Denis Johnson
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The Rumpus Interview with Victor LaValle
Victor LaValle discusses his latest book, The Ballad of Black Tom, patience, H.P. Lovecraft, and reinvention.
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Sound Takes: Something More Than Free
“My day will come if it takes a lifetime,” sings Isbell, with the sunny assuredness to make us believe him.
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The Rumpus Interview with Lincoln Michel
Lincoln Michel talks about his debut short story collection, Upright Beasts, his interest in monsters, and what sources of culture outside of literature inspire him.
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The Rumpus Interview with Megan Kruse
Author Megan Kruse talks about her debut novel, Call Me Home, queer characters in rural places, sibling relationships, and how the music of Lucinda Williams inspires her.
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The Rumpus Interview with Kate Walbert
Author Kate Walbert talks about her new novel, The Sunken Cathedral, about the way cities change over time, and her approach to using footnotes in fiction.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Patrick O’Neil
Patrick O’Neil talks about his debut memoir Gun Needle Spoon, being big in France, the drug/recovery genre, and writing through trauma.
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The Rumpus Interview with Maggie Nelson
Author Maggie Nelson talks about matrophobia, “sodomitical maternity,” breaking down categories between genres of writing, and her new book, The Argonauts.
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The Rumpus Interview with Christian Kiefer
Writer, musician, and poet Christian Kiefer discusses his literary influences, the “beautiful, beat up, and weird town” that is Reno, and writing from the perspective of beasts in his new novel The Animals.
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Re-creations, Adaptations, and “Rip-offs”
Jesus’ Son is often considered the seminal work of Denis Johnson’s career. But recently Johnson called the book a “rip-off” of Isaac Babel’s early 20th century work, Red Cavalry. For The Millions, Nathan Scott McNamara contests Johnson’s assertion, arguing that “rip-off” is not the proper…
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The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson
Matthew Tanner reviews The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson today in Rumpus Books.
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The Artful Sentence of Denis Johnson
Sentence construction. That’s all a writer does anyhow, right? Not all sentences are made with great care and hold sentiments like this one: There is something artful and sad in juxtaposing the certainty that something is wrong with the uncertainty…
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Soul of a Whore and Purvis by Denis Johnson
As a writer, Denis Johnson has demonstrated a remarkable ability to polarize. On the one hand he has impressed some of the most prestigious awards committees in the United States. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship, won the National Book…