Neil Gaiman & Famous Friends Read Aloud the Entirety of Coraline (and The Graveyard Book Too)

in Audio Books, Books, K-12, Literature | July 10th, 2015

One of the many plea­sures of hear­ing a children’s author read­ing his or her own work is their over­whelm­ing lack of vocal sen­ti­ment. When my chil­dren were young, I always opt­ed for the horse’s mouth, over the more histri­on­ic char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of a hired nar­ra­tor, regard­less of what sit­com or Broad­way play he or she may have starred in. It might have tak­en author E.B. White 17 takes to lay down a track for Charlotte’s Web’s tit­u­lar character’s death scene, but he even­tu­al­ly achieved the healthy remove that lets the listener—not the reader—wallow in the val­ley of deep emo­tions.

Neil Gaiman’s Cora­line is not a weepie, like White’s best loved work. Instead, it rev­els in a sort of under­stat­ed creepi­ness en route to the hor­rif­i­cal­ly bizarre. It’s a tone his fel­low lit­er­ary celebs are bliss­ful­ly well equipped to deliv­er, read­ing chap­ters aloud in hon­or of the book’s 10th anniver­sary. You can see them read all of the chap­ters here and also above and below.

Gaiman him­self book­ends the pro­ceed­ings by claim­ing the first (above) and final chap­ter. Lucky that. One shud­ders to think of the myr­i­ad ways in which a nar­ra­tor of cute­si­er sen­si­bil­i­ties could have screwed up phras­es like “oom­pah oom­pah” and “squidy brown toad­stools” (thus blight­ing the entire book).

I con­ceive of these read­ings as a mul­ti­ple nar­ra­tor audio­book because the per­form­ers are read­ing, rather than attempt­ing to act out the text in their hands, but real­ly it’s more of a video sto­ry­time. Gaiman is def­i­nite­ly on point in front of the camera—his large brown eyes, promi­nent pro­boscis and stringy ster­n­oclei­do­mas­toid mus­cles adding to the pro­ceed­ings.

Sand­wiched in between the master’s per­for­mances, you will find such lumi­nar­ies as authors R.L. Stine, John Hodg­man, and Daniel “Lemo­ny Snick­et” Han­dler, framed so that he has no head. For­mer child star Fairuza Balk would’ve made a gim­crack Cora­line back in the day, but her ren­di­tion of the book’s penul­ti­mate chap­ter sug­gests that she’s even bet­ter suit­ed to the role of Coraline’s “Oth­er Moth­er,” or rather her dis­em­bod­ied hand. Bed­lam, indeed.

Lis­ten to the 10th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion of the book in its entire­ty here.

Should that leave you want­i­ng more, Harp­er Collins has com­piled a stem to stern playlist of Gaiman read­ing 2008’s The Grave­yard Book, culled from var­i­ous videos of the author on tour. You can watch it above, or find it in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman Reads “The Man Who For­got Ray Brad­bury”

Where Do Great Ideas Come From? Neil Gaiman Explains

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

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Download & Play The Shining Board Game

in Books | July 9th, 2015

Shining game 1

Stephen King’s 1977 psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror nov­el The Shin­ing has inspired sev­er­al oth­er works, most notably Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 1980 film adap­ta­tion, a movie wide­ly con­sid­ered to have ele­vat­ed King’s sto­ry of the pos­sessed Over­look Hotel and its luck­less win­ter care­tak­ers, the Tor­rance fam­i­ly, to a high­er artis­tic plane. But King him­self nev­er real­ly approved of Kubrick­’s inter­pre­ta­tion: â€śParts of the film are chill­ing, charged with a relent­less­ly claus­tro­pho­bic ter­ror,” he said, “but oth­ers fall flat. A vis­cer­al skep­tic such as Kubrick just could­n’t grasp the sheer inhu­man evil of the Over­look Hotel.”

Shining game 2

Pre­sum­ably King had a bet­ter time play­ing the board game of The Shin­ing, which won the first Microgame Design Con­test in 1998, and about which you can read more at Board Game Geek. It has been said that King him­self helped with the game’s devel­op­ment and offered his ser­vices as an ear­ly play-tester, though some will con­test that. (See the claims in the com­ments sec­tion below.)

You can tell that the game’s faith lies with King’s nov­el rather than Kubrick­’s film by its use of things that nev­er made it from page to screen as game­play ele­ments, such as the hotel grounds’ hedge-sculp­ture ani­mals that come to vicious life.

Shining game 3

You can play The Shin­ing board game as the Tor­rance fam­i­ly, in which case you’ll have to fight those hedge ani­mals. Or you can play it as the Over­look Hotel itself, in which case you’ll con­trol them. Each play­er has a host of imple­ments at their dis­pos­al — ghosts, decoys, the famous axe and snow­mo­bile — all meant to help them accom­plish the task of dri­ving the oth­er side away. Think of it as a sim­pli­fied wargame set in a haunt­ed hotel.

If you’d like to see how you fare, whether in the shoes of the Tor­rances or the Indi­an-bur­ial-ground foun­da­tion of the Over­look, you’ll find all the game’s mate­ri­als freely avail­able on the Micro­grame Design Con­test’s site. Print them out, set them up, and pre­pare to feel some sheer inhu­man evil for your­self.

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 Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

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

Stephen King Reveals in His First TV Inter­view Whether He Sleeps With the Lights On (1982)

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

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

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Books in the Films of Wes Anderson: A Supercut for Bibliophiles

in Books, Film | July 6th, 2015

There’s some­thing about Wes Ander­son films that prompts peo­ple to get cre­ative — to start cre­at­ing their own video essays and super­cuts explor­ing themes in Ander­son­’s whim­si­cal movies. You can find a list below.

The lat­est comes from LuĂ­s Azeve­do, founder of The A to Z Review. â€śBib­lio­phil­ia – Books in the Films of Wes Ander­son” (above) tells this sto­ry:

In the work of Wes Ander­son, books and art in gen­er­al have a strong con­nec­tion with mem­o­ry. The Roy­al Tenen­baums (2001) begins with a homony­mous book, as does Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox (2009). The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) begins and ends with a book. Moon­rise King­dom (2012) ends with a paint­ing of a place which no longer exists. These movies have a clear mes­sage: books pre­serve sto­ries, for they exist with­in them and live on through them.

For a detailed expla­na­tion of the video, bib­li­og­ra­phy, fil­mog­ra­phy and more vis­it this page.

I would also encour­age you to watch the book ani­ma­tion that Ander­son him­self cre­at­ed for Moon­rise King­dom, which sad­ly nev­er made it into the film. Find it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

Wes Ander­son & Yasu­jiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unex­pect­ed Par­al­lels Between Two Great Film­mak­ers

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

A Glimpse Into How Wes Ander­son Cre­ative­ly Remixes/Recycles Scenes in His Dif­fer­ent Films

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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Artist Turns 24-Volume Encyclopedia Britannica Set into a Beautifully Carved Landscape

in Art, Books, English Language, History | June 29th, 2015

Not too long ago, an old­er rel­a­tive tried to donate the Funk & Wag­nalls ency­clo­pe­dia he’d owned since boy­hood to a local char­i­ty shop, but they refused to take it.

What an igno­min­ious end to an insti­tu­tion that had fol­lowed him for sev­en decades and twice as many moves. Like many such weighty pos­ses­sions, its prove­nance was sen­ti­men­tal, a grad­u­a­tion gift I believe, bestowed all at once, rather than pur­chased piece­meal from a trav­el­ing ency­clo­pe­dia sales­man.

By the time I came along, its func­tion had been reduced to the pri­mar­i­ly dec­o­ra­tive. Every now and then, he’d find some pre­text to pull one of its many vol­umes from the shelf.

Did I know that Tan­za­nia was once called Tan­ganyi­ka?

And Thai­land was once Siam!

The vin­tage Funk & Wag­nalls’ many facts, maps, and illus­tra­tions were not the only aspects in need of an update. Its pre-Women’s Lib, pre-Civ­il Rights atti­tudes were shock­ing to the point of camp. There was unin­ten­tion­al com­ic gold in those pages. A col­lage artist could’ve had a ball. Wit­ness the suc­cess of the Ency­clo­pe­dia Show, an ongo­ing per­for­mance event in Chica­go.

encyc brit carved

Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary artist Guy Laramée takes a much more sober approach, above. Adieu, his sculp­tur­al repur­pos­ing of a 24-vol­ume Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca feels like a memen­to mori for a dim­ly recalled ances­tor of the infor­ma­tion age.

Quoth the artist:

I carve land­scapes out of books and I paint roman­tic land­scapes. Moun­tains of dis­used knowl­edge return to what they real­ly are: moun­tains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flat­ten and become fields where appar­ent­ly noth­ing is hap­pen­ing. Piles of obso­lete ency­clo­pe­dias return to that which does not need to say any­thing, that which sim­ply IS. Fogs and clouds erase every­thing we know, every­thing we think we are.

An ene­my of 3D print­ing and oth­er 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­no­log­i­cal advances, Laramée employs old fash­ioned pow­er tools to accom­plish his beau­ti­ful, destruc­tive vision. What’s left is a delib­er­ate waste­land.

Kudos to film­mak­er Sébastien Ven­tu­ra for tran­scend­ing mere doc­u­men­ta­tion to deliv­er the befit­ting ele­gy at the top of the page. He presents us with a beau­ti­ful ruin. What­ev­er hap­pened there, nature will reclaim it.

You can see more of LaramĂ©e’s work at This Is Colos­sal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Takes Old Books and Gives Them New Life as Intri­cate Sculp­tures

The Sketch­book Project Presents Online 17,000 Sketch­books, Cre­at­ed by Artists from 135 Coun­tries

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

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

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Italian Astronaut Reads The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the International Space Station

in Astronomy, Books | May 26th, 2015

On Fri­day, to help cel­e­brate Dan­te’s 750th birth­day, Col­in Mar­shall pre­sent­ed for you Saman­tha Cristo­fore­t­ti, Italy’s first female astro­naut, read­ing lines from The Divine Com­e­dy aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. Lit­tle did we know that, just a few days lat­er, we could serve up a new video of Cristo­fore­t­ti read­ing lines (this time in Eng­lish) from a much more mod­ern text — Dou­glas Adams’ The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979). The video was filmed as part of Tow­el Day, a cel­e­bra­tion held every May 25th, where fans across the uni­verse car­ry a tow­el in Adams’ hon­our. Above you can see Cristo­fore­t­ti, float­ing upside down, doing just that, and read­ing the sec­tion of the book that touch­es on tow­els, the “most mas­sive­ly use­ful thing an inter­stel­lar hitch hik­er can have.”

via

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Astro­naut Reads The Divine Com­e­dy on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion on Dante’s 750th Birth­day

William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

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Mœbius Illustrates Paulo Coelho’s Inspirational Novel The Alchemist (1998)

in Art, Books | May 25th, 2015

moebius alchemist 1

When Paulo Coel­ho’s nov­el The Alchemist came out in Eng­lish, the lev­el of pop­u­lar­i­ty it even­tu­al­ly attained seri­ous­ly impressed me. Then I went to Latin Amer­i­ca, where the Span­ish ver­sion seemed to have won a vaster read­er­ship still. I haven’t yet gone to Brazil to gauge the book’s pop­u­lar­i­ty on the streets of Coel­ho’s home­land since its first pub­li­ca­tion to rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle inter­est, but it sure­ly has­n’t gone unknown there. As many fans as The Alchemist has, though, the inspi­ra­tion-and-des­tiny-inflect­ed appeal of the text entire­ly escapes some read­ers, in whichev­er lan­guage they read it. Per­haps they’d pre­fer an edi­tion illus­trat­ed by MĹ“bius?

moebius alchemist 2

Born Jean Giraud, MĹ“bius’ career guar­an­tees him a per­ma­nent place as one of the most influ­en­tial com­ic artists ever to live. Even apart from the achieve­ments in the medi­um in which he became famous — his found­ing work on Heavy Met­al, his cre­ation of non­tra­di­tion­al west­ern out­law Blue­ber­ry — he did a good deal of work that brought his sin­gu­lar­ly imag­i­na­tive aes­thet­ic into oth­er cre­ative realms, such as con­cept art from Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owky’s Dune and illus­tra­tions for Dan­te’s Par­adiso. In some sense, it might have seemed nat­ur­al for him to lend his hand to Coel­ho’s fan­ta­sy tale of an Andalu­sian shep­herd boy on a trea­sure-hunt­ing jour­ney to Egypt.

moebius alchemist 3

The Illus­trat­ed Alchemist: A Fable About Fol­low­ing Your Dream came out in 1998, and it includ­ed 35 MĹ“bius illus­tra­tions, four of which you see here. The artist’s sig­na­ture style, which he usu­al­ly used in the ser­vice of dark, com­plex fusions of past and present, might at first sound ill-suit­ed for Coel­ho’s sim­ple fable, but MĹ“bius adapts well to the mate­r­i­al. Even if you put down the book uncon­vinced by Coel­ho’s argu­ments about fol­low­ing your dream, you might con­sid­er look­ing to MĹ“bius instead with our post on his tips for aspir­ing artists. Either way, The Illus­trat­ed Alchemist itself show­cas­es a col­lab­o­ra­tion between two well-known cre­ators who most def­i­nite­ly paid their dues.

moebius alchemist 4

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Paulo Coel­ho Start­ed Pirat­ing His Own Books (And Where You Can Find Them)

Paulo Coel­ho on the Fear of Fail­ure

The Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

MĹ“bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Mœbius Illus­trates Dante’s Par­adiso

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Six Books (and One Blog) Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Summer

in Books | May 23rd, 2015


Bill Gates — Microsoft CEO turned phil­an­thropist, life­long learn­er and fan of The Great Cours­es — is rec­om­mend­ing sev­en texts you should read this sum­mer. They’re not exact­ly light beach read­ing. But you’ll learn a lot, and you’ll get more dialed into issues on Gates’ mind. On his web­site, the video above comes accom­pa­nied by rea­sons for read­ing each work.:

Hyper­bole and A Half , by Allie Brosh:The Book, based on Brosh’s wild­ly pop­u­lar web­site, con­sists of brief vignettes and com­ic draw­ings her young About Life. The adven­tures she recounts are most­ly inside her head, where we hear and see the kind of inner thoughts most of us are too timid to let out in pub­lic. You will rip through it in three hours, tops. But you’ll wish it went on longer, because it’s fun­ny and smart as hell. I must have inter­rupt­ed Melin­da a dozen times to read to her pas­sages that made ​​me laugh out loud.

The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty, by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, an evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist at Oxford, has a gift for mak­ing sci­ence enjoy­able. This Book is as acces­si­ble as the TV series Cos­mos is for Younger Audi­ences-and as Rel­e­vant for Old­Er Audi­ences. It’s an engag­ing, well-illus­trat­ed sci­ence text­book offer­ing com­pelling answers to big ques­tions, like “how did the uni­verse form?” And “what caus­es earth­quakes?” It’s also a plea for read­ers of all ages to approach mys­ter­ies with rig­or and curiosity.Dawkins’s antag­o­nis­tic (and, to me, overzeal­ous) view of reli­gion has earned him a lot of angry crit­ics, but I con­sid­er him to be one of the great sci­en­tif­ic writer / explain­ers of all time.

If what?, by Ran­dall Munroe. The sub­ti­tle of the book is “Seri­ous Sci­en­tif­ic Answers to Absurd Hypo­thet­i­cal Ques­tions,” and that’s exact­ly what it is. Peo­ple write Munroe with ques­tions that range over all fields of sci­ence: physics, chem­istry, biol­o­gy. Ques­tions like, “From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?” (The answer, it turns out, is “high enough that it would dis­in­te­grate before it hit the ground.”) Munroe’s expla­na­tions are fun­ny, but the sci­ence under­pin­ning his answers is very accu­rate. It’s an enter­tain­ing read, and you’ll also learn a bit about things like bal­lis­tics, DNA, the oceans, the atmos­phere, and light­ning along the way.

XKCD, by Ran­dall Munroe. A col­lec­tion of posts from Munroe’s Blog XKCD, which is made up of Car­toons he Draws mak­ing fun of things-Most­ly Sci­en­tists and Com­put­ers, But lots of Oth­er things too. There’s One About Sci­en­tists hold­ing A Press Con­fer­ence to Reveal Their dis­cov­ery That Life is arsenic-based. They research press con­fer­ences and find out that some­times it’s good to serve food that’s relat­ed to the sub­ject of the con­fer­ence. The last pan­el is all the reporters dead on the floor because they ate arsenic. It’s that kind of humor, which not every­body loves, but I do.

On Immu­ni­ty , by Eula Biss. When I stum­bled across this book on the Inter­net, I thought it might be a worth­while read. I had no idea what a plea­sure read­ing it would be. Biss, an essay­ist and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er, exam­ines what lies behind peo­ple’s fears of vac­ci­nat­ing their chil­dren. Like many of us, she con­cludes that vac­cines are safe, effec­tive, and almost mirac­u­lous tools for pro­tect­ing chil­dren against need­less suf­fer­ing. But she is not out to demo­nize any­one who holds oppos­ing views. This is a thought­ful and beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten book about a very impor­tant top­ic.

How to Lie With Sta­tis­tics , by Dar­rell Huff. I Picked up this Short, Easy-to-Read Book after See­ing it on A Wall Street Jour­nal list of good Books for Investors . I enjoyed it so much That it WAS One of A Hand­ful of Books I rec­om­mend­ed to every­one at TED this year. It was first pub­lished in 1954, but aside from a few anachro­nis­tic exam­ples (it has been a long time since bread cost 5 cents a loaf in the Unit­ed States), it does not feel dat­ed. One chap­ter shows you how visu­als can be used to exag­ger­ate trends and give dis­tort­ed comparisons‑a time­ly reminder, giv­en how often info­graph­ics show up in your Face­book and Twit­ter feeds these days. A use­ful intro­duc­tion to the use of sta­tis­tics, and a help­ful refresh­er for any­one who is already well versed in it.

Should We Eat Meat?, by Vaclav Smil. The rich­er the world gets, the more meat it eats. And the more meat it eats, the big­ger the threat to the plan­et. How do we square this cir­cle? Vaclav Smil takes his usu­al clear-eyed view of the whole land­scape, from meat’s role in human evo­lu­tion to hard ques­tions about ani­mal cru­el­ty. While it would be great if peo­ple want­ed to eat less meat, I do not think we can expect large num­bers of peo­ple to make dras­tic reduc­tions. I’m bet­ting on inno­va­tion, includ­ing high­er agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the devel­op­ment of meat sub­sti­tutes, to help the world meet its need for meat. A time­ly book, though prob­a­bly the least beach-friend­ly one on this list.

You can get more ideas from Bill Gates at Gates Notes.

If you’re look­ing to do some more DIY edu­ca­tion this sum­mer, don’t miss the fol­low­ing rich col­lec­tions:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture

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Norman Rockwell Illustrates Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn (1936–1940)

in Art, Books, Literature | May 22nd, 2015

Sawyer 1

There’s no get­ting around it: Nor­man Rock­well was a square. There’s also no get­ting around the fact that his career helped define the way main­stream Amer­i­cans saw them­selves for decades. And while an artist like Rockwell—so steeped in nos­tal­gia, so lack­ing in irony and a taste for transgression—might have fad­ed into com­plete irrel­e­vance amidst the tumult of the six­ties, the oppo­site in fact occurred. Instead of pale, freck­le-faced scamps and neigh­bor­ly civ­il ser­vants, Rock­well paint­ed like­ness­es of world lead­ers like Nehru and Nass­er, as well as a now icon­ic sym­bol of the Civ­il Rights strug­gle on a 1964 Look mag­a­zine cov­er.

Sawyer 2

The six­ties Rock­well, though still very much a pur­vey­or of small town Amer­i­cana, became a some­what weight­i­er fig­ure, even if he nev­er gained (or sought) accep­tance in the art world. But we might think of Rock­well as work­ing on two reg­is­ters through­out his career—as the PG-rat­ed painter of mis­chie­vous, child­ish nice­ness, and the earnest com­men­ta­tor on mores and val­ues in adult soci­ety. In a way, these two sides of America’s most pop­u­lar illus­tra­tor mir­ror those of the nation’s most pop­u­lar writer, Mark Twain. Though sep­a­rat­ed by a gen­er­a­tion, the two, writes the Mark Twain House & Museum’s web­site, are “twinned in many ways in the pub­lic con­scious­ness.”

Sawyer 3

In part, this is because Rock­well illus­trat­ed for Her­itage Press two of Twain’s most famous books, The Adven­tures of Tom Sawyer in 1936 and The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn in 1940. Above, see three of Rockwell’s illus­tra­tions from Tom Sawyer and, below, one from his Huck Finn. The dif­fer­ences between the two books (so hilar­i­ous­ly con­trast­ed by Louis CK), could stand for the two sides of both Twain and Rock­well. As the Mark Twain House puts it, “some crit­ics have dis­missed [Twain and Rockwell’s] work as light­weight, blithe­ly ignor­ing the impor­tant state­ments they made on race.” Tom Sawyer is a light­weight book, the work of Twain the pop­u­lar humorist. (Twain him­self would say, “my books are water: those of the great genius­es are wine. Every­body drinks water.”) Huck Finn on the oth­er hand is a seri­ous adult nov­el with seri­ous adult themes. For all of its flaws, it makes an admirable attempt to iden­ti­fy with and faith­ful­ly ren­der the plight of enslaved peo­ple.

Huck Finn Rockwell

Twain’s great strength as a seri­ous writer was his wealth of empa­thy, a qual­i­ty Rock­well man­i­fest­ed as well. In fact, in order to best rep­re­sent Twain’s books, the illus­tra­tor trav­eled to their set­ting, Han­ni­bal, Mis­souri, where he “acquired a new respect for the char­ac­ters,” writes the Nor­man Rock­well Muse­um. “The longer I worked at the task,” Rock­well wrote, “the more in love with the dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties I became.” Illus­tra­tion and design blog Today’s Inspi­ra­tion points out that Rock­well pur­chased old clothes from the Han­ni­bal locals to “soak up the atmos­phere”: “Of all the illus­tra­tors (and there were quite a few) that illus­trat­ed these nov­els in the past, Rock­well was the first to vis­it Mark Twain’s home town. In typ­i­cal Rock­well fash­ion, no amount of detail or research was ignored, faked or quick­ly glossed over.”

Sawyer 4

Today’s Inspi­ra­tion zooms in on details from sev­er­al of the Tom Sawyer paint­ings to show the fine, almost Ver­meer-like atten­tion Rock­well lav­ished on each illus­tra­tion. The exten­sive exam­i­na­tion of these ear­ly Rock­well clas­sics makes a good case for the folksy illus­tra­tor as a “sto­ry­telling genius with pal­let and brush.” Rock­well may be dis­missed as a cre­ator of kitsch, and in some cas­es the charge is jus­ti­fied, but—like Twain—even his lighter work depend­ed on a fine atten­tion to details of set­ting and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that make his work mem­o­rable and mov­ing, in its corni­est and its weight­i­est moments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50,000 Nor­man Rock­well Pho­tographs Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Twain’sHuckleberry Finn (1996)

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

Mark Twain Writes a Rap­tur­ous Let­ter to Walt Whit­man on the Poet’s 70th Birth­day (1889)

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

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