Features & Reviews
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For The Love of God, People, The Slush Pile Isn’t Dead
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal published an article by Katherine Rosman lamenting the end of the slush pile. Choosing what to publish is now just as much about marketing, she says, as it is about discovering new writers. “A…
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RIP Miep Gies
“People should never think that you have to be a very special person to help those who need you.” — Miep Gies, who helped the Frank family during the Holocaust and recovered Anne Frank’s diary. She recently passed away at…
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I was told there’d be cupcakes
“The people who showed up for these events had usually never heard of me. They came because it was a party at their friend’s house and the friend promised to make those cupcakes they like or was calling in a…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
Before I say anything about book blog land today, I want to thank Brian Spears, our Poetry and Saturday Editor here at The Rumpus, for putting together some of the best information on Haiti I’ve been able to find anywhere.…
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The Rumpus Books Sunday Supplement
This week, Rumpus books reviewed Terry Castle’s book of essays, interviewed Elaine Showalter, wrote about Nabokov, and talked about grief and Hamlet. Come see what you missed.
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On the Superiority of James Salter
“The first time I read A Sport and a Pastime, just two years ago, I knew I’d experienced something unusual, alive, difficult in its directness; not something to look upon “fondly,” but a story that, like all great art, connected…
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The Bravery Of Uncertainty
“When you’re not religious, sacredness means something that fills you with awe. The creation of something awe-striking requires a pure offering, an opening up to the universe. It’s not always an act of risk, that could land you “in the…
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The Professor
In a new book of essays, Terry Castle rips through literary and cultural allusions at breakneck speed, citing obscure folk musicians and cult novelists in the same breath.
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Grief And Hamlet
“My grief has been all the usual and varied colours of sadness and madness. It has been searing, voluptuous, numbing. I foresaw that it would be — I have been unhappy, unsettled, unbalanced before (who has not?). I did not…
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Under the Indigo Dome
I found Ala Ebtekar‘s incredible art through the website of Michael Bartalos. Ala kindly agreed to share his work. About “Zire Gonbade Kabood,” Ala told me that it features the Persian Simorgh, “the same bird in the Travels of Sinbad…
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The Last Book I Loved: Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
The books I love are those tangled and overflowing: their magic is the product of the trust the author puts in his talent.
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L’Abbé de l’Abbaye
Alexander Alexeieff‘s 1927 illustrations for Jean Genbach’s L’Abbé de l’Abbaye: