Features & Reviews
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The Tao of Keith
A collection of wisdom, witticisms, hypothetical scenarios, and recipes (really!) lays out the principles of “Keithism”
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Work Befitting A Free Man
“I feel like I’ve been sort of … anointed this voice in the culture by people who, if they’d seen me two years ago when I was just fixing motorcycles would have said, ‘What are you doing with your life?’”…
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Kevin Hobson: The Last Book I Loved, Disgrace
The last book I loved was Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. Maybe “loved” isn’t the right word. “Loved” implies affection, fealty, romance and adoration. Coetzee’s Booker-Prize winning masterpiece affected me profoundly, but I did not feel any of those “lovely” types…
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“Why don’t you dance with her?”
In the Guardian, novelist Ewan Morrison — whose newest novel is called Ménage — tosses out a list of literary ménages à trois, leading off with the Hemingway erotic novel (some would call it an embarrassment that Hemingway never intended…
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The Hooping Book: An Interview
The Rumpus interviews co-author Ariane Conrad about her controversial new sex manual…er, “revolutionary fitness program.”
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The Last Book I Loved: Honored Guest
One of my favorite books is the story-collection Honored Guest (2004) by Joy Williams.
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BEA Redux: Why the Show Must be Refashioned
With BookExpo America at a comfortable distance for reflection, it’s a good time to take a look at “Random BEA Thoughts,” Chad W. Post’s five-part essay on the need for reevaluating the book trade.
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AP to Distribute Nonprofit Journalism- Brief Rumpus Interviews with the Participants
Sy Hersh would be proud: the Associated Press announced last Saturday that it will distribute watchdog and investigative journalism from four leading nonprofit organizations to its 1,500 member newspapers. The deal will widen distribution of the groups’ work while addressing…
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Rebecca Steinitz: The Last Book I Loved, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
The last book I loved was Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey. I hadn’t loved a book in a while, but I thought I might love this one because it is a Persephone book, and I also quite…
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Beacon Press to Republish Out-of-print MLK Books
Beacon Press has come to an agreement with the heirs of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to republish four out-of-print books by the clergyman and civil rights leader, including “Strength to Love,” a collection of his most eloquent and inspiring…
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A Badass Biker Poet: Thom Gunn
Gunn’s work is imminently teachable in the form of Selected Poems, but it is derived from a world that now no longer exists: the Metaphysical poets drawn through the intermingling bodies of the Summer of Love: biker leather, drug haze,…
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Novelist disappears into illness, addiction
Kaye Gibbons, author of the 1987 debut best-seller Ellen Foster and several subsequent novels, is the subject of an Associated Press profile published in several newspapers and Sunday book sections over the weekend. The article traces her downfall from “vivacious”…