Posts by author
Seth Fischer
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
This week, Rumpus Books published reviews of a novel, a book of poetry, and a book about Donald Rumsfeld, as well as a survey of the stripper memoir, an interview with Sophia Raday, a remembrance of Frank McCourt, and an…
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“Unputdownable.” Yes, I Said It.
With apologies to commenters who hated the word “unputdownable” in my post last week about the worst words ever, I will now point you in the direction of Elizabeth Bachner’s brilliant essay on that terrible phrase. “There are … great…
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A Found 1969 Editorial on the Moon Landing
Mumpsimus was digging through his attic and found an old editorial his grandfather wrote for The Needham Times after the moon landing. Funny how a forty year old opinion piece is a million times more enlightened than Sarah Palin’s recent op-ed…
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Aunt Mary’s Storybook Project
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be around while one of my best friends gave birth to a baby boy. It was an amazing experience. As a result, unfortunately, I had to spend a lot of time…
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How to Make an Oscar Wao
“It was very late, and we were over at a friend’s house… (T)hat night we were just all hanging out and it was a bunch of Mexican bohemians and me and my Guatemalan buddy. And one of these Mexican cats…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
This week, the book blogs are scaring the ever-loving Jesus out of me. Sure, there have been a few fun, interesting updates and interviews, but most of what they’ve been saying makes me want to build a series of tunnels…
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The Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
This week, Rumpus Books has published a review of a memoir and three novels, as well as two interviews, one of which includes an excerpt from Robert Sullivan’s book The Thoreau You Don’t Know.
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Politico Profiles HuffPo
From Michael Calderone at Politico’s recent profile of The Huffington Post: “While (The Huffington Post) wants to be taken seriously, much of its traffic is driven by entertainment and sex. While it ridicules mainstream media, it relies on it for much…
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The Worst Words Ever
“What word do you hate and why?” That was the question posed to poets this year at the Ledbury Poetry Festival. Answers ranged from chillax (ugh) to redact (yuck) to appall. And Phillip Wells’ explanation of hatred for the word…
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We’re Paying People to Play Our Video Games for Us
The very idea of a “virtual world” scares me. I don’t understand Second Life, and it makes me a little sad. I understand this makes me a bit of a curmudgeon, but I just can’t believe people would pay real…
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Monkeys Know Bad Grammar When They Hear It
It’s not like they’re gonna be writing for The New Yorker anytime soon, but a team of scientists just published a study in the journal Biology Letters saying that monkeys can “recognize bad grammar.” Researchers spent a day familiarizing a…