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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Posts Tagged: philip roth
An Elaborately Constructed Artifice: Maxwell’s Demon by Steven Hall
Slipstream may as well be what we call our bewilderment.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #183: Ryan Chapman
“[Y]ou really want to engage a reader, and not abuse their time.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #148: Daniel Torday
“I also wanted this to be a deeply overtly American book.”
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How to Keep Calm and Carry On
Your mind doesn’t play tricks on you. You play tricks on your mind.
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What to Read When You Need to Understand How to Live
Michelle Tea shares a reading list in celebration of her forthcoming book, Against Memoir, out May 8 from Amethyst Editions/The Feminist Press.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #94: David Burr Gerrard
David Burr Gerrard’s new novel The Epiphany Machine is one of the more ambitious books you’ll read this year, centering on a device that can reveal the epiphany of your life by tattooing the words onto your arm. “ABANDONS WHAT MATTERS MOST” is just one example of the sort of permanent self-owns that get written […]
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Swinging Modern Sounds #78: Conceived as a Playlist
Shadowbahn […] is among the most unusual, and most extreme, in a literary career that has often been marked by its unpredictability.
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HORN! REVIEWS: The Plot Against America
It’s as if Roth, in 2004, had inhaled a Delphic vapor to bring us this vision of an alternate then so eerily like our now.
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A Recommended Reading List for Trump’s America
We asked nineteen authors what books they’d suggest as recommended reading in light of America’s new political reality.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #62: Julian Tepper
Upon publication of his first novel, Balls, author Julian Tepper received pointed advice from one Philip Roth: quit. What the elder statesman, on the verge of his own retirement, was trying to say is that the writing life is “just torture,” and he should spare himself the suffering. But instead of heeding that advice, Tepper […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Anuk Arudpragasam
Anuk Arudpragasm discusses his debut novel The Story of a Brief Marriage, the bombing of civilians during the war in Sri Lanka, documenting war crimes, and powerful Tamil women.
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Paula Whyman
Paula Whyman discusses her debut collection You May See a Stranger, discovering truth in fiction, and how memory interferes with good storytelling.
...moreA Fictional Tyrant Come to Life
At the Washington Post, Carlos Lozada compares Donald Trump with the fictional dictators of two novels that seem to uncannily anticipate the rise of today’s foul-mouthed “politician.” Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935) and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004) both feature totalitarian politicians that will eerily remind readers of Trump’s policies and personality. […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Rebecca Schiff
Rebecca Schiff discusses her debut collection The Bed That Moved, choosing narrators who share similarities with each other and with herself, and whether feminism and fiction-writing conflict.
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The Rumpus Interview with Annie Liontas
Annie Liontas talks about her debut novel Let Me Explain You, crafting voices, and the benefits—and occasional pitfalls—of returning to get an MFA after years of writing in the dark.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Thorpe Moeckel
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Thorpe Moeckel about his new book Arcadia Road, the challenge of writing long poems, raising twins, and camo thongs.
...moreOn Getting Pranked by Philip Roth
Philip Roth’s retirement may well go down in history as one of the literary world’s greatest pranks. Over at The Baffler, J.C. Hallman takes a look at whether the literary giant has actually retired, despite giving interviews and and participating in conferences and receiving awards—and whether the very idea of a writer retiring is “to […]
...moreA Philip Roth for a New Generation
Superficially, Philip Roth and Paul Beatty might appear as polar opposites. But over at Forward, Hannah Assouline argues that Beatty could be Roth’s literary heir. Assouline calls Beatty’s latest novel, The Sellout, a “generation’s answer to Roth,” and compares the novel to Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint: “The Sellout” — which concerns a California sociologist’s son brought before the […]
...moreLike Whatever
Art is problematic. Humans are problematic. Roxane Gay is a bad feminist. We know this, yet still we attack each other for liking Lil Wayne or Fifty Shades of Grey. Flavorwire‘s Sarah Seltzer wants us to stop telling women what they can and can’t like: I wouldn’t abandon the practice of critiquing art for its political […]
...moreStop Worrying About What Comes Next
At The Millions, Jonathan Russell Clark analyzes several last sentences from well-known novels by Hemingway, Tolstoy, Morrison, and Roth. He pays particular attention to the craftsmanship necessary to write these sentences, and considers how last sentences work to reinforce larger themes within a novel: For writers, the last sentences aren’t about reader responsibility at all — it’s […]
...moreLiterary Opposites
Here’s why I think that Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy are opposites: Roth is a builder, and McCarthy is a destroyer. Over at the Ploughshares blog, Lily Meyerin tells us why she thinks that Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy, named by Harold Bloom as two of the most important living American writers, should be considered “literary […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Tomi Ungerer
Writer and illustrator Tomi Ungerer discusses his exile in Ireland, being a target of censorship, and his work’s recent resurgence of popularity in the US.
...moreFamous Authors: They’re Just Like Us!
For T Magazine, seven authors reflect on the experience of revisiting and annotating their early works for an upcoming PEN American Center fundraiser. George Saunders thinks his style in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline was “manic and abrupt.” Jennifer Egan still regrets that she failed to include an Epic poetry chapter in A Visit From the […]
...moreLittle Traveler
In support of his new memoir, Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart’s been touring the country. Lucky for us, he’s keeping a journal: Philip Roth, in a 2000 interview with David Remnick in the pages of this magazine, speaks about the declining number of serious readers in America—he supposes it might even have dwindled to around five thousand. […]
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The Rumpus Interview with David Bezmozgis
The Rumpus talks to David Bezmozgis about Israel, making fact into fiction, politics in novels, and his new book, The Betrayers.
...moreNot the End of Philip Roth
Philip Roth has retired! Well, not quite. Catch him on an upcoming episode of Stephen Colbert’s show for a special segment of Colbert’s book club. Read all the details on AP.
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The Rumpus Interview with Julian Tepper
Writer and musician Julian Tepper talks about his first novel Balls, the social stigmas surrounding illness, the appeal of lounge jazz pianists, and the imaginary boredom of Philip Roth.
...moreTaking Physics from Einstein When You Want to Be Mrs. Einstein
Writer Lisa Scottoline was an English Major at University of Pennsylvania when she attended, in the 70s, two seminars with a very special teacher: Philip Roth. Now, she tells on the New York Times’s Sunday Review what it was like to have her celebrity crush teaching the “Literature of Desire”—actually not so erotic, but still the […]
...moreThe Great G.A.N.
Does the “Great American Novel” actually exist—or is it just the name of a book by Philip Roth? Over at the New Yorker, you can read Adam Gopnik’s review of The Dream of the Great American Novel by Laurence Buell, and you can also listen to Elizabeth Gilbert, Adam Gopnik and Sasha Weiss discuss what the term has evolved […]
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