Unglued from Time: Shahriar Mandanipour’s Moon Brow
An enjoyable and thought-provoking read, Moon Brow trades on its striking and unusual formal features to allude to the complexities and consequences of war.
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Joseph Heller
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #86: Max Allan Collins
In April, the Mystery Writers of America named Max Allan Collins a Grand Master, the organization’s peer-voted lifetime achievement award. Collins has had a prolific and often eclectic career. The…
Stability in the Spinning Chaos
Why is Catch-22 so widely read? According to the Guardian’s Sam Jordison, Joseph Heller’s novel is powerful because its protagonist Yossarian is “an old-fashioned hero”: Readers immediately cared about Yossarian, and his survival.…
The Rumpus Interview with Anthony Marra
Anthony Marra discusses his latest book, The Tsar of Love and Techno, how humor affects literature, how absurdity affects war, and what makes the perfect mixtape.
Great American Novels and Wars
In his newly published The Novel: a Biography, Michael Schmidt takes some time to study how the wars of the 20th century shaped the great American novel, citing Norman Mailer,…
An Enduring Paradox
Catch-22 turns 50 this year. NPR explores how and why the the novel’s central paradox still resonates with readers—particularly with “a new crop of young people distrustful of their elders.…
What’s the Catch?
Catch-22 turns 50 today. What better way to celebrate than perusing this article. It discusses why the novel has inspired such “divergent” reactions. In teasing out the reasons, the article…
“Famous for the Wrong Book”
Oftentimes an author’s most popular work is not actually his or her best, qualitatively speaking. What about those other under-the-radar books that don’t seem to get to get credit where…