not growing.

The Claws That Type the Text: Ander Monson’s Predator: A Memoir, a Movie, an Obsession

Rather than saying, Fuck it, and remaining stagnant in the face of cultural horrors, Monson suggests readers start with the marginalia. Exhaust all possibilities. Carve a new path where sweeping prescriptions fail to stick.

A Conversation with Adam Rosen about anthologies and the worst movie ever made

I was looking for people who had something to say beyond This is the dumbest movie of all time.

SKETCH BOOK REVIEWS: Three Faves

A roundup of great books that didn't make it into Sketch Book Reviews this year

A World Where We Are Known and Loved: Shelley Wong’s As She Appears

to be seen is not the same thing as being known

A joyful expression of femininity and play: Talking dolls with Maria Teresa Hart

In which one Samantha interviews another.

Take Your Divagations Seriously: Geoff Dyer’s The Last Days of Roger Federer

The Last Days . . . has nothing much to do with tennis or with Roger Federer, who appears sparingly in these pages . . . [nor is it] “intended to be a comprehensive study of last things, or of lastness generally.”

The Answers Usually Come from Somewhere Unexpected: An Interview with Emma Winsor Wood

If you go to a poetry reading, the aphoristic moments are usually where the audience lets out a collective “hmmm” or “ahhh”—almost before the poet has finished the sentence.

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