Other
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Lying Artists
Artists and certain brain damage patients have overlapping tendencies—lying or “chronic confabulation,” in neuroscience vernacular. The difference is in that writers fabricate experiences and consciously control their associations whereas people who have incurred frontal lobe damage may be unable to…
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Brush Up on Your Literary Feuds
Whitehead v. Ford Egan v. Weiner Rushdie v. Updike Writers duel with their words, though sometimes there’s spit involved. Flavorwire has a list of 10 notorious literary spats.
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‘To a Restless Little Brother’
“You may not understand this now, but she isn’t coming back. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Day after that. And no, she hasn’t left anything behind — a sticky note on the refrigerator door or a quick message for the answering…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Welcome to the known world, deepest living thing! Let’s talk about profanity in the New Yorker. Fact: there are some very large numbers in the world. Coming soon: actual useful jetpacks.
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Rafah Crossing
Approaching the Rafah crossing on the morning of its historic opening, I pass a lone Palestinian woman in her mid 20’s holding a newborn, walking into Egypt. Twenty yards behind her, sweltering in the late morning desert sun is a…
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #43: Alana Voth in Conversation with Her Facebook Friend, Terry Gearlds
Terry Gearlds and I have never met. We’re friends on Facebook. We share some stuff in common like True Blood and horror movies. Also, anytime either of us see a picture of Bradley Cooper with no shirt on our nipples…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Am I the only person who thinks falconry is fascinating? I probably shouldn’t be linking to Polaroids from the set of Blade Runner, but I am going to. By the way, Eternal Sunshine is totally coming scientifically true. Submarine insignia…
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Magazine Review #6: Paris Review, Issue 196
The most important—and surprising—thing about this issue of The Paris Review: Roberto Bolaño’s lost novel. This is very exciting for fans of the Chilean writer (I happen to be a somewhat obsessive one) and even more so because The Paris…
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Franzian Guidance
Jonathan Franzen dispensed some optimistic guidance in a NY Times Op-Ed essay, an adaptation of his recent commencement speech to Kenyon graduates. He covers techno-consumerism, the environmentalist anger that once confined him to his room and his bird-watching revelation that…
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Swearing Firsts in the New Yorker
The New Yorker’s history of expletive usage and pioneering is recounted by the Awl in list-form. Times have changed, along with the editors at the New Yorker and this in turn, has changed how often profanity appears in the magazine.…
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Women in Sci Fi
The Guardian researches why the female presence seems to be diminishing in science fiction writing. Though there isn’t necessarily a shortage of female authors (or women publishers), there is a serious lack of female presence in the Guardian’s list of…
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #42: Aimee Loiselle in Conversation with Grace Smith
I met Grace Smith (Yup’ik) when I was researching an article for The Circle, a Native American newspaper in the Twin Cities. The Native community in the Twin Cities is very complex, with people from many different tribes and nations.