Katie Hoeber is a student at San Francisco State University working on her Masters in Public Health Nursing.

As a project for her Community Nursing class, Katie is spending a week living off four dollars a day — the equivalent value of an average day’s worth of food stamps. …more

After watching Hot Tub Time Machine, a raunchy, slightly funnier-than-average buddy comedy set against the backdrop of 80’s nostalgia, I left the theater with the peculiar feeling I always get after watching movies that involve time-travel.  It’s the peculiar feeling of asking myself “did what I just see make any sense whatsoever?” …more

Millard Kaufman’s posthumously published novel evokes noir films of the past in the contemporary labyrinth of Los Angeles. …more

Finally, a literary contest I might have a shot at winning.  Britain’s Bad Sex in Fiction Prize winner was recently announced by the editor’s of Literary Review magazine.  The shortlist consisted of several notable luminaries, including Phillip Roth, Paul Theroux and John Banville.

The annual award is given “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.”  Past winners include Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer, and in 2008 John Updike was given a lifetime achievement award after having reached the award’s shortlist four times since the award’s inception 17 years ago.

This year’s winner?  Jonathan Littell, for a passage from his controversial, bestselling tome The Kindly Ones. The passage describes a Nazi officer’s orgasm while sodomizing a woman locked in a guillotine as “a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg.”  Yum.

Jonathan Ames wears many hats: writer, boxer, performer, raconteur, and screenwriter.

The hat he wears in his video interview on bigthink.com is a jaunty chapeau; a beanie perched atop Ames’ bearded head.  It’s almost jaunty enough to distract from the fascinating responses to questions about Ames career arcs as a boxer, performer, writer, screenwriter and more.

An especially interesting tidbit centers on Ames’ answer to the questions “Is there a particular joy to writing about sex?” and “Do you have any personal stories about Craigslist?” which dovetail together nicely and resonate with Ames’ explorations of sex and loneliness.

The only question I wish they’d have asked: “Where did you find such a jaunty hat?”

The American Scholar posted a fascinating (and a bit depressing) article by William J. Quirk called “Living on $500,000 a Year.” The article is about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tax returns, and wow, doesn’t that sound enthralling.

But seriously, it’s an interesting read, covering how Fitzgerald made the equivalent of $500,000 a year, paid only about 5.5% in taxes, kept strict ledgers and budgets, but still managed to go broke. …more

Happy day, happy day!!  Jonathan Lethem, one of my personal favorites, has a new novel out!   It’s called Chronic City, and is, according to Lethem, “the best thing I’ve done.”

This is good to hear, as Lethem looks for a rebound of sorts after his last novel.  Considered by Lethem to be his most “funny and “sexy” work, the L.A. rom-com indie rock inspired You Don’t Love Me Yet, was released in 2007 to mixed reviews. …more

Rumpus contributor Michelle Orange just posted a scream of an article in The New York Times about women in horror films.  Specifically focusing on the upcoming Jennifer’s Body, the article “Taking Back the Knife—Girls Gone Gory” details the complex role of women in horror films, and the efforts of the Diablo Cody penned gore-fest to subvert the trope of the genre.

First off, I had no idea that Diablo Cody, of Juno fame, had written Jennifer’s Body. …more

Let’s admit it – we judge books by their covers.  The old adage that we shouldn’t may invariably prove correct, but that doesn’t stop us from doing it anyway.  As with any commodity, those last five crucial inches of space between the hand and the book on the shelf are ultimately traversed by the “ooh, pretty” impulse to grab.  How can you stand right there in the bookstore and get hooked on the first pages of a random book if you never pick up the book in the first place?

So yes, we can agree, covers matter.  Why else would publishers spend money to hire professional designers to create draft after draft of potential cover art?  To wit: Print recently posted a fascinating little article called “Kill Your Darlings” by Peter Terzian that asks eight designers to show their favorite runners up to a book’s cover art.

Each designer explains the history of the different designs and why the changes were made.  The progressions from initial draft to final product are intriguing – some are fluid, and some are abrupt, and whether or not the finished products are any better than the early drafts is up to you to decide.

Rumpus contributor R. Emmet Sweeney has a wonderful article up on Moving Image Source about the best show on TV that you (or me, for that matter) aren’t watching, Danny McBride’s Eastbound and Down.

I’ve been hearing some of the buzz about Eastbound and Down—about a washed-up Major League Baseball star returning home to live with his brother—but it wasn’t until I read Sweeney’s article that I realized that the show is from the same group (McBride, along with Ben Best and Jody Hill) that brought us 2006’s achingly funny indie/kung-fu flick The Foot Fist Way.

Sweeney’s thorough and insightful review was just the catalyst I needed to move from the “yeah, I should check that show out sometime” mentality into a more urgent type of “holy crap, I need to check that show out, like, NOW” state of mind.  Well, it’s a good thing I’ve got no other plans tonight…

Read Sweeney’s article here.

Identitytheory.com has posted an interview with Rumpus music guru and all-around literary genius Rick Moody.

The Q&A, conducted by Meg White (no, not THAT Meg White), delves into the vortex of newness swirling about Moody—the new father (congrats, Rick!) has a new novel in the works, a new album set for release from his band The Wingdale Community Singers, and of course, a new gig as The Rumpus’ music blogger.

From the oblique preview offered during the interview, his new novel, a “slightly futuristic and dystopian” tale featuring a loud-mouthed chimpanzee and an “economically second rate” United States, looks to be vintage Moody—a ribald yet emotionally deep piece of searing satirical intelligence.

Moody also talks about how his music writing has forced him to write “without excessive punctiliousness,” and about how becoming a new father might make Moody’s notoriously “gleeful…lancing of hypocrisies” become less… well… moody?

Sorry.  While you’re recovering from that terrible pun, check out the interview for yourself.  And don’t forget to read Moody’s Swing Modern Sounds blog here on The Rumpus.

Rumpus contributor Jonathan Ames recently got interviewed by a little magazine called Time.

Clearly this upstart Time rag is hopping on the Rumpus’ pro-Ames bandwagon, but we won’t begrudge them. How can you NOT want to learn more about a writer who’s been compared to everyone from Norman Mailer to David Sedaris? …more

Chances are you don’t know who John Craigie is.  But rest assured, John Craigie wants to know you. …more

The last book I loved was Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee.  Maybe “loved” isn’t the right word.  “Loved” implies affection, fealty, romance and adoration.  Coetzee’s Booker-Prize winning masterpiece affected me profoundly, but I did not feel any of those “lovely” types of emotions. …more