Peter Rock: The Last Book I Loved, Bluets
The other day I ran into a student of mine who said “I just read an amazing book. I loved it. Maggie Nelson’s Bluets.” I nodded and agreed, since I…
Features & Reviews
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“I tried to remember your scent as your own”
A collection like Ohio Violence is best consumed in small doses, so that its imaginative density, which is never ponderous, can be absorbed.
Paul Bowles, Travel and the Non-Christian World
“With few exceptions, landscape alone is of insufficient interest to warrant the effort it takes to see it. Even the works of man, unless they are being used in his…
Adventures in Russian Literature: An Upcoming Adventure
“They couldn’t figure out exactly where the book fit. Part literary criticism, part travel writing, part memoir, Batuman’s collection of seven nonfiction pieces moves from the campus of Stanford University…
Honoring an Amazing Writer and Father
“He had raised three of us single-handedly following my mother’s premature death when we were five, seven and nine. It was the 60s, when single fathers didn’t do that sort…
Nights of Siberia
Alexander Alexeieff’s illustrations for Joseph Kessel’s Les Nuits de Siberie (1928):
How To Write Memoir
This Friday, in Brooklyn, Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott is giving a lecture on using your life in your writing, using examples from The Adderall Diaries. He’ll talk about writing about…
eBook Rights
“After noting that most of Random House’s backlist titles grant the publisher electronic book rights […], [CEO Markus Dohle] writes that ‘there have been some misunderstandings concerning ebook rights in…
Seth on the Quiet Art of Cartooning
Recently I was reminded of this lovely little essay by the cartoonist Seth, about the solitary art of cartooning. From his description I’d say that cartooning — at least fiction…
Reviewer and Reviewee
Shya Scanlon posted on Big Other about an extremely harsh review of Jorge Volpi’s Season of Ash written by Tom Bissell for the New York Times. The post led to…
Painted Leviathan
Inspired by Zak Smith, who illustrated Gravity’s Rainbow page by page, Matt Kish has set out to illustrate every page of Melville’s Moby Dick. You can find more of Kish’s…
How to Destroy the Book: A Guide
Last month Cory Doctorow gave an eloquent and often-amusing speech at the National Reading Summit to an audience of “librarians, educators, publishers, authors and students” called “How to Destroy the…