John Cheever Reads “The Swimmer,” His Famous Short Story, in Its Entirety (1977)

in Audio Books, Literature | June 3rd, 2014

The Sto­ries of John Cheev­er, a col­lec­tion of 61 sto­ries chron­i­cling the lives of “the great­est gen­er­a­tion,” was first pub­lished in 1978 with much fan­fare. The crit­ics liked it. The weighty, 700-page book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion in 1979. The peo­ple liked it too. The Sto­ries of John Cheev­er, Michiko Kaku­tani wrote in Cheev­er’s 1982 obit, was “one of the few col­lec­tions of short fic­tion ever to make The New York Times best-sell­er list.”

The col­lec­tion fea­tures some of Cheev­er’s best-known sto­ries: “The Enor­mous Radio,” “Good­bye, My Broth­er,” “The Five-Forty-Eight,” and “The Coun­try Hus­band.” And also per­haps his most famous short piece of fic­tion, “The Swim­mer.”

First pub­lished in The New York­er in July, 1964, “The Swim­mer” was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as a nov­el and ran over some 150 pages, before the author pared it down to a taut eleven pages. Those eleven pages appar­ent­ly take some 25 min­utes to read. Above, you can hear Cheev­er read­ing “The Swim­mer,” in its entire­ty, at New York’s 92nd St. Y. The audio was record­ed on Decem­ber 19, 1977, and it’s oth­er­wise housed in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Bonus: you can also hear author Anne Enright read “The Swim­mer” over at The New York­er. This ver­sion was record­ed in 2011.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

92nd Street Y Launch­es a New Online Archive with 1,000 Record­ings of Lit­er­ary Read­ings, Musi­cal Per­for­mances & More

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

Famous Authors Read Oth­er Famous Authors

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Ballet Dancers Do Their Hardest Moves in Slow Motion

in Dance | June 2nd, 2014

The Wash­ing­ton Post went behind the scenes at the Wash­ing­ton Bal­let to get “six pro­fes­sion­al dancers to show off the most dif­fi­cult moves in their reper­toire.” If this intrigues you, you can turn back to a 2012 post where we fea­tured Mari­na Kan­no and Gia­co­mo Bevilaqua, both from the Staats­bal­lett Berlin, per­form­ing sev­er­al jumps, each cap­tured in slow motion at 1000 frames per sec­ond. And it’s all set to Radiohead’s “Every­thing In Its Right Place.” Enjoy.

via The Cre­ators Project/Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Le Bal­let Mécanique: The His­toric Cin­e­mat­ic Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Fer­nand Legér and George Antheil

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

2 Hour Annotated Star Wars Film Reveals the Cinematic Influences Behind George Lucas’ Classic Film

in Film | June 2nd, 2014

Last week we brought to your atten­tion a short video detail­ing the ways George Lucas’ clas­sic Star Wars draws from the samu­rai films of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, bor­row­ing cos­tum­ing and direc­to­r­i­al nods. But like any great artist, Lucas stole from more than one source. His ground­break­ing space epic incor­po­rates influ­ences as diverse as John Ford’s clas­sic west­ern The Searchers and the com­par­a­tive mythol­o­gy of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thou­sand Faces, among many, many oth­ers. How on earth did Lucas syn­the­size such a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent gen­res into the uni­fied whole that is Star Wars? To begin to answer that ques­tion, Michael Heile­mann has put togeth­er the anno­tat­ed Star Wars you see above, “a work-in-progress mashup of Star Wars with many of its sources of inspi­ra­tion, play­ing as a fea­ture-length pre­sen­ta­tion.” As The Onion’s A.V. Club describes it, “the video illu­mi­nates the astound­ing breadth of mate­r­i­al that was bang­ing around in Lucas’ head as he assem­bled Star Wars. It’s the kind of thing that ought to be on a spe­cial-edi­tion Blu-Ray release but nev­er will be because of copy­right issues.”

Heile­mann, Inter­face Direc­tor at Square­space, edit­ed the film as part of his research process for an ebook called Kit­bashed, an exhaus­tive study of “how George Lucas and his artists per­fect­ed the process of trans­form­ing exist­ing books, comics, movies and ideas into the fan­ta­sy spec­tac­u­lar that is Star Wars.” The title of Heilemann’s project comes from a word that means “using exist­ing mod­el-kits to detail space­ship mod­els for films,” with some con­no­ta­tions of both the “mashup” and the “hack.” Lucas’ achieve­ment, how­ev­er, is much more than either of those words sug­gest, accord­ing to Heile­mann, whose jour­ney into the films revealed to him their “under­ly­ing com­plex­i­ty and seem­ing­ly infi­nite depth.” Far from attempt­ing to “reveal how Star Wars is in real­i­ty com­plete­ly uno­rig­i­nal,” Heile­mann hopes to show read­ers, and view­ers, that “the cre­ative process that brought forth Star Wars is noth­ing short of amaz­ing.”

Read more about Kit­bashed at its offi­cial site.

Via AV Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Star Wars is a Remix

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Anyone Can Change the World: The Animated Wisdom of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Jody Williams

in Animation | June 2nd, 2014

Here’s a lit­tle ani­ma­tion for those times when the unlike­li­hood of win­ning pub­lic recog­ni­tion for your work has you deject­ed to the point of inac­tion.

Chil­dren are repeat­ed­ly told that they can change the world, and, in my expe­ri­ence, most of them seem to believe that this is true.

How is it, then, that so many adults are par­a­lyzed by feel­ings of pow­er­less­ness? Did some­thing hap­pen in mid­dle school, or are the prob­lems of the world so immense? (Both, prob­a­bly.) Why both­er, right?

Activist Jody Williams may have won a Nobel Prize, but she’s also a fan of start­ing small.

The Roy­al Soci­ety for the Arts enlist­ed ani­ma­tor Katy Davis to mine William’s lec­ture  “Any­one Can Change the World” for its nar­ra­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties. It’s a good argu­ment against suc­cumb­ing to the siren song of your flat screen TVs. It’s also a good argu­ment for engag­ing with your com­mu­ni­ty.

Williams cru­sad­ed against land mines, but her advice holds true for more mod­est endeav­ors, too, be it school lunch pol­i­cy reform or fin­ish­ing that nov­el or short sto­ry.

If a cou­ple of min­utes of dog­gies don’t set you to rights, her com­plete lec­ture is below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of “Out­ro­spec­tion” — A Way of Life, A Force for Social Change — Explained with Ani­ma­tion

Manuel Lima Visu­al­izes Knowl­edge in Our Inter­con­nect­ed World in a Brand New RSA Ani­mat­ed Video

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

James Joyce’s Dirty Love Letters Read Aloud by Martin Starr, Paget Brewster & Other TV Comedy Actors (NSFW)

in Comedy, History, Letters, Literature | June 2nd, 2014

(Be warned, these videos are Not Safe for Work. And unless you can deal with strong lan­guage, you should skip watch­ing these clips.)

Last year we fea­tured James Joyce’s “dirty let­ters” to his wife, orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in 1909 but not dis­cov­ered in all their cere­bral­ly erot­ic glo­ry until this cen­tu­ry. For Valen­tine’s Day, the sketch com­e­dy video site Fun­ny or Die cap­i­tal­ized on the avail­abil­i­ty of these high­ly detailed, fan­ta­sy-sat­u­rat­ed Joycean mash notes by hav­ing them read dra­mat­i­cal­ly. For this task the pro­duc­ers round­ed up five well-known actors, such as Mar­tin Starr from such comed­ical­ly respect­ed tele­vi­sion shows as Freaks and Geeks and Par­ty Down. You can watch his read­ing above. “I would like you to wear draw­ers with three or four frills, one over the oth­er at the knees and up the thighs, and great crim­son bows in them, so that when I bend down over you to open them and” — but you don’t just want to read it. You want to hear such a mas­ter­piece per­formed.

Off rais­ing the chil­dren in Tri­este, Joyce’s wife Nora wrote replies of a pre­sum­ably sim­i­lar ardor-sat­u­rat­ed nature. Alas, these remain undis­cov­ered, but that unfor­tu­nate fact does­n’t stop actress­es as well as actors from pro­vid­ing oral ren­di­tions of their own. Just above, we have Paget Brew­ster from Friends and Crim­i­nal Minds read­ing aloud anoth­er of Joyce’s love let­ters, one which moves with sur­pris­ing swift­ness from evok­ing “the spir­it of eter­nal beau­ty” to evok­ing “a hog rid­ing a sow.” This series of read­ings also includes con­tri­bu­tions from The Mid­dle­man’s Natal­ie Morales, The Kids in the Hall’s Dave Foley, and Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Michaela Watkins. They all reveal that, with his tex­tu­al cre­ativ­i­ty as well as his close acquain­tance with those places where the roman­tic meets the repul­sive, James Joyce would have made quite a sex­ter today. You can have that idea for free, lit­er­ate sketch com­e­dy video pro­duc­ers of the inter­net.

PS Apolo­gies for the lengthy ads that pre­cede the videos. They come from Fun­ny or Die and we have no con­trol over them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s “Dirty Let­ters” to His Wife (1909)

James Joyce Plays the Gui­tar, 1915

On Blooms­day, Hear James Joyce Read From his Epic Ulysses, 1924

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Free NASA eBook Theorizes How We Will Communicate with Aliens

in Astronomy, e-books | May 31st, 2014

Douglas A. Vakoch

Dur­ing the past few years, NASA has released a series of free ebooks, includ­ing NASA Earth As Art and var­i­ous inter­ac­tive texts focus­ing on the Webb and Hub­ble space tele­scopes. Last week, they added a new, curi­ous book to the col­lec­tion, Archae­ol­o­gy, Anthro­pol­o­gy, and Inter­stel­lar Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Edit­ed by Dou­glas A. Vakoch (the Direc­tor of Inter­stel­lar Mes­sage Com­po­si­tion at the SETI Insti­tute), the text con­tem­plates how we’ll go about “estab­lish­ing mean­ing­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion with an extrater­res­tri­al intel­li­gence.” The schol­ars con­tribut­ing to the vol­ume “grappl[e] with some of the enor­mous chal­lenges that will face human­i­ty if an infor­ma­tion-rich sig­nal ema­nat­ing from anoth­er world is detect­ed.” And to make sure that we’re “pre­pared for con­tact with an extrater­res­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion, should that day ever come,” they draw on “issues at the core of con­tem­po­rary archae­ol­o­gy and anthro­pol­o­gy.” Why archae­ol­o­gy and anthro­pol­o­gy? Because, says Vack­och, com­mu­ni­ca­tion with intel­li­gent life prob­a­bly won’t be through sound, but through images. We will need to read/understand the civ­i­liza­tion we encounter based on what we observe. Vakoch says:

[D]on’t think of “sound worlds” or music or speech as the domains, vehi­cles, or con­tents of ETI [extra ter­res­tri­al intel­li­gence] mes­sages. Regard­less of semi­otic con­cerns, the acces­si­bil­i­ty of acoustic mes­sag­ing must remain doubt­ful. Fur­ther­more, there will be intend­ed and unin­tend­ed aspects of per­for­mance, which elab­o­rate the dif­fi­cul­ties of using sound. In my view avoid­ance of the sound world need not be con­tro­ver­sial.

On the oth­er hand, vision and the use of images would appear to be at least plau­si­ble. Although spec­tral details can­not be con­sid­ered uni­ver­sal, the phys­i­cal arrange­ment of objects on a hab­it­able plan­et’s sur­face will be shaped in part by grav­i­ty (the notion of a hori­zon might well be uni­ver­sal) and thus mul­ti­spec­tral images might plau­si­bly be con­sid­ered worth­while for mes­sages. More gen­er­al­ly, the impli­ca­tions for con­sid­er­ing SETI/CETI as some sort of anthro­po­log­i­cal chal­lenge need teas­ing out.

The 300-page book, Archae­ol­o­gy, Anthro­pol­o­gy, and Inter­stel­lar Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, has been made avail­able in three for­mats, and added to our own col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices:

› Kin­dle read­ers: MOBI [2.8 MB]

› All oth­er eBook read­ers: EPUB [3.8 MB]

› Fixed lay­out: PDF [1.7 MB]

Below you can watch Vakoch give a TEDX talk called,“What Would You Say to an Extrater­res­tri­al?”

via Giz­mo­do/Kim Komand0

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Patti Smith Presents Top Webby Award to Banksy; He Accepts with Self-Mocking Video

in Art, Life, Music | May 30th, 2014

Pre­sent­ing at the 18th annu­al Web­by Awards last week, God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith man­aged to Adele Dazeem street art provo­ca­teur Banksy not once, but twice. Banksky? Ban-ski? It’s a mea­sure of the lady’s august stand­ing that emcee Pat­ton Oswalt passed on the com­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties of this giant blun­der. He did call her “fuck­ing adorable,” but I like to think he did so with the kind­est of inten­tions.

As to why an artist famous for using the real world as his can­vas should be dubbed “Per­son of the Year” by an out­fit that rec­og­nizes excel­lence on the Inter­net, Smith was noth­ing short of elo­quent. The imper­ma­nence of his oft-ille­gal­ly installed cre­ations make them the per­fect can­di­date “to be archived, shared and stored … through the World Wide Web.” (Appar­ent­ly, she only just real­ized this is a syn­onym for the Inter­net, but no mat­ter. I’m with Oswalt! It would be a cringe­wor­thy admis­sion in just about any­body else, but from her, it’s pret­ty dang cute.)

The nec­es­sar­i­ly low-pro­file hon­oree sur­prised no one by fail­ing to accept his award in per­son. Rather than send­ing Sacheen Lit­tle­feath­er as his proxy, he prof­fered a delight­ful, self-mock­ing short film, which you can see above.

The short revis­its some of the high points of “Bet­ter In Than Out,” last fal­l’s month-long, piece-a-day takeover of New York City. Keep your eyes peeled for Sirens of the Lambs, a truck haul­ing a load of squeak­ing, osten­si­bly doomed plush farm ani­mal toys and Queens, an inflat­able tag thrown up on his final day as “Artist in Res­i­dence for the City of New York.”

My favorite work from his autum­nal siege of my city was Art Sale, in which he stocked a Cen­tral Park ven­dor table with half a mil­lion dol­lars’ worth of uncred­it­ed sten­cil art, then installed a decid­ed­ly unhip-look­ing senior cit­i­zen to man it. The day’s receipts totaled $420 from a hand­ful of tourists, one of whom suc­cess­ful­ly bar­gained her way into a 2‑for‑1 deal.

I want to know more about these peo­ple who unwit­ting­ly lucked into such a lucra­tive role in 21st-cen­tu­ry art his­to­ry, but to my con­ster­na­tion, they seem to be fly­ing incog­ni­to, just like the artist who so increased their val­ue. You know, the guy who’s all over the inter­net, with­out reveal­ing his iden­ti­ty? The Web­by Awards’ Per­son of the Year!?

Maybe if I spend anoth­er hour pok­ing around online… (A bad use of time, for all but Pat­ti Smith, who claimed it took her 48 min­utes to unsuc­cess­ful­ly down­load the video we can click with such ease, above.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Banksy Cre­ates a Tiny Repli­ca of The Great Sphinx Of Giza In Queens

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Hear Pat­ti Smith Read 12 Poems From Sev­enth Heav­en, Her First Col­lec­tion (1972)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day occa­sion­al­ly tears her­self  free of the Inter­net to labor over The East Vil­lage Inky, an entire­ly hand­writ­ten, illus­trat­ed zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Thank You, Mask Man: Lenny Bruce’s Lone Ranger Comedy Routine Becomes a NSFW Animated Film (1968)

in Animation, Comedy | May 30th, 2014

If you ever real­ly want­ed to know what was the deal between The Lone Ranger and Ton­to, the above video of Thank You, Mask Man might answer a few ques­tions. Warn­ing: it’s seri­ous­ly NSFW.

The audio for Thank You, Mask Man is tak­en from a stand up rou­tine from Lenny Bruce, who ruth­less­ly, hilar­i­ous­ly takes apart the leg­endary crime fight­er. After years of get­ting saved by a masked hero on a white steed, the denizens of a small West­ern town cor­ner him into accept­ing some­thing, any­thing as a token of their grat­i­tude. The hero points to a near­by Native Amer­i­can and says that he wants him. He pro­claims that he wants “to per­form an unnat­ur­al act.” The towns­peo­ple are hor­ri­fied. “I’ve read a lot of expos­es on how bad it is,” the Masked Man explains, “and I want to try it, just once.”

Jeff Hale, who lat­er went on to ani­mate that groovy Pin­ball Num­ber Count­down bit on Sesame Street, made the short in 1968, two years after Bruce’s death. The movie had a hard time get­ting booked into the­aters report­ed­ly, in part, because Bruce ruf­fled more than a few feath­ers in the film indus­try. Ulti­mate­ly though Thank You, Mask Man became a sta­ple at gay and cult film fes­ti­vals.

Bruce was, of course, the orig­i­nal bad boy com­ic. He laced his free form, light­ning quick per­for­mances with frank dis­cus­sions of sex, social issues and lots of swear­ing. Nowa­days, F‑bombs are par for the course in a come­di­an club but, back dur­ing the Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion, they were shock­ing. And they got him thrown in jail on sev­er­al occa­sions. You can lis­ten to anoth­er (unan­i­mat­ed) Bruce rou­tine below. It’s com­plete­ly NSFW.

You can find Thank You, Mask Man in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lenny Bruce Riffs and Rants on Injus­tice and Hypocrisy in One of His Final Per­for­mances (NSFW)

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

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