From the Archive: Why Writing Matters in the Age of Despair
No word is wasted. No story is told in vain.
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Posts Tagged: Milan Kundera
Power, Speech, and Silence: The Weak Spot by Lucie Elven
The Weak Spot is more interested in the invisible forces that guide our ways of being in the world.
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To Start Again in a Different Place: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts
These are the terms Lahiri was trying to, seeking to find in Italian: this is her creed as a fiction writer.
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Voices on Addiction: There Were Also Girls, Women
I always thought I was too smart to be one of those girls.
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Flesh and Blood: A Conversation with Oksana Zabuzhko
Oksana Zabuzhko discusses her story collection, YOUR AD COULD GO HERE.
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Through the Translator’s Lens: Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough’s Objects of Affection
For Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, language provides a stronger connection with the past than nationality alone.
...moreThe Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Goes to… Kenny G
Rumpus editors share our Nobel Prize in Literature predictions with you!
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Finding Comfort in the Discomfort: Talking with Juan Martinez
Juan Martinez discusses his debut collection Best Worst American, his relationship to the English language, and why Nabokov ruined his writing for years.
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What to Read When Your Country Is Invaded by Russians
Three books to read while the Russians are knocking on our nation’s door.
...moreImmortalizing History
Literature continually reminds us that we are not alone and (to paraphrase Kundera) that things are not always as simple as they seem. With so many stories, histories, characters and figures populating a reader’s mind, it’s easy for us to take for granted the liberation that literature imparts. Considering our wide and fast access to […]
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Nietzsche the Space Man
It is often said that who controls the past controls the future but Nietzsche is one of the first to anticipate the power of speculation—that he who controls the future, controls the present.
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The Rumpus Interview with Zarina Zabrisky
Zarina Zabrisky talks about her new book, Explosion, the art of the short story, Russia and Ukraine, and being “a Jewish pessimist in the spirit of Shalom Aleichem.”
...moreWe Wish to Go to the Festival
After 13 years, another Milan Kundera novel has been translated into English for all us provincials who never learned French. At Slate, Benjamin Herman praises The Festival of Insignificance for its lighthearted wisdom: Insignificance is the work not of a grumpy old man but of a grinning old man.
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My Sister’s Legs
Because that’s how it is with sisters. You are them. You are not them. You are broken shards from the same pane of glass, each reflecting a different light.
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Paper Trumpets #21: The Insurance of Company (Die Hand)
I often buy random photographs in thrift stores and vintage shops when I’m drawn to something in them—an awkward smile, a twinkle in the eye, a revealing hint of uncertainty.
...moreHarper Schmarper, It’s Kundera We Want
Sure, everyone is jazzed about the new Harper Lee book (except for those of us who are worried). But here is a book we can all get behind—a new Milan Kundera novel to be translated to English this summer: Faber described the new book as a “wryly comic yet deeply serious glance at the ultimate insignificance […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Nayomi Munaweera
Nayomi Munaweera discusses Sri Lanka, its brutal Civil War, and writing a novel about two artists with their identities wrapped up in two different countries, Sri Lanka and America.
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Repetition
I have long been more comfortable with questions than answers. I like a storyline that is left open as opposed to one that ties up neatly.
...moreToward You
With Toward You, Jim Krusoe completes his trilogy about death, resurrection, and the afterlife, a series of novels that are both comic and consequential.
...moreI am a Japanese Writer
With wit and insight, Dany Laferriere, the Haitian-Canadian novelist, explores national identity and cultural authenticity in his latest book, I Am a Japanese Writer.
...moreThe Country Where No One Ever Dies
The Albanian, in Ornela Vorpsi’s comic novel, is someone prone to megalomania, and who has one obsession “dearer to them than death… Fornication.”
...moreThe Lightness of Sidney Wade
Her lightness is not merely pointing out the details of the world but showing us that without the glory of the everyday, the parsnip, for instance, there can be no weight lifted.
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