WWII
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Song in the Subjunctive
Perhaps the city looked more poignantly lovely because I was conscious of its tragic history.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jay Rubin
Author and translator Jay Rubin talks about his new novel, The Sun Gods, translating Haruki Murakami into English, and the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II.
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War Narratives #1: Truth and Fiction
The notion that the truth about combat cannot be described in a book goes back to the American Civil War, at least.
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Thebes
The tragedy of a mentally ill mind or a richly realized fantasy is that its world exists only for its inventor. It is the loneliest party, the most isolating game.
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Charles Simic on Walt Whitman
Poet Charles Simic may prefer the “pleasant aftertaste” of a literary amuse-bouche before bed, but when prompted about one of his favorite literary passages, he chose Walt Whitman’s “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim.” Over at…
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The New York Comics and Picture-Story Symposium: William H. Foster III on African Americans in Early American Comic Books, 1940-1950
The New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium is a weekly forum for discussing the tradition and future of text/image work. Open to the public, it meets Tuesday nights 7-9 p.m. EST in New York City.
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Slow and Steady
It took Gene Oishi 50 years to write his debut novel, a story about Japanese American identity and family during and after World War II. Over at The Nervous Breakdown, Oishi interviews himself about the process of writing Fox Drum…
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Amis, Oates, and the Foul-Smelling Meadow
Recent [WWII] novels by Susanna Moore and Ayelet Waldman achieve their emotional power by focussing upon characters peripheral to the terrible European history that has nonetheless altered their lives. The conflagration must be glimpsed indirectly, following Appelfeld’s admonition that “one…
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Gratification Be Postponed
Although it never garnered the intellectual prestige reserved for his contemporary Walter Benjamin’s critical zingers, Stefan Zweig’s work has recently enjoyed a revival at the hands of two publishers. Zweig’s legacy is that of a conflicted yet devoted proponent of…
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Roald Dahl: Fighter Jet Pilot
Who would’ve thunk it? Though WWII explains the Oompa Loompas. All the same, it’s hard to imagine Dahl, Ian Fleming, and William Stephenson as contemporaries, yet the three were apparently acquainted by the war. It’s usually macho men like Ernest…
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Mein Führer, the Vegetarian
“Hitler was so paranoid that the British would poison him—that’s why he had fifteen girls taste the food before he ate it himself.” The Associate Press reports the story of ninety-five year old Margot Woelk. She was the only one of…
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{sound of cicadas}
Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s memoir, A Drifting Life, chronicles the youth and career of a prominent graphic novelist.