Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Talks Writing @Google

in Books, Google, Literature, Writing | August 30th, 2011

Ear­li­er this month Jen­nifer Egan, the new­ly-mint­ed Pulitzer Prize win­ner, paid a vis­it to Google to talk about A Vis­it from the Goon Squad, her exper­i­men­tal nov­el that won the Pulitzer, among many oth­er awards. That’s the osten­si­ble focus. But the con­ver­sa­tion moves quick­ly into oth­er areas that will inter­est writ­ers and read­ers alike — how Egan first devel­ops ideas for her nov­els, why she writes her first drafts in illeg­i­ble hand­writ­ing on legal pads, why she wrote a chap­ter of her new nov­el in Pow­er­Point (with­out ever hav­ing used the soft­ware before), what her nov­el has in com­mon with The Who’s Quadrophe­nia (I’m hooked), and how tech­nol­o­gy might change the nov­el as we know it.

The Egan video went live yes­ter­day, and runs about 54 min­utes. Oth­er videos appear­ing in the Authors@Google series fea­ture con­ver­sa­tions with Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Eliz­a­beth Gilbert, Michael Pol­lan, Slavoj Zizek and Junot Diaz. H/T @webacion

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The Decemberists’ New Video Inspired by Scenes from Infinite Jest

in Books, Literature, Music | August 26th, 2011

Michael Schur, the co-cre­ator of NBC’s Parks and Recre­ation, has had a long-run­ning fas­ci­na­tion with David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s sprawl­ing mag­num opus, Infi­nite Jest.  So when his favorite band, The Decem­berists, asked him to shoot a video for their new track “Calami­ty Song,” he knew the cre­ative direc­tion he want­ed to take. And so here it is — the new­ly-pre­miered video that makes “Escha­ton” its cre­ative focus. Fans of DWF’s nov­el will remem­ber that Escha­ton — “basi­cal­ly, a glob­al ther­monu­clear cri­sis recre­at­ed on a ten­nis court” — appears on/around page 325. The New York Times has more, and you can also find anoth­er ver­sion of the video if you’re hav­ing prob­lems view­ing it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The David Fos­ter Wal­lace Audio Project

The Best Mag­a­zine Arti­cles Ever, Curat­ed by Kevin Kel­ly

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Biblioburro: Library on a Donkey

in Books, Education | August 25th, 2011

For more than a decade, Luis Sori­ano, a pri­ma­ry school teacher, has trav­eled the rugged ter­rain of Colom­bia by don­key, deliv­er­ing books to chil­dren in hun­dreds of rur­al vil­lages. The project, pow­ered by his two don­keys Alfa and Beto, goes by the name “Bib­liobur­ro.” And it seeks to pro­mote lit­er­a­cy in areas where access to books is not always a giv­en. You can find more infor­ma­tion and pic­tures on the home­page of the Bib­liobur­ro project and also make a small dona­tion. A video update shows what these dona­tions are actu­al­ly used for.

Bonus mate­r­i­al: The clip above is part of a 60-minute PBS doc­u­men­tary avail­able in full here. If you are a teacher and want to work with the film in class, you will appre­ci­ate this relat­ed les­son plan. Bib­liobur­ro has even been cov­ered by The New York Times, and there is now a sim­i­lar project under­way in Ethiopia.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Richard Feynman: The New Graphic Novel

in Art, Books, Physics | August 24th, 2011


Last week, we high­light­ed The Last Jour­ney Of A Genius, a doc­u­men­tary that record­ed the final days of the great physi­cist Richard Feyn­man and his obses­sion with trav­el­ing to Tan­nu Tuva, a state out­side of out­er Mon­go­lia.

Now here is what next week will bring — a new “sub­stan­tial graph­ic nov­el biog­ra­phy” that “presents the larg­er-than-life exploits of the Nobel-win­ning quan­tum physi­cist, adven­tur­er, musi­cian and world-class racon­teur.” The book writ­ten by Jim Otta­viani and illus­trat­ed by Leland Myrick runs a fair­ly hefty 272 pages. The video clip on Youtube will give you a good feel for the art­work that tells Feyn­man’s per­son­al tale.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Feynman’s Physics Lec­tures Online

The Plea­sure of Find­ing Things Out

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William S. Burroughs Tells the Story of How He Started Writing with the Cut-Up Technique

in Art, Books, Literature, Writing | August 16th, 2011

In late 1920, the Dadaist writer Tris­tan Tzara wrote “dada man­i­festo on fee­ble love and bit­ter love,” which includ­ed a sec­tion called “To Make a Dadaist Poem,” and it gave these instruc­tions:

Take a news­pa­per.
Take some scis­sors.
Choose from this paper an arti­cle of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the arti­cle.
Next care­ful­ly cut out each of the words that makes up this arti­cle and put them all in a bag.
Shake gen­tly.
Next take out each cut­ting one after the oth­er.
Copy con­sci­en­tious­ly in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resem­ble you.
And there you are — an infi­nite­ly orig­i­nal author of charm­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty, even though unap­pre­ci­at­ed by the vul­gar herd.

Decades lat­er, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs took this basic con­cept and put his own twist on it. Between 1961 and 1964, Bur­roughs pub­lished The Nova Tril­o­gy, a series of three exper­i­men­tal nov­els fash­ioned with his own cut-up method. Often con­sid­ered his defin­i­tive work of cut-up writ­ing, The Soft Machine, the first nov­el in the tril­o­gy, stitched togeth­er pages from a series of man­u­scripts that Bur­roughs him­self wrote between 1953 and 1958.

You can watch Bur­roughs demon­strat­ing his cut-up tech­nique above, and for­ev­er find this clip in our col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons, which lets you see great writ­ers, film­mak­ers, and thinkers talk­ing in their own words.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare

William S. Bur­roughs’ Clay­ma­tion Christ­mas Film

 

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Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita: Just Another Great Love Story?

in Books, Literature | August 16th, 2011

We take you back to the mid 1950s, to an inter­view with Vladimir Nabokov and lit­er­ary crit­ic Lionel Trilling con­duct­ed soon after the pub­li­ca­tion of Loli­ta (1955). Loli­ta’s basic plot is well known — mid­dle-aged Hum­bert Hum­bert devel­ops a pas­sion­ate obses­sion for twelve-year old Dolores Haze and takes her on the road. For some crit­ics, this was enough to reject the book out of hand. One British review­er called it “the filth­i­est book I have ever read” (which per­haps did­n’t say much about the scope of his read­ing). Oth­er lit­er­ary observers, Trilling includ­ed, rec­og­nized the book’s lit­er­ary mer­its straight­away. And years lat­er, crit­ics still agree. Recent­ly, The Mod­ern Library called it the fourth most impor­tant nov­el pub­lished in Eng­lish dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry.

The video above fea­tures Nabokov and Trilling talk­ing inter­est­ing­ly about how Loli­ta finds its place in a grand lit­er­ary tra­di­tion that’s more con­cerned with love, often scan­dalous love, than with sex per se. And, it’s in this sense that Loli­ta sits in the same tra­di­tion as Tol­stoy’s Anna Karen­i­na.

The video is actu­al­ly the sec­ond part of a longer inter­view. You can start with Part I here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Nabokov Tweaks Kafka’s “The Meta­mor­pho­sis”

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Dave Eggers: The Teacher Who Encouraged Me to Write

in Books, Education, Literature, Writing | August 4th, 2011

Image by Rhodo­den­drites, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Thou­sands of pub­lic school teach­ers won’t be return­ing to the class­room this fall, thanks to bud­get cuts nation­wide. And that means more than a few Jay Criche’s won’t get the chance to tap the hid­den tal­ents of young stu­dents. Jay Criche, in case you’re won­der­ing, taught Eng­lish at Lake For­est High School and count­ed Dave Eggers (A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius and What Is the What) as one of his stu­dents. Criche passed away recent­ly, and, writ­ing in Salon, Eggers remem­bers his teacher’s deep influ­ence:

He was kind to me, but I had no sense that he took par­tic­u­lar notice of me. There were oth­er, smarter kids in the class, and soon I fell back into my usu­al posi­tion — of think­ing I was just a lit­tle over aver­age in most things. But near the end of the semes­ter, we read “Mac­beth.” Believe me, this is not an easy play to con­nect to the lives of sub­ur­ban high school­ers, but some­how he made the play seem elec­tric, dan­ger­ous, rel­e­vant. After pro­cras­ti­nat­ing till the night before it was due, I wrote a paper about the play — the first paper I typed on a type­writer — and turned it in the next day.

I got a good grade on it, and below the grade Mr. Criche wrote, “Sure hope you become a writer.” That was it. Just those six words, writ­ten in his sig­na­ture hand­writ­ing — a bit shaky, but with a very steady base­line. It was the first time he or any­one had indi­cat­ed in any way that writ­ing was a career option for me. We’d nev­er had any writ­ers in our fam­i­ly line, and we did­n’t know any writ­ers per­son­al­ly, even dis­tant­ly, so writ­ing for a liv­ing did­n’t seem some­thing avail­able to me. But then, just like that, it was as if he’d ripped off the ceil­ing and shown me the sky.

Over the next 10 years, I thought often about Mr. Criche’s six words. When­ev­er I felt dis­cour­aged, and this was often, it was those six words that came back to me and gave me strength. When a few instruc­tors in col­lege gen­tly and not-so-gen­tly tried to tell me I had no tal­ent, I held Mr. Criche’s words before me like a shield. I did­n’t care what any­one else thought. Mr. Criche, head of the whole damned Eng­lish depart­ment at Lake For­est High, said I could be a writer. So I put my head down and trudged for­ward.

You can read Egger’s remem­brance in full here.

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Hunter S. Thompson Gets Confronted by The Hell’s Angels (1967)

in Books, Literature | July 22nd, 2011

In 1965, the edi­tor of The Nation asked Hunter S. Thomp­son to write a sto­ry about the Hel­l’s Angels Motor­cy­cle Club, as they’re offi­cial­ly known. The arti­cle quick­ly led to a book deal, and, the next year, the Gonzo jour­nal­ist pub­lished Hel­l’s Angels: The Strange and Ter­ri­ble Saga of the Out­law Motor­cy­cle Gangs. Review­ing the book for The New York Times, Leo Lit­wak wrote:

Hunter Thomp­son entered this ter­ra incog­ni­ta [the world of the Hel­l’s Angels] to become its car­tog­ra­ph­er. For almost a year, he accom­pa­nied the Hel­l’s Angels on their ral­lies. He drank at their bars, exchanged home vis­its, record­ed their bru­tal­i­ties, viewed their sex­u­al caprices, became con­vert­ed to their motor­cy­cle mys­tique, and was so intrigued, as he puts it, that “I was no longer sure whether I was doing research on the Hel­l’s Angels or being slow­ly absorbed by them.” At the con­clu­sion of his year’s tenure the ambi­gu­i­ty of his posi­tion was end­ed when a group of Angels knocked him to the ground and stomped him…

Hunter Thomp­son has pre­sent­ed us with a close view of a world most of us would nev­er dare encounter, yet one with which we should be famil­iar. He has brought on stage men who have lost all options and are not rec­on­ciled to the loss. They have great resources for vio­lence which does­n’t as yet have any effec­tive focus. Thomp­son sug­gests that these few Angels are but the van­guard of a grow­ing army of dis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed, dis­af­fil­i­at­ed and des­per­ate men. There’s always the risk that some­how they may force the wrong options into being.

This clip, which aired on Cana­di­an tele­vi­sion in 1967, describes the cir­cum­stances that led up to the Angels giv­ing HST a beat down. The misog­y­ny that’s on dis­play will make you shud­der.

 

Relat­ed Con­tent

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

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