Stephen King Creates a List of 82 Books for Aspiring Writers (to Supplement an Earlier List of 96 Recommend Books)

in Books, Literature, Writing | October 29th, 2015

Image by The USO, via Flickr Com­mons

Stephen King has giv­en writ­ers a lot to think about these past few years in his numer­ous inter­views and in his state­ment of craft, On Writ­ing. He deems one of his most salient pieces of advice on writ­ing so impor­tant that he repeats it twice in his Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers: writ­ers, he says, “learn best by read­ing a lot…. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.” To help his read­ers dis­cov­er the right tools, King attached a list of 96 books at the end of On Writ­ing, of which he said, “In some way or oth­er, I sus­pect each book in the list had an influ­ence on the books I wrote…. a good many of these might show you some new ways of doing your work.”

King’s orig­i­nal list of 96 books for aspir­ing writ­ers gen­er­at­ed a fair amount of com­ment on Aero­gramme Writer’s Stu­dio, who brought it to our atten­tion last year. Lat­er, the same web site brought us anoth­er list of 82 books, which King pub­lished in the 10th anniver­sary edi­tion of On Writ­ing. With King’s sec­ond list, as with the first, you’ll find that best-sell­ing genre writ­ers sit com­fort­ably next to lit-class sta­ples.

In this list, the spec­trum of acces­si­bil­i­ty is a lit­tle nar­row­er. We have few­er clas­sic writ­ers like Dick­ens or Con­rad and few­er com­mer­cial nov­el­ists like Nel­son DeMille. Instead the list is most­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry lit­er­ary fic­tion by most­ly liv­ing con­tem­po­raries, with lit­tle genre fic­tion save per­haps sci-fi/­fan­ta­sy writer Neal Stephenson’s Quick­sil­ver, thriller author Lee Child’s Jack Reach­er series, huge­ly pop­u­lar mys­tery writer Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Drag­on Tat­too, and Patrick O’Brian’s adven­ture series. Below, we’ve excerpt­ed a list of 15 books King recommends—books, he says, “which enter­tained and taught me.”

Kate Atkin­son, One Good Turn
Mar­garet Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Robert Bolaño, 2666
Michael Chabon, The Yid­dish Policemen’s Union
Junot Diaz, The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao
Neil Gaiman, Amer­i­can Gods
Denis John­son, Tree of Smoke
Sue Monk Kid, The Secret Life of Bees
Elmore Leonard, Up in Honey’s Room
Cor­mac McCarthy, No Coun­try for Old Men
Jodi Picoult, Nine­teen Min­utes
Philip Roth, Amer­i­can Pas­toral
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Chil­dren
Don­na Tartt, The Lit­tle Friend
Leo Tol­stoy, War and Peace 

King almost shrugs in his short intro­duc­tion, writ­ing, “you could do worse.” I expect many read­ers of this post might have sug­ges­tions for how they think you could also do bet­ter, espe­cial­ly giv­en the five years that have passed since this list’s com­pi­la­tion and some of the blind spots that seem to per­sist in King’s read­ing habits. I doubt he would object much to any of us adding to, or sub­tract­ing from, his lists—or ignor­ing them alto­geth­er. It seems clear he thinks that like him, we should read what we like, as long as we’re always read­ing some­thing. See the full list of 82 titles here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

7 Free Stephen King Sto­ries: Pre­sent­ed in Text, Audio, Web Com­ic & a Graph­ic Nov­el Video

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

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55 Covers of Vintage Philosophy, Psychology & Science Books Come to Life in a Short Animation

in Animation, Art, Books, Design | October 27th, 2015

We all know that toys come alive at night, but what about mid-cen­tu­ry vin­tage paper­back cov­ers, such as you might find in the psy­chol­o­gy or phi­los­o­phy sec­tions of a dim­ly-lit used book­store?

Watch­ing 55 min­i­mal­ist cov­ers from graph­ic and motion design­er Hen­ning M. Led­er­er’s 2200 title-strong col­lec­tion begin to spin, drift, and seethe in the short ani­ma­tion above, I got the impres­sion that they were the ones dic­tat­ing the terms. Or per­haps Led­er­er is the ves­sel through which the inten­tions of the orig­i­nal design­ers—Rudolph de Harak and John + Mary Con­don to name a few—flow. Cov­ers is not an act of reimag­i­na­tion or crowd-pleas­ing irrev­er­ence, but rather one log­i­cal motion, ele­gant­ly applied.

Habitués of used book­stores may find their usu­al brows­ing habits slight­ly altered by the hyp­not­ic results.

Led­er­er makes no bones about judg­ing books by their cov­ers. Strong graph­ics, not con­tent, are the pri­ma­ry deter­min­ing fac­tor as to which titles he acquires. The state­ly geo­met­rics set in motion here are relics from anoth­er age, but the unclut­tered abstracts so favored by 60s era pub­lish­ers are not the only genre to catch his eye.

Shame Drifter, Dusky Desire, and Sin­sur­ance are some of the decid­ed­ly non-min­i­mal­ist titles spic­ing up his collection’s online gallery. After all of those arrows, angles, and spheres, Led­er­er might have craved ani­mat­ing some­thing with a bit more…personality.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Artist Ani­mates Famous Book Cov­ers in an Ele­gant, Under­stat­ed Way

Illus­tra­tions for a Chi­nese Lord of the Rings in a Stun­ning “Glass Paint­ing Style”

Loli­ta Book Cov­ers: 100+ Designs From 37 Coun­tries (Plus Nabokov’s Favorite Design)

83 Years of Great Gats­by Book Cov­er Designs: A Pho­to Gallery

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her post-dig­i­tal, pre apoc­a­lyp­tic dark com­e­dy, Fawn­book, is now play­ing in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Map of Middle-Earth Annotated by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

in Books, Maps | October 26th, 2015

tolkien map

Image via Blackwell’s Rare Books

Back in April, we high­light­ed for you a trove of 110 illus­tra­tions by J.R.R. Tolkien, offer­ing a rare glimpse of the author’s artis­tic tal­ents. Tolkien did­n’t just like to write books, as we saw. He also liked to draw illus­tra­tions for these books, which helped him to con­cep­tu­al­ize the fan­ta­sy worlds he was cre­at­ing.

Just this month, Houghton Mif­flin released a new book called The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, which brings togeth­er more than 180 draw­ings, inscrip­tions, maps, and plans–all drawn by Tolkien as part of his world­build­ing cre­ative process. Most were nev­er pub­lished until now.

And then we get this: a new­ly-dis­cov­ered map anno­tat­ed by Tolkien. Found in a copy of The Lord of the Rings that orig­i­nal­ly belonged to Pauline Baynes (the artist who illus­trat­ed Tolkien’s nov­els in print), the map intrigu­ing­ly con­nects Tolkien’s fan­ta­sy world to real places on our globe. Accord­ing to The Guardian, anno­ta­tions on the map (click here to view the mate­ri­als in a larg­er for­mat) sug­gests that “Hob­biton is on the same lat­i­tude as Oxford [where Tolkien taught], and implies that the Ital­ian city of Raven­na could be the inspi­ra­tion behind the fic­tion­al city of Minas Tirith.” Bel­grade, Cyprus, and Jerusalem also get list­ed as ref­er­ence points. Dis­cov­ered by Blackwell’s Rare Books, the rare map will be put on the mar­ket for an ask­ing price of £60,000.

You can learn more about this map, con­sid­ered “per­haps the finest piece of Tolkien ephemera to emerge in the last 20 years,” over at The Guardian.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the RingsTril­o­gy

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read From The Lord of the Rings and The Hob­bit

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

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The Maligned Impressionist Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir Illustrates Emile Zola’s Gritty Novel L’Assommoir (1878)

in Art, Books | October 21st, 2015

renoir 6

We’ve all been to a muse­um with that friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber who just doesn’t “get” mod­ern art and sug­gests it’s all a con. Con­cep­tu­al art? Abstract expres­sion­ism? What is that?! Impres­sion­ism? Who wants blur­ry, poor­ly drawn paint­ings?! Arrgh!

Hey, maybe some of us are that friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber. Maybe our com­plaints are even more specific—maybe some of us are mem­bers of a “cul­tur­al jus­tice” move­ment called “Renoir Sucks at Paint­ing.” Maybe we show up at the Boston Muse­um of Fine Arts with signs par­o­dy­ing the car­toon­ish­ly ter­ri­ble West­boro Bap­tist Church (“God Hates Renoir”) and demand­ing, with as much force as one can with a par­o­dy sign, that the Renoirs be removed from the com­pa­ny of wor­thi­er objets d’art.

A - Renoir 4

One crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence between the typ­i­cal art hater and the Renoir Sucks crew: the lat­ter do not object to Pierre-Auguste Renoir because his work is too hard to “get,” but because it’s too easy. Renoir, they say, paint­ed “trea­cle” and “deformed pink fuzzy women.” As art crit­ic Peter Schjel­dahl writes in The New York­er, “Renoir’s win­some sub­jects and efful­gent hues jump in your lap like a friend­ly pup­py.” Renoir is so far from avant-garde that Schjel­dahl can peg his “exag­ger­at­ed blush and sweet­ness” as an exam­ple of the “pop­u­lar appeal” that “advanced the bour­geois cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion that was Impres­sion­ism.” Ouch.

This kind of assess­ment gets no help from the painter’s great-great grand­daugh­ter, Genevieve, who responds to crit­ics by quot­ing sales fig­ures: “It is safe to say,” she writes, “that the free mar­ket has spo­ken and Renoir did NOT suck at paint­ing.” By this mea­sure, Thomas Kinkade and Sis­ter Maria Inno­cen­tia Hum­mel were also artis­tic genius­es. The charges of “aes­thet­ic ter­ror­ism” against Renoir come right out of the icon­o­clasm that func­tions in the art world as both mean­ing­ful dis­sent and suc­cess­ful gim­mick (cf. Mar­cel Duchamp, or Ai Weiwei’s con­tro­ver­sial, gallery-fill­ing attacks on revered cul­tur­al arti­facts.) But per­haps the hon­est ques­tion remains: does Renoir Suck at Paint­ing?

Let us reserve judg­ment and take a look at anoth­er side of Renoir, a rarely seen excur­sion into book illustration—specifically the four illus­tra­tions he made for an 1878 edi­tion of Emile Zola’s nov­el L’Assommoir (“The Dram Shop”). Described by the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go as “grit­ti­ly real­is­tic,” Zola’s nat­u­ral­ist depic­tion of what he called “the inevitable down­fall of a work­ing-class fam­i­ly in the pol­lut­ed atmos­phere of our urban areas” pro­voked many of its read­ers, who regard­ed the book as “an unfor­giv­able lapse of taste on the part of its author.” It showed Parisians “an aspect of cur­rent life that most found fright­en­ing and repul­sive.” Nonethe­less, the nov­el became a pop­u­lar suc­cess.

Auguste-Renoir-Zola-Assommoir-Gervaise-et-Lantier-au-cafe-1024x721

The four black-and-white engrav­ings here—made from Renoir’s orig­i­nal drawings—are the impres­sion­ist’s con­tri­bu­tion to Zola’s ill­lus­trat­ed nov­el. The choice of Renoir as one of sev­er­al artists for this edi­tion seems an odd one. (Zola, a friend of the painter’s, approached him per­son­al­ly.) Then, as now, Renoir had a rep­u­ta­tion for sun­ny opti­mism: “he always looks on the bright side,” remarked one con­tem­po­rary. Renoir’s “pref­er­ence for cre­at­ing images of beau­ty,” writes The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, “made the illus­tra­tion of the par­tic­u­lar­ly seedy pas­sages of the nov­el prob­lem­at­ic, and some of the result­ing draw­ings lack con­vic­tion.”

Instead of suc­cumb­ing to the novel’s grim tone, Renoir’s orig­i­nal ren­der­ings, like the “loose wash draw­ing” in “warm, brown ink” at the top of the post, “gen­tly sub­vert­ed the dark under­tones of Zola’s text.” Below the orig­i­nal draw­ing, see the engrav­ing that appeared in the book. Book blog Adven­tures in the Print Trade con­cedes the plates “are of vary­ing qual­i­ty” and sin­gles out the illus­tra­tion just above as the most suc­cess­ful one, since “the sub­ject-mat­ter is per­fect for Renoir, and the whole scene is brim­ming with life.”

Renoir 1

As you can see from the two images at the top of the post, the trans­la­tion from Renoir’s draw­ings to the final book engrav­ings left many of his fig­ures blurred and obscured, and intro­duce a dark heav­i­ness to work under­tak­en with a much soft­er, lighter touch. Do these illus­tra­tions add any­thing to our under­stand­ing of whether Renoir Sucks at Paint­ing? Who can say. It’s true that here, as in many of his well-known paint­ings, “the com­po­si­tions tend to be slack,” as Schjel­dahl writes. Nonethe­less, the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go auda­cious­ly judges the brown ink wash draw­ing at the top of the post “one of the most impor­tant draw­ings the artist pro­duced dur­ing the years of high Impres­sion­ism.”

A - Renoir 2

They only add to my appre­ci­a­tion of Renoir, who does not, I think, suck. Even if his work can be, as Schjel­dahl says, “high glu­cose,” I would argue that his sweet­ness and light pro­vide just the right approach to Zola, whose nov­els, like those of oth­er nat­u­ral­ists such as Theodore Dreis­er or Thomas Hardy, con­tain much more than a hint of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aston­ish­ing Film of Arthrit­ic Impres­sion­ist Painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1915)

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

The Post­cards That Picas­so Illus­trat­ed and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apol­li­naire & Gertrude Stein

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

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Hear a Playlist of 300 Songs That Influenced Elvis Costello, Drawn From His New Memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink

in Books, Music | October 20th, 2015

Elvis_Costello_15_June_2005

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Every­one in the spot­light has at least one damn­ing inci­dent to live down, and some­times a whole damn­ing peri­od. There’s David Bowie’s brief fas­cism con­tro­ver­sy, for exam­ple, or Eric Clapton’s more sub­stan­tive, and much more dis­turb­ing, far-right polit­i­cal views, which he broad­cast from the stage in 1976, then repeat­ed to the mag­a­zines short­ly after. Clapton’s racist invec­tive and sup­port for Enoch Pow­ell and the Nation­al Front was par­tic­u­lar­ly appalling giv­en that he rode in on the shoul­ders of blues artists and scored a huge hit just two years ear­li­er with his ver­sion of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sher­iff.” As pho­tog­ra­ph­er Red Saun­ders would write in a pub­lished let­ter to Clap­ton after the gui­tar god’s bizarre onstage rant: “Half your music is black. You’re rock music’s biggest colonist.” At least for a time, Clap­ton fell decid­ed­ly on the wrong side of a dichoto­my Eric Lott called “Love and Theft.” 

One might make sim­i­lar accu­sa­tions against punk trou­ba­dour Elvis Costel­lo, who took his look from Bud­dy Hol­ly, his name from The King, and has also drawn heav­i­ly from black music for the bet­ter part of thir­ty years. And Costel­lo once had his own brief racist out­burst in 1979 dur­ing a tour stop in Colum­bus, Ohio, drop­ping a cou­ple n‑bombs in ref­er­ence to James Brown and Ray Charles, and get­ting a beat­ing from one of Stephen Stills’ back­ing singers. Costel­lo main­tained the out­rage was a delib­er­ate­ly nasty way to troll the hat­ed old guard Stills rep­re­sent­ed, but he there­after received death threats and con­tin­ued his tour under armed guard. Iron­i­cal­ly, the pre­vi­ous year he had appeared with The Clash and reg­gae bands Misty in Roots and Aswad at a fes­ti­val con­cert in Lon­don spon­sored by Rock Against Racism, who formed in response to Enoch Pow­ell, the Nation­al Front, and Clapton—and whose Amer­i­can chap­ter pick­et­ed Costel­lo after the Ohio brawl.

Costel­lo address­es the inci­dent in his new mem­oir Unfaith­ful Music & Dis­ap­pear­ing Ink, writ­ing “what­ev­er I did, I did it to pro­voke a bar fight. Sure­ly this was all under­stood. Didn’t they know the love I had for James Brown and Ray Charles, whose record of ‘The Dan­ger Zone’ I pre­ferred to watch­ing men walk on the moon?” (He’s made sev­er­al oth­er com­ments over the years, and even Ray Charles weighed in after­wards with some­thing of a for­giv­ing state­ment.) Stephen Deusner at Vul­ture writes, “you some­how nev­er doubt the sin­cer­i­ty of that love, just as you don’t doubt that Costel­lo could be a rav­ing bas­tard when he’s drunk.” Unlike so many oth­er exam­ples of the genre, Unfaith­ful Music doesn’t ped­dle con­tri­tion or con­tro­ver­sy for their own sake. On the con­trary, The Qui­etus calls the book “with­out doubt, one of the great­est self-penned appraisals of a pop­u­lar entertainer’s life and work.”

That great­ness, Deusner argues, comes in large part from Costello’s “nerdish­ly prodi­gious” knowl­edge of, and love for—mostly American—music: “There are near­ly 400 songs Costel­lo name-checks as influ­ences with­in the pages of Unfaith­ful Music, and hun­dreds more he refers to in pass­ing.” These include songs from James Brown and Ray Charles, and also Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Doc Wat­son, The Drifters, his name­sake Elvis Pres­ley, Fleet­wood Mac, huge help­ings of The Bea­t­les, Burt Bacharach… even CSNY’s “Ohio.” Based on Costello’s ency­clo­pe­dic devo­tion to coun­try, pop, R&B, punk, reg­gae, and near­ly every oth­er genre under the sun, Vul­ture com­piled the 300-song Spo­ti­fy playlist above, “by no means com­plete,” writes Deusner, “due in large part to Spotify’s scarci­ty of Bea­t­les, Bacharach, and Neil Young albums.” (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it for free here.)

The playlist serves as an audio accom­pa­ni­ment to Costello’s almost 700-page rem­i­nis­cence; tak­en togeth­er, both explain how “the angry young man of the late 70s,” with a “rep­u­ta­tion as one of the smartest and bristli­est fig­ures in the Lon­don punk scene” became “a revered trou­ba­dour crafts­man play­ing the White House, jam­ming with var­i­ous Bea­t­les, and com­pos­ing bal­let scores.” Just above, you can hear Costel­lo him­self read a brief excerpt from the book, a sto­ry about hang­ing out with David Bowie. The Qui­etus has anoth­er exclu­sive extract from Unfaith­ful Music. (Note that you can down­load the entire book, nar­rat­ed by Costel­lo him­self, for free if you join Audible.com’s Free Tri­al pro­gram.) And if you need to hear more about what he now calls that “f***** stu­pid” fra­cas in ’79, see him talk about his angry young man per­sona and tell oth­er “war sto­ries” of his life in music in an inter­view with ?uest­love. Of his fierce devo­tion to so much of the music above, Costel­lo tells The Roots’ drum­mer, “Eng­lish musi­cians have such this weird out­side love for Amer­i­can music, par­tic­u­lar­ly rhythm and blues as we grew up to know it, that we sort of felt we had pos­ses­sion of it in some weird way.”

via Vul­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Elvis Costel­lo Sings “Pen­ny Lane” for Sir Paul

Radio David Byrne: Stream Free Music Playlists Cre­at­ed Every Month by the Front­man of Talk­ing Heads

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

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

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A Young Hunter S. Thompson Appears on the Classic TV Game Show, To Tell the Truth (1967)

in Books, Television | October 15th, 2015

Once upon a time, avant-garde com­posers, sur­re­al­ist painters, and Gonzo jour­nal­ists made guest appear­ances on the most main­stream Amer­i­can game shows. It does­n’t hap­pen much any­more.

We’ve shown you John Cage per­form on I’ve Got a Secret in 1960; Sal­vador Dalí do his Dalí schtick on What’s My Line in 1952; and a young Frank Zap­pa turn a bicy­cle into a musi­cal instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show in ’63. Now we can add to the list a young Hunter S. Thomp­son mak­ing an appear­ance on To Tell the Truth, one of the longest-run­ning TV game shows in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. The episode (above) aired on Feb­ru­ary 20, 1967, the year after Thomp­son pub­lished his first major book of jour­nal­ism, Hel­l’s Angels: The Strange and Ter­ri­ble Saga of the Out­law Motor­cy­cle Gangs. (See him get con­front­ed by the Angels here.)

If you’re not famil­iar with the show, To Tell the Truth works like this:

The show fea­tures a pan­el of four celebri­ties whose object is the cor­rect iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of a described con­tes­tant who has an unusu­al occu­pa­tion or expe­ri­ence. This cen­tral char­ac­ter is accom­pa­nied by two impos­tors who pre­tend to be the cen­tral char­ac­ter; togeth­er, the three per­sons are said to belong to a “team of chal­lengers.” The celebri­ty pan­elists ques­tion the three con­tes­tants; the impos­tors are allowed to lie but the cen­tral char­ac­ter is sworn “to tell the truth”. After ques­tion­ing, the pan­el attempts to iden­ti­fy which of the three chal­lengers is telling the truth and is thus the cen­tral char­ac­ter.

Giv­en the whole premise of the show, Thomp­son, only 30 years old, was still an unrec­og­niz­able face on Amer­i­ca’s cul­tur­al scene. But, with the pub­li­ca­tion of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas just around the cor­ner, all of that was about to change.

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!

via @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

Read 18 Lost Sto­ries From Hunter S. Thompson’s For­got­ten Stint As a For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

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Browse a Gallery of Kurt Vonnegut Tattoos, and See Why He’s the Big Gorilla of Literary Tattoos

in Art, Books, Literature | October 12th, 2015

Vonnegut Tattoos 1

Accord­ing to Eva Tal­madge, co-author of The Word Made Flesh: Lit­er­ary Tat­toos from Book­worms World­wide, Kurt Von­negut is the big goril­la of lit tat­toos (a dis­tinc­tion he shares with poet e.e. cum­mings).

It’s not sur­pris­ing. Vonnegut’s humor and con­ci­sion make him one of the most quotable authors of all time, per­fect­ly suit­ed to the task.

Rep­e­ti­tion is the price Von­negut tat­too enthu­si­asts must pay for such endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty.

The phrase “so it goes” occurs 106 times in Slaugh­ter­house-Five, a fig­ure dwarfed many times over by the num­ber of hides upon which it is per­ma­nent­ly inked. Recur­rence is so fre­quent that the lit­er­ary tat­too blog, Con­trari­wise, recent­ly host­ed a round of So It Goes Sat­ur­days. So it goes.

Vonnegut 2

Vonnegut Tattoos 3

Vonnegut Tattoos 4

The sec­ond run­ner up, also from Slaugh­ter­house-Five,  is the painful­ly iron­ic “Every­thing was Beau­ti­ful and Noth­ing Hurt.”

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Those who’d rather put a bird on it than present an acces­si­ble sen­ti­ment to the unini­ti­at­ed can opt for “poo-tee-weet,” the catch­phrase of a bird who’s a wit­ness to war.  Cer­tain to con­found the folks star­ing at your tri­ceps in the gro­cery line.

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Slaugh­ter­house Five is not Vonnegut’s only tat­too-friend­ly nov­el, of course.

Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons is par­tic­u­lar­ly well suit­ed to the form, thanks to the author’s own line draw­ings.

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There’s also Slap­stick:

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Hocus Pocus:

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Cat’s Cra­dle:

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God Bless You Mr. Rose­wa­ter:

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And then there’s the infa­mous aster­isk, whose first appear­ance in Break­fast in Cham­pi­ons is pre­ced­ed thus­ly:

…to give an idea of the matu­ri­ty of my illus­tra­tions for this book, here is my pic­ture of an ass­hole”

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Hard­core fans can can prove their ded­i­ca­tion by tak­ing a por­trait of the mas­ter to the grave with them.

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Depend­ing on your tol­er­ance for pain, you could squeeze in a longer sen­ti­ment:

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“I want­ed all things

To seem to make some sense,

So we could all be hap­py, yes,

Instead of tense.

And I made up lies

So that they all fit nice,

And I made this sad world

A par-a-dise.”

― Kurt Von­negut, A Man With­out a Coun­try

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Daz­zling Gallery of Clock­work Orange Tat­toos

Meet Amer­i­ca & Britain’s First Female Tat­too Artists: Maud Wag­n­er (1877–1961) & Jessie Knight (1904–1994)

Why Tat­toos Are Per­ma­nent? New TED Ed Video Explains with Ani­ma­tion

Hear Kurt Von­negut Read Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Cat’s Cra­dle & Oth­er Nov­els

Kurt Von­negut Cre­ates a Report Card for His Nov­els, Rank­ing Them From A+ to D

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this month. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Download Original Bauhaus Books & Journals for Free: Gropius, Klee, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy & More

in Art, Books | October 12th, 2015

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In 1919, Ger­man archi­tect Wal­ter Gropius found­ed Bauhaus, the most influ­en­tial art school of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Bauhaus defined mod­ernist design and rad­i­cal­ly changed our rela­tion­ship with every­day objects. Gropius wrote in his man­i­festo Pro­gramm des Staatlichen Bauhaus­es Weimar that “There is no essen­tial dif­fer­ence between the artist and the arti­san.” His new school, which fea­tured fac­ul­ty that includ­ed the likes of Paul Klee, Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers and Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, did indeed erase the cen­turies-old line between applied arts and fine arts.

Bauhaus archi­tec­ture sand­blast­ed away the ornate flour­ish­es com­mon with ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry build­ings, favor­ing instead the clean, sleek lines of indus­tri­al fac­to­ries. Design­er Mar­cel Breuer reimag­ined the com­mon chair by strip­ping it down to its most ele­men­tal form. Her­bert Bay­er rein­vent­ed and mod­ern­ized graph­ic design by focus­ing on visu­al clar­i­ty. Gun­ta Stöl­zl, Mar­i­anne Brandt and Chris­t­ian Dell rad­i­cal­ly remade such diverse objects as fab­rics and tea ket­tles.

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Nowa­days, of course, get­ting one of those Bauhaus tea ket­tles, or even an orig­i­nal copy of Gropius’s man­i­festo, would cost a small for­tune. For­tu­nate­ly for design nerds, typog­ra­phy mavens and archi­tec­ture enthu­si­asts every­where, the good folks over at Mono­skop have post­ed online a whole set of beau­ti­ful­ly designed pub­li­ca­tions from the sto­ried school.

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Click here to pick out indi­vid­ual works or here to just get all of them. Sad­ly, though, you can’t down­load a teaket­tle.

The list of Books in the Mono­skop Bauhaus archive includes:

And here are some key Bauhaus jour­nals:

  1. bauhaus 1 (1926). 5 pages, 42 cm. Down­load (23 MB).
  2. bauhaus: zeitschrift für bau und gestal­tung 2:1 (Feb 1928). Down­load (17 MB).
  3. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 3:1 (Jan 1929). Down­load (17 MB).
  4. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 3:2 (Apr-Jun 1929). Down­load (15 MB).
  5. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 3:3 (Jul-Sep 1929). Down­load (16 MB).
  6. bauhaus: zeitschrift für gestal­tung 2 (Jul 1931). Down­load (15 MB).

Get more in the Mono­skop Bauhaus archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Home­made Hand Pup­pets of Bauhaus Artist Paul Klee

Time Trav­el Back to 1926 and Watch Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Cre­ate an Abstract Com­po­si­tion

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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