The Rumpus is a San Francisco based publication with monthly Rumpus events in the Bay Area. But April 6 we’ve got a mega-show in New York City. Featuring Sam Lipsyte, Colson Whitehead, Michael Showalter, Lorelei Lee, Dave Hill, Starlee Kine, Jeffrey Lewis, and Alina Simone.

Best get those tickets early, rockers. …more

Well here’s some good news for all you short fiction writers: “The Atlantic is going to start publishing fiction again.”

“I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before.”

That’s what William Faulkner said in 1950 while accepting the Nobel Prize for literature, and he should know, because “even Faulkner had a day job.”

(For those interested, you can read Faulkner’s entire Nobel speech here.)

We’ve previously mentioned the fascinating battle taking place in San Francisco between the city’s two weekly newspapers: The San Francisco Bay Guardian (who won a $21 million dollar judgment against Village Voice Media for monopolistic practices) and the VVM-owned SF Weekly.

Well The Stranger has the full scoop on the story, one which includes (but is not limited to) “seized delivery vans, murderous editors, irate blog posts, allegations of insanity, connections to the Church of Satan, illegal predatory-pricing schemes, and more.” Read “The Great West Coast Newspaper War.”

At least as well known for his boozing as for his books, iconic Irish author Brendan Behan (1923 – 1964) was a rollicking, larger-than-life Gaelic knockabout—a foul-mouthed, furry-chested stereotype of the drunken Paddy. In fact, the polemical playwright and legendary dipsomaniac once sardonically summarized himself as “a drinker with writing problems.”

Behan was, at one time or another, a Borstal boy ( = reform school inmate), an I.R.A. “messenger” (he was an explosives expert with a special preference for gelignite), an inveterate jailbird, a busker, a pornographer, and a house painter. He was, at all times, a rebel and all-around hellbender. …more

Artists: Hawk and Dove

Song: “Gray Parade”

“Why Don Pedro Drinks”
by José Marín Cañas
Translated by Gilbert Alter-Gilbert

“Why Don Pedro Drinks” is from José Marín Cañas’ 1929 collection of crepuscular tales about alcoholics, The Rum Bums (Los bigardos del ron).

Nobody had any idea, until that night, what made Don Pedro drink. …more

“Why do Tao’s negative book reviews seem to always cite as evidence Tao’s gimmickry?”

Brandon Scott Gorrell, author of During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present, has posted a review concerning negative reviews of Tao Lin’s Shoplifting From American Apparel.

Update: An interesting argument has broken out in the piece’s comments section about book reviews and reviews in general (it somewhat mirrors a similar debate we had here).

“The recent recession hit the book industry just like it did every other business, and even though we’re emerging from the chasm, book sales haven’t completely recovered, so publishers are being much more careful than they were a few years ago.”

GalleyCat talks with literary agent Jim Donovan, who has been in the business for 17 years and has “seen the world of books from every angle, editor, book seller, and author.”

Don’t miss today’s holiday Rumpus comic from Space Avalanche.

I wish I had bought this:

Only $8.99!

If you subscribed to the Daily Rumpus you would receive messages like this via email throughout the week.

I’m at South by Southwest and have half an hour to compose this note. …more

“Dear Augusta” by Reginald Dwayne Betts speaks for itself as a whole art piece, horrifying and beautiful and eye-widening, and I’m finding it pretty difficult to write about it at all but it is definitely the last poem I’ve loved so here goes nothing.

The full poem is online in the January 2010 issue of The Collagist, where you can also access an audio file of Betts reading the piece.

Augusta Correctional Center is a prison in Virginia. Betts spent much of his youth in custody after being tried and convicted as an adult for a multiple-felony carjacking at the age of 16. “Dear Augusta” is a kind of letter from Betts, filled with commands, stories, testimony meant for the jail’s walls and rooms, and ending with a question posed to the institution: “Dear Augusta, what do / names mean?” …more

Spring! (almost)

German prison cells are mostly nicer than my apartment.

Words get in David Byrne’s way.

Technically this is about old type interfaces, but let’s be honest here it’s just typewriter design porn.

The sun is out today, and this house’s above ground pool is all sorts of appealing.

What this country needs: Jonathan “the impaler” Sharkey, America’s first vampire president.

Could there be a second, EVIL sun? (There totally could!)

So Google still hasn’t pulled out of China. But today the company unblocked previously censored sites:

“Web sites dealing with subjects such as the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, Tibet and regional independence movements could all be accessed through Google’s Chinese search engine Tuesday, after the company said it would no longer abide by Beijing’s censorship rules.”

Learn more.

Marie Daulne’s music reflects the story of her life.

Her father, a Belgium colonialist, was killed by child rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo shortly after impregnating her mother, Cyrille Daulne. After his death Cyrille emigrated to Belgium, where Marie was schooled and raised. …more