From the Archives: Rumpus Original Fiction: Emergency Lifeboats: 24 (12 on Each Side)
“What’s a six-letter word for ignoring truth,” she might say, without looking up from the puzzle.
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Posts Tagged: dementia
Forms of Narrowing: Julie Otsuka’s The Swimmers
After the memorials, the funerals, the endless influx of flowers and casserole dishes and well-meaning texts, the collective retreats back into their lives and all that is left is the individual, grieving for months and years and perhaps even the rest of their own life.
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The Resumes of Identity We Present to Strangers: A Conversation with Dolly Alderton
Dolly Alderton discusses her new novel, GHOSTS.
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The Benefit of Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Talking with Joshua Henkin
Joshua Henkin discusses his new novel, MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS.
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My Grandfather’s Laugh Is like Thread
Is he there? Does he hear? Does he understand?
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The Legality of Love
I remember when I learned there is a syntax to love.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #231: Ruth O. Saxton
“While the past remains always present, old women exist in the present.”
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Straining Toward “Memory Care”: Victoria Chang’s Obit
For Chang, figurative language proves unsatisfactory when compared to the depth of her grief.
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Keeping Time in Los Angeles
Music was noise, and noise was music, and George Antheil was on his way.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #178: Irene O’Garden
“Trust that if you want to write that much it will find a way out of you.”
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What Is Found There: Talking with Barbara Crooker and Marjorie Maddox
Poets Barbara Crooker and Marjorie Maddox discuss their writing.
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Both Insider and Outsider: Victoria Chang’s Barbie Chang
Barbie Chang is an intelligent, lively portrayal of the pressures on contemporary women (especially mothers), and a breathlessly entertaining read.
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The Possible Absence of a Future: Talking with Jorie Graham
Jorie Graham discusses her latest collection, Fast, the terrifying destruction of our planet, a happy formal accident, and how to live in times of world crisis.
...moreWeekly Geekery
Is HBO’s bookish Westworld poised to give science fiction the Game of Thrones treatment? Antelopes, Bollywood, climate change, Brönte. National Geographic‘s autumn book recommendations—sushi, hiking, murder, oh my! Elon Musk name-drops Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Also, we’re going to Mars?) Spotting dementia through diction in Agatha Christie.
...moreThis Week in Posivibes: Interrogating Dementia
The Caretaker’s Leyland Kirby will be chronicling through music the changes wrought by dementia on his own newly diagnosed mind. Kirby released a statement outlining the project: The series aims to enlighten our understanding of dementia by breaking it down into a series of stages that provide a haunting guide to its progression, deterioration, and […]
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with David Rivard
David Rivard discusses his new collection Standoff, writing as both a public and private act, the interiority of reading, and Pokémon GO.
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The Residue of Memory
At Vela Magazine, Leslie Kendall Dye discusses living with her mother who has dementia, and the connection between her mother and her own daughter: After dinner, I watch my mother and child play in my daughter’s shoe-box room. My daughter is dancing to Dick Hyman’s jazz rendition of The Nutcracker Suite. My toddler instructs my mother […]
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Changing the Subject
Does the time come for everyone when holding it in just won’t do anymore? I kept the story of my abortion to myself until Michael broke up with me two years later.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: What Do You Bring Pauline?
Hoping to gain some insight into the nature of love and family, Elizabeth Tannen begins to visit the elderly woman who was once like a grandmother to her and who now has Alzheimer’s.
...moreForgetting Myself
If you loved Jerry Stahl’s essay “Bad Moments in Parenting” as much as we did, be sure to check out the beautiful, devastating account of of one woman’s experience with dementia by Gerda Saunders. Her deeply personal essay gives insight to how a person reckons with keeping her identity as she struggles to remember her […]
...moreGarcía Márquez Has Dementia
The New York Times shares some sad news: Gabriel García Márquez has dementia, according to his brother Jaime. “He is no longer writing and is simply living this stage of life in peace… He reads every day and is with his family.”
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Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying
No one comes in to check on me, no one asks if I’m okay after I finally emerge, embarrassed, my eyes completely red. They all love me, but not enough to forgive what I’m about to do.
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