Features & Reviews
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Journal Highlight: Monkeybicycle Issue #6
Short fiction is often spoken of in terms of genre, a genre of ephemeral writing that is erased from the mind as quickly as it was most likely written. But the fallacy in this is that genre presupposes a style…
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Punch Drunk Love
This is a story about how appearing bald on the cover of a book led to my getting punched repeatedly by middle-aged women in India. No, actually, that’s not exactly true. Some of these women were ancient.
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The Latest Talks from TED
TED, or Technology, Entertainment, Design, began as a conference in 1984 that brought together leaders in those three fields with the mission of spreading ideas. Now, the annual conference challenges presenters to give “the talk of their lives” in 18…
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An Old Review of Kafka’s Love Letters
“Freely pouring his emotions into the letters, Kafka is, by turns, passionate [‘I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough’], self-deprecating [‘my energies have always been pitifully weak’], possessive…
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Raymond Chandler on Pulp, on Writing, and on Readers
My wife’s been steadily devouring Raymond Chandler, pacing herself so she doesn’t read it all at once (there is, after all, a limited supply). The other night she started in on the story collection Trouble is My Business and read…
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Little House on the Amazon
Galley Cat notes speculation on a patent filed by Amazon for a small building design. (The patent’s here…) The Street weighs in with that claim that “If, indeed, Amazon were to embark on retail locations, analysts think it would only…
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John Madera: The Last Book I Loved, Fog & Car
I have a problem with fidelity. But don’t call me a book slut as I prefer the term “promiscuous bibliophile.” When so many seductive stories vie for my attention, how can I settle for just one?
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Shame Makes Us Who We Are
Anyone who has ever been in a creative writing workshop knows the type of shame ordinarily suffered only by lifestyle submissives. And in the new Bookforum, Mark Grief, while reviewing Mark McGurl’s The Program Era, plays with McGurl’s idea that…
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Can’t Tell Me Nothing
The Rumpus doesn’t really do Kanye West. It doesn’t hate him and it doesn’t love him. It just doesn’t go there. But when the self-proclaimed “voice of this generation“— in an interview for the release of his book, no less…
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Truth, Justice, the American Way, and Bondage
“In 1954, his eyesight failing and work hard to come by, (Superman co-creator Joe Shuster) accepted an invitation to illustrate the lurid stories that were to fill the pages of a magazine called Nights of Horror. Promising its readers “stories spiced…
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The Rumpus Book Blog Roundup
Good news! Your humble Rumpus Sunday editor, who was locked inside the Public Storage in North Berkeley for the better part of last night while helping his nine-months-pregnant friend move, has been rescued by the cops! And today, I’m excited…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
Finished with the BEA? Had the best time of your life at You’re Not Alone, the Rumpus, McSweeney’s and SMITHMAG event last night in New York, and not sure how you could ever top the experience?