What to Read When You Wish You Were Heading Back-to-School
The Rumpus editors put together a list of books for Virgo season
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Posts Tagged: francine prose
Notable Online: 8/22–8/28
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 7/4–7/10
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 6/21–6/27
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable NYC: 9/14–9/20
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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The Thread: Look What You Made Me Do
Can a person with some agency ever claim victimization, or are agency and victimhood a binary?
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Carmen Maria Machado
Carmen Maria Machado discusses Her Body and Other Parties, riffing off the work of others, and how writing is like solving a math problem.
...moreNotable NYC: 3/4–3/10
Saturday 3/4: Peter Blackstock, senior editor at Grove Atlantic, curates Queer as Volk as part of the Festival Neue Literatur. Powerhouse Arena, 6 p.m, free. Timothy Liu and Christopher Salerno launch new books of poetry. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 7 p.m., free. Michael Nicoloff and Christopher Stackhouse join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. […]
...moreEndued with Vital Warmth
Over at The New Republic, Francine Prose writes about Frankenstein’s conception, as a bet in a drama-fueled writer’s group, as fueled by a young soon-to-be-mother’s anxiety, as a cleverly-plotted Gothic novel, as stories embedded in stories, as something altogether wonderful and shot through with dark.
...moreReading against Time
As a child, I loved it when a book took me somewhere else. I still do, but I’m more surprised and grateful now to be transported by words on a page from one world to another. Perhaps because, as grown-ups, we value what is harder won. At the New York Times Book Review, Francine Prose […]
...moreWriters and Moral Obligation
At the New York Times Book Ends column this week, Zoë Heller and Francine Prose discuss whether or not William Faulkner’s famous quote, “The writer’s only responsibility is to his art,” holds up. In other words, Heller asks, does producing great art excuse terrible human behavior? Her conclusion is that no, it doesn’t. Prose seems to […]
...moreThe Day Jobs That Influence Our Writing
At the New York Times, writers Francine Prose and Leslie Jamison explain how their past jobs—at a morgue and in kitchens—have taught them about writing: But it was another truth — the humility of that kitchen, confronting what I didn’t know — that has felt most resonant across my writing life. As my work has […]
...moreThe Lobster, or a Critique of Circe’s New Dating App
In a world where no romantic attachment meant you were turned into an animal, which creature would your lonely self choose? Francine Prose, author of Bullyville, Blue Angels, and many others, writes about the strange, wholly imagined parallel worlds of Yorgos Lanthimos, whose new movie The Lobster premiered at the New York Film Festival in August.
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The Last Book I Loved: Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932
What makes a person who they are? Is evil born or made?
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The Rumpus Interview with Brian Shawver
Author Brian Shawver talks about his new book, Danger on the Page, his novel Aftermath, MFA programs, and why it’s a good thing that writing never stops being hard work.
...moreCanon Cannon
Begone, Wordsworth! The Times‘s Sunday Book Review brought in acclaimed writers James Parker and Francine Prose to answer the question: who should be kicked out of the literary canon? They responded by offering some lovely (or heartbreaking) discussion on Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, and challenging the very idea of a “canon” in the first […]
...moreBechdel on Broadway
Part of what’s fascinating about the Broadway adaptation, with its script and lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jeanine Tesori, is how closely it adheres to the outline and details of Bechdel’s story—yet so differs from the book that it seems to be a related but entirely original work. For the New York Review […]
...moreRushdie Slams Withdrawn PEN Panelists
PEN America announced on Sunday their intention to honor Charlie Hebdo’s surviving staff with the Freedom of Expression Courage award at their May 5 Gala. The novelists Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, and Taiye Selasi have withdrawn as hosts of the ceremony, claiming the French magazine promotes hate speech and […]
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction: A Guide to AWP
It’s that time of year again, where writers young and old, from all corners of the country, come to congregate in one gigantic, frenetic, neurotic, alcohol-infused crowd, in a couple of fancy hotels no one can really afford, to stay in and talk shop (or not, depending on how your writing’s been this year). That’s right: […]
...moreHollywood History and the Truth
In The New York Review of Books, Francine Prose analyzes “the recent controversies about the accuracy of ‘historical’ films” in Hollywood, concluding that maybe “the real source of controversy isn’t the question of truth in historical films, but rather the subjects of historical films—and how vexed those subjects are.”
...moreLiterary Duets
At The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone reviews BOMB Magazine’s “The Author Interviews,” “a collection of 35 interviews spanning 30 years.” He meditates on the competing definitions and modes, concluding he is “drawn” to interviews not “for their performative components” but for how they act “as literary duets.”
...moreYour E-Reader is Watching You
I wonder if readers of Fifty Shades of Grey will now feel uneasy knowing that someone knows exactly which scenes they return to, and reread over and over? As Francine Prose writes over at the New York Review of Books, new e-reader devices allow e-books retailers to fetch and analyze a user’s reading data. Prose […]
...moreExploring the “Russian Soul”
For the New York Times, Francine Prose and Benjamin Moser share their experiences reading 19th century Russian literature. While Prose shows an appreciation for the timeless themes of Tolstoy and Gogol, Moser contends that what makes 19th century Russian writers distinctive is the way their work “echoed their particular national history.”
...moreLife-Changing Books
In the latest installment of “Bookends” at the New York Times, Leslie Jamison and Francine Prose discuss whether a book could ever change a reader’s life in a negative way. While Jamison thinks that “[n]ovels might not make us worse, but they can unlock parts of us that were already there, already dark, already violent or […]
...moreNotable New York, This Week 3/8 – 3/14
This week in New York Sam Lipsyte reads from The Ask, David Shields reads from Reality Hunger, the Magnetic Fields perform, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks reads, Lore Segal and Tao Lin engage in a panel discussion about the novella, Stephen Elliott holds a writing class, Philip Gourevitch, Francine Prose and Lewis Lapham explore natural and man-made […]
...moreDon’t Miss the 2009 Brooklyn Book Festival: Sunday September 13
Reasons to attend the 2009 Brooklyn Book Festival: 1) it’s one of the most hip, smart and diverse American literary events, 2) because Ben Marcus, Sarah Manguso, Thurston Moore, Heidi Julavits and Tao Lin are just some of the stars and emerging writers who will be talking/reading, 3) panels will talk about DFW , rappers […]
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