I was also tickled by the idea of literary sports links. You don’t have to pitch me.Ĭaroline: I like his blog. ![]() Jerry Stahl actually sent me a three page pitch for his blog, Post-Young. Anyway, there was this incredible response to this note I sent out about The Rumpus. And I sent them a note letting them know the kind of magazine I was going to put together.Ĭaroline: So today is a happy day for you. We did voter registration readings in Ohio, etc. I mean, so I know these people, a lot of them, through political organizing. But you know, I really really like Rick Moody, but I wouldn’t ask him for a lift to the airport.Ĭaroline: I saw him recently at the Happy Ending Reading Series, playing with his band. Nowhere50: A lot of the people writing for me are, hmm, not necessarily “friends.” People I like, people I’ve met primarily through all the literary political organizing I did and the three political fiction anthologies I put together. They forget all about the writing and the importance of introducing people to artists they haven’t heard of yet.Ĭaroline: Are most of the people writing for you friends? People are so concerned with driving traffic to their pages, they focus on the popular stories, and “creating” breaking news. We consider any book out less than a year to be a new book, and review it accordingly. For example, there’s very little review coverage for books that have been out six months and didn’t make a huge splash. It’s actually intensified the echo chamber. But as far as full magazines it hasn’t at all. And it has as far as the proliferation of blogs. ![]() The Internet was supposed to diversify content. They’re all writing about Britney Spears and crash landing a plane into the Hudson and how Obama feels about his BlackBerry. They’re all trying to be the People Magazine of the Internet, albeit from different angles. If you look at the web magazine,, The Daily Beast, Slate, The Huffington Post, they’re all fighting for the same stories. ![]() But there isn’t really a good web magazine for us. Nowhere50: The reality is that there’s a lot of literary writers, like me, Dan Chaon, Michelle Tea, Rick Moody. And at some point I was like, Why am I giving her all my ideas?Ĭaroline: The Rumpus is kind of the anti-HuffPo. I realized pretty quickly that even though I’m hot for Arianna, it would not be a good idea for me to work for The Huffington Post. I was talking to Arianna Huffington about joining The Huffington Post. This was my seventh book and I wanted a little time off from writing. I really scraped myself clean in this book, which is half memoir and half true crime. It started because I had just finished my new book, The Adderall Diaries. He’s got a lot of energy.Ĭaroline: So, how did the idea for The Rumpus come about? The James Frey interview on The Rumpus was done over IM.Ĭaroline: And he’s reading at your launch party, right? This is just about the only time I IM, when I’m interviewing or being interviewed. This is better than just making stuff up. Nowhere50: Hi Caroline, at last we meet, online.Ĭaroline: Thanks for indulging me on the IM interview idea.Ĭaroline: I am a lethargic transcriber. But not before we asked Elliott a few more questions over IM find our interview after the jump.Ĭaroline: Hey Stephen, it’s Caroline from Flavorwire. When asked to describe his new online cultural magazine in six words or less, founder Stephen Elliott first spouted off the categories they’ll cover “Books, Music, Art, Politics, Sex, Other.” Then he wrote, “Because the web needs an editor.” Then, “The literary equivalent of stolen wi-fi.” Then, “I only look like I’m online.” Once he got to “The national public radio of webzines,” we had to cut him off - he had to prepare for his site’s official launch out of beta 3 mode, which happened earlier this morning.
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