Prisons Around the U.S. Are Banning and Restricting Access to Books

in Books, Current Affairs | November 26th, 2019

“We live,” wrote philoso­pher Alain Badiou, “in a con­tra­dic­tion.” Dehu­man­iza­tion must be nor­mal­ized in order to keep the econ­o­my going. “A bru­tal state of affairs… where all exis­tence is eval­u­at­ed in terms of mon­ey alone—is pre­sent­ed to us as ide­al.” Yet the mar­ket that promis­es free­dom just as often strips it away, in pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships that bring cen­sor­ship and rent-seek­ing into hap­py sym­bio­sis.

In recent years, free mar­ket oppor­tunism has tak­en hold in the most unfree places in the U.S., the country’s pris­ons, which hold more peo­ple pro­por­tion­al­ly than in any oth­er nation in the world: a huge, pre­vi­ous­ly untapped mar­ket for sales of hygiene prod­ucts and vis­its with fam­i­ly. “Like the mil­i­tary,” writes Adam Bluestein at Inc., “the cor­rec­tions sys­tem is a big, well-cap­i­tal­ized cus­tomer.”

One recent com­mer­cial encroach­ment on pris­on­ers’ free­doms arrived this year when the West Vir­ginia Divi­sion of Cor­rec­tions issued inmates tablets, under a con­tract with a com­pa­ny called Glob­al Tel Link, who charge them by the minute to read books online. One might make the argu­ment that forc­ing inmates to pay for basic needs sat­is­fies some ide­al of pun­ish­ment. But to restrict access to books seems to dis­pense with the pre­tense that prison might also be a place of reha­bil­i­ta­tion.

“Any inmates look­ing to read Moby Dick,” reports Rea­son, “may find that it will cost them far more than it would have if they’d sim­ply got­ten a mass mar­ket paper­back.” Katy Ryan of the Appalachi­an Prison Book Project, which donates free books and mate­ri­als to pris­ons, points out how lim­it­ing the scheme is: “If you pause to think or reflect, that will cost you. If you want to reread a book, you will pay the entire cost again.”

West Vir­ginia is not ban­ning print books, pur­chased or donat­ed. It is, how­ev­er, charg­ing inmates for already free mate­r­i­al. The books they pay per minute to read online are all on Project Guten­berg, the open plat­form for thou­sands of free eBooks. That the pro­gram amounts to a kind of eco­nom­ic-based cen­sor­ship may hard­ly be coin­ci­dence. Oth­er states around the coun­try have begun lim­it­ing, or out­right ban­ning, books in pris­ons.

The Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions has pro­hib­it­ed all books donat­ed by non­prof­its, pre­sum­ably because they might be used to smug­gle con­tra­band. Prison offi­cials at the Danville Cor­rec­tion­al Cen­ter in Illi­nois made clear what they con­sid­ered con­tra­band—books about black his­to­ry, 200 of which were removed from the prison library—including W.E.B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folk and Har­ri­et Beech­er Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cab­in—after they were deemed “too racial.”

These are only a few exam­ples of a wide­spread phe­nom­e­non PEN Amer­i­ca details in a new report, “Lit­er­a­ture Locked Up: How Prison Book Restric­tion Poli­cies Con­sti­tute the Nation’s Largest Book Ban.” Para­dox­i­cal­ly, some restric­tions can seem at odds with mar­ket demands—such as lim­its on inmates’ abil­i­ty to order books from online retail­ers. But like many con­tra­dic­tions in the sys­tem, per­haps these also serve a larg­er goal—preventing pris­on­ers from edu­cat­ing them­selves may ensure a steady stream of repeat cus­tomers in the huge­ly prof­itable carcer­al indus­try.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Inmates in New York Prison Defeat Harvard’s Debate Team: A Look Inside the Bard Prison Ini­tia­tive

On the Pow­er of Teach­ing Phi­los­o­phy in Pris­ons

Artist is Cre­at­ing a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Mon­u­ment to Democ­ra­cy & Intel­lec­tu­al Free­dom

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

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Lynda Barry’s New Book Offers a Master Class in Making Comics

in Art, Books, Comics/Cartoons | November 22nd, 2019

In the same way you don’t have to like the way your liv­er looks for it to be able to func­tion, you don’t have to like the way your draw­ings look for them to start to work.  —Lyn­da Bar­ry

Want to feel more alive in the world?

Get back in touch with your inner four-year-old artist, using meth­ods put for­ward by artist, edu­ca­tor, and g*ddamn nation­al trea­sure Lyn­da Bar­ry.

Mak­ing Comics, the lat­est book from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin asso­ciate pro­fes­sor, MacArthur Genius, and Omega Insti­tute fac­ul­ty mem­ber, bypass­es stan­dard­ized pro­fes­sion­al skills such as ink­ing, sto­ry­board­ing, and let­ter­ing, in order to foment a deep­er emo­tion­al con­nec­tion between car­toon­ist and com­ic.

First things first, you can draw. Stop say­ing you can’t. You can.

Stop say­ing your draw­ings look like they were made by a four-year-old.

In Barry’s expe­ri­ence, the unfet­tered draw­ings of four-year-old artists are some­thing to aim for.

As author and comics his­to­ri­an Chris Gavaler notes in his Pop Mat­ters review:

Mak­ing Comics is a love let­ter to every child who ever picked up a cray­on and start­ed mak­ing marks with unself­con­scious inten­si­ty. Those chil­dren include her col­lege stu­dents. Like her read­ers, some arrive at class with artis­tic train­ing and some arrive with none at all. The lat­ter arrive hav­ing long for­got­ten the unin­hib­it­ed style of image-mak­ing they under­stood instinc­tive­ly as chil­dren. Find­ing each of those chil­dren is Bar­ry’s mis­sion, and she is very very good at it.

Bar­ry, who is child­less, is keen­ly attuned to the sort of play­ful assign­ments that hold imme­di­ate appeal for chil­dren of all ages.

And she doles out instruc­tions on a need to know basis, dis­arm­ing the self-doubt and excuse-mak­ing that plague adult stu­dents who are pre­sent­ed with the big pic­ture too ear­ly in the process.

In Mak­ing Comics, exer­cis­es include draw­ing with eyes closed, draw­ing with the non-dom­i­nant hand, two-hand­ed draw­ing, simul­ta­ne­ous part­ner draw­ing, Exquis­ite Corpse, and trans­form­ing scrib­bles and cof­fee stains by teas­ing out what­ev­er image they may sug­gest.

Bar­ry also con­veys pre­cise instruc­tions with regard to speed and mate­ri­als, know­ing that those can close as many win­dows as they open.

She’s bat­tling the sti­fling impulse toward per­fec­tion, the impos­si­ble stan­dards that cause so many to turn away from mak­ing pic­tures and sto­ries as they mature.

Don’t sweat it! More rock, less talk! Unleash the mon­sters of your id! Invite unfore­seen ghosts into the frame!

As Bar­ry says:

….there are two work­ing lan­guages in human life. One is sort of top of the mind, what we’re con­scious of. The oth­er is this uncon­scious stuff that we might not know about or have access to. The way we access it is usu­al­ly through this thing we call ‘the arts.’ Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that has got­ten removed from the reg­u­lar dai­ly expe­ri­ence of human life. What I’m try­ing to do is to show that there is a way that they can come togeth­er, and that you can make things in a way that makes you actu­al­ly feel alive and present.

Read an excerpt of Lyn­da Barry’s Mak­ing Comics. Or pur­chase your own copy of Mak­ing Comics here.

Video at the top of the page cour­tesy of Art Book Walk-throughs & Reviews.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fol­low Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Barry’s 2017 “Mak­ing Comics” Class Online, Pre­sent­ed at UW-Wis­con­sin

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Teach­es You How to Draw

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Alice B. Toklas Reads Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge (1963)

in Books, Literature | November 20th, 2019

toklas cookbook

Alice Babette Tok­las met Gertrude Stein in 1907, the day she arrived in Paris. They remained togeth­er for 39 years until Stein’s death in 1946. While Stein became the cen­ter of the avant-garde art world, host­ing an exclu­sive salon that wel­comed the likes of Ernest Hem­ing­way, Pablo Picas­so, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Tok­las large­ly pre­ferred to stay in Stein’s shad­ow, serv­ing as her sec­re­tary, edi­tor and assis­tant.

That changed in 1933 when Stein wrote The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Alice B. Tok­las – a retelling of the couple’s life togeth­er with Tok­las serv­ing as nar­ra­tor. The book is Stein’s most acces­si­ble and best-sell­ing work. It also turned the shy, self-effac­ing Tok­las into a lit­er­ary fig­ure.

After Stein’s death, Tok­las pub­lished The Alice B. Tok­las Cook­book in 1954, which com­bined per­son­al rec­ol­lec­tions of her time with Stein along with recipes and mus­ings about French cui­sine. Yet it wasn’t her sto­ries about tend­ing to the wound­ed dur­ing WWI or her opin­ions on mus­sels that made the book famous. Instead, it was the inclu­sion of a recipe giv­en to her by Moroc­can-based artist Brion Gysin called “Hashish Fudge.”

In this 1963 record­ing from Paci­fi­ca Radio, Tok­las reads her noto­ri­ous recipe. The snack “might pro­vide an enter­tain­ing refresh­ment for a Ladies’ Bridge Club or a chap­ter meet­ing of the DAR,” Tok­las notes in her reedy, dig­ni­fied voice. Then she gets on to the recipe itself:

Take one tea­spoon black pep­per­corns, one whole nut­meg, four aver­age sticks of cin­na­mon, one tea­spoon corian­der. These should all be pul­ver­ized in a mor­tar. About a hand­ful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them togeth­er. A bunch of Cannabis sati­va can be pul­ver­ized. This along with the spices should be dust­ed over the mixed fruit and nuts, knead­ed togeth­er. About a cup of sug­ar dis­solved in a big pat of but­ter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a wal­nut, it should be eat­en with care. Two pieces are quite suf­fi­cient.

Tok­las con­cedes that get­ting the key ingre­di­ent “can present cer­tain dif­fi­cul­ties” and rec­om­mends find­ing the stuff in the wild, which might have been pos­si­ble to do in the ear­ly 1960s. Nowa­days, the best course of action is to move to Wash­ing­ton, Col­orado or Uruguay.

In the record­ing, Tok­las then goes on to recall how hashish fudge came to be includ­ed into her book.

“The recipe was inno­cent­ly includ­ed with­out my real­iz­ing that the hashish was the accent­ed part of the recipe,” she says with­out a trace of face­tious­ness. “I was shocked to find that Amer­i­ca wouldn’t accept it because it was too dan­ger­ous.”

“It nev­er went into the Amer­i­can edi­tion,” she says. “The Eng­lish are braver. We’re not coura­geous about that sort of thing.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary 2014.

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

Hear Gertrude Stein Read Works Inspired by Matisse, Picas­so, and T.S. Eliot (1934)

Gertrude Stein Recites ‘If I Told Him: A Com­plet­ed Por­trait of Picas­so’

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Quentin Tarantino’s World War II Reading List

in Books, Film, History | November 19th, 2019

Image by Georges Biard, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

With his first three fea­tures Reser­voir Dogs, Pulp Fic­tion, and Jack­ie Brown, Quentin Taran­ti­no claimed 1990s Los Ange­les as his own. Then he struck bold­ly out into not just new geo­graph­i­cal and cul­tur­al ter­ri­to­ries, but oth­er time peri­ods. With his first full-on peri­od piece, 2009’s Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds, he showed audi­ences just how he intend­ed to use his­to­ry: twist­ing it for his own cin­e­mat­ic pur­pos­es, of course, but only mak­ing his depar­tures after steep­ing him­self in accounts of the time in which he envi­sioned his sto­ry tak­ing place. This nat­u­ral­ly involves plen­ty of read­ing, and Taran­ti­no recent­ly pro­vid­ed His­to­ryNet with a few titles that helped him prop­er­ly sit­u­ate Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds in the Europe of the Sec­ond World War.

Taran­ti­no calls Ian Ous­by’s Occu­pa­tion: The Ordeal of France 1940–1944 “a very good overview that answered all of my ques­tions about life in Nazi-occu­pied France.” Ulysses Lee’s The Employ­ment of Negro Troops is “the most pro­found thing I’ve ever read on both the war and racist Amer­i­ca of the 1940s, com­mis­sioned by the U.S. Army to exam­ine the effec­tive­ness of their employ­ment of black sol­diers.” And for Taran­ti­no, who does­n’t just make films but lives and breathes them, under­stand­ing Nazi Ger­many means under­stand­ing its cin­e­ma, begin­ning with Eric Rentschler’s Min­istry of Illu­sion: Nazi Cin­e­ma and Its After­life, “a won­der­ful crit­i­cal reex­am­i­na­tion of Ger­man cin­e­ma under Joseph Goebbels” that “goes far beyond the demo­niz­ing approach employed by most writ­ers on this sub­ject,” includ­ing even excerpts from Goebbels’ diaries.

Rentschler also “dares to make a fair appraisal of Nazi film­mak­er Veit Har­lan,” who made anti­se­mit­ic block­busters as one of Goebbels’ lead­ing pro­pa­gan­da direc­tors. But the work of no Nazi film­mak­er had as much of an impact as that of Leni Riefen­stahl, two books about whom Taran­ti­no puts on his World War II read­ing list: Glenn B. Infield­’s Leni Riefen­stahl: The Fall­en Film God­dess, the first he ever read about her, as well as Riefen­stahl’s epony­mous mem­oir, which he calls “mes­mer­iz­ing. Though you can’t believe half of it. That still leaves half to pon­der. Her descrip­tions of nor­mal friend­ly con­ver­sa­tions with Hitler are amaz­ing and ring of truth” — and that praise comes from a film­mak­er who made his own name with good dia­logue.

In a recent DGA Quar­ter­ly con­ver­sa­tion with Mar­tin Scors­ese, Taran­ti­no revealed that he’s also at work on a book of his own about that era: “I’ve got this char­ac­ter who had been in World War II and he saw a lot of blood­shed there. Now he’s back home, and it’s like the ’50s, and he does­n’t respond to movies any­more. He finds them juve­nile after every­thing that he’s been through. As far as he’s con­cerned, Hol­ly­wood movies are movies. And so then, all of a sud­den, he starts hear­ing about these for­eign movies by Kuro­sawa and Felli­ni,” think­ing “maybe they might have some­thing more than this pho­ny Hol­ly­wood stuff.” He soon finds him­self drawn inex­orably in: “Some of them he likes and some of them he does­n’t like and some of them he does­n’t under­stand, but he knows he’s see­ing some­thing.” This is hard­ly the kind of premise that leads straight to the kind of vio­lent cathar­sis in which Taran­ti­no spe­cial­izes, but then, he’s pulled off more unlike­ly artis­tic feats in his time.

via His­to­ryNet

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains How to Write & Direct Movies

How Quentin Taran­ti­no Steals from Oth­er Movies: A Video Essay

How Quentin Taran­ti­no Cre­ates Sus­pense in His Favorite Scene, the Ten­sion-Filled Open­ing Moments of Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds

The Films of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Watch Video Essays on Pulp Fic­tion, Reser­voir Dogs, Kill Bill & More

Leni Riefenstahl’s Tri­umph of the Will Wasn’t a Cin­e­mat­ic Mas­ter­piece; It Was a Stag­ger­ing­ly Effec­tive Piece of Pro­pa­gan­da

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 or on Face­book.

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Salvador Dalí’s Iconic Deck of Tarot Cards Get Re-Issued: It’s Out Today

in Art, Books | November 15th, 2019

Last month, we high­light­ed Sal­vador Dal­i’s deck of Tarot cards. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed in 1984, the tarot deck is now being re-issued by Taschen in a beau­ti­ful 184-page art book. For those inter­est­ed, the offi­cial release date is today. Read all about the famous deck here. Or pur­chase your own set of Dal­i’s tarot cards here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Novel Adaptation

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, History, K-12, Literature | November 1st, 2019

The human imag­i­na­tion can be an extra­or­di­nary cop­ing device in times of trou­ble, a tiny win­dow pro­vid­ing men­tal escape from what­ev­er cell fate has con­signed us to.

Diarist and aspir­ing pro­fes­sion­al writer Anne Frank, who died in the Bergen-Belsen con­cen­tra­tion camp at the age of 15, chafed at her now-uni­ver­sal­ly-known con­fine­ment in the Secret Annex. She chafed at her mother’s author­i­ty and the seem­ing­ly effort­less saint­li­ness of her old­er sis­ter. Doc­u­ment­ing her dai­ly phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al real­i­ty offered tem­po­rary respite from it.

The lib­er­at­ing pow­er of the cre­ative mind is one of the aspects writer Ari Fol­man and illus­tra­tor David Polon­sky sought to tease out when adapt­ing Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl as a graph­ic nov­el.

The graph­ic nov­el for­mat decreed that entire pas­sages would be cut or con­densed. Polon­sky can use a sin­gle pan­el to show logis­tics it took Anne para­graphs to describe. The inter­per­son­al con­flicts she dwelt on are now con­veyed by facial expres­sions and body lan­guage.

As with Sid Jacob­son and Ernie Colón’s 2010 Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Autho­rized Graph­ic Biog­ra­phy, the diary’s small stage is expand­ed to give read­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those unac­quaint­ed with the orig­i­nal text, a his­tor­i­cal con­text for under­stand­ing the wider social impli­ca­tions of Anne’s tragedy.

But this graph­ic retelling is unique in that it traf­fics in mag­ic real­ist visu­als that should play well with 21st-cen­tu­ry youth, who cut their teeth on CGI, fast-paced edits, and stream­ing teen-focused enter­tain­ments where­in char­ac­ters are apt to break the fourth wall or break into song.

These are the read­ers to whom the project is most inten­tion­al­ly pitched. As Fol­man told Teen Vogue’s Emma Sar­ran Web­ster:

I tru­ly believe that in a few years, when the very last sur­vivors will have died, the angle that will be tak­en from the sto­ry will be that with every year, we are 10 years fur­ther away from the orig­i­nal. […] There is a severe threat that the things we have to learn from it will not be taught and learned if we don’t find a new lan­guage for them. So any new lan­guage in my opin­ion is blessed, as long as it stays with­in the frame­work and reach­es young audi­ences by means of their tools, which are now very visu­al.

Ergo, Kit­ty, Anne’s nick­name for her diary, has been per­son­i­fied, emerg­ing from the lit­tle plaid book’s pages like Peter Pan’s shad­ow, ear atten­tive­ly cocked toward the secrets Anne whis­pers into it.

The melo­dra­mat­ic Mrs. van Daan’s prized fur coat has an anthro­po­mor­phized rab­bit head col­lar, capa­ble of join­ing in the dia­logue.

Polon­sky pays homage to artists Edvard Munch, whose “degen­er­a­tive” work Hitler had removed from Ger­man muse­ums, and Gus­tav Klimt, who paint­ed many works that were con­fis­cat­ed from their Jew­ish own­ers by Nazi decree.

Young read­ers’ mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties also guid­ed Folman’s approach to the text. The spir­it of the orig­i­nal is pre­served, but cer­tain phras­ings have been giv­en a 21st cen­tu­ry update.

The snarky Secret Annex menus and diet tips he allows his hero­ine harken to the direct address of var­i­ous meta teen come­dies, as well as the blis­ter­ing par­o­dy of the Sara­je­vo Sur­vival Guide, a pur­port­ed trav­el guide writ­ten dur­ing the Siege.

Noble goal of engag­ing the next gen­er­a­tion aside, there are no doubt some purists who will view these inno­va­tions as impo­si­tion. Rest assured that Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graph­ic Adap­ta­tion is sanc­tioned by Anne Frank Fonds, the char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion estab­lished by Anne’s father, Otto.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Only Known Footage of Anne Frank

Read the Poignant Let­ter Sent to Anne Frank by George Whit­man, Own­er of Paris’ Famed Shake­speare & Co Book­shop (1960): “If I Sent This Let­ter to the Post Office It Would No Longer Reach You”

How Art Spiegel­man Designs Com­ic Books: A Break­down of His Mas­ter­piece, Maus

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Bowie’s Bookshelf: A New Essay Collection on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life

in Books, Music | October 31st, 2019

Like some rock stars of his gen­er­a­tion, David Bowie had a lit­er­ary cast of mind; unlike most of those col­leagues, he also made his asso­ci­a­tion with books explic­it. (Not for noth­ing did he appear on that READ poster.) When­ev­er this sub­ject aris­es, it’s tempt­ing to bring up the sto­ry of how The Man Who Fell to Earth direc­tor Nico­las Roeg poked fun at the extreme num­ber of books with which Bowie sur­round­ed him­self dur­ing the time he was act­ing in that film, as we did when we post­ed about the David Bowie book club. Launched by Bowie’s son, the film­mak­er Dun­can Jones, that project was meant to read through Bowie’s own list of top 100 books, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. Now, thanks to the work of music jour­nal­ist John O’Con­nell, Bowie’s love of books has a book of its own.

Pub­lished in the UK as Bowie’s Books and in the US as Bowie’s Book­shelf, O’Con­nel­l’s essay col­lec­tion takes the 100 books the man who was Zig­gy Star­dust, Aladdin Sane, and The Thin White Duke named as favorites. In each he finds the rel­e­vant ques­tions (or at least fas­ci­nat­ing ones) to ask about each book’s rela­tion­ship to Bowie’s life and work: “How did the pow­er imbued in a sin­gle suit of armor in The Ili­ad impact a man who loved cos­tumes, shift­ing iden­ti­ty, and the siren song of the alter-ego?” Or, “How did the poems of T.S. Eliot and Frank O’Hara, the fic­tion of Vladimir Nabokov and Antho­ny Burgess, the comics of The Beano and The Viz, and the ground­break­ing pol­i­tics of James Bald­win influ­ence Bowie’s lyrics, his sound, his artis­tic out­look?”

Kirkus Reviews notes that “many of Bowie’s selec­tions speak to his obvi­ous pas­sion for music, espe­cial­ly ear­ly rock ’n’ roll and R&B (Greil Mar­cus, Ger­ri Her­shey), his famous Japanophil­ia (Yukio Mishi­ma, Tadanori Yokoo), and his stint in Ger­many (Alfred Döblin, Otto Friedrich).” O’Con­nel­l’s com­pletist analy­sis of Bowie’s top-100-books list, com­posed for an exhi­bi­tion at the Vic­to­ria & Albert Muse­um just six years ago, also reveals “the range and play­ful­ness in Bowie’s read­ing, from hefty tomes on the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion to lad­dish com­ic books like The Beano.” Oth­er essays cov­er Loli­ta, The Gnos­tic Gospels, A Con­fed­er­a­cy of Dunces, and White Noise, all part of a mix­ture that would tan­ta­lize any cul­tur­al crit­ic — much like the work of David Bowie, who still con­sti­tutes a cul­ture unto him­self.

Bowie’s Book­shelf: The Hun­dred Books that Changed David Bowie’s Life can be ordered now.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

The David Bowie Book Club Gets Launched by His Son: Read One of Bowie’s 100 Favorite Books Every Month

David Bowie Urges Kids to READ in a 1987 Poster Spon­sored by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

The Sto­ry of How David Jones Became David Bowie Gets Told in a New Graph­ic Nov­el

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

David Bowie Picks His 12 Favorite David Bowie Songs: Lis­ten to Them Online

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 or on Face­book.

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Salvador Dalí’s Tarot Cards Get Re-Issued: The Occult Meets Surrealism in a Classic Tarot Card Deck

in Art, Books | October 26th, 2019

Tarot began as a card game and became a tool of occult div­ina­tion. In that form, with its usu­al­ly elab­o­rate illus­tra­tions, the tarot deck found a major cul­tur­al role as an art object: here on Open Cul­ture we’ve fea­tured decks either designed or inspired by the likes of Aleis­ter Crow­ley, H.R. Giger, Philip K. Dick, and Sal­vador Dalí. That last, whose lim­it­ed edi­tion was pub­lished in 1984, has proven to be enough of an object of desire to gain the atten­tion of Taschen, the pub­lish­er of visu­al­ly (and often, in terms of dimen­sions and weight, phys­i­cal­ly) inten­sive pho­to and art books. Next month they’re bring­ing out a new edi­tion of Dalí’s tarot deck, boxed with a com­pan­ion book by tarot schol­ar Johannes Fiebig.

“Leg­end has it that when prepar­ing props for the James Bond film Live and Let Die, pro­duc­er Albert Broc­coli com­mis­sioned Sur­re­al­ist mae­stro Sal­vador Dalí to cre­ate a cus­tom deck of tarot cards,” says Taschen’s descrip­tion of the prod­uct. (Bond fans will remem­ber Jane Sey­mour as Soli­taire, the tarot read­er whom Roger Moore fate­ful­ly encoun­ters ear­ly in the pic­ture.)

Even though Dalí and Broc­coli ulti­mate­ly could­n’t come to an agree­ment — not least over the amount of mon­ey upon which the artist insist­ed — Dalí decid­ed to see the work through to com­ple­tion on his own.

As Josh Jones not­ed when we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Dalí’s tarot, the ear­ly 1970s was an aus­pi­cious time for such a project: “The occult inter­ests of the 60s coun­ter­cul­ture were main­streamed in the 70s thanks to books like Stu­art Kaplan’s Tarot Cards for Fun and For­tune Telling,” and Dalí had suc­cess­ful­ly tapped the mys­ti­cal zeit­geist not long before with his illus­tra­tions for a 1969 edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land. Draw­ing from all the West­ern art that came before his own, Dalí cre­at­ed a tarot deck that Taschen can now pitch as a “sur­re­al kalei­do­scope of Euro­pean art his­to­ry,” a kind of psy­che­del­ic course in West­ern civ­i­liza­tion pre­sent­ed across 78 cards. Dalí also worked him­self in, mak­ing an appear­ance as the Magi­cian and the King of Pen­ta­cles, and includ­ing his wife Gala — whose inter­est in mys­ti­cism sure­ly encour­aged her hus­band’s own enthu­si­asm for the project — as the Empress.

Any­one who has had an inter­est in Dalí’s work (and a lack of will­ing­ness to pay pre­mi­um prices for those first edi­tions) will find them­selves intrigued by Taschen’s Dalí Tarot. Those unfa­mil­iar with the rules of the tarot can rest assured that the com­pan­ion book, in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing sto­ries about the deck­’s con­cep­tion, also includes Fiebig’s expla­na­tions of the mean­ings of the cards as well as how to per­form read­ings with them. Per­ceived cor­rect­ly, so enthu­si­asts say, the cards of the tarot open a win­dow onto an alter­nate per­cep­tion of real­i­ty — a sim­i­lar­i­ty with Dalí’s art hard­ly lost on the artist him­self. Order a copy (set to be released on Novem­ber 15) here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Sal­vador Dalí’s Illus­tra­tions for The Bible (1963)

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Sal­vador Dalí’s Avant-Garde Christ­mas Cards

Take a Close Look at Basquiat’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Art in a New 500-Page, 14-Pound, Large For­mat Book by TASCHEN

Andy Warhol’s Sev­en Hand-Illus­trat­ed Books: Charm­ing, Lit­tle-Known, and Now Avail­able to the World (1952–1959)

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 or on Face­book.

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