mental_floss on Rumpus

from mental_floss Blog Raisin’ a Rumpus: an Interview with Stephen Elliott by Ransom Riggs – January 21, 2009 – 7:21 AM There are many short biographies of writer Stephen Elliot floating around the internet, but this one, from the Chicago Tribune, is my...

“Crazed and broke and very much alone.”

from The New York Observer Our Critic’s Tip Sheet on Current Reading: Peter Ackroyd Briefly Resurrects Edgar Allan Poe, Birthday Boy BY ADAM BEGLEY  |  2:59 PM JANUARY 19, 2009 Grim is the only way to begin the story of Edgar Allan Poe, who was born 200 years...

The Rumpus Beta Gone

from Stephen Elliot’s TheRumpus.net THE EDITOR’S DESK: What’s Been Going On Well, we’re getting ready to launch this bad boy. I know for a lot of regular readers the site is already launched, but things are going to be different around here once Obama is sworn...

Sociological Storytelling

from New Scientist Novels help to uphold social order WHY does storytelling endure across time and cultures? Perhaps the answer lies in our evolutionary roots. A study of the way that people respond to Victorian literature hints that novels act as a social glue,...

Yeah Right.

from the NY Times Fiction Reading Increases for Adults By MOTOKO RICH After years of bemoaning the decline of a literary culture in the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts says in a report that it now believes a quarter-century of precipitous decline in...