Sylvia Beach Tells the Story of Founding Shakespeare and Company, Publishing Joyce’s Ulysses, Selling Copies of Hemingway’s First Book & More (1962)

in Books, Literature | August 26th, 2020

Revis­it­ing Ernest Hemingway’s A Move­able Feast a cou­ple of decades after I read it last, I notice a few things right away: I am still moved by the prose and think it’s as impres­sive as ever; I am less moved by the machis­mo and alco­holism and more inter­est­ed in char­ac­ters like Sylvia Beach, founder of Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, the book­store that served as a base of oper­a­tions for the famed Lost Gen­er­a­tion of writ­ers in Paris.

“Sylvia had a live­ly, sharply sculp­tured face, brown eyes that were as alive as a small animal’s and as gay as a young girl’s,” Hem­ing­way wrote of her in his mem­oir. “She was kind, cheer­ful and inter­est­ed, and loved to make jokes and gos­sip. No one that I ever knew was nicer to me.” Indeed, Hem­ing­way also “recounts being giv­en access to the whole of Sylvia Beach’s library at Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny for free after his first vis­it,” notes writer RJ Smith.

Beach found­ed the shop in 1919, encour­aged (and fund­ed) by her part­ner Adri­enne Mon­nier, who owned a French-lan­guage book­store. Beach’s most­ly Eng­lish-lan­guage Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny would become a lend­ing-library, post office, bank, and even hotel for authors who con­gre­gat­ed there. She sup­port­ed the great expa­tri­ate mod­ernists and host­ed French writ­ers like André Gide and Paul Valéry. She also pub­lished James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922 when no one else would, after ear­li­er pub­lished excerpts were deemed “obscene.”

Joyce was shaped by Paris, and owed a huge debt of grat­i­tude to Beach, just as read­ers of Ulysses do almost 100 years lat­er. Forty years after the novel’s pub­li­ca­tion, Beach trav­eled to Ire­land to cel­e­brate and sat down for the long inter­view above in which she remem­bers those heady times. She also tells the sto­ry of how a Pres­by­ter­ian minister’s daughter—who went to church in Prince­ton, NJ with Grover Cleve­land and Woodrow Wilson—became a pio­neer­ing out les­bian mod­ernist book­seller in Paris.

Beach remem­bers meet­ing “all the French writ­ers” at Monnier’s shop after her time study­ing at the Sor­bonne and how Amer­i­can writ­ers all came to Paris to escape pro­hi­bi­tion at home. “For Hem­ing­way and his most of his friends,” says Har­vard his­to­ri­an Patrice Higonnet, “Paris was one long binge, all the more enjoy­able because it wasn’t very expen­sive.” For Beach, Paris became home, and Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny a home away from home for waves of expats until the Nazis shut it down in 1941. (Ten years lat­er, a dif­fer­ent Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny was opened by book­seller George Whit­man.)

“They were dis­gust­ed in Amer­i­ca because they couldn’t get a drink,” Beach says, “and they couldn’t get Ulysses. I used to think those were the two great caus­es of their dis­con­tent.” Her inter­views, let­ters, and her own mem­oir, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, tell the sto­ry of the Lost Gen­er­a­tion from her point of view, one ani­mat­ed by an absolute devo­tion to lit­er­a­ture, and in par­tic­u­lar, to Joyce, who did not rec­i­p­ro­cate. When Ulysses sold to Ran­dom House in 1932, he offered her no share of his very large advance.

Beach was for­giv­ing. “I under­stood from the first,” she said, “that work­ing with or for Mr. Joyce, the plea­sure was mine—an infi­nite plea­sure: the prof­its were for him.” She was doing some­thing oth­er than run­ning a busi­ness. She was “cross-fer­til­iz­ing,” as French writer Andre Cham­son put it. “She did more to link Eng­land, the Unit­ed States, Ire­land, and France than four great ambas­sadors com­bined.” She did so by giv­ing writ­ers what they need­ed to make the work she knew they could, at a very rare time and place in which such a thing was briefly pos­si­ble.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Begin­nings Pro­files Shake­speare and Company’s Sylvia Beach Whit­man

The Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny Project Dig­i­tizes the Records of the Famous Book­store, Show­ing the Read­ing Habits of the Lost Gen­er­a­tion

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Has a Strange Din­ner with James Joyce & Draws a Cute Sketch of It (1928)

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

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There Are Only 37 Possible Stories, According to This 1919 Manual for Screenwriters

in Books, Film, Writing | August 20th, 2020

“Great lit­er­a­ture is one of two sto­ries,” we often quote Leo Tol­stoy as say­ing: “a man goes on a jour­ney or a stranger comes to town.” That’s all well and good for the author of War and Peace, but what about the thou­sands of screen­writ­ers strug­gling to come up with the next hit movie, the next hit tele­vi­sion series, the next hit plat­form-spe­cif­ic web and/or mobile series? Some, of course, have found in that apho­rism a fruit­ful start­ing point, but oth­ers opt for dif­fer­ent premis­es that num­ber the basic plots at three (William Fos­ter-Har­ris), six (researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vermont’s Com­pu­ta­tion­al Sto­ry Lab), twen­ty (Ronald Tobias), 36 (George Polti) — or, as some strug­gling screen­writ­ers of a cen­tu­ry ago read, 37.

The year was 1919. Amer­i­ca’s biggest block­busters includ­ed D.W. Grif­fith’s Bro­ken Blos­soms, Cecil B. DeMille’s Male and Female, and The Mir­a­cle Man, which made Lon Chaney into a sil­ver-screen icon. The many aspi­rants look­ing to write their way into the ever more cel­e­brat­ed and lucra­tive movie busi­ness could turn to a new­ly pub­lished man­u­al called Ten Mil­lion Pho­to­play Plots by Wycliff Aber Hill. “Hill, who pub­lished more than one aid to strug­gling ‘sce­nar­ists,’ posi­tioned him­self as an author­i­ty on the types of sto­ries that would work well onscreen,” writes Slate’s Rebec­ca Onion. In this book he pro­vides a “tax­on­o­my of pos­si­ble types of dra­mat­ic ‘sit­u­a­tions,’ first run­ning them down in out­line form, then describ­ing each more com­plete­ly and offer­ing pos­si­ble vari­a­tions.”

Hill’s 37 basic dra­mat­ic sit­u­a­tions include such “hap­py sit­u­a­tions” as “res­cue,” “loved ones lost and recov­ered,” and “a mir­a­cle of God”; such “pathet­ic sit­u­a­tions” as “love’s obsta­cles,” “rival­ry between unequals,” and “a mys­tery”; and such “dis­as­trous sit­u­a­tions pre­cip­i­tat­ed with­out crim­i­nal intent” as “pos­sessed of an ambi­tion,” “enmi­ty between kins­men,” and “vengeance.” (Nat­u­ral­ly, Hill also includes a sep­a­rate cat­e­go­ry involv­ing crim­i­nal intent.) These dra­mat­ic con­cepts then break down into more spe­cif­ic sce­nar­ios like “res­cue by strangers who are grate­ful for favors giv­en them by the unfor­tu­nate one,” “an appeal for refuge by the ship­wrecked,” “the sac­ri­fice of hap­pi­ness for the sake of a loved one where the sac­ri­fice is caused by unjust laws,” and “con­ge­nial rela­tions between hus­band and wife made impos­si­ble by the par­ents-in-law.”

Already more than a few films new and old come to mind whose sto­ries pro­ceed from such dra­mat­ic con­cepts. Indeed, one could think of exam­ples from not just cin­e­ma but lit­er­a­ture, tele­vi­sion, the­ater, comics, and oth­er forms of nar­ra­tive art besides. Sit­u­a­tions we all know from real life may also fol­low sim­i­lar con­tours, which plays no small part in giv­ing them their impact when prop­er­ly trans­lat­ed to the screen. Clear­ly aim­ing for time­less­ness, Hill enu­mer­ates plots that could have been employed in sto­ries cen­turies before his time, and will con­tin­ue to be long after ours. But what, exact­ly, is the rela­tion­ship between plot and sto­ry? We now quote E.M. Forster on the mat­ter, specif­i­cal­ly a line from his Aspects of the Nov­el — a book for which Ten Mil­lion Pho­to­play Plots’ first read­ers would have to wait eight more years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Decod­ing the Screen­plays of The Shin­ing, Moon­rise King­dom & The Dark Knight: Watch Lessons from the Screen­play

10 Tips on How to Write a Great Screen­play from Bil­ly Wilder: Pearls of Wis­dom from the Direc­tor of Sun­set Boule­vard, Some Like It Hot, Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty & More

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

Aaron Sorkin, Cre­ator of The West Wing & The Social Net­work, Teach­es Screen­writ­ing in an Online Class

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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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Essential Reads on Feminism: The New York Public Library Creates a Reading List to Honor the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment

in Books, Gender | August 19th, 2020

We may all have the best of inten­tions when we col­lect and share read­ing lists. We buy the books, stack them neat­ly by the chair or bed, then some­thing hap­pens. Like… lit­er­al­ly, every day, some­thing hap­pens…. Let’s cut our­selves some slack. We’ll get to those books, or give them away to peo­ple who will read them, which is also a good thing to do.

But even if we can’t keep up, read­ing lists are still essen­tial edu­ca­tion­al tools, espe­cial­ly for kids, young adults, and their par­ents and teach­ers. As we cel­e­brate the cen­te­nary of the 19th Amend­ment (which fell on August 18th) and talk about its many short­com­ings, it may be more impor­tant than ever to under­stand the U.S. his­to­ry that brought us to the cur­rent moment.

This is a his­to­ry in which—whether rights were guar­an­teed by the con­sti­tu­tion or not—peo­ple his­tor­i­cal­ly denied suf­frage have always had to strug­gle. Each gen­er­a­tion of women, but most espe­cial­ly Black, Lat­inx, Indige­nous, and LGBTQ women, must claim or reclaim basic rights, lib­er­ties, and pro­tec­tions. More than ever, fem­i­nist read­ing lists reflect the vast dif­fer­ences in col­lec­tive and per­son­al expe­ri­ence that fall under the label “Fem­i­nist.”

To illus­trate the con­tin­ued crit­i­cal impor­tance of fem­i­nist his­to­ry, the­o­ry, and lit­er­a­ture, the New York Pub­lic Library pub­lished read­ing lists for adults, kids, and teens on the 19th Amendment’s 100th anniver­sary. These books can help cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty and inspire deep reflec­tion as kids are pushed back into schools and par­ents and teach­ers try to help them cope.

The adult list con­tains 126 books and includes links to the library cat­a­log or e‑Book edi­tions. “The titles bridge the past and present of fem­i­nist move­ments, from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inde­pen­dent Woman (1949) to Rox­ane Gay’s Bad Fem­i­nist: Essays (2014), and from the ear­li­est man­i­festos for equal­i­ty to con­tem­po­rary writ­ings on inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty,” Valenti­na Di Lis­cia writes at Hyper­al­ler­gic.

The lists for kids and teens are of a more man­age­able length, and “if you’re look­ing to stock the book­shelves before his­to­ry class starts this fall,” you can hard­ly do bet­ter than to start with these titles (or just book­mark the lists for now), as Danielle Valente—who help­ful­ly tran­scribes both lists, below—notes at Time Out New York.

NYPL’s Essen­tial Reads on Fem­i­nism: For Kids 

  • Black Girl Mag­ic by Mahogany L. Browne
  • Black Women Who Dared by Nao­mi M. Moy­er
  • Bold & Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote by Sen­a­tor Kirsten Gilli­brand,
  • Brave. Black. First. 50+ African Amer­i­can Women Who Changed the World by Cheryl Willis Hud­son
  • Delores Huer­ta: A Hero to Migrant Work­ers by Sarah War­ren
  • Eliz­a­beth Start­ed All the Trou­ble by Doreen Rap­pa­port
  • Equal­i­ty’s Call: The Sto­ry of Vot­ing Rights in Amer­i­ca by Deb­o­rah Diesen
  • Good Night Sto­ries for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extra­or­di­nary Women by Ele­na Fav­il­li and Francesca Cav­al­lo
  • The Gut­sy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adven­ture by Car­o­line Paul
  • Heart on Fire: Susan B. Antho­ny Votes for Pres­i­dent by Ann Malaspina
  • Her­sto­ry: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook Up the World by Kather­ine Hal­li­gan
  • I Am Enough by Grace Byers
  • I am Jazz by Jes­si­ca Herthel and Jazz Jen­nings
  • Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told by Wal­ter Dean Myers
  • It Feels Good to Be Your­self: A Book About Gen­der Iden­ti­ty by There­sa Thorn
  • Julián Is a Mer­maid by Jes­si­ca Love
  • Lead­ing the Way: Women in Pow­er by Janet How­ell and There­sa How­ell
  • Lil­lian’s Right to Vote: A Cel­e­bra­tion of the Vot­ing Rights Act of 1965 by Jon­ah Win­ter
  • Lim­it­less: 24 Remark­able Amer­i­can Women of Vision, Grit, and Guts by Leah Tinari
  • Lit­tle Lead­ers: Bold Women in Black His­to­ry by Vashti Har­ri­son
  • Lucía the Luchado­ra by Cyn­thia Leonor Garza
  • Malala’s Mag­ic Pen­cil by Malala Yousafzai
  • Miss Paul and the Pres­i­dent: The Cre­ative Cam­paign for Wom­en’s Right to Vote by Dean Rob­bins
  • The Moon With­in by Aida Salazar
  • My Name Is Truth: The Life of Sojourn­er Truth by Ann Turn­er
  • Noto­ri­ous RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg by Irin Car­mon and Shana Knizh­nik
  • Rad Amer­i­can Women A–Z: Rebels, Trail­blaz­ers, and Vision­ar­ies Who Shaped Our His­to­ry… and Our Future! by Kate Schatz
  • Ros­es and Rad­i­cals: The Epic Sto­ry of How Amer­i­can Women Won the Right to Vote by Susan Zimet
  • Shak­ing Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World by Susan Hood
  • She Per­sist­ed: 13 Amer­i­can Women Who Changed the World by Chelsea Clin­ton
  • They, She, He, Me: Free to Be! by Maya Gon­za­lez and Matthew SG
  • Women Win the Vote!: 19 for the 19th Amend­ment by Nan­cy B. Kennedy

 

New York Pub­lic Library’s Essen­tial Reads on Fem­i­nism: For Teens 

  • Alice Paul and the Fight for Wom­en’s Rights by Deb­o­rah Kops
  • Ask a Queer Chick: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life for Girls Who Dig Girls by Lind­say King-Miller
  • Because I Was a Girl: True Sto­ries for Girls of All Ages by Melis­sa de la Cruz
  • Beyond Magen­ta: Trans­gen­der Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuk­lin
  • Beyond the Gen­der Bina­ry by Alok Vaid-Menon
  • Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Péné­lope Bagieu
  • The Bride Was a Boy by Chii
  • Col­o­nize This!: Young Women of Col­or on Today’s Fem­i­nism by Daisy Hernán­dez and Bushra Rehman (eds.)
  • Dear Ijeawele, or a Fem­i­nist Man­i­festo In Fif­teen Sug­ges­tions by Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie
  • Fem­i­nism Is… by Alexan­dra Black, Lau­ra Buller, Emi­ly Hoyle and Dr. Megan Todd
  • Fem­i­nism: Rein­vent­ing the F‑Word by Nadia Abushanab Hig­gins
  • Fierce Femmes and Noto­ri­ous Liars: A Dan­ger­ous Trans Girl’s Con­fab­u­lous Mem­oir by Kai Cheng Thom
  • Fight Like a Girl: 50 Fem­i­nists Who Changed the World by Lau­ra Bar­cel­la
  • Full Frontal Fem­i­nism: A Young Wom­an’s Guide to Why Fem­i­nism Mat­ters by Jes­si­ca Valen­ti
  • Girl Ris­ing: Chang­ing the World One Girl at a Time by Tanya Lee Stone
  • Girls Resist!: A Guide to Activism, Lead­er­ship, and Start­ing a Rev­o­lu­tion by Kae­Lyn Rich
  • Girls Write Now: Two Decades of True Sto­ries from Young Female Voic­es
  • Here We Are: Fem­i­nism for the Real World by Kel­ly Jensen (ed.)
  • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  • I, Rigob­er­ta Menchú: An Indi­an Woman In Guatemala by Rigob­er­ta Menchú
  • Light­ing the Fires of Free­dom: African Amer­i­can Women in the Civ­il Rights Move­ment by Janet Dewart Bell
  • Mod­ern Her­sto­ry: Sto­ries of Women and Non­bi­na­ry Peo­ple Rewrit­ing His­to­ry by Blair Imani
  • Mus­lim Girl: A Com­ing of Age by Amani Al-Khataht­beh
  • Not for Our­selves Alone: The Sto­ry of Eliz­a­beth Cady Stan­ton and Susan B. Antho­ny by Geof­frey C. Ward and Ken Burns
  • #NotY­our­Princess: Voic­es of Native Amer­i­can Women by Lisa Charley­boy and Mary Beth Leatherdale (eds.)
  • Rethink­ing Nor­mal: A Mem­oir in Tran­si­tion by Katie Rain Hill
  • She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Har­ri­et Tub­man by Eri­ca Arm­strong Dun­bar
  • Sis­sy: A Com­ing-of-Gen­der Sto­ry by Jacob Tobia
  • Tomboy: A Graph­ic Mem­oir by Liz Prince
  • Trans Teen Sur­vival Guide by Owl and Fox Fish­er
  • Trans+: Love, Sex, Romance, and Being You by Kathryn Gon­za­les and Karen Rayne
  • Votes for Women!: Amer­i­can Suf­frag­ists and the Bat­tle for the Bal­lot by Winifred Con­kling
  • With Courage and Cloth: Win­ning the Fight for a Wom­an’s Right to Vote by Ann Bausum
  • You Don’t Have to Like Me: Essays on Grow­ing Up, Speak­ing Out, and Find­ing Fem­i­nism by Ali­da Nugent
  • Ama­zons, Abo­li­tion­ists, and Activists: A Graph­ic His­to­ry of Wom­en’s Fight for Their Rights by Mik­ki Kendall

This is, indeed, an excel­lent place to start. Giv­en younger gen­er­a­tions’ lev­els of engage­ment with cur­rent events, it’s like­ly your kids or stu­dents are already famil­iar with many of the new­er books on the lists.

And if you, your­self, need some less daunt­ing bib­li­ogra­phies to get you start­ed, you might also check out Emi­ly Temple’s “40 New Fem­i­nist Clas­sics” list on LitHub or her (short­er and less diverse) “10 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books” at The Atlantic, or fem­i­nist writer Mona Eltahawy’s list of Black fem­i­nist books on Twit­ter, or for­mer NFL play­er Wade Davis and Cor­nell Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Muko­ma Wa Ngugi’s lists for “men who care about fem­i­nism.”

If there’s any over­ar­ch­ing theme to be found among such a vast and ever-expand­ing canon of fem­i­nist lit­er­a­ture, it might be summed up best in the title of a recent Angela Davis book on fem­i­nist move­ments around the world: “Free­dom is a con­stant strug­gle.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

Down­load All 239 Issues of Land­mark UK Fem­i­nist Mag­a­zine Spare Rib Free Online

103 Essen­tial Films By Female Film­mak­ers: Clue­less, Lost In Trans­la­tion, Ishtar and More

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

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Graphic Novels Tell the Story of David Bowie, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Jean-Michel Basquiat & Other Artists and Thinkers

in Art, Books, Comics/Cartoons | August 19th, 2020

If you’re fas­ci­nat­ed by cer­tain artists and thinkers, you can learn about them from books. Any­one who has a sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al or intel­lec­tu­al influ­ence on human­i­ty soon­er or lat­er gets a biog­ra­phy writ­ten about them, and usu­al­ly more than one. But how many get their own graph­ic nov­els? The ver­sa­til­i­ty of the “com­ic book,” long unsus­pect­ed by many West­ern read­ers, has been more and more wide­ly dis­cussed in recent decades. Some of those read­ers, how­ev­er, won’t believe what can be done with the form until they see what can be done with it. So why not show them the graph­ic nov­el on the life of David Bowie pub­lished not long ago — and if they remain uncon­vinced, why not show them the oth­er one?

Few sub­jects demand a visu­al form as much as Bowie, because of the cen­tral­i­ty of his ever-chang­ing appear­ance to his artis­tic project as well as the need to evoke the effer­ves­cent cul­tur­al peri­ods he lived through and did more than his part to define.

Hence the impor­tance of Michael Allred’s BOWIE: Star­dust, Ray­guns, & Moon­age Day­dreams and Nejib’s Had­don Hall as graph­ic-nov­el con­tri­bu­tions to the grow­ing field of Bowieol­o­gy. Com­ic artists and writ­ers have also done well by oth­er fig­ures with places in music his­to­ry: John Coltrane and Bil­lie Hol­l­i­day, for exam­ple, the sub­jects of Pao­lo Parisi’s Coltrane and Blues for Lady Day: The Sto­ry of Bil­lie Hol­i­day.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured both of those books here on Open Cul­ture, as well as Parisi’s Basquiat: A Graph­ic Nov­el. Con­vey­ing the life of a fel­low artist, even one who worked in a dif­fer­ent medi­um, pos­es a unique set of chal­lenges to the graph­ic nov­el­ist. But it’s one thing to depict the work of anoth­er, and some­thing else again to visu­al­ly reimag­ine it, as in BOOM! Stu­dios’ adap­ta­tion of Kurt Von­negut’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five, a nov­el involv­ing not a few bio­graph­i­cal ele­ments in the first place. Oth­er respect­ed works of lit­er­a­ture late­ly to under­go graph­ic nov­el­iza­tion include James Joyce’s Ulysses in Rob Berry’s Ulysses Seen, and the “weird fic­tion” of H.P. Love­craft in the equal­ly weird Love­craft Anthol­o­gy.

You can also read a graph­ic-nov­el adap­ta­tion of a source work nev­er com­plet­ed in the first place — but nev­er com­plet­ed, one must note, by Sal­vador Dalí and the Marx Broth­ers. A col­lab­o­ra­tion between pop-cul­ture schol­ar Josh Frank, artist Manuela Perte­ga, and come­di­an Tim Hei­deck­er, Giraffes on Horse­back Sal­ad real­izes on the page a film that not only was nev­er, but quite pos­si­bly could nev­er have been made. For read­ers clos­er to world­ly real­i­ty, there’s Jim Otta­viani and Leland Myrick­’s Feyn­man: A Biog­ra­phy, which tells and shows the life of world-famous the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, teacher, and bon vivant Richard Feyn­man. Nev­er before, sure­ly, has a com­ic book had to leg­i­bly and con­vinc­ing­ly depict quan­tum elec­tro­dy­nam­ics, safe-crack­ing, and bon­go-pay­ing — to name just three of Feyn­man’s pur­suits.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Theft! A His­to­ry of Music, a New Free Graph­ic Nov­el Explor­ing 2,000 Years of Musi­cal Bor­row­ing

Bound by Law?: Free Com­ic Book Explains How Copy­right Com­pli­cates Art

iTunes Terms & Con­di­tions Adapt­ed into a Graph­ic Nov­el: Read It Free Online

Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion

Read the Entire Com­ic Book Adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

A Com­ic Book Adap­ta­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s Poignant Poem, “Annabel Lee”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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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When Edward Gorey Designed Book Covers for Classic Novels: See His Ironic-Gothic Take on Dickens, Conrad, Poe & More

in Art, Books | August 12th, 2020

Twen­ty years after his death, it’s cool­er than ever to like Edward Gorey. This is evi­denced not just by the fre­quent post­ing of his inten­sive­ly cross­hatched, Vic­to­ri­an- and Edwar­dian-peri­od-inflect­ed, grim­ly com­ic art on social media, but by the num­ber of artists who now claim him as an influ­ence. Where, one won­ders, did they come across Gorey in the first place? Hav­ing pub­lished more than a hun­dred books in his life­time (if often in small runs from obscure press­es), he cer­tain­ly put the work out there to be found.

But it was the much more well-known books of oth­er writ­ers like Charles Dick­ens, Joseph Con­rad, T.S. Eliot, and Her­man Melville that first prop­a­gat­ed Gorey’s sen­si­bil­i­ty of, as The New York Times’ Steven Kurutz puts it, “camp-macabre, iron­ic-goth­ic or dark-whim­sy.”

Gorey designed the cov­ers for these books and oth­ers between 1953 to 1960, when he worked at the art depart­ment of pub­lish­ers Dou­ble­day Anchor. He had been tasked specif­i­cal­ly with their new series of paper­backs meant to be “seri­ous,” as opposed to the abun­dance of cheap, low­brow, and often sala­cious­ly pack­aged nov­els that had inspired the term “pulp fic­tion.”

Of the first 200 titles in this series, says Goreyo­g­ra­phy, “about a fourth of these have line drawn cov­ers by Gorey.” Even when oth­er artists (the line­up of whom includ­ed Leonard Baskin, Mil­ton Glaser, Philippe Julian, and Andy Warhol) drew the illus­tra­tion, “Gorey then designed the fin­ished prod­uct lend­ing a uni­form appear­ance to the whole line.” You can see a vari­ety of Gorey’s Dou­ble­day Anchor paper­back cov­ers at Lithub, the most Goreyesque of which (such as Joseph Con­rad’s The Secret Agent at the top of the post) not only bear his illus­tra­tions but con­tain noth­ing not drawn by Gorey, text and colophon includ­ed.

“When these cov­ers first appeared against the back­drop of mass-mar­ket cov­ers in gen­er­al,” accord­ing to Goreyo­g­ra­phy, “they were hailed as ‘mod­ern’ and ‘arty.’ Print mag­a­zine praised ‘a feel­ing of uni­ty… a qual­i­ty of their own.’ ” The end of Gorey’s time at Dou­ble­day did­n’t mean the end of his work on oth­ers’ books: in the 1970s, for exam­ple, he con­tributed suit­ably eerie cov­er and inte­ri­or art to John Bel­lairs’ young-adult nov­el The House with a Clock in Its Walls and five of the sequels that would fol­low it. It was in Bel­lairs’ books that I first encoun­tered the visions of Edward Gorey. More than a few read­ers of my gen­er­a­tion and the gen­er­a­tions since could say the same — and also that we’ve been plea­sur­ably haunt­ed by them ever since.

See more cov­ers over at Lithub.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

Lemo­ny Snick­et Reveals His Edward Gorey Obses­sion in an Upcom­ing Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

Edward Gorey Talks About His Love Cats & More in the Ani­mat­ed Series, “Goreytelling”

The Best of the Edward Gorey Enve­lope Art Con­test

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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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Divine Decks: A Visual History of Tarot: The First Comprehensive Survey of Tarot Gets Published by Taschen

in Art, Books, History | August 7th, 2020

The cards of the tarot, first cre­at­ed for play around 600 years ago and used in recent cen­turies for occult div­ina­tion of truths about life, the uni­verse, and every­thing, should by all rights be noth­ing more than a his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty today. Yet some­thing about the tarot still com­pels, even to many of us in the ever more dig­i­tal, ever more data-dri­ven 21st cen­tu­ry. Taschen, pub­lish­er of lav­ish art and pho­to books, know this: hence, as we fea­tured last year here on Open Cul­ture, prod­ucts like their box-set reis­sue of the tarot deck designed by Sal­vador Dalí. (There must be a mean­ing­ful over­lap between Taschen’s demo­graph­ic and Dalí’s fans, giv­en that the pub­lish­er more recent­ly put out the most com­plete col­lec­tion of his paint­ings between two cov­ers.)

Dalí isn’t the only artist whose inter­pre­ta­tions of the Fool, the Hiero­phant, the Lovers, the Hanged One, and the oth­er arcana have graced a tarot deck. H.R. Giger, the artist respon­si­ble for the bio­me­chan­i­cal creepi­ness of Alien, designed one in the 1990s; more recent­ly, we’ve fea­tured decks illus­trat­ed with visions inspired by the nov­els of Philip K. Dick and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.

But all these togeth­er — even includ­ing the “Thoth deck” designed by occultist Aleis­ter Crow­ley and the Sola-Bus­ca deck, the ear­li­est known com­plete set of tarot cards — rep­re­sent only a small frac­tion of the sto­ry of tarot’s place in the past six cen­turies of civ­i­liza­tion. That sto­ry is told, and more impor­tant­ly shown, in Taschen’s new book Divine Decks: A Visu­al His­to­ry of Tarot.

The first vol­ume in Taschen’s “Library of Eso­ter­i­ca,” the book “gath­ers more than 500 cards and works of orig­i­nal art from around the world in the ulti­mate explo­ration of a cen­turies-old art form.” An image gallery on Taschen’s web site gives a small sam­pling of the range of tarot decks found with­in, includ­ing ones cre­at­ed in 1930s Eng­land, 1970s Italy, and 2010s Brook­lyn. One was intend­ed as a pro­mo­tion­al item for an Amer­i­can paper com­pa­ny in the 1960s; anoth­er, with dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es, announces itself as the “Black Pow­er Tarot.” This in addi­tion to such well-known exam­ples as Crow­ley’s Thoth deck and the ven­er­a­ble Sola-Bus­ca, both lush­ly repro­duced in its pages. And the tarot lives on, as I’m remind­ed when­ev­er I pass one of the many store­fronts here in Seoul offer­ing tarot read­ings. In any case, it’s cer­tain­ly come a long way from 15th-cen­tu­ry Europe. You can get a copy of Divine Decks: A Visu­al His­to­ry of Tarot on Taschen’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the Sola-Bus­ca Tarot Deck, the Ear­li­est Com­plete Set of Tarot Cards (1490)

H.R. Giger’s Tarot Cards: The Swiss Artist, Famous for His Design Work on Alien, Takes a Jour­ney into the Occult

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

The Thoth Tarot Deck Designed by Famed Occultist Aleis­ter Crow­ley

Twin Peaks Tarot Cards Now Avail­able as 78-Card Deck

Philip K. Dick Tarot Cards: A Tarot Deck Mod­eled After the Vision­ary Sci-Fi Writer’s Inner World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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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Roald Dahl Gives a Tour of the Small Backyard Hut Where He Wrote All of His Beloved Children’s Books

in Books, Writing | August 6th, 2020

Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, The BFG, The Witch­es, Matil­da: Roald Dahl wrote these and all his oth­er beloved chil­dren’s books in a hut. Just fif­teen feet long and ten feet wide, it served him for 35 years as an office in which no meet­ings were held and no calls tak­en. For four hours a day, bro­ken into two-hour morn­ing and after­noon ses­sions, it was just Dahl in there — Dahl and his paper, his pen­cils, his sharp­en­er, his cof­fee, his cig­a­rettes, his increas­ing­ly eccen­tric col­lec­tion of arti­facts from his own life, and here and there the occa­sion­al spi­der web and goat drop­ping. It was all part of an effort, explains Dahl’s biog­ra­ph­er Jere­my Tre­glown, “not only to recre­ate his own ear­ly child­hood but to improve on it.”

“As a boy in the 1920s,” Tre­glown writes, “Roald used to hide up in a tree in order to write his diary.” But the hut, con­struct­ed right behind his Buck­ing­hamshire home, “was a more sub­stan­tial place to work, where he could com­mem­o­rate, and fan­ta­size about, his past.”

On his side were items like “his father’s sil­ver and tor­toise­shell paper knife,” a “tablet frag­ment with a cuneiform inscrip­tion found in Baby­lon” — a sou­venir from his time in the King’s African Rifles — and, “saved from oper­a­tions,” pieces of his own femur and spine. In his hut, Dahl wrote “sur­round­ed by these fetish­es, snug­ly wrapped in a sleep­ing bag, sit­ting in an old arm­chair, his feet on a trunk which was filled with blocks and tied to a leg of the chair, to pre­vent it from slip­ping.”

“I could­n’t pos­si­bly work in the house, espe­cial­ly when there used to be a lot of chil­dren around,” says Dahl in the 1982 clip at the top of the post as he approach­es his hut. “Even when there aren’t chil­dren, there are vac­u­um clean­ers and peo­ple bustling about.” He then goes in to demon­strate his writ­ing rou­tine, which involves the pour­ing of cof­fee, sharp­en­ing of pre­cise­ly six pen­cils “to a fierce point” (a step that had its own pro­cras­ti­na­tion val­ue), the brush­ing away of the pre­vi­ous day’s eras­er dust (onto the floor, where it has remained ever since), and the sit­u­a­tion with the arm­chair and sleep­ing bag. “Final­ly you get set­tled, you get into a sort of nest, you get real­ly com­fort­able,” Dahl says. “And then you’re away.”

The footage also includes views of Dahl’s much more tra­di­tion­al­ly well-appoint­ed main house, includ­ing its bil­liards table around which he and his local friends would gath­er for a twice-week­ly ses­sion. The game had its influ­ence on Dahl’s writ­ing life, and indeed his writ­ing hut. Among his “snook­er pals” was builder Wal­ly Saun­ders, whom Dahl hired to put it up in the first place (and whose for­mi­da­ble stature and ear size would, near­ly thir­ty lat­er, inspire the title char­ac­ter of The BFG). As he explains on the British Chil­dren’s pro­gram Going Live, he even cov­ered his hand­made wood­en writ­ing sur­faces, which he placed across the arm­rests of his chair, with green baize, a mate­r­i­al he found easy on the eyes.

When Dahl died in 1990, his writ­ing hut went untouched for two decades. But even­tu­al­ly, as explained in this ITV News clip, the sim­ple build­ing could­n’t with­stand fur­ther expo­sure to the ele­ments. So began the project to move the inte­ri­or of the hut, eras­er dust and all, to the Roald Dahl Muse­um and Sto­ry Cen­tre in Buck­ing­hamshire. Luck­i­ly for Wes Ander­son, this hap­pened after he came to Dahl’s home to seek per­mis­sion to adapt The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox from the writer’s wid­ow Felic­i­ty. So com­pelling did she find Ander­son­’s vision that she even allowed him into the “hal­lowed writ­ing hut,” the ide­al space in which to com­mune with Dahl’s spir­it. The hut may now no longer be whole, but that same spir­it con­tin­ues to course through the imag­i­na­tions of gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of young read­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read a Nev­er Pub­lished, “Sub­ver­sive” Chap­ter from Roald Dahl’s Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry

When Roald Dahl Host­ed His Own Creepy TV Show Way Out, a Com­pan­ion to Rod Serling’s Twi­light Zone (1961)

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Roald Dahl, Who Lost His Daugh­ter to Measles, Writes a Heart­break­ing Let­ter about Vac­ci­na­tions: “It Is Almost a Crime to Allow Your Child to Go Unim­mu­nised”

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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 Vladimir Nabokov Wrote Lolita, “My Most Difficult Book”: A 1989 Documentary

in Books, Literature, Television | July 21st, 2020

How many of us could write a book with the impact of Loli­ta? The task, as revealed in the BBC Omnibus doc­u­men­tary above, lay almost beyond even the for­mi­da­ble lit­er­ary pow­ers of Vladimir Nabokov — almost, but obvi­ous­ly not quite. It did push him into new aes­thet­ic, cul­tur­al, and com­po­si­tion­al realms, as evi­denced by his mem­o­ries of draft­ing the nov­el on index cards in road­side motels (and when faced with espe­cial­ly noisy or drafty accom­mo­da­tions, in the back­seat of the parked car) while road-trip­ping though the Unit­ed States. The doc­u­men­tary’s sub­ject is the exiled aris­to­crat nov­el­ist’s expe­ri­ence writ­ing and pub­lish­ing Loli­ta, the book that would make him world-famous — as well as the expe­ri­ence that brought him to the time and place that made such a cul­tur­al coup pos­si­ble.

Aired in 1989, a dozen years after Nabokov’s death, My Most Dif­fi­cult Book fea­tures inter­views with the nov­el­ist’s Fer­rari-dri­ving son and trans­la­tor Dmitri, his schol­ar-biog­ra­ph­er Bri­an Boyd, and his younger admir­er-col­leagues includ­ing Mar­tin Amis, A.S. Byatt, and Edmund White. That last describes Nabokov’s nov­els as “great sys­tems of mean­ing in which every ele­ment refers to every oth­er one,” and Loli­ta marked a new height in his achieve­ment in that form.

But the book’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, or at least its ini­tial wave of pop­u­lar­i­ty, may be bet­ter explained by the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the ele­ments of its by now well-known premise: the refined mid­dle-aged Euro­pean nar­ra­tor, the coarse twelve-year-old step­daugh­ter whom he con­trives to sex­u­al­ly pos­sess — and suc­ceeds in sex­u­al­ly pos­sess­ing — as they dri­ve across Amer­i­ca, a vast land whose look, feel, and lan­guage Nabokov took pains to cap­ture and repur­pose.

“There are a lot of lit­er­al­ists out there,” says Amis, “who will think that you can’t write a nov­el like Loli­ta with­out being a secret slaver after young girls.” That was as true in 1989 as it was in 1955, when the book was first pub­lished, and indeed as true as it is today. Well into mid­dle age, we learn in the doc­u­men­tary, strangers would ask Dmitri what it was like to be the son of a “dirty old man,” and in archive inter­view footage we see Nabokov address the pub­lic con­fla­tion of him­self and Hum­bert Hum­bert, Loli­ta’s pedophil­i­ac nar­ra­tor. A seri­ous chess enthu­si­ast, Nabokov describes him­self as writ­ing nov­els as he would solve chess prob­lems he posed to him­self. What could present a more rig­or­ous chal­lenge than to tell a sto­ry, at a high artis­tic lev­el, from the per­spec­tive of a mon­ster? But Nabokov, as he admit­ted to one inter­view­er, was indeed a mon­ster, at least accord­ing to one def­i­n­i­tion offered by his much-con­sult­ed Eng­lish dic­tio­nary: “A per­son of unnat­ur­al excel­lence.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, and Names the Great­est Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Hear Vladimir Nabokov Read From the Penul­ti­mate Chap­ter of Loli­ta

Vladimir Nabokov on Loli­ta: Just Anoth­er Great Love Sto­ry?

The Note­cards on Which Vladimir Nabokov Wrote Loli­ta: A Look Inside the Author’s Cre­ative Process

Vladimir Nabokov’s Script for Stan­ley Kubrick’s Loli­ta: See Pages from His Orig­i­nal Draft

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent Loli­ta Book Cov­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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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