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: kazuo ishiguro
Notable Online: 3/14–3/20
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 3/7–3/13
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Online: 2/28–3/6
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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A Chorus of Voices: Talking with Melissa Faliveno
Melissa Faliveno discusses her debut essay collection, TOMBOYLAND.
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Until Democracy Falls: Talking with Matthew Baker
Matthew Baker discusses his new story collection, WHY VISIT AMERICA.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #166: T Kira Madden
“I want to always fight for art, not against it.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #163: Padma Venkatraman
“Stories have a power science doesn’t.”
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What’s Between the Covers: A Conversation with Naben Ruthnum
Naben Ruthnum discusses CURRY: EATING, READING, AND RACE and FIND YOU IN THE DARK.
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People and Poetry: A Conversation with Kim Fu
Poet and novelist Kim Fu discusses her new novel, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, how poetry impacts her fiction, and the expectations that accompany a book about lost children.
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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.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Never Let Me Go
“You can’t hold on to the past,” Elif once told me. “You don’t know how. You don’t know what to keep, what to throw away. So you keep it all. And you can’t do that. No one can.”
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Brian Booker
Brian Booker discusses his debut collection Are You Here For What I’m Here For?, giving characters strange and unusual names, and sleeping sickness.
...moreBeyond the Surface
At the Guardian, Alison Flood wonders whether or not genre writing, particularly romance writing, is primarily “rubbish.” In her investigation, she points out how assumptions are often made about the “surface” elements of genre works and cites literary novels that have used the conventions of genre while maintaining their literariness.
...moreIshiguro’s Indiscriminate Archive
The University of Texas purchased Kazuo Ishiguro’s archive for just over $1m, which consists of early drafts and notes that the novelist threw “indiscriminately” into a cardboard box under his desk during his drafting process. In addition, the collection includes a manuscript for a pulp western novel that Ishiguro thought had been lost.
...moreThe Fantasy of Genre
Kazuo Ishiguro and Neil Gaiman discuss genre and its role in the evolution of stories. The interview is part of a special Gaiman and Amanda Palmer collaboration issue at the New Statesman.
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How to Fail at Writing about Movies
If I have any advice, now, for writing about other media, it’s this: Go ahead and try.
...moreNatural Endings
Kazuo Ishiguro is interviewed at the Los Angeles Review of Books; among other things, the writer touches on world-building, jumping genres, and why, sometimes, it takes a little while to get where you’re going: Well, it took me four years or five years before I came up with my second novel, and that wasn’t a strategy, that was […]
...moreIshiguro’s Deliberate Process
Elysha Chang interviews Kazuo Ishiguro for Electric Literature. The two primarily discuss the process and planning that went into Ishiguro’s new release The Buried Giant. Ishiguro says: When I’m planning the project that I actively look for ideas and read very widely. I spend a lot of time planning. I’m quite a deliberate writer in that way. A […]
...moreNotable NYC: 3/14–3/20
Saturday 3/14: Mike Lala, Dolan Morgan, Allyson Paty, Haleh Roshan Stilwell, Jacob Perkins, Matt Nelson, Alain Stamatis, and Kalliopi Mathios celebrate mouth tattoos. Mellow Pages Library, 7 p.m., free. Asha Sasha John and Xeňa Stanislavovna Semjonová join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Sunday 3/15: Kate Gale, Gaylord Brewer, Jim Tilley, and Jason […]
...moreHere There (May or May Not) Be Dragons
Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel The Buried Giant has reignited debates about genre fiction following Ishiguro’s implication that the work isn’t fantasy. The author has since clarified which side he’s really on. Meanwhile, Flavorwire‘s Jonathon Sturgeon defends Ishiguro’s right to call the book whatever he wants: To use some of Le Guin’s own logic: we still […]
...moreIf It Quacks like a Dragon
Kazuo Ishiguro insists his new novel, The Buried Giant, is not a fantasy novel. Laura Miller at Salon agrees. Ursula K. Le Guin does not (and is a little insulted). David Barnett at The Guardian doesn’t care either way and instead sees Ishiguro’s novel as an opportunity: Why not throw open the gates, tear down […]
...moreIshiguro Doesn’t Take Breaks
For the Telegraph, Gaby Wood speaks with Kazuo Ishiguro about his new release The Buried Giant. The novel is Ishiguro’s first book in ten years, however the author has not been taking a “break,” working hard to find a project that was “good enough” to complete. Like some of his past publications, the novel deals heavily with the […]
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The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Tara Merrigan reviews The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro today in Rumpus Books.
...moreLetting Them Go
Down at the Atlantic, Nathaniel Rich touches on Kazuo Ishiguro, memory, and literature’s Borgesian debts: The answer, as most readers will intuitively conclude, lies between two extremes. Forget everything and you lose your soul; remember everything and you lose the ability to forgive. Ishiguro’s characters, like all of us, are caught between the bliss of ignorance […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Steph Cha
Steph Cha talks about her new novel, Beware Beware, writing compelling and complex Korean American characters, and what reading a book has in common with a level in a video game.
...moreIshiguro Admits To Binge Writing
Kazuo Ishiguro shares his experience writing the first draft of The Remains of The Day over a four-week period, which he calls “the Crash.” Each day he wrote from 9:00 am to 10:30 pm, hoping to “reach a mental state in which my fictional world was more real to me than the actual one.”
...moreThe Last Book I Loved: Never Let Me Go
The problem with writing about Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is that I can’t discuss the plot. A blend of science fiction and literary narrative, the novel hinges on a secret, a secret so all-encompassing and imposing, so carefully revealed, that if I were to divulge it, I would ruin the book.
That being said, here’s what I can tell you…
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
“I feel that for writers, an obsession with what is elegant or what is a cliché or not a cliché can become very inhibiting.” Booker Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro stands up for cliches. (via Bookninja) “Laughs were out, torture porn was in.” Colin Bateman wonders what happened to humor in crime fiction. GIANT wants to […]
...moreWhen You’ve Only Got Four Books Left
“Bathetic self-deception, and unfulfilled dreams–a lament to passing time, and life not working out quite as one had hoped–have been the defining themes of almost all Ishiguro’s work. They are, on the face of it, puzzling preoccupations for one of Britain’s most successful writers.” An interview with Kazuo Ishiguro.
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