August 2012
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The Comedian Mayor: The Rumpus Interview with Jón Gnarr
Iceland’s most famous comedian ran for mayor of Reykjavic, and won…
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“My American Dream Sounds Like Blackstar”
Teju Cole writes for NPR about how Mos Def and Talib Kweli’s collaborative project Black Star perfectly encapsulates the experience of living in New York: “But, shorn of musical accompaniment, we also recognize that these are the best words in the best…
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How Critics Affect Artists
An artist’s work can take years to complete, while a critic’s take on said art can be formulated in a matter of hours. This distinction is pointed out early on in Richard Brody’s discussion of criticism at The New Yorker. …
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The Secret World of Punctuation
“Em-dash is complicated, and she’s not about to let you forget it. It takes three keys to create her, after all. She lives on the blood of baby hyphens, and one time, in a bar, while very drunk, she stole…
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Claire Bidwell Smith responds to Stephen Elliott’s Letter In The Mail
That house was the first place I felt safe after my mother died. It was the first place where I felt comfortable being the girl I had suddenly become in her absence.
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“Hard Times in the Uncanny Valley”
Colson Whitehead went on a London Olympics adventure, which you can read all about in his multi-part dispatch for Grantland. “I started scoring events in terms of what they’d offer in a human-annihilation-type scenario. Offensewise, archery skills seemed like an…
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Engine Empire by Cathy Park Hong
There remain a few shops, labels, and presses in the United States that embody DIY artistic independence in the best way, combining the intensity and existential tenacity of hardcore punk with the zine culture’s relentless focus on aesthetics, history, honesty…
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HEAVY-HANDED: Walgreens
“Sometimes I feel like I’m in some kind of short break between segments of my actual life.”
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Someday we’ll run out of abandoned things to photograph and just have to resort to flying houses. Welcome to the world, crazy new cave spider. Big week for long missing vehicles: maybe we’ve figured out what happened to Amelia Earhart…
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The Rumpus Interview with Richard Lloyd Parry
Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor and Tokyo Bureau Chief of The London Times, covered the case of Lucie Blackman as it unfolded and now, a decade later, has published an expanded—and fascinating—account in his second book, People Who Eat Darkness:…
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The Agony of Undefeat
Our friends at WRITE CLUB SF are hosting their awesome monthly event tonight, so go if you have the chance! “The Agony of Undefeat (Special XL Edition!)” will feature 8 WRITE CLUB SF champions duking it out, with only 4 left undefeated.…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Under the Maud Moon” by Galway Kinnell
A round- cheeked girlchild comes awake in her crib. The green swaddlings tear open I first encountered the last poem I loved, Galway Kinnell’s “Under the Maud Moon,” eleven summers ago, after a short trip to a novel writing workshop…