Rumpus Originals
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The Best Music is Made of Subtraction
Like the Jazz, Blues, and R&B music Brown references, these poems are born of heartbreak, explorations of love and violence, connections and disconnections, the vast complications of body and heart.
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What Is Found
In Patrick Somerville’s novel, an expectant father must decide what kind of man he wants to be.
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The Rumpus Interview with James Toback
James Toback started his career in 1978 with a movie called Fingers, starring Harvey Keitel, about a gangster who succeeds in following his more spiritual, delicate side and becomes a concert pianist. In a similar way, Toback’s latest film explores…
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The Great American Novel in Miniature
Lurking beneath the dazzling political and pop-culture fireworks of Benjamin Taylor’s second novel, The Book of Getting Even, is a vivid tale of American displacement and discovery that could be called a contemporary classic but for one thing: It’s only…
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One Last Dan Baum Article: Sean Carman Imitates Dan Baum
If you’re not familiar with Dan Baum’s story, start here.
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The Rumpus Interview with Carlos Cuarón
During an assembly-line interview process last week, I sat with writer and director Carlos Cuarón to talk about his new film, Rudo y Cursi. We met up at a self-described rock-and-roll hotel suite in downtown San Francisco. With his rat’s…
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Maps and Legends
“Do you ever get the feeling like you already know the entire contents of the universe somewhere in your head… and you are just spending your entire life figuring out how to access this map?” — The Selected Works of…
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To Sit, to Stand, to Write
Ever since Nietzsche’s declaration, there has been some disagreement among writers, thinkers, doctors, and designers as to whether inspiration and creativity come from being seated and quiescent, or from being upright and vigorous.
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No Contact, Asshole!
The summer of 1990 was a bad one. It should have been a good one but it was a bad one. I’ve pulled a lot of stunts in my day, mostly of the sick sexual variety, but that summer I…
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The Rumpus Interview with Philippe Lioret
No one ever asks, after watching a love story, whether it succeeded in raising our awareness of the lovers’ plight.