Celebrate Kurt Vonnegut’s 100 Birthday with a Collection of Songs Based on His Work

in Books, Literature, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | November 11th, 2022

There’s a pas­sage from Kurt Vonnegut’s Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons that cross­es our desk a lot at this time of year. It’s the one in which he declares Armistice Day, which coin­ci­den­tal­ly falls on his birth­day, sacred:

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juli­et, for instance.

And all music is.

Here, here!

Hope­ful­ly Shake­speare won’t take umbrage if we skip over his doomed teenaged lovers to cel­e­brate Kurt Vonnegut’s 11/11 Cen­ten­ni­al with songs inspired by his work.

Take the Kil­go­re Trout Expe­ri­ence’s trib­ute to Sirens of Titan, above.

The dri­ving force behind the KTE Tim Langs­ford, a drum­mer who men­tors Autis­tic stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ply­mouth, was look­ing for ways to help his “fog­gy mind remem­ber the key con­cepts, char­ac­ters, and mem­o­rable lines that occur in each” of Vonnegut’s 14 books.

The solu­tion? Com­mu­ni­ty and account­abil­i­ty to an ongo­ing assign­ment. Langs­ford launched the Ply­mouth Von­negut Col­lec­tive in 2019 with a type­writ­ten man­i­festo, invit­ing inter­est­ed par­ties to read (or re-read) the nov­els in pub­li­ca­tion order, then gath­er for month­ly dis­cus­sions.

His lofti­er goal was for book club mem­bers to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly on a 14-track con­cept album informed by their read­ing.

They stuck to it, with efforts span­ning a vari­ety of gen­res.

Moth­er Night might make your ears bleed.

The psy­che­del­ic God Bless You, Mis­ter Rose­wa­ter mix­es quotes from the book with edit­ed clips of the col­lec­tive’s dis­cus­sion of the nov­el.

The project pushed Langs­ford out from behind the drum kit, as well as his com­fort zone:

It has tak­en an awful lot to be com­fort­able with the songs on which I sing. How­ev­er, I have tried to invoke KV’s sense of cre­ation as if no one is watch­ing. It doesn’t mat­ter so do it for your­self…. Although do I con­tra­dict that by shar­ing these things to the inter­net rather than trash­ing them unseen or unheard?!  

Ah, but isn’t one of the most beau­ti­ful uses of the Inter­net as a tool for find­ing out what we have in com­mon with our fel­low humans?

Con­grat­u­la­tions to our fel­low Von­negut fans in Ply­mouth, who will be cel­e­brat­ing their achieve­ment and the leg­endary author’s 100th birth­day with an event fea­tur­ing poet­ry, art, music and film inspired by the birth­day boy’s nov­els.

Folk rock­er Al Stew­art is anoth­er who “was drawn by the Sirens of Titan.”  The lyrics make per­fect sense if the nov­el is fresh in your mind:

But here in the yel­low and blue of my days

I wan­der the end­less Mer­cu­ri­an caves

Watch­ing for the signs the Har­mo­ni­ans make

The words on the walls

The lyrics to Nice, Nice, Very Nice by Stewart’s peers in Ambrosia are pulled straight from the holy scrip­ture of Bokonon­ism, the reli­gion Von­negut invent­ed in Cat’s Cra­dle.

The band gave the author a writ­ing cred­it. He repaid the com­pli­ment with a fan let­ter:

I was at my daughter’s house last night, and the radio was on. By God if the DJ didn’t play our song, and say it was num­ber ten in New York, and say how good you guys are in gen­er­al. You can imag­ine the plea­sure that gave me. Luck has played an enor­mous part in my life. Those who know pop music keep telling me how lucky I am to be tied in with you. And I myself am crazy about our song, of course, but what do I know and why wouldn’t I be?  This much I have always known, any­way: Music is the only art that’s real­ly worth a damn. I envy you guys.

If that isn’t nice, we don’t know what is.

Vonnegut’s best known work, the time-trav­el­ing, peren­ni­al­ly banned anti-war nov­el, Slaugh­ter­house-Five, presents an irre­sistible song­writ­ing chal­lenge, judg­ing from the num­ber of tunes that have sprout­ed from its fer­tile soil.

Susan Hwang is unique­ly immersed in all things Von­negut, as founder of the Bush­wick Book Club, a loose col­lec­tive of musi­cians who con­vene month­ly to present songs inspired by a pre-select­ed title — includ­ing almost every nov­el in the Von­negut oeu­vre, as well as the short sto­ries in Wel­come to the Mon­key House and the essays com­pris­ing A Man With­out a Coun­try.

She was a Kurt Von­negut Muse­um & Library 2022 Banned Books Week artist-in-res­i­dence.

She titled her recent EP of five Von­negut-inspired songs, Every­thing is Sateen, a nod to the Sateen Dura-Luxe house paint Vonnegut’s abstract expres­sion­ist, Rabo Karabekian, favors in Blue­beard.

We’re fair­ly con­fi­dent that Hwang’s No Answer, offered above as a thank you to crowd­fun­ders of a recent tour, will be the boun­ci­est adap­ta­tion of Slaugh­ter­house-Five you’ll hear all day.

Keep lis­ten­ing.

Sweet Soubrette, aka Ellia Bisker, anoth­er Bush­wick Book Club fix­ture and one half of the goth-folk duo Charm­ing Dis­as­ter, leaned into the hor­rors of Dres­den for her Slaugh­ter­house-Five con­tri­bu­tion, namecheck­ing rub­ble, barbed wire, and the “mus­tard gas and ros­es” breath born of a night’s heavy drink­ing.

Song­writ­ing musi­col­o­gist Gail Spar­lin’s My Blue Heav­en: The Love Song of Mon­tana Wild­hack — seen here in a library per­for­mance — is as girl­ish and sweet as Valerie Perrine’s take on the char­ac­ter in George Roy Hill’s 1972 film of Slaugh­ter­house-Five. 

Back in 1988, Hawk­wind’s The War I Sur­vived suf­fused Slaugh­ter­house-Five with some very New Wave synths…

The cho­rus of Sam Ford’s wist­ful So It Goes taps into the nov­el­’s time trav­el­ing aspect, and touch­es on the chal­lenges many sol­diers expe­ri­ence when attempt­ing to rein­te­grate into their pre-com­bat lives :

That ain’t the way home

Who says I wan­na go home?
I’m always home
I’m always home.

Hav­ing invoked Vonnegut’s ever­green phrase, there’s no get­ting away with­out men­tion­ing Nick Lowe’s 1976 pow­er pop hit, though it may make for a ten­u­ous con­nec­tion.

Hi ho!

Still, ten­u­ous con­nec­tions can count as con­nec­tions, espe­cial­ly when you tal­ly up all the ref­er­ences to Cat’s Cra­dle’s secret gov­ern­ment weapon, Ice Nine, in lyrics and band names.

Then there are the sub­merged ref­er­ences. We may not pick up on them, but we’re will­ing to believe they’re there.

Pearl Jam’s front man Eddie Ved­der wrote that “books like Cat’s Cra­dle, God Bless You, Mr. Rose­wa­ter, Play­er Piano…they’ve had as much influ­ence on me as any record I’ve ever owned.”

He also earned a per­ma­nent spot in the karass by pass­ing out copies of Blue­beard to atten­dees at the 4th Annu­al Kokua Fes­ti­val to ben­e­fit envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion in Hawaii.

A mem­o­rable Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons illus­tra­tion is said to have lit a flame with New Order, pro­pelling Von­negut out onto the dance floor.

And Ringo Starr edged his way to favorite Bea­t­le sta­tus when he tipped his hat to Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, ded­i­cat­ing his 1973 solo album to “Kil­go­re Trout and all the beavers.”

There are dozens more we could men­tion — you’ll find some of them in the playlist below — but with­out fur­ther ado, let’s wel­come to the stage Spe­cial K and His Crew!

Yes, that’s Phish drum­mer (and major Von­negut fan) Jon Fish­man on vac­u­um.

But who’s that mys­tery front man, spit­ting Chaucer’s Can­ter­bury Tales?

Hap­py 100th, Kurt Von­negut! We’re glad you were born.

 Relat­ed Con­tent 

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries (and Amus­ing­ly Graphs the Shapes Those Sto­ries Can Take)

Kurt Von­negut Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Writ­ers in a 1991 TV Inter­view

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

 

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Join her for a free Von­negut Cen­ten­ni­al Fanzine Work­shop at the Kurt Von­negut Muse­um & Library on Novem­ber 19.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Rise and Fall of Concorde, the Midcentury Supersonic Jetliner That Still Inspires Awe Today

in History, Technology, Travel | November 10th, 2022

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of the phrase “style over sub­stance” has encour­aged us to assume an inher­ent and absolute divide between those con­cepts. But as the most ambi­tious works of man remind us, style pushed to its lim­its its sub­stance, and vice ver­sa. This truth has been expressed in var­i­ous spe­cial­ized ways: archi­tect Louis Sul­li­van’s max­im “form fol­lows func­tion,” for exam­ple, which went on to attain some­thing like scrip­tur­al sta­tus among mod­ernists of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. It was in that same era that aero­space engi­neer­ing pro­duced one of the most glo­ri­ous proofs of the uni­ty of style and sub­stance, form and func­tion, mechan­ics and aes­thet­ics: Con­corde, the super­son­ic jet­lin­er that flew between 1976 and 2003.

Nobody who flew on Con­corde (col­lo­qui­al­ly but not offi­cial­ly “the” Con­corde) has for­got­ten it. The sharp­ness and length of its ascent; the thrust of the after-burn­er, press­ing you into your seat like the accel­er­a­tion of a high-per­for­mance sports car; the vis­i­ble cur­va­ture of the Earth and the deep pur­ple of the sky; the impec­ca­ble food and drink ser­vice that turned a flight between New York and Lon­don into a sump­tu­ous French meal. A host of for­mer pas­sen­gers, crew mem­bers, and pilots rem­i­nisce vivid­ly about all this in the BBC doc­u­men­tary Con­corde: A Super­son­ic Sto­ry.  That sto­ry is told more briefly in the Vox video at the top of the post, which asks the ques­tion, “This plane could cross the Atlantic in 3.5 hours. Why did it fail?”

The short answer has to do with busi­ness via­bil­i­ty. At super­son­ic speeds an air­craft leaves a son­ic boom in its wake, which rel­e­gat­ed Con­corde to transocean­ic flights. Its inabil­i­ty to hold enough fuel to cross the Pacif­ic left New York-Lon­don, oper­at­ed by British Air­ways, as its sole viable route, with Air France also run­ning between New York and Paris. For Con­corde was an Anglo-French project, launched as a part­ner­ship between the two gov­ern­ments in 1962, at the height of the Space Age — and despite enor­mous sub­se­quent cost over­runs an effec­tive­ly un-can­ce­lable one, since one coun­try could­n’t pull out with­out the oth­er’s say-so.

With nation­al pride at stake, French com­mit­ment did much to make Con­corde what it was. “Because it went so fast, the V.I.P.s on board would­n’t need much more, from an Eng­lish point of view, than a sand­wich, a cup of tea, and a glass of whiskey,” says Jonathan Glancey, author of Con­corde: The Rise and Fall of the Super­son­ic Air­lin­er. But the French said, “No, this a lux­u­ry air­craft,” and it was ulti­mate­ly lux­u­ry — as well as a sleek­ly func­tion­al sil­hou­ette that nev­er stopped look­ing futur­is­tic — that kept Con­corde going until its retire­ment in 2003. (Nor could the con­ve­nience fac­tor be ignored, for invest­ment bankers and inter­na­tion­al celebri­ties alike: “It’s always excit­ing to get to New York before you’ve left,” said fre­quent fli­er Sting.)

“The real flaw in Con­corde was not tech­no­log­i­cal but social,” writes Fran­cis Spufford in the Lon­don Review of Books. “Those who com­mis­sioned it assumed that air trav­el would remain, as it was in 1962, some­thing done by the rich: and not the mobile, hard-work­ing man­age­r­i­al rich either, but the gild­ed upper-crust celebri­ty rich,” the orig­i­nal “jet set.” Alas, the future lay not with speed but vol­ume: “The Boe­ing 747 was just as bold a leap into the unknown as Con­corde, just as extreme in its depar­ture from the norm; noth­ing so large had ever left the ground before. And Boeing’s gam­ble paid off.” Super­son­ic jet­lin­ers have nev­er­the­less re-entered devel­op­ment in recent years, and if any come to mar­ket, they’ll sure­ly do so with such lux­u­ries unknown in the Space Age as per­son­al, on-demand enter­tain­ment sys­tems. But will any­thing they can show be as thrilling as Con­corde’s cab­in speedome­ter reach­ing mach two?

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry Of Avi­a­tion: From da Vinci’s Sketch­es to Apol­lo 11

Col­or­ful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Small­er and Trav­el Times Quick­er

NASA Cap­tures First Air-to-Air Images of Super­son­ic Shock­waves Inter­act­ing in Flight

Down­load 14 Free Posters from NASA That Depict the Future of Space Trav­el in a Cap­ti­vat­ing­ly Retro Style

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Cats in Japanese Woodblock Prints: How Japan’s Favorite Animals Came to Star in Its Popular Art

in Art, History | November 10th, 2022


Few coun­tries love cats as much as Japan does, and none express­es that love so clear­ly in its var­i­ous forms of art. Though not eter­nal, the Japan­ese incli­na­tion toward all things feline does extend deep­er into his­to­ry than some of us might assume. “In the sixth cen­tu­ry, Bud­dhist monks trav­elled from Chi­na to Japan,” writes Philip Kennedy at Illus­tra­tion Chron­i­cles. On these jour­neys, they brought scrip­tures, draw­ings, and relics – items that they hoped would help them intro­duce the teach­ings of Bud­dhism to the large island nation.” They also brought cats, in part as car­ri­ers of good luck and in part for their abil­i­ty to “guard the sacred texts from the hun­gry mice that had stowed on board their ships.”


Bud­dhism made a last­ing mark on Japan­ese cul­ture, but those cats prac­ti­cal­ly over­took it. “Today, cats can be found near­ly every­where in Japan,” Kennedy writes. “From spe­cial cafés and shrines to entire cat islands. Indeed the own­ers of one Japan­ese train sta­tion were so enam­ored with their cat that they appoint­ed her sta­tion­mas­ter.”

By the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, the ukiyo‑e wood­block print mas­ter Uta­gawa Kuniyoshi could keep a stu­dio over­run with cats and not seem too ter­ri­bly eccen­tric for it. “His fond­ness for felines crept into his work, and they appear in many of his finest prints. Some­times they crop up as char­ac­ters from well-known sto­ries; oth­er times, they are beau­ti­ful­ly expres­sive stud­ies.”

Kuniyoshi made his name illus­trat­ing tales of his­tor­i­cal war­riors, but his artis­tic capac­i­ty also encom­passed “every­thing from land­scapes and ani­mals to ghost­ly appari­tions and scenes from pop­u­lar kabu­ki the­atre.” When the Toku­gawa Shogu­nate sensed its pow­er declin­ing in the 1840s, it banned such “lux­u­ries” as the depic­tions of kabu­ki actors (as well as geisha).

To accom­mo­date that demand, Kuniyoshi cre­at­ed humanoid cats endowed with fea­tures resem­bling well-known per­son­ages of the era. This in addi­tion to his series Neko no ate­ji, or “cat homo­phones,” with cats arranged to spell the names of fish, and Cats Sug­gest­ed As The Fifty-three Sta­tions of the Tōkaidō, a feline par­o­dy of Hiroshige’s ear­li­er Fifty-three Sta­tions of the Tōkaidō. Rat-eat­ing aside, cats aren’t known as espe­cial­ly use­ful ani­mals, but many a Japan­ese artist can attest to their inspi­ra­tional val­ue even today.

A col­lec­tion of Kuniyoshi’s prints fea­tur­ing cats can be found in the book, Cats in Ukiyo‑e: Japan­ese Wood­block Print.

via Illus­tra­tion Chron­i­cles

Relat­ed con­tent:

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

Insane­ly Cute Cat Com­mer­cials from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyazaki’s Leg­endary Ani­ma­tion Shop

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Dis­cov­er the Kat­tenK­abi­net: Amsterdam’s Muse­um Devot­ed to Works of Art Fea­tur­ing Cats

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Your Burning Questions About Coffee Answered by James Hoffmann

in Food & Drink | November 10th, 2022

If you have a ques­tion about cof­fee, James Hoff­mann prob­a­bly has an answer. The author of The World Atlas of Cof­fee, Hoff­mann has devel­oped a robust YouTube chan­nel where he explores the ins-and-outs of mak­ing coffee–from how to buy great cof­fee, to mak­ing excel­lent cof­fee with The Chemex and the Bialet­ti Moka pot, to grind­ing cof­fee with the right gear. And don’t for­get the mag­ic of adding salt to cof­fee.

Above, in a new video cre­at­ed by Wired, Hoff­mann con­tin­ues his edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, “answer[ing] the inter­net’s burn­ing ques­tions about cof­fee. What’s the dif­fer­ence between drip and pour over cof­fee? What’s the dif­fer­ence between iced cof­fee and cold brew? Does dark­er roast cof­fee have more caf­feine?” Tak­en togeth­er, he cov­ers a lot of ground in 22 min­utes.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

Life and Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion

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The Fiske Reading Machine: The 1920s Precursor to the Kindle

in Books, History, Technology | November 9th, 2022


The Sony Lib­rie, the first e‑reader to use a mod­ern elec­tron­ic-paper screen, came out in 2004. Old as that is in tech years, the basic idea of a hand­held device that can store large amounts of text stretch­es at least eight decades far­ther back in his­to­ry. Wit­ness the Fiske Read­ing Machine, an inven­tion first pro­filed in a 1922 issue of Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can. “The instru­ment, con­sist­ing of a tiny lens and a small roller for oper­at­ing this eye­piece up and down a ver­ti­cal col­umn of read­ing-mat­ter, is a means by which ordi­nary type­writ­ten copy, when pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly reduced to one-hun­dredth of the space orig­i­nal­ly occu­pied, can be read with quite the facil­i­ty that the impres­sion of con­ven­tion­al print­ing type is now revealed to the unaid­ed eye,” writes author S. R. Win­ters.

Mak­ing books com­pat­i­ble with the Fiske Read­ing Machine involved not dig­i­ti­za­tion, of course, but minia­tur­iza­tion. Accord­ing to the patents filed by inven­tor Bradley Allen Fiske (eleven in all, between 1920 and 1935), the text of any book could be pho­to-engraved onto a cop­per block, reduced ten times in the process, and then print­ed onto strips of paper for use in the machine, which would make them read­able again through a mag­ni­fy­ing lens. A sin­gle mag­ni­fy­ing lens, that is: “A blind­er, attached to the machine, can be oper­at­ed in obstruct­ing the view of the unused eye.” (Win­ters adds that “the use of both eyes will doubt­less involve the con­struc­tion of a unit of the read­ing machine more elab­o­rate than the present design.”)

“Fiske believed he had sin­gle-hand­ed­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ized the pub­lish­ing indus­try,” writes Engad­get’s J. Rigg. “Thanks to his inge­nu­ity, books and mag­a­zines could be pro­duced for a frac­tion of their cur­rent price. The cost of mate­ri­als, press­es, ship­ping and the bur­den of stor­age could also be slashed. He imag­ined mag­a­zines could be dis­trib­uted by post for next to noth­ing, and most pow­er­ful­ly, that pub­lish­ing in his for­mat would allow every­one access to edu­ca­tion­al mate­r­i­al and enter­tain­ment no mat­ter their lev­el of income.” Con­sid­er­ing how the rela­tion­ship between read­ers and read­ing mate­r­i­al ulti­mate­ly evolved, thanks not to cop­per blocks and mag­ni­fiers and tiny strips of paper but to com­put­ers and the inter­net, it seems that Fiske was a man ahead of his time.

Alas, the Fiske Read­ing Machine itself was just on the wrong side of tech­no­log­i­cal his­to­ry. Even as Fiske was refin­ing its design, “micro­film was begin­ning to catch on,” and “while it ini­tial­ly found its feet in the busi­ness world — for keep­ing record of can­celled checks, for exam­ple — by 1935 Kodak had begun pub­lish­ing The New York Times on 35mm micro­film.” Despite the absolute preva­lence that for­mat soon attained in the world of archiv­ing, “the appetite for minia­tur­ized nov­els and hand­held read­ers nev­er mate­ri­al­ized in the way Fiske had imag­ined.” Nor, sure­ly, could he have imag­ined the form the dig­i­tal, elec­tron­ic-paper-screened, and slim yet huge­ly capa­cious form that the e‑reader would have to take before find­ing suc­cess in the mar­ket­place — yet some­how with­out quite dis­plac­ing the paper book as even he knew it.

via Engad­get

Relat­ed con­tent:

The e‑Book Imag­ined in 1935

Napoleon’s Kin­dle: See the Minia­tur­ized Trav­el­ing Library He Took on Mil­i­tary Cam­paigns

Behold the “Book Wheel”: The Renais­sance Inven­tion Cre­at­ed to Make Books Portable & Help Schol­ars Study Sev­er­al Books at Once (1588)

The Page Turn­er: A Fab­u­lous Rube Gold­berg Machine for Read­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Asbestos-Bound, Fireproof Edition of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

in Books | November 9th, 2022

Even by the extreme stan­dards of dystopi­an fic­tion, the premise of Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451 can seem a lit­tle absurd. Fire­men whose job is to set fires? A soci­ety that bans all books? Writ­ten less than a decade after the fall of the Third Reich, which announced its evil inten­tions with book burn­ings, the nov­el explic­it­ly evokes the kind of total­i­tar­i­an­ism that seeks to destroy culture—and whole peoples—with fire. But not even the Nazis banned all books. Not a few aca­d­e­mics and writ­ers sur­vived or thrived in Nazi Ger­many by hew­ing to the ide­o­log­i­cal ortho­doxy (or at least not chal­leng­ing it), which, for all its ter­ri­fy­ing irra­tional­ism, kept up some sem­blance of an intel­lec­tu­al veneer.

The nov­el also recalls the Sovi­et vari­ety of state repres­sion. But the Par­ty appa­ra­tus also allowed a pub­lish­ing indus­try to oper­ate, under its strict con­straints. Nonethe­less, Sovi­et cen­sor­ship is leg­endary, as is the sur­vival of banned lit­er­a­ture through self-pub­lish­ing and mem­o­riza­tion, vivid­ly rep­re­sent­ed by the famous line in Mikhail Bulgokov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, “Man­u­scripts don’t burn.”

Bul­gakov, writes Nathaniel Rich at Guer­ni­ca, is say­ing that “great lit­er­a­ture… is fire­proof. It sur­vives its crit­ics, its cen­sors, and even the pas­sage of time.” Bul­gakov wrote from painful expe­ri­ence. When his diary was dis­cov­ered by the NKVD in 1929, then returned to him, he “prompt­ly burned it.” Some­time after­ward, dur­ing the long com­po­si­tion of his posthu­mous­ly pub­lished nov­el, he burned the man­u­script, then lat­er recon­struct­ed it from mem­o­ry.

These exam­ples bring to mind the exiled intel­lec­tu­als in Bradbury’s nov­el, who have mem­o­rized whole books in order to one day recon­struct lit­er­ary cul­ture. Europe’s total­i­tar­i­an regimes pro­vide essen­tial back­ground for the novel’s plot and imagery, but its key con­text, Brad­bury him­self not­ed in a 1956 radio inter­view, was the anti-Com­mu­nist para­noia of the U.S. in the ear­ly 1950s. “Too many peo­ple were afraid of their shad­ows,” he said, “there was a threat of book burn­ing. Many of the books were being tak­en off the shelves at that time.” Read­ing the nov­el as a chill­ing vision of a future when all books are banned and burned makes the arti­fact pic­tured above par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant—an edi­tion of Fahren­heit 451 bound in fire­proof asbestos.

Released in 1953 by Bal­lan­tine in a lim­it­ed run of two-hun­dred signed copies, the books were “bound in Johns-Manville Qin­ter­ra,” notes Lau­ren Davis at io9, “a chryso­lite asbestos mate­r­i­al.” Now the fire­proof cov­ers, with their “excep­tion­al resis­tance to pyrol­y­sis,” are “much sought after by col­lec­tors” and go for upwards of $20,000. A fire­proof Fahren­heit 451, on the one hand, can seem a lit­tle gim­micky (its pages still burn, after all). But it’s also the per­fect man­i­fes­ta­tion of a lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the nov­el as a sto­ry about ban­ning and book burn­ing. All of us who have read the nov­el have like­ly read it this way, as a vision of a repres­sive total­i­tar­i­an night­mare. As such, it feels like a prod­uct of mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry fears.

Rather than fear­ing mass book burn­ings, we seem, in the 21st cen­tu­ry, on the verge of being washed away in a sea of infor­ma­tion (and dis- and mis-infor­ma­tion). We are inun­dat­ed with writing—in print and online—such that some of us despair of ever find­ing time to read the accu­mu­lat­ing piles of books and arti­cles that dai­ly sur­round us, phys­i­cal­ly and vir­tu­al­ly. But although books are still pub­lished in the mil­lions, with sales ris­ing, falling, then ris­ing again, the num­ber of peo­ple who actu­al­ly read seems in dan­ger of rapid­ly dimin­ish­ing. And this, Brad­bury also said, was his real fear. “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a cul­ture,” he claimed, “just get peo­ple to stop read­ing them.”

We’ve mis­read Fahren­heit 451, Brad­bury told us in his lat­er years. It is an alle­go­ry, a sym­bol­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a gross­ly dumb­ed-down soci­ety, huge­ly oppres­sive and destruc­tive in its own way. The fire­men are not lit­er­al gov­ern­ment agents but sym­bol­ic of the forces of mass dis­trac­tion, which dis­sem­i­nate “fac­toids,” lies, and half-truths as sub­sti­tutes for knowl­edge. The nov­el, he said, is actu­al­ly about peo­ple “being turned into morons by TV.” Add to this the pro­lif­er­at­ing amuse­ments of the online world, video games, etc. and we can see Brad­bury’s Fahren­heit 451 not as a dat­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tion of 40s fas­cism or 50s repres­sion, but as a too-rel­e­vant warn­ing to a dis­tractible soci­ety that deval­ues and destroys edu­ca­tion and fac­tu­al knowl­edge even as we have more access than ever to lit­er­a­ture of every kind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Reveals the True Mean­ing of Fahren­heit 451: It’s Not About Cen­sor­ship, But Peo­ple “Being Turned Into Morons by TV”

Ray Brad­bury Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion (in Which Case We Need More Lit­er­a­ture!)

Helen Keller Writes a Let­ter to Nazi Stu­dents Before They Burn Her Book: “His­to­ry Has Taught You Noth­ing If You Think You Can Kill Ideas” (1933)

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

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Discover Friedrich Nietzsche’s Typewriter, the Curious “Malling-Hansen Writing Ball” (Circa 1881)

in Philosophy, Technology | November 9th, 2022

Dur­ing his final decade, Friedrich Nietzsche’s wors­en­ing con­sti­tu­tion con­tin­ued to plague the philoso­pher. In addi­tion to hav­ing suf­fered from inca­pac­i­tat­ing indi­ges­tion, insom­nia, and migraines for much of his life, the 1880s brought about a dra­mat­ic dete­ri­o­ra­tion in Nietzsche’s eye­sight, with a doc­tor not­ing that his “right eye could only per­ceive mis­tak­en and dis­tort­ed images.”

Niet­zsche him­self declared that writ­ing and read­ing for more than twen­ty min­utes had grown exces­sive­ly painful. With his intel­lec­tu­al out­put reach­ing its peak dur­ing this peri­od, the philoso­pher required a device that would let him write while mak­ing min­i­mal demands on his vision.

So he sought to buy a type­writer in 1881. Although he was aware of Rem­ing­ton type­writ­ers, the ail­ing philoso­pher looked for a mod­el that would be fair­ly portable, allow­ing him to trav­el, when nec­es­sary, to more salu­bri­ous cli­mates. The Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball seemed to fit the bill:

In Dieter Eberwein’s free Niet­zch­es Screibkugel e‑book, the vice pres­i­dent of the Malling-Hansen Soci­ety explains that the writ­ing ball was the clos­est thing to a 19th cen­tu­ry lap­top. The first com­mer­cial­ly-pro­duced type­writer, the writ­ing ball was the 1865 cre­ation of Dan­ish inven­tor Ras­mus Malling-Hansen, and was shown at the 1878 Paris Uni­ver­sal Exhi­bi­tion to jour­nal­is­tic acclaim:

“In the year 1875, a quick writ­ing appa­ra­tus, designed by Mr. L. Sholes in Amer­i­ca, and man­u­fac­tured by Mr. Rem­ing­ton, was intro­duced in Lon­don. This machine was supe­ri­or to the Malling-Hansen writ­ing appa­ra­tus; but the writ­ing ball in its present form far excels the Rem­ing­ton machine. It secures greater rapid­i­ty, and its writ­ing is clear­er and more pre­cise than that of the Amer­i­can instru­ment. The Dan­ish appa­ra­tus has more keys, is much less com­pli­cat­ed, built with greater pre­ci­sion, more sol­id, and much small­er and lighter than the Rem­ing­ton, and more­over, is cheap­er.”

Despite his ini­tial excite­ment, Niet­zsche quick­ly grew tired of the intri­cate con­trap­tion. Accord­ing to Eber­wein, the philoso­pher strug­gled with the device after it was dam­aged dur­ing a trip to Genoa; an inept mechan­ic try­ing to make the nec­es­sary repairs may have bro­ken the writ­ing ball even fur­ther. Still, Niet­zsche typed some 60 man­u­scripts on his writ­ing ball, includ­ing what may be the most poignant poet­ic treat­ment of type­writ­ers to date:

“THE WRITING BALL IS A THING LIKE ME:

MADE OF IRON YET EASILY TWISTED ON JOURNEYS.

PATIENCE AND TACT ARE REQUIRED IN ABUNDANCE

AS WELL AS FINE FINGERS TO USE US.”

In addi­tion to view­ing sev­er­al of Nietzsche’s orig­i­nal type­scripts at the Malling-Hansen Soci­ety web­site, those want­i­ng a clos­er look at Nietzsche’s mod­el can view it in the video below.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Decem­ber 2013.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

The Keaton Music Type­writer: An Inge­nious Machine That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

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Jim Henson’s Commercials for Wilkins Coffee: 15 Twisted Minutes of Muppet Coffee Ads (1957–1961)

in Food & Drink, Television | November 8th, 2022

Drink our cof­fee. Or else. That’s the mes­sage of these curi­ous­ly sadis­tic TV com­mer­cials pro­duced by Jim Hen­son between 1957 and 1961.

Hen­son made 179 ten-sec­ond spots for Wilkins Cof­fee, a region­al com­pa­ny with dis­tri­b­u­tion in the Bal­ti­more-Wash­ing­ton D.C. mar­ket, accord­ing to the Mup­pets Wiki: “The local sta­tions only had ten sec­onds for sta­tion iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, so the Mup­pet com­mer­cials had to be lightning-fast–essentially, eight sec­onds for the com­mer­cial pitch and a two-sec­ond shot of the prod­uct.”

With­in those eight sec­onds, a cof­fee enthu­si­ast named Wilkins (who bears a resem­blance to Ker­mit the frog) man­ages to shoot, stab, blud­geon or oth­er­wise do grave bod­i­ly harm to a cof­fee hold­out named Won­tkins. Hen­son pro­vid­ed the voic­es of both char­ac­ters.

Up until that time, TV adver­tis­ers typ­i­cal­ly made a direct sales pitch. “We took a dif­fer­ent approach,” said Hen­son in Christo­pher Finch’s Of Mup­pets and Men: The Mak­ing of the Mup­pet Show. “We tried to sell things by mak­ing peo­ple laugh.”

The cam­paign for Wilkins Cof­fee was a hit. “In terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty of com­mer­cials in the Wash­ing­ton area,” said Hen­son in a 1982 inter­view with Judy Har­ris, “we were the num­ber one, the most pop­u­lar com­mer­cial.” Hen­son’s ad agency began mar­ket­ing the idea to oth­er region­al cof­fee com­pa­nies around the coun­try. Hen­son re-shot the same spots with dif­fer­ent brand names. “I bought my con­tract from that agency,” said Hen­son, “and then I was pro­duc­ing them–the same things around the coun­try. And so we had up to about a dozen or so clients going at the same time. At the point, I was mak­ing a lot of mon­ey.”

If you’re a glut­ton for pun­ish­ment, you can watch many of the Wilkins Cof­fee com­mer­cials above. And a word of advice: If some­one ever asks you if you drink Wilkins Cof­fee, just say yes.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

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