Bob Dylan Classic, “Forever Young,” Animated for Children

in Books, Literature, Music | June 26th, 2012

Bob Dylan record­ed “For­ev­er Young” on his 1974 album Plan­et Waves. It’s a clas­sic “pater­nal love song,” a song inspired by his then four year-old son Jakob, who lat­er became the front­man of The Wall­flow­ers. Count­less musi­cians have since cov­ered this Dylan stan­dard — from Joan Baez and John­ny Cash to Rod Stew­art, The Pre­tenders, Eddie Ved­der and even Norah Jones, who sang a poignant ver­sion at Steve Jobs’ memo­r­i­al ser­vice last year.

The lyrics of “For­ev­er Young” lend them­selves per­fect­ly to a chil­dren’s book:

May you grow up to be right­eous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights sur­round­ing you
May you always be coura­geous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay for­ev­er young
For­ev­er young, for­ev­er young
May you stay for­ev­er young

And so, in 2008, Dylan teamed up with Paul Rogers to pub­lish the illus­trat­ed ver­sion of For­ev­er Young. The lyrics are the only text; and the illus­tra­tions (high­light­ed in the video above) pro­vide the real nar­ra­tive, show­ing a young­ster com­ing of age in the folk scene of 1960s Green­wich Vil­lage. The book (avail­able in paper and dig­i­tal for­mats) is a plea­sure to read to kids. But it’s even bet­ter when they read it to you…

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Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writers

in Books, Literature, Writing | June 25th, 2012

“If it sounds like writ­ing,” says Elmore Leonard, “I rewrite it.”

Leonard’s writ­ing sounds the way peo­ple talk. It rings true. In nov­els like Get Shorty, Rum Punch and Out of Sight, Leonard has estab­lished him­self as a mas­ter styl­ist, and while his char­ac­ters may be lowlifes, his books are received and admired in the high­est cir­cles. In 1998 Mar­tin Amis recalled vis­it­ing Saul Bel­low and see­ing Leonard’s books on the old man’s shelves. “Bel­low and I agreed,” said Amis, “that for an absolute­ly reli­able and unstint­ing infu­sion of nar­ra­tive plea­sure in a prose mirac­u­lous­ly purged of all false qual­i­ties, there was no one quite like Elmore Leonard.”

In 2006 Leonard appeared on BBC Two’s The Cul­ture Show to talk about the craft of writ­ing and give some advice to aspir­ing authors. In the pro­gram, shown above, Leonard talks about his deep appre­ci­a­tion of Ernest Hem­ing­way’s work in gen­er­al, and about his par­tic­u­lar debt to the 1970 crime nov­el The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Hig­gins. While explain­ing his approach, Leonard jots down three tips:

  • “You have to lis­ten to your char­ac­ters.”
  • “Don’t wor­ry about what your moth­er thinks of your lan­guage.”
  • “Try to get a rhythm.”

“I always refer to style as sound,” says Leonard. “The sound of the writ­ing.” Some of Leonard’s sug­ges­tions appeared in a 2001 New York Times arti­cle that became the basis of his 2007 book, Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writ­ing. Here are those rules in out­line form:

  1. Nev­er open a book with the weath­er.
  2. Avoid pro­logues.
  3. Nev­er use a verb oth­er than “said” to car­ry dia­logue.
  4. Nev­er use an adverb to mod­i­fy the verb “said.”
  5. Keep your excla­ma­tion points under con­trol!
  6. Nev­er use the words “sud­den­ly” or “all hell broke loose.”
  7. Use region­al dialect, patois,  spar­ing­ly.
  8. Avoid detailed descrip­tions of char­ac­ters.
  9. Same for places and things.
  10. Leave out the parts read­ers tend to skip.

You can read more from Leonard on his rules in the 2001 Times arti­cle. And you can read his new short sto­ry, “Ice Man,” in The Atlantic.

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Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses

in Books, Literature | June 16th, 2012

Today is “Blooms­day,” the day when lit­er­a­ture lovers around the world gath­er in book­stores and Irish pubs and oth­er fit­ting places to cel­e­brate James Joyce’s mas­ter­piece of high mod­ernism, Ulysses.

June 16, 1904 was the day Joyce first went out for a walk with his future wife, Nora Barnacle–a fate­ful day in his life, which he decid­ed to com­mem­o­rate in his great nov­el, first pub­lished in Paris in 1922. All the events in the book–more than 700 dense­ly writ­ten pages of exper­i­men­tal prose rich in allu­sions and struc­tured around Home­r’s Odyssey–take place on that sin­gle day in 1904. Just as William Blake could hold eter­ni­ty in an hour, Joyce could frame an epic in a day.

To cel­e­brate the occa­sion we bring you a pair of videos. Above, the British actor and writer Stephen Fry speaks briefly about his love of Joyce’s book. To find out if there are any events near you, vis­it the Rosen­bach Muse­um & Library’s Blooms­day Cen­tral Web site. And to dive into the book, you can find copies in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

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Thomas Pynchon Novels Coming to eBook, at Long Last

in Books, e-books, Literature | June 14th, 2012

Thomas Pyn­chon has nev­er made things par­tic­u­lar­ly easy for his pub­lish­ers. He has famous­ly shunned any kind of media atten­tion for decades. (Book tours? No thanks.) And, dur­ing recent years, he resist­ed the idea of repub­lish­ing his books in elec­tron­ic for­mat. But that has all offi­cial­ly changed with Pen­guin’s announce­ment that you can now pur­chase eight of Pyn­chon’s works in elec­tron­ic for­mat, with prices rang­ing from $9.99 to $12.99. The books (list­ed below) can be found on Ama­zon right here.

Against the Day
Grav­i­ty’s Rain­bow
Inher­ent Vice
Mason & Dixon
Slow Learn­er
The Cry­ing of Lot 49
V.
Vineland

Find a great num­ber of clas­sics in our col­lec­tion of 300 Free eBooks.

via Media Decoder

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Michael Lewis Tells Princeton Graduates How Moneyball Rules Apply to Real Life

in Books, Graduation Speech | June 11th, 2012

More and more we see a trend — high cal­iber schools are ask­ing celebri­ties to deliv­er their big com­mence­ment speech­es. Conan O’Brien at Dart­mouth. Stephen Col­bert at North­west­ern. Den­zel Wash­ing­ton at Penn. Tom Han­ks at Yale. The list goes on. Admit­ted­ly, the talks can be enter­tain­ing. But, it’s still a breath of fresh air when schools actu­al­ly put an author cen­ter stage. Wit­ness Neil Gaiman at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts and now Michael Lewis at Prince­ton.

Lewis grad­u­at­ed from Prince­ton in 1982, and went on to write many best­sellers — Liar’s Pok­er, The Blind Side, The Big Short, and Mon­ey­ball, a book turned into a Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion by Brad Pitt. You prob­a­bly know the gist of Mon­ey­ball. Major league base­ball clubs have long over­val­ued star play­ers, and under­val­ued ver­sa­tile ones who fly beneath the radar. That only changed when scrap­pi­er, finan­cial­ly-pressed teams start­ed min­ing base­ball data in intel­li­gent ways. Well, it turns out the same log­ic applies to the work­ing world. Cor­po­ra­tions reward exec­u­tives out­ra­geous­ly, while under­valu­ing many con­trib­u­tors in an orga­ni­za­tion, which leads “suc­cess­ful” peo­ple to believe they’re extreme­ly tal­ent­ed rather than gen­er­al­ly lucky. So here’s Lewis’ mes­sage to Prince­ton grads. When you get rich or famous, don’t get too car­ried away with your­self. Your suc­cess might have to do with “being there,” or being in the right sys­tem, more than any­thing else.

And now for anoth­er real­i­ty check for grad­u­ates — this one from Welles­ley High Eng­lish teacher David McCul­lough Jr. (son of the famous his­to­ri­an) who tells grads “You are not spe­cial. You are not excep­tion­al.” The empir­i­cal evi­dence makes that clear:

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Ray Bradbury Offers 12 Essential Writing Tips and Explains Why Literature Saves Civilization

in Books, Literature, Sci Fi | June 6th, 2012

We woke up today to learn about the sad pass­ing of Ray Brad­bury. Brad­bury now joins Isaac Asi­mov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Hein­lein, and Philip K. Dick in the pan­theon of sci­ence fic­tion. It’s a place well deserved, see­ing that he effec­tive­ly brought mod­ern sci­ence fic­tion into the lit­er­ary main­stream. His first short sto­ry, “Holler­bochen’s Dilem­ma,” appeared in 1938. And his last one, “Take Me Home,” was just pub­lished this week in The New York­er’s first spe­cial issue devot­ed to sci­ence fic­tion. Dur­ing the 74 years in between, Brad­bury pub­lished eleven nov­els, includ­ing the great Fahren­heit 451, and count­less short sto­ries. His books, now trans­lat­ed into 36 lan­guages, have sold over eight mil­lion copies.

To help cel­e­brate his lit­er­ary lega­cy, we want to revis­it two moments when Brad­bury offered his per­son­al thoughts on the art and pur­pose of writ­ing. Above, we start you off with a 1970s clip where Brad­bury explains why lit­er­a­ture serves more than an aes­thet­ic pur­pose — it’s actu­al­ly the safe­ty valve of civ­i­liza­tion. (See our orig­i­nal post here.) And below we bring you back to Brad­bury’s 2001 keynote address at Point Loma Nazarene University’s Writer’s Sym­po­sium By the Sea. There, he gives 12 essen­tial pieces of writ­ing advice to young writ­ers. You can find a nice list of his tips in our orig­i­nal post here. And, if you’re hun­ger­ing for more, let us direct you to anoth­er clip rec­om­mend­ed by one of our read­ers: a lengthy talk record­ed in 2005 at the Los Ange­les Times Fes­ti­val of Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

Leonard Nimoy Reads Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries From The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles & The Illus­trat­ed Man (1975–76)

Watch Ray Brad­bury: Sto­ry of a Writer, a 1963 Film That Cap­tures the Para­dox­es of the Leg­endary Sci-Fi Author

 

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Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-Winner, Tweets New Story with The New Yorker

in Books, Literature, Twitter | May 25th, 2012

In March, Jen­nifer Egan (A Vis­it From the Goon Squad) paid a vis­it to Google and was asked to sum up her year since win­ning the Pulitzer Prize in 2011. She said: “I am still not used to the idea that I won it. Maybe I will final­ly real­ly grab hold of that idea when some­one else wins it. I will say ‘No, I want it!’ ” Lit­tle did she know that just a few weeks lat­er the Pulitzer Prize judges would decline to name a suc­ces­sor, leav­ing her in men­tal lim­bo for yet anoth­er year. She seems to be han­dling it pret­ty well — well enough to pub­lish a new short sto­ry on The New York­er’s Fic­tion twit­ter stream. Yes, you read that right, its Twit­ter stream.

Start­ing last night, The New York­er began tweet­ing her new sto­ry, “Black Box,” and the sto­ry will con­tin­ue to unfold over nine more night­ly install­ments. It’s a gim­mick, you’re think­ing, right? Well, for Egan, it’s not. She explains on The New York­er web site:

I’d also been won­der­ing about how to write fic­tion whose struc­ture would lend itself to seri­al­iza­tion on Twit­ter. This is not a new idea, of course, but it’s a rich one—because of the inti­ma­cy of reach­ing peo­ple through their phones, and because of the odd poet­ry that can hap­pen in a hun­dred and forty char­ac­ters. I found myself imag­in­ing a series of terse men­tal dis­patch­es from a female spy of the future, work­ing under­cov­er by the Mediter­ranean Sea. I wrote these bul­letins by hand in a Japan­ese note­book that had eight rec­tan­gles on each page. The sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly near­ly twice its present length; it took me a year, on and off, to con­trol and cal­i­brate the mate­r­i­al into what is now “Black Box.”

If you’re a Twit­ter user, you can catch the live stream between 8 and 9 P.M. EDT. (And you can also fol­low our live­ly Twit­ter stream here.) If micro-seri­al­ized fic­tion isn’t your thing, then you can always fol­low the sto­ry on The New York­er’s “Page Turn­er” blog.

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Neil Gaiman Gives Graduates 10 Essential Tips for Working in the Arts

in Books, Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | May 21st, 2012

Neil Gaiman, con­sid­ered one of the top ten liv­ing post-mod­ern writ­ers, nev­er went to col­lege. He nei­ther start­ed nor fin­ished his advanced stud­ies, but rather put him­self into the world and start­ed writ­ing. And write he did. He’s now the New York Times best­selling author of the nov­els Nev­er­where, Star­dust, and Amer­i­can Gods, among oth­ers, and he’s also the win­ner of the 2009 New­bery Medal and 2010 Carnegie Medal in Lit­er­a­ture. (We have gath­ered free ver­sions of Gaiman’s writ­ing in audio & text here.) This week­end, Gaiman spoke at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts in Philadel­phia and told the grad­u­at­ing class all the things he wish he knew at their age. The talk runs 19 min­utes. The dis­tilled ver­sion appears below.

  1. Embrace the fact that you’re young. Accept that you don’t know what you’re doing. And don’t lis­ten to any­one who says there are rules and lim­its.
  2. If you know your call­ing, go there. Stay on track. Keep mov­ing towards it, even if the process takes time and requires sac­ri­fice.
  3. Learn to accept fail­ure. Know that things will go wrong. Then, when things go right, you’ll prob­a­bly feel like a fraud. It’s nor­mal.
  4. Make mis­takes, glo­ri­ous and fan­tas­tic ones. It means that you’re out there doing and try­ing things.
  5. When life gets hard, as it inevitably will, make good art. Just make good art.
  6. Make your own art, mean­ing the art that reflects your indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and per­son­al vision.
  7. Now a prac­ti­cal tip. You get free­lance work if your work is good, if you’re easy to get along with, and if you’re on dead­line. Actu­al­ly you don’t need all three. Just two.
  8. Enjoy the ride, don’t fret the whole way. Stephen King gave that piece of advice to Neil years ago.
  9. Be wise and accom­plish things in your career. If you have prob­lems get­ting start­ed, pre­tend you’re some­one who is wise, who can get things done. It will help you along.
  10. Leave the world more inter­est­ing than it was before.

via Metafil­ter

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