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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James Joyce Manuscripts Online, Free Courtesy of The National Library of Ireland

in Books, History | May 11th, 2012

Soon, the Nation­al Library of Ire­land will re-scan, re-orga­nize, and ful­ly con­tex­tu­al­ize its online col­lec­tion of James Joyce man­u­scripts. But the die-hard Joyce enthu­si­asts among us prob­a­bly found this out in April, when what the NLI calls “The Joyce Papers, c. 1903–1928″ first became avail­able. They would have had to do some click­ing to get there, though, since the col­lec­tion debuted and remains buried sev­er­al lay­ers deep in the site, enjoy­ing what the restau­rant indus­try calls a “soft open­ing,” before its more user-friend­ly “grand open­ing” in the near future. But when you’ve got the chance to read mil­lions of euros’ worth of writ­ing in Joyce’s own hand — drafts of Ulysses, proofs of Finnegans Wake, notes dat­ing back to his uni­ver­si­ty days — why daw­dle?

The col­lec­tion awaits a detailed guide, offer­ing at the moment only a list of man­u­scripts labeled 36,639/1 through 36,639/19. But you can get a sense of what’s in there from assis­tant keep­er Peter Ken­ny’s sum­ma­ry at the top of the page. Ter­ence Killeen in the Irish Times draws spe­cial atten­tion to doc­u­ment 36,639/2/A, a jour­nal or “com­mon­place book, which Joyce used for an unusu­al vari­ety of pur­pos­es: as an account book, as a repos­i­to­ry of var­i­ous pas­sages and poems from his read­ing that struck him (Ben Jon­son is a par­tic­u­lar favourite); read­ing lists; thoughts and reflec­tions on aes­thet­ics; remarks on friends (JF Byrne, for instance); and, even­tu­al­ly, notes for Dublin­ers and for the fig­ure of Stephen Dedalus as he emerged in the lat­er fic­tion (some of the notes even look for­ward to Ulysses).” As if that weren’t enough, he also rec­om­mends the next doc­u­ment down, a “sub­ject note­book” for Ulysses includ­ing “notes on the Irish,” “the Clerken­well bomb­ing of 1867, “the Celtic view of hell by a Ger­man pro­fes­sor,” and “the Jews and theos­o­phy.” And if actu­al­ly deci­pher­ing Joyce’s own hand proves too daunt­ing a task, well, you can always wait for the tran­scrip­tions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

Pas­sages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: The Film

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

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

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Watch the Animation of Maurice Sendak’s Surreal and Controversial Story, In the Night Kitchen

in Animation, Books, Film, K-12 | May 9th, 2012

By now you’ve heard the sad news. The beloved chil­dren’s author Mau­rice Sendak died yes­ter­day at the age of 83. Of course, he’s best remem­bered for his clas­sic tale, Where the Wild Things Are (1963). But some read­ers may hold a spe­cial place in their hearts for his 1970 pic­ture book, In the Night Kitchen. It’s a sur­re­al sto­ry that was named one of the Out­stand­ing Chil­dren’s Books of 1970 by The New York Times. It’s also a sto­ry that stirred up some con­tro­ver­sy. At points in the illus­trat­ed book, the three year old pro­tag­o­nist appears naked, shock­ing some crit­ics and read­ers. These days, you’ll find the book rank­ing 25th on the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion’s list of the 100 Most Fre­quent­ly Chal­lenged Books of 1990–2000.

In 1980, illus­tra­tor Gene Deitch got beyond the con­tro­ver­sy and pro­duced a five minute, faith­ful adap­ta­tion of In the Night Kitchen. It appears above, and it’s now right­ful­ly added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of 475 Free Movies Online.

Bonus Mate­r­i­al:

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

in Books, Poetry | May 8th, 2012

Like most lit­er­ary geeks, I’ve read a lot of Jorge Luis Borges. If you haven’t, look into the influ­ences of your favorite writ­ers, and you may find the Argen­tine short-sto­ry crafts­man appear­ing with Bea­t­les-like fre­quen­cy. Indeed, Borges’ body of work radi­ates inspi­ra­tion far beyond the realm of the short sto­ry, and even beyond lit­er­a­ture as com­mon­ly prac­ticed. Cre­ators from David Fos­ter Wal­lace to Alex Cox to W.G. Sebald to the Fire­sign The­ater have all, from their var­i­ous places on the cul­tur­al land­scape, freely admit­ted their Bor­ge­sian lean­ings. That Borges’ sto­ries — or, in the more-encom­pass­ing term adher­ents pre­fer to use, his “fic­tions” — con­tin­ue to pro­vide so much fuel to so many imag­i­na­tions out­side his time and tra­di­tion speaks to their simul­ta­ne­ous intel­lec­tu­al rich­ness and basic, pre­cog­ni­tive impact. Per­haps “The Gar­den of Fork­ing Paths” or “The Aleph” haven’t had that impact on you, but they’ve sure­ly had it on an artist you enjoy.

Now, thanks to YouTube (see video above), you can not only read Borges, but hear him as well. They offer MP3s of Borges’ com­plete Nor­ton Lec­tures, which the writer gave at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty in the fall of 1967 and the spring of 1968. A tran­script of the lec­tures can be bought in book for­mat. The names of the six lec­tures are list­ed below.

1. The Rid­dle of Poet­ry

2. The Metaphor

3. The Telling of the Tale

4. Word-Music, and Trans­la­tion

5. Thought and Poet­ry

6. A Poet­’s Creed

Near­ing both 70 years of age and total blind­ness, Borges nonethe­less gives a vir­tu­osi­cal­ly wide-rang­ing series of talks, freely reach­ing across forms, coun­tries, eras, and lan­guages with­out the aid of notes. Enti­tled “This Craft of Verse,” these lec­tures osten­si­bly deal with poet­ry. Alas, like many lit­er­ary geeks, I know too lit­tle of poet­ry, but if Borges can’t moti­vate you to learn more, who can? And if you’ve read any of his fic­tions, you’ll know that he treats all sub­jects as nexus­es of sub­jects. To hear Borges speak on poet­ry is, in this case, to hear him speak on sto­ry­telling, cliché, the epic, human com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the short­com­ings of the nov­el, trans­la­tion, and the false­ness of hap­py end­ings — and, because nobody could digest it all the first time, to want to hear it again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Borges: The Task of Art

Las Calles de Borges: A Trib­ute to Argentina’s Favorite Son

Jorge Luis Borges: The Mir­ror Man

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

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Yale’s Open Courses Inspire a New Series of Old-Fashioned Books

in Books, Online Courses, Yale | May 6th, 2012

Last month we report­ed on Yale’s addi­tion of sev­en new online cours­es to its grow­ing ros­ter of free offer­ings. Now we’ve learned that Yale is inau­gu­rat­ing a new series of books based on its pop­u­lar open cours­es.

“It may seem coun­ter­in­tu­itive for a dig­i­tal project to move into books and e‑books, because these are a much more con­ven­tion­al way of pub­lish­ing,” Open Yale Cours­es found­ing project direc­tor Diana E.E. Klein­er told The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion last week. But the books are in keep­ing with Open Yale’s mis­sion of “reach­ing out in every way that we could.”

Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press is bring­ing out the first six titles this year. The paper­backs are priced at rough­ly $12 on Ama­zon, with e‑book edi­tions going for clos­er to $10.  The first three vol­umes–The­o­ry of Lit­er­a­ture by Paul H. Fry, New Tes­ta­ment His­to­ry and Lit­er­a­ture by Dale B. Mar­tin, and Death by Shelly Kagan–are avail­able now, while three addi­tion­al titles–The Moral Foun­da­tions of Pol­i­tics by Ian Shapiro, Intro­duc­tion to the Bible by Chris­tine Hayes, and Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy by Steven B. Smith–will be pub­lished lat­er this year. The pub­lish­er says the books are “designed to bring the depth and breadth of a Yale edu­ca­tion to a wide vari­ety of read­ers.”

For more open edu­ca­tion resources, take a moment to explore our col­lec­tion of 450 free online cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

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Lit2Go’s 200 Free (and Teacher-Friendly) Audio Books: Ready for Downloads

in Audio Books, Books, K-12, Literature | May 3rd, 2012

A num­ber of sites offer free Mp3s of pub­lic domain books—Lib­rivox and Podi­o­books, for instance. What sets apart Lit2Go, the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Florida’s exten­sive col­lec­tion of free audio books (Web — iTunes), are the mate­ri­als to help K‑12 teach­ers present lit­er­a­ture in the class­room.

From fairy tales to The Ili­ad (Web — iTunes), Lit2Go orga­nizes more than 200 titles by author and genre (adven­ture, goth­ic, his­to­ry, sci­ence fic­tion) with clear genre descrip­tions and plot sum­maries for young read­ers. The look and feel of the site’s beta ver­sion is user-friend­ly and library-like, with type­writer fonts and illus­tra­tions mak­ing it a plea­sure to browse. There are a few small kinks to be worked out how­ev­er, so teach­ers inter­est­ed in down­load­ing sup­ple­men­tal mate­ri­als should opt for the orig­i­nal site.

Lit2Go mar­ries the old school library form (each novel’s year of pub­li­ca­tion and orig­i­nal pub­lish­er is includ­ed) with the capac­i­ty of the web (a link takes read­ers direct­ly to the iTunes store, where Lit2Go has its own sec­tion of free down­loads).

Many titles include sup­port mate­r­i­al to kick off class­room dis­cus­sion or to coach stu­dents through devel­op­ing their own char­ac­ter dia­grams. One of the site’s real assets is the way it curates titles into col­lec­tions, includ­ing African-Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture, Amer­i­can Founders and the intrigu­ing Hap­pi­ness Col­lec­tion where read­ers find Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “The Swing” and Shakespeare’s heart-stop­ping scene in which Fri­ar Lau­rence mar­ries Romeo to Juli­et (Web — iTunes).

Anoth­er cura­to­r­i­al bonus: Mate­ri­als are also orga­nized by grade lev­el, using the Flesch-Kin­caid Grade Lev­el index. Teach­ers and stu­dents can also down­load each title’s full text as a PDF, to read along to the audio.

Mean­while, your can find hun­dreds of down­load­able works of lit­er­a­ture in our own meta col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Kate Rix writes about k‑12 instruc­tion and high­er ed. 

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