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Posts Tagged: Steve Almond

Boston Marathon Roundup

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If you’re looking for a token of solace after the Boston marathon bombings, please check out Roxane Gay’s words if you haven’t already. And Thomas Page McBee reflects on ways to help when feeling helpless.

At the Guardian, Rumpus columnist Steve Almond comments on the histrionic attitude the media has taken on in the wake of the explosions, and wonders if “events such as Monday’s bombing can somehow morally enlarge us as a nation, can help us imagine the suffering of other people and our own duty to those people – wherever they happen to live.”

Boston.com’s Metro Desk eulogizes Martin William Richard, the 8-year old who was killed.

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Don’t Worry Too Much About Goodreads, Says Steve Almond

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Amazon’s buyout of Goodreads has a lot of people curling their lips in disgust, and Rumpus columnist Steve Almond is among them: “As a reader and writer I find all this pretty despicable.”

But it’s worth zooming out and looking at the buyout’s context: industry-wide changes to publishing’s traditional (and deeply dysfunctional) business practices.

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“Attention Is the First and Final Act of Love”

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Steve Almond’s Writs of Passion is “the best Valentine’s gift money can buy,” at least according to About.com (and us!).

About.com guide Corey Silverberg interviewed Almond about pleasure, emotional danger, and how to write sex scenes.

A preview:

…even if we do enjoy sex, we find all kinds of ways to punish ourselves for that pleasure.

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Here Are Some Stories Seth Likes

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Here’s a few very short stories for your Monday morning:

“When a door opens and you can’t see who’s coming, it’s almost always a cat that would like to be your lover.” — At BLIP MAGAZINE, “The Cat Lover” by Thaisa Frank. 

“We sweet-lipped drag queens for clean sheets.” — At The Collagist, “And Then We Were Happy” by T Kira Madden. 

“She shakes her head and says, “I don’t drink.” She did years ago.

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Muni Anti-Muslim Ad Controversy

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Adam Serwer reports for Mother Jones on the anti-Muslim advertisements that have recently appeared on Muni vehicles. The advertisements are paid for by Pamela Geller, an anti-muslim blogger:

“The ads declare that ‘in any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man’—a paraphrase of an Ayn Rand quote—while also urging readers to ‘support Israel’ and ‘defeat jihad.’”

Geller ran similar advertisements with the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority last year, citing her first amendment rights as grounds to keep them posted.

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EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT STEVE ALMOND’S TAXES

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“Further questions should be referred to my accountant, the aforementioned Marty, who is no longer employed by H&R Block and who was, last time I checked, living in a small cardboard domicile outside Davis Square.”

In response to Mitt Romney’s recalcitrance to release more of his tax returns, Rumpus columnist and author Steve Almond has provided Boston’s NPR affiliate radio station WBUR with his own returns — complete with explanatory notes that give financial transparency a new meaning.

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Steve Almond on Comedy and Politics

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“Why take to the streets when Stewart and Colbert are on the case? It’s a lot easier, and more fun, to experience the war as a passive form of entertainment than as a source of moral distress requiring citizen activism.”

At The Baffler, Rumpus columnist Steve Almond takes on comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, arguing that the comedians serve, largely, to mollify the public by staunching desire for active action against unjust power structures by engaging in acts of essentially harmless ridicule.

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