Newspapers in New York: News Is a Verb
If you won’t read a newspaper on a New York City subway, where will you read it? As zeitgeist, as canary in the mine, the habits of New York subway…
Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
Daniel Pearce: The Last Book I Loved, Mr. Bridge
Evan S. Connell’s Mr. Bridge—a companion piece to his earlier novel, Mrs. Bridge—offers a rare sort of company. And it’s unexpected company: Its protagonist, after all, is a tacitly-but-virulently xenophobic,…
All the Water
“Absent characters often hover around the edges of these stories. Children long for dead parents; husbands deceased, divorced, or ignored wander in and out of thoughts. Creatures both real and…
Annals of Advertising: Jeans in “America”
Yes, that is from a Walt Whitman poem; and apparently Walt thinks you need some new jeans. More from the Annals of Advertising.
The Blurb #11: A Fresh Eye
Why do so many of us, as readers or maybe as a society, assume that originality springs forth out of nothing, although at the same time we understand that every idea, every story, has a precedent?
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Leakage Problem
The American Scholar posted a fascinating (and a bit depressing) article by William J. Quirk called “Living on $500,000 a Year.” The article is about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tax returns,…
Making Out in the Back of Horseless Carriages!
Teen hysteria, courtesy of the February 14, 1925 issue of the New York Evening Journal:
Health Care Links
Reversal: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pushes for a public option, but one that comes with an escape hatch. Leadership, progressives, and advocacy groups get behind the opt-out plan after…
Morning Coffee
Kevin Van Aelst uses house-hold objects to illustrate scientific principles. Silly beautiful things. Also: pantone staircase. Are you a woman trying to make it in the criminal underground? You should…
The Rumpus Interview with Lydia Millet
When asked why I publish what I publish, I often reply—I publish in order to understand why I published. Until a book goes out into the world to be engaged…
David Lynch Thinks About Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha, photographer of twenty-six affectless Standard gas stations in LA, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, and painter of words floating in space, with or without a setting, is…