Features & Reviews
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Reality Boredom: Why David Shields is Completely Right and Totally Wrong
1. Reality Hunger, the newest book from the always interesting David Shields, comes sheathed in glowing blurbs from the likes of Lydia Davis, Ben Marcus, Amy Hempel and Jonathan Lethem. Needless to say, I had high expectations
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Popular Science Online Forever!
Hey fellow nerds, guess what? Every Popular Science has gone online! All 137 years. And it’s free! And it’s searchable! It’s much better than watching the Oscars. I promise. I did a search for “Rumpus” and came up with this…
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Northern California Book Award Nominees Announced
The Northern California Book Award Nominees have been announced, and we’re thrilled to have reviewed, interviewed and excerpted a bunch of them here at The Rumpus. The Rumpus Interview with Catherine Brady, author of The Mechanics of Falling and Other…
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Jeanette Winterson on Grief, Being “Post-Heterosexual”
“Susie (Orbach) calls herself post-heterosexual. I like that description because I like the idea of people being fluid in their sexuality. I don’t for instance consider myself to be a lesbian. I want to be beyond those descriptive constraints.” “Over…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
Someone bought Agatha Christie’s old “battered” trunk for a hundred quid at auction, and in it, she found some jewels, most likely from the great mystery writer’s infamous collection. (via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind) Someone made a font out of Franz…
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The Rumpus Books Sunday Supplement
Just so you know, Sunday is a good day to catch up with what Rumpus Books has been up to this week.
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DIY Lit
As the term “self-publishing” became more common in the vernacular, the prospect of DIY literature was seen as godsend, bridging the gap between writer and reader, creating a corporate publisher-free utopia. And yet in her article “Self-Publishing, Author Services Open…
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Chabon on the Bay
“WSJ: Which local writers are overrated?” “Mr. Chabon: Just me.” Michael Chabon shares his thoughts on the Bay Area literary scene with the The Wall Street Journal.
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Stein Goes to Paris
Lorin Stein, formerly of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, has been named editor of the Paris Review.
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Twenty and Bored and Alive
This voice is neither howl, yowl, nor whisper, but something more like a quiet monotone, slightly ironic and yet also depressed, lonely and, at times, compellingly vulnerable.
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Poetry as a Soon-to-Be Bestselling Cure-All
Poetry doesn’t seem to sell, although there are hundreds upon hundreds of poets creating it. I would venture to guess that there are at least twice as many poetry contests out there than fiction contests. Everywhere I turn I see…
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Barely Discernible Notes On Barry Hannah
We did right by your death and went out, Right away, to a public place to drink, To be with each other, to face it.