Recent posts
Rumpus Articles
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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, what he called “the last book party.” Read an interview…
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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 same book over and over again for a very long…
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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 market and the spectacle-bedizened biennials circuit.” So wrote New Yorker…
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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 at this or that restaurant, or the kind of waits…
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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, Frank Halliday details Coll’s methodical deconstruction of the inner workings…
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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 fans in the Chicago Police Department.
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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 1963 edition. The side-by-side comparison offers a composite look at…
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We’re Elite
Publishing is failing us, and it is failing. The lamentable irony is that its foundation rests upon satisfying readers by assuming we’d like to read whatever crap is one level above being able to read. In four parts, Thomas McGonigle…
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A Day in the Life of the Real Mafia
Gomorrah is a self-conscious repudiation of gangster movies like Scarface; a reminder that the classy foot soldiers of The Godfather and the bumbling mafiosi of The Sopranos have very little to do with the real world.