Not-So-Ancient History
A first novel set in modern Zimbabwe begins: “Two days after I turned fourteen the son of our neighbor set his stepmother alight.”
Rumpus Original
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The Rumpus Interview with Alasdair Gray
Writer and artist Alasdair Gray is his own best nightmare. It took the modern Scottish bard twenty-five years to finish Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981), his fat, strangely…
Steve Almond’s Bad Poetry Corner #5: Trained
(Writing wretched verse so you don’t have to since 1995) Trained You will ask why I never tore her down with my famous claws and arrowed jaws why instead I…
The Rumpus Review of A Serious Man
What is it with the Coen brothers, technical masters who tend to use their skills for no meaningful purpose?
The Rumpus Review of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
My boyfriend insisted I read Brief Interviews with Hideous Men when we started dating. “It will help you understand the way men think!” he exclaimed. Secrets of those bearing a…
The Random Rumpus Interview with Todd Barry
There’s an ice cream truck near my apartment that sells cinnamon ice cream. I haven’t tried it yet; but when I do, I think it’s going to be my favorite.
A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #16: Wildcat, Baby
This past week’s pro football storylines were, in a word, beautiful. First of all, before the games even began, there was the matter of Rush Limbaugh wanting to become an…
The Facts About John Cheever
The publication of a great writer’s collected works should be a cause for celebration, and or at least a measured reassessment. How disturbing, then, that the Library of America’s two-volume…
You Caught Me
Tao Lin’s characters are constantly connected, yet physically detached. The technology they live and breathe often seems less mechanical than its users.
Ted Wilson Reviews the World #5
THE ROCKVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY ★★★★★ (3 out of 5) Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing the Rockville Public Library.
The Scholars and the Pornographer
Dame Helen Gardner and George Newton Bowlin Laws—it seems funny, but very good to me to see them in the same sentence. I first saw Helen Gardner, brilliant scholar, denizen…
Swinging Modern Sounds #16: Indeterminate Activity
Lovers of contemporary experimental music will likely remember the moment in the early eighties when John Cage, the godfather of minimalism and of most New York City experimental music, referred…