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Articles by Norman Rush
Paris Review - Lying Presences
Jack liked his office and it was all right to like your office. He would say that basically it worked. It was nicely enigmatic. All the tools of his trade, his papers and portfolios, were kept out of sight in a block of chrome-plated file cabinets with unlabelled drawers. He liked one thing on his desk at a time. The only way somebody uninitiated might guess he was an agent for illustrators of children’s books was through the painting on the wall behind him of a pig in armor.
A Year in Reading: Zoë Ruiz
For my Year in Reading, I'm focusing on two books and the questions they raised. 1. Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is the last book he wrote, the book that he said almost killed him "and, in a way, did kill me." He never did finish a book after In Cold Blood, which took him six years to complete. Answered Prayersis the book he was writing and not writing, the unfinished novel.
Fever Dreams of Your FBI
Fever Dreams of Your FBI Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy Knopf, 640 pp., $28.95 Rex Features/Everett CollectionJames Ellroy, 1990s; photograph by Richard Mildenhall 1. James Ellroy’s astonishing creation, the Underworld USA Trilogy, is complete. Its concluding volume, Blood’s a Rover, has just been published.
Transcript: Sarah Cone
The transcript from this week’s MIB: Sarah Cone, Social Impact Capital, is below. You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras on Apple iTunes, Overcast, Spotify, Google, Bloomberg, and Stitcher. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here. ~~~ VOICE-OVER: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio.
Our Mega Fall 2013 Books Preview: 21 Must Reads
Subtle Bodies by Norman Rush, Sept. 10. “Surely the only considerable American novelist who has never yet written about America,” the critic James Wood said about his friend Norman Rush, and as if responding to a dare, Rush has set his fourth novel not in Botswana but in the Catskills, up the Hudson River into another heart of darkness, where a group of college friends have gathered for the funeral of their ringleader, more than 20 years after graduation.
Staff Picks: Tattoos, Death Grips, and Love Letters
Eddie Martinez, Yard Work #7 (Optimistical), 2017 I’ve long admired Eddie Martinez’s wild, colorful abstractions, but until now, I’d never seen them in person. This week, I saw half of a show at two New York locations of the gallery Mitchell-Innes and Nash.
Who's Afraid of African Democracy?
Who’s Afraid of African Democracy? Ndabashinze Renovat/Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesSecurity forces facing off with protesters in Bujumbura, Burundi, May 20, 2015 Poor Burundi. Landlocked, tiny, and known mainly for ethnic conflict, it was for years the subject of one of the most intense international peace-building efforts in history. By the time the Arusha Peace Agreement was finally signed in 2003, 300,000 Burundians had died in a civil war rivaling in ferocity that of its neighbor Rwanda.
Glossing Africa
Glossing Africa Ferdinando Scianna/Magnum PhotosCôte d’Ivoire, 1972 Whenever African writers are on a panel together, we are asked about the continent as a whole—its literature, its future, its political woes and economic potential. Whenever African writers get together on our own, we talk about glossaries. These additions to the main text, often vetted, if not entirely decided, by publishers, are crucial to how it will be received by readers.
Communes, Collectives, and Beyond: 10 Fictional Utopias to Read Now
It’s not hard to see why utopian communities have commanded the attention of so many writers. An idealistic search for a better way of life is ripe for drama, conflict, and big ideas that can play themselves out on a grand fictional canvas. The history of utopian communities also offers plenty that writers can explore, and the concept of people attempting to create a utopia in modern times is also an inherently fascinating one.
A Burning Collection | by Norman Rush
Teju Cole is a kind of realm. He has written three books—two exceptional novels and the volume of essays to be considered here—as well as many uncollected essays, interviews, newspaper columns, and a vast online oeuvre made up of skeins of tweets on fixed themes, faits divers, e-mail arguments, captioned Instagrams, mixed media exercises, and rants.
8 Authors Who Crossed the Gender Line
The protagonist of Adelle Waldman's new novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., is Nathaniel Piven, "a product of a postfeminist, 1980s childhood." We asked Waldman to pick some of her favorite books by authors with different genders than their respective protagonists. The first question I’m usually asked about my novel, “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.,” is whether it was difficult for me, as a woman, to write from the male point of view.
Norman Rush on Guy Davenport’s Elusive Prose
London Tower Bridge, 1901. Our complete digital archive is available now. Subscribers can read every piece—every story and poem, every essay, portfolio, and interview—from The Paris Review’s sixty-three-year history. Subscribe now and you can start reading 0ur back issues right away. You can also try a free ten-day trial period. Below, Norman Rush recommends a story from our Summer 1996 issue by Guy Davenport.
The Best, If Worst-Paid, Job I Ever Had
In 1991, fresh out of college and determined to become a writer, I was a recipient of a Government Enterprise Allowance Scheme grant.
Get the Word of the Day - parapraxis | Dictionary.com
Origin of parapraxis Parapraxis can be traced to the Greek word prâxis meaning "act, action." The prefix para- is used in formation of loanwords from Greek and means "beyond, past, by." By extension, para- is also used to designate objects or activities auxiliary to or derivative of that denoted by the base word.
Listen: Saul Bellow Reads from “Humboldt’s Gift,” 1988
By Norman Rush May 20, 2015 “75 at 75,” a special project from the 92nd Street Y in celebration of the Unterberg Poetry Center’s seventy-fifth anniversary, invites contemporary authors to listen to a recording from the Poetry Center’s archive and write a personal response. Here, Norman Rush reflects on Saul Bellow, who read from Humboldt’s Gift and Henderson the Rain King on October 10, 1988. 92Y will celebrate Bellow’s centenary tomorrow evening.
Very Evil Guys in Africa
The Laughing Monsters is a curious novel. Denis Johnson describes it as a “literary thriller,” which it technically is. A tale of derring-do, chicanery, and treason, it feels particularly apposite in the immediate geopolitical moment. Its main characters are parasites on the frenzy accompanying the current scramble for Africa. But it is an elusive work.
The Comic Voice: An Interview with Christina Nichol
Photo courtesy of the Overlook Press Last month, Brooklyn’s powerHouse Books hosted Norman Rush, Marco Roth, and Christina Nichol to discuss Nichol’s debut novel, Waiting for the Electricity. Set in a post-Soviet Georgia, rife with power shortages, the book stars Slims Achmed Makashvili, a maritime lawyer navigating the perplexing, often hilarious vagaries of life in a corrupt republic.
The Basic Couple
When Virginia Woolf said of Middlemarch that it was among the few English novels ‘for grown-up people’, she didn’t explain what she meant.
Subtle Bodies | Issue 17 | n+1 | Norman Rush
Genitals have their own lives, his beloved Nina had said at the close of an argument over whether even the most besotted husband could be trusted one hundred percent faced with the permanent sexual temptations the world provided. It was the kind of conversation that went with the early days of a marriage, of their marriage. He had been rebutting her silly but fiendish thought experiments and had gotten tired of the game. She was a genius at imagining inescapable sex traps.
Mortals by Norman Rush: 9780679737117
A Conversation with Norman Rush Author of MORTALS Q. Mortals is your third work of fiction set in Botswana. How is Botswana different from other African countries? A. Botswana is a unique African country. It achieved independence in 1967 through a process of negotiation, not violence, and its first president was married to a white English woman. Each of these factors played a part in the development of Botswana as a peaceful democratically-inclined, pragmatic, western-oriented new country.
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