An Animated Introduction to the Magical Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges

in Books, Literature | July 18th, 2019

“Read­ing the work of Jorge Luis Borges for the first time is like dis­cov­er­ing a new let­ter in the alpha­bet, or a new note in the musi­cal scale,” writes the BBC’s Jane Cia­bat­tari. Borges’ essay-like works of fic­tion are “filled with pri­vate jokes and eso­ter­i­ca, his­to­ri­og­ra­phy and sar­don­ic foot­notes. They are brief, often with abrupt begin­nings.” His “use of labyrinths, mir­rors, chess games and detec­tive sto­ries cre­ates a com­plex intel­lec­tu­al land­scape, yet his lan­guage is clear, with iron­ic under­tones. He presents the most fan­tas­tic of scenes in sim­ple terms, seduc­ing us into the fork­ing path­way of his seem­ing­ly infi­nite imag­i­na­tion.”

If that sounds like your idea of good read, look a lit­tle deep­er into the work of Argenti­na’s most famous lit­er­ary fig­ure through the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above. Mex­i­can writer and crit­ic Ilan Sta­vans, the lesson’s cre­ator, begins his intro­duc­tion to Borges by describ­ing a man who “not only remem­bers every­thing he has ever seen, but every time he has seen it in per­fect detail.” Many of you will imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize Funes the Mem­o­ri­ous, the star of Borges’ 1942 sto­ry of the same name — and those who don’t will sure­ly want to know more about him.

Sta­vans goes on to describe a library “built out of count­less iden­ti­cal rooms, each con­tain­ing the same num­ber of books of the same length,” that as a whole “con­tains every pos­si­ble vari­a­tion of text.” He also men­tions a rumored “lost labyrinth” that turns out to be “not a phys­i­cal maze but a nov­el,” and a nov­el that reveals the iden­ti­ty of the real labyrinth: time itself. Borges enthu­si­asts know which places Sta­vans is talk­ing about, mean­ing they know in which of Borges’ sto­ries — which their author, stick­ing to a word from his native Span­ish, referred to as fic­ciones — they orig­i­nate.

But though “The Library of Babel” (which in recent years has tak­en a dig­i­tal form online) and “The Gar­den Fork­ing Paths” count as two par­tic­u­lar­ly notable exam­ples of what Sta­vans calls “Borges’ many explo­rations of infin­i­ty,” he found so many ways to explore that sub­ject through­out his writ­ing career that his lit­er­ary out­put func­tions as a con­scious­ness-alter­ing sub­stance. It does to the right read­ers, that is, a group that includes such oth­er mind-bend­ing writ­ers as Umber­to Eco, Rober­to Bolaño, and William Gib­son, none of whom were quite the same after they dis­cov­ered the fic­ciones. Behold Borges’ mir­rors, mazes, tigers, and chess games your­self — there­by catch­ing a glimpse of infin­i­ty — and you, too, will nev­er be able to return to the read­er you once were. Not that you’d want to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges Explains The Task of Art

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to H.P. Love­craft and How He Invent­ed a New Goth­ic Hor­ror

Why Should You Read James Joyce’s Ulysses?: A New TED-ED Ani­ma­tion Makes the Case

Why You Should Read The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Bulgakov’s Rol­lick­ing Sovi­et Satire

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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Beatles Songs Re-Imagined as Vintage Book Covers and Magazine Pages: “Drive My Car,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” & More

in Books, Design, Music | July 17th, 2019

What makes the Bea­t­les the best-known rock band in his­to­ry? None can deny that they com­posed songs of unsur­passed catch­i­ness, a qual­i­ty demon­strat­ed as soon as those songs hit the air­waves. But the past 55 or so years have shown us that they also pos­sess an endur­ing pow­er to inspire: how many begin­ning musi­cians, fired up by their enjoy­ment of the Bea­t­les, play their first notes each day? The trib­utes to the music of the Bea­t­les keep com­ing in non-musi­cal forms as well: take, for exam­ple, these Bea­t­les songs turned into vin­tage book cov­ers and mag­a­zine pages by screen­writer and self-described “graph­ic-arts prankster” Todd Alcott.

“ ‘Dri­ve My Car’ re-imag­ines the clas­sic 1965 Bea­t­les song as a clas­sic 1965 adver­tise­ment for an actu­al car,” Alcott writes of the work at the top of the post, “mash­ing up the image from an ad for a 1966 Chevro­let Cor­vair with the lyrics from the song.”

Below that, “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” makes of that num­ber a mass-mar­ket book cov­er “in the style of Erich von Daniken’s clas­sic 1970s alien-vis­i­ta­tion book Char­i­ots of the Gods?” Below, Alcot­t’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” per­fect­ly re-cre­ates the look (and, with that vis­i­ble cov­er wear, the feel) of a heady 1960s sci­ence-fic­tion nov­el.

Tomor­row Nev­er Knows does sound like a plau­si­ble piece of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion from that era, but Alcott has made use of much more than these songs’ titles. Even casu­al Bea­t­les fans will notice how much of their lyri­cal con­tent he man­ages to work into his designs, for which the 1967 Nation­al Enquir­er cov­er pas­tiche he put togeth­er for the 1967 sin­gle “A Day in the Life” (“com­plete with pho­tos of Tory Browne, the Guin­ness heir about whom the song was writ­ten”) offered an espe­cial­ly rich oppor­tu­ni­ty. Just when the Bea­t­les broke up in real life, the era of the new-age self-help book began, and after see­ing what Alcott did with “Hel­lo Good­bye” using the dis­tinc­tive visu­al brand­ing of that pub­lish­ing trend, you’ll won­der why no one cashed in on such a com­bi­na­tion at the time.

You can see all of Alcot­t’s Bea­t­les book cov­er and mag­a­zine page designs, and buy prints of them in var­i­ous sizes, over at Etsy. Oth­er selec­tions include “Rocky Rac­coon” as an 1880s dime nov­el (pub­lish­ers of which includ­ed a firm named Bea­dles) and “Rev­o­lu­tion” as a Sovi­et his­to­ry book. Open Cul­ture read­ers will know Alcott from his pre­vi­ous for­ays into retro music-to-book graph­ic design, which took the songs of David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Radio­head and oth­ers and re-imag­ined them as sci-fi nov­els, pulp-fic­tion mag­a­zines, and oth­er arti­facts of print cul­ture from times past. In the case of the Bea­t­les, Alcot­t’s for­mi­da­ble skill at evok­ing a high­ly spe­cif­ic era of recent his­to­ry with an image under­scores, by con­trast, the time­less­ness of the songs that inspired them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

Songs by David Bowie, Elvis Costel­lo, Talk­ing Heads & More Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

Clas­sic Radio­head Songs Re-Imag­ined as a Sci-Fi Book, Pulp Fic­tion Mag­a­zine & Oth­er Nos­tal­gic Arti­facts

Pulp Cov­ers for Clas­sic Detec­tive Nov­els by Dashiell Ham­mett, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie & Ray­mond Chan­dler

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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Behold Fantastical Illustrations from the 13th Century Arabic Manuscript Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing

in Art, Books, History | July 16th, 2019

Reli­gion, his­to­ry, med­i­cine, poet­ry, ethnog­ra­phy, zool­o­gy, cos­mol­o­gy, polit­i­cal philosophy—in many a medieval text, these cat­e­gories all seem to melt togeth­er. Or rather, they don’t exist sep­a­rate­ly in the way we think of them, as labels on a library shelf and cours­es in a cat­a­logue. The same log­i­cal rules do not apply—the appeal to author­i­ty, for exam­ple is not a fal­la­cy so much as a pri­ma­ry method­ol­o­gy. If knowl­edge came from the right prophet, schol­ar, or sage, it could be trust­ed, a mode of think­ing that gave rise to mon­sters, phan­toms, and out­landish beings of all kinds.

It’s easy to call these meth­ods prim­i­tive, but so-called medieval ways of think­ing are still very much with us, and thinkers hun­dreds and thou­sands of years ago have had sur­pris­ing­ly sci­en­tif­ic approach­es, despite lim­it­ed resources and tech­nolo­gies.

We find both the fan­tas­ti­cal and the sci­en­tif­ic woven togeth­er in medieval man­u­scripts, illu­mi­nat­ing and com­ment­ing on each oth­er. And we find exact­ly that in the works of Abu Yahya Zakariya’ ibn Muham­mad al-Qazwi­ni, Per­sian writer, physi­cian, astronomer, geo­g­ra­ph­er, and author of a 13th cen­tu­ry trea­tise called ‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt, or Mar­vels of Things Cre­at­ed and Mirac­u­lous Aspects of Things Exist­ing.

This work is “the most well-known exam­ple,” writes the Nation­al Library of Med­i­cine, “of a genre of clas­si­cal Islam­ic lit­er­a­ture that was con­cerned with ‘mirabil­ia’ or won­ders of cre­ation.” Draw­ing on 50 dif­fer­ent authors, includ­ing sev­er­al ancient Islam­ic geo­g­ra­phers and his­to­ri­ans, Qazwi­ni weaves myth, leg­end, and sci­ence, tying them togeth­er with sto­ries and poet­ry. The Qur’an and hadith are sig­nif­i­cant sources—for a sec­tion on “angelol­o­gy,” for exam­ple. When the cos­mog­ra­phy comes down to earth, mov­ing down through the ranks of humans, beasts, plants, and min­er­als, all sorts of weird, folk­loric ter­res­tri­al crea­tures show up.

The phoenix (or Simurgh), for exam­ple, and the Homa, or par­adise bird—which lands on someone’s head and instant­ly makes them king—sit com­fort­ably next to eagles, vul­tures, and ostrich­es, all of which are con­strued as mar­velous or mirac­u­lous in some way.

The trea­tise cov­ered all the won­ders of the world, and the vari­ety of the sub­ject mat­ter (humans and their anato­my, plants, ani­mals, strange crea­tures at the edges of the inhab­it­ed world, con­stel­la­tions of stars, zodi­a­cal signs, angels, and demons) pro­vid­ed great scope for the artist.

First writ­ten in Ara­bic in the late 1200s and ded­i­cat­ed to the gov­er­nor of Bagh­dad, the man­u­script was “immense­ly pop­u­lar” in the Islam­ic world. It was trans­lat­ed into Per­sian and Turk­ish and copied out in rich­ly illus­trat­ed edi­tions for cen­turies. The images here come from a Per­sian trans­la­tion, “thought to hail from 17th-cen­tu­ry Mughal India,” writes The Pub­lic Domain Review, and the art vivid­ly dis­plays the “eclec­tic mix of top­ics” in al-Qazwini’s book. These were sub­jects that “chal­lenged understanding”—often because they con­cerned things that do not exist, and often because they described nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­non that could not yet be explained.

“From humans and their anato­my to strange myth­i­cal crea­tures; from plants and ani­mals to con­stel­la­tions of stars and zodi­a­cal signs,” The Pub­lic Domain Review explains, the trea­tise pur­port­ed to sur­vey all the “known” world. Al-Qazwi­ni embell­ished his explo­rations for enter­tain­ment pur­pos­es, but he also cre­at­ed exten­sive tax­onomies and described prac­ti­cal sci­ence like the use of “a type of pitch or tar that we today know as asphalt,” San Francisco’s Asian Art Muse­um notes in their cat­a­logue descrip­tion of anoth­er illus­trat­ed man­u­script, in Ara­bic, from 1650. For al-Qazwi­ni and his read­ers, as for oth­er 13th-cen­tu­ry schol­ars, writ­ers, and read­ers around the world, the bound­aries between faith, fact, and fic­tion were per­me­able, and imag­i­na­tion some­times seems to have been the ulti­mate author­i­ty.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

700 Years of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Learn Islam­ic & Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy with 107 Episodes of the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­cast

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

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A Witty Dictionary of Victorian Slang (1909)

in Books, English Language | July 3rd, 2019

In the intro­duc­tion to his Dic­tio­nary of Con­tem­po­rary Slang, Tony Thorne writes of the dif­fi­cul­ty of defin­ing infor­mal speech: “A sym­po­sium on slang held in France in 1989 broke up after sev­er­al days with­out hav­ing arrived at a def­i­n­i­tion accept­able to even the major­i­ty of par­tic­i­pants.” If you’re think­ing maybe this seems like tak­ing the sub­ject a lit­tle too seri­ous­ly, I’d agree. But if we trav­el back eighty years in time and across the Eng­lish Chan­nel, we’ll meet an eccen­tric lex­i­cog­ra­ph­er who approached the task in the right spir­it.

“Here is a numer­i­cal­ly weak col­lec­tion of ‘Pass­ing Eng­lish.’ ” writes James Red­ding Ware in the Pref­ace to his posthu­mous­ly-pub­lished 1909 Pass­ing Eng­lish of the Vic­to­ri­an Era, A Dic­tio­nary of Het­ero­dox Eng­lish, Slang and Phrase.

 

“It may be hoped that there are errors on every page, and also that no entry is ‘quite too dull.’” He goes on in a more seri­ous tone to sum­ma­rize the rapid lan­guage change occur­ring in Eng­land in the last few decades of the 19th cen­tu­ry:

Thou­sands of words and phras­es in exis­tence in 1870 have drift­ed away, or changed their forms, or been absorbed, while as many have been added or are being added. ‘Pass­ing Eng­lish’ rip­ples from count­less sources, form­ing a riv­er of new lan­guage which has its tide and its ebb, while its cur­rent brings down new ideas and car­ries away those that have drib­bled out of fash­ion. Not only is ‘Pass­ing Eng­lish’ gen­er­al ; it is local ; often very sea­son­ably local. 

Ware—a pen name of British writer Andrew Forrester—goes on to get very local indeed in his descrip­tions, from “Pet­ty Italia behind Hat­ton Gar­den” to “Anglo-Yid­dish.” The Pub­lic Domain Review high­lights the fol­low­ing quirky entries.

Got the Morbs – tem­po­rary melan­choly
Mut­ton Shunter – the police
Bat­ty-Fang – to thrash thor­ough­ly
Doing the Bear – court­ing that involves hug­ging
Maf­fick­ing – get­ting row­dy in the streets
Orf Chump – no appetite
Poked Up – embar­rassed
Nan­ty Nark­ing – great fun

Ware’s atti­tude may be appro­pri­ate­ly infor­mal, but his method­ol­o­gy is suit­ably rig­or­ous, and this com­pre­hen­sive lex­i­con was clear­ly a labor of love. His book is a seri­ous resource for schol­ars of the peri­od, and, hell, it’s also just great fun. Read and down­load the full dic­tio­nary at the Inter­net Archive.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read A Clas­si­cal Dic­tio­nary of the Vul­gar Tongue, a Hilar­i­ous & Infor­ma­tive Col­lec­tion of Ear­ly Mod­ern Eng­lish Slang (1785)

The Largest His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of Eng­lish Slang Now Free Online: Cov­ers 500 Years of the “Vul­gar Tongue”

The Very First Writ­ten Use of the F Word in Eng­lish (1528)

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

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How to Read Many More Books in a Year: Watch a Short Documentary Featuring Some of the World’s Most Beautiful Bookstores

in Books, Travel | July 2nd, 2019

You don’t have enough time in life to read all the books you want to. But if you change your habits just a bit, you’ll be able to read many more books in the time you do have left than you oth­er­wise could have. Film­mak­er Max Joseph learns these and oth­er lessons about read­ing in this short doc­u­men­tary, Book­store: How to Read More. In it he trav­els in search of not just the advice of some of the world’s most expert read­ers (or at least some of the most expert read­ers in Amer­i­ca), but also in search of the expe­ri­ence of the most beau­ti­ful book­stores in the world (or at least in west­ern Europe and South Amer­i­ca).

Wait But Why blog­ger Tim Urban tells Joseph he would need to read for only half an hour per day to have read more than a thou­sand books by the end of his time on Earth, ver­sus the sin­gle shelf he might read through with his cur­rent habits.

Eric Bark­er of Bark­ing Up the Wrong Tree sug­gests that Joseph redi­rect his social media-view­ing instincts toward whichev­er book he feels most excit­ed about read­ing in the moment, and that he begin by set­ting his dai­ly read­ing goal so low at first — say, just one page — that it’s prac­ti­cal­ly eas­i­er to meet it than not. (To quote from Moby-Dick, “What can­not habit accom­plish?”) Then Howard Berg, who holds the Guin­ness World Record declar­ing him the fastest read­er alive, breaks down the tech­niques that can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly make each page go by in sec­onds.

But how fast do we real­ly want to read? For coun­sel on the what and the why, Joseph vis­its the office of Ruth J. Sim­mons, pres­i­dent of Prairie View A&M Uni­ver­si­ty and for­mer pres­i­dent of Brown Uni­ver­si­ty. She empha­sizes the impor­tance of read­ing not just fre­quent­ly but wide­ly, a con­di­tion that should­n’t be ter­ri­bly hard to ful­fill giv­en Joseph’s trav­el and shop­ping habits: in the video we see him vis­it a vari­ety of high­ly Insta­gram­ma­ble (and drone-filmable) book­stores every­where from Brus­sels and Maas­tricht to São Paulo and Buenos Aires. One of them, Lis­bon’s Ler Deva­gar, tells him to “read slow­ly” with its very name, echo­ing Sim­mons’ descrip­tion of read­ing as “forced med­i­ta­tion.” That fram­ing is apt, but just like vis­it­ing a new book­store, med­i­ta­tion makes the true bib­lio­phile think of only one thing first: all the vol­umes out there still to be read.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

7 Tips for Read­ing More Books in a Year

The Last Book­store: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Per­se­ver­ance & the Love of Books

A Secret Book­store in a New York City Apart­ment: The Last of a Dying Breed

What Are the Most Stolen Books? Book­store Lists Fea­ture Works by Muraka­mi, Bukows­ki, Bur­roughs, Von­negut, Ker­ouac & Palah­niuk

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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Why You Should Read The Master and Margarita: An Animated Introduction to Bulgakov’s Rollicking Soviet Satire

in Books, History, Literature | June 3rd, 2019

Which are the essen­tial Russ­ian nov­els? Quite a few unde­ni­able con­tenders come to mind right away: Fathers and Sons, Crime and Pun­ish­ment, War and Peace, Anna Karen­i­na, The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, Dr. Zhiva­go, One Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso­vich. But among seri­ous enthu­si­asts of Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture, nov­els don’t come much less deni­able than The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, Mikhail Bul­gakov’s tale of the Dev­il’s vis­it to Sovi­et Moscow in the 1930s. This “sur­re­al blend of polit­i­cal satire, his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, and occult mys­ti­cism,” as Alex Gendler describes it in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above, “has earned a lega­cy as one of the 20th century’s great­est nov­els — and one of its strangest.”

The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta con­sists of two par­al­lel nar­ra­tives. In the first, “a meet­ing between two mem­bers of Moscow’s lit­er­ary elite is inter­rupt­ed by a strange gen­tle­man named Woland, who presents him­self as a for­eign schol­ar invit­ed to give a pre­sen­ta­tion on black mag­ic.” Then, “as the stranger engages the two com­pan­ions in a philo­soph­i­cal debate and makes omi­nous pre­dic­tions about their fates, the read­er is sud­den­ly trans­port­ed to first-cen­tu­ry Jerusalem,” where “a tor­ment­ed Pon­tius Pilate reluc­tant­ly sen­tences Jesus of Nazareth to death.”

The nov­el oscil­lates between the sto­ry of the his­tor­i­cal Jesus — though not quite the one the Bible tells — and that of Woland and his entourage, which includes an enor­mous cat named Behe­moth with a taste for chess, vod­ka, wise­cracks, and firearms. Dark humor flows lib­er­al­ly from their antics, as well as from Bul­gakov’s depic­tion of “the USSR at the height of the Stal­in­ist peri­od. There, artists and authors worked under strict cen­sor­ship, sub­ject to impris­on­ment, exile, or exe­cu­tion if they were seen as under­min­ing state ide­ol­o­gy.”

The dev­il­ish Woland plays this over­bear­ing bureau­crat­ic life like a fid­dle, and “as heads are sep­a­rat­ed from bod­ies and mon­ey rains from the sky, the cit­i­zens of Moscow react with pet­ty-self inter­est, illus­trat­ing how Sovi­et soci­ety bred greed and cyn­i­cism despite its ideals.” Such con­tent would nat­u­ral­ly ren­der a book unpub­lish­able at the time, and though Bul­gakov’s ear­li­er satire The Heart of a Dog (in which a sur­geon trans­plants human organs into a dog and then insists he behave as a human) cir­cu­lat­ed in samiz­dat form, he could­n’t even com­plete The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta before his death in 1940.

“Bulgakov’s expe­ri­ences with cen­sor­ship and artis­tic frus­tra­tion lend an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal air to the sec­ond part of the nov­el, when we are final­ly intro­duced to its name­sake,” says Gendler. “The Mas­ter is a name­less author who’s worked for years on a nov­el but burned the man­u­script after it was reject­ed by pub­lish­ers — just as Bul­gakov had done with his own work. Yet the true pro­tag­o­nist is the Master’s mis­tress Mar­gari­ta,” whose “devo­tion to her lover’s aban­doned dream bears a strange con­nec­tion to the dia­bol­i­cal company’s escapades — and car­ries the sto­ry to its sur­re­al cli­max.”

In the event, a cen­sored ver­sion of The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta was first pub­lished in the 1960s, and an as-com­plete-as-pos­si­ble ver­sion even­tu­al­ly appeared in 1973. Against the odds, the man­u­script that Bul­gakov left behind sur­vived him to become a mas­ter­piece that has inspired not just oth­er Russ­ian writ­ers, but cre­ators like the Rolling Stones, Pat­ti Smith, and (in a per­haps less than safe-for-work man­ner) H.R. Giger as well. Per­haps the author him­self had some pre­mo­ni­tion of the book’s poten­tial: man­u­scripts, as he famous­ly has Woland say to the Mas­ter, don’t burn.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? (This could include The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta.) Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, Ani­mat­ed in Two Min­utes

Pat­ti Smith’s Musi­cal Trib­utes to the Russ­ian Greats: Tarkovsky, Gogol & Bul­gakov

Why You Should Read Crime and Pun­ish­ment: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Dostoevsky’s Moral Thriller

Why Should We Read Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451? A New TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion Explains

Why You Should Read One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude: An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

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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Bill Gates Recommends Five Books to Read This Summer

in Books | May 28th, 2019

It’s becom­ing an annu­al rit­u­al. Every sum­mer Bill Gates offers us a read­ing list–5‑books to take on vaca­tion. As you’ll see, his list assumes that even if you’re phys­i­cal­ly on vaca­tion, your mind isn’t. The curi­ous mind takes no breaks. Bill writes:

Upheaval, by Jared Dia­mond. I’m a big fan of every­thing Jared has writ­ten, and his lat­est is no excep­tion. The book explores how soci­eties react dur­ing moments of cri­sis. He uses a series of fas­ci­nat­ing case stud­ies to show how nations man­aged exis­ten­tial chal­lenges like civ­il war, for­eign threats, and gen­er­al malaise. It sounds a bit depress­ing, but I fin­ished the book even more opti­mistic about our abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems than I start­ed. More here.

Nine Pints, by Rose George. If you get grossed out by blood, this one prob­a­bly isn’t for you. But if you’re like me and find it fas­ci­nat­ing, you’ll enjoy this book by a British jour­nal­ist with an espe­cial­ly per­son­al con­nec­tion to the sub­ject. I’m a big fan of books that go deep on one spe­cif­ic top­ic, so Nine Pints (the title refers to the vol­ume of blood in the aver­age adult) was right up my alley. It’s filled with super-inter­est­ing facts that will leave you with a new appre­ci­a­tion for blood. More here.

A Gen­tle­man in Moscow, by Amor Towles. It seems like every­one I know has read this book. I final­ly joined the club after my broth­er-in-law sent me a copy, and I’m glad I did. Towles’s nov­el about a count sen­tenced to life under house arrest in a Moscow hotel is fun, clever, and sur­pris­ing­ly upbeat. Even if you don’t enjoy read­ing about Rus­sia as much as I do (I’ve read every book by Dos­toyevsky), A Gen­tle­man in Moscow is an amaz­ing sto­ry that any­one can enjoy. More here.

Pres­i­dents of War, by Michael Beschloss. My inter­est in all aspects of the Viet­nam War is the main rea­son I decid­ed to pick up this book. By the time I fin­ished it, I learned a lot not only about Viet­nam but about the eight oth­er major con­flicts the U.S. entered between the turn of the 19th cen­tu­ry and the 1970s. Beschloss’s broad scope lets you draw impor­tant cross-cut­ting lessons about pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship. More here.

The Future of Cap­i­tal­ism, by Paul Col­lier. Collier’s lat­est book is a thought-pro­vok­ing look at a top­ic that’s top of mind for a lot of peo­ple right now. Although I don’t agree with him about everything—I think his analy­sis of the prob­lem is bet­ter than his pro­posed solutions—his back­ground as a devel­op­ment econ­o­mist gives him a smart per­spec­tive on where cap­i­tal­ism is head­ed.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Gates Names 5 Books You Should Read This Sum­mer (2018)

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends Five Books for Sum­mer 2017

5 Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer (2016)

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The Lives of John Coltrane & Billie Holiday Are Now Told in Two Graphic Novels

in Books, Jazz | May 22nd, 2019

How do you tell the sto­ries of larg­er-than-life cul­tur­al figures—of peo­ple whose his­to­ries inter­sect with piv­otal moments in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, whose careers set new stan­dards for excellence—without over­sim­pli­fy­ing and risk­ing car­i­ca­ture? With com­ic art, of course. Graph­ic nov­els have long proven them­selves wor­thy vehi­cles for biog­ra­phy. Some­thing about the bold strokes of the illus­tra­tions, the dia­logue in word bub­ble form, and the pan­el style of sto­ry­telling makes for a par­tic­u­lar­ly vivid encounter with his­to­ry.

Artist Pao­lo Parisi has cap­i­tal­ized on this kismet of form and con­tent in three bio­graph­i­cal graph­ic nov­els now, one of which—the sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s rise to fame and for­tune—we high­light­ed just a cou­ple days ago.

Parisi’s ear­li­er efforts took on no less icon­ic fig­ures than John Coltrane and Bil­lie Hol­i­day in Coltrane and Blues for Lady Day: The Sto­ry of Bil­lie Hol­i­day. The Ital­ian artist has demon­strat­ed a pas­sion for Amer­i­can music, espe­cial­ly jazz, in his career as an illus­tra­tor. As a writer, he also dis­plays a tal­ent for restraint, large­ly let­ting the images tell the sto­ry.

As in Basquiat, these images are both drawn from famous pho­tographs and from imag­i­na­tive recon­struc­tions of what it might have been like, sit­ting in on record­ing ses­sions, in the clubs, and in the heat­ed con­ver­sa­tions. Parisi may inevitably view his sub­jects through an out­sider’s lens—he may roman­ti­cize them at times and may elide impor­tant, but hard to visu­al­ize, details, as is the nature of the form.

But he excels at mak­ing these two musi­cal giants approach­able, telling their sto­ries in broad strokes so that those who haven’t read the dense, heav­i­ly-foot­not­ed tomes about them can devel­op appre­ci­a­tion and empa­thy for their art and too-short lives. It is a sad irony that those who burn bright and die young leave behind the most com­pelling mate­r­i­al for those who tell their sto­ries.

Parisi seems drawn to such trag­ic fig­ures, or per­haps the form itself requires high-con­trast highs and lows. “How could a graph­ic treat­ment pro­vide any­thing oth­er than the sketchi­est of details?” asks Coltrane review­er William Rycroft Tring. “Per­haps by choos­ing the right sub­ject.” In Coltrane and Hol­i­day, Parisi has two sub­jects whose lives were inher­ent­ly dra­mat­ic, full of major tri­umphs and tragedies.

Above all is the music. Graph­ic nov­els may not be sub­sti­tutes for a “prop­er biog­ra­phy,” as Tring writes, but they are excel­lent sup­ple­ments for get­ting to know the artists as you lis­ten to Lady Sings the Blues or A Love Supreme, whether for the first time or the mil­lionth.

You can pick up copies of Coltrane and Blues for Lady Day: The Sto­ry of Bil­lie Hol­i­day online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Rise in the 1980s Art World Gets Told in a New Graph­ic Nov­el

An Ani­mat­ed John Coltrane Explains His True Rea­son for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

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

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