Last Book I Loved
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The Last Book I Loved: The Broom of the System
David Foster Wallace was a writer with whom I was determined, out of principle, not to fall in love.
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The Last Book I Loved: Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation
To live as an outsider or outlaw is a lonely endeavor, but a group of outsiders becomes a community.
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The Last Book I Loved: Turtle Diary
The tempting line of thinking for lonely people is that if only there were somebody who’d understand, we could somehow be less alone.
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The Last Book I Loved: Rat Girl
The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that genius and creativity were literal spirits, both apart from and outside the artist’s body. The artist’s role was to serve as conduit, and one’s output could only be as good as the input.…
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The Last Book I Loved: I Love You More Than You Know
I moved to New York City in July. I was unemployed, rejected from graduate school, and had $6.29 in my bank account. It seemed logical. I’d spent the last year incapable of making the transition from college to the “real…
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The Last Book I Loved: Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes
In the brief preface to his novel, Exley calls his book a work of fiction or fantasy, claiming that the events of the novel only bear a passing similarity to his life, an event he refers to as “that long…
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The Last Book I Loved: Mating
Dealing in questions rather than answers, Mating has a way of making things seem possible for both its characters and its readers—intellectual love included.
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The Last (Poetry) Book I Loved: Star Dust by Frank Bidart
Everything from the theme of creation to the understated technique resonates; it is a book of poetry which has inspired both reflection and furious meditations of my own as I spin my own arcs from Bidart’s example. It is excellent…
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David McConnell: The Last Book I Loved, The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry
I’m always hunting for great nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century histories. Something about those rolling, periodic sentences, the lofty diction, the Olympian “great man” narratives gives the books an air of eternal authority I love. Compared to them, recent popular histories…
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2nd Annual Indie Lit Secret Santa
HTMLGIANT is sponsoring (moderating? overseeing?) their Second Annual Indie Lit Secret Santa. All you do is head over there and sign up between now and December 15, then when you get your person’s name, send him or her a book…
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Would you like to write for The Rumpus?
Of course you would. And fortunately for you, there are a couple of ways you can do it. Check out our two series, The Last Book I Loved and The Last Poem I Loved, and if you have an idea…
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The Last Book/Poem I Loved: “The Changing Light at Sandover” by James Merrill
It took me three months to pound my way through James Merrill’s epic poem, his universe, his vision of the afterlife as told through a Ouija board in a conversation between Merrill, his partner DJ, and the characters on the…