Imposing the Life on the System: A Conversation with Eula Biss
Eula Biss discusses her new book, HAVING AND BEING HAD.
...more
Posts Tagged: economy
Reality Is Absurd: Talking with Ted O’Connell
Ted O’Connell discusses his first book, K: A NOVEL.
...more
Merry Christmas, Mr. #TrumpOwnsAmerica
He said, “You’ve got to understand I would have burned down anything just to get somebody to listen to me.”
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Imbolo Mbue
Imbolo Mbue discusses her debut novel Behold the Dreamers, teaching herself how to write a novel, and the price of the American Dream.
...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 6): “To Elsie”
Now the battle is joined. I will prosecute my part of it as a writer till the last dog dies…
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Gonzalo Torné
Acclaimed Spanish novelist Gonzalo Torné discusses his first novel to be translated into English, Divorce Is in the Air, his ideal reader, and the economic crisis in Spain.
...moreThe Night Wash Jones Won
Eighty years ago, Wash Jones appeared as a minor character in William Faulkner’s masterpiece on American identity and self-invention, Absalom, Absalom! From a craft perspective Jones was put in for a purpose: to demonstrate the role that white working-class men played in maintaining white supremacy among the wealthiest people in America before the Civil War, […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with J.D. Vance
J.D. Vance talks about his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, the perils of upward mobility, and never forgetting where you come from.
...moreWhy Women Freelance More
More and more people are leaving the salaried workplace for the freelance economy. But it’s not necessarily by choice; at Bitch Magazine, Sarah Grey discusses how companies and labor policy push women in particular toward freelancing, and why the “lean in” brand of workplace feminism is unhelpful in remedying it.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Jensen Beach
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Jensen Beach about his short story collection Swallowed by the Cold, suburbia in Sweden, quiet racism, and writing a series of connected short stories.
...moreWeekly Geekery
If a weasel can shut down the Large Hadron Collider, we can finish that novel. And barring any more weasel problems, the future of physics is very exciting. Did you celebrate email debt forgiveness day? Fake hackers make more money than you. Your procrastination is making Facebook rich.
...more
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Rick Moody
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Rick Moody about his new book Hotels of North America, unreliable narrators, hotel porn, how titles are uncopyrightable, and Internet comment sections.
...moreE-books Threaten Warehouse Jobs
The rise of e-books are threatening jobs in publishing once again—this time, it’s the warehouse workers that once distributed physical books. Penguin Random House is laying off warehouse workers, since electronic books are delivered wirelessly and never need to be stored.
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Valuation Methods
In some of my fantasies, I make a pitch for art or for truth, defend them like commodities.
...moreEveryday You’re Hustlin’
If you’re not making enough money, or if you’re stuck in a dead-end job that you’re overqualified for, it’s because you just aren’t hustling hard enough. It most certainly is not because there aren’t enough jobs, or the minimum wage isn’t high enough, or because women aren’t guaranteed equal pay under the law. Even if […]
...moreThe Best Job You’ll Get With That Degree
Young, rich, Ivy League-educated and unemployed? Francesca Mari has the job for you. When I was an undergrad at Harvard, the English department produced fancy brochures about the opportunities available to its majors: teacher, editor, Rhodes scholar. Personal assistant was not listed. I hadn’t even heard of such positions until senior year, when older friends, […]
...more
The Americans by David Roderick
The Americans is no self-help book, no guide to suburban living. Rather, [it] offers all of us a chance to examine the places we make our homes, to remember what these places might mean in the context of American history, and to consider how they might shape American culture.
...moreA Harder Job to Imagine
It’s true, this job seemed hard to trump—but there’s worse out there. Before the strike, platinum miners in South Africa made approximately $94.00 per month. The strike itself took 44 lives. Find here a timeline of the five month conflict.
...moreWeekly Geekery
The future of the Internet should scare you. Death isn’t an end on Facebook. Really awesome revolution of information. Teeny tiny profit margin. Don’t click away! Don’t check Twitter. This is all very important.
...moreWhen the Gospel of Lean Gets Mean
All of this American productivity, but cui bono? The answer is actually a little harder to get to than it seems. The Virginia Quarterly Review reports: One might be forgiven for asking what, exactly, all this productivity is for. “We busted our butts to get where we were at,” Ricky Lack said the first time […]
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Corinne Goria
Author and veteran Voice of Witness editor Peter Orner sits down with Invisible Hands: Voices From the Global Economy editor Corinne Goria to talk about putting the book together, economic interdependency, and the complex human stories behind everyday items.
...moreDon’t Be a Coward: The Rumpus Interview with Philipp Meyer
“All of us, all the time, are searching for some order in the world/universe/our lives. We’re searching for guiding principles and explanations. Especially in times of stress, we tend to find sayings, aphorisms, mantras to help guide us.”
...moreWork, Change, Pride
Having to face the strain and fill time in between jobs has, for many, become a matter of survival. On this topic, Charles Darwin had this to say, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” A recent series of articles in […]
...more
Poems for an Economic Collapse
Katy Lederer’s poems are both romantic and political in nature. With their attention to formal and lyrical concerns, these poems tackle the problems of desire when it coincides with money and passion.
...moreWhat I Learned at AWP
The Rumpus dispatched dozens of our top reporters to Chicago. None of them were heard from again.
...more