The Rumpus Original Combo with Joshua Mohr
Joshua Mohr knows how easily the dark parts of the psyche can be sustained and deepened by the seamy parts of city life — drink, drugs, chronic poverty, and sad selfish sex.
...morePosts by: Jeremy Hatch
Lydia Davis Lecture in SF, Cheap to Rumpus Readers
Our friends over at the Center for the Art of Translation are extending a special offer to San Francisco Rumpus fans to see Lydia Davis at the Verdi Club next Wednesday, at a large discount. Davis probably needs no introduction here. She’s an insouciant tactician of the English language — a writer of extraordinary short […]
...moreSpalding Gray Review in Cineaste
Cineaste Magazine has published a long, considered review of the new documentary by Stephen Soderbergh about Spalding Gray, And Everything Is Going Fine. The film consists entirely of footage of Gray himself, either performing his monologues or being interviewed. The reviewer, David Sterrit, takes a positive view of the film overall, describing it at one […]
...moreBurroughs Doc A Man Within Giveaway
The recent documentary about William S. Burroughs, A Man Within, was released on DVD last week, and its distributor, Oscilloscope Labs, sent us a copy to give away to one lucky Rumpus reader! It’s a fascinating documentary that reveals a more private, sensitive picture of Burroughs than we’re used to. Click through for further details […]
...moreMusic Man Murray
Friend of the Rumpus Richard Parks is Kickstarting a documentary short about “Music Man” Murray Gershenz, LA’s premier rare-vinyl dealer. He’s put his entire collection up for sale at $500,000 — much of it is literally priceless, but he originally valued it at $5 million. However, so far he has not found a buyer. Parks […]
...moreSir Arne’s Treasure with the Mountain Goats
If you’re in San Francisco next Tuesday night, the San Francisco Film Society is presenting a screening of the 1919 silent classic, Sir Arne’s Treasure, with live accompaniment by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. Full program information is here.
...moreBernal Heights Film Crawl
If you live in San Francisco, you might want to check out the Film Crawl on Cortland this Friday night. Yes, the website is a little cheesy, but the offerings look really cool. The idea behind it is that five local businesses will show a program of short films by local filmmakers (and we have […]
...more2010 Amanda Davis Highwire Award Now Open
The memorial award established by McSweeney’s in 2004, the Amanda Davis Highwire Award, is now open to applicants again. The award “is intended to aid a young woman writer of 32 years or younger who both embodies Amanda’s personal strengths—warmth, generosity, a passion for community—and who needs some time to finish a book in progress. […]
...moreJames Franco’s Insane Anti-Career
If you’re looking for a long profile of a celebrity to read this weekend (and why wouldn’t you be?) you should choose this one: Sam Anderson’s profile of James Franco in New York magazine. You should read it just based on its literary merit: I have the feeling this profile will soon be regarded as […]
...moreOpium and LDM in England
The Guardian ran a big feature today about the “new wave of literary events” in England, which highlights Todd Zuniga’s Opium and the Literary Death Match. (Matches are being held in Edinburgh and London on August 10th and 11th, respectively.)
...moreFarewell to Pindeldyboz
A couple months ago the litmag Pindeldyboz announced that it would be going dark and looking for a way to keep everything published in it available somehow: now the site is updated with their Farewell Edition.
...moreBeaches of Agnès Still on POV for Free
I know this film is a hobbyhorse of mine, but I just can’t resist today: Agnès Varda’s extraordinary filmed memoir, the Beaches of Agnès, is still available to watch for free, online, at this POV page.
...moreCultivating First Novel Karma
Matt Stewart has written an interesting piece at the Millions about how to cultivate good First Novel Karma:
...moreRachel Shukert Interview at SMITHMAG
Rachel Shukert is coming out with a new book this week, Everything is Going to Be Great, a memoir of her years in Europe, and SMITHMAG has published a thought-provoking and funny interview with her. In 2003 Shukert went to Vienna to be in an experimental play and after that was over, ended up settling […]
...morePerfecting Sound
Scott Rosenberg has posted a review of Greg Milner’s Perfecting Sound Forever: an Aural History of Recorded Music:
...moreDIY Publishing & Marketing Seminar In San Francisco
On August 23rd, 826 Valencia in San Francisco is hosting their second Adult Writers’ Seminar from 7-9 pm. This seminar focuses on DIY Publishing and Marketing. The panelists are a full slate of Rumpus-friendly folk:
...moreHow to Survive the Next Article About eBooks: Make It a Drinking Game
Sunday Editor Seth Fischer just pointed me to this amusing article, which lays out rules for a drinking game based on articles about eBooks. For example: “Will e-books wipe out / kill / decimate /pulverize / HULKSMASH /angry verb real books?” — one drink Above question is lede — one drink Every use of phrase […]
...moreA Little More of the Tao
The Atlantic just did a little piece about Tao Lin here. Apropos of an article Lin published a couple weeks ago about being arrested for trespassing, the Atlantic’s Hua Hsu writes: “The piece gives you a good sense of Lin’s writerly persona—his prose is placid, spare, vaguely hypnotic, “possibly” “ironic,” and he’s faintly self-obsessed but in […]
...more12th and Delaware
Over at Mother Jones, Rumpus volunteer and Mother Jones intern Maddie Oatman has published a review of the abortion-rights documentary 12th and Delaware, the new film from the makers of Jesus Camp: “The new documentary 12th and Delaware, which premiered last night on HBO, presents a fly-on-the wall view inside two organizations in Fort Pierce, […]
...moreMiranda Rights Under Slow, Steady Attack
From the AP: “You have the right to remain silent, but only if you tell the police that you’re remaining silent.
...moreCrain on Freud
Caleb Crain has been re-reading and blogging Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams: “Two forces meet the reader of the Interpretation: Freud’s authority and his charm. Are they monsters? Seducers? Has-beens? The authority interferes before the book is even picked up. One reads Freud because one has heard of him; at last one has decided to make […]
...morePresumed Guilty Online
Today is the last day you can watch Presumed Guilty for free online, I just found out — through midnight tonight. The documentary is about the shockingly corrupt Mexican justice system, which has no juries and no presumption of innocence, and crimes are often “solved” by grabbing the first hapless poor person off the street […]
...moreArt From Behind
Kathy Grayson is the director of Deitch projects, and I recently found out about her entertaining and interesting blog Art From Behind. You don’t read it, really; each post consists of tons of pictures of art she’s been looking at and things she’s been doing, with a line or two of hilarious commentary for each […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Mac McClelland: Burma, the Karen, and Genocide
In March, Soft Skull Press released For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question, Mac McClelland’s memoir of the six weeks she spent in Thailand, helping refugees from Burma living illegally in a border city. These refugees were from an ethnic minority called the Karen (kuh-REN), and they’ve been persecuted by the junta in Burma, […]
...moreKolmanskop, Namibia, Slowly Sinking Under Sand
Atlas Obscura published an amazing pictorial today of this Namibian diamond-rush town, which was founded in 1908 and was completely abandoned by 1960. Check out the description: “Residents of Kolmanskop accumulated enough wealth to build an entire town influenced by German aesthetics, replete with ballrooms, bowling alleys, mansions, and the first x-ray machine south of […]
...moreA Tale from the Trenches
Today the Awl published a long essay by Richard Morgan about his seven years as a freelancer, which I read this afternoon. It’s a worthwhile if sobering read, and really entertaining: the subtitle is “How to Make Vitamin Soup,” if that gives you any idea of the circumstances he describes. It so happens that I […]
...moreA View of the Long Form
Kevin Kelly recently published a review of the journalism website Long Form, which seeks to promote long-form journalism by making it easier to find and read articles online or on portable devices. Kelly says that Long Form “points to the best long form articles appearing anywhere in print, and also collects the great magazine articles […]
...moreThe Collins Almanac is Back!
Friend of the Rumpus and all around cool guy Paul Collins has revived the Collins Almanac on the McSweeney’s iPhone app: “After six years of slumber (I prefer to call it “deep cogitation”) the Almanac is back as an exclusive on the McSweeney’s iPhone App. It is, exactly as you’d imagine, basically me puttering about […]
...moreDavid Mamet, Crypto-Conservative All Along?
Not long ago David Mamet admitted that he is a conservative, and in his latest book, Theatre, he attempts to integrate his newly articulated politics into his view of the theater. But as Terry Teachout points out in this essay for Commentary: “The only unexpected thing about this conclusion is that it took the author […]
...moreInterviewers, as Seen by Novelists
The B&N Review has published an amusing piece by Tom LeClair about the way interviewers of novelists are portrayed in novels by DeLillo, Roth, Coetzee and Bolano — and LeClair describes his own experiences from the trenches of interviewing artists. (via Conversational Reading)
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