E.M. Forster’s later years are something of a riddle. After publishing five novels, including the classics A Passage to India and Howards End, Forster stopped writing fiction at the age of 45. He lived quietly for another 46 years and continued to write essays, short biographies and literary journalism — but no more novels.
The issues behind it are complicated, says Forster in this excerpt from a 1958 BBC interview. “But I think one of the reasons why I stopped writing novels,” he says, “is that the social aspect of the world changed so very much. I’d been accustomed to write about the old vanished world with its homes and its family life and its comparative peace. All of that went. And though I can think about it I cannot put it into fiction form.”
At the time of the interview Forster was an honorary fellow at King’s College, Cambridge, where he lived the final 24 years of his life. He speaks of his life at Cambridge, and of his own limitations as a writer, with a sincerity and humanity that readers will recognize from his books.
In 1980, Jim Jarmusch made his first feature, Permanent Vacation, an urban walkabout that’s equal parts stark, alienated, and funny. Four years later came Stranger Than Paradise, a film often compared to both Yasujiro Ozu and The Honeymooners, and the one that made his name in the cinephilic consciousness. Faced with the job of following up this surprisingly (some would say shockingly) low-key hit, Jarmusch came up with 1986’s Down By Law. His productions have always taken pains to assemble distinctive casts, and this one stars the trio of Tom Waits, Stranger Than Paradise’s John Lurie, and Roberto Benigni. When the three find themselves locked up together in the same prison cell, they devise an escape plan that takes them straight out into the surrounding Louisiana swamps. The film therefore represents Jarmusch’s entry into the genre of the jailbreak movie, albeit in the same convention-skewing, tradition-dismissing, tangential way that his Dead Man was a western, his Ghost Dog was a samurai movie, and his The Limits of Control was a spy thriller.
Above you’ll find unseen scenes Jarmusch shot for Down by Law (here’s part two) showing a few characteristically intriguing moments of performance from Waits, Lurie, and others in jail and out on the streets of New Orleans. All of it comes shot in a rich, dreamlike black-and-white by famed cinematographer Robby Müller, a look Jarmusch tried out in Stranger Than Paradise and would later perfect in Dead Man. Though these scenes didn’t ultimately make it into the movie, they nonetheless come off as clearly Jarmuschian in their appearance and tone. Critics have long considered Jarmusch one of the least, if not the least compromising independent filmmaker to come out of the eighties. You can, of course, see that in the way an entire personality comes through in each of his films. But listen closely to these outtakes, and you’ll find that even the way he says “action” and “cut” bears the stamp of his cinematic attitude.
Most people know Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) as a writer and illustrator of some of the world’s most-beloved children’s books. And while it’s true that some of his characters have not fared well since his death in 1991, his legacy as a playful moralist is secure with parents and teachers everywhere. But few people know that Geisel got his start as a satirist and illustrator for adults, publishing articles and illustrations in Judge, Life, Vanity Fair, and the Saturday Evening Post. He went on to prominence as an advertising illustrator during the Depression, most famously with a 17-year campaign for a bug-repellant called Flit—made by Standard Oil—whose slogan, “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” became a popular catch phrase in the 30s.
The University of California, San Diego, has a special collection of Geisel’s advertising work from the 30s and 40s (such as the image above) for clients like Standard, NBC, and Ford. The images show Geisel the illustrator developing visual themes that characterize his children’s books—the circus imagery, elephants, dazzling physical stunts, wide-eyed, furry creatures, complex Rube Goldberg machines, and the signature disembodied pointing gloves. During World War II, Geisel shifted his focus from advertising to politics and contributed weekly cartoons to PM magazine, a liberal publication. UCSD also has an online catalog of Geisel’s political cartoons, such as the 1941 ad for U.S. Savings Bonds below.
Here’s a rare gem from the video vault: Tom Waits on the Australian TV program, The Don Lane Show, in 1979.
Don Lane was an American nightclub performer who somehow managed to become the Johnny Carson of Australia. The Don Lane Show ran from 1975 to 1983, and featured comedy, interviews and musical performances by a variety of international stars who were touring Australia, including Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Jerry Lee Lewis and, on more than one occasion, Tom Waits.
On his first appearance in 1979, the 29-year-old Waits gave a disjointed, comic interview (above), before going to the piano (below) to perform “On the Nickel,” which he wrote for the soundtrack of the 1980 film of the same name. “The Nickel” refers to the skid row area of Los Angeles, along 5th Street. The song was included on Waits’s 1980 album, Heartattack and Vine. Australian TV viewers apparently didn’t know what to think about the mumbling, chain-smoking singer. When Waits returned in 1981, Lane said, “The last time Tom Waits appeared with us, his unusual style and sense of humor lit up our switchboard for about an hour after the show. And not all with compliments, either.”
Astronaut Don Pettit is a chemical engineer by training, and he is a man who loves his work. The video above, produced as part of a series called “Science off the Sphere,” shows an experiment conducted aboard the International Space Station. In it, Pettit demonstrates the way a water bubble reacts to puffs of air in microgravity. The results are fascinating to watch, made more so by Pettit’s total absorption in the experiment.
During his first six-month stay on the ISS in 2002–3, Pettit also experimented on how fluids react in zero-gravity. He dubbed these sessions “Saturday Morning Science.” Pettit returned to the ISS in December of 2011 and is still there, orbiting over 240 miles above the earth, conducting experiments in his free time and producing “Science off the Sphere.” Episode 5 of the series (below) is mesmerizing, and again, Pettit’s wonder as he narrates the experiment is palpable.
In the mid 1980s, Bob Dylan found his career hitting an unmistakable low point. In his autobiography, he recalls “Everything was smashed. My own songs had become strangers to me, I didn’t have the skill to touch the right nerves, couldn’t penetrate the surfaces. It wasn’t my moment of history anymore.”
For a while, Dylan toured with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, and it only led him to one conclusion: “Tom was at the top of his game and I was at the bottom of mine.” It was time to pack things in, to exit music altogether.
Before he could retire, Dylan agreed to do some shows with The Grateful Dead. In the summer of 1987, the singer-songwriter traveled to San Rafael, California to rehearse with the band. But it turned out to be trying, more than he could have ever imagined. In Chronicles, Volume 1 he writes:
After an hour or so, it became clear to me that the band wanted to rehearse more and different songs than I had been used to doing with Petty. They wanted to run over all the songs, the ones they liked, the seldom seen ones. I found myself in a peculiar position and I could hear the brakes screech. If I had known this to begin with, I might not have taken the dates.… There were so many [songs] that I couldn’t tell which was which‑I might even get the words to some mixed up with others.
Dylan eventually excused himself from the studios, intending never to return. But an encounter with a local jazz band — call it a simple twist of fate — brought him back. Dylan and The Dead started playing through his big repertoire. It was tough sledding at first. “But then miraculously,” he adds, “something internal came unhinged.” “I played these shows with The Dead and never had to think twice about it. Maybe they just dropped something in my drink, I can’t say, but anything they wanted to do was fine with me.”
It’s a great little story. Even better, the rehearsal is recorded for posterity. Thanks to the Internet Archive, you can sit back and listen to 74 tracks, which includes some classics — “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “Gotta Serve Somebody,” “Maggie’s Farm,” “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” and more.
You can stream all of the tracks right below, from start to end. Or find individual recordings here.
When I was young, the first songs every aspiring rock star would learn on guitar were Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” and Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.” I dutifully learned both baroque compositions before stumbling on to sludgy three-chord hardcore punk. “Wish You Were Here,” the song is, yes, a staple of high-school talent shows and every singer/songwriter in every coffeeshop, but that’s only because it is an incredibly powerful song from an incredibly powerful record, also called Wish You Were Here (WYWH). The documentary above tells the story of that record’s making. It begins with the atmospheric blues of “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” and its tragic inspiration, Floyd’s former leader Syd Barret—whose absence haunts the band as they discuss the genesis of WYWH—then the film continues on to the band’s collective sense of ennui after the success of 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon. All along, we’re treated to lengthy interviews, impromptu solo performances from Roger Waters and David Gilmour (never in the same room, of course), and fascinating looks at the recording process at Abbey Road Studios. An excerpt from the film description cites more specifics:
Wish You Were Here, released in September 1975, was the follow up album to the globally successful The Dark Side Of The Moon and is cited by many fans, as well as band members Richard Wright and David Gilmour, as their favorite Pink Floyd album. On release it went straight to Number One in both the UK and the US and topped the charts in many other countries around the world. This program tells the story of the making of this landmark release through new interviews with Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason and archive interviews with the late Richard Wright. Also featured are sleeve designer Storm Thorgerson, guest vocalist Roy Harper, front cover burning man Ronnie Rondell and others involved in the creation of the album. In addition, original recording engineer Brian Humphries revisits the master tapes at Abbey Road Studios to illustrate aspects of the songs construction.
Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds reviews the film here.
Damon Horowitz, a philosophy professor and “serial entrepreneur,” recently joined Google as an In-House Philosopher/Director of Engineering. Prior to his work at Google, Horowitz co-founded Aardvark, Perspecta, and a number of other tech companies. In this talk at Stanford University’s 2011 BiblioTech conference on “Human Experience,” Horowitz explains why he left a highly-paid tech career, in which he sought the keys to artificial intelligence, to pursue a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Stanford (the text of the talk is available here).
Horowitz offers fellow techies a formidable challenge, but a worthwhile one. In saying so, I must confess a bias: As a student and teacher of the humanities, I have watched with some dismay as the culture becomes increasingly dominated by technicians who often ignore or dismiss pressing philosophical and ethical problems in their quest to build a better world. It is gratifying to hear from someone who recognized this issue by (temporarily) giving up what he admits was a great deal of power and societal privilege and headed back to the classroom.
Horowitz describes his intellectual journey from “technologist” to philosopher with passion and candor, and concludes that as a result of his academic inquiry, he “no longer looks for machines to solve all of our problems for us,” and no longer assumes that he knows what’s best for his users. This kind of humility and intellectual flexibility is, ideally, the outcome of a higher degree in the humanities, and Horowitz uses his own trials to make a case for better critical thinking, for a “humanistic perspective,” in the tech sector and elsewhere. For examples, see Horowitz’s TED talks on a “moral operating system” and “philosophy in prison.” Complicating Google’s well-known, unofficial slogan “don’t be evil,” Horowitz, drawing on Hannah Arendt, believes that most of the evil in the world comes not from bad intentions but from “not thinking.”
In a related Stanford talk (above) from the same seminar, Marissa Mayer, former Vice President of Consumer Products at Google, discusses how she incorporated the humanities into product innovation at Google. The first female engineer at Google (and its youngest executive at the time of this talk), she has made headlines recently, becoming the new CEO of Yahoo.
We're hoping to rely on loyal readers, rather than erratic ads. Please click the Donate button and support Open Culture. You can use Paypal, Venmo, Patreon, even Crypto! We thank you!
Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
