The Delusion of Objectivity: Talking with Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison discusses The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, understanding that every text is incomplete, and whether motherhood has changed her writing.
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Posts Tagged: Raymond Carver
A Love Letter to Fuckhead
If you’re judging your characters, you’re not doing it right. I’ll always be grateful to [Denis] Johnson for teaching me that.
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The Big Idea: John Freeman
John Freeman, Executive Editor at Lit Hub, talks with Suzanne Koven about his new print-only literary magazine Freeman’s, the difference between between criticism and editing, and his fear of flying.
...moreThe Invisible Lower Class
Raymond Carver and other “Kmart realists” championed the working class in high-brow literary fiction. But has the realism of the 99% gone out of style? Electric Literature explores.
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The Rumpus Interview with Marian Thurm
Prolific author Marian Thurm talks about her new collection of stories, Today is Not Your Day, being a true New Yorker, and the importance of sympathetic characters.
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The Rumpus Interview with David Lipsky
David Lipsky, whose book was recently adapted into the movie The End of the Tour, discusses his career as a writer and journalist as it’s evolved in the twenty years since his road trip with David Foster Wallace.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #67: The Franchise Restaurants of Song
Musician Owen Ashworth on his new album, Nephew in the Wild, literary influences, self-expression in songwriting, and how becoming a father has changed his work.
...moreThe Power of the Common Tongue
For The Millions, Lauren Alwan provides “a brief history” and analysis of colloquial titles, including works from authors like Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, Lorrie Moore, and Raymond Carver. In addition, Alwan offers her insights as to what makes colloquial titles so appealing: There is a certain power in hearing phrases we know and may have used […]
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Locking Yourself Out Then Trying To Get Back In” by Raymond Carver
Some deep part of me thinks that this is all poetry is, at best: a clear record of a moment where something catches.
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The Rumpus Interview with Wayne Harrison
Wayne Harrison discusses his debut novel, The Spark and the Drive, fiction, working as a correctional officer, and Carl Benz’s three-wheeled Motor Car.
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The Rumpus Interview with Richard Ford
Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Richard Ford discusses his new book, Let Me Be Frank With You, how metaphor shapes our world, and why he doesn’t like the idea he has a battery to recharge.
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The Rumpus Review of Birdman
Birdman boils down to the same essential question of how we spend our days, and how those days add up to our years. How we make our story matter, and whether legacy is the point of existence, in how we measure the worth of our lives.
...moreHunting and Healing
For the Guardian, Robert McCrum visits acclaimed novelist Richard Ford on the Irish coast, where the author travels every year to hunt woodcock. The two discuss the trajectory of Ford’s career and his intimate relationship with the late Raymond Carver. I loved him (Carver) and still miss him every day. We liked to hunt and fish, and […]
...moreLearning about Short Stories through Films
Birdman, the new film starring Michael Keaton, is centered around a theatrical adaptation of Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” At Electric Literature, Halimah Marcus discusses what the film can teach writers about writing short stories.
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Back to the Beginning: Why I Write
In the beginning the words flowed like honey, like maple syrup, like corn syrup; yes, the metaphors flowed just like that.
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The Rumpus Interview with T.C. Boyle
T.C. Boyle, who has now written over twenty books, talks to The Rumpus about his most recent short story collection, four decades of cooking up high-grade literary tales, the importance of performance during readings, and life at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
...moreAfter 1984, There Was 1983
Think of the year 1984 and your mind can’t help but jump to great books, thanks to George Orwell’s dystopic classic. But what about 1983? To put some sparkle back in 1983’s literary eye, the AV Club rounded up ten of the year’s excellent but underappreciated books. It’s true: despite being praiseworthy books by big-name […]
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Ladies and Gentlemen
The brief unresolved narratives of Adam Ross’s new short story collection, Ladies and Gentlemen, show regular people with compelling problems.
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
The book blogs had a great week — here’s some of what they have to say: This is very cool. Check out The Underground Library, a community in which “books are given out to Members of the Library, who are asked to SIGN their name by the Due Date and PASS the book to someone […]
...moreRaymond Carver: Vicarious Slumming for the WSJ
It’s Raymond Carver night at the Rumpus! Moments after I wrote and scheduled the preceding post, I saw this tweet from the Library of America: “WSJ on Raymond Carver: ‘There must be few story collections whose notes offer more melodrama than the main text.’ ” Then they offered a link to the Wall Street Journal […]
...moreDavid Ulin on the LOA’s Raymond Carver
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is stunningly desolate, a group of stories so laconic they almost perfectly reflect the resignation of characters struggling with alcoholism, infidelity and the desperation of diminished dreams… “Despite the book’s success, Carver was unhappy at how he was labeled; “There’s something about ‘minimalist,’ ” he grumbled […]
...moreShame Makes Us Who We Are
Anyone who has ever been in a creative writing workshop knows the type of shame ordinarily suffered only by lifestyle submissives. And in the new Bookforum, Mark Grief, while reviewing Mark McGurl’s The Program Era, plays with McGurl’s idea that the shame inherent in academia has in fact helped define an entire era of literature.
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