The Whole Vortex of Home
[Peter] Gizzi’s particular gift is to posit that shifting location where senses meet the terrible and the sublime, where political portent or its brittle actualities announce themselves in various configurations.
Rumpus Original
8550 posts
DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #97: You Have Arrived at the Fire
You have arrived at the fire. Here’s the bread. Grab a hunk.
Before and After
Sitting on the edge of the English language, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s new collection Apricot Jam and Other Stories pushes us into twentieth century Russia.
Habeas Whitney
The one that got me was a torso shot. There were a bunch of them published even before she died, frantic paparazzi pictures of Whitney Houston leaving last night’s party.
The Dress Doesn’t Make the Priest
I am going to tell you my favorite story of how a flower acquired its name. It’s the story of the ranunculus.
We’ll Call Them Contact Zones
Based in research of museum design, and memorialization, Slot’s narrator moves inside public landmarks dedicated to various disasters—9/11, slavery, Hiroshima, the Holocaust— and explores ways memorialization acts on conscience and…
A Narrow Slice of Things
These cactus are so phallic. This is what I say to Andrew in the early moments of what will spread into an entire February day spent wringing the narrow backroads…
LONELY VOICE #17: In Love Again and Doomed (Part Two of Five Stray Thoughts on Kafka)
My lung was fair at least out there, here where I’ve been for the last fortnight. I’ve not been able to see the doctor. But it can’t be so bad…
SELF-MADE MAN #1: The Truckstop
I am in a public restroom off 95 in southern Maine, wondering what makes a man and also if I can muffle my piss stream with balled up toilet paper…
Ted Wilson Reviews the World #124
CIRCLES ★★★★★ (5 out of 5) Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing circles.
On Elegance
I have a theory that elegant people have an aura of impenetrable private sadness, and that good taste and impeccable manners are life’s consolation. Perhaps they conjure sprezzatura, the Renaissance ideal…