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Rumpus Articles
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A Look at the Journalism Job Market
As the internet continues to take over the world, more and more of us begin to fancy ourselves as writers and hop on the blog-wagon, but how many viable journalistic positions are there really room for in the big wide…
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“A Bolaño Syllabus”
Have you read (or are you reading) Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 yet? We may have mentioned it once or twice here at The Rumpus, but only once or twice. Needless to say the book has been, rightfully, getting a lot of…
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Dig Bunny Dig
Musician and author Nick Cave talks about his new book, The Death of Bunny Munro, “a sordid tale about a sex-crazed, drug-addled, adulterous traveling salesman and the 9-year-old son with whose care he suddenly finds himself charged.” Sounds about right…
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An Appreciation of John Hawkes
“But What I Really Love About This Is This Amazing Game That You’ve Invented”
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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…