“We Got Off on Being Puppeteers.”
Tamler Sommers of The Believer recently interviewed Dr. Phil Zimbardo about his infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. The 1971 experiment randomly assigned intelligent, normal, healthy young men to the role of…
Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
Mourning the Book
I expected to feel a sense of accomplishment when I finished Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose," but instead I felt lost, grief-stricken. It was a mixture of sadness for the main character and a fear that I might yet ruin my own life—but mostly I wanted to be back in the middle of that book.
Adam Robinson: The Last Book I Loved, Alaska
I can’t figure out why James Michener gets such short shrift. Is it because he’s too popular? Or because he had help with his painstaking geographical research? The critical disregard…
Morning Coffee
Giant rat discovered in secret volcano. The new species of rat doesn’t have a name yet, if anyone has any ideas. Slate on new bubble technologies. Man accidentally fires a…
Diary of a Young Survivor
A playwright’s first novel takes on adolescence and grief in a post-9/11 world
HAPPY LABOR DAY: AN OXYMORON
Labor Day. The Rodney Dangerfield of holidays. Nobody knows why it’s treated like the runt of the celebration litter. Maybe it has to something to do with our biological clocks…
Morning Coffee: Labor Day Edition
The season is drawing to a close and with it we bring you our favorite MC links of the summer. Life takes you inside a fish hospital (my heart breaks…
Lester Bangs on John Lennon
Jacket Copy has scrounged up an old op-ed written by the rock critic Lester Bangs, published six days after John Lennon was killed. “Look: I don’t think I’m insensitive or…
Warning: Don’t Mess with Damien Hirst’s Pencils
The artist Damien Hirst is trying to ruin a seventeen year old artist named Cartrain … for stealing a pack of pencils as a practical joke. Originally, Hirst went after…
Rebecca Solnit on Writing What Matters
In 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…
Putin Scares Pants Off Condé Nast, Gawker Saves Day
Did you know that GQ recently published a groundbreaking story which questions “the official line” on the 1999 bombings — supposedly committed by Chechen rebels — that Vladimir Putin used…
