Columns
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Magic in Movies: Notes on Au Hasard Balthazar
Magic in movies is a beautiful thing. I’ve inundated myself with film for years, since the age of nineteen, but only recently experienced the pleasure of being put under a spell by two directors I had known of, but whose…
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Empathy Towards Flawed Characters: The Rumpus Book Club Round-Up
-The big news for Doug Dorst this week was that his new book, The Surf Guru, was reviewed in The New York Times Book Review. Writer Robin Romm extols Dorst’s ability to push limits, to stretch the conventions of what…
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Morning Coffee
If you’d been hit by six meteors you would probably think aliens were after you too. Well look at you lottery ticket jeep, aren’t you clever? On the very first Audubon engraving. As long as we are talking about really…
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Now Playing: Let It Rain
Agnés Jaoui directed her sublime first film The Taste of Others (Le goût des autres) in 2000, and received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film in the process. Jaoui and her writing partner Jean-Pierre Bacri have since collaborated…
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Beaches 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.
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Cultivating First Novel Karma
Matt Stewart has written an interesting piece at the Millions about how to cultivate good First Novel Karma:
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Rachel 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…
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DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #46: Beauty and the Beast
Dear Sugar, I’m an average twenty-six-year-old man, exceptional only in that I’m writing to an Internet advice columnist and that I’m incredibly ugly. I don’t hate myself, and I don’t have body dysmorphia. I was born with a rare blood…
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Prop 8 Reactions
As you may have heard, yesterday Judge Vaughn Walker found California’s Prop 8 to be unconstitutional. Here’s the entire ruling if you’re into those sorts of things. I’m not a lawyer, but it read to me like a beatdown, and…
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Perfecting Sound
Scott Rosenberg has posted a review of Greg Milner’s Perfecting Sound Forever: an Aural History of Recorded Music:
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DIY 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:
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Elegant Trash
In his second book, Rob Sheffield uses ‘80s pop to explore adolescent memories, complex emotions, and the woes of being the de facto “gay friend.”