A Literary Tasting Menu: My Year Abroad by Chang-rae Lee
Simply put, the novel’s heart is not political but sensual.
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Posts Tagged: joseph conrad
Through the Translator’s Lens: Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough’s Objects of Affection
For Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, language provides a stronger connection with the past than nationality alone.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #148: Daniel Torday
“I also wanted this to be a deeply overtly American book.”
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Map-Making: Alex Dimitrov’s Together and By Ourselves
At one point, I write in my margin: There is no X marks the spot for treasure here. The map is the treasure. Which is another way of saying: this book is the bounty; these poems are the gold.
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Less Brilliant but More Profound: Denis Johnson’s The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
[I]n Johnson’s whole protean oeuvre, more than any pair of books, Jesus’ Son and The Largesse of the Sea Maiden are like binary stars, locked in orbit, distinct but inseparable, each throwing its light upon the other.
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Every Woman Is a Nation unto Herself: A Conversation with Sabina Murray
Sabina Murray discusses the novel Valiant Gentleman, writing characters that are fundamentally different from herself, and confronting issues of colonization.
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Literature’s Second-Class Citizens
They’re there but not there. They’re included but their stories don’t fully weave into the story.
...moreThe Prison House of English
For the NYRB, Tim Parks meditates on writing in English through investigating various authors who made switches from native tongues to the more economically viable lingua franca, like Nabokov and Conrad—or who did the exact opposite, like Jhumpa Lahiri—all in effort to answer the question: Why write in English?
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War Narratives #6: The Rumpus Interview with Phil Klay
When you’re writing fiction, you can follow your own ignorance. You can write something and realize how flawed you are.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Campbell McGrath
Campbell McGrath talks about his new collection, XX: Poems For The Twentieth Century, capitalism, history, and what it might mean to write a wordless poem.
...morePlot and Prejudice
At Electric Literature, Matthew Salesses discusses the works of Joseph Conrad and Flannery O’Connor to explore the problem of unconscious prejudice and unintentional racism in writing, and how writers can avoid it: The writing of fiction cannot treat marginalized characters as vessels, cannot let the plot play out the racism of under-enlightened protagonists. Perhaps the […]
...moreJoseph Conrad’s Thank-You Note to Henry James
Clothed in the wonderful garment of your prose, they have stood, consoling, by my side under many skies,” Conrad wrote. “I trust that you will consent, by accepting this copy, to augment the precious burden of my gratitude. UT Austin’s Ransom Center released Project REVEAL, digitizing 25 of its manuscript collections. Pull up a chair […]
...moreFinding Kurtz
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is driven by the search and discovery of Kurtz, the man turned mad by Africa. Kurtz is the pale white colonizer who rapes the continent, is also worshiped by the native population, and provides fodder for an endless stream of undergraduate English papers. However, there remains the question of whether […]
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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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The Rumpus Interview with Elliot Ackerman
Elliot Ackerman discusses his debut novel Green on Blue, fighting with the Marine Corps in the Second Battle of Fallujah, and being labeled as a journalist .
...moreThe Fantastic Joseph Conrad
In honor of Joseph Conrad’s birthday on December 3, the Paris Review blog posted Conrad’s author’s note to The Shadow Line, which ruminates on marvels and mysteries.
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