fiction
-
Fiction or Non fiction: That is the question
Is it true that nowadays nonfiction is more relevant than fiction? Pankaj Mishra and Rivka Galchen answer the question and both their answers are dissimilar. Mishra answers, “Even writers working within the old verities of stability and coherence — we…
-
Our Future Depends On Reading!
“Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian “improving” literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading…
-
Weekly Rumpus Fiction: Bryan VanDyke
The next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Bryan Van Dyke! Here’s an excerpt! Head down, hands in pockets, I am almost past the first surveillance cameras when I run into my sister. She jumps up and down and squeals with…
-
“Every Narrative Voice Is a Fiction”
Some years ago I attended a [Margaret Atwood] reading….She introduced the story she read by saying that it was not autobiographical. Then she read her story about a woman who weighed somewhere in the vicinity of 300 pounds. When she…
-
Junot Díaz on the Writing Life
…nothing calls for the paper shredder like a story that the writer clearly hasn’t sat on. A story that hasn’t been rewritten, or rewritten enough. So many writers that I encounter send their work in so soon. It shows, it…
-
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
There are no holiday weekends in August, but there are weekend Rumpus roundups. If you feel like you need a hundred-year-nap, you might relate to Saturday’s comic by Yumi Sakugawa. And on Sunday, Rob Roberge wrestled with the way fiction…
-
Against Explanation, or How to Write Fiction About Mormons (Or Anybody)
The kind of knowledge that good fiction can impart is incomplete knowledge, knowledge that admits its gaps and urges a certain caution because of them
-
Shakespeare’s Plays: Fact or Fiction?
Has Shakespeare become so intertwined with our culture that we find it hard to separate myth from reality? Dan Jones at the Telegraph writes about how many of Shakespeare’s historical portraits are tinged with his own biases and those of…
-
A Portrait of the Character as a Fictional Creation
Lovers of fiction and art (i.e., pretty much every Rumpus reader), listen up. The Modern Eden Gallery is San Francisco is hosting an exhibition called “Fiction,” in which artists portray literary characters from Dorian Gray to Alice in Wonderland to…
-
An Excuse to Read More Novels
Do you prefer order over ambiguity? Do you often find it necessary to come to definitive conclusions? According to a new study, your answer may have something to do with what you read.
-
Sunday Rumpus Fiction: The Stench
The room wiggled and writhed, as though a pre-storm wind were blowing across a pond. Wall made the mistake of breathing in through his nose, then immediately gagged.
-
Sunday Rumpus Fiction: My Friend, the Painter Joan Miró
In the wake of the Lockerbie Disaster and haunting personal loss, Miró plays nursemaid to a young American woman, unraveling abroad…