Of Bread and Circuses
The wonky-eyebrowed hero of Office Space ends up happily working as a manual laborer, after his company literally collapses. This embrace of working outdoors, with his hands, is supposed to…
Posts by author
Casey Dayan
98 posts
Casey Dayan is a Rumpus intern and musician. He is finishing up his undergraduate studies in literature and anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he is working on a memoir and trying to one-up Jeff Buckley. Find his twitter here, @caseydayan. Find his band, “Moo,” here.
Glass Ceilings Lately
Last summer, NPR exposed the recent less-than-virtuous practices of major news publications in the U.S., which have been printing false bylines. With the advent of the Internet, it’s much more practical…
Reading: Still Probably a Good Idea
We linked to an Atlantic article in January about the recent decline in readers in America. According to the article, 23 percent of Americans went without reading a single novel in…
Boo Radley, Social Media Star
Last Monday, Harper Lee brought an end to what CNN has called “a glaring holdout in the digital library of literary masterpieces,” and the news has social media buzzing with…
The Girl with the Hair in Her Mouth
“What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness: those moments when another human being was there in front of me, suffering, and I responded sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly,”…
Discussion Nostalgia, Book Clubbing
Up on your wall behind your office desk is a small sheet of paper, gold-leaf embossed, an emblem in the bottom right hand corner—it reads: The University of Something-or-Rather in…
Insert Short Story Here
[Beginning in media res in mother’s house.] [Sufficiently dramatic exposition with an obvious, planted echo to the story’s climax.] Story in need of kindling? Take a gander at this short…
Where Betty Byrne Lived
Story is an integral part of the city of Dublin. Bronze statues of beloved writers roam the landscape, immortal: Wilde lounges “languidly on a crag in the park at Merrion Square,” while Joyce is…
Please, Sir, I Want Some More
Designer, director, and “amateur table-setter” Dinah Fried has recreated a number of iconic meals from famous fiction: tequila, grapefruits, and cigarettes from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; the bowl of chowder…
Love to Gabo
Gabriel Garcia Marquez died yesterday at home in Mexico City. 87 years since his birth in Aracataca, CO, “Gabo” Marquez has written over twenty novels and short story collections. He…
Social Media Year, 2080
In the spirit of Orwell, Saunders, and M.T. Anderson, see here for a glimpse at the future of social media: virtual reality dates, sensory augmentation, robots writing on humans in…
The American Financial System in Story
Take a look at this review of Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys over at The Millions. There’s something endearing about Lewis’s project to unmask and reveal: The task Lewis sets for himself in…