Features & Reviews
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Going Away Shoes
Eleven stories from Jill McCorkle show the humor to be found in desperation—and vice versa.
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“A Bolaño Syllabus”
Have you read (or are you reading) Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 yet? We may have mentioned it once or twice here at The Rumpus, but only once or twice. Needless to say the book has been, rightfully, getting a lot of…
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Dig Bunny Dig
Musician and author Nick Cave talks about his new book, The Death of Bunny Munro, “a sordid tale about a sex-crazed, drug-addled, adulterous traveling salesman and the 9-year-old son with whose care he suddenly finds himself charged.” Sounds about right…
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An Appreciation of John Hawkes
“But What I Really Love About This Is This Amazing Game That You’ve Invented”
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Depression May Be Beneficial (For Writers)
“Yet some scientists are suggesting that depression — peculiarly prevalent for a mental disorder — is not a malfunction at all, but an evolutionary adaptation, a state of mind which can have debilitating effects, but also promotes highly analytical thinking.”…
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When a Writer Becomes an Adjective
Kafka. Joyce. Woolf. Dickens. Nabokov. All of these writers have become adjectives. (Arguably, “Kafkaesque” is the most overused one of the mix. And “Nabokovian” the least-earned moniker.) Just last April, a prolific and prophetic English writer by the name of…
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Rene Daumal at Parabola
I spend a lot of my time rediscovering things. It’s a nifty, almost unconscious trick. All it necessitates is wandering through a landscape, engaging with reality and picking up on sensory cues. Whether it’s a certain food I once loved,…
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Books
“Our world is fragmented, Amanda Eyre Ward seems to say, in all the ways that it might be. I’m going to put it back together for you, slowly. Take my hand.” Kurt Caswell on Amanda Eyre Ward’s new collection of…
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Bicycle Byrne
David Byrne talks with USA Today about his latest book, Bicycle Diaries, which is described as “a political and philosophical travelogue tied together by Byrne’s bike rides in cities, from Niagara Falls to San Francisco, London to Manila.” The multi-talented…
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The Ultimate Gateway Drug to Life on the Right
At the New Republic, there’s an amazing review of a new Ayn Rand biography by Jonathan Chait that actually explains everything you need to know about the American right. An infatuation with Rand’s works is something of a rite of…
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Significant Objects
Significant Objects marries writing with eBay. For example, Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott describes his Hawaiian Utensils here. And you can bid on them here. All the money goes to the author.
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Eisie Shoots Papa
“In 1952, LIFE sent legendary photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt to Cuba to shoot author Ernest Hemingway. The magazine needed photos to run alongside a new novella that would run in LIFE before it was published in book format. That book was…