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Posts by author

Michael Berger

253 posts
Michael Berger is a barely-published writer and book-seller living in San Francisco. He is one of the founding Corsairs of the Iron Garters Bike Club and is currently pursuing a degree in applied pataphysics. He sometimes eats oatmeal for dinner.
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  • Rumpus Original

Saturday Rumpus Essay: Art at Work

  • Michael Berger
  • January 26, 2013
Even while the work just barely paid my bills, I had to make it work for me on an entirely different level. I knew art could transform so much meaninglessness.
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  • Features & Reviews
  • Rumpus Original

Bartending, Booktending: Three Years at Red Hill Books

  • Michael Berger
  • July 20, 2012
Last summer I was telling my coworker at Red Hill Books a story about mistaken identity.
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  • Features & Reviews

Zombies Meet Joy Division

  • Michael Berger
  • March 24, 2011
More and more “serious” “literary” writers are turning to zombies, werewolves, and vampires for inspiration. This could be symptomatic of something dire or something hopeful in the world of writing.…
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  • Features & Reviews

Rebecca West On Literary Criticism

  • Michael Berger
  • March 24, 2011
“A little grave reflection shows us that our first duty is to establish a new and abusive school of criticism. . .There is merely a chorus of weak cheers, a piping note of…
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  • Features & Reviews

Farewell To Open City

  • Michael Berger
  • March 10, 2011
A memorial to the long-standing literary magazine, Open City. (Via: Bookforum)
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  • Politics

On Law, Zines and Trans Politics

  • Michael Berger
  • March 10, 2011
“. . .there has been widescale attacks on social movements over the last thirty or forty years in response to the very meaningful social movements in the sixties and seventies…
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  • Features & Reviews

Perec On Asking For A Raise

  • Michael Berger
  • March 10, 2011
Everyday life is surprisingly full of hair-raising adventures. Sometimes you don’t realize it until you’re in the thick of it. Waiting for the grocery store manager to confirm that you…
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  • Features & Reviews

Reimagining The Memoir

  • Michael Berger
  • March 3, 2011
“That it is being considered as book of criticism, rather than as memoir, seems the luck of the draw. Some of the essays in it were originally published in the…
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  • Other

The Joys Of Freelancin’

  • Michael Berger
  • March 3, 2011
“The great thing about freelance, of course, is the numerous freedoms it embraces, chief among them being the freedom to work in your underwear. This seems to be the one…
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  • Features & Reviews

Introducing Belgium’s Master Fantasist

  • Michael Berger
  • March 3, 2011
Just like last week, Belgium, for reasons obtuse and inexplicable is on my mind. I discovered at 50 Watts a guest post by Edward Gauvin about a Belgian writer named…
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  • Features & Reviews

Introducing Anna Kavan

  • Michael Berger
  • February 24, 2011
There’s an indispensable book called About Writing by Samuel R. Delany. In the first essay he cobbles together an eclectic list of authors that, ideally, the aspiring writer should read.…
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  • Features & Reviews

A Primer On Exotic Punctuation

  • Michael Berger
  • February 24, 2011
Never heard of the ancient, wonderful and criminally under-acknowledged Pilcrow? Then go savor the musings at Shady Characters, a blog about unusual punctuation. (Via: Book Bench)
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