Funny Names Are Serious Business
Names play an important role in defining characters and can inform readers of what they should expect from a text. But not all names need to be serious—indeed, for much of the last century, comedic...
View ArticleSwinging Modern Sounds #63: It’s Supposed to Be Bad
Recently, I attempted to compile, with the help of a few friends, a list of popular-music recordings that might be bad on purpose. I admit, for the sake of the conversation, that not everyone agrees...
View ArticleThe Saturday Rumpus Interview with Jacob Wren
I first met Jacob Wren in 2009 at a writing retreat in Lithuania. Since then his writing has never ceased to impress me. Wren is a writer willing to take risks and ask big philosophical questions. His...
View ArticleTo Pimp Postmodernism
Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Casey Michael Henry considers Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly a new bid to revive a “Black Postmodernism”:Not only does the album fulfill many specific...
View ArticleBlending the High with the Low
Star Wars is a Western. Star Wars is a samurai movie. Star Wars isa space opera. Star Wars is a war film. Star Wars is a fairy tale.Slate‘s Forrest Wickman argues that George Lucas’s serial masterpiece...
View ArticleImagine That
Like every other year, in 2015 we wrestled with the knowledge of our constructed selves. But rather than eschew personhood as a postmodernist might, we considered just who we’ve been inventing:What do...
View ArticleReally Good Fiction
Infinite Jest recently turned twenty, a birthday so momentous it merited a new edition of the tome for college students to display on their bedside tables. In light of the renewed discussion about...
View ArticleThe Rumpus Interview with Kristopher Jansma
In 2013, Kristopher Jansma came on the scene with The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, a wild, clever, funny, heartbreaking novel. I read the book in two days and immediately vowed to follow Jansma down...
View ArticleThe Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #63: Patrick Madden
Patrick Madden teaches writing at Brigham Young University and is the author of the essay collection Quotidiana. His essays frequently appear in literary magazines and have been featured in The Best...
View ArticleDesire Makes Storytellers of Us All: Anthropica by David Hollander
I’ve only encountered a handful of long postmodern novels that I’ve found coherent and genuinely fun to read. Usually it’s one or the other—the book pursues the execution of a concept with dogged...
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