Dostoyevsky Got a Reprieve from the Czar’s Firing Squad and Then Saved Charles Bukowski’s Life

in Literature, Poetry | November 25th, 2014

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured Charles Bukowski’s first-ever record­ed read­ings. Per­haps you found them, in their way, inspi­ra­tional, but for me the feel­ing of inspi­ra­tion always leads to a ques­tion — who inspired my inspir­er? In the case of Bukows­ki, the poet has, in his work, clear­ly named one of his main inspi­ra­tions: the work of 19th-cen­tu­ry Russ­ian nov­el­ist Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky. The author of Crime and Pun­ish­ment might at first seem to have lit­tle in com­mon with the author of Ham on Rye, but often the most res­o­nant inspi­ra­tions don’t involve much direct resem­blance. And as Bukows­ki remem­bers in the poem he gave Dos­toyevsky’s name (albeit in one of the oth­er stan­dard spellings), his ances­tor in the world of let­ters did more than just get him writ­ing:

Dos­to­evsky

against the wall, the fir­ing squad ready.
then he got a reprieve.
sup­pose they had shot Dos­to­evsky?
before he wrote all that?
I sup­pose it would­n’t have
mat­tered
not direct­ly.
there are bil­lions of peo­ple who have
nev­er read him and nev­er
will.
but as a young man I know that he
got me through the fac­to­ries,
past the whores,
lift­ed me high through the night
and put me down
in a bet­ter
place.
even while in the bar
drink­ing with the oth­er
dere­licts,
I was glad they gave Dos­to­evsky a
reprieve,
it gave me one,
allowed me to look direct­ly at those
ran­cid faces
in my world,
death point­ing its fin­ger,
I held fast,
an immac­u­late drunk
shar­ing the stink­ing dark with
my
broth­ers.

You can also lis­ten to “Dos­to­evsky” read aloud at the top of the post. Those with a work­ing knowl­edge of its name­sake’s life might think back to Dos­toyevsky’s time in prison, recount­ed briefly in the “Siber­ian exile (1849–1854)” sec­tion of his Wikipedia page. Arrest­ed on trumped-up charges of con­spir­a­cy for sim­ply read­ing the wrong books, he was sen­tenced to “eight years of exile with hard labour at a kator­ga prison camp in Omsk, Siberia, fol­lowed by a term of com­pul­so­ry mil­i­tary ser­vice.” Today, any of us can read Bukowski’s rough-and-tum­ble verse to get us through hard times; we can also, as Bukows­ki did, read Dos­toyevsky (see our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks). But Dos­toyevsky him­self, con­sid­ered par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous by his jail­ers, was “per­mit­ted to read noth­ing but his New Tes­ta­ment.” Hard times indeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 130 Min­utes of Charles Bukowski’s First-Ever Record­ed Read­ings (1968)

A Read­ing of Charles Bukowski’s First Pub­lished Sto­ry, “After­math of a Lengthy Rejec­tion Slip” (1944)

So You Want to Be a Writer?: Charles Bukows­ki Explains the Dos & Don’ts

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky Told in a Beau­ti­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky Draws Elab­o­rate Doo­dles In His Man­u­scripts

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Tim Burton Directs Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar” on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1986)

in Film, Television | November 25th, 2014

How do you fol­low up on mak­ing a children’s movie clas­sic? If you’re Tim Bur­ton, you spin a tale of sex, mur­der and con­cep­tu­al art.

On the heels of his fea­ture debut Pee-Wee’s Big Adven­ture, Tim Bur­ton adapt­ed Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar” (1944) for an episode of the ‘80s reboot of Alfred Hitch­cock Presents. In Bradbury’s sto­ry, a fail­ing farmer buys a jar with a curi­ous thing float­ing in it. It is described as “one of those pale things drift­ing in alco­hol plas­ma … with its peeled, dead eyes star­ing out at you and nev­er see­ing you.” This thing, how­ev­er, has a pecu­liar charis­ma. Peo­ple come for miles to gawk at it, strange­ly cap­ti­vat­ed by its uncan­ny charm. Well, almost every­one. The farmer’s cheat­ing wife, how­ev­er, loathes it to the pit of her mar­row and when she tries to get rid of it, things take a vio­lent turn.

Bur­ton gives the sto­ry a decid­ed­ly Rea­gan-era twist. Instead of being a down-and-out farmer, Knoll (played by Grif­fin Dunne) is a fad­ing star of the New York art scene. The episode opens with a crit­ic sav­aging Knoll’s new open­ing, which is filled with large, pre­pos­ter­ous con­cep­tu­al pieces. The artist flees the show and his belit­tling harpy of a wife in favor of the local junk­yard. There, he pries the tit­u­lar jar from the trunk of a 1938 Mer­cedes. Float­ing inside is what looks like a Dr. Seuss crea­ture drown in Windex. Knoll is both fas­ci­nat­ed and repulsed by it. So, nat­u­ral­ly, he places it at the cen­ter of his show. The results are mixed. Sure, Knoll starts to sell art again but his wife also starts to get stab­by with a kitchen knife.

The episode is deli­cious fun. From the eye-pop­ping col­or palette to the crisp, graph­ic direc­tion to the painful­ly ‘80s hair­styles, this work feels very much a part of the same world as Burton’s next movie, Beetle­juice. In fact, com­pos­er Dan­ny Elf­man and screen­writ­ers Michael McDow­ell and Lar­ry Wil­son worked on both. You can watch it above.

You can watch a more faith­ful ver­sion of Bradbury’s sto­ry, which aired in 1964 dur­ing the orig­i­nal run of Alfred Hitch­cock Presents, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films

Vin­cent, Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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The Wisdom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Provoking Animations

in Animation, Philosophy, Religion | November 24th, 2014

Per­haps no sin­gle per­son did more to pop­u­lar­ize Zen Bud­dhism in the West than Alan Watts. In a sense, Watts pre­pared U.S. cul­ture for more tra­di­tion­al­ly Zen teach­ers like Soto priest Suzu­ki Roshi, whose lin­eage con­tin­ues today, but Watts did not con­sid­er him­self a Zen Bud­dhist. Or at least that’s what he tells us in the talk above, ani­mat­ed by Trey Park­er and Matt Stone, the cre­ators of South Park. “I am not a Zen Bud­dhist,” he says, “I am not advo­cat­ing Zen Bud­dhism, I am not try­ing to con­vert any­one to it. I have noth­ing to sell.” Instead, he calls him­self “an enter­tain­er.” Is he pulling our leg?

After all, Watts was the author of such books as The Spir­it of Zen (1936—his first), The Way of Zen (1957), and ”This Is It” and Oth­er Essays on Zen and Spir­i­tu­al Expe­ri­ence (1960). Then again, he also wrote books on Chris­tian­i­ty, on “Erot­ic Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty,” and on all man­ner of mys­ti­cism from near­ly every major world reli­gion.

And he was ordained an Epis­co­pal priest in 1945 and served as such until 1950. Watts was a tricky character—a strict anti-dog­ma­tist who found all rigid doc­trine irri­tat­ing at best, deeply oppres­sive and dehu­man­iz­ing at worst.

While Watts may not have been any sort of doc­tri­naire Zen priest, he learned—and taught—a great deal from Japan­ese Bud­dhist con­cepts, which he dis­tills in the video at the top. He gleaned very sim­i­lar insights—about the uni­ty and inter­con­nect­ed­ness of all things—from Dao­ism. Just above, see a very short ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by Eddie Rosas, from The Simp­sons, in which Watts uses a sim­ple para­ble to illus­trate “Dao­ism in per­fec­tion.”

The con­cepts Watts elu­ci­dates from var­i­ous tra­di­tions are instant­ly applic­a­ble to eco­log­i­cal con­cerns and to our rela­tion­ship to the nat­ur­al world. “The whole process of nature,” he says above in a para­ble ani­mat­ed by Steve Agnos, “is an inte­grat­ed process of immense com­plex­i­ty.” In this case, how­ev­er, rather than offer­ing a les­son in uni­ty, he sug­gests that nature, and real­i­ty, is ulti­mate­ly unknow­able, that “it is real­ly impos­si­ble to tell whether any­thing that hap­pens in it is good or bad.” The most rea­son­able atti­tude then, it seems, is to refrain from mak­ing judg­ments either way.

It’s that ten­den­cy of the human mind to make hasty, erro­neous judg­ments based on mis­ap­pre­hen­sions that comes in for cri­tique in the Watts talk above, ani­mat­ed by Tim McCourt and Wes­ley Louis of West­min­ster Arts & Film Lon­don. Here, he reach­es even deep­er, inves­ti­gat­ing ideas of per­son­al iden­ti­ty and the exis­tence of the ego as an enti­ty sep­a­rate from the rest of real­i­ty. Return­ing to his grand theme of inter­con­nect­ed­ness, Watts assures us it’s “impos­si­ble to cut our­selves off from the social envi­ron­ment, and also fur­ther­more from the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. We are that; there’s no clear way of draw­ing the bound­ary between this organ­ism and every­thing that sur­rounds it.” But in order to dis­cov­er this essen­tial truth, says Watts, we must become “deep lis­ten­ers” and let go of embar­rass­ment, shy­ness, and anx­i­ety.

If you enjoy these excerpts from Alan Watts’ lec­tures, you can find many hours of his talks online. The offi­cial Alan Watts site, man­aged by his son Mark, has exten­sive col­lec­tions of his talks and cours­es, though these are offered at con­sid­er­able cost. What Watts would have thought of this, I do not know, but I’m cer­tain he’d be glad that so much of his work—hours of lec­tures, in fact—is avail­able free of charge on Youtube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Zen Teach­ings of Alan Watts: A Free Audio Archive of His Enlight­en­ing Lec­tures

What If Mon­ey Was No Object?: Thoughts on the Art of Liv­ing from East­ern Philoso­pher Alan Watts

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets of Aldous Hux­ley and His Art of Dying

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Tech­nol­o­gy Can’t Grasp Real­i­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Read Online Key Documents from the Ferguson Grand Jury: Witness Testimony, Forensic Evidence & More

in Current Affairs | November 24th, 2014

ferguson testimonyTonight, a St. Louis Coun­ty grand jury decid­ed not to bring crim­i­nal charges against Dar­ren Wil­son, the white police offi­cer who shot to death Michael Brown, an unarmed African-Amer­i­can teenag­er, in Fer­gu­son, Mis­souri this past sum­mer. Fol­low­ing the con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion, St. Louis Pub­lic Radio start­ed to upload key doc­u­ments from the grand jury pro­ceed­ings to its web­site. The doc­u­ments include grand jury tes­ti­mo­ny, foren­sic evi­dence, med­ical reports, and law enforce­ment inter­views. View it all here and be sure to check back for updates.

via Gawk­er

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The Crazy, Iconic Life of Nico; Andy Warhol Muse, Velvet Underground Vocalist, Enigma in Amber

in Film, Music | November 24th, 2014

There’s no deny­ing that train wrecks make great doc­u­men­tary sub­jects.

Not that Abra­ham Lin­coln doesn’t, but watch­ing some­one come unglued is a whole ‘nother sort of com­pelling. Upset­ting, even.

Docs in this genre usu­al­ly require the sub­ject to have left the build­ing in order to reach a sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion. The final word belongs to an assort­ment of friends, col­leagues, admir­ers, enemies…some of whom may be har­bor­ing ulte­ri­or motives.

Sure­ly Ger­man chanteuse Nico’s appear­ance fac­tored into Andy Warhol’s deci­sion to ele­vate her to Fac­to­ry super­star sta­tus. (See his video of her imme­di­ate­ly above.) She was a mod­el after all, arrest­ing enough to have appeared as her­self in La Dolce Vita. She romanced rock gods, film direc­tors, and movie stars, many of whom have their say in Susanne Ofteringer’s doc­u­men­tary Nico-Icon, view­able in its entire­ty up top.

It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing, cau­tion­ary por­trait, but as the back­seat psy­cho­analy­sis mount­ed, I found myself want­i­ng to hear from the sub­ject more.  With apolo­gies to Neil Dia­mond fans, we decid­ed  it was only fit­ting to show you Nico hav­ing her own say.

Maybe she was a night­mare. For­mer key­boardist, James Young, wrote a book about his time on tour with her. He’s in the doc­u­men­tary, of course. Aspir­ing icons, you’ve been fore­warned:

When I worked with her her looks were gone and she wasn’t this Chelsea Girl crea­ture, this per­ox­ide blonde Mar­lene Diet­rich moon god­dess vamp. She was a mid­dle aged junkie.

Nice. You reck­on he might have gone eas­i­er on her, had she been one of John Waters’ super­stars, the late Edith Massey or the still-thriv­ing Mink Stole?

For­get sticks and stones. It takes a lot more hero­in and hard liv­ing to kill the looks of any­one with her bone struc­ture.

Did Nico real­ly have such lit­tle use for anyone’s approval but her own? The art she made after her icon­ic work with the Vel­vet Under­ground con­vinces me that her embrace of ugly–what Chelsea Girls direc­tor referred to as her “stu­pid Ger­man perversity”–was sin­cere.

She’s still an enig­ma trapped in amber. She’ll be your mir­ror.

Find 200 free doc­u­men­taries in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Sal­vador Dalí

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico Reunite, Play Acoustic Vel­vet Under­ground Songs on French TV, 1972

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Literary Remains of Gabriel García Márquez Will Rest in Texas

in Literature | November 24th, 2014

marquez ransom
Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez’s notes for The Gen­er­al in His Labyrinth (1989) via The Ran­som Cen­ter & The New York Times

Quick note: The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, a human­i­ties research library at UT-Austin, announced this morn­ing that it has acquired the archive of Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez, the Nobel Prize-win­ning, Colom­bian nov­el­ist who passed away ear­li­er this year. His lit­er­ary remains include “orig­i­nal man­u­script mate­ri­als for 10 books …; more than 2,000 pieces of cor­re­spon­dence, includ­ing let­ters from Car­los Fuentes and Gra­ham Greene; drafts of his 1982 Nobel Prize accep­tance speech; more than 40 pho­to­graph albums doc­u­ment­ing all aspects of his life over near­ly nine decades; the Smith Coro­na type­writ­ers and com­put­ers on which he wrote some of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s most beloved works; and scrap­books metic­u­lous­ly doc­u­ment­ing his career via news clip­pings from Latin Amer­i­ca and around the world.”

All of this mate­r­i­al, The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter goes on to say, will con­ve­nient­ly site along­side archives of oth­ers authors who inspired Gar­cía Márquez — most notably, Jorge Luis Borges, William Faulkn­er and James Joyce.

The New York Times has a small gallery of images show­cas­ing pho­tos in the new­ly acquired col­lec­tion. Take a quick spin through it here.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 10 Short Sto­ries by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Inter­views)

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Car­los Fuentes: “You Have to See the Face of Death in Order to Start Writ­ing Seri­ous­ly”

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Shelf Life: American Museum of Natural History Creates New Video Series on Its 33 Million Artifacts

in Biology, History, Museums, Science, Video - Science | November 24th, 2014

I once spent a sum­mer as a secu­ri­ty guard at the Children’s Muse­um of Indi­anapo­lis. A won­der­ful place to vis­it, but my work­day expe­ri­ence proved dread­ful­ly dull. By far the high­light was being pulled off what­ev­er exhib­it I hap­pened to be guard­ing to assist in col­lec­tions, a cav­ernous back­stage area where untold trea­sures were shelved with­out cer­e­mo­ny. The head con­ser­va­tor con­fid­ed that many of these items would nev­er be sin­gled out for dis­play. The thrift store egal­i­tar­i­an­ism that reigned here was far more appeal­ing than the eye-catch­ing, edu­ca­tion­al sig­nage in the pub­lic area. From the obliv­ion of deep stor­age springs the poten­tial for dis­cov­ery.

How grat­i­fy­ing to learn that the 200 plus sci­en­tists employed by the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry feel the same. As palen­tol­o­gist Mike Novacek, puts it in Shelf Life, the museum’s just launched month­ly video series:

You can make new dis­cov­er­ies in Col­lec­tions just like you can out in the field. You can walk around the cor­ner and see some­thing that no one’s quite observed that way before, describe a new species or a new fea­ture that’s impor­tant to sci­ence.

The insti­tu­tion can choose from among more than 33,430,000 good­ies, from ancient objects they’ve been care­ful­ly tend­ing for more than two cen­turies to the sam­ples of frozen tis­sue and DNA com­pris­ing the bare­ly 13-year-old Ambrose Mon­ell Cryo Col­lec­tion for Mol­e­c­u­lar and Micro­bial Research.

Gems and mete­orites!

Arrow­heads and gourds!

Ver­te­brates and inver­te­brates!

There’s tru­ly some­thing here for…

WaspsFinalFlat

Wasp enthu­si­asts (you know who you are) can thrill to the sev­en and a half mil­lion spec­i­mens in sex researcher Alfred Kinsey’s Cynip­i­dae col­lec­tion. (They’re ready for their close up, Mr. DeMille. Famous as they are, the first episode passed them over in favor of a more pho­to­genic mock bee from the genus Criorhi­na.)

Future episodes will call upon in-house ichthy­ol­o­gists, pale­on­tol­o­gists, anthro­pol­o­gists, astro­physi­cists, and her­petol­o­gists to dis­cuss such top­ics as spec­i­men prepa­ra­tion, tax­on­o­my, and cura­tion. Stay abreast (and — bonus!- cel­e­brate Nero’s birth­day with tur­tles) by sub­scrib­ing to the museum’s youtube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Panoram­ic Vir­tu­al Tour of the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry

Down­load the Uni­verse: A Dis­cern­ing Cura­tor for Sci­ence eBooks

How to Make a Mum­my — Demon­strat­ed by The Get­ty Muse­um

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She goes into more detail about her short-lived stint as a muse­um secu­ri­ty guard in her third book, Job Hop­per. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Hear 130 Minutes of Charles Bukowski’s First-Ever Recorded Readings (1968)

in Poetry | November 24th, 2014

Charles_Bukowski_smokingCharles Bukows­ki smok­ing by Tyre­nius

We enjoy the work of Charles Bukows­ki here at Open Cul­ture, but recent­ly we’ve weight­ed our atten­tion toward his late work. And I mean his very late work, like the last poem he ever faxed. So today we turn to the very back of Bukowski’s back pages, for 130 min­utes of the can­tan­ker­ous yet odd­ly hope-filled poet and nov­el­ist’s first-ever record­ed read­ings, all avail­able at Ubuweb. They come, as the site says, “culled from tapes made by Bukows­ki at his Los Ange­les home in 1968 for biog­ra­ph­er and rock crit­ic Bar­ry Miles, long before the author had begun reg­u­lar pub­lic read­ings.” Few would expect the behav­ior of a shrink­ing vio­let from the likes of Bukows­ki, but this occa­sion found him “so shy he insist­ed that he record alone. He reads both poet­ry and prose, gets thor­ough­ly drunk dur­ing the record­ing, and bitch­es about his life, his land­lord, and his neigh­bors.”

This mate­r­i­al all comes the album At Ter­ror Street and Agony Way, com­mer­cial­ly issued in 2000 but now out of print. Now that it has made its way to the inter­net, you can enjoy such vin­tage, lean Bukows­ki cuts  as “The State of World Affairs” (“The Hol­ly­wood hills stand there, stand there, full of drunks and insane peo­ple and much kiss­ing and auto­mo­biles”), “I Can­not Stand Tears” (“There were sev­er­al hun­dred fools around the goose who broke his leg, try­ing to decide what to do, when the guard walked up and pulled out his can­non”), and “I Want­ed to Over­throw the Gov­ern­ment” (“The weak­ness was not Gov­ern­ment but Man, one at a time, that men were nev­er as strong as their ideas, and that ideas were gov­ern­ments turned into men; and so it began on a couch with a spilled mar­ti­ni and it end­ed in the bed­room”).

You can hear the whole thing, in all its spir­it­ed (in both sens­es of the word) glo­ry on Ubuwe­b’s Bukows­ki page, which also offers such choice record­ings as 1969’s 70 Min­utes in Hell, 1973’s Poems and Insults, and 1980’s Hostage.

Find more of Bukowskis’s 1968 record­ings at Ubuweb.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Read­ing of Charles Bukowski’s First Pub­lished Sto­ry, “After­math of a Lengthy Rejec­tion Slip” (1944)

Lis­ten to Charles Bukows­ki Poems Being Read by Bukows­ki Him­self & the Great Tom Waits

So You Want to Be a Writer?: Charles Bukows­ki Explains the Dos & Don’ts

The Last (Faxed) Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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