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Unwriting the Great American Novel: Helen DeWitt’s "Your Name Here" - The Rumpus

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A few years ago, the bookstore where I worked while I was writing my first novel closed. It was a strange and good place, the passion project of an owner who was so resolutely indifferent to making money that he would not stock a bestseller or indeed any book by a major publisher: we specialized in obscure poetry, translated fiction and experimental literature only. The store was fantastically effective at attracting starving writers to serve as booksellers, perhaps largely because the owner had a very lenient policy about reading on shift. You were free to come in and spend eight hours reading The Anatomy of Melancholy or Extracting the Stone of Madness or The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions behind the front desk, as long as you said hello to customers and the store was reasonably tidy at the end of the day. At the closing sale, I talked a bit with one of my former coworkers (now a beloved cult novelist) about Helen DeWitt. DeWitt, for those not already acquainted, is th

Unwriting the Great American Novel: Helen DeWitt’s "Your Name Here" - The Rumpus Skip to content Essays Unwriting the Great American Novel: Helen DeWitt’s “Your Name Here” By Celia Bell • September 9, 2025 A few years ago, the bookstore where I worked while I was writing my first novel closed. It was a strange and good place, the passion project of an owner who was so resolutely indifferent to making money that he would not stock a bestseller or indeed any book by a major publisher: we specialized in obscure poetry, translated fiction and experimental literature only. The store was

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