Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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The Importance of Being Still: The Rumpus Interview With Charles Baxter
In his essay, Baxter discusses the degree to which Americans “have distrusted silence and its parent condition, stillness.”
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Morning Coffee
The LA Times looks back on “Day of the Locust.” For some reason, placebos seem to be getting more effective. Take THAT science and medical advances! Atlas Obscura is a wiki-type set for all the world’s oddities, curios, and tourist…
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Kubrick’s 1961 Lolita is the First 70s Movie
The other day I read a rambling but entertaining essay over on Bright Lights Film Journal, called All Tomorrow’s Playground Narratives, which analyzed Kubrick’s Lolita in terms of — well, approximately anything that occurred to the guy, it would seem.…
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Jennie Ottinger at Johansson Projects
Lately I’ve been trying to put myself together—eating seaweed and swimming laps. But Jennie Ottinger’s paintings, up at Johansson Projects in Oakland, reminded me it’s okay to fall apart.
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The Best Fake Holocaust Memoir Ever
Born (and undoubtedly circumsized) in 2001, Booklyn-based Heeb Magazine has been irreverently covering Jewish culture for nearly a decade. Recently they one-upped themselves in the hilariously inappropriate category with the Germany Issue’s Fake Holocaust Memoir Competition. The winner? A “harrowing…
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How to Leave Hialeah
“Crucet is endowed with the double vision that helped Richard Wright and Salman Rushdie describe the lives of marginalized people with poignancy, humor, and rich music.”
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Former Rapper’s PhD Paid for By Record Label
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably seen the television ad for Dr. Pepper where spokes-rapper Dr. Dre utters the phrase, “Trust me, I’m a doctor.” But while Dre’s doctorate is fantastical at best, Roxanne Shante’s PhD is…
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Go on! Embed me!
Sharing is caring on the Internet. The idea is that magazines and newspapers, struggling for survival, want one thing: more distribution. So why not make it easier for bloggers and writers to embed posts on their sites, rather than having…
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Playing With Words
One thing that fascinates me about writing is how people play with the medium: making up games and assignments to bring us together. For example the Napkin Project at Esquire, where cocktail napkins are mailed to writers and then returned,…