To Gleam at the Periphery: Talking with Kendra DeColo
Kendra DeColo discusses her new collection, I AM NOT TRYING TO HIDE MY HUNGERS FROM THE WORLD.
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Join NOW!Grant Faulkner shares a reading list to celebrate ALL THE COMFORT SIN CAN PROVIDE.
...moreThree exclusive excerpts from …AFTERWORDS, a new series of distinctive commentaries on great works of contemporary literature from our friends at Fiction Advocate!
...moreFor VICE’s Broadly, Alicia Kennedy interviews Natasha Wimmer, Spanish translator extraordinaire, on her life as a translator of Great Male Novelists™ like Roberto Bolaño, Mario Vargas Llosa, and most recently Álvaro Enrigue. They discuss what makes translation rewarding, anxiety-inducing, and powerful all at once.
...moreThe latest installment in the trend of adapting the unadaptable is none other than Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, a sprawling, digressive novel to which director Robert Falls has allotted five hours of mixed-media stage time. Performances will begin at Chicago’s Goodman Theater on February 6. Bring snacks.
...moreWhile reviewing Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Aaron Bady considers the rise of Mexican literature post-Roberto Bolaño: Roberto Bolaño’s popularity in English over the last decade or so has had a profound effect on publishers. “The Story of My Teeth” takes part in this renaissance, but […]
...moreIt’s a literal confrontation of his metaphorical fear, a visual take on Rilke’s words: to view Güeros is to see a “thing poem” on the screen, to witness something like “The Panther” materialize.
...moreAuthor Antonio Ruiz-Camacho speaks about his new collection, Barefoot Dogs, breakthrough stories, the writing process, and why translating his book for readers in Mexico feels like a homecoming.
...moreTo do things and not die: is this not all our quest, distilled? At the Kenyon Review, Meg Shevenock breaks down just what makes Bianca from Roberto Bolaño’s A Little Lumpen Novelita so heroic.
...moreWhat kind of fantastic twist of fate would it take to instantly finance an epic stage production of a thousand-page Bolaño novel? As it turns out, it only took a retired stage manager turned monk winning a 153 million dollar Powerball jackpot. The Goodman Theater in Chicago intends to mount its dream production of Roberto […]
...more“Sometimes the people who lament that global English has become a ‘grey language’ forget that the greyness predominates in certain social contexts, like business communication, and they forget that while English has been running around the world displacing other languages, it has also been appropriated in all sorts of ways.” At BOMB Magazine, Will Heyward […]
...moreRoberto Bolaño’s posthumous collection The Secret of Evil will be released tomorrow. In this story drawn from the book, Bolaño imagines V.S. Naipaul’s time in Argentina in 1972. “Naipaul’s vision of Argentina could hardly have been less flattering. As the days went by, he came to find not only the city but the country as […]
...moreTraces of Adam Ross’s life appear in the pages of his latest book of stories, Ladies and Gentlemen. There’s the teenage boy attending Trinity School in Manhattan, a journalist traveling to interview a famous actress, and an English professor who is a vessel for other people’s stories.
...moreRoberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses puts the author’s critical and nonfiction prowess on display. It’s a collection of essays and writing from his newspaper column (which was titled Between Parentheses), compiled after the publication of The Savage Detectives. Most of the pieces revolve around the topics of poetry and fiction. The Faster Times writes on the […]
...moreThe most important—and surprising—thing about this issue of The Paris Review: Roberto Bolaño’s lost novel. This is very exciting for fans of the Chilean writer (I happen to be a somewhat obsessive one) and even more so because The Paris Review will be publishing this “lost” novel in its entirety over the course of four […]
...moreIn September 2008, David Foster Wallace stepped out onto his patio and did what most of us occasionally imagine doing, but hopefully never go through with.
...moreWhen does writing about ourselves become narcissistic? Are we ever not writing (or reading) ourselves? Some Thoughts After the Mezcal Ran Out:
...more“I was going out with two women. That I do remember clearly. One of them was getting on a bit—she must have been about my age—and the other wasn’t much more than a girl. Some days, though, they seemed like two ailing, crotchety old women, and other days like two little girls who just wanted […]
...more“M.M.: What do you wish to do before dying? R.B.: Nothing special. Well, clearly I’d prefer not to die. But sooner or later the distinguished lady arrives. The problem is that sometimes she’s neither a lady nor very distinguished, but, as Nicanor Parra says in a poem, she’s a hot wench who will make your […]
...moreHave you read (or are you reading) Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 yet? We may have mentioned it once or twice here at The Rumpus, but only once or twice. Needless to say the book has been, rightfully, getting a lot of hype. Over at The Millions though, Garth Risk Hallberg worries that the hype may be […]
...moreGreetings and salutations! I’m Michael Berger, today’s guest-editor. I’ve spent my last few days off sipping coffee and drifting through the labyrinth of book blogs. Which was terrific, because most of my work week was spent moving a bookstore. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the 25 year old San Francisco used bookstore Phoenix Books is not […]
...more“An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom,” by Charles Baudelaire, 2666‘s epigram
...morePrior to launching The Rumpus, during our test phase, we ran this incredible, thorough, and thoughtful review of Roberto Bolano’s 2666 by Michael Berger. Today seemed like a good day to bring it back. – SE
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