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Isaac Fitzgerald, the beating heart of this big ol’ enterprise we know and love as THE RUMPUS, has just accepted a job at McSweeney’s as their Director of Publicity. We are so proud of this kid. His announcement is up on The Rumpus:
My four years at The Rumpus have been some of the most fulfilling years of my life. I started working here as a volunteer, then as the site’s first (and, at the time, only) paid employee, and have been privileged to witness The Rumpus grow into what it is today. I am so incredibly proud of everything that we’ve built. When I say “we” I mean every editor I’ve worked with, writer we’ve published, every fan who has come to a Rumpus event, and you, the readers of the site. That adds up to many more people than I could possibly name, but you all know who you are. Thank you for helping build this place of empathy, earnestness, literature, and joy on the Internet. Thank you for being a part of The Rumpus.
I am personally so grateful to Isaac first for bullying me (in a friendly way) to write for The Rumpus a first and then a second time, for asking me to help The Rumpus get on Tumblr, and for trusting me to run it. There are few editors I know who inspire as much devotion as Isaac (Roxane Gay is one), and he deserves ever ounce of it. He is a champion of good writing and a warrior for writers.
He’s not going away totally—Isaac is still a co-owner of the Rumpus—and you can always find him Twittering away @isaacfitzgerald, recapping Friday Night Lights at Drinking with Tim Riggins, telling the stories behind people’s tattoos at Pen & Ink, and now, too, at McSweeney’s.
Lisa Dusenbery, The Rumpus’s badass editorial assistant and second ever paid employee, will be assuming the managing editor position, where she will blaze new and awesome paths for The Rumpus and all of its readers. She also sings a mean Brandy if you are ever doing “The Boy Is Mine” at karaoke.
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“At their best, love and translation share some contradictions, including selfishness and generosity. Translation is impossible, or at least not very good, without a passionate desire to own the material and leave one’s mark on it. At the same time, few translators want to “hide the light” of their translations “under a bushel.” The translations they undertake and complete belong to them, are marked by them, and yet they are without much value unless shared.” — Barbara Berman reviews The Emily Dickinson Reader by Paul Legault over at The Rumpus. -
“Maybe clicking on a link to download digital text is enough for you, but I believe there’s no substitute for wandering into an off-the-beaten-path bookstore, browsing its thoughtful employee recommendations, running my nose along the Barth/Barthelme/Beckett/Borges/Brecht/Burroughs aisle while fondling myself under my Penguin Classic tote bag, then ducking into the restroom with Middlemarch and a complement of grinding and sifting tools as I reach climax. Please support your local independent bookstores, especially those with lockable restrooms.” -
“I have not seen a room this tough
Since I asked for the hand of Lady Anne Neville;
She was a widow because I had murder’d her husband.
I see thee nodding over there; thou know’st how that is.”— The best thing to come out of the Richard III identification and burial controversy has got to be this McSweeney’s piece. (via mrmullin) -
Foul-mouthed Believer staff shopping recommendations and concomitant sales over at McSweeney’s today. We felt weird about recommending the Believer but, to be honest, we highly recommend you subscribe to the Believer.
This is the only mug you are allowed to buy other than the Write Like a Motherfucker one. (Though it’d be best if you bought both.)
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The Believer Logger: Real Man Adventures 
VV: How did the mosaic-like structure of Real Man Adventures come about? Did you start conducting the interviews with other people (your wife, ReDICKulous, parents of other transgender children, and others) before you started writing the book, or while you were writing it?
TC: The structure reflects pretty much how my brain originally envisioned the book. I never thought of it as a “start at point A, end at point B” type of narrative, and I don’t think I could ever have written it as such. Okay, maybe if writing it that way would eradicate wars and violence and starvation I could do that—but it wouldn’t be a very good book.
As for the interviews, I’d conducted a handful with various people over the last couple years (my brother, his FTM [female-to-male transsexual] colleague on the Los Angeles Police Department, the FTM who was assaulted on a college campus in California), thinking,I’ll use this for a magazine piece or something, but then that didn’t happen for a variety of reasons, and I realized that those voices could be brought in to the overall conversation I wanted to have in the book (but transformed and updated, of course). Other interviews (with people like my wife, the male stripper ReDICKulous, Kate Bornstein, and my friends’ mother and father), I conducted as I worked through the draft and noticed places for them. It probably sounds a little lofty to say—and I definitely don’t mean it that way—but my aim was to sort of conduct a chorus of different voices chiming in on the over-arching subject of the book, which is essentially masculinity in our culture.
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McSweeney’s brand-new poetry series begins tomorrow evening in San Francisco. -
McSweeney’s is accepting submissions for their Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award. “This memorial award is intended to aid a young woman writer of 32 years or younger who both embodies Amanda’s personal strengths—warmth, generosity, a passion for community—and who needs some time to finish a book in progress.”
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Our friends at the Rumpus just started a Tumblr, called, appropriately, the Rumblr. In celebration and anticipation we share with you this bonus intimidating gif of the Rumblr’s editor, Molly McArdle.
Rumblr, we’ll meet you in the park at 6 to dance-fight this out and crown the one true Valencia Street Tumblr.
THE RUMBLR ROLLS DEEP, BELIEVER MAG!
(But no, in truth, we <3 you so, so much.)
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“Editorially, I’d lean toward McSweeney’s. They do real books, impressive books. But if we’re talking actual knuckles, The Rumpus would kick the shit out of McSweeney’s.” — Our fearless leader, Isaac Fitzgerald, considers the question “McSweeney’s vs The Rumpus” over at Modern Luxury.
