The Enduring Analog Underworld of Gramercy Typewriter

in Books, History, Technology | October 22nd, 2012

Are type­writ­ers going the way of vinyl?

Note to those cave dwellers who’ve yet to suc­cumb to Mad Men mania, it’s not that same route so trav­eled by the dodo. For a while it looked like the world’s sup­ply of Under­woods and Olivet­tis was being req­ui­si­tioned for hip­ster jew­el­ry, but their recent come­back is root­ed in their intend­ed pur­pose. These days, they’re near fetish objects for roman­tic young writ­ers con­ceived in the shad­ow of the Mac Clas­sic.

Mean­while, the likes of Cor­mac McCarthy and David McCul­lough, author of 1776, have yet to turn their backs on their beloved, quite like­ly lucky ana­log imple­ments.

All due respect to the young Turks seek­ing to dig­i­tize the dinosaur, but the real hero of the type­writer’s post mil­len­ni­al sur­vival is Paul Schweitzer, the ink fin­gered med­i­cine man at the helm of Gramer­cy Type­writer. His once-robust com­pe­ti­tion con­signed to the ash heap, Schweitzer has both the stub­born­ness and exper­tise to tough it out, in an ana­log lair that’s the antithe­sis of sleek.

No one will fault you if your heart lies with your var­i­ous screens. But let’s not for­get where you came from.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mak­ing Paper in L.A., Pianos in Paris: Old Crafts­men Hang­ing on in a Chang­ing World

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of a half dozen some books includ­ing the decid­ed­ly ana­log Zinester’s Guide to NYC.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Cartoonist Kate Beaton Plays on Literary Classics — The Great Gatsby, Julius Caesar & More

in Books, Comedy, Literature | October 19th, 2012

Lis­ten, Old Sport, as far as that Leonar­do DiCaprio Gats­by movie goes, I haven’t seen it. But I’ll bet a swim­ming pool of gin it’s nowhere near as  fun­ny as car­toon­ist Kate Beat­on’s 3‑panel takes on F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s clas­sic nov­el.

Of course, F. Scot­t’s orig­i­nal was­n’t exact­ly what one would call a knee slap­per — where­as Beat­on’s com­ic col­lec­tion, Hark! A Vagrant, mer­its a per­ma­nent spot in one’s bath­room library. Beat­on’s take on The Great Gats­by is by no means a lit­er­al adap­ta­tion, but her mean-faced, ven­om-tongued cre­ations get it spir­i­tu­al­ly right. They also do a num­ber on Bronte, Jane Austen, Niet­zsche and Shake­speare’s Julius Cae­sar, to name but a few of the author’s oth­er lit­er­ary tar­gets. (See her archive here.) Not bad for a Cana­di­an with degrees in His­to­ry and Anthro­pol­o­gy. Is it wrong to think Zel­da would approve?

At any rate, it’s high time some­one blew the lid off of what’s behind the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eck­el­berg. Grat­i­fy­ing, too, to see Tom and Daisy’s child get­ting some long past due con­sid­er­a­tion. Now that I think about it, our com­pul­sion to keep beat­ing on boats against the cur­rent is kind of fun­ny. Top draw­er stuff, Old Sport, top draw­er stuff.

Find works by F. Scott Fitzger­ald in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Phi­los­o­phy Made Fun: Read the Free Pre­view Edi­tion of the Action Philoso­phers! Com­ic

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of a half dozen some books includ­ing No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Philosophy Made Fun: Read the Free Preview Edition of the Action Philosophers! Comic

in Art, Books, Philosophy | October 13th, 2012

“Imag­ine Pla­to as a wrestling super­star of ancient Greece, Niet­zsche as the orig­i­nal uber­men­sch, and Bohid­har­ma as the grand mas­ter of kung fu. These are not just great thinkers they also make great comics. Action Philoso­phers! details the lives and thoughts of his­to­ry’s A‑list brain trust in hip and humor­ous com­ic book fash­ion. ”

That’s how the Action Philoso­phers! com­ic book was pitched when its cre­ators, Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey, pub­lished it in 2009. The com­ic book is still in print, and you can read the fun pre­view edi­tion online. It starts, of course, with the Pre-Socrat­ics — Thales, Anax­i­man­der, Par­menides, and the gang. Enjoy.

Bonus — Read more Action Philoso­phers! online:

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Stephen Fry Friday: His Musings on Life, Swearing, Shakespeare, Nanoscience & More

in Books, Life, Literature, Philosophy, Science | October 12th, 2012

Stephen Fry is a man of many tal­ents. He’s a nov­el­ist, con­trib­u­tor to news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines, TV per­son­al­i­ty, come­di­an, pod­cast­er, lin­guist of sorts. And accord­ing to his Twit­ter pro­file, he’s also a “Lord of Dance, Prince of Swimwear & Blog­ger.” In short, Stephen Fry cov­ers a lot of ground, and, through­out the years, we’ve shown you Fry opin­ing on many sub­jects. But you can’t real­ly appre­ci­ate his intel­lec­tu­al range until you’ve seen his mus­ings placed next to one anoth­er. So we’re pro­claim­ing today “Stephen Fry Fri­day” and we’re pre­sent­ing our favorite Fry clips from years past. We start above with Fry’s take on “The Joys of Swear­ing” and the rest fol­lows:

The Strange New World of Nanoscience

What is nano? And how will nanoscience shape our future? It’s all explained in a snap­py 17 minute video —  NANO YOU — that Fry nar­rat­ed for Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty.

What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18 

It’s a peren­ni­al fan favorite — Fry reflect­ing on his life, all 55 years of it, and offer­ing up life lessons to young­sters. Truth be told, old­er folks will get some­thing out of this video too.

On Phi­los­o­phy and the Impor­tance of Unbe­lief

Get­ting into the nit­ty grit­ty of phi­los­o­phy, Fry gives us one more life les­son: If you assume there’s no after­life, you’ll like­ly have a fuller, more enrich­ing life.

A Kinet­ic Take on Lan­guage

For a brief time in 2008, Fry pro­duced a series of pod­casts – called “Pod­grams” – that drew on his writ­ings, speech­es and col­lec­tive thoughts. In one episode, he med­i­tat­ed on lan­guage — the Eng­lish lan­guage, his own lan­guage, Barthes, Chom­sky, and Pinker — and then Matthew Rogers took that med­i­ta­tion and ran with it, pro­duc­ing a “kinet­ic typog­ra­phy ani­ma­tion” that art­ful­ly illus­trates a six minute seg­ment of Fry’s longer talk.

Shake­speare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

It’s not sur­pris­ing that some­one this immersed in lan­guage would deeply admire the Shake­speare­an tra­di­tion.…

Why Fry Loves Joyce’s Ulysses

And Joyce’s Ulysses too (which you can down­load as a fine free audio book here).

Stay tuned, we’ll have more Stephen Fry in the months and years to come.…

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Hear Paul Auster Read the Entirety of The Red Notebook, an Early Collection of Stories

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | October 10th, 2012

Nov­el­ist, screen­writer, poet, and trans­la­tor Paul Auster has carved out a place for him­self over the past sev­er­al decades as a decid­ed­ly writer’s writer, a Brook­lyn Borges of a sort, whose metafic­tion­al tales are often intri­cate­ly con­struct­ed sto­ries with­in sto­ries (with­in sto­ries). Auster is also known for writ­ing and co-direct­ing (with Wayne Wang) 1995 sleep­er indie hit Smoke, a film about the denizens of a Brook­lyn cig­ar shop. As with much of Auster’s fic­tion, a cen­tral char­ac­ter in Smoke is a bro­ken-heart­ed, soli­tary writer (played by William Hurt). Auster’s 2002 nov­el The Book of Illu­sions is cen­tered around a sim­i­lar char­ac­ter, a writer deep in mourn­ing. On April 11, 2001, Auster stopped by the Kel­ly Writ­ers House at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia to give a read­ing from The Book of Illu­sions. Below, you can hear him read the first two pages of the nov­el:

The com­plete UPenn event, includ­ing intro­duc­tion and a lengthy read­ing from the sec­ond chap­ter is avail­able here.

Penn Sound, which hosts the above read­ing, also has audio of Auster read­ing the entire­ly of an ear­ly col­lec­tion of sto­ries, The Red Note­book: True Sto­ries, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Buf­fa­lo in April of 1995. Auster has argued that fic­tion is “mag­nif­i­cent­ly use­less,” but valu­able nonethe­less for the joy it brings both writ­ers and read­ers. In The Red Note­book he nar­rates what he claims are true events from his life. The col­lec­tion is divid­ed into four short sec­tions: “The Red Note­book,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” “Acci­dent Report,” and, the final nar­ra­tive, “Why Write?” His answers to this final question–whether they’re real­ly “true” or just mag­nif­i­cent­ly use­less inventions–show us sur­pris­ing coin­ci­dences and odd pat­terns in the seem­ing­ly ran­dom busi­ness of dai­ly life. Lis­ten to the first install­ment below. You can find the com­plete audio, with intro­duc­tion by Robert Cree­ley, here.

Penn Sound is a “cen­ter for pro­grams in con­tem­po­rary writ­ing” at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and fea­tures a large archive of record­ed audio and video read­ings and dis­cus­sions on con­tem­po­rary poet­ry, fic­tion, and more.

The read­ing of The Red Note­book appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Quantum Physics of Harry Potter, Broken Down By a Physicist and a Magician

in Books, Science | October 10th, 2012

If you con­sid­er your­self a Har­ry Pot­ter fan, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly read read all sev­en of J.K. Rowl­ing’s nov­els and watched all eight of their film adap­ta­tions. The ques­tion of where to go from there has many pos­si­ble answers. Some true believ­ers plunge straight into, and often con­tribute to, the vast body of unof­fi­cial read­ing mate­r­i­al that is Har­ry Pot­ter fan fic­tion. Oth­ers turn to the schol­ar­ship sur­round­ing Pot­ter and his world, a field that includes such stud­ies of vary­ing seri­ous­ness as The Sci­ence of Har­ry Pot­ter, Har­ry Pot­ter and Phi­los­o­phy, The Values of Har­ry Pot­ter, Look­ing for God in Har­ry Pot­ter, and If Har­ry Pot­ter Ran Gen­er­al Elec­tric. In the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to lec­ture above, quan­tum physi­cist Kris­ter Shalm explains, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, the quan­tum physics of Har­ry Pot­ter.

Shalm thus faces two tasks: to explain the rel­e­vant facts of quan­tum physics in a man­ner under­stand­able to the lay­man, and the even more for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge of relat­ing the rel­e­vant facts of Har­ry pot­ter in a way that won’t com­plete­ly alien­ate the unini­ti­at­ed. But pulling this off in an enter­tain­ing fash­ion would seem to land right in the wheel­house of a man who bills him­self as “The Danc­ing Physi­cist” and states his mis­sion to “make some of the mind-bog­gling con­cepts in quan­tum mechan­ics more approach­able” by col­lab­o­rat­ing with “a magi­cian, musi­cians, and dancers.” That magi­cian, a cer­tain Dan Trom­mater, turns up in this lec­ture to com­ple­ment Shalm’s phys­i­cal angle with a mag­i­cal one. Togeth­er, they illus­trate for us how Dra­co Mal­foy’s tele­por­ta­tion tech­niques resem­ble what quan­tum physi­cists do in the lab on a reg­u­lar basis, and what rel­e­vance Schrödinger’s famous cat has to that fate­ful prophe­cy that either Har­ry Pot­ter or Lord Volde­mort would ulti­mate­ly die. (Luck­i­ly for me, Shalm does­n’t reveal which one; I haven’t read the books myself yet!)

Relat­ed con­tent:

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Ele­ments.

Har­ry Pot­ter Pre­quel Now Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

University Presses & Libraries Turn to Pinterest to Promote Books

in Books, Web/Tech | October 8th, 2012

I’ll admit it: I’m not a big Pin­ter­est user. Until very recent­ly I thought the social net­work­ing site was a bit twee—too much about cute clothes and crafts, not enough about ideas.

Turns out the web’s 15th largest site has a lot more to offer.

Open Cul­ture has its own embry­on­ic Pin­ter­est page. But, more impor­tant­ly, uni­ver­si­ty press­es are mak­ing wide­spread use of Pin­ter­est to pro­mote new book titles. Like­wise, aca­d­e­m­ic libraries are using their Pin­ter­est pages to pro­mote events and help fund major cap­i­tal improve­ments. For libraries and archives, a major ongo­ing mis­sion is to keep the col­lec­tions vis­i­ble. It’s not easy to let the world know about your one-of-a-kind hold­ings, and Pin­ter­est poten­tial­ly offers a great way to bring these mate­ri­als to new and  younger audi­ences.

Big retail­ers haven’t fig­ured out how to make real mon­ey off of Pin­ter­est yet, though one the­o­ry holds that the site’s high­ly visu­al nature puts peo­ple in the mood to click and buy. True or not, uni­ver­si­ty press­es and libraries need all the help they can get to gin up sales, so they’re wad­ing into the Pin­ter­est waters and see­ing what hap­pens.

Alice Northover has cre­at­ed a Tum­blr that cat­a­logues a few of the best uni­ver­si­ty press­es that have Pin­ter­est pages. The list is a handy map of trea­sures to be found online.

There are the usu­al, and com­plete­ly worth check­ing out, sus­pects: Of course, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press has a page that fea­tures, among oth­er things, inter­views with Har­vard Press authors. Watch math­e­mati­cian Paul Lock­hart, author of Mea­sure­ment, trip out on par­al­lel­o­grams.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi has a robust pres­ence that fea­tures an exten­sive col­lec­tion of Faulkn­er crit­i­cism and appre­ci­a­tion.

Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty’s page links to its audio archive, which includes a fun, episod­ic pro­gram called “Wait? They Banned What?”. You might be sur­prised to find out that Bing Cros­by song was banned dur­ing World War II for being too catchy.

One of the best may be one of the most unsung, how­ev­er. New Zealand’s Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty of Welling­ton’s library hous­es a major col­lec­tion of Samoan his­tor­i­cal objects. Check out the library’s repos­i­to­ry of amaz­ing South Pacif­ic his­to­ry.

These sites offer very few dec­o­rat­ing tips for your Air Stream trail­er, and I found no links to loca­vore jam-mak­ing busi­ness­es, but Alice, whomev­er she may be, has cre­at­ed a great cura­to­r­i­al tool for explor­ing a new trend in book pro­mo­tion.

But wait. Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press has a pin on its page called “Lib­ri­an­ista” that links to short-hem­line clothes mod­eled by bespec­ta­cled cuties. I guess even the world’s old­est pub­lish­er gets to have a lit­tle fun.

Thanks to Kirstin But­ler for send­ing Alice’s Tum­blr our way.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Albert Camus Talks About Nihilism & Adapting Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed for the Theatre, 1959

in Books, Literature, Theatre | October 5th, 2012

If there is no God, said Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky, life is mean­ing­less. And with­out mean­ing, men and women will “go stark, rav­ing mad.” For the deeply skep­ti­cal and agnos­tic Albert Camus, Dos­toyevsky’s books were a rev­e­la­tion. While he could­n’t agree with the Russ­ian nov­el­ist’s pre­scrip­tion of faith in an unseen deity, Camus felt Dos­toyevsky had con­vinc­ing­ly described the tragedy of man’s exis­tence in an indif­fer­ent uni­verse.

Camus first read Dos­toyevsky when he was 20 years old, and lat­er called it a “soul-shak­ing expe­ri­ence.” He was moved by the moral weight of Dos­toyevsky’s words. When the hor­rors of Stal­in’s purges came to light, Camus refused to look away. As he lat­er said, “The real 19th cen­tu­ry prophet was Dos­toyevsky, not Karl Marx.”

One of Dos­toyevsky’s works that affect­ed Camus the most was the apoc­a­lyp­tic 1872 nov­el The Pos­sessed, which in recent years has been trans­lat­ed as Demons or The Dev­ils. It’s a com­plex sto­ry of a con­flict­ed Russ­ian soci­ety as it descends into anar­chy and chaos with the spread of nihilism. The themes explored in The Pos­sessed were so absorb­ing to Camus that in 1959 he pub­lished a three-act stage adap­ta­tion, Les Pos­sédés. The play pre­miered on Jan­u­ary 28, 1959 at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris, and on that day he gave an inter­est­ing inter­view with Pierre Dumayet for French tele­vi­sion, which you can watch in the video above. In the pro­gram hand­ed out at the the­ater that night, Camus described the nov­el­’s impor­tance: “Les Pos­sédés is one of the four or five works that I rank above all oth­ers. In more ways than one, I can say that it has enriched and shaped me.”

You can down­load a copy of The Pos­sessed and oth­er works by Dos­to­evsky from our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks. Major works by the great Russ­ian author can also be found in our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 14 ) |

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