Features & Reviews
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North of the Border
A group of Mexican teenagers encounters a bizarre America in Luis Alberto Urrea’s latest novel.
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Infinite Summer
Infinite Summer is a Web site presenting the world with the following challenge/life-better-maker: “Read Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week.” Plus endnotes. The…
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Why Does No One Write About Their Day Job?
In a manifesto (er, “ideas piece”) about the importance of the workplace in writing, Alain de Botton calls on contemporary writers to write about work. “If a proverbial alien landed on earth,” he says, “and tried to figure out what human…
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“Sonnet like allusions are made to your gilt silk hair”
Next week, 600,000 pages of manuscripts, letters, drafts and journals will be put online from canonical British authors like Oscar Wilde, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens and others. Included will be correspondence between Wilde and many of his lovers, including…
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This Book Stinks
Apparently, Marina Fiorato’s new novel The Madonna of the Almonds has a complementary perfume designed to smell like Renaissance Italy, the setting of her book. This strikes me as either ingenius or idiotic —probably both— and may just be another reminder…
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The Rumpus Book Blog Roundup
It is spring, and the book blogs are horny! Will they be the type to lock themselves in a room with a suitcase full of porn? Or will they find someone who looks lonely and hit on them, not leaving…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
This week, Rumpus Books has published reviews of Christopher Buckley’s new memoir, the work of Sidney Wade, and two novels, including one about being Jewish — and accused of patricide — in Holocaust-era Austria.
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Down in the Dumpster
“What Joshua Mohr is doing has more in common with Kafka, Lewis Carroll, and Haruki Murakami, all great chroniclers of the fantastic. He’s interested in something weirder than mere sex, drugs, and degradation.”
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Louis Menand on Creative-Writing Programs
Louis Menand has really been on a roll this year. First the must-read article about how the Village Voice changed journalism, then the article on Donald Barthelme, and now this week, an essay about The Program Era by Mark McGurl,…
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All that Glitters
What was it like to be Jewish, and accused of patricide, in Holocaust-era Austria?
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Frontiers in Reading
It’s not only boy wizards and teen vampires who can still ignite a book frenzy: as already reported in The Rumpus, Haruki Murakami’s two-volume (or longer?) new novel 1Q84 came out this week in Japan. It has already broken sales…
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The Brandon Book Crisis
First Dan Baum’s Twitter missives and now this: The Brandon Book Crisis, a paperback “thriller” about book design featuring 140+ pages of unedited Gmail chats, text messages, voicemails, and emails between Brandon Scott Gorrell, Tao Lin, and others.