Features & Reviews
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You Mean Writing Can’t Be My Career?!
“What the profiles fail to reveal is that the literary apprenticeship is a lengthy one for the majority, that getting published at all is difficult, and to get paid enough to not do anything else but write is virtually a…
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Things Not To Do In Your Debut Novel
“To sit down to read a novel is a mere fraction of the commitment required to write one, but in both cases the commitment must be made, and it needs to be driven by something very deep: What is essential…
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Kierkegaard Available in English
“In a just world, translators would be paid ten times as much as authors. Their work cannot be other than tedious, their names are soon forgotten, yet one has only to try to imagine what our cultural life would be…
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Old Man Winter Comes to Town
In attempt to cheer myself up about my city’s neverending thundersnow, I present here Beatrice Braun-Fock’s whimsical illustrations for Old Man Winter Comes to Town by Hilde Hoffmann. The German edition was published in 1959. I have a 1960 American…
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The Cost of Digital Lit
First there was the bitter move by Amazon to remove all Macmillan titles from its digital inventory after Macmillan demanded higher e-book pricing. Then two more publishing houses publicly denounced Amazon’s dime a dozen approach to pricing e-books at $9.99.…
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The Rumpus International Rivers Interview #4: Dumitru Tsepeneag on the Danube
Dumitru Tsepeneag is a Romanian novelist, essayist and one of the founders of the Romanian Oniric literary movement. Established in the mid-60s, the Oniric group was inspired by surrealism and built an aesthetic platform centered on dreams. As one of…
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A Context of “Romantic Relationships.”
The Poetry foundation has published “an emotionally devastating analysis of five love poems” by Tao Lin in honor of Valentine’s Day.
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The Plath Cabinet
Many of the strongest poems in this poetical homage politicize Sylvia [Plath], showing her to be less a victim than a citizen of her time, whom history can misrepresent but not silence.
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Dear Asshole
Rumpus contributor Steve Almond recently self-published a collection of hate mail that was sent to him (along with his responses) entitled Letters From People Who Hate Me. You can read Almond’s argument for self-publishing here. The following is an excerpt…
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Dante’s Hell
A couple of weeks ago we posted a picture of what must be the worst Dante’s Inferno cover of all time (click the link to view the pic). To quote myself: “Not only does the cover image look like it…
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Presto Book-O (Why I Went Ahead and Self-Published)
To say that I’ve had a checkered history in publishing would be like saying Elizabeth Taylor had a checkered history in marriage.
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What the Girls Call ‘Murder’
A funny thing happened on the way to the “angry grrrl rock revolution which seeks to save the psychic and cultural lives of girls and women everywhere”…