Posts by author
Seth Fischer
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American Short Story Writers Are Taught To Do It Wrong
John Barry has a piece up at The Baltimore City Paper in which he argues that too many American short story writers are taught to try to mimic that famous last paragraph in James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” And…
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Mark Athitakis Talks Book Blogging
“I think there’s a lot of thoughtful engagement with books on blogs—a lot of quick-hit riffing and expressions of enthusiasm, and I participate in some of that myself. That has its place—I wouldn’t do it if I think it didn’t—but…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
The book blogs are full of awesome this week. You should read them. How to write to an editor: “I have given your request for evidence 23 hours of thought, the proper number of hours to come up with the…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
This week, Rumpus Books reviewed three novels and a collection of poems. Come read!
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Amanda Palmer is “Not Afraid To Take Your Money”
Amanda Palmer, who says that she’s been getting criticism for making money from her webcasts, has one hell of a manifesto up on her blog called, subtly enough, “Why I Am Not Afraid to Take Your Money.” She’s got a…
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Jim Shepard on Writing Fiction That’s Got Some Truth to It
“The first worry writers have when they consider working with something like historical events has to do with the issue of authority: as in, where do I get off writing about that? Well, here’s the good and the bad news: …
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An Oral History of Bay Area Punk
I grew up in Denver and moved out to the Bay Area when I was eighteen, partially because I’d heard about this magical “Gilman” place that seemed to go against everything I was raised to believe in. Of course, once…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
This week, Rumpus books has published reviews of a novel and two short story collections.
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The Surreal Makes You Smarter
Allison Flood at the Guardian has dug up an article from the journal Psychological Science showing that reading surrealism may actually make people smarter. In the study, some subjects were given Kafka’s “A Country Doctor,” and others were given a…
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Planning Out the End
“The idea that economics will aid us in thinking through the problem of the destruction of the natural world… commits us to the assumption that our world ought to be governed and guided by technicians. It is part of the…
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If Charles Bukowski Wrote Peanuts
For some reason, I’m in Santa Rosa at the moment, and it seems that Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, was from here. I’ve figured this out because everything is named after him and I can’t go three feet without…