Features & Reviews
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The Rumpus Interview with Jaclyn Friedman
I’ve been interested in talking and educating about rape, safety and sexuality for most of my adult life.
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What Happened To Sheila
“Don’t worry, I’m not dying,” said my wife Sheila. But she was. This was about three days before it happened, and she sat up in her hospice bed and gave me one of those complicated looks she had: comforting and…
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The Importance of Being Nice
Abject admiration is the worst way to start a review. Isn’t it the blurbist’s job to kiss a writer’s behind, the critic’s to skewer it on the formidable barb of his or her literary intellect?
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Wiring the Lush Life
“I just saw a billboard on Houston street, it says ‘where have all the junkies gone?’” Clocking Some Time With Richard Price
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Story Time!
Sometimes you just want to come home from your haircut, curl up with Judy, and sit in the last sunshine of the day reading a good short story, a story that starts one way and then goes another, tragically, by…
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The Purifying Flame
Glen Duncan’s new novel, A Day and a Night and a Day, is an intense and involving story of a man pressed violently against his own limitations.
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Skateboarding Writers
McSweeney’s interviews skateboarding pro turned writer, Bret Anthony Johnston, who has written about skateboarding and school for The New York Times. He is now the director of the creative writing program at Harvard, and he writes regularly for All Things…
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A Baker’s Dozen of My Feelings about David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest
“Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he’s devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It’s hard to say…
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The Only Band That Mattered
The author remembers his time with Joe Strummer and reflects on the band’s definitive new book, The Clash.
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John Updike: Writers Reflect
The Rumpus asked writers to share their thoughts on the work and legacy of John Updike, who died this week at the age of 76.
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Things I’ve Been Silent About
Azar Nafisi‘s first book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, chronicles an underground book club reading Western Classics under the oppressive Islamic government of Tehran (it subsequently became a favorite book-club book State-side as it climbed The New York Times Bestseller List).…
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Terrifying Nixon-Era Children’s Books
Ever since shoving Bush into his helicopter with an expletive and fantasizing about letting go of Cheney’s wheelchair at the top of a long, steep hill, I find I have a tender place in my heart for the plight of…