Features & Reviews
9281 posts
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Rumpus Interview With Rebecca Solnit
To read one of [Solnit's] books is to slap your forehead and say, “How could I, and everyone else, have missed this?”
Some Buildings on the Skyline of the Past
It’s funny how memory works. Budd Schulberg’s death yesterday got me thinking about On the Waterfront and The Harder They Fall, which got me thinking about Hollywood, and Schulberg’s collaboration, when…
The Joys Of Overland Travel
In my opinion, the worst part about travelling is flying. It’s expensive, it’s boring, the food is awful, the people are usually not that interesting, the environmental and financial impact…
Genre Trap
Spanish author Javier Calvo’s novel critiques pop culture by embracing its stereotypes
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?…