Hypocrisy Is Ripe for Stories: Talking with Melissa Scholes Young
Melissa Scholes Young discusses her new novel, THE HIVE.
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Posts Tagged: mark twain
Writing When Your Life Depends on It
Do I want to live, or do I want to write? Sometimes I think it’s that simple.
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #25: Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been, a Success?
In America, everybody, it seems, wants to be a success. Me, too. Recently, I confided to a family member that sometimes, in moments of deep despair (fortunately they are fairly uncommon), I find myself contemplating suicide as the most sensible retirement plan. The road ahead, paved with potholes and poverty, sometimes doesn’t look all that […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Jerald Walker
Jerald Walker discusses his memoir, The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult, the story of his childhood in The Worldwide Church of God, and how the act of writing delivered him from bitterness.
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The Rumpus Interview with Emily Raboteau
Emily Raboteau discusses her essay, “Know Your Rights!” from the collection, The Fire This Time, what she loves about motherhood, and why it’s time for White America to get uncomfortable.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #63: Patrick Madden
Patrick Madden teaches writing at Brigham Young University and is the author of the essay collection Quotidiana. His essays frequently appear in literary magazines and have been featured in The Best Creative Nonfiction and The Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. He pays close attention to the details of the every day, infusing humor and self-deprecation, combining […]
...moreBeaking the Language Barrier
Twain endorsed the book, saying “Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect.” A 19th century Portuguese-to-English phrase book, English as She Is Spoke, broke the conversational ice between two countries—as well as many funny bones. File under: you won’t […]
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I’ll Fly Away: Notes on Economy Class Citizenship
I want to break from a continued and systematic white supremacy so pervasive it is entrenched in the vernacular I use to express myself.
...moreMapping Literary Road Trips
What is more American than the road trip? Steven Melendez has created an astonishingly detailed interactive map of the beloved institution as documented in twelve works of American literature. The books featured include Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Mark Twain’s Roughing It, John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Acid […]
...moreConversations with Literary Ex-Cons: Jack Gantos
Jack Gantos discusses the sense of “delusional invincibility” he had in 1970s New York that led him to prison—and then on to a career as an award-winning children’s book author.
...moreFast Friends: Mark Twain and Helen Keller
A new article on Open Culture examines the fascinating friendship between Mark Twain and Helen Keller, two of the 20th century’s most revolution-minded popular authors. Twain was taken with Keller from their first meeting, and made it a personal mission to support her education and career. The two shared a love of the political underdog, […]
...moreBefore Twain Was Twain
Newspaper journalist Samuel Clemens would eventually go on to become novelist Mark Twain. But, Samuel Clemens was something of a story writer too. At the Guardian, Nicky Woolf reports that a scholar at the University of California has discovered and authenticated letters stories written by Twain while he still worked at the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle. […]
...moreThe Melancholy of Age
For Electric Literature, Henry Stewart examines the coming of age stories of Ray Bradbury. In addition to comparing Bradbury’s “boy’s boys” to characters in works by Mark Twain and James Agee, Stewart draws parallels between Bradbury’s novels and the author’s biography. What he finds is that Bradbury’s characters’ fascination with “inevitable, inexorable death,” may be related to […]
...moreWho Robbed Mark Twain’s Grave?
Sometime between Christmas and New Year’s, a dastardly criminal (or Mark Twain superfan) stole a bronze plaque of Twain’s profile from his gravestone in Elmira, N.Y. At Melville House, former Elmira resident Alex Shephard examines the city’s complicated relationship with its literary past—and swears that, although he was home for Christmas, he didn’t do it.
...moreRollin’ Down a River
What is there left to say about Huck Finn? Andrew Levy is saying it.
...moreIs Our Art Failing Us?
In his “Cross Cuts” column for the New York Times, A.O. Scott explains how, “in the midst of [our] hard times,” he feels as if “art is failing us.” Following his introductory essay, he asked a group of panelists some basic questions regarding art’s role in the present-day.
...moreThe Funny Side of Writing
Over at the New Yorker, read an excerpt from Mike Sacks’s upcoming Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers. The selection features an interview with George Saunders, in which the writer talks about his upbringing, getting inspiration for characters from working in a restaurant, Mark Twain, comedy, and humor versus satire.
...moreThe Strange Life of Dan Carter Beard
Dan Carter Beard wasn’t just one of the founders of Boy Scouts of America; he was also Mark Twain’s most trusted illustrator. Twain said of Beard’s work: Dan Beard is the only man who can correctly illustrate my writings for he not only illustrates the text, but he also illustrates my thoughts. The Public Domain […]
...moreMark Twain Still Popular…In China!
Did you know that Mark Twain is one of the best known foreign writers in China? Neither did we. There is a well earned, and unabashed image of Mark Twain as the quintessential American author and for good reason. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains in the American cannon and is taught all over the […]
...moreTwain’s Longest Dictation
In the New Yorker, Ben Tarnoff reviews Volume II of the Autobiography of Mark Twain. Notorious for his ability to talk a blue streak, Twain dictated the entire three-volume tome of over 5000 typewritten pages while lying in bed awaiting, it would seem, his own demise. In his autobiography, the rambling flow that has always […]
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The Island of Stopped Clocks: Inside Cuba 50 Years after the Revolution
In a museum in Havana there are two skulls
...more“I Am Greatly Troubled By What You Say”
In a Letter of Note from earlier this week, Mark Twain replies to a librarian’s note concerning the Brooklyn Public Library ban on Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in his characteristically wry and confounding way. After the library found copies of Twain’s most famous works in the children’s room at the library, Asa Dickinson, the […]
...moreOnce Banned, Now Loved
Eve’s Diary, Mark Twain’s retelling of Adam and Eve, is back on Charlton, MA library shelves after a 105-year absence. The book was banned due to seemingly explicit illustrations (though they “now seem quite chaste”). Its return is timely—this Saturday marks the beginning of Banned Books Week, celebrating literary freedom. One-hundred years late is better […]
...moreMark Twain Wanted to Scalp His Critics
Have you checked out Sunday Magazine? It’s writer David Friedman’s site with articles from The New York Times Sunday Magazine exactly 100 years ago from the date he posts. One of the articles for July 30, 1911, “When Mark Twain Nearly Changed His Literary Career,” features an interview with Twain talking about reviews for The […]
...moreTwain in Pictures
Mark Twain’s humor is post-age. His children’s book, Advice to Little Girls was published in 1865 and was a comedic gem amongst the moralizing, heavy-on-the-role-models books of the genre. His story is recast as a slideshow of illustrations by the children’s book illustrator and writer, Vladimir Radunksy.
...moreLiterary Mail
Mark Twain found another way to be immortal—and it doesn’t involve the posthumous release of a book. It’s actually one of the coolest collaborations between a US government agency and the literary arts: the Mark Twain stamp, which is the 27th one of the USPS’ literary arts series. Nice choice, Postal Service!
...moreA Clouded Thing
Jaimy Gordon’s National Book Award-winning novel conveys the hard-knock world of horseracing in a style reminiscent of Walker Percy and Mark Twain.
...moreMark Twain on Mark Twain
“The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.” — It’s finally time. Mark […]
...moreMorning Coffee
Is it just me or is today really dorky? We here at the Rumpus aren’t always so keen on the idea of steampunk, we do however like these lamps a lot. Mark Twain is PISSED! Perhaps you need to buy a porcelain envelope. The artificial eyelid is coming. Prisoner’s still can’t play D and D.
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