Headed out tonight with my friend and occasional editor Elisabeth to a benefit for The Rumpus; things we saw there included Michael Showalter introducing his “The Weekender” parody*; Jonathan Ames interviewing two random members of the crowd, one of whom discussed a run-in with a substance that resembled, but was not, plum pudding; and Will Sheff playing a pair of Okkervil River songs. At one point, I noticed a guy wandering around helping to manage the crowd; we were late arrivals, and he directed us to some open space with a better view than the spot in which we were standing. Realized once we’d reached the new spot that said guy was, in fact, Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott.

HTML Giant has a lengthy piece on The Rumpus and interview with Elliott up today. One interesting quote from it, taken from a larger discussion of the evolving format of the arts:

But in many ways The Rumpus is working off a very old model, as is HTMLgiant. A group of writers starting a cool literary journal, like McSweeney’s or The Paris Review, where you have great writing and you raise just enough money to publish.

A lot of good ground is covered — both in terms of questions of arts coverage and in terms of forms of media.

*-”Dayton for under $900 a day” may well be the highlight, at least for me.