Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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Morning Coffee
Proof that everything that could possibly exist does somewhere: Life takes you inside a fish hospital. Library themed ice cream? It turns out that coin flips aren’t fair at all. Dang, I guess I should have gone to grad school…
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L.A. on Fire
Nathanael West‘s The Day of the Locust tells the story of Tod Hackett, a painter trying to survive in Hollywood while planning his masterpiece, “The Burning of Los Angeles.” Hackett is surrounded by dubious characters: an actress as beautiful as…
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Boxes Worth More Than Your Soul
“Brillo 5, a work of art by Gavin Turk, will be auctioned off at Christie’s postwar and contemporary art sale on September 23. “Christie’s describes the piece of art as ‘an ironic and ambiguous work that is essentially a copy…
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Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys
“There’s something unique about being a member of the sex worker club, an instant camaraderie that bonds one to people who would otherwise be strangers, and this chemistry is something of which Sterry can’t get enough.”
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Nicolas Le Borgne
The art website Fecal Face has a wonderful feature where they invite artists to submit some pieces along with answers to a standard questionnaire. From time to time they run one of these submissions as a “mini-interview.” Yesterday’s subject was…
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The Write Links
“Unsettled: The PW Survey on the Google Book Settlement” A Q&A with (rockstar) literary agent Georges Borchardt. Underground Library is hoping to do for the literary underground what MySpace has done for independent music. More on the Google settlement: “Libraries…
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Random Media Notes
The New York Times’ latest revenue stream? Seminars taught by columnists. “Elle Offers Internship to Homeless Girl” (via Mediabistro) Sony releases latest Kindle rival, the Reader Daily Edition. “Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teens” New Vibe gets new editor-in-chief.
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Would Tolstoy Get Tenure?
“Name of applicant: Rimbaud, Arthur “The candidate is not suited to a university environment except as an expellable member of a fraternity – if one would take him. The committee unanimously withholds details.” Times Higher Education ponders how academic search…
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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…