The Rumpus Interview with Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll discusses his newest collection Transitory, the influence of film on his writing, and getting good news at bad times.
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Posts Tagged: Bookforum
Women and Instrumentality
She hasn’t been shown any other options. But can she invent a new option? Over at Bookforum, Anelise Chen sits down with Alexandra Kleeman, author of the new collection Intimations, to talk about femininity, dread, and menace in her stories, as well as her own history and inspirations.
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The Read Along: Megha Majumdar
Megha Majumdar on Russian spies, child-sized newspapers, and why reading difficult fiction can invigorate, rather than depress.
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The Rumpus Interview with Amy Sohn
At the end of the day, all we have to hold onto, really, is other people’s stories. And that’s how Alizah Solario’s series “Writers on Wheels Getting Tea” was born. The first interview features author Amy Sohn.
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The Rumpus Interview with Bruce Bauman
Bruce Bauman discusses his latest book, Broken Sleep, why rock isn’t dead (yet), how humor makes life bearable, and why we should reinstate the draft.
...moreDog Sees God
A preacher cares for his daughter’s child while she has a nervous breakdown in a foreign land. A teenager watches her mother slowly die. Another teen mourns his father, who that summer had been “executed by the state of Florida.” Deb Olin Unferth reviews Joy Williams’s short stories for Bookforum.
...moreThe Greatest Experimentalist You’ve Never Heard Of
She felt that this approach illuminated a fundamental truth about language: The very act of using language, she once told an interviewer, involves a ‘castration. The moment we utter a sentence, we’re leaving out a lot.’ A “nanopress” has begun reissuing the work of novelist, poet, and essayist Christine Brooke-Rose, who died in 2012. The author […]
...moreL-IT-erature
Cohen is the perfect age to write such a book, having lived approximately an even number of years on either side of the pre-Web/post-Web divide. He gets “kids these days” and partakes of their Net-fueled narcissism, owning it in a way that earlier writers never could, but he has the erudition and historical grounding of […]
...moreThe End of the Diary
Over at Bookforum, Caitlin Johnson touches base with Sarah Manguso about her new memoir Ongoingness: The End of a Diary, motherhood, and a lifetime spent recording memories and experiences. And for even more on Ongoingness, and Manguso’s thoughts about how motherhood does (or doesn’t) change being a writer, check out our own recent interview with the poet and writer.
...moreFacebook and the Avant-garde
…our Franzen problems, these days, are pretty minor. We don’t have to worry that Chip Lambert’s hand-wringing is going to reinforce the old, realist modes of romantic reaction. But we do have to worry about what happens to attempts to resist those modes. Power has not merely untoothed the language of the avant-garde, it has […]
...moreWay Back When
In the middle of a digression on the bar scene in Kansas, Edmund White took a moment to question its authenticity: Sometimes gay friends my age or older ask me if I ever miss the good-bad old days before gay liberation. Surely, they suggest, it was more fun in the Fifties when you had to sneak around […]
...moreAmong the Damned
Reminded of a quote from Charles Baxter — “‘if you want a compelling story…put your protagonist among the damned” — Jabai Asim argues, in Bookforum’s “Daily Review” that while Ferguson is intriguing as a historical moment, it’s just as important to watch “the continuing battle of who gets to tell” the story.
...moreAn Open Letter
On her blog today, respected critic Ruth Franklin wrote an open letter to the editors of Bookforum. She writes: I have considered opting out of writing for magazines at which women are not represented among the top editors, such as Bookforum. But such a policy would naturally be counter to my stated intent. So I’ve resolved to […]
...moreMigrations Map
Here is a map to help you visualize human migration over the course of our 200,000 year existence. Using data based on mitochondrial DNA difference, the map models migratory patterns as humans “moved outward from Africa into Asia, and later the Americas, Indonesia and Australia.” The visual distinguishes between land and water or temporary land/ice […]
...moreBookforum Love
Bookforum’s daily roundup of internet gems shone their literary spotlight on our poetry editor Brian Spears whose piece “The Death and Resurrection of BlazeVOX,” we recently published. We wanted to reciprocate the love. So, here it is. We love you back, Bookforum! And if you want to know about the recent BlazeVOX controversy, the contemporary […]
...moreYoung Artist, Mean World
The art world is a rough place, which is the practical thought behind art schools offering courses on grant-writing and portfolio building. Still, even with the presence of these utilitarian courses, when embarking on your formative artistic education, how can you conceive of the difficulties ahead? Not just the capitalistic ones, but the problems with […]
...moreThe Elusive Best Seller
“The best seller is caught in a peculiar paradox: Its popularity can be understood as both proof and negation of its value.” The term “best seller,” is in question. Bookforum has an essay on how the term is more of a hyperbolic designation with a shifting definition, than one that is clear-cut and quantifiable. With […]
...moreLet’s Take a Walk Together
James Yeh writes on the Spontaneous Society for Faster Times, Jon Cotner’s ambulatory, real-life interaction/art installation, inciting strangers to interact positively with one another. The project was created in hopes of reigniting a certain kind of social spontaneity that is lost on all of us by way of headphones and fast-paced lifestyles. It’s been garnering […]
...moreReimagining The Memoir
“That it is being considered as book of criticism, rather than as memoir, seems the luck of the draw. Some of the essays in it were originally published in the guise of book reviews, but they always jump the rails of literary journalism and go off on their own course — assessing not just the […]
...moreMore Pacazo
“It’s a shaggy-dog tale, one that eventually—boldly—invites comparison to its great progenitor, Don Quixote. In cutting a classic wide swath, Pacazo exposes itself to risk, a tricky balance between hilarity and horror. By and large, though, this rangy novel earns its claim to the old knight’s inheritance.” John Domini at Bookforum gives a great review […]
...moreUtopia, What Are You Good For?
“But the question lingers: Apart from its questionable value as a marketing strategy, what is utopia good for?” Paul La Farge at Bookforum on the concept and uses of utopia, with special mention of San Francisco and Burning Man.
...moreThe Fearless Book Vending Machine
“Lane’s other invention, alongside the cheap, quality paperback, was the Penguincubator, first installed outside Henderson’s (the ‘Bomb Shop’) at 66 Charing Cross Road, which signaled his intention to take the book beyond the library and the traditional bookstore, into railway stations, chain stores and onto the streets. It is worth noting, given publishers’ frequent timidity […]
...moreTotalitarian Kitsch
“It is the official art of authoritarian governments, aimed at extending state control through propaganda. Totalitarian kitsch exists to glorify the state, foster a personality cult surrounding the dictator and celebrate ceaseless and irrevocable social and economic progress through images of churning factories and happy, exultant workers.” I have long pondered the boundless evil of […]
...moreWater Causes Cancer And Other Truths
Time Magazine has already called it “The Decade From Hell.” (Couldn’t have been worse than the 1940’s?! Could it? I mean the 40’s had Hitler AND Stalin.) And if you have survived the “aughts” reasonably intact as we caterwaul our way into 2010 with a health care package being vigorously stripped of all its progressive […]
...moreThe Rumpus Book Blog Roundup
Greetings! Your humble guest-editor Michael is back in the saddle for another round of negotiating the highly-addictive world of the book blogs. I had an interesting week, where I had time to contemplate my imminent move to Bernal Heights and whether I should apply to those blasted MFA’s again and what it means that I […]
...moreShame Makes Us Who We Are
Anyone who has ever been in a creative writing workshop knows the type of shame ordinarily suffered only by lifestyle submissives. And in the new Bookforum, Mark Grief, while reviewing Mark McGurl’s The Program Era, plays with McGurl’s idea that the shame inherent in academia has in fact helped define an entire era of literature.
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