Wisdom Is a Double-Edged Sword: Talking with Jay Baron Nicorvo
Jay Baron Nicorvo discusses his debut novel, The Standard Grand, how easy it is for civilians to forget about soldiers and veterans, and his longstanding love of animals.
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Posts Tagged: The Wire
Digging for Characters: A Conversation with Sonya Chung
Sonya Chung discusses her latest novel The Loved Ones, the mental space required to wander around fictional worlds, and looking back at her childhood.
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Luke Cage: When Representation Isn’t Enough
This show’s true strength is its diverse portrayal of African-American subjectivity and morality, amongst both the male and female characters.
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Baltimore, Offline
Social media’s role in all this is especially strange in that it makes people feel obligated to speak out, whether they’ve thought hard about their place in the discourse or not.
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The X-Files Forever
[I]f there was ever a show that could wrestle with anxiety about aging and mortality in a new way, it’s The X-Files.
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The Rumpus Interview with Lincoln Michel
Lincoln Michel talks about his debut short story collection, Upright Beasts, his interest in monsters, and what sources of culture outside of literature inspire him.
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The Rumpus Interview with Mark Danielewski
Mark Danielewski talks about the “maddening energy of violence” and why he’s writing a 27–volume novel, starting with his first 850-page installment in the series, The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May.
...moreThe Saturday Rumpus Essay: Never Really Alone
Blood and smoke and broken windows aren’t the only images out of Baltimore (though they sure do get good ratings).
...moreBaltimore: A Rumpus Roundup
On April 12th, four Baltimore bicycle police arrested 25-year-old Freddie Gray. Gray sustained injuries while in police custody. He asked for medical assistance repeatedly before slipping into a coma. A week later, he died.
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The Rumpus Review of 12 O’Clock Boys
The new documentary 12 O’Clock Boys is the latest example of Baltimore’s restless creative energy… a film that stands up to its inevitable comparisons with [David] Simon’s urban epic.
...moreThe Grimmest Adjuncting Story Yet
D. Watkins is an adjunct professor. He doesn’t make much money, but most of his family and friends are even worse off, struggling with wrongful convictions, the impossibly high cost of health care, and the loss of loved ones to drugs and guns. Read his account of life in East Baltimore at Salon: Ten-plus years and three […]
...moreWhale: 1685, Kitten: 1
Ever thought, “I know Herman Melville was talking about a whale but how much, really, did he talk about a whale?” This cool page will answer your question with its graphical representation of word distribution throughout Moby Dick. The creator Adam Pearce was inspired by an infographic of frequently used words on the show The Wire and styled his […]
...moreDonnell Loves Fran
If Omar was ‘one of TV’s greatest characters’ it was because of Donnie. The show distinguished itself by laying out a palimpsest of failed American institutions but even within that decentralized narrative Omar was singular because the outcome of his life, before, during, and after incarceration was so unusual. He harnessed his dwindling resources to transform […]
...moreAn Interview with The Wire‘s Omar
Michael Kenneth Williams, the actor who played Omar on the highly-praised HBO series The Wire, is interviewed on Mother Jones. The show is often described as “the greatest television show ever made,” and Williams offers his perspective on why the show has been so successful. “You can go anywhere in the world and you can […]
...moreSounds like a reasonable position
Reykjavik just elected a comedian to be its mayor. Jon Gnarr is the head of the Best Party, which took just over a third of the vote in the recent elections, which means they control 6 of the City Council’s 15 seats. The Best Party has to form a coalition in order to govern, but […]
...moreEssays on the Game
With contemporary postcolonial critique, Darkmatter offers a series of papers discussing HBO’s The Wire. With titles including: – “The Wire: Investigating the use of a Neoliberal Institutional Apparatus and a ‘New Humanist’ Philosophical Apparatus,” – “The Politics of Brisket: Jews and The Wire,” – “The Life and Times of Fuzzy Dunlop: Herc and the Modern […]
...moreGeorge Pelecanos’ Favorite Westerns
The Magnificent Seven (1960) A handful of professional gunmen led by black-clad Yul Brynner are hired to protect a south-of-the-border farming village from scores of bandits in John Sturges’ western adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai.
...moreAmerican Apocalypse: The Wire and 2666
The name “Baltimore” can be traced to an Irish phrase meaning “Town of the Big House.” “Juárez,” when traced back to the Visigoths who overtook Spain in the 5th Century AD, means, roughly, “Army of the South.”
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