Peter Orner
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The Rumpus Interview with Joe Mozingo
Journalist Joe Mozingo digs deep into his ancestral history to uncover the origin behind his surname, and discovers it’s one of the few African names to survive not only the Middle Passage, but the history of American slavery itself.
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THE LONELY VOICE #23: It Doesn’t Fit, It Will Never Fit, It Fits
Of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Haiti, and V.S. Pritchett…
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The Lonely Voice #22: RIP Richard Stern
Richard Stern has died. Stern was a short story writer, novelist, and essayist. I’ve always been particularly fond of Stern’s short stories, which are as emotionally raw as they are comic.
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The Lonely Voice #21: So Long Adobe Books
Another bookstore closes and San Francisco yawns. But Adobe Books on 16th Street, between Valencia and Guerrero isn’t another bookstore. It is a haven, a port for lonely souls, readers.
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The Lonely Voice #20: William Maxwell in the December Rain
This morning I threw Julian Barnes’ Sense of an Ending out the window of my car. I was reading at a red light. This occurred at approximately 10 A.M. at the corner of Mission Street and Como Avenue in Daly City,…
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THE LONELY VOICE #19: On the Beauty of Not Writing… A Reluctant Homage to Juan Rulfo
I would like to be even more silent. The need to write thankfully only comes once in a while,
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In Memory of Victor Martinez
Peter Orner remembers his friend, the late poet and novelist Victor Martinez.
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LONELY VOICE #18: Kafka the Dad (Part Three of Five Stray Thoughts on Kafka)
In an essay called “The I Without a Self,” W.H. Auden tells us about a rumor “which if true might have occurred in a Kafka story.” That is that Kafka, without knowing it, fathered a child.
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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 considering for instance that I was able – holy vanity!…
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THE LONELY VOICE #16: Between the Public and the Sky (Part One of Five Stray Thoughts on Kafka)
Whoever leads a solitary life and yet now and then feels the need for some kind of contact…
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THE LONELY VOICE #15: Be Aware of Your Own Ridiculousness, A Small Tribute to Václav Havel
That Václav Havel’s death was overshadowed by Kim Jong Il, that loopy coward, is a joke that might have made Havel, the writer, laugh. Idiot tyranny finally pays him back a little. Over New Year’s (yeah, a lonely voice likes…
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THE LONELY VOICE #14: Isaac Babel, Every Grief Soaked Word
I mourn him like a lost brother. I’ve no right to say this. It’s ridiculous. Yet some voices, we convince ourselves, can’t be lived without.