The Rumpus

Ray was failing at being a person. He’d been fooled by life. It had triumphed over him. I wanted to call out to him, over his wife’s head, Hey Ray, life has triumphed over you.

Meet Able Brown: artist, New York City park ranger, body-surfing enthusiast and stand-up comedian. His drawings and paintings have been included in group shows at several galleries, including a show at the Fleisher/Ollman gallery curated by Will Oldham, aka Bonny Prince Billy. ...

· November 9th, 2009 · filed under Original Content, Ted Wilson, blogs, rumpus original

This week in New York Ben Marcus and Rivka Galchen at Harper’s Magazine’s The Family Table, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach talk, Mary Gaitskill, John Turturro, and Eric Bogosian at PEN benefit, Frederick Wiseman’s documentary La Danse, Jeff Lewis and the Wowz! ...

I guess I finally rode McSweeney’s coattails into a graduate English department: McSweeney’s 17 forms a key part of the honors thesis of one Flora Feltham, at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Some time ago, she emailed me the following:

With Tamim Ansary, author of Destiny Disrupted, Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, Melanie Gideon, author of The Slippery Year, Chelsea Martin, author of Everything Was Fine Until Whatever, and Po Bronson, author of NurtureShock.

It’s partly the fault of the form; contemporary travel magazines are filled with 10 Best New Hotels/Bars/Spas on Yet Another Tony Exclusive Island or How to Eat Fabulously in This Most Glorious Setting You Will Never See.

Our boutique investment firm is seeking a top-notch Wisenheimer for our New York headquarters. We are an eight-person office that manages investments for many high-net worth individuals in need of some lightening up.

· November 6th, 2009 · filed under Antonia Crane, Homepage Feature, rumpus original

The deciders of the Publishers Weekly Best 10 list “ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz.” Which is kind of brilliant in a way. Because everyone knows if you ignore things, you can maybe make those things go away.

Two weeks ago, the American Booksellers Association, an organization of independent booksellers, asked the Justice Department to investigate what it describes as “illegal predatory pricing” by big-box retailers Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, and Target. ...

I really like this boy who I work with and I’m pretty sure that he fancies me. We’re both single and are constantly flirting with each other. I think we should give a relationship a go, but I’m afraid that it might ruin our friendship. ...

Above-average scary. Neat pacing. Best with a full house in big cities. Overheard: “This is dumb good,” “We’re gonna have to get the bootleg.”

Molly Crabapple is an artist, model, entrepreneur, and one-woman pen-and-ink revolution. She’s probably best known as the founder of the worldwide burlesque life drawing phenomenon, Dr. Sketchy’s ...