Guidelines for Handling William Faulkner’s Drinking During Foreign Trips From the US State Department (1955)

in History, Literature | February 27th, 2015

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Image by Carl Van Vecht­en, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

There’s a polite turn of phrase I’ve always found amus­ing, if a lit­tle sad; when some­one has too much to drink at a social func­tion and embar­rass­es him or her­self, we say the per­son has been “over­served.” This euphemism gra­cious­ly lays the blame at the host’s feet rather than the some­times shame­faced imbiber’s, sug­gest­ing that a good host cares enough about his or her guests—whether they be light­weights or binge-drink­ing alcoholics—to mon­i­tor their intake and keep things on an even keel. In the case of one noto­ri­ous­ly hard-drink­ing guest, nov­el­ist William Faulkn­er, this respon­si­bil­i­ty became much more than the tact­ful bur­den of a few friends. Keep­ing an eye on the writer’s drink­ing became a man­date of State Depart­ment offi­cers at the U.S. Infor­ma­tion Agency dur­ing Faulkn­er’s offi­cial trips abroad.

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Since his 1950 Nobel win—writes Greg Barn­his­el at Slate—Faulkn­er was in high demand as a Cold War good­will ambas­sador for Amer­i­can cul­ture, along with Martha Gra­ham, John Updike, and Louis Arm­strong, all “liv­ing proof that Amer­i­ca wasn’t just Mick­ey Mouse and chew­ing gum.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as most every­one knows, “the author had a bit of a drink­ing prob­lem.” Dur­ing a 1955 vis­it to Japan, for exam­ple, he got so drunk at the wel­come recep­tion “that the U.S. ambas­sador ordered he be put on the next plane back to the states.” U.S. offi­cials may have been embar­rassed, but the Japan­ese, it seems, did not feel that Faulkner’s drink­ing was a hin­drance. Accord­ing to Dr. Leon Picon, books offi­cer at the Tokyo embassy, the writer’s hosts “didn’t see any­thing wrong with the amount of drink that he had, and they under­stood when he went off com­plete­ly, and was not com­mu­ni­ca­ble again….” Rather than send Faulkn­er home, Picon found ways to make sure his guest was nev­er over­served.

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Picon—whom Faulkn­er called his “wet nurse”—composed and dis­creet­ly cir­cu­lat­ed a doc­u­ment called “Guide­lines for Han­dling Mr. William Faulkn­er on His Trips Abroad.” These instruc­tions came from Picon’s obser­va­tions that Faulkn­er “fared bet­ter… when there was lit­tle time for con­cert­ed drink­ing.” Of the Japan­ese vis­it Faulkn­er biog­ra­ph­er David Mint­ner writes:

Giv­en shrewd­ly arranged sched­ules and care­ful­ly arranged audi­ences, Faulkn­er talked eas­i­ly about books, war, and race, hunt­ing, farm­ing, and sail­ing. Although his man­ners remained for­mal and his replies for­mu­la­ic, he seemed poised and respon­sive.

Barn­his­el quotes among Picon’s guide­lines for assur­ing a smooth vis­it the fol­low­ing:

  • “Keep sev­er­al pret­ty young girls in the front two rows of any pub­lic appear­ance to keep his atten­tion up”
  • “Put some­one in charge of his liquor at all times so that he doesn’t drink too quick­ly”
  • “Do not allow him to ven­ture out on his own with­out an escort”

As the declas­si­fied mem­o­ran­da above tes­ti­fy (click once, and then again, to view them in a larg­er for­mat), the instruc­tions helped oth­er for­eign ser­vice offi­cers to suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate the writer’s habits. In the memo near the top of the post with the odd­ly-word­ed sub­ject “Exploita­tion of Faulkn­er Vis­it,” Dr. Picon is laud­ed for “humor­ing and han­dling Mr. Faulkn­er,” and his guide­lines cred­it­ed with being “effec­tive and vital to the suc­cess of the whole tour.” The memo just above—written in need­less­ly wordy bureau­cratese, appar­ent­ly by none oth­er than J. Edgar Hoover—commends Picon in more detail:

The Depart­ment wish­es to com­mend Mr. Leon Picon for the superb job he did in describ­ing a pro­ce­dure for devel­op­ing a pro­gram for Mr. Faulkn­er in oth­er coun­tries.

In his book Cold War Mod­ernists, Barn­his­el, a pro­fes­sor at Duquesne Uni­ver­si­ty, notes that Faulkn­er con­tin­ued to rep­re­sent the U.S. abroad, in trips to Greece and Venezuela, and though his drink­ing remained a chal­lenge for his gov­ern­ment han­dlers, the trips were deemed unqual­i­fied suc­cess­es.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Drink­ing with William Faulkn­er: The Writer Had a Taste for The Mint Julep & Hot Tod­dy

Rare Audio: William Faulkn­er Names His Best Nov­el, And the First Faulkn­er Nov­el You Should Read

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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

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George Orwell Creates a Who’s Who List of “Crypto” Communists for British Intelligence Forces (1949)

in History, Politics | February 26th, 2015

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Jour­nal­ist and nov­el­ist Eric Blair, known for all of his pro­fes­sion­al life by the pen name George Orwell, staunch­ly iden­ti­fied him­self as a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist. For exam­ple, in his slim 1946 pub­li­ca­tion Why I Write, he declared, “Every line of seri­ous work I have writ­ten since 1936 has been writ­ten, direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, against total­i­tar­i­an­ism and for demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism as I under­stand it.” Despite the wide­spread blur­ring of lines these days between social­ism and communism—whether through igno­rance or delib­er­ate misleading—the dis­tinc­tion was not lost on Orwell. Though he sup­port­ed an equi­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth and pub­lic insti­tu­tions for the com­mon good, he fierce­ly opposed Sovi­et com­mu­nism as anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic and oppres­sive. As Orwell biog­ra­ph­er John Newsinger writes, one “cru­cial dimen­sion to Orwell’s social­ism was his recog­ni­tion that the Sovi­et Union was not social­ist. Unlike many on the left, instead of aban­don­ing social­ism once he dis­cov­ered the full hor­ror of Stal­in­ist rule in the Sovi­et Union, Orwell aban­doned the Sovi­et Union and instead remained a social­ist.”

Of course, Orwell’s anti-com­mu­nist sen­ti­ments are famil­iar to every stu­dent who has read Ani­mal Farm. Less well known is the degree to which he con­tributed to anti-com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da, even cor­re­spond­ing with British secret ser­vices and keep­ing a black­list of writ­ers he deemed either “cryp­tos” (secret com­mu­nists), “fel­low trav­ellers” (com­mu­nist sym­pa­thiz­ers), or out­right mem­bers of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty. Orwell’s involve­ment with the Infor­ma­tion Research Depart­ment (IRD), a pro­pa­gan­da unit formed in 1948 under the UK’s For­eign Office to com­bat Stal­in­ism at home and abroad has received a good deal of atten­tion in the past few decades, in part because of the dis­cov­ery in 2003 of a pri­vate note­book con­tain­ing his orig­i­nal list. Even before this rev­e­la­tion, biog­ra­phers and his­to­ri­ans had known about the list, which Orwell includ­ed, in part, in a let­ter to his love inter­est Celia Kir­wan, who worked for the IRD, with the instruc­tions that she keep it secret due to its “libelous” nature. Orwell intend­ed that the writ­ers on the list not be asked to work for the IRD because, in his esti­ma­tion, they were peo­ple who could not be trust­ed.

Reac­tions to Orwell’s list have been very mixed. When the sto­ry first broke in the late nineties, Orwell’s long­time friend Michael Foot said he found the list “amaz­ing” and out of char­ac­ter. One of the peo­ple named, Nor­man Macken­zie, ascribed the list to Orwell’s ill­ness, say­ing that the writer was “los­ing his grip on him­self” in 1949 dur­ing his final strug­gle with the tuber­cu­lo­sis that killed him that year. Orwell biog­ra­ph­er Bernard Crick defend­ed his actions, writ­ing, “He did it because he thought the Com­mu­nist Par­ty was a total­i­tar­i­an men­ace. He wasn’t denounc­ing these peo­ple as sub­ver­sives. He was denounc­ing them as unsuit­able for counter-intel­li­gence oper­a­tion.” On the oth­er hand, late left­ist fire­brand jour­nal­ist Alexan­der Cock­burn con­demned Orwell as a “snitch” and thought the list was evi­dence of Orwell’s big­otry, giv­en his sus­pi­cion of Paul Robe­son as “anti-white” and his denounc­ing of oth­ers due to their rumored homo­sex­u­al­i­ty or Jew­ish back­ground. He makes a com­pelling case. What­ev­er Orwell’s moti­va­tions, the effect on the named indi­vid­u­als’ pro­fes­sion­al and polit­i­cal lives was mild, to say the least. This was hard­ly a McCarthyite witch-hunt. Nonethe­less, it’s a lit­tle hard for admir­ers of Orwell not to wince at this col­lab­o­ra­tion with the state secret ser­vice.

Below, see the list he sub­mit­ted to Kir­wan in his let­ter. Fur­ther down is a list of names, includ­ing those of Orson Welles and Kather­ine Hep­burn, that appeared in his note­book but not on the list he gave to the IRD.

Writ­ers and jour­nal­ists

Aca­d­e­mics and sci­en­tists

Actors

Labour MPs

Oth­ers

Peo­ple named in Orwell’s note­book, but not appear­ing on the final IRD list:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

George Orwell Reviews Mein Kampf (1940)

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

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

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Glorious Early 20th-Century Japanese Ads for Beer, Smokes & Sake (1902–1954)

in Art, History | February 25th, 2015

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Ear­li­er this month, we fea­tured adver­tise­ments from Japan’s pre­war Art Deco gold­en age, a peri­od that shows off one facet of the coun­try’s rich graph­ic his­to­ry. While all forms of Japan­ese design remain com­pelling today, any time or place would be hard pressed to com­pete with the world of Japan’s pre-war print adver­tis­ing. It has, espe­cial­ly for the mod­ern West­ern­er, not just a visu­al nov­el­ty but a com­mer­cial nov­el­ty as well: as often as not, sur­viv­ing exam­ples glo­ri­fy now-restrict­ed addic­tive sub­stances like alco­hol and tobac­co.

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At Pink Ten­ta­cle (a com­plete­ly safe-for-work page, believe it or not), you can find a roundup of Japan­ese print adver­tise­ments for prod­ucts that tap into just such vices. Japan opened up to the world in a big way in the mid-to-late 19th cen­tu­ry, and the coun­try’s accep­tance (and sub­se­quent Japan­i­fi­ca­tion) of all things for­eign kept chug­ging along right up until the Sec­ond World War. At the top, we have an appeal­ing exam­ple of this inter­na­tion­al­ism at work in the ser­vice of Saku­ra Beer in the late 1920s. The 1902 ad just above depicts not just the globe but a smok­ing Pega­sus astride it in the name of Pea­cock cig­a­rettes.

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When the tone of Japan­ese life got mil­i­taris­tic in the 1930s, so did the tone of Japan­ese ads. The 1937 poster just above pro­claims “Defense for Coun­try, Tobac­co for Soci­ety,” a mes­sage brought to you by the South Kyoto Tobac­co Sell­ers’ Union. Below, the kind of Japan­ese maid­en pre­war graph­ic design always ren­dered so well appears in a dif­fer­ent, more out­ward­ly patri­ot­ic, and much more naval form.

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It goes with­out say­ing that most of these ads’ design­ers geared them toward the eyes of the Japan­ese — most, but not all. After the war, dur­ing the Unit­ed States’ occu­pa­tion of the coun­try, there appeared print announce­ments in this same styl­is­tic vein urg­ing GIs and oth­er Amer­i­can mil­i­tary per­son­nel to keep on their best com­mer­cial behav­ior. Take, for instance, these words the straight­for­ward­ly named Japan Monop­oly Cor­po­ra­tion placed beside this arche­typ­i­cal­ly court­ly but unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly stern tra­di­tion­al lady in 1954:

drink_smoke_25

A valiant effort, but from the sto­ries I’ve heard of the occu­pa­tion, no amount of graph­ic design could’ve shut down that par­tic­u­lar black mar­ket. And final­ly, no look back at vin­tage Japan­ese ads would be com­plete with­out includ­ing one adver­tise­ment for sake. The ad below is for Zuigan sake, cre­at­ed in 1934.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Adver­tise­ments from Japan’s Gold­en Age of Art Deco

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Two Short Films on Cof­fee and Cig­a­rettes from Jim Jar­musch & Paul Thomas Ander­son

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

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Watch Veterans of The US Civil War Demonstrate the Dreaded Rebel Yell (1930)

in History | February 23rd, 2015

“It was the ugli­est sound that any mor­tal ever heard—even a mor­tal exhaust­ed and unnerved by two days of hard fight­ing, with­out sleep, with­out rest, with­out food and with­out hope.”

- Ambrose Bierce,  “A Lit­tle of Chicka­mau­ga” (1898)

 

“…a shrill ring­ing scream with a touch of the Indi­an war-whoop in it .”

- Lon­don Times reporter William Howard Rus­sell (1861)

 

“…a fox­hunt yip mixed up with sort of a ban­shee squall.”

- His­to­ri­an Shel­by Foote (1990)

 The seces­sion­ist bat­tle cry has long cap­ti­vat­ed Civ­il War schol­ars. A fix­ture of lit­er­a­ture as well as eye­wit­ness accounts, its actu­al sound was a mat­ter of con­jec­ture. It lent itself to col­or­ful descrip­tion. Pho­net­ic ren­der­ings could not hope to repro­duce the chill­ing effect:

“Yee-aay-ee!”  ‑Mar­garet Mitchell

“Wah-Who-Eeee!”  ‑Chester Gool­rick

“Rrrrrr-yah­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­hh-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip!” -H. Allen Smith

Of course, the Rebel Yell is far from the only sound to have struck a note of dread dur­ing The Civ­il War. Hoof­beats, the crack­le of flames, a white voice com­mand­ing you to leave your hid­ing place…

By the time the harm­less-look­ing grand­pas in the archival footage above donned their old uni­forms to demon­strate the yell, the war had been over for six­ty-five years.

There’s a clear sense of occa­sion. The old fel­lows’ pipes are impres­sive, though one begins to under­stand why there was nev­er con­sen­sus regard­ing the actu­al sound of the thing.

Lin­guist Allen Walk­er Read con­clud­ed that the yell—aka the “Pibroch of the Con­fed­er­a­cy,” a vocal lega­cy of blue paint­ed Celtic war­riors fac­ing down the Roman army—was a stress-relat­ed, full body response. Ergo, any hol­ler­ing done after 1865 was a fac­sim­i­le.

At least one vet­er­an agreed. In Ken Burn’s Civ­il War doc­u­men­tary, Shel­by Foote recalled how one of them refused to oblige eager lis­ten­ers at a soci­ety din­ner, claim­ing he could only exe­cute it at a run, and cer­tain­ly not with “a mouth full of false teeth and a bel­ly full of food.”

(An asser­tion sev­er­al legions of grey coat­ed reen­ac­tors clear­ly do not sup­port.)

My 14-year-old son was great­ly amused by the coy­ote-like ulu­la­tions of the old gents. The vari­ety of inter­pre­ta­tions only height­ened his enjoy­ment. Their proud demon­stra­tion is unde­ni­ably rem­i­nis­cent of  Patrick Stewart’s take on the region­al vari­a­tions of moo­ing British cows.

I had to remind my boy that this was once a seri­ous thing. To quote Hen­ry “Dr. Liv­ingston, I Pre­sume” Stan­ley, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Bat­tle of Shiloh as a 21-year-old enlis­tee on the South­ern side:

It drove all san­i­ty and order from among us. It served the dou­ble pur­pose of reliev­ing pent-up feel­ings, and trans­mit­ting encour­age­ment along the attack­ing line. I rejoiced in the shout­ing like the rest. It remind­ed me that there were about four hun­dred com­pa­nies like the Dix­ie Greys, who shared our feel­ings. Most of us, engrossed with the mus­ket-work, had for­got­ten the fact; but the wave after wave of human voic­es, loud­er than all oth­er bat­tle-sounds togeth­er, pen­e­trat­ed to every sense, and stim­u­lat­ed our ener­gies to the utmost.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion,” a New MOOC by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning His­to­ri­an Eric Fon­er

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

Find cours­es on The Civ­il War in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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

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How Clocks Changed Humanity Forever, Making Us Masters and Slaves of Time

in History, Technology | February 19th, 2015

In 1983, the Har­vard eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­an David Lan­des wrote an influ­en­tial book called Rev­o­lu­tion in Time: Clocks and the Mak­ing of the Mod­ern World. There, he argued that time­pieces (more than steamships and pow­er looms) drove the eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment of the West, lead­ing it into the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion and even­tu­al­ly into an advanced form of cap­i­tal­ism. Time­pieces allowed us to mea­sure time in accu­rate, uni­form ways. And, once we had that abil­i­ty, we began to look at the way we live and work quite dif­fer­ent­ly. Lan­des wrote:

“The mechan­i­cal clock was self-con­tained, and once horol­o­gists learned to dri­ve it by means of a coiled spring rather than a falling weight, it could be minia­tur­ized so as to be portable, whether in the house­hold or on the per­son. It was this pos­si­bil­i­ty of wide­spread pri­vate use that laid the basis for ‘time dis­ci­pline,’ as against ‘time obe­di­ence.’ One can … use pub­lic clocks to simon peo­ple for one pur­pose or anoth­er; but that is not punc­tu­al­i­ty. Punc­tu­al­i­ty comes from with­in, not from with­out. It is the mechan­i­cal clock that made pos­si­ble, for bet­ter or worse, a civ­i­liza­tion atten­tive to the pas­sage of time, hence to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and per­for­mance.”

It’s all part of the log­ic that even­tu­al­ly gets us to Ben­jamin Franklin offer­ing this famous piece of advice to a young trades­man, in 1748, “Remem­ber that Time is Mon­ey.”

You can find sim­i­lar argu­ments at the core of this new­ly-released video called “A Briefer His­to­ry of Time: How tech­nol­o­gy changes us in unex­pect­ed ways.” The video brings us back to the 1650s — to a turn­ing point when Chris­ti­aan Huy­gens invent­ed the pen­du­lum clock, which remained the world’s most pre­cise and wide­spread time­keep­ing device for the next three cen­turies. He was­n’t alone. But cer­tain­ly Huy­gens did much to make us mas­ters of time. And cer­tain­ly also slaves to it.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es

David Harvey’s Course on Marx’s Cap­i­tal: Vol­umes 1 & 2 Now Avail­able Free Online

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

The Mar­velous Health Ben­e­fits of Choco­late: A Curi­ous Med­ical Essay from 1631

Every­day Eco­nom­ics: A New Course by Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Where Stu­dents Cre­ate the Syl­labus

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Let Me Librarian That for You: What People Asked Librarians Before Google Came Along

in History, Life | February 18th, 2015

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I often won­der just how I would have done my job(s) before the advent of an inter­net that puts more or less what­ev­er infor­ma­tion I might need right at my fin­ger­tips. The answer, of course, applies to any ques­tion about how we did things in an ear­li­er tech­no­log­i­cal era: we would’ve had to talk to some­one. Some of us would’ve had to talk to a librar­i­an, just like the ones The New York Pub­lic Library has employed (and con­tin­ues to employ) to research and respond to any ques­tions peo­ple need answered.

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The inter­net, as it hap­pens, has loved #let­meli­brari­anthat­fory­ou, the hash­tag the New York Pub­lic Library start­ed using on Insta­gram to iden­ti­fy the unusu­al such ques­tions it field­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry. Their recent dis­cov­ery of a box of note­cards filled with pre­served ques­tions from the 1940s through the 80s, pho­tographs of which they now post on a reg­u­lar basis, has pro­vid­ed a clear win­dow onto the human curios­i­ty of days past — or rather, the instances of human curios­i­ty that librar­i­ans found curi­ous enough to pre­serve in their box labeled “inter­est­ing research ques­tions” and kept behind the desk.

nypl questions 2

Search tech­nol­o­gy, of course, has­n’t yet made human con­sul­tants of every kind obso­lete; there are more Googleable and less Googleable ques­tions, after all. Exam­ples of the for­mer include 1962’s “What is the ges­ta­tion of human beings in days?” (“I was born on 1/29/62,” replies one com­menter. “Maybe my moth­er was get­ting impa­tient!”), 1966’s query about whether Jules Verne wrote Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, and the undat­ed “Are Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, and Socrates the same per­son?”

nypl questions

Some patrons, on the oth­er end of the spec­trum, pre­ferred to ask the unan­swer­able: one need­ed the solu­tion to “the rid­dle of exis­tence,” and anoth­er called in pur­suit of The Oxford Ornithol­o­gy of Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture. Even if the librar­i­ans could­n’t help out these inquis­i­tive peo­ple of the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, I do hope they found a way to sati­ate your curios­i­ty. It almost makes me want to see what mod­ern human­i­ty is Googling right now. Wait, no — I said “almost.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Art Can Answer Life’s Big Ques­tions in Art as Ther­a­py

Woody Allen Answers 12 Uncon­ven­tion­al Ques­tions He Has Nev­er Been Asked Before

What Ques­tions Would Stephen Fry Ask God at the Pearly Gates?

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

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Monopoly: How the Original Game Was Made to Condemn Monopolies & the Abuses of Capitalism

in Economics, History | February 16th, 2015

The great cap­i­tal­ist game of Monop­oly was first mar­ket­ed by Park­er Broth­ers back in Feb­ru­ary 1935, right in the mid­dle of the Great Depres­sion. Even dur­ing hard times, Amer­i­cans could still imag­ine amass­ing a for­tune and secur­ing a monop­oly on the real estate mar­ket. When it comes to mak­ing mon­ey, Amer­i­cans nev­er run out of opti­mism and hope.

Monop­oly did­n’t real­ly begin, how­ev­er, in 1935. And if you trace back the ori­gins of the game, you’ll encounter an iron­ic, curi­ous tale. The sto­ry goes like this: Eliz­a­beth (Lizzie) J. Magie Phillips (1866–1948), a dis­ci­ple of the pro­gres­sive era econ­o­mist Hen­ry George, cre­at­ed the pro­to­type for Monop­oly in 1903. And she did so with the goal of illus­trat­ing the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with con­cen­trat­ing land in pri­vate monop­o­lies.

As Mary Pilon, the author of the new book The Monop­o­lists: Obses­sion, Fury, and the Scan­dal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game, recent­ly explained in The New York Times, the orig­i­nal game — The Landlord’s Game — came with two sets of rules: “an anti-monop­o­list set in which all were reward­ed when wealth was cre­at­ed, and a monop­o­list set in which the goal was to cre­ate monop­o­lies and crush oppo­nents.” Phillips’ approach, Pilon adds, “was a teach­ing tool meant to demon­strate that the first set of rules was moral­ly supe­ri­or.” In oth­er words, the orig­i­nal game of Monop­oly was cre­at­ed as a cri­tique of monop­o­lies — some­thing the trust- and monop­oly-bust­ing pres­i­dent, Theodore Roo­sevelt, could relate to.

Patent­ed in 1904 and self-pub­lished in 1906, The Land­lord’s Game fea­tured “play mon­ey and deeds and prop­er­ties that could be bought and sold. Play­ers bor­rowed mon­ey, either from the bank or from each oth­er, and they had to pay tax­es,” Pilon writes in her new book.

The Landlord’s Game also had the look & feel of the game the Park­er Broth­ers would even­tu­al­ly bas­tardize and make famous. Above, you can see an image from the patent Philips filed in 1904 (top), and anoth­er image from the mar­ket­ed game.

Magie Philips nev­er got cred­it or resid­u­als from the Park­er Broth­ers’ game. Instead, a fel­low named Charles Dar­row came along and draft­ed his own ver­sion of the game, tweaked the design, called it Monop­oly (see the ear­li­est ver­sion here), slapped a copy­right on the pack­ag­ing with his name, and then sold the game to Park­er Broth­ers for a report­ed $7,000, plus resid­u­als. He even­tu­al­ly made mil­lions.

As they like to say in the US, it’s just busi­ness.

For more on the ori­gins of Monop­oly, read Mary Pilon’s piece in The Times.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hen­ry Rollins: Edu­ca­tion is the Cure to “Dis­as­ter Cap­i­tal­ism”

Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mas­ter­piece Stalk­er Gets Adapt­ed into a Video Game

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Hear the World’s Oldest Instrument, the “Neanderthal Flute,” Dating Back Over 43,000 Years

in History, Music | February 10th, 2015

Back in July of last year, we brought you a tran­scrip­tion and a cou­ple of audio inter­pre­ta­tions of the old­est known song in the world, dis­cov­ered in the ancient Syr­i­an city of Ugar­it and dat­ing back to the 14th cen­tu­ry B.C.E.. Like­ly per­formed on an instru­ment resem­bling an ancient lyre, the so-called “Hur­ri­an Cult Song” or “Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6” sounds oth­er­world­ly to our ears, although mod­ern-day musi­col­o­gists can only guess at the song’s tem­po and rhythm.

When we reach even fur­ther back in time, long before the advent of sys­tems of writ­ing, we are com­plete­ly at a loss as to the forms of music pre­his­toric humans might have pre­ferred. But we do know that music was like­ly a part of their every­day lives, as it is ours, and we have some sound evi­dence for the kinds of instru­ments they played. In 2008, arche­ol­o­gists dis­cov­ered frag­ments of flutes carved from vul­ture and mam­moth bones at a Stone Age cave site in south­ern Ger­many called Hohle Fels. These instru­ments date back 42,000 to 43,000 years and may sup­plant ear­li­er find­ings of flutes at a near­by site dat­ing back 35,000 years.

bone flute

Image via the The Archae­ol­o­gy News Net­work

The flutes are metic­u­lous­ly craft­ed, reports Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, par­tic­u­lar­ly the mam­moth bone flute, which would have been “espe­cial­ly chal­leng­ing to make.” At the time of their dis­cov­ery, researchers spec­u­lat­ed that the flutes “may have been one of the cul­tur­al accom­plish­ments that gave the first Euro­pean mod­ern-human (Homo sapi­ens) set­tlers an advan­tage over their now extinct Nean­derthal-human (Homo nean­derthalis) cousins.” But as with so much of our knowl­edge about Nean­derthals, includ­ing new evi­dence of inter­breed­ing with Homo Sapi­ens, these con­clu­sions may have to be revised.

It is per­haps pos­si­ble that the much-under­es­ti­mat­ed Nean­derthals made their own flutes. Or so a 1995 dis­cov­ery of a flute made from a cave bear femur might sug­gest. Found by arche­ol­o­gist Ivan Turk in a Nean­derthal camp­site at Div­je Babe in north­west­ern Slove­nia, this instru­ment (above) is esti­mat­ed to be over 43,000 years old and per­haps as much as 80,000 years old. Accord­ing to musi­col­o­gist Bob Fink, the flute’s four fin­ger holes match four notes of a dia­ton­ic (Do, Re, Mi…) scale. “Unless we deny it is a flute at all,” Fink argues, the notes of the flute “are inescapably dia­ton­ic and will sound like a near-per­fect fit with­in ANY kind of stan­dard dia­ton­ic scale, mod­ern or antique.” To demon­strate the point, the cura­tor of the Sloven­ian Nation­al Muse­um had a clay repli­ca of the flute made. You can hear it played at the top of the post by Sloven­ian musi­cian Ljuben Dimkaros­ki.

The pre­his­toric instru­ment does indeed pro­duce the whole and half tones of the dia­ton­ic scale, so com­plete­ly, in fact, that Dimkaros­ki is able to play frag­ments of sev­er­al com­po­si­tions by Beethoven, Ver­di, Rav­el, Dvořák, and oth­ers, as well as some free impro­vi­sa­tions “mock­ing ani­mal voic­es.” The video’s Youtube page explains his choice of music as “a pot­pour­ri of frag­ments from com­po­si­tions of var­i­ous authors,” select­ed “to show the capa­bil­i­ties of the instru­ment, tonal range, stac­ca­to, lega­to, glis­san­do….” (Dimkaros­ki claims to have fig­ured out how to play the instru­ment in a dream.) Although arche­ol­o­gists have hot­ly dis­put­ed whether or not the flute is actu­al­ly the work of Nean­derthals, as Turk sug­gest­ed, should it be so, the find­ing would con­tra­dict claims that the close human rel­a­tives “left no firm evi­dence of hav­ing been musi­cal.” But what­ev­er its ori­gin, it seems cer­tain­ly to be a hominid arti­fact—not the work of preda­tors—and a key to unlock­ing the pre­his­to­ry of musi­cal expres­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia

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

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