Mike Wallace and Bennett Cerf (Founder of Random House) Talk Censorship

in Books, Television | July 27th, 2010

Long before 60 Min­utes, Mike Wal­lace host­ed his own talk show, The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1957 — 1960), where he asked prob­ing ques­tions to celebri­ties of the day. The com­plete archive – now avail­able via the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas (access it here) – fea­tures inter­views with Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Sal­vador Dali, Rein­hold Niebuhr, Aldous Hux­ley, and Hen­ry Kissinger, to name a few. In anoth­er notable inter­view, Wal­lace talked with Ben­nett Cerf (watch here), co-founder of the pub­lish­ing giant Ran­dom House, and even­tu­al­ly the con­ver­sa­tion turned to cen­sor­ship. Cer­f’s com­ments date back more than 50 years, but the issue nev­er real­ly goes away. File under: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

WALLACE: Well, yet you say, one of the great­est threats fac­ing book pub­lish­ing and the entire coun­try is cen­sor­ship.

CERF: That’s right.

WALLACE: What is the… Who does the cen­sor­ing, and what is the motive of those who cen­sor?

CERF: Well, now that would take a lot of explo­ration Mike. I think there are an awful lot of peo­ple in this coun­try, who are not sat­is­fied to gov­ern them­selves and their own fam­i­lies. Or the peo­ple who belong to the same cult that they do, but who have tak­en upon them­selves, to tell every­body else what they should read, what they should see, and what they should think.

WALLACE: For what rea­son do they do it?

CERF: I guess, they think it will make them more sure of get­ting to heav­en. I don’t know why they do it. I think they’re sell­ing short, the good taste of the Amer­i­can pub­lic.

WALLACE: Who are these peo­ple, who would like to inflict this kind of cen­sor­ship upon the Amer­i­can pub­lic? What are the groups?

CERF: Self-appoint­ed snoop hounds.

WALLACE: Such as… such as…

CERF: They come from all… walks of life, er… in all the way back to colo­nial days, and in times of the Puri­tans. There were peo­ple who were telling oth­ers, what they most think, how they must behave, and what their morals must be. These peo­ple can­not resist butting in.

via Richard S.

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Clay Shirky: How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World?

in Books, Media, TED Talks | June 29th, 2010

Clay Shirky’s book tour col­lid­ed with the TED con­fer­ence in Cannes ear­li­er this month, and what you get is a crisp, 13-minute pre­cis of the argu­ments in Shirky’s new book, Cog­ni­tive Sur­plus: Cre­ativ­i­ty and Gen­eros­i­ty in a Con­nect­ed Age. The big ques­tion after watch­ing Shirky’s piece: How can Open Cul­ture draw on the col­lec­tive “cog­ni­tive sur­plus” of our read­ers and deliv­er a more pow­er­ful site to learn­ers world­wide? A lot of it comes down to design/architecture. But what would a re-archi­tect­ed Open Cul­ture site look like? If you have some thoughts, please take a few min­utes to send them our way. Who knows, your think­ing might inspire a whole new approach here.

To delve fur­ther into Shirky’s think­ing, you can lis­ten to his extend­ed inter­view last week on KQED’s Forum, my favorite morn­ing talk show in San Fran­cis­co. Down­load here, or stream below.

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Hitchens Cancels Speaking Engagements

in Books | June 25th, 2010

Hav­ing recent­ly turned 60, Christo­pher Hitchens decid­ed it was time to write a mem­oir. Hence Hitch-22, his new book pub­lished ear­li­er this month. For a moment, the pub­lic­i­ty machine got rolling. (Above, we have him talk­ing with Antho­ny Layser in a short video called “Drink­ing with Hitchens.” Watch Part 2 here.) But, for what­ev­er rea­son, things have now come to a halt.  Mul­ti­ple speak­ing engage­ments on the West coast (my neck of the woods) have sud­den­ly been can­celed, as True/Slant notes. And, right­ly or wrong­ly, there’s now spec­u­la­tion about Hitchen­s’s health. Nei­ther Hitchens nor his rep­re­sen­ta­tives have offered any offi­cial expla­na­tion. Dailyhitchens.com will inevitably keep mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

Note: You can down­load Hitch-22 (nar­rat­ed by Hitchens him­self) for free via Audible.com. Read more about their no-strings attached pro­mo­tion here.

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The Meta Summer Reading List

in Books | June 22nd, 2010

Now time for some beach wor­thy books… Fla­vor­wire has pulled togeth­er a meta col­lec­tion of sum­mer read­ing lists, aggre­gat­ing books rec­om­mend­ed by The New York Times, NPR, UC Berke­ley, Details, Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library and sev­en oth­er sources. Some­where in this mix you’ll find that per­fect read.

Try Audi­ble Now and Get A FREE Audio­book! Details here.

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Putting the Web Inside the Printed Book

in Books | May 28th, 2010

There’s a lot of talk about “vooks” these days. Usu­al­ly vooks are all about mov­ing tra­di­tion­al books over to dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments (e.g., the iPad) and sur­round­ing them with sup­port­ing web media. But one com­pa­ny, Ubi­mark, is tak­ing a dif­fer­ent approach. They’re keep­ing the print­ed word and putting the web inside the tra­di­tion­al book. Kind of. Using smart phones, read­ers can take pic­tures of “2D codes” embed­ded in print books. And, from there, the smart phone will launch maps, video, and oth­er web media that will col­lec­tive­ly enrich the words on the page. The video above, using Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days as an exam­ple, shows what this all looks like in action.

via Wired Cam­pus

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Mark Twain Finally to Publish Autobiography

in Books, Literature | May 24th, 2010

File this under “bet­ter late than nev­er.” Mark Twain spent his last decade writ­ing his mem­oirs, pro­duc­ing some 5,000 unedit­ed pages. How­ev­er, he stip­u­lat­ed that they could­n’t be pub­lished for at least a cen­tu­ry fol­low­ing his death. (Apro­pos see this very rare footage record­ed by Thomas Edi­son show­ing Twain in his last year.) Fast for­ward to 2010. We have now clocked 100 years. And this Novem­ber, UC Berke­ley will pub­lish the first vol­ume of Twain’s man­u­script. The Inde­pen­dent tells you more about this lit­er­ary event, and sug­gests why Twain want­ed to keep his auto­bi­og­ra­phy under wraps. Get the full arti­cle here.

via @ebertchicago

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HuffPo on Literary One-Hit Wonders

in Books, Literature | May 20th, 2010

Huff­Po has pulled togeth­er a list of The 12 Great­est Lit­er­ary One-Hit Won­ders. And it’s a strange list indeed. When you think of “one-hit won­ders,” you think of mem­o­rable songs record­ed by very unmem­o­rable artists – artists who got their 15 min­utes of fame and then fell right off the radar. Mean­while, the Huff­Po list includes some of the most endur­ing names in Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture  –  F. Scott Fitzger­ald, J.D. Salinger, and Her­man Melville. They gave us their big nov­els – The Great Gats­by, The Catch­er in the Rye, and Moby Dick – then wrote some oth­er last­ing pieces of fic­tion, both short and long. They hard­ly fad­ed into obliv­ion. And, years lat­er, we’re cer­tain­ly not ask­ing, “what ever hap­pened to old what’s his name?”

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Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man, A Free Documentary on the Argentine Writer

in Books, Film, Literature | May 12th, 2010

He was Argenti­na’s favorite son, one of the great South Amer­i­can writ­ers of the last cen­tu­ry (along with Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez, Car­los Fuentes, and Mario Var­gas Llosa), and the win­ner of 46 nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lit­er­ary prizes. We’re talk­ing about Jorge Luis Borges, the mas­ter of the post­mod­ern short sto­ry. Borges was born in 1899, and to cel­e­brate his 100th birth­day (though he died in 1986), Philippe Molins direct­ed the doc­u­men­tary, Jorge Luis Borges: The Mir­ror Man. The film’s major strength (as one review­er put it) is that it’s a “bit of every­thing – part biog­ra­phy, part lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, part hero-wor­ship, part book read­ing, and part psy­chol­o­gy.” It runs 47 min­utes and includes a fair amount of archival footage. (You can watch it in a larg­er for­mat on Vimeo here.)

A big thanks goes to Mike for send­ing The Mir­ror Man our way. If you have your own great piece of cul­tur­al media to share with us and your fel­low OC read­ers, please feel free to send it along.

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