The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
In the current issue of BookForum, Christian Lorentzen, an editor at the London Review of Books, writes about “the perils of money fiction” in the twenty-first century.
“There are a few ways out of these traps—ersatz journalistic gap filling, hapless gesturing at the system’s perversity, and ogling fortune with envy and scorn—of writing about bankers.
...moreA Goldman Sachs employee resigns and writes an op-ed in the New York Times deriding a culture that looks to make money from, not for, its clients. He talks about Goldman Sachs ripping off their clients and referring to them as muppets.
...moreSports columnist, Rick Reilly is doling out writing advice to Colorado’s J-school graduating class, and not everybody is taking it so well.
It’s a constant dilemma for writers new and old, having to negotiate exposure vs. payment or deciding whether an unpaid internship will eventually lead to some sort of monetary promise.
...more
On Wednesday, I wake a little after ten. This isn’t intentional. It’s not like I set an alarm.
I stumble from the bed to the bathroom to take a long, yellow piss. I brush my teeth—extra well, since my health insurance expired recently, since it doesn’t look like I’ll be seeing the dentist anytime soon.
...moreAmanda Palmer, who says that she’s been getting criticism for making money from her webcasts, has one hell of a manifesto up on her blog called, subtly enough, “Why I Am Not Afraid to Take Your Money.” She’s got a pretty convincing and simple argument as to why artists shouldn’t be afraid to ask their fans to support them:
“artists need to make money to eat and to continue to make art.
...moreA couple months ago, we wrote about Matthew Crawford’s book Shop Class as Soulcraft, and around the same time I read another interesting review of the book, by Caleb Crain. (I refrained from posting about it at the time to avoid Crain-overkill.) In it, he describes the growth of wages, and consequently, leisure during the industrial revolution, and then goes on to produce an amazing quote from Thoreau about money:
...moreA paper from The Harvard Business School on whether it’s OK for artists to be paid. (full PDF download) From the abstract:
...moreWhen art and commerce are mentioned in the same sentence, many people become bad tempered or think something needs fixing.
A few days ago in Morning Coffee I linked to this: “Emotionally Unavailable Until Famous.” What was interesting about this short piece, the decision made by the author to love and be loved, is that it speaks so much to the artistic urge.