tragedy

  • No Hope

    Rumpus Interviews Editor Ben Pfeiffer discusses the complete loss of hope in Anton Chekhov’s literary works, in relation to modern TV shows such as The Leftovers and The Walking Dead. Pfeiffer wonders why people have continued to, watch, read, and…

  • The Saturday Rumpus Review: 99 Homes

    The Saturday Rumpus Review: 99 Homes

    99 Homes continues Bahrani’s tendency to take on big topics, to cut them into chewable pieces for its audience

  • The Rumpus Interview with Christopher Bollen

    The Rumpus Interview with Christopher Bollen

    Author Christopher Bollen talks about his sophomore novel, Orient, secrets and privacy, sexual orientation in fiction, and the lost art of the whodunit mystery.

  • The Rumpus Interview with Neil Smith

    The Rumpus Interview with Neil Smith

    Author Neil Smith discusses his latest book, Boo, the suffering inherent in being thirteen years old, and how friendship can help pull us through traumatic events in our lives.

  • Delivering Whisky After An Earthquake

    As I worked, filing reports every night from a hotel room, the details nagged at me. Her mother, Japa Tamang, was living in an open-sided shed once used to store grain, in hills still shuddering from aftershocks. My husband had…

  • Who Do You Cry For?

    Who do we remember and why do we mourn? Teju Cole writes about unmournable bodies for the New Yorker.

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    Song of the Day: “Micheline”

    A standout record in Mark Kozelek’s long career is the critically-lauded 2014 release, Benji. The presence of everyday tragedies permeates the record and propels the keening voice of Kozelek, aka Sun Kil Moon. On “Micheline,” he offers us three stories…

  • Tragedy is Fast, Knowledge is Slow

    Tragedy is Fast, Knowledge is Slow

    For months, I had worked to help students make connections between sports and society, to help them analyze and interrogate media representations of sport and of athletes….In the immediate aftermath of the Boston bombings, I had no answers and very…

  • Weekend Rumpus Roundup

    Check out these tasty Rumpus morsels, posted over the weekend! Wendy Ortiz interviews poet Louise Mathias about beauty, ecstasy, and eroticism…and “snakes and horses and sky and birds and hallucinogenic flowers, and stars, and the smell of creosote after rain,…