Features & Reviews
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Welcome to Rumpus Books
At The Rumpus, we believe that a healthy literary culture is one which embraces writing of all kinds, by authors of all stripes – young and old, established and emerging, traditional and experimental, writing from the margins or from (or…
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The Last Book I Loved: In A Lonely Place
The book I am reading and loving right now is In A Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes. I have known and loved the Humphrey Bogart movie based on the novel for a long time. The movie is about a…
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Reese Kwon: The Last Book I Loved, The Modern Element
Sometimes I separate the books I intend, one day, to read, into two groups: the Bookcase of Desire, and the Bookcase of Guilt. Desire is made up of anticipated pleasures, the books I haven’t yet read only because time is…
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American Apocalypse: The Wire and 2666
The name “Baltimore” can be traced to an Irish phrase meaning “Town of the Big House.” “Juárez,” when traced back to the Visigoths who overtook Spain in the 5th Century AD, means, roughly, “Army of the South.”
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The Last Book I Loved: Away
I fall in love with books all the time. I remember periods of my life this way – like “what’s-his-name left me when I was reading Mrs. Dalloway” or “I got my first bra during the winter when I read…
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The Rumpus Long Interview With Tamim Ansary
Tamim Ansary is the author of West of Kabul, East of New York and the forthcoming book Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. He is also the facilitator of the the oldest continuous free writers’ workshop…
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Monica Shores: The Last Book I Loved, Madeleine is Sleeping
My assertion is that you will not have read a novel quite like Madeleine is Sleeping because I hadn’t, until I read it. A young girl jerks off the local idiot and so her hands are burned in a pot…
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Robert Mailer Anderson:The Last Book I Loved, 2666
The last book I loved was Roberto Bolano’s 2666. His powers as a narrator are staggering. His abilities to both deconstruct the novel, while also somehow meeting the brutality and humor of his subject and characters head on is amazing…
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Life in the Woods
Peter Rock’s darkly evocative fifth novel follows a father and daughter’s underground existence in a city park.
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Jason Roberts: The Last Book I Loved, Soon I Will Be Invincible
I happen to agree that Watchmen (the graphic novel, not the movie) deserves its slot in the canon as one of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. But Soon I Will Be Invincible uses language alone to take…
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Flannery on the Couch
In a new biography, Brad Gooch makes romantic assumptions about the relationship between O’Connor’s life and art.
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Cobblers and Coverless Books
Doing well: shoe repair shops and, according to the Telegraph of London, used bookstores: