Rumpus Original
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OG DAD: The Texas Jew Panel
For reasons I explained last time around, we are having our little she-creature in Austin, which has a reputation as the hipster heart of Texas.
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The Rumpus Interview with Julianna Baggott
Julianna Baggott’s Pure is about a post-apocalyptic world where the responsibility for changing and saving civilization lies with children.
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THE WEEK IN GREED #6: To Behave Like the Fallen World
It’s no coincidence that the one man willing to lie about his savagery as an adolescent is the one running for president.
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Between the Crackups, by Rebecca Lehmann
Rebecca Lehmann’s collection, Between the Crackups, is a glittering, furious book. Many of its poems inhabit a childhood world full of violence and anger. Others showcase adult voices that range in tone; they are frustrated, sorrowful, sometimes funny, sometimes contemplative.…
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Thinking Outside the Boomer Box
I am turning 60 this month, and I have to say that 60 has been occupying my thoughts quite a bit more than 50 did, or 40, or 30, or even 20
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Ninety Days: A Memoir of Recovery by Bill Clegg
There is a moment in Junky in which a psychiatrist asks William Burroughs’ narrator why he needs narcotics. His answer is to get out of bed in the morning, to function – “I need it to stay alive.” Later, managing…
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Keepers
You won’t think of us until morning. Until we announce ourselves with the hollow ding of knuckles on aluminum. A keycard, a rubber doorstop, a single word. Some of us, as if to suggest we are meek, industrious mice doing…
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The Trouble With Prince Charming or He Who Trespassed Against Us
I enjoy fairy tales because I need to believe, despite my cynicism, that there is a happy ending for everyone, for me.
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Voices of the Rainbow: Contemporary Poetry by Native Americans
Visiting the Taos Pueblo (“an ancient community continuously inhabited for 100 years”) on San Geronimo Day, I was frightened by the Sacred Clowns (Koshares). The list of rules for visitors explained that these fit young men roving about in traditional…
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OG DAD: The Hum
OG Dad will recount the adventures of a man who, in the proverbial autumn of his years, or at least the pre pre-autumn, discovers his girlfriend is pregnant. And having a baby. Whereupon hijinks, cosmic and mundane, ensue.
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The Rumpus Interview with Damion Searls
To say that Amsterdam Stories is a pleasure to read is a vast understatement. This pearl of a book, containing all of the Dutch author Nescio’s greatest stories, evoked in me a joy I seldom receive: the jolt of clarity…
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Lonesome Was the Blacktop
At my dad’s house in Tucson, almost everything I picked up was expired. The contact solution. The Aspirin. The Frosted Mini Wheats. I consumed all of it anyway. So far, none of it has killed me.