Two further reasons to drop your day job and write full time rather than watch all this literary glamor ringside are Jonathan Ames and Sophie Dahl. Unless, of course, you don’t have a hit show on HBO, Dave Letterman calling you for repeat visits, Mick Jagger at your heels, or the legacy of a literary legend to fall back on. Despite all these perks beheld by our next two literary fashionables, Ames and Dahl have gotten and remained where they are, not on their fair looks alone. Though those didn’t hurt. Neither did their peculiar flair for spectacle. …more

Today’s two Literary Fashionables traveled in distinct social settings at the time of their rise to literary fame. One moved with exiles, hustlers and runaways in Paris, Mexico and Tangier and wrote experimental fiction. The other moved to Vogue out of college, got married and would soon join a group of rising journalists, including Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, who became known for giving journalism a new face. But while these two writers lived vastly different lifestyles, they’re both beloved for their sense for knowing how to make the most out of, well, lemony situations. And all the while in great literary style. …more

Two hallowed New York intellectuals are The Rumpus’s next set of Literary Fashionables.  Susan Sontag and George Plimpton both circled the upper tiers of Manhattan’s literary society. And while exhibiting seemingly opposing aesthetics, both Sontag and Plimpton promulgated revolutionary ideas and modes of approach to writing that would impact literary stylists for years to come. …more

Artist Dash Snow’s life was cut short at twenty-seven years when he overdosed last summer in his hometown of New York City in a destructive solo hotel stint.

Snow created art similarly to how he lived life; he did whatever the fuck he wanted. Priming his canvas surfaces with urine and ejaculating onto his own collages as a finishing touch was not uncommon. Neither was doing so on a review of his work that he disapproved of.  …more