Leslie Jamison
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Practical Sobs
At the New Yorker, Leslie Jamison interviews Charles D’ambrosio; they touch on narrative omniscience, the impossibility of achieving it, and just what it is that makes for a wonderful essay: Most of the time I think of the self as…
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Up Next in the Rumpus Book Clubs
There’s still time to get the December selections if you join either (or both!) the Rumpus Book and Poetry Book Clubs. What makes our book clubs special? Well, our first readers have a terrific track record of selecting truly amazing…
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Lydia Kiesling Is Not Done Reading
Lydia Kiesling discovered Meghan Daum after reading the writer’s profile of Lena Dunham in a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine. As she chronicles in Salon, she didn’t stop there.
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Grant Snider puts us in the right frame of mind and Steven Kraan personifies Sunday. In the Bay of Fundy, between Maine’s northeast coast and the western shores of Nova Scotia, lies an island called Grand Manan, whose windswept…
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The Big Idea: Eula Biss
On Immunity author Eula Biss speaks to Suzanne Koven about mythology, personal freedom, and the history of vaccines.
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Sunday Links
Can’t get enough Leslie Jamison? The Chicago Humanities Festival video of her October 20 talk with Jac Jemc is available here. They cover a lot of ground in this hourlong Q &A, including a much more involved exploration of “wounded women”…
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Leslie Jamison
In which we discuss Frozen, Taylor Swift, the limits of empathy, the problem of happiness, and why we listen to sad songs over and over.
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The Rumpus Interview with M.E. Thomas
M.E. Thomas, author of Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight, discusses writing a memoir, being a lawyer and a Mormon, the unreliability of memory—and, of course, being a high-functioning sociopath.
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This Week in Short Fiction
On Tuesday, Margaret Atwood released Stone Mattress, a collection of “wonderfully weird short stories.” Stone Mattress is Atwood’s eighth collection of stories, not to mention her 14 novels and other formidable volumes of poetry, children’s literature, and nonfiction. Reviewers across the…
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Life-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…
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The Loneliest Whale In The Ocean
Somewhere in the Pacific ocean, a whale of unprecedented size is swimming around and calling out to other whales, with no response. This is the “52 Blue” whale, subject of worldwide devotion and fascination and a beautiful new essay on…
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The Post-Wounded Woman
Leslie Jamison‘s The Empathy Exams coins the phrase “Post-Wounded Woman,” referring to women who “are wary of melodrama so they stay numb or clever instead. Post-wounded women make jokes about being wounded or get impatient with women who hurt too much.”…