Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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Crown of Sonnets
An anthology of stories from the new Russia shows the continuity between contemporary writers and their canonical predecessors
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Steve Almond’s Bad Poetry Corner #2: Viper
Writing wretched verse so you don’t have to since 1995. Viper She told me how, as a girl, she slept each night with a different stuffed animal to make the others jealous
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Why Were Artists Poor?
Reading Jeremy’s post on Andrew Keen and starving artists, I couldn’t help but think of Joel Barlow (1754-1812). Barlow was a poet, one of the Connecticut Wits, to be precise, so my mental leap probably owes more to the fact…
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Random Media Notes
Financial Times warns readers: ‘don’t email our articles.’ A 26 year old former fact checker is the new managing editor of The New Yorker. Wall Street Journal claims a P.R. executive’s column is not a conflict of interest, despite the…
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Writing Is Hard
First, watch this: Hamlet 2 preview (pay special attention around the 49-second mark). Steve Coogan, playing Dana Marschz, beautifully captures the life of a writer in the overshadowed and under-acclaimed Hamlet 2 when he laments, “Oh my god, writing is…
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The Last Book I Loved: The Moviegoer
I just had another read of Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, because I admire it and because I sought two specific paragraphs from the novel. I wanted to read them again. With our everydayness so saturated with news media and opinion…
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Afghan Star: A Conversation with Tamim Ansary
Pop Idol has been widely imitated throughout the world [American Idol here in the states] , but Afghanistan is possibly the only place where the mere existence of a televised, Western-style talent show amounts to a political statement.
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Morning Coffee
The 10 geekiest tattoos. “An essay on the horrors of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, in the form of a Choose Your Own Adventure® story” from Rudolph Delson. It is hard to have babies in outer space. Mythical creatures vendiagram-ed.…
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Why Are Artists Poor?
It’s a question close to our hearts, and Andrew Keen — who has argued, in his own words, that “the Internet is killing our culture and undermining the livelihood of cultural producers” — addresses it in a Telegraph UK article…
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Pittsburgh, Writer’s Haven
“According to the Post-Gazette article, writers are realizing how great Pittsburgh is, and moving there en-masse. “Of course, the article makes clear, it’s not about the money (there is not much)—it’s about being able to attend Encyclopedia Destructica’s weekly ‘binding…