Because you’ve probably never bothered to get to know your stalwart writing companion: A history of the ballpoint pen.
Know thy bic
The Great White Hope
Ever since The Rumpus began reviewing albums, you knew the day would come when they’d review Vanilla Ice. (If you’re wondering, the writer tackled his major label debut.)
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A Japanese Country Doctor
Recommended viewing: Kafka‘s “A Country Doctor” translated into Japanese animation.
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Baldwin on the Bosphorus
“He combed through the sahaflar, the second-hand bookshops that line the streets around the Grand Bazaar, their dusty wares stacked on haphazard tables. He sat by the New Mosque, drinking tea out of tulip-shaped cups, playing backgammon, and watching the fishermen’s wooden boats launch into the dirty waters of the Golden Horn.” For Public Books, Suzy Hansen writes about James Baldwin‘s less-well-documented time in Istanbul. Pair with this piece from our pages about the famed author, race, and fatherhood.
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Hate: Is It In You?
Meghan Daum’s written the longest and best article on “Haterade” you’ll read this month. I guarantee it.
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The Applicant
“‘Poetry, I feel,” said Sylvia Plath in a radio interview in 1962, the year before her suicide, ‘is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far so fast in such a small space, you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.'” Fifty years after her death, an argument for close reading.
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