Thelonious Monk’s personality was as quirky and original as his piano playing. An elusive, insular figure, Monk was nevertheless persuaded in late 1967 to allow a camera crew to follow him around over an extended period of time for a West German television documentary. The film, Monk (shown above in its entirety), is a fascinating up-close look at one of the giants of Jazz.
The 55-minute movie was shot by the American filmmakers Michael and Christian Blackwood for the networks NDR (North German Broadcasting) and WDR (West German Broadcasting). The Blackwood brothers had unprecedented access to Monk over a six-month period in late 1967 and early 1968, as he and his quartet performed and recorded in New York, Atlanta and Europe. The quartet includes Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, Larry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums. Although there are a few brief passages of untranslated German narration, the film is basically a cinéma vérité piece on Monk (who speaks English) and his remarkable music.
The Blackwood brothers’ footage, which Stephen Holden of The New York Times called “some of the most valuable jazz sequences ever shot,” later became the nucleus of a longer 1988 documentary produced by Clint Eastwood. You can watch that film and learn more about it in our 2011 post, “Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser.”
The story above—from our old friend James Grime of Numberphile and Cambridge University—has all the makings of weirdo Americana: bad amateur science, commercial ventures based upon the same, and a state legislature eager to embrace it all. In 1897, an amateur mathematician named Edwin Goodwin believed he’d solved an ancient problem ruled insoluble fifteen years earlier. He thought that he had squared the circle and could reasonably copyright Pi as 3.2. Yes, that’s right, after his “discovery,” Goodwin, a native of Indiana, decided to copyright his proof so that anyone using it outside of the state would have to pay him royalties.
But kindly, in a gesture of nativist goodwill (or political opportunism), Goodwin decided he would let his home state of Indiana use his proof for free for educational purposes. In fact, he said as much when he introduced a bill to the Indiana House of Representatives to rule his proof correct and grant him sole proprietorship. And, as sometimes happens in stories like this, the bill passed, unanimously, and the legislators were impressed. But one man wasn’t. By sheer chance, a professor of mathematics happened to be in attendance. While he declined to meet mathematics hero Edwin Goodwin, he did take it upon himself to warn the Indiana Senate of what was coming its way. Luckily for the state’s schoolchildren, the Senate threw the bill out, but not before a half-hour spent mocking its silliness.
But is the idea of squaring a circle ridiculous? Dr. Grime cites one Indian mathematician who proposed a somewhat feasible solution. And what exactly does it mean to “square a circle”? If you don’t know (and I don’t), you’ll have to wait till next time on Numberphile, when Grime and his team promise to explain it to us rubes.
Growing up, I didn’t think about all the individual qualities that make a great movie. I just thought of Blade Runner. Whatever Ridley Scott’s 1982 adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep had, it made for high cinematic quality indeed. As naive as it sounds, it doesn’t fall much short of modern critical and target-audience consensus. Visually, intellectually, and technically, Blade Runner has endured the decades almost effortlessly; how many other tales of humans real and artificial in a dystopian future megalopolis can you say the same about, at least with a straight face? Yet back in the early eighties, you would have had to call the picture, which opened to a weekend of only $6.15 million in ticket sales against its $28 million budget, a flop. Nor could critics come up with much praise: “A waste of time,” said Gene Siskel of Siskel & Ebert. (“I have never quite embraced Blade Runner,” Ebert wrote 25 years later, “but now it is time to cave in and admit it to the canon.”)
Have a look at the sheet of screening notes above (or click here to view a larger image), and you’ll find that even the studio executives didn’t like the movie. Some Blade Runner fans blame the poor initial reception on the cut that 1982’s critics and audiences saw, which differs considerably from the version so many of us revere today. They cite in particular a series of deadeningly explanatory voice-overs performed after the fact by star Harrison Ford, which sounds like a classic demand by philistine “suits” in charge until you read the notes from one executive referred to as J.P.: “Voice over dry and monotone,” “This voice over is terrible,” “Why is this voice over track so terrible.” And under “general comments”: “Voice over is an insult.” But with the offending track’s removal, the replacement of certain shots, tweaks in the plot, and the simple fullness of time, Blade Runner has gone from one of the least respected science fiction films to one of the most. Yet part of me wonders if some of those higher-ups in the screening ever made peace with it. A certain A.L., for instance, makes the fourteenth point, and adamantly: “They have to put more tits into the Zhora dressing room scene.”
Here’s an extraordinary recording of Albert Einstein from the fall of 1941, reading a full-length essay in English:
The essay is called “The Common Language of Science.” It was recorded in September of 1941 as a radio address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The recording was apparently made in America, as Einstein never returned to Europe after emigrating from Germany in 1933.
Einstein begins by sketching a brief outline of the development of language, before exploring the connection between language and thinking. “Is there no thinking without the use of language,” asks Einstein, “namely in concepts and concept-combinations for which words need not necessarily come to mind? Has not every one of us struggled for words although the connection between ‘things’ was already clear?”
Despite this evident separation between language and thinking, Einstein quickly points out that it would be a gross mistake to conclude that the two are entirely independent. In fact, he says, “the mental development of the individual and his way of forming concepts depend to a high degree upon language.” Thus a shared language implies a shared mentality. For this reason Einstein sees the language of science, with its mathematical signs, as having a truly global role in influencing the way people think:
The supernational character of scientific concepts and scientific language is due to the fact that they have been set up by the best brains of all countries and all times. In solitude, and yet in cooperative effort as regards the final effect, they created the spiritual tools for the technical revolutions which have transformed the life of mankind in the last centuries. Their system of concepts has served as a guide in the bewildering chaos of perceptions so that we learned to grasp general truths from particular observations.
Einstein concludes with a cautionary reminder that the scientific method is only a means toward an end, and that the welfare of humanity depends ultimately on shared goals.
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem–in my opinion–to characterize our age. If we desire sincerely and passionately for the safety, the welfare, and the free development of the talents of all men, we shall not be in want of the means to approach such a state. Even if only a small part of mankind strives for such goals, their superiority will prove itself in the long run.
The immediate context of Einstein’s message was, of course, World War II. The air force of Einstein’s native country had only recently called off its bombing campaign against England. A year before, London weathered 57 straight nights of bombing by the Luftwaffe. Einstein had always felt a deep sense of gratitude to the British scientific community for its efforts during World War I to test the General Theory of Relativity, despite the fact that its author was from an enemy nation.
“The Common Language of Science” was first published a year after the radio address, in Advancement of Science 2, no. 5. It is currently available in the Einstein anthologies Out of My Later Years and Ideas and Opinions.
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What entered the public domain in the US in 2013? It’s not a long answer, because the answer is .… nothing.
Now here’s a question that yields a longer answer. What books would have entered the public domain if we were still operating under reasonable, pre-1978 copyright laws? Here’s a little list that comes from Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain:
Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
Philip K. Dick, Minority Report
Ian Fleming, Diamonds are Forever (a James Bond novel)
Fred Gibson, Old Yeller
Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues
Alan Lerner, My Fair Lady
Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night
John Osborne, Look Back in Anger
Dodie Smith, 101 Dalmatians
You can also add films to the list, like:
Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Searchers (directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne)
The Ten Commandments (1956 version by Cecil B. DeMille, who also directed a similar film in 1923)
Around the World in 80 Days
Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
The Best Things in Life are Free
And we shouldn’t fail to mention that we could have had the first issue of MAD magazine, with Alfred E. Neuman gracing the cover.
In the meantime, if you’re wondering what will hit the public domain in 2014, the answer is “nothing.” And you can keep repeating that answer until 2019! That’s the next time something new will enter America’s creative commons. Yet one more reason Congress’ approval rating deserves to sit at 15%.
Woody Guthrie may have written as many as 3,000 folk songs, but he didn’t limit himself there. He also managed to write a novel called House of Earth, which only last month saw the light of day. To whom do we owe the pleasure of reading this previously unknown addendum to the prolific singer-songwriter’s career? Why, to historian Douglas Brinkley, actor Johnny Depp, and Guthrie’s daughter Nora. Researching a forthcoming biography of Bob Dylan, Brinkley spotted a mention of House of Earthsomewhere deep in the files of famous folk-music recordist Alan Lomax. He traced the manuscript to the University of Tulsa library, which had it in storage. Depp had recently started his own publishing imprint, Infinitum Nihil, and Brinkley passed along this promising piece of material. (The two had known each other for years, having initially met through that great literary connector, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.)
With House of Earth, Guthrie wrote a Dust Bowl novel, but one very much in tune with his own sensibilities. Unlike John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Guthrie’s story follows not the farm families who fled west, but those who remained on the Texas plains. “Pitched somewhere between rural realism and proletarian protest,” write Brinkley and Depp in a New York Times Book Review essay, “somewhat static in terms of narrative drive, ‘House of Earth’ nonetheless offers a searing portrait of the Panhandle and its marginalized Great Depression residents. Guthrie successfully mixes Steinbeck’s narrative verve with D. H. Lawrence’s openness to erotic exploration.” As of this week, you can read and also now hear the book, as read by Will Patton, in an audio version released by Audible.com. (Find info on how to get it for free below.) At the top of this post, you’ll find a short clip of Patton delivering the singer’s prose. Though Guthrie will remain best known for his politically-charged songs, his novel, which launches broadsides against big finance, big lumber, and big agriculture, should carry charge enough for any of his enthusiasts.
Note: Do you want to download House of Earth from Audible for free? Here’s one way to do it. Just head over to Audible.com and register for a 30-day free trial. You can download any audio book for free. Then, when the trial is over, you can continue your Audible subscription, or cancel it, and still keep the audio book. The choice is yours. And, in full disclosure, let me tell you that we have a nice arrangement with Audible. Whenever someone signs up for a free trial, it helps support Open Culture. That’s cool. But frankly, we work with them because I personally use the service nothing short of religiously.
Yoko Ono turned 80 last month, and she’s already proving that conceptual art has no expiration date — that octogenarians can create art that dazzles as much as it baffles. In the past week, Ono released her new video installment, Yoko Ono’s Make-Up Tips for Men, to help promote her fashion line for Opening Ceremony, which apparently features “LED jock straps, thigh-high boots, and butt-baring pants inspired by John Lennon’s sexy body.” The video is odd and offbeat, as you’d expect. And, true to form, it’s entirely devoid of actionable fashion tips for men.
According to The Telegraph, experts rummaging through a dusty box recently uncovered a letter penned by Oscar Wilde in 1890 (or thereabouts). Addressed to a “Mr. Morgan,” the letter runs 13 pages, and it offers what amounts to practical advice for an aspiring writer. Details on the letter’s contents remain scarce, although we will probably know more when the document gets auctioned off in two weeks time. But, so far, we know that Wilde offered Mr. Morgan two points to consider:
“Make some sacrifice for your art, and you will be repaid, but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you,”
“The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer.”
It’s essentially the nineteenth century version of what Charles Bukowski later said in much more simple terms: “if you’re doing it for money or fame, don’t do it.”
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