RaveThe Rumpus... a carnivalesque novel of historical amnesia and uncanny violence ... glaringly political, but there’s something aloof about Ball’s novel, too, a signature quirk reminiscent of his strangest early work ... There’s a lesson, perhaps, but in Ball’s disjointed narratives and sparse prose, that lesson becomes pleasantly unclear. His is not a language that trivializes violence; it’s a language that exposes it ... a lively, unexpected work of fiction. The pleasure of Jesse Ball’s work comes in his playfulness, his collaboration with the absurd, and the \'cast off\' feeling of his prose that’s somehow both minimalist and made for theater. Ball indulges in imperfection, often with a veneer of simplicity that emerges from deep knowledge of folklore, parable form, and childlike desire.
