Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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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 Italy. Microcosms may not be as good as Danube, Magris’…
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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 put his hands in the open wounds of American identity…
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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 think. Marie Stopes’ 1918 Married Love might be the most…
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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 progressed to encompass two stage shows and numerous television programs,…
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The Rumpus Review of Sunshine Cleaning
Sunshine [Cleaning] is more about the gallows than the humor.
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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 Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most…
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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 a two-car accident on highway 95, the road between Needles,…
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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 heroine is plus-size paralegal Odelia Gray, and she’s an amateur…
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Notes from Underground
The world will end in a matter of hours… unless Lowboy can lose his virginity.
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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…. Gus Marino, who has a prosperous junk business at 2045…
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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 scenes, the National Book Award is both arbitrary and brutal,…
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The Rumpus Long Interview with Michael Uslan
Comics and movies with the man who has owned the film rights to Batman for thirty years.