Kurt Vonnegut’s Tips for Teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1967)

in Literature, Writing | November 29th, 2012

Few who dip into Kurt Von­negut’s work come away with­out the influ­ence of his voice. If we can judge by his let­ter to Richard Gehman (click here to read it in large for­mat), this will go for his per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence as much as it does for his fic­tion. In addi­tion to such nov­els as Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Cat’s Cra­dle, and Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, Von­negut left behind a great many let­ters, some of the most inter­est­ing of which have just come togeth­er in a new 464-page col­lec­tion. We pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured one of Von­negut’s dis­patch­es from the army, writ­ten to his par­ents at age 22. 22 years after that, he wrote the above page to Gehman, him­self a not­ed man of let­ters. It con­tains the one thing for which near­ly ever ded­i­cat­ed read­er of Kurt Von­negut must long: advice from Kurt Von­negut.

“Morn­ings are for writ­ing,” Von­negut tells Gehman, “and so are most of the after­noons.” The recip­i­ent was prepar­ing for a teach­ing stint at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa’s famous Writer’s Work­shop. Von­negut’s own tour of duty there from 1965 to 1967 put him in a posi­tion to offer wise coun­sel. “The class­es don’t mat­ter much,” he writes, a sen­ti­ment that will strike cre­ative writ­ing teach­ers as at once dispir­it­ing and sen­si­ble. “The real busi­ness, head-to-head, is done dur­ing office hours.” He also has much to say about uni­ver­si­ty life and how to cope with the remote­ness of Iowa City. “For­get your lack of cre­den­tials.” “You go to Cedar Rapids for seafood.” “Can­cel class­es when­ev­er you damn please.” “Every so often you will go nuts. All of a sud­den the corn­fields get you.” “Run with the painters. I did.” “Go to all the foot­ball games. They are great.” Beyond these points, the let­ter only gets juici­er — as a true Von­negut fan would expect. Again you can read it in large for­mat here.

via Slate

Relat­ed con­tent:

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

Kurt Von­negut Reads from Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut: “How To Get A Job Like Mine” (2002)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Woody Allen Answers 12 Unconventional Questions He Has Never Been Asked Before

in Comedy, Film | November 28th, 2012

Woody Allen hates per­son­al pub­lic­i­ty. He does­n’t appear on talk shows or attend the Oscars. He rarely gives inter­views, even when he has a new film to pro­mote. But a few years back Allen opened up to film­mak­er Robert B. Wei­de for the mak­ing of Woody Allen: A Doc­u­men­tary, which aired last year in the Amer­i­can Mas­ters series on PBS. “He nev­er refused a request,” Wei­de told PBS, “and he nev­er declined to answer a ques­tion.” At one point Wei­de asked Allen a series of twelve ques­tions that he was rea­son­ably sure Allen had nev­er been asked before. The result­ing inter­view, shown above, is includ­ed as an extra in the DVD ver­sion of the film and offers a fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle por­tal into the reclu­sive film­mak­er’s per­son­al­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen in 26 Minute Film

How Woody Allen Dis­cov­ered Ing­mar Bergman, and How You Can Too

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |

Neil deGrasse Tyson Answers the Big Enchilada Question, “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?”

in Life, Physics | November 28th, 2012

Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked by the Tem­ple­ton Foun­da­tion to answer the unan­swer­able ques­tion “Does the Uni­verse Have a Pur­pose?” He read his answer aloud, and Minute Physics helped ani­mate it. If you head to the Tem­ple­ton Foun­da­tion web site, you can find replies by oth­er lead­ing intel­lec­tu­als, includ­ing Lawrence Krauss, Jane Goodall, and Elie Wiesel.

For more pearls of wis­dom from Tyson, check out the fol­low­ing:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Neil deGrasse Tyson Deliv­ers the Great­est Sci­ence Ser­mon Ever

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Woody Guthrie’s Fan Letter To John Cage and Alan Hovhaness (1947)

in Letters, Music | November 28th, 2012

I’ve always felt a cer­tain close affin­i­ty with Woody Guthrie. Could be my admi­ra­tion for his unstint­ing working-man’s pol­i­tics or that he hails from my mother’s home state of Okla­homa. Those are strong appeals, and I sup­pose it’s all of that and more: Guthrie could carve out com­pact gran­ite sen­tences even Robert Frost would envy. If the let­ter above doesn’t con­vince you, read the man’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy. In the let­ter, the unapolo­getic work­ing-class folksing­ing Okie who embod­ied depres­sion-era authen­tic­i­ty writes to “Disc Com­pa­ny of Amer­i­ca” to enthuse over John Cage for his “over­haul of the fam­i­ly piano” and his “choked down odd and unusu­al kinds of things.”

Odd and unusu­al are two words that spring to mind when imag­in­ing Guthrie writ­ing a let­ter in praise of Cage. (He also prais­es Armen­ian com­pos­er Alan Hov­haness—Guthrie spells it “Hov­aness”). Writ­ten in 1947, it is the kind of text one wants to quote in its entire­ty. For­tu­nate­ly, we have the repro­duc­tion above, and you can read it for your­self. What isn’t repro­duced is the post­script, in which Guthrie wrote: “I need some­thing like this odd­strik­ing music to match the things I feel in my soul tonight.” He also wrote that that morn­ing, his wife, Mar­jorie, had “giv­en birth to a big 7‑pound boy”—Arlo.

Guthrie’s let­ter ref­er­ences a (now extreme­ly rare) two-disc set enti­tled Piano Com­po­si­tions by Alan Hov­haness and John Cage played by Maro Ajemi­an and Alan Hov­hanes, fea­tur­ing a hand-drawn cov­er by acclaimed jazz-record illus­tra­tor David Stone Mar­tin. Accord­ing to LA Times music crit­ic Mark Swed, the Cage com­po­si­tion on Guthrie’s 78-rpm record was the pre­pared piano solos from Cage’s Amores, com­posed in 1943. Below, watch a per­for­mance of the “odd­strik­ing” Amores by Span­ish ensem­ble Neop­er­cusión.

Thanks to Tris­tan for point­ing us to this let­ter orig­i­nal­ly blogged over at Stool Pigeon.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

The Epistemology of Dr. Seuss & More Philosophy Lessons from Great Children’s Stories

in K-12, Philosophy | November 28th, 2012

horton-hears-philosophy

Now for a sto­ry which “rais­es ques­tions about the the­o­ry and nature of knowl­edge.” An ele­phant “hears a faint noise com­ing from a small speck of dust; it seems to him like a tiny per­son is call­ing out for help.” He “finds it pecu­liar that a dust speck could speak so he rea­sons that there must be a very small crea­ture on it. With­out being able to see the crea­ture, he seems to know it is there and that it is his duty to save it from harm. The oth­er ani­mals in the jun­gle see him speak to the dust speck and find it impos­si­ble that there could be a crea­ture liv­ing on it.” Met with only dis­be­lief, “he holds tight to what he knows is true and learns from the voice that there exists an entire uni­verse.” At last, the speck­’s res­i­dent tiny towns­peo­ple “come togeth­er and make enough noise for the ani­mals to hear; they have proven their exis­tence and the jun­gle ani­mals are able to know what Hor­ton has known all along.” Most of us have read this clas­sic chil­dren’s book, Hor­ton Hears a Who!  by Dr. Seuss. But how many of us have probed its “ques­tions about the nature of human knowl­edge”?

The last para­graph’s quot­ed text all comes from Teach­ing Chil­dren Phi­los­o­phy’s Hor­ton Hears a Who mod­ule. The project, an out­growth of Mount Holyoke Col­lege pro­fes­sor Tom Warten­berg’s course “Phi­los­o­phy for Chil­dren,” comes premised on the notion not only that young­sters can learn phi­los­o­phy, but that they pos­sess minds par­tic­u­lar­ly well-suit­ed to its study. Teach­ing Chil­dren Phi­los­o­phy draws out the rel­e­vant philo­soph­i­cal issues and ques­tions from the books they’ve been read­ing already, from the epis­te­mol­o­gy of Hor­ton Hears a Who! to the meta­physics of Sylvester and the Mag­ic Peb­ble to phi­los­o­phy of mind in Harold and the Pur­ple Cray­on. Tar­get­ed toward par­ents, edu­ca­tors, and kids them­selves, the site promis­es great solace to any philo­soph­i­cal­ly mind­ed read­er (or read­er-aloud) of chil­dren’s sto­ries who feel they have long since exhaust­ed the depths of these beloved slim vol­umes. “How does Hor­ton know that this voice means there is a per­son on the speck?” “Is the moon that Harold draws the same as the moon we can see in the sky at night?” “If Sylvester is still a don­key because he thinks, what hap­pens when Sylvester is not think­ing?” You sup­ply the chil­dren’s books, and Warten­berg and com­pa­ny sup­ply the phi­los­o­phy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es from our Col­lec­tion of 550 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Concert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

in K-12, Music | November 27th, 2012

We’ve writ­ten before about the pub­lic ser­vice Leonard Bern­stein ren­dered the Amer­i­can pub­lic as an ambas­sador of clas­si­cal music. Bern­stein made some appear­ances on an arts and cul­ture pro­gram called Omnibus in the 50s, and in 1972, as the Charles Eliot Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor of Poet­ry at Har­vard, he deliv­ered a mas­ter­ful series of pub­lic lec­tures. Through his var­i­ous appear­ances on radio and tele­vi­sion pro­grams, he suc­ceed­ed bril­liant­ly in mak­ing high art acces­si­ble to the aver­age per­son. In Jan­u­ary of 1958, just two weeks after tak­ing over duties as the direc­tor of the New York Phil­har­mon­ic, Bern­stein took up a tra­di­tion in Amer­i­can orches­tras called “young people’s con­certs.”  He would lead a total of 53 such con­certs, even after his tenure at the Phil­har­mon­ic end­ed in 1969, con­tin­u­ing as con­duc­tor emer­i­tus until 1972. The con­certs were first broad­cast on Sat­ur­day morn­ings, but for a few years, CBS—probably in reac­tion to FCC direc­tor New­ton Minow’s 1961 “vast waste­land” speech about the state of television—moved the pro­gram to prime time. Bern­stein made the con­certs cen­tral to his work at the Phil­har­mon­ic, describ­ing them in hind­sight as “among my favorite, most high­ly prized activ­i­ties of my life.”

The first con­cert (above), enti­tled “What Music Means,” begins with Rossini’s “William Tell Over­ture.” While the orches­tra works away with pre­ci­sion, the cam­era cuts to the faces of aston­ished kids react­ing to what they knew at the time as the theme to The Lone Ranger TV show. Bern­stein then stops the piece, the kids cry out “Lone Ranger!” and he deft­ly piv­ots from this dis­arm­ing moment to a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion of why music isn’t about “sto­ries,” isn’t about “any­thing, it just is.” He com­mu­ni­cates his for­mal­ist the­o­ry with­out dumb­ing-down or con­de­scen­sion, but with clar­i­ty and pas­sion. Strip­ping away the pop­u­lar notion that every work of art has some inher­ent “mean­ing” (or “hid­den,” or “deep” mean­ing), Bern­stein shows his young audi­ence instead how all art–“high” or “low”–is first and fore­most about aes­thet­ic plea­sure, and appre­ci­a­tion begins with an under­stand­ing of how any giv­en work can only appeal to our emo­tions through the sens­es. Music, Bern­stein insists, is just “made of notes.”

This con­cert, at Carnegie Hall, was the first of its kind to be tele­vised. Lat­er episodes marked the first con­certs to be tele­vised from New York’s Lin­coln Cen­ter. The remain­ing three parts of “What Music Means” are avail­able here (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), and a full ver­sion (with Span­ish sub­ti­tles) can be found here.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Nine Classic Superman Cartoons Restored and Now on YouTube

in Animation, Comics/Cartoons | November 27th, 2012

At the top of this post, you can watch 1941’s Super­man, a short nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award and (accord­ing to 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als) the 33rd great­est car­toon of all time. When you’ve done that, how about eight more of the Man of Steel’s most aes­thet­i­cal­ly dis­tinc­tive, pristine­ly restored ani­mat­ed adven­tures? Warn­er Broth­ers has just post­ed them, free for the watch­ing, to their YouTube chan­nel. They orig­i­nal­ly came out of Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios, which ani­ma­tion buffs will know meant a true mark of qual­i­ty back then. “Then,” in this case, means the ear­ly 1940s, and these Fleis­ch­er-pro­duced Super­man shorts brazen­ly bear the styl­is­tic mark of that era. But if their rich, clean-lined look burst­ing with Tech­ni­col­or strikes our eyes today as vin­tage, it also has a cer­tain retro time­less­ness — if that does­n’t sound like too much of a con­tra­dic­tion in terms. No won­der they call this the Gold­en Age of Ani­ma­tion.

Just below, you’ll find Fleis­cher’s sec­ond Super­man short, Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters, in which our hero bat­tles exact­ly those. After it came Bil­lion Dol­lar Lim­it­ed, The Arc­tic Giant, The Bul­leteers, The Mag­net­ic Tele­cope, Elec­tric Earth­quake, Vol­cano, and Ter­ror On The Mid­way and more— all with­in a span of under two years.

After 1942, Para­mount hand­ed the Super­man con­tract to Famous Stu­dios, which rose out of Fleis­cher’s dis­so­lu­tion. Eight addi­tion­al shorts emerged, none now held in regard near­ly as high as any of the Fleis­ch­er pro­duc­tions.

Where Fleis­ch­er pos­sessed a sur­feit of imag­i­na­tion, Famous seemed to suf­fer a deficit. (Their Sec­ond World War-themed Super­man debut was titled Japo­teurs.) But those first eight have enjoyed a long lifes­pan, par­tic­u­lar­ly as high-pro­file influ­ences. The Super­man ani­mat­ed tele­vi­sion series of the 1990s owes them a debt, as does even that same decade’s Bat­man series. Fans of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion will rec­og­nize the lar­ce­nous robots of Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters in Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s series Lupin III and fea­ture Cas­tle in the Sky, and even the thor­ough­ly irrev­er­ent Fox car­toon The Tick paid them homage. So, Hol­ly­wood types strain­ing to dream up the next Super­man fran­chise reboot: spend time with these still-enter­tain­ing, still-impres­sive pieces of ani­ma­tion, Hol­ly­wood car­toons like noth­ing Hol­ly­wood has put out since.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Car­toon Brew

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam

When Super Heroes Get Old and Retire to Mia­mi

Free Gold­en Age Comics

Free Vin­tage Car­toons: Bugs Bun­ny, Bet­ty Boop and More

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Google Presents an Interactive Visualization of 100,000 Stars

in Astronomy, Google, K-12, Science | November 27th, 2012

Stargaz­ers of all ages will enjoy the lat­est Google exper­i­ment designed for Chrome. One Hun­dred Thou­sand Stars is an inter­ac­tive map of space includ­ing the loca­tions of—you guessed it—more than 100,000 stars.

Ren­dered in three dimen­sions, our know­able, mapped galaxy is both stag­ger­ing­ly vast and easy to nav­i­gate. With imagery and data from NASA and the Euro­pean Space Agency, Google’s Chrome Work­shop built a 3D mod­el of our lit­tle cor­ner of the uni­verse.

You can pre­view One Hun­dred Thou­sand Stars above. Or you can enter the map, click on the upper left cor­ner, and take a tour of your own. You’ll start just beyond the stars that astronomers have stud­ied and named. Swipe all the way into our own solar sys­tem. The first thing you’ll notice is that Plu­to isn’t includ­ed, invit­ing a new mnemon­ic for the plan­et names (My Very Earnest Moth­er Just Served Us Nec­tarines?). That hazy cloud about a light year from the sun is the Oort Cloud, a mass of comets that’s thought to mark the out­er edge of the sun’s grav­i­ta­tion­al pull.

Swipe out a bit to see 87 rel­a­tive­ly near­by stars. Click on their names to read about them. Sir­ius is the bright­est in the night sky, part­ly because of its own lumi­nos­i­ty but also because it is com­par­a­tive­ly close to Earth. Vega is so well stud­ied that its bright­ness is used as the base­line to clas­si­fy stars accord­ing to their col­or.

Swipe out fur­ther for a galac­tic view of the Milky Way. It appears as a beau­ti­ful illu­mi­nat­ed disc cen­tered around a bright bulge. This shape is called the Galac­tic Plane. Click and drag to tilt the disc this way and that. Total­ing to some 400 bil­lion stars and as many plan­ets, the Milky Way does in fact bulge at its cen­ter, though astronomers think that the true core is real­ly an intense black hole.

Notice the tiny icon to “Tog­gle Spec­tral Index” up in the left cor­ner. On one set­ting, each cloud is pix­i­lat­ed to high­light its col­or (a key iden­ti­fi­er for astronomers).

Here’s where it helps to know a lit­tle about stars and how they form. Stars begin as clouds of most­ly hydro­gen, becom­ing grad­u­al­ly so dense through the process of nuclear fusion that even grav­i­ty can­not make them fly apart.

The amount of light a star gives off is mea­sured as dif­fer­ent col­ors and tem­per­a­tures. “Hot­ter” stars are younger and give off more blue light, and so are indi­cat­ed as blue. “Cool” stars are old­er, give off less blue light, and are indi­cat­ed as red.

By the way, the music behind One Hun­dred Thou­sand Stars is by Sam Hulick, whose music gamers may rec­og­nize  from Mass Effect.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site and her blog, thenifty.blogspot.com.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast