The Sunday Book Blog Roundup
Greetings and salutations! I’m Michael Berger, today’s guest-editor. I’ve spent my last few days off sipping coffee and drifting through the labyrinth of book blogs. Which was terrific, because most…
Features & Reviews
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The Sunday Book Review Supplement
Now that it’s finally Sunday, it’s time to read a new book. Perhaps you’ve noticed how Sunday parks and bars are full of blissed-out readers and lovers of the written…
Monster Mashup
To continue on the subject of monsters and mashes for a moment: Last Sunday in the Los Angeles Times, Ed Park published his notes on Laurie Sheck’s A Monster’s Notes,…
Pauline Kael’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
The winner of the The Rumpus College Book Review Contest, a review of Pauline Kael’s seminal Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, by Matthew Weinstock.
King James and the Battle for the Novel
There’s a sizable new interview with James Wood, polemical literary critic extraordinaire, up on LA Weekly. Colson Whitehead has spoofed him, Walter Kirn has mocked him, and there’s even a…
Is Marriage Obsolete?
In the current issue of The Atlantic, the newly-divorced Sandra Tsing Loh wonders out loud “isn’t the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete?” but then holds off a little from answering…
J.M.G Le Clezio’s The Book of the Flights
Second Place in the Rumpus College Book Review Contest Apparently it’s now possible, forty years after the first release of The Book of Flights, to see experimental fiction—like Marxism, feminism,…
FUBAR Nation
Chelsea Martin’s strange collection of miscellany evokes the loneliness of life lived through technology.
Two-for-One at the Pyramid of the Sun
David Lida’s book about Mexico City, First Stop in the New World, contains a really impressive chapter which traces the history of daily commerce in the capital from the vast…
The Rumpus Interview with Colum McCann
“Every novel is a failure. You can never achieve what you truly want to achieve. That thing you dreamt on the riverbank is never the thing you achieve when you…
Measuring the Weight of Loss
A post-romantic poet not content to wax sentimental on idealized Nature, a la Mallarmé, Andrew Michael Roberts has staked his tent in her decimated domain.