Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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William T. Vollmann Made Me A San Franciscan
One of the more anticipated summer novels of the season is also probably one of the longest, most disturbing and most intimidating: Imperial, William T. Vollman’s mammoth exploration of the U.S.-Mexican border in Imperial County, CA. Clocking in at about…
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Somalian Refugee Writers Show the Way
Dadaab is not an oasis. There is no water. In July, food rations are expected to be cut back to 1000 calories a day. The camps are short 38,000 latrines. Every year only twenty students from the entire camp escape…
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What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going
Five short stories modeled on the works of the old masters make up this smart, witty first collection
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Movies Briefly, The Proposal (2009)
The title The Proposal has two meanings; it refers to the improvised marriage between shrew boss Margaret (Sandra Bullock) and exasperated assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) devised to stave off her deportation, as well as to their jobs in the world…
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Movies Briefly, Suspiria (1977)
It boggles my mind that Dario Argento directed a movie called Deep Red and it is not this picture. How is that possible? How could any movie not set entirely in a darkroom be more about the color red than…
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The Dead Sea Scrolls of John Dillinger
The tale of a long-lost account of one of America’s most notorious criminals, a struggling ad man, and the contributing editor at Playboy who brought the story to light.
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Morning Coffee
Pictures of people looking at monuments. Eventually all of photography will just fold into itself. Using Google Earth and the country of Slovenia to create a satelite alphabet. (via Metafilter.) Did I just mention Slovenia? That must mean it’s time…
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The Science of Happiness
From an interview in The Sun with psychologist Barbara Fredrickson: “[Some] researchers have found that the number of positive emotions a person feels predicts his or her satisfaction with life. What we’ve done is uncover how positive emotions actually cause us…
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Caleb Crain Elaborates
Surely you remember our note about Caleb Crain’s new book, The Wreck of the Henry Clay? (He noticed us!) If you don’t remember the story, then briefly: it’s a collection of untimely essays from his blog, Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, edited…
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Evening Cocktail
It’s been a hot day, so have a cold one. The nation’s first public library was founded on this day in 1731, when Benjamin Franklin and fifty associates pooled their books, and annual dues to buy more books, for the…
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“Reading That’s Bad for You,” or: Lessons in Publishing
Ron Charles of the Washington Post reports on Electric Literature, a new bi-monthly magazine that is making lit. mags differently. I’ve noted five lessons about publishing via Electric Literature’s watershed model: “Amid all the dismal reports about the death of…