Toni Morrison’s 1,200 Volume Personal Library is Going on Sale: Get a Glimpse of the Books on Her Tribeca Condo Shelves

in Books, Literature | November 27th, 2020

Images by Brown Har­ris Stevens

I will tell you how I began to be a writer.

I was a read­er.

—Toni Mor­ri­son

Those of us who might have grown up har­bor­ing lit­er­ary ambi­tions may have been hum­bled and inspired when we first read Toni Mor­ri­son. She proves over and again, in nov­els, essays, and oth­er­wise, the courage and ded­i­ca­tion that seri­ous writ­ing requires. She has also shown us the courage it takes to be a seri­ous read­er. “Delv­ing into lit­er­a­ture is not escape,” she said in a 2002 inter­view. It is “always a provoca­tive engage­ment with the con­tem­po­rary, the mod­ern world. The issues of the soci­ety we live in.”

In her sem­i­nal text on read­ing, Play­ing in the Dark: White­ness and the Lit­er­ary Imag­i­na­tion, Mor­ri­son showed us how to read as she does. “As a read­er (before becom­ing a writer),” she wrote, “I read as I had been taught to do. But books revealed them­selves rather dif­fer­ent­ly to me as a writer,” in the space of imag­i­na­tive empa­thy. “I have to place enor­mous trust in my abil­i­ty to imag­ine oth­ers and my will­ing­ness to project con­scious­ly into the dan­ger zones such oth­ers may rep­re­sent for me.”

Crit­i­cal read­ers risk vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, open them­selves to shock and sur­prise: “I want to draw a map… to open as much space for dis­cov­ery… with­out the man­date for con­quest.” This atti­tude makes crit­i­cism an act of “delight, not dis­ap­point­ment,” Mor­ri­son wrote, despite the dif­fer­ent, and unequal, posi­tions we come from as read­ers. “It’s that being open,” she said in 2009, “not scratch­ing for it, not dig­ging for it, not con­struct­ing some­thing but being open to the sit­u­a­tion and trust­ing that what you don’t know will be avail­able to you.”

Want to learn to read like that? You can. And you can also, if you have the cash, own and read the books in Morrison’s per­son­al library, the books she thumbed over and read in that same spir­it of crit­i­cal empa­thy. The over 1,200 books col­lect­ed at her Tribeca con­do can be pur­chased in their entire­ty for a price nego­ti­at­ed with her fam­i­ly. In the pho­tos here from real­tor Brown Har­ris Stevens, who cur­rent­ly list her five mil­lion dol­lar, 3 bed­room apart­ment in a sep­a­rate sale, cer­tain titles leap out from the spines:

Biogra­phies of Paul Robe­son and Charles Dick­ens, Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, Eric J. Sundquist’s To Wake the Nations, Angela Davis’ An Auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Cor­nel West’s Democ­ra­cy Mat­ters. (Her library seems to be envi­ably alpha­bet­ized, some­thing I’ve meant to get around to for a cou­ple decades now….)

Michelle Sin­clair Col­man at Galerie lists sev­er­al more titles in the library, includ­ing The Orig­i­nal Illus­trat­ed Sher­lock Holmes, “books about and by the Oba­mas and the Clin­tons, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hugh­es, Zora Neale Hurston, Gayl Jones, Hen­ry Dumas, James Bald­win, and Mark Twain.” On her night­stand, undis­turbed, sit Robert A. Caro’s biog­ra­phy of Lyn­don John­son, David Maraniss’s Barack Oba­ma: The Sto­ry, and Stephen King’s Revival.

Some oth­er points of inter­est:

  • She owned a beau­ti­ful gold illus­trat­ed copy of Song of Solomon with the book­mark on Chap­ter Four.
  • She dis­played mul­ti­ple-framed Dewey Dec­i­mal cat­a­log library cards of her nov­els.
  • She edit­ed as she read.

And…

  • She had a few nev­er-returned library books. The most inter­est­ing was a copy of her own book, The Bluest Eye, from the Burn­a­by Pub­lic Library with copi­ous notes, under­lines, cross-outs on every sin­gle page.

Were these her own notes, under­lines, and cross-outs? It isn’t clear, but should you pur­chase the library, which can­not be pieced out but only owned as a whole, you can find out for your­self. We hope this his­toric col­lec­tion will one day end up in a library, maybe dig­i­tized for every­one to see. But for now, those of us who can’t afford the pur­chase price can be con­tent with this rare glimpse into Morrison’s sanc­tu­ary, where she did so much writ­ing, think­ing, and maybe most impor­tant­ly for her, so much read­ing. Images on this page come from Brown Har­ris Stevens.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Toni Mor­ri­son Decon­structs White Suprema­cy in Amer­i­ca

Toni Mor­ris­son: For­get Writ­ing About What You Know; Write About What You Don’t Know

Toni Mor­ri­son Dis­pens­es Sound Writ­ing Advice: Tips You Can Apply to Your Own Work

Hear Toni Mor­ri­son (RIP) Present Her Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech on the Rad­i­cal Pow­er of Lan­guage (1993)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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A Curious Herbal: 500 Beautiful Illustrations of Medicinal Plants Drawn by Elizabeth Blackwell in 1737 (to Save Her Family from Financial Ruin)

in Art, Books, History, Science | November 23rd, 2020

Some­times beau­ti­ful things come out of ter­ri­ble cir­cum­stances. This does not jus­ti­fy more ter­ri­ble cir­cum­stances. But as evi­dence of the resilience, resource­ful­ness, and cre­ativ­i­ty of human beings—and more specif­i­cal­ly of moth­ers in dire straits—we offer the fol­low­ing: A Curi­ous Herbal, Eliz­a­beth Blackwell’s fine­ly illus­trat­ed, engraved, and col­ored “herbal,” the term for a “book of plants, describ­ing their appear­ance, their prop­er­ties and how they may be used for prepar­ing oint­ments,” the British Library writes.

Born some­time around 1700 to a suc­cess­ful mer­chant fam­i­ly in Scot­land, Eliz­a­beth mar­ried Alexan­der Black­well, a “shady char­ac­ter” who pro­ceed­ed to drag her through a series of mis­ad­ven­tures involv­ing him pos­ing as a doc­tor and a print­er, despite the fact that he’d had no train­ing in either pro­fes­sion.

Black­well incurred sev­er­al hefty fines from the author­i­ties, which he could not pay, and he was final­ly remand­ed to debtor’s prison, an insti­tu­tion that often left women with young chil­dren to fend for them­selves.

“With Alexan­der in prison, Eliz­a­beth was forced to rely on her own resources to keep her­self and her child.” For­tu­nate­ly, she had been pre­pared with life skills dur­ing her pros­per­ous upbring­ing, hav­ing learned a thing or two about busi­ness and “received tuition in draw­ing and paint­ing, as many well-to-do young women then did.” Black­well real­ized a pub­lish­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty: find­ing no high-qual­i­ty herbals avail­able, she decid­ed to make her own in “a rare tri­umph of turn­ing des­per­a­tion into inspi­ra­tion,” Maria Popo­va writes.

After befriend­ing the head cura­tor Chelsea Physic Gar­den — a teach­ing facil­i­ty for appren­tice apothe­caries estab­lished sev­er­al decades ear­li­er — she real­ized that there was a need for a hand­book depict­ing and describ­ing the garden’s new col­lec­tion of mys­te­ri­ous plants from the New World. A keen observ­er, a gift­ed artist, and an entre­pre­neur by nature, she set about bridg­ing the world’s need and her own.

The gor­geous book, A Curi­ous Herbal (1737–39), was not all Blackwell’s work, though she com­plet­ed all of the illus­tra­tions from start to fin­ish. She also enlist­ed her husband’s help, vis­it­ing his cell to have him “sup­ply each plant’s name in Latin, Greek, Ital­ian, Span­ish, Dutch, and Ger­man.” Black­well pro­duced 500 illus­tra­tions in total. She adver­tised “by word of mouth,” notes the British Library, “and in sev­er­al jour­nals” and “showed her­self an adept busi­ness­woman, strik­ing mutu­al­ly advan­ta­geous deals with book­sellers that ensured the finan­cial suc­cess of the herbal.”

Black­well not only ben­e­fit­ed her fam­i­ly and her read­ers, but she also gave her book to posterity—though she couldn’t have known it at the time. Her herbal has been dig­i­tized in full by the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library. The herbal will also give back to the nat­ur­al world she lov­ing­ly ren­dered (includ­ing plants that have since gone extinct). Popo­va has made a selec­tion of the illus­tra­tions avail­able as prints to ben­e­fit The Nature Con­ser­van­cy. See Blackwell’s dig­i­tized book in full here and order prints at Brain Pick­ings.

via Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Dis­cov­er Emi­ly Dickinson’s Herbar­i­um: A Beau­ti­ful Dig­i­tal Edi­tion of the Poet’s Col­lec­tion of Pressed Plants & Flow­ers Is Now Online

His­toric Man­u­script Filled with Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Cuban Flow­ers & Plants Is Now Online (1826)

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch How to Be at Home, a Beautiful Short Animation on the Realities of Social Isolation in 2020

in Animation, Books, Film, Life, Poetry | November 23rd, 2020

I think, as social pri­mates, we want to feel a strong sense of belong­ing either in a rela­tion­ship or to a community—or both. But also intrin­sic to our human­i­ty is a feel­ing that we are tru­ly alone.

—Film­mak­er Andrea Dorf­man, 2010

When they first became friends, poet Tanya Davis and film­mak­er Andrea Dorf­man talked a lot about the plea­sures and hard­ships of being alone. Davis had just gone through a break up, and Dorf­man was just embark­ing on a rela­tion­ship after four years of fly­ing solo.

These con­ver­sa­tions led to a col­lab­o­ra­tion, 2010’s How to Be At Alone (see below), a whim­si­cal videopo­em that com­bines live action and ani­ma­tion to con­sid­er some of soli­tude’s sweet­er aspects, like sit­ting on a bench as sig­nal to the uni­verse that one is avail­able for impromp­tu con­ver­sa­tion with a stranger.

That bench reap­pears in their 2020 fol­low up, How to Be At Home, above. Now it is cor­doned off with black and yel­low cau­tion tape, a famil­iar pub­lic health mea­sure in 2020.

As with the ear­li­er project, a large part of Davis’ pur­pose was to reflect and reas­sure, both her­self, and by exten­sion, oth­ers.

Although she has become a poster child for the joys of soli­tude, she also rel­ish­es human con­tact, and found her­self miss­ing it ter­ri­bly while shel­ter­ing alone in the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic. Writ­ing the new poem gave her “an anchor” and a place to put her anx­i­ety.

Dorf­man notes that the project, which was com­mis­sioned by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da as part of a short film col­lec­tion about Cana­di­ans nav­i­gat­ing life dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, was “essen­tial­ly cat­alyzed by COVID.”

As she embarked on the project, she won­dered if the pan­dem­ic would be over by the time it was com­plete. As she told the CBC’s Tom Pow­er:

There was this feel­ing that this could go away in a month, so this bet­ter be fin­ished soon, so it’s still rel­e­vant. So as an artist, as a film­mak­er, I thought, “I have to crank this out” but there’s no fast and easy way to do ani­ma­tion. It just takes so long and as I got into it and real­ized that this was going to be a marathon, not a sprint, the images just kept com­ing to me and I real­ly just made it up as I went along. I’d go into my stu­dio every day not know­ing what lay ahead and I’d think, “Okay, so, what do we have up next? What’s the next line? And I’d spend maybe a week on a line of the poem, ani­mat­ing it. 

It appears to have been an effec­tive approach.

Dorfman’s paint­ed images rip­ple across the fast turn­ing pages of an old book. The titles change from time to time, and the choic­es seem delib­er­ate—The Lone Star Ranger, Le Secret du Manoir Han­té, a chap­ter in The Bro­ken Halo—“Rose­mary for Remem­brance.”

“It’s almost as though the way the poem is writ­ten there are many chap­ters in the book. (Davis) moves from one sub­ject to anoth­er so com­plete­ly,” Dorf­man told the Uni­ver­si­ty of King’s Col­lege stu­dent paper, The Sig­nal.

In the new work, the absence of oth­er peo­ple proves a much heav­ier bur­den than it does in How To Be Alone.

Davis flirts with many of the first poem’s set­tings, places where a lone indi­vid­ual might have gone to put them­selves in prox­im­i­ty to oth­er humans as recent­ly as Feb­ru­ary 2020:

Pub­lic trans­porta­tion

The gym

A dance club

A descrip­tion from 2010:

The lunch counter, where you will be sur­round­ed by chow-down­ers, employ­ees who only have an hour and their spous­es work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

In 2020, she strug­gles to recre­ate that expe­ri­ence at home, her phone serv­ing as her most vital link to the out­side world, as she scrolls past images of a Black Lives Mat­ter protests and a masked essen­tial work­er:

I miss lunch coun­ters so much I’ve been eat­ing [pick­les and] toast­ed sand­wich­es while hang­ing unabashed­ly with my phone.

See How to Be at Home and the 29 oth­er films that com­prise The Curve, the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da series about life in the era of COVID-19 here.

How to be at Home

By Tanya Davis

If you are, at first, real­ly fuck­ing anx­ious, just wait. It’ll get worse, and then you’ll get the hang of it. Maybe. 

Start with the rea­son­able feel­ings – dis­com­fort, lack of focus, the sad­ness of alone

you can try to do yoga

you can shut off the radio when it gets to you

you can mes­sage your fam­i­ly or your friends or your col­leagues, you’re not sup­posed to leave your home any­way, so it’s safe for you

There’s also the gym

you can’t go there but you could pre­tend to

you could bendy by your­self in your bed­room

And there’s pub­lic trans­porta­tion

prob­a­bly best to avoid it

but there’s prayer and med­i­ta­tion, yes always

employ it

if you have pains in your chest ‘cause your anx­i­ety won’t rest

take a moment, take a breath

Start sim­ple

things you can han­dle based on your inter­ests

your issues and your trig­gers

and your inner logis­tics 

I miss lunch coun­ters so much I’ve been eat­ing [pick­les and] toast­ed sand­wich­es while hang­ing unabashed­ly with my phone

When you are tired, again of still being alone

make your­self a din­ner

but don’t invite any­body over

put some­thing green in it, or maybe orange

chips are fine some­times but they won’t keep you charged 

feed your heart

if peo­ple are your nour­ish­ment, I get you

feel the feel­ings that undo you while you have to keep apart

Watch a movie, in the dark

and pre­tend some­one is with you 

watch all of the cred­its

because you have time, and not much else to do

or watch all of the cred­its to remem­ber 

how many peo­ple come togeth­er

just to tell a sto­ry

just to make a pic­ture move

And then, set your­self up danc­ing

like it’s a club where every­one knows you

and they’re all gonna hold you

all night long

they’re gonna dance around you and with you and on their own

it’s your favourite song 

with the hard­est bass and the cathar­tic drums

your heart pumps along/hard, you belong

you put your hands up to feel it

With the come down comes the weep­ing

those down­cast eyes and feel­ings

the truth is you can’t go danc­ing, not right now

not at any club or par­ty in any town

The heart­break of this astounds you

it joins old aches way down in you

you can vis­it them, but please don’t stay there

Go out­side if you’re able, breathe the air

there are trees for hug­ging

don’t be embar­rassed

it’s your friend, it’s your moth­er, it’s your new crush

lay your cheek against the bark, it’s a liv­ing thing to touch

Sad­ly, leave all bench­es emp­ty

appre­ci­ate the kind­ness in the dis­tance of strangers

as you pine for com­pa­ny and wave at your neigh­bours

savour the depths of your con­ver­sa­tions

the lay­ers uncov­ered

in this strange space and time

Soci­ety is afraid of change

and no one wants to die

not now, from a tiny virus

not lat­er from the world on fire

But death is a truth we all hate to know

we all get to live, and then we all have to go

In the mean­time, we’re sur­round­ed, we’re alone

each a thread woven in the fab­ric, unrav­el­ling in moments though

each a solo enti­ty spin­ning on its axis, for­get­ting that the galaxy includes us all

Here­in our fall

from grace from each oth­er from god what­ev­er, doesn’t mat­ter

the dis­as­ter is that we believe we’re sep­a­rate 

we’re not

As evi­denced by virus­es tak­ing down soci­eties

as proven by the lone­li­ness inher­ent in no gath­er­ings

as pal­pa­ble as the vacan­cy in the space of one per­son hug­ging

If this dis­rup­tion undoes you

if the absence of peo­ple unrav­els you

if touch was the teth­er that held you togeth­er

and now that it’s sev­ered you’re frag­ile too 

lean into lone­li­ness and know you’re not alone in it 

lean into lone­li­ness like it is hold­ing you

like it is a gen­er­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a glar­ing truth

oh, we are con­nect­ed

we for­get this, yet we always knew.

How to Be at Home will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch “Ryan,” Win­ner of an Oscar and 60 Oth­er Awards

2020: An Iso­la­tion Odyssey–A Short Film Reen­acts the Finale of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a COVID-19 Twist

 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Powell’s Books Unveils a New Perfume That Smells Like Old Books

in Books, Random | November 10th, 2020

Miss­ing the scent of used book stores dur­ing quar­an­tine? Pow­ell’s Books has you cov­ered with their new uni­sex fra­grance: “Like the crim­son rhodo­den­drons in Rebec­ca, the heady fra­grance of old paper cre­ates an atmos­phere ripe with mood and pos­si­bil­i­ty. Invok­ing a labyrinth of books; secret libraries; ancient scrolls; and cognac swilled by philoso­pher-kings, Powell’s by Powell’s deliv­ers the wear­er to a place of won­der, dis­cov­ery, and mag­ic hereto­fore only known in lit­er­a­ture.” You can pre-order it here…

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Chem­istry Behind the Smell of Old Books: Explained with a Free Info­graph­ic

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

Wear­able Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Man­u­scripts & Turned Them into Clothes

Old Book Illus­tra­tions: An Online Data­base Lets You Down­load Thou­sands of Illus­tra­tions from the 19th & 20th Cen­turies

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The Meticulous, Elegant Illustrations of the Nature Observed in England’s Countryside

in Art, Books, Nature | November 5th, 2020

If you hap­pen to have grown up in the Eng­lish coun­try­side, you prob­a­bly retain a cer­tain sen­si­tiv­i­ty to and affin­i­ty for nature. This can express itself in any num­ber of ways, most often by a com­pul­sion to gar­den, no mat­ter how urban the set­ting in which you now live. But Jo Brown has shown how to base a career on it: an artist and illus­tra­tor — and “bird­er wildlif­er mush­roomer,” accord­ing to her Twit­ter bio — she has long kept a “nature jour­nal” doc­u­ment­ing the flo­ra and fau­na encoun­tered in the coun­try­side around her home in Devon.

“At the end of April 2019, Jo post­ed a video of her jour­nal so far on Twit­ter,” says her web site. “It went viral and her fol­low­ers jumped from 9K fol­low­ers to 20K fol­low­ers in two days.” A glance at any giv­en page reveals what so impressed them. “Each page of Brown’s note­book con­tains a pen and col­ored pen­cil draw­ing that begins at the pages’ edges, appear­ing to grow from the cor­ner or across the paper,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert.

“Some­times cap­tured through close-ups that mim­ic sci­en­tif­ic illus­tra­tions, the del­i­cate ren­der­ings depict the detail of a buff-tailed bumblebee’s fuzzy tor­so and the red ten­drils of a round-leaved sun­dew. Brown notes the com­mon and Latin names for each species and com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics, in addi­tion to where and when she spot­ted it.”

In oth­er words, the nature jour­nal show­cas­es at once its cre­ator’s keen eye, well-trained hand, and for­mi­da­ble knowl­edge of the nat­ur­al world. It also stands as a prime exam­ple of the art of note­book­ing.

 

Using to its fullest advan­tage her ruled Mole­sk­ine note­book (the brand of choice for those invest­ed in doing their jot­ting and sketch­ing on the go for a cou­ple of decades now), Brown effec­tive­ly deliv­ers a mas­ter class in the vivid, leg­i­ble, and ele­gant — dare we say organ­ic? — orga­ni­za­tion of both visu­al and tex­tu­al infor­ma­tion in the space of a small page.

You can take a clos­er look at how she does it on her web site as well as her feeds on both Twit­ter and Insta­gram. More recent­ly, her jour­nal has been pub­lished in book form as Secrets of a Devon Wood. Few nature-lovers, per­haps, can equal Jo Brown as an artist, but every­one can enjoy the glo­ri­ous­ly var­ied realm of life that sur­rounds them just as much as she does. “All that’s required,” she says, “is a lit­tle patience and qui­et obser­va­tion.”

via Kot­tke/Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

Japan­ese Artist Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eat­en for 32 Years: Behold the Deli­cious Illus­tra­tions of Itsuo Kobayashi

The Sketch­book Project Presents Online 24,000 Sketch­books, Cre­at­ed by Artists from 135 Coun­tries

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Chris Matheson, “Bill & Ted” Writer, Talks Cosmic Satire with Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #65

in Books, Comedy, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | October 22nd, 2020

Chris Math­e­son has writ­ten a bunch of com­ic movies includ­ing the new Bill & Ted Face the Music, and he’s con­vert­ed reli­gious texts into fun­nier books on three occa­sions, most recent­ly with The Bud­dha’s Sto­ry. Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt talk with him about what uni­fies these projects: Why the big ideas of sci­ence fic­tion, fan­ta­sy, reli­gion, and phi­los­o­phy are beg­ging in a sim­i­lar way to be made fun of.

We get into the big ques­tions: How does humor relate to fear? Would a soci­ety based on Bill and Ted (or Keanu Reeves) actu­al­ly be desir­able? How bad is the evi­dent lit­er­al absur­di­ty of many reli­gious texts? Plus, the B & T joke that has not aged well, and much more!

A few arti­cles that we found but did­n’t real­ly draw on includ­ed:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Explore a Digital Archive of Student Notebooks from Around the World (1773-Present)

in Archives, Books, Education, History | October 1st, 2020

To bring back mem­o­ries of your school­days, there’s noth­ing quite like the sight of your old exer­cise books. This holds true whether you went to school in Ghana in the 2010s, Italy in the 90s, France in the 80s, Chi­na in the 70s, Japan in the 60s, or India in the 50s. All of these exam­ples and many more have come avail­able to view at the Exer­cise Book Archive, an “ever-grow­ing, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry archive of old exer­cise books that allows every­one to dis­cov­er the his­to­ry, edu­ca­tion, and dai­ly life of chil­dren and youth of the past.” All of the entries include the rel­e­vant book’s front cov­er — already a Prous­t­ian view­ing expe­ri­ence for any who had them grow­ing up — and some fea­ture scans of the inte­ri­or pages, stu­dent writ­ing and all.

“One girl’s note­book describes the bomb­ing of her small town in 1940s Switzer­land,” writes Col­lec­tors Week­ly’s Hunter Oat­man-Stan­ford. “Anoth­er boy’s jour­nal chron­i­cles dai­ly life in rur­al Penn­syl­va­nia dur­ing the 1890s; the diary of a Chi­nese teenag­er recounts his expe­ri­ences in prison dur­ing the 1980s.” The arti­cle quotes Thomas Pololi, co-founder of the orga­ni­za­tion behind the Exer­cise Book Archive, on the his­tor­i­cal val­ue of books con­tain­ing “com­po­si­tions about war, pro­pa­gan­da, or polit­i­cal events that we now rec­og­nize as ter­ri­ble.

But in the nar­ra­tion of chil­dren, there is often enthu­si­asm about the swasti­ka in Ger­many, or the Duce in Italy (dic­ta­tor Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni), or for Mao in Chi­na.” (Thanks to the work of vol­un­teers, these and oth­er exer­cise-book writ­ings have been tran­scribed and trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish.)

These young stu­dents “tend­ed to see the pos­i­tive side of trau­mat­ic things, per­haps because their main goal is to grow up, and they need­ed to do it the world they lived in.” Their exer­cise books thus offer reflec­tions of their soci­eties, in not just con­tent but design as well: “In Spain or in Chi­na,” for exam­ple, “you see beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions of pro­pa­gan­da themes. They are often aes­thet­i­cal­ly appeal­ing because they were meant to per­suade chil­dren to do or think some­thing.” Edu­ca­tion­al trends also come through: “Before, there were main­ly exer­cis­es of cal­lig­ra­phy with dic­tat­ed sen­tences about how you have to behave in your life, with phras­es like ‘Emu­la­tion sel­dom fails,’ ” which to Pololi’s mind “implies that if you are your­self, you risk fail­ing. That’s the oppo­site of what we teach chil­dren nowa­days.”

Some­how the most mun­dane of these stu­dent com­po­si­tions can also be among the most inter­est­ing. Take the jour­nal of a group of Finnish girl scouts from the ear­ly 1950s. “The train to Lep­pä­vaara arrived quick­ly,” writes the author of one entry from April 1950. “At the sta­tion it start­ed to rain. We walked to the youth house, where we sang ‘Exalt the joy’ etc. Then we went to the sauna where we had to be. We sang and prayed. We then ate some sand­wich­es.” Could she have pos­si­bly imag­ined peo­ple all around the world read­ing of this girl-scout day trip with great inter­est sev­en­ty years lat­er? And what would the young man doing his pen­man­ship near­ly a quar­ter-mil­len­ni­um ago in Shrop­shire think if he know how eager we were to look at his exer­cise book? Bet­ter us than his school­mas­ter, no doubt. Enter the Exer­cise Book Archive here.

via Col­lec­tors Week­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ancient Egypt­ian Home­work Assign­ment from 1800 Years Ago: Some Things Are Tru­ly Time­less

Muse­um Dis­cov­ers Math Note­book of an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Eng­lish Farm Boy, Adorned with Doo­dles of Chick­ens Wear­ing Pants

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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How Bong Joon-ho’s Storyboards for Parasite (Now Published as a Graphic Novel) Meticulously Shaped the Acclaimed Film

in Books, Film | September 22nd, 2020

In Seoul, where I live, the suc­cess of Bong Joon-ho’s Par­a­site at this year’s Acad­e­my Awards — unprece­dent­ed for a non-Amer­i­can film, let alone a Kore­an one — did not go unno­ticed. But even then, the cel­e­bra­tion had already been under­way at least since the movie won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Some­thing of a home­com­ing for Bong after Snow­piercer and Okja, two projects made whol­ly or par­tial­ly abroad, Par­a­site takes place entire­ly in Seoul, stag­ing a socioe­co­nom­ic grudge match between three fam­i­lies occu­py­ing stark­ly dis­parate places in the human hier­ar­chy. The denoue­ment is chaot­ic, but arrived at through the pre­ci­sion film­mak­ing with which Bong has made his name over the past two decades.

When Par­a­site’s sto­ry­boards were pub­lished in graph­ic-nov­el form here a few months ago, I noticed ads in the sub­way promis­ing a look into the mind of “Bong­tail.” Though Bong has pub­licly declared his con­tempt for that nick­name, it has nev­er­the­less stuck as a reflec­tion of his metic­u­lous way of work­ing.

The son of a graph­ic design­er, he grew up not just watch­ing movies but draw­ing comics, a prac­tice that would lat­er place him well to cre­ate his own sto­ry­boards. In so doing he assem­bles an entire film in his mind before shoot­ing its first frame (a work­ing process not dis­sim­i­lar to that of West­ern film­mak­ers like the Coen broth­ers), which enables him and his col­lab­o­ra­tors to exe­cute com­plex sequences such as what the Nerd­writer calls Par­a­site’s “per­fect mon­tage.”

With the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Par­a­site: A Graph­ic Nov­el in Sto­ry­boards now avail­able, video essay­ists like Thomas Flight have made com­par­isons between Bong’s draw­ings and the film. Start­ing with that cel­e­brat­ed mon­tage, Flight shows that, where the final prod­uct departs from its plan, it usu­al­ly does so to sim­pli­fy the hand-drawn action, mak­ing it more leg­i­ble and ele­gant. In the short video just above, you can watch one minute of Par­a­site lined up with its cor­re­spond­ing sto­ry­board pan­els, one of which incor­po­rates a pho­to­graph of the real Seoul neigh­bor­hood in which Bong locat­ed the main char­ac­ters’ home. This is rich sto­ry­board­ing indeed, but in his intro­duc­tion to the book, Bong explains that he does­n’t con­sid­er it essen­tial to film­mak­ing, just essen­tial to him: “I actu­al­ly sto­ry­board to quell my own anx­i­ety.” Would that we could all draw world­wide acclaim from doing the same.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Secret of the “Per­fect Mon­tage” at the Heart of Par­a­site, the Kore­an Film Now Sweep­ing World Cin­e­ma

Mar­tin Scors­ese Intro­duces Film­mak­er Hong Sang­soo, “The Woody Allen of Korea”

Watch More Than 400 Clas­sic Kore­an Films Free Online Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

How the Coen Broth­ers Sto­ry­board­ed Blood Sim­ple Down to a Tee (1984)

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Paint­ed the Sto­ry­boards For Scenes in His Epic Films: Com­pare Can­vas to Cel­lu­loid

Rid­ley Scott Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­board­ing (and How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Project)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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