Songs Inspired by and Played for Actors on the Set of the Motion Picture Happy Baby
1. My Adidas – Run DMC: The kids are ten years old, smoking in a park.
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Stephen Elliott
The Rumpus Interview With Michelle Orange
We sat on my bed, our backs against the wall, talking about This Is Running For Your Life.
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Sundance So Far
The World According To Dick Cheney is a very good, maybe great documentary.
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The Problem with the Problem with Memoir
I got an email from a friend yesterday asking me if I’d seen this article on Gawker, Journalism Is Not Narcissism, by Hamilton Nolan. I hadn’t but I was aware of the argument. It’s an easy one to make, that memoir and personal essay are killing journalism.
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Whoops, I hired Isaac
This is The Daily Rumpus email from three years ago today when I announced to the world The Rumpus had it’s first employee.
...moreThe Talent Myth
I don’t usually publish Daily Rumpus emails online but today I’m making an exception. This email was sent to subscribers on November 2, 2010.
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Mistress
Mistress, the second in a series of short movies based on the novel Happy Baby, directed by Stephen Elliott.
...moreMy Little Brother Ruined My Life
“Are you a masochist?” It’s the first thing Bosco asks me. He’s 14 years old now, almost my height, 5′ 8″, creamy white skin, and a small, German nose from my stepmother’s side of the family.
...moreAn Oral History of Myself: 14. Judy
Judy — Mother
My dad has a lot of money and he’s a lot older than my mom. She didn’t have any family and when she met him she thought she hit the jackpot. He was living with his mother, my grandmother, and devoid of social skills.
...moreAn Oral History of Myself: 13. Mato
In 2005 I began interviewing people I grew up with and transcribing the interviews, creating a kind of memoir but in other people’s words.
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Mato — Actor
I went to a Catholic school. I was a shy kid and got beat up by girls.
...moreTHE EDITOR’S DESK: Hope For Egypt
Yesterday there was a blog on HTMLGIANT about apolitical writers. I disagreed with it. First, because The Rumpus has had regular roundups of the news from Egypt. Second, because most serious writers I know are very political, very engaged. I’ve edited three books of political fiction and never had difficulty finding contributors.
...moreNotes on Susan Sontag, Yasir Arafat, and George Bush
I’m returning from doing readings upstate, once more along the Hudson. Worrying about my coffee spilling onto the brown leather shoes of the man next to me reading Susan Sontag’s Regarding The Pain of Others. Sontag, the public intellectual. What does that mean?
The Drunk Whisperer
Argentina lost to Germany today and it made me sad. I didn’t know that I cared. But my roommate got Argentina’s national team logo tattooed on his forearm and because I care about my roommate I care about Argentina. He actually went further than the tattoo.
...moreSan Francisco
It’s so pretty in San Francisco right now. All the clouds coming in above the blue and pink lights of the 500 Club. There’s the tattoo parlor and the laundrette and close by the bar with the bike rack and Adobe Books where they once organized all the books by color.
Defending Memoir, or, The Problem with Taylor
Taylor Antrim, author of The Headmaster Ritual, takes easy shots at memoir zeroing in on Nick Flynn’s The Ticking Is The Bomb and Alex Lemon’s Happy.
I should say up front that Nick Flynn and I have become friends in recent years, after I championed his first memoir (it’s easy to like someone who loves your writing).
...moreThe Editor’s Blog
(note: all of these go out in The Daily Rumpus email, but not all of them are posted on The Rumpus)
I’m on a train again, rambling north into New England, contemplating the east coast, the football playoffs (I have $20 on Minnesota).
...moreThe Editor’s Blog
(note: all of these go out in The Daily Rumpus email, but not all of them are posted on The Rumpus)
I’ve been subscribing to Bob Lefsetz email letter ever since about eight people forwarded something he had written about me.
...moreNotes From Book Tour #18: Numbers
A couple of days ago a friend wrote and told me my psychiatrist was crazy. Work on getting close to people, he said. The rest will follow.
...moreNotes From Book Tour #17: Describing Beautiful Women
(Note, these go out as part of The Daily Rumpus email. Most of them aren’t posted on the site so consider subscribing to get all the Notes From Book Tour.)
Notes From Book Tour #16: Heart, Pittsburgh
In Washington I sold thirty books, or so I hear. In Naperville I sold twenty more. Luis and Cindy Urrea came to see me and I spent the night in their house. I had a reading planned in my foster sister’s apartment but she cancelled it, which was fine with me, I was getting sick.
...moreNotes From Book Tour #15: Rock Star
I couldn’t really write a Daily Rumpus today (not a long one certainly, until I decided not to). Why? Last night I was with rock stars.
Notes From Book Tour #14: What Did You Get When You Got What You Asked For?
Last night was the big Rumpus event in New York.
...moreNotes From Book Tour #13: The Part About Leaving; The Part About Finding Love
I’m in a barn on a hundred acres of land trust in upstate New York. I hear a machine going somewhere but outside all I can see are naked trees and then hills descending to a small pond and past that a line of mountains.
...moreNotes From Book Tour #12: From Bethel, with Love
There was a reading last night in Connecticut. I was told it was a disaster, not because there were only twelve people there, but because of the old woman who owned the building and the used bookstore next door.
...moreNotes From Book Tour #11: That’s Why They Call it New York
Notes From Book Tour #10: Readings, Classes, Pandemics
I’m back in San Francisco for a week. That week is almost up. I’ve been doing events of one kind or another for The Adderall Diaries almost every day. On Wednesday, in San Jose, I interviewed Denis Johnson. He said he didn’t read that much anymore.
Notes From Book Tour #9: So Where Does That Leave Liz Phair?
On the 44th day of book tour I borrowed my friend’s car and drove south to Oberlin College, 2.5 hours down the 23 and across the 80/90 toll road. I have an iPhone now and I read short articles with the device perched against the steering wheel, swerving toward my destination.
Notes From Book Tour #8: What I Can Tell You About Book Tours
Let’s start with last night, because that’s when it happened. Or maybe the night before, reading for fifteen people in someone’s living room in Ft. Lauderdale. There was a woman there poured into a tight black dress with lace webbing across her breasts, feet bound in some cross between high heels and sandals.
Notes From Book Tour #7: Notes
I landed in Washington, D.C. and went to the Lincoln Memorial where I did a short reading and Q&A for Barrel House Magazine. It was a quickly put together event and there were only maybe ten or eleven people. We went out for a drink after and it was fun but it also reminded me to protect the wind in my sails.
...moreBook Tour Interview #3: Meaghan O’Connell
A few months ago for some reason I started following Meaghan O’Connell’s twitter posts and decided, while I was in New York, she was the person I wanted to interview for my Book Tour Interview series.