R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country Features 114 Illustrations of the Artist’s Favorite Musicians

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Music | October 4th, 2013

CrumbHeroes

It was one of my favorite gifts of Christ­mas 2006. No, all apolo­gies to every­one who bought me thought­ful gew­gaws, but it was, with­out a doubt, the favorite. A hum­ble, unas­sum­ing pack­age con­tained a ver­i­ta­ble ency­clo­pe­dia of Amer­i­cana: over one hun­dred por­traits of jazz, blues, and coun­try artists from the gold­en eras of Amer­i­can music, all drawn by a fore­most anti­quar­i­an of pre-WWII music, R. Crumb. Beside each portrait—some made with Crumb’s exag­ger­at­ed pro­por­tions and thick-lined shad­ing, some soft­er and more realist—was a brief, one-para­graph bio, just enough to sit­u­ate the singer, play­er, or band with­in the pan­theon.

Though a fan of this sort of thing may think that it could get no bet­ter, glued to the back cov­er was a slip­case con­tain­ing a CD with 21 tracks—seven from each genre. A quick scan showed a few famil­iar names: Skip James, Char­lie Pat­ton, Jel­ly Roll Mor­ton. Then there were such unknown enti­ties as Mem­phis Jug Band, Crockett’s Ken­tucky Moun­taineers, and East Texas Ser­e­naders, culled from Crumb’s enor­mous, library-size archive of rare 78s. Joy to the world.

Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try began in the 80s with a series of illus­trat­ed trad­ing cards, as you can see in the video above (which only cov­ers the blues and jazz cor­ners of the tri­an­gle). The first cards, “Heroes of the Blues,” came attached to old-time reis­sues from the Yazoo record com­pa­ny. Even­tu­al­ly expand­ing the cards to include jazz and coun­try, work­ing in each cat­e­go­ry from old pho­tos or news­reel footage, Crumb cov­ered quite a lot of musi­co-his­tor­i­cal ground. Archivists and authors Stephen Calt, David Jasen, and Richard Nevins wrote the short blurbs. Final­ly Yazoo, rather than issu­ing the cards indi­vid­u­al­ly with each record, com­bined them into boxed sets.

The book—which val­i­dates my sense that this music belongs togeth­er cheek by jowl, even if some of its par­ti­sans can’t stand each other’s company—evolved through a painstak­ing process in which Crumb redrew and recol­ored the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions from the print­ed trad­ing cards (the orig­i­nal art­work hav­ing dis­ap­peared). You can fol­low one step of that process in a detailed descrip­tion of Crumb’s con­ver­sion of the blues cards to a silkscreened poster. Crumb’s process is as thor­ough as his peri­od knowl­edge. But Crumb fans know that the com­ic artist’s rev­er­ence for Amer­i­cana goes beyond his col­lect­ing and extends to his own ver­sion of kitchen-sink blue­grass, blues, and jazz. Lis­ten to Crumb on the ban­jo above with his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders. And if any­one feels like get­ting me a Christ­mas present this year, I’d like a copy of their record Chasin Rain­bows. On vinyl of course.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

Record Cov­er Art by Under­ground Car­toon­ist Robert Crumb

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

in Books, Music | October 1st, 2013

Image by Avro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“David Bowie Is,” the exten­sive ret­ro­spec­tive exhib­it of the artist and his fab­u­lous cos­tumes, hit Toron­to last Fri­day (see our post from ear­li­er today), and as many peo­ple have report­ed, in addi­tion to those costumes—and pho­tos, instru­ments, set designs, lyric sheets, etc.—the show includes a list of Bowie’s favorite books. Described as a “vora­cious read­er” by cura­tor Geof­frey Marsh, Bowie’s top 100 book list spans decades, from Richard Wright’s raw 1945 mem­oir Black Boy to Susan Jacoby’s 2008 analy­sis of U.S. anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism in The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son.

Bowie’s always had a com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with the U.S., but his list shows a lot of love to Amer­i­can writ­ers, from the afore­men­tioned to Tru­man Capote, Hubert Sel­by, Jr., Saul Bel­low, Junot Diaz, Jack Ker­ouac and many more. He’s also very fond of fel­low Brits George Orwell, Ian McE­wan, and Julian Barnes and loves Mishi­ma and Bul­gakov.  You can read the full list below or over at Open Book Toron­to, who urges you to “grab one of these titles and set­tle in to read — and just think, some­where, at some point, David Bowie (or, to be more accu­rate, the man behind David Bowie, David Jones) was doing the exact same thing.” If that sort of thing inspires you to pick up a good book, go for it. You could also peruse the list, then puz­zle over the lit­er­ate Bowie’s lyrics to “I Can’t Read.” You can also explore a new relat­ed book–Bowie’s Book­shelf: The Hun­dred Books that Changed David Bowie’s Life.

  1. Inter­views With Fran­cis Bacon by David Sylvester
  2. Bil­ly Liar by Kei­th Water­house
  3. Room At The Top by John Braine
  4. On Hav­ing No Head by Dou­glass Hard­ing
  5. Kaf­ka Was The Rage by Ana­tole Bro­yard
  6. A Clock­work Orange by Antho­ny Burgess
  7. City Of Night by John Rechy
  8. The Brief Won­drous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
  9. Madame Bovary by Gus­tave Flaubert
  10. Ili­ad by Homer
  11. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkn­er
  12. Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
  13. Berlin Alexan­der­platz by Alfred Döblin
  14. Inside The Whale And Oth­er Essays by George Orwell
  15. Mr. Nor­ris Changes Trains by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood
  16. Halls Dic­tio­nary Of Sub­jects And Sym­bols In Art by James A. Hall
  17. David Bomberg by Richard Cork
  18. Blast by Wyn­d­ham Lewis
  19. Pass­ing by Nel­la Lar­son
  20. Beyond The Bril­lo Box by Arthur C. Dan­to
  21. The Ori­gin Of Con­scious­ness In The Break­down Of The Bicam­er­al Mind by Julian Jaynes
  22. In Bluebeard’s Cas­tle by George Stein­er
  23. Hawksmoor by Peter Ack­royd
  24. The Divid­ed Self by R. D. Laing
  25. The Stranger by Albert Camus
  26. Infants Of The Spring by Wal­lace Thur­man
  27. The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
  28. The Song­lines by Bruce Chatwin
  29. Nights At The Cir­cus by Angela Carter
  30. The Mas­ter And Mar­gari­ta by Mikhail Bul­gakov
  31. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
  32. Loli­ta by Vladimir Nabokov
  33. Her­zog by Saul Bel­low
  34. Puck­oon by Spike Mil­li­gan
  35. Black Boy by Richard Wright
  36. The Great Gats­by by F. Scott Fitzger­ald
  37. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishi­ma
  38. Dark­ness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
  39. The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
  40. McTeague by Frank Nor­ris
  41. Mon­ey by Mar­tin Amis
  42. The Out­sider by Col­in Wil­son
  43. Strange Peo­ple by Frank Edwards
  44. Eng­lish Jour­ney by J.B. Priest­ley
  45. A Con­fed­er­a­cy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
  46. The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
  47. 1984 by George Orwell
  48. The Life And Times Of Lit­tle Richard by Charles White
  49. Awop­bopaloobop Alop­bam­boom: The Gold­en Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
  50. Mys­tery Train by Greil Mar­cus
  51. Beano (com­ic, ’50s)
  52. Raw (com­ic, ’80s)
  53. White Noise by Don DeLil­lo
  54. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The South­ern Dream Of Free­dom by Peter Gural­nick
  55. Silence: Lec­tures And Writ­ing by John Cage
  56. Writ­ers At Work: The Paris Review Inter­views edit­ed by Mal­colm Cow­ley
  57. The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Char­lie Gillette
  58. Octo­bri­ana And The Russ­ian Under­ground by Peter Sadecky
  59. The Street by Ann Petry
  60. Won­der Boys by Michael Chabon
  61. Last Exit To Brook­lyn By Hubert Sel­by, Jr.
  62. A People’s His­to­ry Of The Unit­ed States by Howard Zinn
  63. The Age Of Amer­i­can Unrea­son by Susan Jaco­by
  64. Met­ro­pol­i­tan Life by Fran Lebowitz
  65. The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stop­pard
  66. The Bridge by Hart Crane
  67. All The Emperor’s Hors­es by David Kidd
  68. Fin­ger­smith by Sarah Waters
  69. Earth­ly Pow­ers by Antho­ny Burgess
  70. The 42nd Par­al­lel by John Dos Pas­sos
  71. Tales Of Beat­nik Glo­ry by Ed Saun­ders
  72. The Bird Artist by Howard Nor­man
  73. Nowhere To Run The Sto­ry Of Soul Music by Ger­ri Hir­shey
  74. Before The Del­uge by Otto Friedrich
  75. Sex­u­al Per­son­ae: Art And Deca­dence From Nefer­ti­ti To Emi­ly Dick­in­son by Camille Paglia
  76. The Amer­i­can Way Of Death by Jes­si­ca Mit­ford
  77. In Cold Blood by Tru­man Capote
  78. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
  79. Teenage by Jon Sav­age
  80. Vile Bod­ies by Eve­lyn Waugh
  81. The Hid­den Per­suaders by Vance Packard
  82. The Fire Next Time by James Bald­win
  83. Viz (com­ic, ear­ly ’80s)
  84. Pri­vate Eye (satir­i­cal mag­a­zine, ’60s – ’80s)
  85. Select­ed Poems by Frank O’Hara
  86. The Tri­al Of Hen­ry Kissinger by Christo­pher Hitchens
  87. Flaubert’s Par­rot by Julian Barnes
  88. Mal­doror by Comte de Lautréa­mont
  89. On The Road by Jack Ker­ouac
  90. Mr. Wilson’s Cab­i­net of Won­der by Lawrence Weschler
  91. Zanoni by Edward Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton
  92. Tran­scen­den­tal Mag­ic, Its Doc­trine and Rit­u­al by Eliphas Lévi
  93. The Gnos­tic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
  94. The Leop­ard by Giuseppe Di Lampe­dusa
  95. Infer­no by Dante Alighieri
  96. A Grave For A Dol­phin by Alber­to Den­ti di Pira­jno
  97. The Insult by Rupert Thom­son
  98. In Between The Sheets by Ian McE­wan
  99. A People’s Tragedy by Orlan­do Figes
  100. Jour­ney Into The Whirl­wind by Euge­nia Ginzburg

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 14 ) |

Virginia Woolf on James Joyce’s Ulysses, “Never Did Any Book So Bore Me.” Shen Then Quit at Page 200

in Books, Literature | September 30th, 2013

woolf joyce

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Goodreads, that social net­work for the book­ish, recent­ly post­ed on its blog the results of a sur­vey tak­en among its 20 mil­lion mem­bers with the melan­choly title “The Psy­chol­o­gy of Aban­don­ment.” Com­plete with info­graph­ic, the sur­vey gives us, among oth­er things, a list of the “Top Five Aban­doned Clas­sics.” James Joyce’s Ulysses is third on the list, and I’m not at all sur­prised to find it there. One must know Ulysses, it seems, to mer­it con­sid­er­a­tion as a cul­tur­al­ly lit­er­ate per­son. But Ulysses, per­haps more than any work of mod­ern lit­er­a­ture, can eas­i­ly dis­cour­age. It presents us with a land­scape so psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly com­plex, so dense with lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal allu­sion and con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al ref­er­ence, that I can­not say I would have known what to do with it had I not read it under the aus­pices of an august Irish Joyce schol­ar and with Don Gifford’s guide­book Ulysses Anno­tat­ed ready at hand. I had nowhere near the breadth and depth of read­ing Joyce seems to assume of his ide­al read­er. Few peo­ple do.

Two of Joyce’s con­tem­po­raries, how­ev­er, had such a grasp of lit­er­a­ture and lan­guage: T.S. Eliot and Vir­ginia Woolf. And the two had quite a lot to say about the book, much of it to each oth­er. Eliot rec­om­mend­ed Joyce’s nov­el to Woolf, and very soon after its 1922 pub­li­ca­tion, she pur­chased her own copy. At the time, Woolf was hard at work on her sto­ry “Mrs. Dal­loway on Bond Street,” which would even­tu­al­ly grow into her next nov­el, Mrs. Dal­loway. She was also immersed in Proust’s epic Remem­brance of Things Past, just begin­ning the sec­ond vol­ume. Accord­ing to Dartmouth’s James Hef­fer­nan, Woolf “chafes at the thought of Ulysses,” writ­ing haugh­ti­ly:

Oh what a bore about Joyce! Just as I was devot­ing myself to Proust—Now I must put aside Proust—and what I sus­pect is that Joyce is one of those unde­liv­ered genius­es, whom one can’t neglect, or silence their groans, but must help them out, at con­sid­er­able pains to one­self.

Hef­fer­nan chron­i­cles Woolf’s read­ing of Ulysses, which she doc­u­ment­ed in her diary in a “with­er­ing assess­ment” as the work of “a self-taught work­ing man… ego­tis­tic, insis­tent, raw, strik­ing, & ulti­mate­ly nau­se­at­ing.” “When one can have cooked flesh,” she writes, “why have the raw?”

This pri­vate crit­i­cal opin­ion Woolf record­ed after read­ing only 200 pages of the nov­el. Hef­fer­nan makes the case that she read no more there­after. Though she claimed to have “fin­ished Ulysses,” he takes her to mean she had fin­ished with the book, putting it aside like those bewil­dered, bored, or exas­per­at­ed Goodreads mem­bers. Nev­er­the­less, Woolf could not shake Joyce. She con­tin­ued to write about him, to Eliot and her­self. “Nev­er did any book so bore me,” she would write, and many more very dis­parag­ing remarks about her bril­liant con­tem­po­rary.

Over and again she sav­aged Joyce in her diaries; so much so that it seems to Hef­fer­nan and Woolf schol­ar Suzette Henke that hers is a case of protest­ing too much against an author whom, Henke alleges, was her “artis­tic ‘dou­ble,’ a male ally in the mod­ernist bat­tle for psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism.” This may indeed be so. In the midst of her char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of Joyce as uncouth, bor­ing, “under­bred” and worse, she admits in her diary that what she attempt­ed in her fic­tion was “prob­a­bly being bet­ter done by Mr. Joyce.” While hard­ly any read­er of Ulysses—among those who fin­ish it and those who don’t—can say they are attempt­ing some­thing near what he accom­plished, we might all find some solace in know­ing that a read­er as sharp as Vir­ginia Woolf found his mod­ernist mas­ter­piece either so bor­ing or so intim­i­dat­ing that even she may not have been able to fin­ish it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

On Blooms­day, Hear James Joyce Read From his Epic Ulysses, 1924

Read Ulysses Seen, A Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of James Joyce’s Clas­sic

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book (also find in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 20 ) |

Free Audio: 46 Minute Reading from Dave Eggers’ New Novel, The Circle

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | September 29th, 2013

dave_eggers_the_circle

Dave Eggers, author of A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius, has a new book com­ing out in ear­ly Octo­ber, The Cir­cle, a nov­el about “a young woman who goes to work at an omnipo­tent tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny and gets sucked into a cor­po­rate cul­ture that knows no dis­tinc­tion between work and life, pub­lic and pri­vate.” Break­ing with tra­di­tion, The New York Times has placed the nov­el­’s cov­er on the cov­er of its own Sun­day Mag­a­zine. It has also print­ed a lengthy excerpt from the book. Read it online here, or lis­ten right below (or on iTunes) to a read­ing of the excerpt by actor Don Gra­ham. It runs 46 min­utes.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The 10 Greatest Books Ever, According to 125 Top Authors (Download Them for Free)

in Books | September 25th, 2013

ak cover 2

Ear­li­er this month, we high­light­ed The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics. Fea­tur­ing films by Hitch­cock, Kubrick, Welles and Felli­ni, this mas­ter list came togeth­er in 2012 when Sight & Sound (the cin­e­ma jour­nal of the British Film Insti­tute) asked con­tem­po­rary crit­ics and direc­tors to name their 12 favorite movies. Near­ly 900 cinephiles respond­ed, and, from those sub­mis­sions, a meta list of 10 was culled.

So how about some­thing sim­i­lar for books, you ask? For that, we can look back to 2007, when J. Ped­er Zane, the book edi­tor of the Raleigh News & Observ­er, asked 125 top writ­ers to name their favorite books — writ­ers like Nor­man Mail­er, Annie Proulx, Stephen King, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Mes­sud, and Michael Chabon. The lists were all com­piled in an edit­ed col­lec­tion, The Top Ten: Writ­ers Pick Their Favorite Books, and then pref­aced by one uber list, “The Top Top Ten.”

Zane explained the method­ol­o­gy behind the uber list as fol­lows: “The par­tic­i­pants could pick any work, by any writer, by any time peri­od.… After award­ing ten points to each first-place pick, nine to sec­ond-place picks, and so on, the results were tab­u­lat­ed to cre­ate the Top Top Ten List — the very best of the best.”

The short list appears below, along with links to elec­tron­ic ver­sions of the works (and tra­di­tion­al pub­lished edi­tions). There’s one notable excep­tion, Vladimir Nabokov’s Loli­ta. We could­n’t pro­vide that elec­tron­ic text, but we do have some­thing spe­cial — an audio record­ing of Nabokov read­ing a chap­ter from his con­tro­ver­sial 1955 nov­el.

The texts list­ed below are per­ma­nent­ly housed in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks, along with many oth­er clas­sics. In many cas­es, you’ll find audio ver­sions of the same works in our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. If you have ques­tions about how to load files onto your Kin­dle, please see this relat­ed instruc­tion­al video.

Got an issue with any of the selec­tions? Tell us all about it in the com­ments sec­tion below.

1. Anna Karen­i­na, by Leo Tol­stoy

iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats

2. Madame Bovary, by Gus­tave Flaubert

3. War and Peace, by Leo Tol­stoy

4. Loli­ta, by Vladimir Nabokov

5. The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, by Mark Twain

6. Ham­let, by William Shake­speare

7. The Great Gats­by, by F. Scott Fitzger­ald

8. In Search of Lost Time, by Mar­cel Proust

9. The Sto­ries of Anton Chekhov

10. Mid­dle­march, by George Eliot

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

The Ten Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 358 Film­mak­ers

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

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 223 ) |

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

in Books, Food & Drink, K-12, Literature | September 24th, 2013

dahl-kitkat

It comes as no sur­prise that Roald Dahl, author of Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, pos­sessed a sweet tooth. Hav­ing daz­zled young read­ers with visions of Cav­i­ty-Fill­ing Caramels, Ever­last­ing Gob­stop­pers, and snozzber­ry-fla­vored wall­pa­per, Dahl’s can­dy of choice was the more pedes­tri­an Kit-Kat bar. In addi­tion to savor­ing one dai­ly (a lux­u­ry lit­tle Char­lie Buck­et could but dream of, pri­or to win­ning that most gold­en of tick­ets) he invent­ed a frozen con­fec­tion called “Kit-Kat Pud­ding.”

The orig­i­nal recipe is, appro­pri­ate­ly, sim­ple enough for a child to make. Stack as many Kit-Kats as you like into a tow­er, using whipped cream for mor­tar, then shove the entire thing into the freez­er, and leave it there until sol­id.

Book pub­li­cist and self-described lit­er­ary fan­girl Nicole Vil­leneuve does him one bet­ter on Paper and Salt, a food blog devot­ed to the recipes of icon­ic authors. Her re-imag­ined and renamed Frozen Home­made Kit-Kat Cake adds bit­ter­sweet choco­late ganache, replac­ing Dahl’s beloved can­dy bars with high qual­i­ty wafer cook­ies. It remains a pret­ty straight-for­ward prepa­ra­tion, not quite as deca­dent as the Mar­quis de Sade’s Molten Choco­late Espres­so Cake with Pome­gran­ate, but sure­ly more to Dahl’s lik­ing than Jane Austen’s Brown But­ter Bread Pud­ding Tarts would have been. (The author once wrote that he pre­ferred his choco­late straight.)

Vil­leneuve spices her entry with his­tor­i­cal con­text and anec­dotes regard­ing ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry can­dy mar­ket­ing, Dahl’s hatred of the Cad­bury Crème Egg, and his dog’s han­ker­ing for Smar­ties. Details such as these make Paper and Salt, which fea­tures plen­ty of savories to go with the sweet, a deli­cious read even for non-cooks.

Mean­while, dessert chefs unwill­ing to source their ingre­di­ents from Rite-Aid’s Hal­loween aisle might try Sylvia Plath’s Lemon Pud­ding Cakes (“Is it taboo to write about bak­ing and Sylvia Plath?” Vil­leneuve won­ders), C.S. Lewis’ Cin­na­mon Bour­bon Rice Pud­ding, Willa Cather’s Spiced Plum Kolache or Wal­lace Stevens’ Coconut Caramel Gra­ham Cook­ies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

Allen Ginsberg’s Per­son­al Recipe for Cold Sum­mer Borscht

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyza­ki

Ayun Hal­l­i­day  doc­u­ment­ed her own sweet tooth in Dirty Sug­ar Cook­ies: Culi­nary Obser­va­tions, Ques­tion­able Taste. Fol­low her @AyunHallliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

A Journey into the Mind of P: A Cinematic Look at Thomas Pynchon

in Books | September 10th, 2013

Nov­el­ist Thomas Pyn­chon does not, as his read­ers well know, do pub­lic­i­ty. But does he need to? When a man has writ­ten books like V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Grav­i­ty’s Rain­bow, does­n’t the appear­ance of a new one pub­li­cize itself, in some sense? Pyn­chon’s eighth nov­el Bleed­ing Edge, a seem­ing­ly hard-boiled yet char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly askew and para­noia-fla­vored tale of post-tech-bub­ble but pre‑9/11 New York, comes out on Sep­tem­ber 17th, and a cer­tain class of fan has no doubt spent hours scru­ti­niz­ing the excerpt its pub­lish­er Pen­guin has already released. A cer­tain oth­er class of fan, the sort who spent long dorm-room hours with the ear­ly books but who some­how nev­er sum­moned the will for the more recent ones, will at least have felt their curios­i­ty piqued. To anoth­er class of fan entire­ly, those who feel like they could get into Pyn­chon but can’t quite deter­mine why or how, we offer the doc­u­men­tary above, Fos­co and Donatel­lo Dubini’s A Jour­ney into the Mind of P.

“I think of Pyn­chon as a cryp­togram,” says one read­er inter­viewed in the film. “We are almost, in a sense, code­break­ers. He presents a puz­zle that we are try­ing to crack.” That, as well as any­thing, sums up my own find­ings from talk­ing to Pyn­chon die-hards about their enthu­si­asm for their author of choice. A Jour­ney into the Mind of P actu­al­ly exam­ines two minds at once: the mind of Pyn­chon the writer, and the mind of the Pyn­chon fan, which seeks not only to grasp the cul­tur­al­ly sweep­ing, infor­ma­tion-dense height­ened real­i­ty of the nov­els, but also to con­struct a coher­ent image of the man who cre­ates that real­i­ty. Thus far, these read­ers have had to draw this image from only the nov­els them­selves (though, in sev­er­al cas­es, large and labyrinthine ones), and for the fore­see­able future they must con­tin­ue to do so. At least Bleed­ing Edge, what­ev­er its recep­tion, will add almost 500 more pages to their body of avail­able evi­dence. Best of luck, Pyn­chon exegetes with copies on pre-order. Per­haps the rest of you would rather start with the book trail­er just above. A new Pyn­chon nov­el may always make a splash, but Pen­guin’s pub­lic­i­ty depart­ment isn’t tak­ing any chances.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the First Page of Thomas Pynchon’s New Nov­el, Bleed­ing Edge

New Pyn­chon Book [Inher­ent Vice] Out Today: Watch the Trail­er

Thomas Pyn­chon Nov­els Com­ing to eBook, at Long Last

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch an Animation of Shaun Tan’s All-Ages Picture Book The Lost Thing

in Animation, Books, K-12, Life | August 26th, 2013

What would you do if you crossed paths with a jin­gling lost thing whose oven-shaped body, crus­ta­ceous claws, and fleshy ten­ta­cles would seem right at home in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights?

Scream? Run? Release your bow­els?

The anony­mous nar­ra­tor of The Lost Thing, a fif­teen-minute ani­ma­tion born of Shaun Tan’s all-ages pic­ture book, attempts, instead, to iden­ti­fy it empir­i­cal­ly through care­ful obser­va­tion, cal­i­brat­ed mea­sure­ment, and con­trolled exper­i­men­ta­tion. When the sci­en­tif­ic approach fails, he assumes respon­si­bil­i­ty for his strange find, lead­ing it through a clank­ing, grimy land­scape where san­i­ta­tion crews deflate beach balls with pointy sticks after the joy­less hol­i­day crowds are dismissed—a vision of steam­punk in defeat.

We’re loathe to hit you with any more spoil­ers. Suf­fice it to say that this is a fine exam­ple of inno­v­a­tive­ly adapt­ed source mate­r­i­al, and that even­tu­al­ly our sto­ic hero—voiced by British-born Aus­tralian com­ic Tim Minchin—and his charge arrive in a land­scape that should cause the inhab­i­tants of the Island of Mis­fit Toys to stop moon­ing over San­ta.

You will find The Lost Thing list­ed in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Whim­si­cal Ani­ma­tion of Ita­lo Calvino’s Short Sto­ry “The Dis­tance of the Moon”

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

Hard­er Than It Looks: How to Make a Great Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day picks all man­ner of jet­sam off the curbs of her Brook­lyn neigh­bor­hood. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast