Alison Tyler: The Last Book I Loved, Born Standing Up
The album is from 1974, but we got our grubby little hands on a copy of a tape in the early 80s, which we played so often we had the…
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Rumpus Articles
The Last Book I Loved: Microcosms
The book I’m reading now, Microcosms by Claudio Magris. I’m traveling in China while falling in love with a book about the tiny and strange borderlands between Croatia (Istria) and…
Why are we dead anyhow?
A brief look at James Purdy’s career. It is customary to speak of an artist having his fingers on the pulse of a nation’s culture. Purdy, on the contrary, repeatedly…
How Books Got Their Titles
A blog about how famous books got their titles, peppered with amusing and surprisingly sexual anecdotes. John Cleland’s title Fanny Hill is dirty, but not for the reasons you might…
The Chaser
The Chaser is Australia’s answer to Monty Python, the Frat Pack, the Kings of Comedy, and every other great comedy squadron. The Chaser began with a satirical newspaper, and has…
The Rumpus Review of Sunshine Cleaning
Sunshine [Cleaning] is more about the gallows than the humor.
Benjamin Sarlin: The Last Book I Loved, I Have Fun Everywhere I Go
I don’t think I’ve had more fun with any recent read than last year’s I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking…
Spreading the gospel: OWH OOOOOWWWHH!
In another time, he would have been called prophet. So reads the gravestone of the comedian Sam Kinison. On April 10, 1992, at age 38, Kinison met his end in…
The Last Book I Loved: Too Big to Miss
I used to read lots of mysteries, and for some reason I stopped. Then I heard about Sue Ann Jaffarian’s mysteries from Mystery Bookstore on Twitter, and got addicted. Her…
Notes from Underground
The world will end in a matter of hours… unless Lowboy can lose his virginity.
Look Out New Yorkers: Black Hand has an Auto
“Maintaining the American spirit of up-to-dateness, which is said to attain its most perfect flower in New York, the Black Hand has now added the automobile to its working machinery….…
Battle of the Books
“Best novel” awards are not often thrown into metaphorical convergence with mixed martial arts. However, as the founders of the Tournament of Books point out, “Everyone knows that, behind the…