The Rumpus Interview with Melissa Gira Grant
Melissa Gira Grant talks sex workers’ rights, labor politics, the novelty of women’s sexuality, and her book, Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work.
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Posts Tagged: the new york times
Sacred Literature
For the New York Times, Alexandra Alter interviews Salman Rushdie about his new novel Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. Their discussion covers the stylistic choices that went into the novel, as well as the role of mythology and polytheistic religions in Rushdie’s larger body of work: Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Informing Form
She was a physical, as opposed to a media, reality to me—someone with a voice to be addressed rather than a flattened image.
...moreThe Volcano that Defined the 1816-7 Art Scene
“The year without a summer,” as 1816 came to be known, gave birth not only to paintings of fiery sunsets and tempestuous skies but two genres of gothic fiction. The freakish progeny were Frankenstein and the human vampire, which have loomed large in art and literature ever since. William J. Broad writes for the New […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Joshua Mohr and Janis Cooke Newman
Authors Joshua Mohr and Janis Cooke Newman talk with one another about their new novels, All This Life and A Master Plan for Rescue, respectively.
...moreThe Wheelbarrow is Real
When we read this poem in an anthology, we tend not to think of the chickens as real chickens, but as platonic chickens, some ideal thing,” William Logan, the scholar who recently discovered Mr. Marshall’s identity, said in an interview. It’s a rare feat to be able to locate the tangible sources of inspirations of […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Stepfatherhood
“He was my real dad,” she says. “I just happened to have two.”
...moreLiterary Tripping
All of which adds up to a place that produces writers the way France produces cheese — prodigiously, and with world-class excellence — a place that calls on its writers’ talent and inspiration and, in turn, is reflected back into the world through their words. And though the list of Louisiana writers — both homegrown […]
...moreTautophrases and Narcissism
In a world where the selfie has become our dominant art form, tautological phrases like “You do you” and its tribe provide a philosophical scaffolding for our ever-evolving, ever more complicated narcissism. Colson Whitehead examines the relationship between “tautophrases” and contemporary narcissism over at the New York Times.
...moreWolf Hall Onstage
For the New York Times, Alexis Soloski profiles Ben Miles, who plays Thomas Cromwell in the production of “Wolf Hall, Parts One and Two,” the Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s prizewinning novels.
...moreMy Saga, Part I
Karl Ove Knausgaard took an American road trip. Here’s his first installment at the New York Times Magazine.
...moreResurrecting a Soviet Satire
The New York Times takes a look at Dying For It, a new adaption of The Suicide, a 1928 satirical play written (but never performed) under Stalinism.
...moreMirrors and Windows
Jacqueline Woodson responds to Daniel Handler’s racist watermelon joke at the National Book Awards with a moving and direct piece in the New York Times. She neither condemns nor forgives Handler, but instead focuses on her personal history with the watermelon joke, the positive direction of diversity in publishing, and her mission in writing: This […]
...moreThe Lost Pulp of Gore Vidal
Before he became an acclaimed novelist and political commentator, Gore Vidal was just a guy trying to make ends meet. Under three different pseudonyms, Vidal wrote a romance novel, three mysteries, and a crime thriller. Now, over 50 years later, Thieves Fall Out, a pulp novel set during the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, is being re-issued, […]
...moreGiving Up The Giver
What is it like to hand your award-winning young adult novel over to Hollywood, 21 years after it was written? Lois Lowry talks to the New York Times about the forthcoming film adaption of The Giver.
...moreText-ing
Interactive digital storytelling: fiction’s next frontier? In the New York Times, Chris Suellentrop examines interactive technologies as used in Blood & Laurels, by Emily Short: Exploring those possibilities is one reason Ms. Short became a writer of interactive fiction rather than of more conventional stories. “I found myself frustrated that I couldn’t write multiple versions of the same scene,” she […]
...moreThis American Life, Moving Forward
Ira Glass loses his voice; Ira Glass gets it back: The New York Times reports on This American Life’s risky split from PRI and venture into the world of independent programming (and don’t worry—it doesn’t sound like the storytelling is going away).
...moreLearning from Books that Are Supposedly Terrible
As any lover of literature might tell you, all books are not created equal. But this does not mean that there is nothing to be gained from novels that are, in many ways, flawed. Over at the New York Times, writers Leslie Jamison and James Parker discuss “supposedly terrible books that left a lasting impression”: I will always love Go Ask […]
...moreFrom True Love to Ambivalence
Think your love of certain passages will never fade? The New York Times Sunday Book Review argues that perhaps not all passages will withstand the test of time. How much does age change what we love? If you’re the sort of person who has always marked up your books — written comments in the margins and […]
...moreAbsent Characters
People of color have been largely excluded from children’s literature. Of the 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, only 93 featured black characters. In his essay, “The Apartheid of Children’s Literature,” Christopher Myers speaks out against the trend of allowing members of certain racial groups to go unseen because of the color of their skin. […]
...moreThe Academic Writing Debate
At the end of last month, Nicholas Kristof published a piece in the New York Times calling for academics to come out from their insular bubble and participate in the mainstream conversation—especially with respect to writing. Joshua Rothman responded in the New Yorker that academic writing is only as “knotty and strange, remote and insular, technical and specialized, forbidding and clannish” […]
...moreMark Twain Still Popular…In China!
Did you know that Mark Twain is one of the best known foreign writers in China? Neither did we. There is a well earned, and unabashed image of Mark Twain as the quintessential American author and for good reason. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains in the American cannon and is taught all over the […]
...more“Pop,” “Soda,” or “Heaven Bubbles”?
You’ve probably seen this regional-dialect quiz from the New York Times making the rounds on your social networks. You answer questions about your vocabulary and pronunciation, and it tries to determine where in the United States you’re from. But the New Yorker‘s Shouts & Murmurs blog is really upping the ante with their own dialect quiz, which […]
...moreBad News for Journalism
The shape of journalism has been changing rapidly in the past several years, but it still comes as a shock to hear that a media company as dominant as Time Inc. is bulldozing the barrier between business and news. According to the New York Times, “the newsroom staffs at Time Inc.’s magazines will report to the […]
...moreHelpful Definitions for the Modern Author
There are a lot of terms writers have to be aware of these days. A lot of them seem like marketing words but they can come in handy when trying to explain to the non writers in your life what the hell you are trying to do. For example: “You, Author: Act as Book’s Publicist, […]
...moreGrowing Up Homeless In NYC
Andrea Elliott’s five-part New York Times essay “Invisible Child” is a brutal but absolutely necessary read. In it, Elliott follows Dasani, a bright, athletic girl who, along with her parents and seven siblings, struggle through daily life in savagely underfunded homeless shelters and public schools. It’s a reminder of how strong you have to be to […]
...moreWhat Jhumpa Lahiri is Reading
If certain books are to be termed immigrant fiction, what do we call the rest? Native fiction? Puritan fiction? This distinction doesn’t agree with me. Given the history of the United States, all American fiction could be classified as immigrant fiction. In an interview with the New York Times, Jhumpa Lahiri discusses her all-time favs, the […]
...moreThe Greater Meaning of Goats and Gossip
If there’s anything worse than accidentally CCing someone on an unflattering email about them, it’s receiving an unflattering email you weren’t supposed to see. When Tim Kreider discovered such an email in his inbox (disparaging the choice he had made to rent a herd of goats “for reasons that aren’t relevant here”), he felt terrible […]
...moreCabbie Poetry
“Tip the waitress or barman well, ‘cause you’re going to need their toilet.” Taxi drivers made strides this year at the PEN World Voices Festival. For a handful of weeks, a group of long-standing New York City taxi drivers have been meeting to poetically reflect on their adventures shuttling passengers throughout the boroughs. Under the […]
...moreMonomania: Why Writing All By Your Lonesome Kind of Sucks
Over at the New York Times “Draft” blog, Benjamin Nugent, author of Good Kids, breaks down the romantic notion that locking yourself away in the “primeval hush of the Midwest” is a certified boon to your writing. Instead, Nugent discusses the “Victorian foil” of monomania and the way that too much alone time can actually […]
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