Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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On the Couch
The protagonist of this novel about addiction, therapy, and recovery, confronts many of the same issues as its author.
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Choose Your Own “Adventure”
In his post “The Limits of Narrative” Mark Pritchard links to Alison Flood’s recent article “How I learned to cheat at reading” in which she writes “It was the Choose Your Own Adventure books that led me astray.” Flood admitted…
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Random Media Notes
The New York Times is going into the wine business in hopes of making some scratch. Glenn Beck continues to lose sponsors. Top US media companies and marketers have created a consortium to challenge Nielsen. Jon Friedman writes “CNN’s Lou…
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Grandmaster of 108
“Born in Greece and raised on West 71st Street in Manhattan, Kessler started skateboarding when he was 11. This was in the 1970s, a time when skateboarding was so alien to New York City that he had to mail-order his…
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Magic Gardens
“I’m a stripper, rocker, bartender, and writer. I had a lot of plans last year, but none of them involved breast cancer. The disease sidetracked my livelihood, threatened my life, and forced me to reinvent my chest. So far, I’ve…
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Exactly Like Liz Phair, Except Older. And With Hypochondria.
I told myself she reminded me of Liz Phair, but without the marijuana-steeped tomboy, devil-may-care, laid-back attitude of Liz Phair. This is the type of thing you tell yourself when you’re young, or at least when I was young. The…
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Morning Coffee
Filling in for Dan this week, I feel almost as though I’ve become him. This man stole identities using Limewire. My method is superior. If anyone wants to try and prove I’m not Dan, feel free to try sequencing my…
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The End of News? Another Beginning
“[The] image of the Internet as parasite has some foundation. Without the vital news-gathering performed by established institutions, many Web sites would sputter and die. “In their sweep and scorn, however, [statements like ‘the parasite is killing the host’] seem…
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An Open Letter Concerning The Authors Guild vs. Google, Inc.
The lawyers will get $30 million—does that mean the authors are getting screwed?
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Details on DFW’s Pale King
As you probably already know, David Foster Wallace left an unfinished novel called The Pale King upon his death. Today Tim Martin of the Telegraph UK wrote a remembrance of DFW that, among many other things, includes details of the…
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Meet Mario Bellatin
“A few years ago the Mexican novelist Mario Bellatin attended one of those literary conferences here where writers are asked to talk about their own favorites. Unwilling to make a choice, he invented a Japanese author named Shiki Nagaoka and…