“A sort of secular religion”
Amy Tan on Being the First for Some Readers
Nicole Chung interviews Amy Tan about her new memoir Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir, one of the highlights is when Tan ponders being one of the ‘first’ authors that people name/read when they think of Asian-American literature. “But when [“The Joy Luck Club”] came out, it did feel like there were many expectations from all areas — not just in the Asian American community, but in Asian culture itself, and in any ethnic studies community. There were people who said ‘At last!’ and there were people who said ‘How dare she?’ […] I wanted to say: I’m not writing sociology, it just so happens this is what happened in my own family.”
Write What You Experience
The age old debate: experience versus aesthetics, the real world versus the MFA world.
Unpublished DFW
This previously unpublished David Foster Wallace story, likely an excerpt from the Pale King manuscript, circulated as samizdat a couple of years back, but its reappearance – this time on some guy’s tumblr page – is a good excuse to link to it.
Trystero Coffee
At Jacket Copy, Carolyn Kellogg has coffee with Thomas Pynchon–well, not exactly…
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Skateboarding’s Art and Craft
Joel Rice‘s “Flip” column for McSweeney’s discusses the culture of skateboarding. This week he interviews Cole Louison, author of The Impossible: Rodney Mullen, Ryan Sheckler, and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding.
iRumpus
The Rumpus is coming to your iPad or iPhone. The magazine just launched its new app, The Weekly Rumpus. The app features the best of The Rumpus’s weekly content, original short fiction, and upcoming articles every Wednesday. The app and its first issue are free, but you can subscribe for $3.99 a month or $25.99 a year.