Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
-
Kevin Van Aelst
Kevin Van Aelst works in the media of the commonplace. The images in his fingerprint series, for example, are rendered on typewriter paper, or with cheese puffs, fragments of cassette tape, sugar, yarn, kite string or cat shit. Or mustard.…
-
An Oral History of Myself #11: Ashley
I put myself in the group home. I was in the therapist office with my mom and I said, “I give up. I’m not going to try anymore,” meaning getting along with my mom, and he suggested the group home.
-
Blogging for Book Deals
What do Look at this Fucking Hipster, Postcards from Yo Momma, Stuff White People Like, I Can Has Cheezburger, and Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle, have in common (you know, aside being online sensations)? Book deals. Many bloggers, especially…
-
The Magic Hour
Reading such a dense novel can feel like being in the backseat of a car traveling nonstop through a safari, with a reader wanting to stop and poke around a bit, maybe get a little more explanation from the tour…
-
The Freelance Life
The latest issue of the Oxford American includes their annual “Best of the South” package, but it’s also got an essay on the struggles of freelancing, a subject that knows no geographical bounds. For almost 20 years, Thomas Swick edited…
-
The Digital Caste System
The arrival of the Internet and the wide dissemination of information that ensued has inspired the belief that technology may be able to break down hierarchies and allow for the equal access to and expression of information. In “The Not-So-Hidden…
-
The Un-formulaic Life of the Man Who Invented the Movie Formula
Wycliffe A. Hill is the grandfather of the cookie cutter Hollywood movie. Author of Ten Million Photoplay Plots: The Master Key to All Dramatic Plots, which was published in 1919, Hill created an assembly line approach to writing screenplays: character…
-
Auto-tune the News #6
Palin. Drugs. And a certain celebrity who passed away. The latest from The Gregory Brothers (read our mini-interview with the group here).
-
Uncommon Catharsis
Macro Sea has reportedly laid plans to put dumpster pools in strip mall parking lots in Brooklyn to demonstrate the creative re-use of refuse bins. The project is part of Macro Sea’s broader vision to denude the American strip mall…
-
Essays on the Game
With contemporary postcolonial critique, Darkmatter offers a series of papers discussing HBO’s The Wire. With titles including: – “The Wire: Investigating the use of a Neoliberal Institutional Apparatus and a ‘New Humanist’ Philosophical Apparatus,” – “The Politics of Brisket: Jews…
-
The Two Virgins
The summer of 1983 I was nineteen-years old. I was very muscular and very blonde and had nice features. Girls liked me. I was lousy in bed but that wasn’t important back then. Anyway, I was traveling in Europe that…
-
Morning Coffee
Beef up your art history skills. (via @misskatewatson) Hemingway was a spy for the KGB? Garfield Minus Garfield (highlighted by our own Rick Moody). Dolphin inspired personal submarines: for when you have both way too much money and freetime. A…