Winston Smith Is 39
1. Winston Smith is 39. And, rereading 1984 for perhaps the fifth time, so am I.
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Rumpus Articles
Poetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
Whoever wrote this poem lo those many years ago ought to be forced to wear those shorts. I’m really surprised there hasn’t been more of a response to David Orr’s…
Remembrance of Things Fast
A review of So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
The Last Book Party
So, where is the publishing industry going? No one really knows. But we like to speculate. For the March issue of Harper’s Gideon Lewis-Kraus covered the annual Frankfurt Book Fair,…
An Interview with Julie Vanderburg, Obsessive Reader
Julie Vanderburg is a painter, jewelry designer, and mother of three from Seattle, Washington, who is distinguished, among these other things, by the fact that she has been reading the…
A Change in the Air?
“Something is happening in artists’ studios: a shift of emphasis, from surface to depth, and a shift of mood, from mania to melancholy, shrugging off the allures of the money-hypnotized…
Yelling ‘Bout Yelp
The San Francisco-based website Yelp allows users to post reviews of businesses. The idea’s simple enough: trust consumers to tell you the truth about the kind of service you’ll get…
The Bin Laden Machine
Only a few genetic lines–the Hapsburgs, the Hans, the Roosevelts, for instance–have shaped geopolitics as much as the Bin Ladens. In his NYRB review of Steve Coll’s The Bin Ladens,…
The Rumpus Long Interview with Bill Ayers
The Unrepentant Terrorist? Founder of the Weather Underground, and favorite whipping boy of the failed McCain campaign, Bill Ayers talks to The Rumpus about the ’60s, the present, and his…
The Best Word Book Ever, Then and Then
In 1991, the editors of Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever made some key editorial changes in an effort to level the race, gender and religious biases of the original…