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The Chicago Tribune is working on a new Sunday paper called Five Star full of long, thoughtful essays and articles, along with a literary section and no advertising. You have to pay extra to get it. Critics are saying what’s in the new paper is what’s supposed to be in the newspaper. Story here.
All images from Le Livre de Sante by Joseph Handler (Monte Carlo: Andre Sauret, 1967): …more
1. Sometimes, at the top of this site, it says “you don’t co-op pop culture, pop culture co-ops you. A good musician friend of mine named Adam Balbo likes to say that Michael Jackson lyrics and Heman toys are the shared cultural mythology we have to draw from.
I’m not here to pick sides. …more
Tired of waiting weeks or even MONTHS for back-cover endorsements from recognizable authors? I, Mickey Hess, will blurb any book – that’s right, ANY book – within 24 hours! Just look at these satisfied customers:
Plano Fox and Zenbar Harris’ Matriculating from Malaysia: “First off, I should mention that I don’t blurb friends. That said, Plano Fox and I have never seen eye-to-eye on things, and Harris strikes me as kind of a dick.” – Mickey Hess …more
Aaaah! Vintage NASA pictures! Hurray!
Will this be a continued theme? Chihuly’s boathouse.
I love articles about voids.
This is in French, but you know what else it is? A billboard made out of actual bees.
Good news: Vonnegut Memorial Library is coming soon!
It’s just a coincidence that I’ll be teaching the Wendell Berry poem “Enriching the Earth” tomorrow, a poem which ends with the lines “And so what was heaviest / and most mute is at last raised up into song,” but I couldn’t help but think of Berry’s sentiment about the body being of use after death when I read this story from Autopia about cadaver testing in the auto industry.
The article makes clear that auto companies don’t actually test with cadavers themselves–they just make use of the data universities provide from tests funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Apparently some people get upset at the idea of using human cadavers as test subjects in this way. Perhaps they think it’s undignified, or creepy–I can’t really say, since I don’t share the opinion–but it’s enough of an issue that auto companies are quick to distance themselves from the work.
But it seems to me to be a good way to use these bodies, all of which have been donated for the advancement of scientific knowledge. My grandfather donated his body to science when he died. I have no idea what was done with it–he might have been used by med school students to study human anatomy; he might have been swaddled into a car and slammed into a wall at moderate speed. Makes me think I should check into the program he was a part of and make a similar arrangement.
We’re giving away four tickets to see Jonathan Franzen at City Arts and Lectures in San Francisco.
To enter you have to be a member of The Jonathan Franzen One-Off Book Club. You don’t have to participate in the book club but you do have to buy the book from an independent bookstore (we also have two copies left to sell).
Then tell us something about Jonathan Franzen, or yourself. We’ll announce the winners here.
If you live in San Francisco, you might want to check out the Film Crawl on Cortland this Friday night. Yes, the website is a little cheesy, but the offerings look really cool. The idea behind it is that five local businesses will show a program of short films by local filmmakers (and we have a lot of them!), with one screening at 7:30 and another at 8:30. You switch venues at the intermission. It’s part of the larger Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema event that runs from September 2nd through the 5th.
The memorial award established by McSweeney’s in 2004, the Amanda Davis Highwire Award, is now open to applicants again.
The award “is intended to aid a young woman writer of 32 years or younger who both embodies Amanda’s personal strengths—warmth, generosity, a passion for community—and who needs some time to finish a book in progress. The book in progress needn’t be thematically or stylistically close to Amanda’s work, but we would be lying if we said we weren’t looking to support another writer of Amanda’s outrageous lyricism and heart.”
Note: These are actual chats conducted on Facebook with men who instant message the musician Alina Simone.
If you too keep getting scammed for money by Russian women, you won’t want to miss this week’s random chat with James…
If you are a New Yorker you are drinking all sorts of tiny tiny shrimps.
Flavorwire has your crazy wonderful spill photography du jour.
A look at Alexander Calder’s studio. (P.S. this is my new favorite blog.)
We’ve got a great show put together for next month’s Rumpus (September 13th at The Make-Out Room in San Francisco). Check out the lineup and buy your tickets early: …more
Come Help Us Say Farewell to Summer with comedians MICHAEL SHOWALTER and JESSI KLEIN, readings by NICK FLYNN, SARA MARCUS, HILTON ALS and CORRINA BAIN and a musical performance by FRANKIE ROSE AND THE OUTS.
“When you have me as I’m standing / Against a wall” ignites memories of intimacy that overcome the who, what, where, and when of relationships. Intense moments have a quality of sameness. You feel alive in that moment, not specific, and this poem offers some words where there are none. A good kiss has a color, a hue, a luminescence that “hangs like a valuable stone above us.”
Love can be quick and easy, especially without any social norms governing exactly how many poems you can love at one time. …more
Would I find Cortazar?
But I wasn’t really looking for Cortazar when I read his masterpiece, Hopscotch. I was, I’m sorry to say, looking for myself. And just to make the cliché complete, I was looking for myself while living a bohemian existence in Buenos Aires, with little idea of how I got there or where I was going next, after quitting a corporate job in New York. …more
April 2010. I’m in Wassenaar, Holland, at one end of the long desk I share with my wife, Elisa. She scored a writer-in-residence fellowship here at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) and managed to coattail me in, so we’ve been spending time at this desk since early February, working every day to push forward on our new novels. …more
This ongoing experiment in film writing freezes a film at 10, 40, and 70 minutes, and keeps the commentary as close to those frames as possible. This week, I examine The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski. …more
A Rumpus Meditation on Editors, Ambition, and Angry Dependence (in 33 loosely jointed parts):
1. On July 30, the managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, Kevin Morrissey, took his life. His note stated that he “just couldn’t bear it anymore.” …more
Steve Almond, one of our favorite authors and frequent contributor to The Rumpus, stopped by the Rumpus Radio suite/apartment to talk about publishing, politics, media and community. Comedian Nato Green co-hosts along with Rumpus managing editor Isaac Fitzgerald. You can listen here, download the episode stevealmond.mp3, or listen to Rumpus Radio in iTunes.
The voice that animates The French Exit is smart and philosophically dexterous, capable of showing the self to be a fetish-object of its own and also a refractive subject of Lacanian devotion, as a mirror which doesn’t so much distort as endless “reveal,” like the panopticon eye of a camera. …more
James Longenbach’s fourth book of poems, The Iron Key, feels like it has itself arrived from a different era. It oozes nostalgia for the many charms of Venice, the complexities of Greek myths, and the ethereal pleasures of opera and poetry that is, paradoxically, both old-fashioned and refreshing. …more
Like boxes in storage, Andrea Scrima’s memories are itinerant. Wherever she resides, nothing seems to be in the right place. …more
Arthur Ganson is referred to as a kinetic sculptor, but I think his machines are more like spiritual beings. He largely makes what’s known as Rube Goldberg machines, overly complex machines that execute simple tasks. …more
MY SUMMER JOB
★★★★★ (4 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing my summer job. …more
When I emailed Shalom Auslander, inviting him to help me summon the courage necessary to write first-person non-fiction my parents might not like, he wrote back: “Any time I can help drive a wedge between family members, I’m happy to try.” …more
It was 11:30 on a Tuesday night and the bar at Jumbo’s Clown Room was packed. I was instantly moved by the spirit of Ramona, a tall black stripper in a tutu with pink wings attached to her back, gliding across the stage to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” in ratty toe shoes. …more
Dear Sugar,
My lover is having an affair. He’s married. I’m not. …more
Lydia Davis is the author of four short story collections, as well as The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis and the novel The End of the Story. A MacArthur Fellow, she has been a finalist for many major book awards and this September will release her translation of Madame Bovary. …more
This ongoing experiment in film writing freezes a film at 10, 40, and 70 minutes, and keeps the commentary as close to those frames as possible. This week, I examine Soldier Blue, directed by Ralph Nelson. …more
The principle urban conversation today seems to revolve around authenticity. The relationship many white urbanites have to their city depends on the story they tell about their neighborhoods. Are they authentic, i.e. did they move in before gentrification, and therefore “good.” Or are they one of the soulless homogenizers who arrive when the neighborhood is “safe” (white) and devoid of all realness. …more
The Perfumed Garden vs. The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, both translated by Sir Richard F. Burton: …more
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
★★★★★ (1 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing unconditional love. …more
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