Genre Trap
Spanish author Javier Calvo’s novel critiques pop culture by embracing its stereotypes
Features & Reviews
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The Cost of a Thing
A couple months ago, we wrote about Matthew Crawford’s book Shop Class as Soulcraft, and around the same time I read another interesting review of the book, by Caleb Crain.…
Searching the Library of Babel
About six months ago, as I was nearing the end of Jorge Luis Borges’ Selected Non-Fictions, I came across the chapter titled “Prologues to The Library of Babel.” The chapter…
The Man Who Invented Borges
Dzanc Books is one of my favorite recently-minted small publishers, and not just because their first two titles were by my brilliant friend Roy Kesey. Just check out their mission statement…
Attack of the E-Readers
Looks like Amazon‘s Kindle has got some competition. Sony announced two new e-readers today, The Reader Pocket Edition and The Reader Touch Edition. The Pocket is small (5-inch screen) and…
The Wind Has Stopped Blowing (Your Pockets Are Filled With Wind)
It’s April and I’m back home for Passover and Easter and my brother’s birthday. I’m wandering my parents’ farm. The air is cold and I expected warm, the trees are…
Douglas Rushkoff and Life, Inc.
“For me, the idea of selling out was the worst possible thing,” says Douglas Rushkoff during a discussion with friend and fellow writer Walter Kirn one recent evening at an…
China’s Statistics Poetry
“Life Some mock me for doing statistics Some loathe me and statistics Some don’t understand what statistics are Why is it that statistics Put a calm smile on my face?…
“Trouble on the way, and great joy”
In a place where names are lost like household objects, and white noise supplants meaningful distinctions between voices and people, why the need for singularity (or personhood) at all?
Thomas Pynchon’s Summer Read
Inherent Vice is “a noir-like novel set in Los Angeles at the end of the 1960s” that follows “a dope-smoking private detective named Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello.” It is 384 pages…
Hoping Things End Safely: The Rumpus Interview with Hyejin Kim
North Korean women risk their lives to escape across the border to China, where they often face lives of indentured servitude and the ever-present fear of being outed by the…
The Last Book I Loved: Walking Dead Comics
I’ll tell you something that’s total crack, is the Walking Dead Comics. I’ve been reading a lot of comics lately, and that one is amazing. Also, there’s a guy named…