The Scholars and the Pornographer
Dame Helen Gardner and George Newton Bowlin Laws—it seems funny, but very good to me to see them in the same sentence. I first saw Helen Gardner, brilliant scholar, denizen…
Rumpus Originals
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Swinging Modern Sounds #16: Indeterminate Activity
Lovers of contemporary experimental music will likely remember the moment in the early eighties when John Cage, the godfather of minimalism and of most New York City experimental music, referred…
Why I Write (About Music)
I have two of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies index cards taped to my monitor. They are supposed to motivate me while slowly radiating guilt. Obliquely, I guess. One reads: Not…
But Not for Long
Michelle Wildgen’s second novel traces the residents of a sustainable-food co-op through crises, adjustments, and reinventions.
FUNNY WOMEN #4: The Importance of Attitude
My husband enjoys scuba diving. Prior to meeting my present spouse, I had never entertained the notion of going diving, as it combines three things I generally try to avoid:…
Rumpus Flash Fiction: “Simoom,” by Anna North
When my father left and my mother went crazy and carved into every wooden surface of our house a name that wasn’t hers or his, I asked what she was doing. She made me get down the dictionary. “Simoom,” I read...
California Dreaming
If you haven’t yet watched Showtime’s hit series Californication, here’s a quick tagline: Down-and-out novelist Hank Moody – played by David Duchovny – tries to get his life back on…
A Gate at the Huh?
Despite this novel’s serious flaws, it is a gratifying experience. You don’t so much read Lorrie Moore’s books as inhabit them—after which they inhabit you.
Conversations About the Internet #2: Scott Rosenberg on Blogging and Journalism
What motivates bloggers? They care. It’s as simple as that. To a lot of journalists that comes as a shock, because for many (not all) it’s just a job,…
A New Cult of Domesticity
The speaker of The King doesn’t play into the randomly generated poems and discursive ironies of her generation; she lifts the curtain to the production, exposing the history of language’s…