Saturday 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.
Posts by tag
suicide
149 posts
My Little Brother Ruined My Life
"Are you a masochist?" It's the first thing Bosco asks me. He's fourteen years old now, almost my height, 5' 8", creamy white skin, and a small, German nose from my stepmother's side of the family.
When Barbara Jean Was Missing
“You are the closest thing I have to a mother,” she said. My mother said this to me, her oldest daughter, me, the only one of her four children unlikely…
Death of an Author
Edouard Levé’s Suicide, a slim, declarative, idea-driven novel, is daring and raw, and packed full of rewards for any reader willing to take a wide step outside of the American mainstream.
What We Lost When We Lost Barbara Jean
This is the truth. Around noon I gulped a shot of tequila and then placed a chair in my closet, sat down, shut the door and put my .22 rifle…
“Notes Toward a Suicide Letter”
Reflecting, reminiscing, wondering, asking. Jimmy Chen’s beautifully personal essay on HTML Giant, “Notes Toward a Suicide Letter”, explores suicide from multiple standpoints. Whether writing about a loved one or Kurt…
Chen Sah: Suicide Stopper
Meet Chen Sah, “an odd and unlikely angel” who does his best to deter those attempting to throw themselves off the Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, China. (via MeFi)
In a Strange Room
“In every story of obsession there is only one character. I am writing about myself alone… for this reason I have always failed in every love, which is to say…
This Book Will End Your Life: The Greatest Modern Persian Novel Ever Written
Among the many places I was forbidden to go as a youth was through the pages of a book that didn't even exist in our bookshelves.
Celebration and Bitterness, Comfort and Dread
In Please Come Back to Me, Jessica Treadway examines the ambiguities of the human heart, sometimes answering life’s dilemma’s too elegantly.
Let Us Now Raze Famous Men
A Rumpus Meditation on Editors, Ambition, and Angry Dependence (in 33 loosely jointed parts): 1. On July 30, the managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, Kevin Morrissey, took his…
DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #48: Write Like a Motherfucker
I want to know what you have inside you. I want to see the contours of your second beating heart.