The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
This week in New York Keith Gessen and Elif Batuman talk, Guernica has a reading, Joanna Newsom sings and plays harp, Marcel Dzama appears, talks and signs books, The Moth has a Story Slam, Christopher Walken loses a hand and Zoe Kazan gives him one, and Atlas Obscura presents an international celebration of curious and obscure things.
This week in New York Howard Bloom interviewed by Richard Foreman, Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Gopnik discuss mankind, John Cale reflects on music and art, Ed Park and Lynne Tillman read at Triple Canopy and Light Industry’s celebration of their new venue, a tribute to Gilbert Sorrentino, Kevin Sampsell and Justin Taylor read, and exhibitions of artwork by Kiki Smith and Dinh Q.
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I’ve been away for what seems like an eternity, as many of you have been, but here we are, in a new decade, back from the abyss. Here’s some of what we’ve missed here at Rumpus Books.
This week in New York Malcolm Gladwell and James Wood talk about Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual, members of the Velvet Underground reunite at the New York Public Library, 60 Writers/60 Places screens, Anne Carson performs, Andy Warhol films get shown at Anthology Film Archives, Mark Doty and Marie Howe read, and Voice 4 Vision Puppet Festival presents odes to Salvador Dalí and Fernando Pessoa.
PPOW Gallery in Chelsea has been lending its space for a variety of interesting literary arts events through its Hostess Project. A few weeks ago it hosted a screening of a film by writers Michael Kimball and Luca Dipierro, I WILL SMASH YOU.
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Friday October 16, the New Yorker opened its annual weekend festival of readings, conversations, art tours and musical performances. This is my account of the events I attended, which included among others a talk with Malcolm Gladwell, readings by George Saunders, Gary Shteyngart and Jonathan Franzen, a musical performance by Neko Case and a conversation with James Franco.
MONDAY, October 12, 2009 – SUNDAY, October 18, 2009
This week in New York, The New Yorker Festival hits town. And yes, while the “Humor Revue,” “About Towns,” and “Kaffeeklatches” seem to have been sold out before they were on sale, there’re still some good readings and “Screen Gems” available, and a slim, if precariously so, window for getting tickets to sold-out events (see below) – and see a full schedule here; A Festival of Frightening Movies begins at Lincoln Center, and Spike Jonze week continues a the MOMA, in celebration of the Friday release of Where the Wild Things Are.
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Gigantic, A Magazine of Short Prose and Art just launched its online version with chapter 18 of Shya Scanlon’s Forecast 42 Project, new fiction from J.A. Tyler, and art by Thomas Doyle. The online journal also houses Joe Wenderoth’s Seizure State, a soon-to-be mind-bending poetics blog.
“In the middle of laying out what he sees as the new business model of the digital age Anderson is forced to admit that one of his main case studies, YouTube, ‘has so far failed to make any money for Google.’ … Why is that?
...more“When Malcolm Gladwell, a Manhattan-based journalist, turned up last winter to do a monologue at the Lyceum, a West End theatre that has hosted Led Zeppelin and is now home to the Lion King musical, he filled it – twice.
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“I’m totally engaging in cultural stereotyping, no question about it. But I think it’s OK because I’m doing it for a reason, for a good reason…
So long as the stereotype is used as a way of understanding how to fix the problem as opposed to demonizing a people or writing them off, then I think it’s OK.”
Rumpus: Let’s start by defining Outliers for the five people left who haven’t heard of it.
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At a recent 
TED