Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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Morning Coffee
OMG new dinosaur!!! (which helps solve evolutionary mysteries of the t-rex, or something, whatever). The History of Jobs in America (a graph). “On the asking of favors from established writers.” I’ve often wondered what the internet and digital technolgy has…
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Label 228: Art on Priority Mail Stickers
Soft Skull Press has got a new book out called Label 228, featuring art made on Priority Mail labels. Juxtapoz blogger Elise Hennigan has written a review of the book that includes some samples of the collected art. The curator,…
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Imagine No Religion?
The other day I was walking down Mission Street in San Francisco and I saw a billboard on the side of a passing bus that read, “Imagine No Religion.” It was done in the style of stained glass, deliberately meant…
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Depression May Be Beneficial (For Writers)
“Yet some scientists are suggesting that depression — peculiarly prevalent for a mental disorder — is not a malfunction at all, but an evolutionary adaptation, a state of mind which can have debilitating effects, but also promotes highly analytical thinking.”…
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The Rumpus Review of The Informant!
For his role in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! as corporate executive turned whistleblower Mark Whitacre, Matt Damon gained something like thirty pounds. He didn’t need do it to look like the real Whitacre because none of us know what the…
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When a Writer Becomes an Adjective
Kafka. Joyce. Woolf. Dickens. Nabokov. All of these writers have become adjectives. (Arguably, “Kafkaesque” is the most overused one of the mix. And “Nabokovian” the least-earned moniker.) Just last April, a prolific and prophetic English writer by the name of…
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Rene Daumal at Parabola
I spend a lot of my time rediscovering things. It’s a nifty, almost unconscious trick. All it necessitates is wandering through a landscape, engaging with reality and picking up on sensory cues. Whether it’s a certain food I once loved,…
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FUNNY WOMEN #2: A Play About Post-Racial America in Seven Acts
(or Seven Things White People Have Really Said to Me Since November 4, 2008)
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Tune of the Day
Artists: Raekwon ft. Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, and Method Man Song: “House of Flying Daggers”
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Books
“Our world is fragmented, Amanda Eyre Ward seems to say, in all the ways that it might be. I’m going to put it back together for you, slowly. Take my hand.” Kurt Caswell on Amanda Eyre Ward’s new collection of…
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A Life in 3,653 Pictures
Almost every time I’ve been home to Toronto in the past six years, and visiting with my dear friends Greg and Meredith, I hear a really great story about Meredith’s friend Jeff Harris, who’s the photo editor at Maclean’s and,…
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Bicycle Byrne
David Byrne talks with USA Today about his latest book, Bicycle Diaries, which is described as “a political and philosophical travelogue tied together by Byrne’s bike rides in cities, from Niagara Falls to San Francisco, London to Manila.” The multi-talented…