Rumpus Original
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No Love Lost: Damien Hirst Faces the Old Masters
At the end of his exhibit, I came across a guide called, “Damien Hirst’s Wallace Collection Trail,” containing short, chatty write-ups on twenty-six works in the permanent collection that have ‘ignited’ his imagination. For the next hour, with Hirst as…
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A Future Always Pure and Perfect and Remote
Jon Stephen Fink’s novel A Storm in the Blood imagines the lives of Jews, anti-Tsarists, and revolutionaries in London’s East End.
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FUNNY WOMEN #7: In Retrospect, Dating That Speed Freak Wasn’t All That Bad, Comparatively
God, he was smart! He had a mind like a hummingbird, he had read every book there was to read, his tongue was sharp, he was funnier than anyone else at the party.
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Monster Girl: The Rumpus Interview with Chelsea Martin
“The second and fourth parts of that sentence came directly from life, but the first and third parts came from some thoughts I had while watching a movie, and the sentence after it I just thought would be really funny.”
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Salvage Artist: The Rumpus Original Combo with Bonnie Jo Campbell
“I like to go where the life is. I’m pro-life, in the sense that chaos seems like life to me and order seems like death. I’m of the people in the bar and the people in my stories. They are…
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Ted Wilson Reviews the World #10
THE FOR SALE SIGN PLACED IN MY YARD ★★★★★ (5 out of 5) Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing the ‘for sale’ sign placed in my yard.
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The Rumpus Interview with Robert McKee
Robert McKee is best known to the world in two ways: as the guy who teaches the popular STORY seminar in Los Angeles and around the world to would-be screenwriters, and as the character in the film Adaptation who teaches…
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The Hurricane and the War
A new book about a soldier who murdered his girlfriend examines the similar traumas of combat veterans and Katrina survivors.
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A Connoisseur of Clouds, a Meteorologist of Whims: The Rumpus Interview with Paul Auster
I don’t know why I write. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn’t have to.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #17: Higher Love
Recently, I was given an assignment by Rumpus film critic and friend Ryan Boudinot to write about one of those pieces of music that is so execrable, so thoroughly gangrenous, that it’s nearly impossible to figure out why anyone would…
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Accomplices in Her Accomplishment
As much as Intruder makes us look at the difficult, the painful, the ugly, it also gives us a chance to watch the insides of a snow globe swirl, to enjoy beauty in all its victory, through images, rhythms and…
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Steve Almond’s Bad Poetry Corner #7: Sartre, You’re Such an Asshole
(Writing wretched verse so you don’t have to since 1995) Sartre, You’re Such an Asshole You thought your derriere off, no beef there. But your heart: was it missing a valve or something? Why do all your plays end in…