Rumpus Original
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The Rumpus Interview with Chinaka Hodge
The shooting of Oscar Grant showed that Oakland is in serious need of a discussion on race. The poet and playwright Chinaka Hodge provided such a discussion in her groundbreaking play Mirrors in Every Corner
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10/40/70 #22: The Ghost Writer
This ongoing experiment in film writing freezes a film at 10, 40, and 70 minutes, and keeps the commentary as close to those frames as possible. This week, I examine The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski.
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It Ninja-Stars Me
The voice that animates The French Exit is smart and philosophically dexterous, capable of showing the self to be a fetish-object of its own and also a refractive subject of Lacanian devotion, as a mirror which doesn’t so much distort…
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Let Us Now Raze Famous Men
A Rumpus Meditation on Editors, Ambition, and Angry Dependence (in 33 loosely jointed parts): 1. On July 30, the managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, Kevin Morrissey, took his life. His note stated that he “just couldn’t bear it…
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Interview with Arthur Ganson – The Man Behind the Machines
Arthur Ganson is referred to as a kinetic sculptor, but I think his machines are more like spiritual beings. He largely makes what’s known as Rube Goldberg machines, overly complex machines that execute simple tasks.
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Ted Wilson Reviews the World #51
MY SUMMER JOB ★★★★★ (4 out of 5) Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing my summer job.
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Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me: Shalom Auslander
As someone who was raised with reform Judaism, my negative experiences with religion pale next to Auslander’s.
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Between Good and Bad, Right and Wrong
James Longenbach’s fourth book of poems, The Iron Key, feels like it has itself arrived from a different era.
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Our Strippers Who Art in Hollywood, Jumbo’s Be Thy Name
It was 11:30 on a Tuesday night and the bar at Jumbo’s Clown Room was packed. I was instantly moved by the spirit of Ramona, a tall black stripper in a tutu with pink wings attached to her back, gliding…
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Renewed, Transfigured
Like boxes in storage, Andrea Scrima’s memories are itinerant. Wherever she resides, nothing seems to be in the right place.
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The Rumpus Interview with Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis is the author of four short story collections, as well as The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis and the novel The End of the Story. A MacArthur Fellow, she has been a finalist for many major book awards…
