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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Shel Silverstein Reads His Poem ‘Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too’ in Animated Video

in Animation, Books, K-12 | May 1st, 2012

You know Shel Sil­ver­stein as the author of the beloved chil­dren’s book, The Giv­ing Tree, which he even­tu­al­ly turned into an ani­mat­ed film in 1973. Sil­ver­stein nar­rat­ed the film him­self and played the accom­pa­ny­ing har­mon­i­ca too. You can watch it online right here.

Now, almost four decades lat­er, comes anoth­er ani­mat­ed video. This time we have the voice of Sil­ver­stein (1930–1999) read­ing his poem, ‘Ick­le Me, Pick­le Me, Tick­le Me Too,’ which orig­i­nal­ly appeared in anoth­er famous col­lec­tion, Where the Side­walk Ends. The ani­ma­tion, you’ll notice right away, uses the same aes­thet­ic as the 1974 book. Hope you enjoy. And props go to Media Bistro for bring­ing it to light.

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The Man Who Quit Money — and Lived to Tell About It

in Books, Life | April 30th, 2012

If you’re get­ting ready to start yet anoth­er work week, let us give you some food for thought.

12 years ago, Daniel Sue­lo walked into a phone booth, left his only mon­ey there ($30), and has­n’t touched any since — no cash, no loans, no cred­it cards, no bank accounts, no wel­fare pay­ments — nada. Instead, he sleeps in caves in the Utah desert (rent free), lives the life of a hunter-gath­er­er, remains active in his Moab com­mu­ni­ty and proves that much of what we con­sid­er a neces­si­ty real­ly isn’t at all.

Sue­lo was pro­filed in a 2009 piece in Details. He’s now the sub­ject of Mark Sun­deen’s new book, The Man Who Quit Mon­ey.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Werner Herzog Reads From Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses

in Books, Film, Radio | April 25th, 2012

Rough­ly since the 2005 release of his wide­ly seen doc­u­men­tary Griz­zly Man, Wern­er Her­zog has come into great demand. He does so not just as a film­mak­er (though he has dozens and dozens of movies of many kinds to his name), or as a writer (though sev­er­al vol­umes of his diaries and one long-form inter­view have appeared as books). Many of Her­zog’s newest fans, lured into the fold by the dis­tinc­tive voiceover nar­ra­tion he records for his doc­u­men­taries, sim­ply want to hear him talk. Hav­ing grown up in Bavaria, honed his craft in Ger­man-lan­guage projects through the sev­en­ties, and more recent­ly put down roots in Los Ange­les, Her­zog com­mu­ni­cates in a man­ner some­how more basic and more intel­lec­tu­al, more and less artic­u­late, than any oth­er pub­lic per­son­al­i­ty alive. In one char­ac­ter­is­tic line from Griz­zly Man, he com­pares his view of nature to his hap­less sub­ject, the late bear enthu­si­ast Tim­o­thy Tread­well: “What haunts me is that, in all the faces of all the bears that Tread­well ever filmed, I dis­cov­er no kin­ship, no under­stand­ing, no mer­cy. I see only the over­whelm­ing indif­fer­ence of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored inter­est in food.”

If you’ve nev­er seen the movie, imag­ine those sen­tences spo­ken with a Teu­ton­i­cal­ly inflect­ed delib­er­ate­ness and the non-native Eng­lish speak­er’s slight hes­i­tan­cy about word choice. Then imag­ine it ulti­mate­ly arriv­ing at the kind of grasp of and rev­er­ence for the mean­ing of those words you tend to have to spend a lot of time star­ing into the abyss to achieve. Giv­en his inter­est in the affect­less sav­agery of the world around us, it comes as no sur­prise that Her­zog counts him­self as a fan of the nov­el­ist Cor­mac McCarthy. Pulled from an episode of NPR’s Sci­ence Fri­day, the above clip fea­tures Her­zog read­ing, and thrilling to, a pas­sage from McCarthy’s 1992 nov­el, All the Pret­ty Hors­es. “It can­not get any bet­ter,” he adds, “and for decades we have not had this lan­guage in Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture.” Crim­i­nal­ly, he did­n’t direct the adap­ta­tion of All the Pret­ty Hors­es, nor has he direct­ed any oth­er. But until the inevitable day that he does, per­haps he could just record McCarthy’s audio­books?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Reads “Go the F**k to Sleep” in NYC (NSFW)

An Evening With Wern­er Her­zog

Con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture: An Open Yale Course

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

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