This Week in Essays
A weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
...morePosts Tagged: michelle dean
Notable Los Angeles: 4/9–4/15
Literary events and readings in and around L.A. this week!
...moreNotable NYC: 4/7–4/13
Literary events and readings in and around New York City this week!
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Reading Other People’s Mail: Talking with Michelle Dean
Michelle Dean discusses Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion, literary legends, and the absence of Black writers from the narrative.
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What to Read When You Want to Celebrate Women’s History
Rumpus editors select writing that speaks to women’s history—past, present, and future.
...moreNotable Los Angeles: 3/5–3/11
Literary events and reading in and around L.A. this week!
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Morgan Jerkins
Morgan Jerkins discusses This Will Be My Undoing, getting her start on the Internet, and why her collection of linked personal essays isn’t just another Millennial read.
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What to Read When 2018 Is Just Around the Corner
While we can’t promise that 2018 won’t find us facing more political upheaval, we can assure you that there will be great literature to offer moments of escape and inspiration.
...moreAmerican Lit’s Reclusive Editor
Without editor Robert Gottlieb, contemporary classics such as True Grit and Catch-22 might not exist in the forms we know them—but that doesn’t seem to move him. In a rare interview for the Guardian, Michelle Dean visited Gottlieb at his New York home to talk about his long list of achievements, which he demurely brushes […]
...moreThe Chosen One
Colson Whitehead’s new novel, The Underground Railroad, was announced as an Oprah’s Book Club selection on the day of its release. Speaking to Michelle Dean in the Guardian, Whitehead discusses his reaction to the news: “I called her back and she said: ‘Oprah.’ I said: ‘Shut the front door,’ because I didn’t want to curse. She said: […]
...moreOr Smash the Mold Straight Off
If this sounds like a Women’s Lib rap, baby, it is. For The New Republic, Michelle Dean writes a lovely and winding essay on the life and feminism of Adrienne Rich: its origins in breaking meter, discovery through therapy, her correspondence with Hayden Carruth, the suicide of her husband, and culminating in her National Book […]
...moreThe Story of Vera Caspary
Michelle Dean takes an intimate look at Vera Caspary, the woman who wrote Laura. But there is another source for the character. The writing of “Laura” was a kind of accident, done for money. Caspary did not like murder mysteries herself, and she saw in them a structural flaw. “The murderer, the most interesting character,” she […]
...moreThe Myth of the Drunken Writer
Whoever the culprit, we clearly like our geniuses to be “consumed” by their craft, and we like them tortured—and if possible, drunk. At The New Republic, Michelle Dean writes about the myth of the tortured, alcoholic writer and how that image carries a different weight if that writer is a woman.
...moreLiterary Geniuses Say Some Not-So-Genius Things
In “honor” of David Gilmour’s comments to a Hazlitt interviewer about how he refused to teach books by female authors, Rumpus contributor Michelle Dean rounded up some other literary men’s contributions to the field of misogyny. From Hemingway blaming all men’s problems on women’s diseased brains to T. S. Eliot’s assertion that there were no women […]
...moreThe Feminist Reading List to End All Feminist Reading Lists
In case you missed it, Rumpus contributor Michelle Dean whipped up a superb “pop-culture feminist syllabus” at Flavorwire. Ranging from time-tested classics like Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman to newer but equally exciting material like Issa Rae’s The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, Dean’s list includes books, films, TV shows, and songs (plus one “biomythography”) from women of all […]
...moreFemale Critics on Women and Criticism
Attention, New York readers who love literary criticism and women and literary criticism by women: come to SHARP: A Discussion of Women and Criticism tomorrow night at 7:00 at the Bookstore Cafe! The event will feature female critics, including Rumpus contributors like Michelle Orange and Michelle Dean, in conversation about “the women they’ve been inspired […]
...moreThe Golden Gate Bridge = The George Washington Bridge?
Want to leave NYC but fear too much about abandoning your beloved Red Hook/Boreum Hill/Washington Heights/Harlem/Upper West Side…? Check out The Morning News’s list of counterpart neighborhoods throughout the US and abroad. Rumpus pal Alexander Chee recommends Portland, Maine’s Vinalhaven in place of Bushwick, and former Saturday editor Michelle Dean praises Toronto’s Leslieville as Park Slope’s […]
...moreWeekend Rumpus Roundup
Our posting schedule was a little light over the holiday weekend, but Michelle Dean’s ode to used books is well worth a read: My copy of Anne of Green Gables, the one my dad read to me, is worn and fragile and the binding, a cheap 1980s mass market quality, is slowly going to dust. […]
...moreWhen We Allow the Imagination to Roam Free
At The New Yorker, Saturday Rumpus editor Michelle Dean explores what Mitt Romney might learn from Wallace Stevens. “This embedded idea, that there was something liberating in the elimination of risk, led Stevens to write approvingly in that company journal of social insurance in Italy, Germany, and England. For Stevens, these policies embodied the ideal […]
...moreA gift that threatens to overwhelm
Saturday Rumpus editor Michelle Dean writes for the New Yorker about Opal Whiteley, the “once celebrated, then controversial, and now forgotten” 1920s child prodigy and diarist. “The fantasy of orphanhood is a common one. It is the cornerstone of many cherished novels, from “A Little Princess” to “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” But Opal took […]
...moreSaturday History Lesson: Flannery O’Connor and Betty Hester
Most people writing to their favorite authors do not, I’d guess, think they will get an answer back, and perhaps Betty Hester didn’t either.
...moreHeather Donahue Interview
Michelle Dean interviews actress-turned-pot grower Heather Donahue about her book, Growgirl. Donahue discusses “tit whiskers,” “pot-wives,” career changes, and more. “I understand that it’s a privilege to change a life. But I also understand that what really changed my life was my decision to write every day, which cost nothing. My decision to meditate, even […]
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