Just Do Something: Talking with Sam Farahmand
Sam Farahmand discusses his debut novel, CHIMERO.
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Posts Tagged: the stranger
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Danzy Senna
Danzy Senna discusses New People, inhabiting her characters without judging them, playing with the reality and surreality of identity, and pushing against traditional story arcs.
...moreThe Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #56: Patricia Engel
I met one of my favorite writers before she ever published a single story. We were classmates vying for our MFAs in Creative Writing from Florida International University and would smile at each other from across the room. She was shy, but never defensive, in workshop and always strove, really made the effort, to answer […]
...moreA Productive Unhappiness
Why is it that knowing how to remain alone in Paris for a year in a miserable room teaches a man more than a hundred literary salons and forty years’ experience of ‘Parisian life’? Over at the Paris Review Daily, Alice Kaplan, author of the new biography Looking for the Stranger, writes about Albert Camus’s […]
...moreWriting for All
At The Stranger, Rich Smith describes the Till Writer’s Residency program at Smoke Farm in Arlington, Washington. Unlike most residency programs, which are expensive and require writers to pay for travel, the Till Residency is affordable and aims to provide a learning space for all kinds of writers: Till Residency at Smoke Farm, an annual four-day […]
...moreA Spirit of Rebellion
Maddie Crum interviews Jacques Ferrandez, who adapted Albert Camus’s classic The Stranger into a graphic novel, on the importance of The Stranger, his personal connection to it, and more: The book is about the human condition and also about youth. Camus used to describe Meursault as someone who does not know how to lie. Each […]
...moreA for Effort
Lit Hub has just released Book Marks, a book review aggregator which provides a grading system for books. At The Stranger, Rich Smith talks about what this means, grade inflation, and more: The point of a book review isn’t to sell books or trick people into reading books. The point of a books review aggregator isn’t to […]
...moreSaving Trees
For The Stranger, Rich Smith reviews Even Though the Whole World Is Burning, the film about poet W.S. Merwin and his life as a conservationist in Hawaii: The film glorifies Merwin as a giver of life, a distinction that invites an eye roll. But looking at the evidence the film presents, it’s hard to call foul. […]
...moreLittle Theaters of Heat
Christopher Frizzelle shares a dazzling review of Garth Greenwell’s debut novel, What Belongs to You, praising its ferocity and intense exploration of homosexuality: These “little theaters of heat,” these packets of desire or panic or imminence, these doublings-down of doubt and upswellings of confidence—these concentrations of feeling are Greenwell’s subject. The novel is explicitly set in Bulgaria, […]
...moreOxford Dictionary of Emojis
For The Stranger, Rich Smith justifies Oxford Dictionaries’s choice for the UK’s Word of the Year: an emoji. Although OD has been getting backlash from critics lamenting “the death of language, the end of the world, etc.,” Smith claims that emojis are just like words in the way that they evoke feelings: …to address those who don’t think […]
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Michael Seidlinger
The Publisher-in-Chief of Civil Coping Mechanisms and Book Reviews Editor for Electric Literature talks about his newest novel, The Strangest.
...moreAnti-Sex Activists Are Anti-Human
It’s about how “Show us your humanity!” is more belittling and damaging than “Show us your tits!” At The Stranger, Conner Habib argues that anti-sex activists are actually just bigots out to marginalize and oppress sex workers.
...moreThe Real Deal
Many of us choose to pursue MFAs; many of us are also plagued with doubts about the value of a degree in creative writing. Former teacher Ryan Boudinot shares his thoughts about programs, publishing, and the unlikely chance that you’re the Real Deal: I think the instant validation of our apps is an enemy to producing […]
...moreTreatment as Metaphor
In our daily efforts to stay healthy, to invent solutions for staving off death, have we already put ourselves in treatment for diseases yet to come? Conner Habib writes about his cancer diagnosis over at The Stranger, challenging Susan Sontag’s argument against seeing illness as a metaphor by revealing the ways in which we can’t […]
...moreLies and the Lying Artists Who Tell Them
Art journalist Jen Graves was dismayed to discover she had been lied to by someone claiming to be an outsider artist who in fact had a fairly well-established career. But when she began to look more closely at lies other artists had told (or not told, to their detriment), she realized fraud in the art […]
...moreOn the Internet, No One Knows You’re A Liar
Slate‘s recurring feature “The Longform Guide to…,” curated by Longform.org, is usually fascinating, and the most recent installment is no exception. In “honor” of the revelation that Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o’s girlfriend never existed, Max Linsky leads us through a maze of stories on Internet hoaxes. Especially unsettling is “The Lying Disease,” a recent […]
...more40th Anniversary of Miles Davis’s On The Corner
At The Stranger, Dave Segal and other Seattle musicians commemorate the 40th anniversary of Miles Davis’s On The Corner. “Grooves solid as diamonds with freaked-out tendrils that wrap around your soul and poke at you where you least expect to be poked. Sometimes they draw blood. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? You’ll be okay—just let […]
...moreBookstores, Community, Shoppers and More Community
Here’s more fuel for the dialogue on brick and mortar bookstores and their integral role in creating and supporting the literary community. HTML Giant’s got a double dose of input on the subject—a video of Matthew Stadler delineating the difference between readers and shoppers, and an essay in The Stranger by Paul Constant, encouraging us […]
...moreNotable New York, This Week 10/11 – 10/17
This week in New York David Grossman translates with Paul Auster, Justin Taylor and Eva Tamladge exhibit tattoos for the literary inclined, Tao Lin reads, Guernica celebrates, Bill Bryson is Private, Rick Moody joins the Sunday Salon, Catfish is the SATURDAY MOVIE PICK, and James Frey combines Dante, literature, and ART.
...moreSaturday Morning Links
Winter has finally come to south Florida, which means I’ll spend part of the afternoon moving our pepper plants indoors, to protect them from the bitter 40 degree weather that’s dropping by for a day or two. Don’t hate. I tried fantasy football a couple of times and couldn’t figure it out. Fantasy geopolitics? Not […]
...moreSaturday Morning Links
Lots of people, myself included, mocked NBCU’s decision to change the name of the Sci-Fi Channel to the “hipper” and more easily textable “SyFy.” Michael Hinman, who created the website SyFy Portal ten years ago (now named Airlock Alpha), has a different take on the controversy. Graphic novels, after years of huge sales numbers, finally […]
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