Mario Vargas Llosa and the Sort of Book You’d Sacrifice a Sandal For
A few months ago my wife and I spent a day on Isla Colon—one of Panama’s Bocas del Toro islands in the Caribbean—where three different men asked if I wanted…
Features & Reviews
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The Rumpus Interview with Christopher Goffard
Wherever he went, the man of God carried his shotgun… Christopher Goffard’s You Will See Fire is a tense and harrowing look at the life and mysterious death – of…
Updating the Ol’ Internet Storefront
Well would you look at that, our pals over at McSweeney’s have a snazzy new (online) store.
My Affairs Are Just My Questions
And it is a voice—perhaps a bit apprehensive and damaged by experience—that seems willing to express it all, even the ugly and cruel.
Unreliable Narrators
In reviewing RENEGADE: Henry Miller and the Making of “Tropic of Cancer,” Jeanette Winterson explores mythmaking in cultural criticism, unearthing who and what gets ignored in the process. “There is…
Publishing Anxieties
The Authors Guild argues that the book publishing “ecosystem” is in a precarious situation, largely due to Amazon’s growing industry dominance, which they put in the context of a more…
Ben Marcus Reading Tonight
Ben Marcus will read from his new novel The Flame Alphabet at City Lights Bookstore. Tonight, 7 p.m. “The Flame Alphabet invites the question: What is left of civilization when…
A Peaceful, but Very Interesting Pursuit
Even after he published Prufrock and The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot continued to work his day job at a bank.
A People of Savage Sentimentality
John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead should be hailed not simply as a fabulous piece of writing but as a landmark debut of a new genre, invented by others but perfected here.
Occupy Banned Books
In response to Arizona’s decision to ban ethnic studies and expunge associated texts from school shelves, the Occupy Wall Street Library is planning to flood Tucson with copies of the…
Ben Marcus Talks Speech Fever
SF Weekly interviews Ben Marcus about his new novel The Flame Alphabet, which we reviewed last week. “I’m drawn to the ways that family members can speak to each other.…
Write What You Don’t Know
Ann Beattie’s collagist new novel, Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life, questions the inherent value of fiction.