All images from Le Livre de Sante by Joseph Handler (Monte Carlo: Andre Sauret, 1967): …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

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.

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.”

Check the post for application details.

We only have a few more copies of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom.

“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

Illustrations by Hana Stepanova for Florentina by James Kruss (Prague, 1967): …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:

Shya Scanlon’s Forecast: “As writers, we are constantly lugging around somebody else’s body. We deserve so little, yet ask for rewards such as accolades. There are stories that Shya Scanlon wants to tell, narratives about money, summer camp experiences, and a former America.” – Mickey Hess …more

This week, moving into my new apartment takes much longer than I thought it would, this guy talks about UFOs at Amnesia, The Exploratorium gets spacey new installation art, and SF Zine Fest takes over the San Francisco County Fair building!

Monday 8/30: For the first time since the inception of Notable San Francisco, I’ve dropped the ball. In my defense, moving house on top of being a full time student and having a day job was just more than I could handle today, and I really couldn’t bear to give you less than one hundred and ten percent. Also, The Rumpus pays me in hamburgers and hugs. Not that I don’t love both hamburgers and hugs. So this Monday, cook yourself a nice meal, crack open that semi-fancy bottle of wine someone brought over that one time, and settle in with Ted Wilson’s latest review of the world or Antonia Crane’s recent interview/essay about the one-of-a-kind strip club carnival that is Jumbo’s Clown Room. …more

Thomas Pynchon’s 2006 letter defending author Ian McEwan against accusations of plagiarism has been posted online.

(via TheMillions)

Rumpus Book Club member and artist extraordinaire Kevin Thomas on reading The Four Fingers of Death and dog sitting: …more

Book and magazine covers by Swedish graphic designer Olle Eksell (1918-2007): …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:

John Jodzio’s If You Lived Here You’d Already be Home: “When I saw that John Jodzio’s book has a blurb from Chuck Klosterman, I was like What the hell? Man, I asked Chuck Klosterman for a blurb and he never responded.” – Mickey Hess …more

It’s that time again: here’s some very short nonfiction that’ll only take a minute to read but that will make you feel something.

“Connie was albino, exceptionally white even by the ultra-Caucasian standards of our southern suburb. Only her eyelids had color: mouse-nose pink, framed by moth-white lashes and brows.” — At Brevity, “White Lies” by Erin Murphy.

“Had God not become an extremist, tipping the scales, there would still exist today an equiponderant balance between what you might consider good and evil.” — At elimae, “Jesus was Cute” by Kim Teeple.

“I shared my first kiss with two boys, best friends.” At Eclectica, “Kissing in Tandem” by Valerie Fioravanti.

“On each day she was supposed to write a reason to live.” At The Collagist, “Light” by Michael Palmer.

I’m always looking for journals with a web presence that publish excellent flash nonfiction. If you know of any good sites I might be missing, put a note in the comments section or send me an email.

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:

Paul Muldoon’s Wayside Shrines: “During graduate school, I once stabbed myself with a Paul Muldoon poem (I had to have surgery). It’s like it had all the answers – it was fraught with human life. In Muldoon’s world, there would be no boring, 400-page books. Just flea market curiosities and the American Dream.” – Mickey Hess …more

“But there’s a more pressing issue at hand: after little Joshua—the story’s grinning, crapping hero—learns where to drop his bombs, he does not once wear pants.”

— At The Millions, Jacob Lambert laments the subversive nature of Once Upon a Potty and other children’s picture books.

Maybe you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, but you can refuse to sell it if it features Alexander the Great’s butt.

Ron Charles wants to tell you about how to make a hip book review. (via)

The LA Times has a literary tour of New Orleans for you. (via)

Electric Lit has a cool new one sentence animation of Patrick DeWitt’s short story.

Roy Peter Clark on how grammar is really magic. This is a really good interview.

It’d be a good idea to click on where it says “…more.” Rumpus Books kind of kicked ass this week. …more

The October book club selection is The Instructions by Adam Levin, published by McSweeney’s. The Instructions is 1,024 pages, hardcover.

The November book club selection is a Rumpus Paper Internets hardcover original, Rumpus Women Vol. I, edited by Elissa Bassist and Julie Greicius.

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom will begin shipping this Monday to the Jonathan Franzen One-Off Book Club subscribers.

Our September book club selection, Lan Samantha Chang’s All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, will ship Wednesday, September 1st.

We’re now shipping our September poetry club selection, Timothy Donnelly’s The Cloud Corporation.

The poetry club discussion with Shane Book is this Sunday at 6pm. The book club discussion with Tao Lin is Thursday, September 2nd at 6pm. The conversation with Jonathan Franzen is September 23 at 1pm. All times Pacific.

If you’re an international subscriber and you joined at the original price of $25 a month we’re going to have to unsubscribe you after this month. To resubscribe at the international rate without having your subscriptions overlap contact Isaac at isaac AT therumpus.net.

If you’re a member of one of the book clubs and you’re not on the announcement list, and therefore didn’t know when the discussion with the author is happening, send an email to isaac AT therumpus.net and ask to be put on the list.

Shake and bake.