The Daily Rumpus
Get Overly Personal Emails
From Stephen Elliott
If you’re not already listening to the Believer’s new podcast, the Organist, don’t worry—there’s still time to catch up!
The third episode, posted earlier this month, swings from hillbilly records to classic horror movies, hitting everything in between.
It’s worth a listen for the weird-ass Jack White/Conan O’Brien interview alone.
...moreIn honor of National Poetry Month, please check out poet Ali Liebegott’s wonderfully conducted interview with the eminent Dorianne Laux, where Laux sheds light on Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay for helping her hone her poetic craft.
...moreIf I hadn’t been able to talk with myself, with respect, as a whole human being, who had a mind and heart and desires, a goodness, a desire to be good—you know, all of those things, I think, are the original impulse when we sit down and write. I’m not the only person in the world who is suffering.
If you’re a regular Rumpus reader, you probably like essays. And if you like essays, you’ll probably enjoy this New York Times opinion piece about their literary and social value:
...moreEver since Michel de Montaigne, the founder of the modern essay, gave as a motto his befuddled “What do I know?” and put forth a vision of humanity as mentally wavering and inconstant, the essay has become a meadow inviting contradiction, paradox, irresolution, and self-doubt.
Our friends at The Believer are giving away ten free tickets to “Beck’s Song Reader” at Sonos Studios next Thursday evening in Los Angeles.
...moreThe event isn’t open to the public, so if you want to come chill alongside Beck (THE BECK!
Joan Didion’s 78th birthday is as good an excuse as any to revisit her conversation with Sheila Heti for the Believer.
The two talk about the performative aspects of writing, the confidence a writer has to claim, and Didion’s aborted oceanography career.
...moreCome out this Thursday night to The Makeout Room from 7-10 for McSweeney’s annual Holiday Party!
Tickets can be purchased here and guests receive a free copy of the Believer or Lucky Peach Magazine, treats from Dandelion Chocolate, Tiger Beer, Holiday Eats, and Unquantifiable Entertainment.
...moreSubscriptions to The Believer are $5 off all week long in celebration of their upcoming 2012 music issue.
The issue features a free cassette tape (and digital download) curated by Calvin Johnson, and interviews with Lucinda Williams, Mobe, Brian Chippendale, and Wes Borland.
...moreBeliever co-founder and co-editor Heidi Julavitz writes about how online journals (such as The Rumpus!) caused the Believer to rethink some of its original tenets, including a strong resistance to virtualization.
“Ultimately we risked losing readers, and we risked losing writers, too.
...moreAuthor Sheila Heti, a long-time astrology naysayer, came across popular U.K. astrologer Jonathan Cainer last year and has been following his daily writings ever since. In conversation at The Believer, Heti asks Cainer about his sense of narrative, time, and ethical obligations.
...moreThe Believer will present Laurel Nakadate’s The Wolf Knife at the IFC Center on Monday, April 9th at 8pm. The screening, which celebrates the release of The Believer’s new film issue, will be followed by a conversation between Nakadate and Rumpus columnist Rick Moody.
...moreLitquake and The Believer are presenting a conversation between novelist, essayist, and New York Times Book Review columnist Geoff Dyer and film critic David Thomson. Tonight, 7p.m. at North Beach’s Tosca Café. Admission is free. Get there early, Bay Area!
...more“Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can’t reach otherwise.”
Joan Didion’s conversation with Sheila Heti is now available in its entirety at The Believer.
...moreThe Believer is teasing us with ongoing highlights of a conversation between Sheila Heti and Joan Didion before posting the interview in its entirety. In this snippet Didion discusses writing as performance.
...moreAt the Believer, Meghan Daum dissects the “commenting culture” of the Internet and the rampant “haterade” in our public discourse.
“A young person (any person) who published a piece as incendiary as “Safe-Sex Lies” today would be chewed up and spit out so many times over by bloggers and commenters and cable-news screamers that the idea of “understanding what I was trying to get across” would seem not just quaint but moot.”
...moreAllen Ginsberg debuted “Howl” at the Six Gallery Reading on October 7, 1955. In 2006, for the 50th anniversary of the poem’s publication, City Lights came out with Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression and The Believer reflected on the significance of “Howl” and Ginsberg’s less celebrated antiwar poem “Wichita Vortex Sutra.”
...moreThis September’s Rumpus event is the ultimate San Francisco literary collaboration. We’re teaming us with The Believer Magazine to bring you a night of literary joy!
Join us September 12th (TONIGHT!), 7pm at the Make-out Room, 3225-22nd Street, San Francisco!
...moreWhatcha doin tonight, Brooklyn? There’s no better way to celebrate the end of the storm than going to this Believer Magazine event at Public Assembly. It’s a celebration of the 2011 music issue (a copy of which is rewarded to you with admission).
...moreLadies and Gentlemen, the 2011 Music Issue of the Believer Magazine is upon us. This year’s issue has got some unprecedented audible sensations, which I will relay in the following list:
1. Trey Anastasio of Phish is interviewed for this issue (did you know that’s rare?).
...moreNovelist Chris Bachedler discusses crafting his latest book, Abbott Awaits, about a self-conscious professor.
...moreThis week in San Francisco, Granta at City Lights, literature meets food at Feast of Words and to-the-death battle at Literary Death Match, and Believer Magazine hangs out at Electric Works.
Monday 12/6: Celebrate issue 113 of Granta magazine at City Lights with readings by Daniel Alarcón, Carlos Labbé, Andrés Felipe Solano, and Carlos Yushimito.
...more“Like most people, I would rather be someone else. The prose this other self would write would be sharp and coiled, deadly like a snake; not all soggy and attenuated like a garden hose, spritzing dewily, indiscriminately, over thorns and flowers.
...moreOver at The Utne Reader, Keith Goetzman asks a question originally posed by John D’Agata, “Do we read (nonfiction) to receive information, or do we read it to experience art?”
...moreIf you have any doubts about the power of the novel, or its lasting cultural significance, or its transcendent ability to deepen and enrich our chaotic earthly experiences, look no further than this impassioned conversation at The Believer between two of our most exciting novelists, Colum McCann and Alexander Hemon.
...moreEarlier today Chris blogged about a guy who’s translating Moby-Dick into emoji. Which reminded me of something.
Recently one of our favorite writers, Damion Searls, was pondering a 2007 abridgment of Moby-Dick called Moby-Dick in Half the Time.
...moreIn The Believer, Rebecca Solnit gives some advice I hope to someday learn to follow completely:
“Apolitical is a political position, yes, and a dreary one. The choice by a lot of young writers to hide out among dinky, dainty, and even trivial topics—I see it as, at its best, an attempt by young white guys to be anti-hegemonic, unimposing.
...moreFrom the Believer: The history of America is the history of the automobile industry and car salesmen are the preachers in the church of the American dream.
...more
This week, Rumpus books published a review of a story collection by Greg Gerke, an interview with Benjamin Anastas, a Rumpus Reprint by our own Stephen Elliott, and an exclusive excerpt from a best of the Believer compilation.
Video for a previously unreleased song by Sam Phillips, which appears on The Believer‘s July/August 2009 Music Issue CD entitled “Fantastic and Spectacular,” which was compiled by Daniel Handler.
Over the weekend, I finally got around to unboxing and shelving my archived litmags in the new apartment. As I placed my issues of the Believer back into magazine files in proper order, the top headline on the cover of the May 2004 issue (number 13) caught my attention: A Primer for All of Us: How to Read and Perhaps Enjoy New Poetry, by Stephen Burt.
...more
Guernica talks to Fatima Bhutto, 27-year-old poet and Pakistan’s heir apparent, about the death of her father in one of Pakistan’s famous “encounters,” the two sides of Benazir and why Obama legitimizes the Taliban.
In “Dancing About Architecture,” Arthur Philips’s essay in the July issue of The Believer, Philips offers a worthy apology for writing on music, and why the physical impact of the phrase “chill horn,” in William Gaddis’s The Recognitions, has value.
...more