The Bin Laden Machine
Only a few genetic lines–the Hapsburgs, the Hans, the Roosevelts, for instance–have shaped geopolitics as much as the Bin Ladens. In his NYRB review of Steve Coll’s The Bin Ladens,…
Features & Reviews
9300 posts
We’re Elite
Publishing is failing us, and it is failing. The lamentable irony is that its foundation rests upon satisfying readers by assuming we’d like to read whatever crap is one level…
Rediscovering the West
As much as these poems tap into a mythic story of the West, they are not linear narratives, but circuitous maps of anxiety and desire, a portrait of an inner world masquerading as meditations on people and place.
J.G. Ballard’s Pre-posthumous Memoir
After eighteen novels and even more short story collections, J. G. Ballard directly approaches autobiography in his latest book Miracles of Life. (Read the London Guardian review here.) Though known…
The Unhappy Writer, Links by Mark Pritchard
A recent entry on the publishing blog Galleycat told of the writer Molly Jong-Fast and how she was quitting writing to become an agent. Jong-Fast’s somewhat privileged complaints — she…
The Eyes of Our Skin Are Closed
The enchantment of Dangerous Laughter is not merely a function of the tales themselves, but also of the way in which Millhauser tells them – with careful, attentive prose that…
Mortals—Norman Rush’s Novel For Grown-ups
If I have learned anything from years of recommending this book, it’s this: enthusiasm, by itself, accomplishes nothing.
Reading Online
Fact: The Internet changes how we read. But is reading on the internet not really “reading” at all? In a recent column in The New York Times Virginia Heffernan analyzes…
What I Learned at AWP
The Rumpus dispatched dozens of our top reporters to Chicago. None of them were heard from again.
The Rumpus Interview with Jacob Weisman
“You can’t just stick a rocketship on the cover of a book and expect it to sell. That’ll work for the Hard SF readership, but that’s not going to sell…