Defying Gravity: Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars
This book is disarmingly—in fact, unnervingly—amoral.
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Posts Tagged: Video Games
Happily Never After: A Conversation with A.A. Balaskovits
A.A. Balaskovits discusses her new story collection, STRANGE FOLK YOU’LL NEVER MEET.
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At the Intersections of Identity: Talking with Dani Putney
Dani Putney discusses their debut poetry collection, SALAMAT SA INTERSECTIONALITY.
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Cherry Blossom Girl
Her name was Ing Hua. Literal translation: Cherry Blossom.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project: Marlin M. Jenkins
“I really believe that if it matters to the writer, it can find space in the poem.”
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Matthew Salesses
Matthew Salesses discusses his new novel, DISAPPEAR DOPPELGÄNGER DISAPPEAR.
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Permadeath
All your efforts and still you must reckon with this end.
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Poetry as Archeology: Talking with Roy G. Guzmán
Roy G. Guzmán discusses their debut collection, CATRACHOS.
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Nothing Gets Solved: Talking with Kevin Nguyen
Kevin Nguyen discusses his debut novel, NEW WAVES.
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The Reality of Love: Talking with Adrian Todd Zuniga
Adrian Todd Zuniga discusses his debut novel, COLLISION THEORY.
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R.I.P.: A Mortician’s Tale
[W]hat could possibly be more cleansing than accepting that death is an unremarkable part of life?
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Reality Scooped: Talking with Tony Tulathimutte
Recent Whiting Award winner Tony Tulathimutte discusses his first novel, Private Citizens, the state of satire in 2017, “booby-trapping” identity politics, and productivity in the Internet age.
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Down the Rabbit Hole of Experimental Fiction: Michael J. Seidlinger on Becoming a Reader
Michael J. Seidlinger discusses returning to House of Leaves for Ig Publishing’s “Bookmarked” series.
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Womanly Arts
This is the hearth. This is the knot. This is home. The woman bent over a sewing machine, the steady hum of the motor, the needle rising and sinking.
...moreThe Company Tub
If you have ever enjoyed playing an early Nintendo arcade game, chances are you’ve enjoyed the brain fruit Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto grew while soaking in the company bathtub, Chris Kohler reports for WIRED. “At night when nobody was around, you could hang out there for a long time. It totally saved me,” Miyamoto said of the […]
...moreThe Rumpus Mini-Review of The Lost Arcade
In the past couple of years it has become nearly impossible to avoid a certain genre of New York documentary that can best be described as urban eulogy. But The Lost Arcade, directed by Kurt Vincent and written by Irene Chin, isn’t just another wistful goodbye to the dirty boulevards of pre-gentrification New York. It’s […]
...moreYour Favorite Pokémon’s Book of Life Advice
Never fear Pokémon GO-ers (and those of you who have managed to avoid the Poké-wave); the pocket monsters aren’t quite done yet—they’re writing a book. More specifically, it’s an “inspirational guide to life,” as described by Emma Oulton for Bustle. The Pokémon Book of Joy, besides having the most uplifting title ever, will feature adorable illustrations […]
...moreThe Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Solmaz Sharif
Solmaz Sharif discusses her new collection Look, the difference between nearness and similarity, and the level of ownership we have over stories.
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On Playing Games, Productivity, and Right Livelihood
One week last spring I said it out loud for the first time: “Sometimes I play so long, my fingers go numb.”
...moreHarvesting Our Desires
What can the medium of the video game tell us about our collective desires as a society? According to Alfie Brown’s essay for The New Inquiry, a lot actually. The author details how our fascinations with apocalypse gaming and pastoral farming simulations reflect two distinct responses to the hopelessness of capitalism: Their picture of a […]
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Mark Leyner
Mark Leyner on his new book Gone with the Mind, pressuring the novel form, being a purist Dionysian, and artisanal pap smears.
...moreWeekly Geekery
Understanding our origins. The New York Public library is encouraging people to make video games. Thoreau’s world of death. Can drugs help us understand life?
...moreWatching Firewatch
Olly Moss, a graphic designer whose sparse, vivid posters have brought him a lot of attention recently, has taken his distinct style to the gaming world. Firewatch, a narrative video game about two “rudderless fortysomethings” working in the Wyoming wilderness, features Moss’s aesthetic in every frame (or polygon, or whatever). Over at the New Yorker, […]
...morePinsky’s DOS Days
Over at the New Yorker, James Reith discusses Mindwheel, a text adventure game written by US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky back in the 80s. Once thought the future of fiction, the “interactive novel” now stands as a delightful curiosity you can play right here.
...moreWeekly Geekery
The digital life at sea. The unlikely history of video games. All those YouTubers sound the same. Once again, the Internet is ruining all good things.
...moreVideo Games as Poetry
Space in video games is not, strictly speaking, physical. It’s made of pixels on a screen, and the movement of objects within it are governed by the algorithms of its central processing unit. This artificiality has the ironic effect of making the world inside of a video game more immediately familiar than the world beyond […]
...moreA Game About a Memoir About Games
Michael Clune learned about the space between our own minds and those of others through video games. You can bridge that mental space by reading Gamelife, his memoir of a childhood spent playing Suspended and The Bard’s Tale II. Or you can get into his head the same way he learned how to get out […]
...moreDigital Technology is Valid Literature
Digital technology is changing literature. Those changes are more than just variations on traditional forms like the novel. Video game storytelling, for instance, is a perfectly valid form of art and yet often lacks recognition in the literary world. That needs to change, argues Naomi Alderman over at the Guardian: The problem is that people who like science […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Matt Bell
Author Matt Bell talks video games, fiction, nonfiction, politics, empathy, and his new books, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn and Scrapper.
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