Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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Fighting the Thousand Year War
Praveen Mavdan and Christin Evans, owners for the past two years of the Booksmith in San Francisco, are writing a series of weekly articles on the Huffington Post about their experiences running the store and, most importantly, their efforts to…
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Reviewing The Reviewers
“Criticism and reviews are both meta-forms–if they don’t in some way amplify or complicate the subject of their focus, then they shouldn’t exist. So much of what passes for reviews or criticism that I read online seems not simply to…
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The Beauty Of Black Sparrow Books
The love of reading and the love of books, while almost always coinciding are still, in essence two different things. If I loved to read as much as I loved books, for instance, then I wouldn’t own at least a…
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Sleeper’s Wake
John Wraith’s penis is a neat literary device. It provides character depth and motivation, and is central to every plot twist in the book.
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On Being A Citizen Of Literature
“There’s a scene at the end of Ugrešić’s 1993 essay collection Have A Nice Day: From The Balkan War to the American Dream where the author describes an encounter that occurred while waiting in line for her I.D. card in…
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Are We Talking About Sex Differently?
My girlfriend is reading Henry Miller, we’re applying for food stamps and I’m having nightmares about children having died in my house. I spent the last weekend partying in Al Capone’s old hideout. And woke up to find myself waiting…
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The Big Book Club
There are books on the NEA’s list that I haven’t read and undoubtedly should read—but unless I’ve made a New Year’s resolution, I prefer to stumble upon my next book.
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Charlie Crespo: The Last Book I Loved, Infinite Jest
After reading David Foster Wallace’s short story collection, Girl With Curious Hair, I was determined to read Infinite Jest. I found Wallace’s prose to be unlike anything I had ever read before and even though he used structures or techniques…
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Random Media Notes
Sam Zell, Chairman and CEO of the Tribune Company (publisher of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times), says no newspapers can survive. (via MediaBistro) “Politico owner Robert Allbritton is planning to launch a local Washington D.C news website.”…
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“A Man of Confused but Deep Spirituality”
On October 21st, Jack Kerouac had been dead exactly forty years. You’d be pressed to find a more quoted, misunderstood, revered, and culturally significant icon of the latter half of the 20th century. Yet his literary contributions remain pretty controversial.…