anti-hero

  • The Rumpus Interview with Alida Nugent

    The Rumpus Interview with Alida Nugent

    Alida Nugent talks about her new book You Don’t Have to Like Me: Essays on Growing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding Feminism, the messiness and realness of sex and sexuality, and putting likeability last.

  • The Rumpus Review of Nightcrawler

    The Rumpus Review of Nightcrawler

    Gyllenhaal is a perfect sociopath. His calm and calculated demeanor is accentuated by the hollow look in his eyes. He delights in the demise of his peers. He has no remorse. Sounds like the kids I went to college with.

  • A Fair Shake for Flawed Female Characters

    Over at the Guardian, Emma Jane Unsworth considers the apparent likeability divide between anti-heroes—as it turns out, a heavily gendered archetype—and their female counterparts. Why does it seem that readers have a more negative reaction to women behaving badly and…

  • Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    The “the stirring, hot-blooded motion” of the poems in Irene McKinney’s collection Have You Had Enough Darkness Yet? is striking, given its posthumous publication. Charlie Atkinson reviews this “curious” and sometimes “playful” examination of mortality, noting the poet’s competence and…