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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Clive Owen & Nicole Kidman Star in HBO’s Hemingway & Gellhorn: Two Writers, A Marriage and a Civil War

in Books, Film, History | April 20th, 2012

On the 28th of next month, HBO will air Hem­ing­way & Gell­horn, a fea­ture-length dra­ma based on the tit­u­lar writ­ers’ five-year mar­riage. Direct­ed by well-known adapter of lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry Philip Kauf­man — he of The Right Stuff, Hen­ry & June, and Quills — the film roots itself in the peri­od of 1936 to 1945, begin­ning with the cou­ple’s first encounter in Flori­da and fol­low­ing them into the Span­ish Civ­il War, which pro­vid­ed both of them with vivid mate­r­i­al indeed. Amer­i­cans and Euro­peans — and no doubt much of the rest of the read­ing world — need no intro­duc­tion to Ernest Hem­ing­way, author of such oft-assigned nov­els as The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Ris­es, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. As the quin­tes­sen­tial high-liv­ing, sav­age­ly artis­tic, and aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly respect­ed fig­ure movies love, he’s under­gone a great many cin­e­mat­ic res­ur­rec­tions this last decade and a half: Albert Finney played him in Hem­ing­way, The Hunter of Death; Vin­cent Walsh played him in Hem­ingway: That Sum­mer in Paris; Corey Stoll played him most vis­i­bly in Woody Allen’s Mid­night in Paris; and Antho­ny Hop­kins will play him in next year’s Hem­ing­way and Fuentes. Movie-star buffs must have all kinds of expec­ta­tions for “Papa” as embod­ied in the ever-ris­ing Clive Owen, but some­thing tells me they’ll have even more to say about Nicole Kid­man’s turn as Martha Gell­horn.

If you can’t imme­di­ate­ly place the name of Martha Gell­horn in the life of Ernest Hem­ing­way, it’s per­haps because she, her­self, helped ensure that. After she divorced him in 1945, Gell­horn specif­i­cal­ly request­ed that her inter­view­ers nev­er so much as bring up Hem­ing­way’s name. Though it counts as no fail­ure to fall under Hem­ing­way’s shad­ow in the pub­lic lit­er­ary imag­i­na­tion — most writ­ers do, after all — Gell­horn carved out her own siz­able place in the his­to­ry of for­eign cor­re­spon­dence, report­ing on war not only from Spain but from Eng­land, Hong Kong, Viet­nam, Fin­land, Sin­ga­pore, Ger­many, Czecho­slo­va­kia, Bur­ma, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, and the Mid­dle East. Hem­ing­way & Gell­horn, whose trail­er you can watch above, seems like­ly to fill in plen­ty of bio­graph­i­cal details that many of Hem­ing­way’s read­ers, and even many of Gell­horn’s, don’t know. But you can’t yet watch it on the inter­net, or on DVD — or in any form at all, for that mat­ter — until after May 28th. Then, pre­sum­ably, you can see exact­ly how Martha Gell­horn inspired For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Ernest Hem­ing­way, Fifty Years After His Death

Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea Ani­mat­ed Not Once, But Twice

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

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Alfred Hitchcock Adapts Joseph Conrad’s Novel of Terrorism in Sabotage (1936)

in Books, Film | April 19th, 2012

Just like most of you Open Cul­ture read­ers, I’m a suck­er for cul­tur­al inter­sec­tions, the places where music meets paint­ing, poet­ry meets com­put­ing, lan­guage meets archi­tec­ture, and so on. I feel an even greater thrill when two respect­ed cre­ators team up to accom­plish this; the more unlike­ly and inad­ver­tent the com­bi­na­tion, the bet­ter. The film above, which you can watch free on YouTube, rep­re­sents not just the inter­sec­tion of cin­e­ma and lit­er­a­ture, but the inter­sec­tion of Alfred Hitch­cock and Joseph Con­rad, titans of their respec­tive forms whose lives only briefly over­lapped. In 1907, Con­rad pub­lished The Secret Agent, a polit­i­cal nov­el of late nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Lon­don. (Find it in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion) In 1936, Hitch­cock turned it into the pic­ture Sab­o­tage, also known as The Woman Alone (but not, I should note, Secret Agent, an entire­ly dif­fer­ent Hitch­cock-direct­ed film of that year). Con­rad’s book, a tale of ide­ol­o­gy and ter­ror­ism, saw very fre­quent cita­tion in the after­math of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. Lat­er that decade, Quentin Taran­ti­no cit­ed Hitch­cock­’s film to illus­trate a vital plot point in his own Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds. Both works, it seems, have retained a cer­tain rel­e­vance.

While Hitch­cock and com­pa­ny tai­lored Con­rad’s source mate­r­i­al to fit their sen­si­bil­i­ty, their times, and their medi­um, both the movie and the nov­el cen­ter on a busi­ness­man named Ver­loc. (Spoil­er alert, we talk about the plot here.) Caught in the unen­vi­able posi­tion of belong­ing to a bomb-chuck­ing anar­chist soci­ety and work­ing as an agent provo­ca­teur for a coun­try some­where in shad­owy East­ern Europe, Ver­loc uses his unsus­pect­ing young broth­er-in-law Ste­vie to car­ry out an attack meant to osten­si­bly fur­ther the anar­chist agen­da but to secret­ly strike a blow for the nation that employs him. When the bomb­ing goes awry and takes Ste­vie with it — a death that Hitch­cock report­ed­ly regret­ted includ­ing, though the inevitabil­i­ty with which his plot deliv­ers it strikes me as entire­ly Hitch­cock­ian — Ver­loc finds him­self not at the mer­cy of the anar­chists, nor of the spies, nor of Scot­land Yard, but of his own enraged wife. Even after hav­ing under­gone cin­e­mat­ic sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, Con­rad’s tale eludes almost any posi­tions or mes­sages read­ers would ascribe to it. “Con­rad dis­trust­ed gov­ern­ments as much as he scorned those who sought as a mat­ter of abstract prin­ci­ple to over­throw them,” writes Judith Shule­vitz in a Slate piece on the nov­el­’s post‑9/11 pop­u­lar­i­ty. “He nei­ther advo­cat­ed one kind of state over anoth­er nor proph­e­sied the ongo­ing war against ter­ror­ism, except inso­far as he saw indus­tri­al­ized soci­ety as for­ev­er at odds with the anar­chic human heart.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

21 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

We Were Wan­der­ers on a Pre­his­toric Earth: A Short Film Inspired by Joseph Con­rad

Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Hitch­cock (MP3s)

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

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