The Universal Threat of Loneliness
“The End of Solitude” by William Deresiewicz begins with the question, “What does the contemporary self want?” He answers after two sentences: “Celebrity and connectivity are both ways of becoming…
Features & Reviews
9279 posts
On Teaching Poetry to Women in Prison
I was nineteen. Prison seemed sexy and foreign—as did most forbidden things.
The Rumpus Interview with Jack Pendarvis
I didn't so much experiment as flounder around. But experiment is a nice word for it!
Link to Drink: What Christopher Hitchens Gave Up God For
Rarely have I seen a Christopher Hitchens TV interview in which the atheistic author of God is Not Great isn’t knocking back an ice-clinking glass of whiskey of some brand or another. Yet, I…
The Silence of Thousands of Miles
A Review of Matthew Eck’s The Farther Shore “The war is now a story. How will it get told?” – William T. Vollmann
More John Updike Links
Mark Oppenheimer’s essay, “Why Everyone Used to Read Updike,” from five years ago, in which it occurs to him that “those frequent short stories that grab New Yorker space from younger, fresher voices,…
John Updike
In literature there are many figures but few icons. John Updike published over 50 books which dug through the depths of suburban American lives, particularly our sex lives, once comparing…
Lost and Found
I first heard about Stoner back in grad school. I’d been on a Denis Johnson jag (weren’t we all?) and so naturally assumed the novel was a florid account of…
Poetic Lives Online: Random Poetry Links by Brian Spears
Oh, the things I’ve learned since I started doing this little column, the arguments I’ve lurked through, the long-winded defenses of one’s aesthetic choices, et cetera, et cetera. And I’m…
The Shorty Q&A With Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Matthew Bernstein Sycamore was one of the early organizers of Gay Shame which, among other things, takes a stance against marriage in all forms.