Rumpus Originals
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The Rumpus Interview with Jason Kottke
“The site was becoming unmanageable as just a hobby… so I decided I either needed to quit the site or turn it into something I could live off of… The bigger challenge was how to balance taking the site seriously…
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The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks
It’s a tricky thing, a memoir of a death: you know how it’s going to end. The challenge for the writer (not only with regard to the conclusion) is making the inevitable unknown.
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The Rumpus Interview with Paul Yoon
One time I was reading Haruki Murakami and I thought: if I had the chance, would I ever ask him why his characters always vanish? I’m not sure I’d want to. Maybe he doesn’t know either.
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Poems for an Economic Collapse
Katy Lederer’s poems are both romantic and political in nature. With their attention to formal and lyrical concerns, these poems tackle the problems of desire when it coincides with money and passion.
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Tips for the Downsized
Anyone searching for a primer on how to hide the fact from one’s family after losing a job need look no further than Tokyo Sonata, the newest—and timely—film from the genre-hopping Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
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The Rumpus Interview with Uwem Akpan
“After the phone call, I walked more than a mile to church to thank God. But on getting there, I couldn’t sit or kneel or pray, out of excitement.”
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Pixelated God: Faith in the Internet
“We are all products in the marketplace. Everything we consume is a product. We consume and are consumed. We are products that produce.”
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The Shorty Q & A with Rodes Fishburne
The hero of Rodes Fishburne’s first novel, Going to See the Elephant, comes to San Francisco with only a trunk full of first-edition19th-century novels and an equally heavy load of gumption.
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Fifteen Thousand Pages in Three Minutes
Roberto Bolaño’s überbook inspires a speed-read through literary history.
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The Rumpus Interview with Michael Showalter
“I am writing an ‘important’ memoir about not being able to write an important memoir. It winds up being kind of a novel-length comedic essay on insecurity and procrastination.”
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Lost in Space
For Mary Miller’s characters, the world is anything but big. These are women trapped in little towns and little lives, but the emotional resonance is limitless.