Long Live the Book: Jessica Pressman’s Bookishness
It opens a field of inquiry that stretches to the far corners of culture.
...more
Posts Tagged: digital age
The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Tracy O’Neill
Tracy O’Neill discusses her new novel QUOTIENTS.
...more
Inevitable Uncertainties: A Conversation with Joyce Hinnefeld
Joyce Hinnefeld discusses her new story collection, THE BEAUTY OF THEIR YOUTH.
...more
The Lenses We Can’t See: A Conversation with Howard Axelrod
Howard Axelrod discusses his new book, THE STARS IN OUR POCKETS.
...more
Interestingness Is Always There: Talking with Jenny Odell
Jenny Odell discusses HOW TO DO NOTHING: RESISTING THE ATTENTION ECONOMY.
...more
A Decade of Surface over Significance: Sleeveless by Natasha Stagg
A former editor at V, Stagg is no stranger to the slippage between life and editorial.
...more
My Blockbuster
Time has put those lovely nostalgia lenses in front of our eyes, and I am not immune.
...more
A Way to Make Sense of the World with Suzanne Buffam
Poet Suzanne Buffam discusses her latest work, A Pillow Book, sleep remedies that don’t work, and the worries that occupy her mind and keep her from sleep.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: I Died of Dysentery
The glorious ways we fifth graders died in Mr. Mosher’s computer class. We strove to die in the most imaginable permutations possible.
...moreDigital Ash
Over at the New York Review of Books, Edward Mendelson writes apocalyptically about the way our lives are changing for the worse with the advent of the Internet, smartphones, and “the cloud,” infecting every facet of our increasingly public lives. So, go outside, or something?
...moreHeal Together
The Internet may have irreversibly altered the forms activism takes, but there is still room for change. Christopher Soto reflects on activist frameworks used in 2015 and offers their strategies for working toward a more inclusive poetry community in the future: I believe in critical conversations with my community, I believe in doing rehabilitative work […]
...moreRecord Store Day Is Approaching
Tomorrow a whole slew of releases, promos, and events are hitting locations across the country in celebration of all the great things about a local record store that the Internet can never replace. Check out a full list of exclusive releases, along with information about participating stores and what’s happening where. Don’t be a jerk: give […]
...moreNo More Book Shaming
It’s no secret that libraries have had a rocky relationship with publishers since the ebook boom began in the late aughts. Publisher’s Weekly suggests three ways the two could work to heal the rift, but one of the suggestions is surprising: librarians need to stop “book shaming”: What today’s library elite seems to forget is […]
...moreErykah Badu on Cyberspace
Erykah Badu met up with okayplayer.’s program The Questions and the result is a meditation on what participation means in the digital age, among many other things. Watch the interview after the jump.
...moreHandwriting is Dead; Long Live Handwriting
Type is the same, instance after instance, and the font you choose today will look the same when you type in it again tomorrow. The same is not true for crafting prose or poetry by hand, each looping connection between letters mapping out the inherently linear, temporal nature of language: the fact that for it […]
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Jeremy Hawkins
Author Jeremy Hawkins discusses his debut novel, The Last Days of Video, the resurgence of the independent bookstore industry, and allowing nostalgia to have presence but not precedence in one’s life.
...more
Swinging Modern Sounds #65: Tragedy Plus Time
Jesse Malin is a lifer in a business that rarely features lifers anymore.
...moreA World Without Libraries
Libraries are under threat, and those that want to survive will need to modernize. But what does the world look like if libraries change too much, or cease to exist at all? Over at Huffington Post, Lindsey Drager examines what a future without books might look like by defining what libraries do: What concerns me […]
...moreWriting in the Age of Google
If there is an individual alive in 2015 with the genius and vision of James Joyce, they’re probably working for Google, and if there isn’t, it doesn’t matter since the operations of that genius and vision are being developed and performed collectively by operators on the payroll of that company, or of one like it. […]
...moreThe Web Isn’t Nirvana (But You Can Get All Their Albums For Free)
On February 26, 1995, just about twenty years ago, Newsweek published an article by Clifford Stoll called “Why the Internet Won’t Be Nirvana.” In it, Stoll provides a litany of faults to be found in the nascent web. Although there’s a decidedly un-zen tone to the article, Stoll makes some surprisingly accurate predictions—right alongside some laughable ones. […]
...moreDisappearing Digital Ink
Writers like to believe their words will make them immortal. But in the digital age, most writing careers outlive publications. Carter Maness discovered that most of his career as a music journalist has faded from existence as the publications that published and paid him shut down the servers hosting his words. This evaporation of content can […]
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Alix Lambert
Director Alix Lambert talks about her documentary, Mentor, small-town conformity, and bullying in the digital age.
...moreHigh-Speed World
The world is moving faster than ever. Digital technologies have allowed, encouraged, and even required quicker processing of information. The net effect isn’t necessarily a good thing—all that speed has left people struggling to consume information in fragments, and is ultimately eroding art. Mark C. Taylor explains over at The Chronicle of Higher Education: All […]
...moree-Books Threaten Libraries
Libraries have adapted to the modern era by lending out e-books. In many cases, electronic books provide patrons easier access to materials. But a new study says that they also threaten an old system of distribution, reports GalleyCat. The main problem is how electronic content is never really owned, but instead, licensed: Unlike the print […]
...moreArchiving in the Digital Age
Salman Rushdie donated his personal archive to Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) in 2006. Much of Rushdie’s personal archive was digital, a form that creates new problems for modern librarians to contend with. Consider, for example, Rushdie’s PowerMac from the mid-90s. It still functioned when he donated it, but librarians had […]
...more
Face-Off: Facebook vs. Reality
Facebook connects people every damn day. It’s just not how I personally want to connect. I trust that I’ll still wind up with valuable, lasting connections without the aid of online networking, and not waste so much steam in the process.
...moreDigital Age Changes Writing
Technology has changed the way writers write, and that change is not just about the rise of e-books. Composition in a digital world is much more malleable and fluid, and changes in methodology alter the structure of sentences and words. Author Tom McCarthy tells the Guardian: Writing with word processors has given a new organisation […]
...moreRadiohead Banned, YouTube Like Amazon?
Surprisingly, YouTube is only now getting its foot in the door with the music streaming game. Their grand entrance, according to this article at Salon, involves terms with which a large number of independent artists disagree—Radiohead, Vampire Weekend, and Animal Collective, just to name a few. YouTube is planning to block these artists from streaming. Ultimately […]
...moreDigital Age Fuels Sci-Fi Short Stories
The digital era has brought on a new golden age of science fiction. Electronic books, self-driving cars, and video phones may not seem too fictional these days, but technology like the Internet has empowered all sorts of new distribution methods connecting sci-fi writing with the fans who support it. New science fiction magazines launch with crowd […]
...moreCall Me, Ishmael
Already all the rage in Japan, the cell phone novel is slowly making its way to the US. The cell phone novel is a tweet-like fiction form: short bursts of serialized prose with chapters usually confined to 200 words or less. HuffPost Books has the whole story.
...more