“Stop It and Just DO”: Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Advice on Overcoming Creative Blocks, Written by Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse (1965)


A quick fyi: this video is a lit­tle not safe for work.

You know you want to cre­ate some­thing, but how on Earth to get it out of your mind and into real­i­ty? Some­times you sim­ply can’t see the way for­ward, a sit­u­a­tion in which every cre­ator finds them­selves soon­er or lat­er. When the sculp­tor Eva Hesse hit a cre­ative block in 1965, she wrote of her prob­lem to a close friend, the con­cep­tu­al artist Sol Lewitt. He emphat­i­cal­ly sug­gest­ed that she “just stop think­ing, wor­ry­ing, look­ing over your shoul­der,” and fur­ther­more that she stop

won­der­ing, doubt­ing, fear­ing, hurt­ing, hop­ing for some easy way out, strug­gling, grasp­ing, con­fus­ing, itch­ing, scratch­ing, mum­bling, bum­bling, grum­bling, hum­bling, stum­bling, num­bling, ram­bling, gam­bling, tum­bling, scum­bling, scram­bling, hitch­ing, hatch­ing, bitch­ing, moan­ing, groan­ing, hon­ing, bon­ing, horse-shit­ting, hair-split­ting, nit-pick­ing, piss-trick­ling, nose stick­ing, ass-goug­ing, eye­ball-pok­ing, fin­ger-point­ing, alley­way-sneak­ing, long wait­ing, small step­ping, evil-eye­ing, back-scratch­ing, search­ing, perch­ing, besmirch­ing, grind­ing, grind­ing, grind­ing away at your­self. Stop it and just

DO

You can read Lewit­t’s reply in full, which offers much more col­or­ful advice and sup­port­ing ver­biage besides (as well as a far bold­er “DO” than HTML can ren­der), at Let­ters of Note. Though per­son­al­ly tai­lored to Hesse and her dis­tinc­tive sen­si­bil­i­ties, Lewit­t’s sug­ges­tions also show the poten­tial for wider appli­ca­tion: “Try and tick­le some­thing inside you, your ‘weird humor.’ ” “Don’t wor­ry about cool, make your own uncool.” “If you fear, make it work for you — draw & paint your fear & anx­i­ety.” “Prac­tice being stu­pid, dumb, unthink­ing, emp­ty.” “Try to do some BAD work — the worst you can think of and see what hap­pens but main­ly relax and let every­thing go to hell — you are not respon­si­ble for the world — you are only respon­si­ble for your work — so DO IT.”

Though all this has plen­ty of impact on the page, it has an entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind when per­formed by actor (and cham­pi­on let­ter-read­er) Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, as seen and heard in the Let­ters Live video above. Putting on a not-over­done New York accent, the Eng­lish star of Sher­lock and The Imi­ta­tion Game deliv­ers with all nec­es­sary force Lewit­t’s advice to “leave the ‘world’ and ‘ART’ alone and also quit fondling your ego,” to “emp­ty your mind and con­cen­trate on what you are doing,” to know “that you don’t have to jus­ti­fy your work — not even to your­self.” Be warned that this cre­ative coach­ing ses­sion does gets a lit­tle NSFW at times, but then, so do some of the finest works of art — and so do the truths we need to hear to make them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Famous Writ­ers Deal With Writer’s Block: Their Tips & Tricks

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Albert Camus’ Touch­ing Thank You Let­ter to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Listen to a Marathon Reading of Elie Wiesel’s Night

A cou­ple of weeks ago on Jan­u­ary 27, Inter­na­tion­al Holo­caust Remem­brance Day, a diverse group gath­ered for a marathon read­ing of Night, Nobel Prize win­ner, Elie Wiesel’s mem­oir of his youth­ful expe­ri­ences as a pris­on­er in Auschwitz and Buchen­wald.

The event was orga­nized in part by the Nation­al Yid­dish The­atre—fit­ting giv­en that Night was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in Yid­dish, though first pub­lished in French. The theater’s artis­tic direc­tor and sev­er­al actors from past pro­duc­tions claimed sev­er­al of the read­ing slots, but left more than six­ty to be filled by par­tic­i­pants from an inten­tion­al­ly broad pool.

There were rab­bis and Broad­way per­form­ers, a New York­er writer, the Con­sul Gen­er­al of Ger­many, and the Hun­gar­i­an Ambas­sador to the UN…

Stu­dents and edu­ca­tors…

A num­ber of Holo­caust sur­vivors…

Dr. Ruth Wes­t­heimer and Wiesel’s grown son, Elisha, who observed:

At a time when this coun­try is feel­ing so divid­ed, when so much neg­a­tiv­i­ty is cir­cu­lat­ing about those who are dif­fer­ent from our­selves — those who have dif­fer­ent eth­nic­i­ties, reli­gions or even dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal lean­ings — my father’s words are an impor­tant reminder of the dan­gers of the ‘us ver­sus them’ men­tal­i­ty.

It took the vol­un­teer read­ers a lit­tle over four hours to get through the slim vol­ume, which shows up on many Amer­i­can high schools’ required read­ing lists.

The free event was co-spon­sored by the Muse­um of Jew­ish Heritage—A Liv­ing Memo­r­i­al to the Holo­caust, whose loca­tion in low­er Man­hat­tan was quite con­ve­nient to anoth­er impor­tant event tak­ing place that day—an inter­faith ral­ly to protest Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s exec­u­tive order ban­ning immi­grants from 7 coun­tries, sus­pend­ing entry for all refugees for a peri­od of four months, and call­ing for “extreme vet­ting” screen­ings.

There may be times when we are pow­er­less to pre­vent injus­tice, but there must nev­er be a time when we fail to protest.

- Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Accep­tance Speech, Decem­ber, 1986

h/t Jeff N.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Elie Wiesel (RIP) Talks About What Hap­pens When We Die

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

Yes, the Holo­caust Hap­pened, Even If a Top Google Search Result Says It Didn’t

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Albert Camus’ Touching Thank You Letter to His Elementary School Teacher

It’s nev­er too late to thank the teacher who changed your life.

Oprah Win­frey fell to pieces when she was reunit­ed on air with Mrs. Dun­can, her fourth grade teacher, her “first lib­er­a­tor” and “val­ida­tor.”

Patrick Stew­art used his knight­hood cer­e­mo­ny as an occa­sion to thank Cecil Dor­mand, the Eng­lish teacher who told him that Shakespeare’s works were not dra­mat­ic poems, but plays to be per­formed on one’s feet.

And Bill Gates had kind words for Blanche Caffiere, the for­mer librar­i­an at View Ridge Ele­men­tary in Seat­tle, who des­tig­ma­tized his role as a “messy, nerdy boy who was read­ing lots of books.”

One of the most heart­felt stu­dent-to-teacher trib­utes is that of Nobel Prize-win­ning author and philoso­pher Albert Camus to Louis Ger­main, a father sub­sti­tute whose class­room was a wel­come reprieve from the extreme pover­ty Camus expe­ri­enced at home. Ger­main per­suad­ed Camus’ wid­owed moth­er to allow Camus to com­pete for the schol­ar­ship that enabled him to attend high school.

As read aloud by actor Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, above, at Let­ters Live, a “cel­e­bra­tion of the endur­ing pow­er of lit­er­ary cor­re­spon­dence,” Camus’ 1957 mes­sage to Ger­main is an exer­cise in humil­i­ty and sim­ply stat­ed grat­i­tude:

Dear Mon­sieur Ger­main,

I let the com­mo­tion around me these days sub­side a bit before speak­ing to you from the bot­tom of my heart. I have just been giv­en far too great an hon­our, one I nei­ther sought nor solicit­ed.

But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my moth­er, was of you. With­out you, with­out the affec­tion­ate hand you extend­ed to the small poor child that I was, with­out your teach­ing and exam­ple, none of all this would have hap­pened.

I don’t make too much of this sort of hon­our. But at least it gives me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the gen­er­ous heart you put into it still live in one of your lit­tle school­boys who, despite the years, has nev­er stopped being your grate­ful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.

Albert Camus

The let­ter was grate­ful­ly received by his for­mer teacher, who wrote back a year and a half lat­er to say in part:

If it were pos­si­ble, I would squeeze the great boy whom you have become, and who will always remain for me “my lit­tle Camus.”

He com­pli­ment­ed his lit­tle Camus on not let­ting fame go to his head, and urged him to con­tin­ue mak­ing his fam­i­ly pri­or­i­ty. He shared some fond mem­o­ries of Camus as a gen­tle, opti­mistic, intel­lec­tu­al­ly curi­ous lit­tle fel­low, and praised his moth­er for doing her best in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances.

Read­ers, please use the com­ments sec­tion to share with us the teach­ers deserv­ing of your thanks.

You can find this let­ter, and many more, in the great Let­ters of Note book.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Camus: The Mad­ness of Sin­cer­i­ty — 1997 Doc­u­men­tary Revis­its the Philosopher’s Life & Work

Albert Camus, Edi­tor of the French Resis­tance News­pa­per Com­bat, Writes Mov­ing­ly About Life, Pol­i­tics & War (1944–47)

Hear Albert Camus Deliv­er His Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech (1957)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Richard Feynman’s Poignant Letter to His Departed Wife Arline: Watch Actor Oscar Isaac Read It Live Onstage

Media vita in morte sumus, goes the medieval line of poet­ry that lent the Eng­lish Book of Com­mon Prayer its most mem­o­rable expres­sion: “In the midst of life we are in death.” The remain­der of the poem extrap­o­lates a the­ol­o­gy from this obser­va­tion, some­thing one can only take on faith. But what­ev­er way we dress up the mys­tery of death, it remains ever-present and inevitable. Yet we might think of the mot­to as a palin­drome: In the midst of death, we are in life. The dead remain with us, for as long as we live and remem­ber them. This is also a mys­tery.

Even the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cists must con­front the pres­ence of the depart­ed, and few scientists—few writers—have done so with as much poignan­cy, direct­ness, elo­quence, and humor as Richard Feyn­man, in a let­ter to his wife Arline writ­ten over a year after she died of tuber­cu­lo­sis at age 25. Feyn­man, him­self only 28 years old at the time, sealed the let­ter, writ­ten in 1946, until his own death in 1988. “Please excuse my not mail­ing this,” he wrote with bit­ter humor in the post­script, “but I don’t know your new address.” Even in the midst of his pro­found grief, Feynman’s wit sparkles. It is not a per­for­mance for us, his posthu­mous read­ers. It is sim­ply the way he had always written—in let­ter after let­ter—to Arline.

In the video above, Oscar Isaac, who has embod­ied many a wise­crack­ing roman­tic, gives voice to the long­ing and pain of Feynman’s let­ter, in which the physi­cist con­fess­es, “I thought there was no sense to writ­ing.” Some­how, he could not help but do so, end­ing with stark­ly ambiva­lent truths he was unable to rec­on­cile with what he col­lo­qui­al­ly calls his “real­is­tic” nature: “You only are left to me. You are real.… I love my wife. My wife is dead.” Read the full let­ter below, via Let­ters of Note. For more from their Let­ters Live series, see Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch read Kurt Vonnegut’s let­ter to the school that banned his nov­el Slaugh­ter­house Five.

Octo­ber 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweet­heart.

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a ter­ri­bly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you under­stand how I am, stub­born and real­is­tic; and I thought there was no sense to writ­ing.

But now I know my dar­ling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to under­stand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to com­fort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have prob­lems to dis­cuss with you — I want to do lit­tle projects with you. I nev­er thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We start­ed to learn to make clothes togeth­er — or learn Chi­nese — or get­ting a movie pro­jec­tor. Can’t I do some­thing now? No. I am alone with­out you and you were the “idea-woman” and gen­er­al insti­ga­tor of all our wild adven­tures.

When you were sick you wor­ried because you could not give me some­thing that you want­ed to and thought I need­ed. You needn’t have wor­ried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clear­ly even more true — you can give me noth­ing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of lov­ing any­one else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much bet­ter than any­one else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am fool­ish and that you want me to have full hap­pi­ness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are sur­prised that I don’t even have a girl­friend (except you, sweet­heart) after two years. But you can’t help it, dar­ling, nor can I — I don’t under­stand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meet­ings they all seem ash­es.

You only are left to me. You are real.

My dar­ling wife, I do adore you.

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

PS Please excuse my not mail­ing this — but I don’t know your new address

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Richard Feyn­man Cre­ates a Sim­ple Method for Telling Sci­ence From Pseu­do­science (1966)

 

Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Letter to the High School That Burned Slaughterhouse-Five

If you’ve kept up with Open Cul­ture for a while, you know that Kurt Von­negut could write a good let­ter, whether home from World War II, to high school stu­dents, to oth­er writ­ers, to John F. Kennedy, or to the future. You also know that Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch can give a good read­ing, whether of lit­er­a­ture like The Meta­mor­pho­sis and Moby Dick or more direct­ly per­son­al words from Alan Tur­ing or a Guan­tá­namo pris­on­er. It must have seemed like only a mat­ter of time, then, before this mas­ter read­er of let­ters (in the broad sense) took on the work of a mas­ter let­ter-writer, and here we have a clip of Cum­ber­batch at the Hay Fes­ti­val 2014 read­ing a Von­negut let­ter — and a par­tic­u­lar­ly impas­sioned Von­negut let­ter at that.

“I am among those Amer­i­can writ­ers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous fur­nace of your school,” Von­negut writes to Charles McCarthy, head of the school board at North Dako­ta’s Drake High School, who in 1973 ordered its copies of Von­negut’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five and oth­er nov­els burned for their “obscene lan­guage.” “Cer­tain mem­bers of your com­mu­ni­ty have sug­gest­ed that my work is evil. This is extra­or­di­nar­i­ly insult­ing to me. The news from Drake indi­cates to me that books and writ­ers are very unre­al to you peo­ple. I am writ­ing this let­ter to let you know how real I am.”

After assur­ing McCarthy that “my pub­lish­er and I have done absolute­ly noth­ing to exploit the dis­gust­ing news,” Von­negut goes on to describe him­self not as one of the “rat­like peo­ple who enjoy mak­ing mon­ey from poi­son­ing the minds of young peo­ple” that McCarthy may imag­ine, but as a “large, strong per­son, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. I have raised six chil­dren, three my own and three adopt­ed. They have all turned out well. Two of them are farm­ers. I am a com­bat infantry vet­er­an from World War II, and hold a Pur­ple Heart. I have earned what­ev­er I own by hard work.”

And as for the prod­ucts of that labor, “if you were to both­er to read my books, to behave as edu­cat­ed per­sons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wild­ness of any kind. They beg that peo­ple be kinder and more respon­si­ble than they often are. It is true that some of the char­ac­ters speak coarse­ly. That is because peo­ple speak coarse­ly in real life.” Von­negut acknowl­edges the school’s right to decide what books its stu­dents should read, “but it is also true that if you exer­cise that right and ful­fill that respon­si­bil­i­ty in an igno­rant, harsh, un-Amer­i­can man­ner, then peo­ple are enti­tled to call you bad cit­i­zens and fools. Even your own chil­dren are enti­tled to call you that.”

More that forty years have passed, and hard­ly any­where does Slaugh­ter­house-Five now count as con­tro­ver­sial read­ing mate­r­i­al. But Von­negut’s words to McCarthy, which you can read in full at Let­ters of Note web site (or in the Let­ters of Note book), still bear not just repeat­ing but breath­ing new life into by a per­former like Cum­ber­batch, one of the most respect­ed of his gen­er­a­tion. At the Let­ters Live Youtube chan­nel, you can see his inter­pre­ta­tion of more let­ters orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Sol LeWitt, William Safire, and oth­er peo­ple known pri­mar­i­ly for their work, but the read­ing of whose let­ters make them, in Von­negut’s words, “very real.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1988, Kurt Von­negut Writes a Let­ter to Peo­ple Liv­ing in 2088, Giv­ing 7 Pieces of Advice

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Kurt Vonnegut’s Tips for Teach­ing at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop (1967)

Kurt Von­negut to John F. Kennedy: ‘On Occa­sion, I Write Pret­ty Well’

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

 

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Term Paper Assignment from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Teaches You to Read Fiction Like a Writer

vonnegut drawing

Image by Daniele Prati, via Flickr Com­mons

I wish I’d had a teacher who framed his or her assign­ments as let­ters…

Which is real­ly just anoth­er way of say­ing I wish I’d been lucky enough to have tak­en a class with writ­ers Kurt Von­negut or Lyn­da Bar­ry.

There’s still hope of a class with Bar­ry, aka Pro­fes­sor Chew­bac­ca, Pro­fes­sor Old Skull, and most recent­ly, Pro­fes­sor Dro­go. Those of us who can’t get a seat at the Wis­con­sin Insti­tute for Dis­cov­ery, the Omega Insti­tute, or the Clar­i­on Sci­ence Fic­tion and Fan­ta­sy Writ­ers’ Work­shop can play along at home, using assign­ments she gen­er­ous­ly makes avail­able in her books and on her Near-Sight­ed Mon­key Tum­blr.

Von­negut fans long for this lev­el of access, which is why we are dou­bly grate­ful to writer Suzanne McConnell, who took Vonnegut’s “Form of Fic­tion” (aka “Sur­face Crit­i­cism” aka “How to Talk out of the Cor­ner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro”) course at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop in the mid-60s.

The goal was to exam­ine fic­tion from a writer’s per­spec­tive and McConnell (who is soon to pub­lish a book about Vonnegut’s advice to writ­ers) pre­served one of her old teacher’s term paper assign­ments—again in let­ter form. She lat­er had an epiphany that his assign­ments were “designed to teach some­thing much more than what­ev­er I thought then…  He was teach­ing us to do our own think­ing, to find out who we were, what we loved, abhorred, what set off our trip­wires, what tripped up our hearts.”

For the term paper, the eighty students—a group that includ­ed John Irv­ing, Gail God­win, and Andre Dubus II—were addressed as “Beloved” and charged with assign­ing a let­ter grade to each of the fif­teen sto­ries in Mas­ters of the Mod­ern Short Sto­ry (Har­court, Brace, 1955, W. Hav­ighurst, edi­tor).

(A decade and a half lat­er, Von­negut would sub­ject his own nov­els to the same treat­ment.)

A not­ed human­ist, Von­negut instruct­ed the class to read these sto­ries not in an over­ly ana­lyt­i­cal mind­set, but rather as if they had just con­sumed “two ounces of very good booze.”

The ensu­ing let­ter grades were meant to be “child­ish­ly self­ish and impu­dent mea­sures” of how much—or little—joy the sto­ries inspired in the read­er.

Next, stu­dents were instruct­ed to choose their three favorite and three least favorite sto­ries, then dis­guise them­selves as “minor but use­ful” lit mag edi­tors in order to advise their “wise, respect­ed, wit­ty and world-weary supe­ri­or” as to whether or not the select­ed sto­ries mer­it­ed pub­li­ca­tion.

Here’s the full assign­ment, which was pub­lished in Kurt Von­negut: Let­ters (Dela­corte Press, 2012). And also again in Slate.

Beloved:

This course began as Form and The­o­ry of Fic­tion, became Form of Fic­tion, then Form and Tex­ture of Fic­tion, then Sur­face Crit­i­cism, or How to Talk out of the Cor­ner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will prob­a­bly be Ani­mal Hus­bandry 108 by the time Black Feb­ru­ary rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”

As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cyn­i­cal and reli­gious. I want you to adore the Uni­verse, to be eas­i­ly delight­ed, but to be prompt as well with impa­tience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Uni­verse is or should be. “This above all …”

I invite you to read the fif­teen tales in Mas­ters of the Mod­ern Short Sto­ry (W. Hav­ighurst, edi­tor, 1955, Har­court, Brace, $14.95 in paper­back). Read them for plea­sure and sat­is­fac­tion, begin­ning each as though, only sev­en min­utes before, you had swal­lowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as lit­tle chil­dren …”

Then repro­duce on a sin­gle sheet of clean, white paper the table of con­tents of the book, omit­ting the page num­bers, and sub­sti­tut­ing for each num­ber a grade from A to F. The grades should be child­ish­ly self­ish and impu­dent mea­sures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some sto­ries bet­ter than oth­ers.

Pro­ceed next to the hal­lu­ci­na­tion that you are a minor but use­ful edi­tor on a good lit­er­ary mag­a­zine not con­nect­ed with a uni­ver­si­ty. Take three sto­ries that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pre­tend that they have been offered for pub­li­ca­tion. Write a report on each to be sub­mit­ted to a wise, respect­ed, wit­ty and world-weary supe­ri­or.

Do not do so as an aca­d­e­m­ic crit­ic, nor as a per­son drunk on art, nor as a bar­bar­ian in the lit­er­ary mar­ket place. Do so as a sen­si­tive per­son who has a few prac­ti­cal hunch­es about how sto­ries can suc­ceed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flat­ly, prag­mat­i­cal­ly, with cun­ning atten­tion to annoy­ing or grat­i­fy­ing details. Be your­self. Be unique. Be a good edi­tor. The Uni­verse needs more good edi­tors, God knows.

Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill some­body, about twen­ty pages from each of you should do neat­ly. Do not bub­ble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.

poloniøus

McConnell sup­plied fur­ther details on the extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ence of being Vonnegut’s stu­dent in an essay for the Brook­lyn Rail:

 Kurt taught a Chekhov sto­ry. I can’t remem­ber the name of it. I didn’t quite under­stand the point, since noth­ing much hap­pened. An ado­les­cent girl is in love with this boy and that boy and anoth­er; she points at a lit­tle dog, as I recall, or maybe some­thing else, and laughs. That’s all. There’s no con­flict, no dra­mat­ic turn­ing point or change. Kurt point­ed out that she has no words for the sheer joy of being young, ripe with life, her own juici­ness, and the promise of romance. Her inar­tic­u­late feel­ings spill into laugh­ter at some­thing innocu­ous. That’s what hap­pened in the sto­ry. His absolute delight in that girl’s joy of feel­ing her­self so alive was so encour­ag­ing of delight. Kurt’s enchant­ment taught me that such moments are noth­ing to sneeze at. They’re worth a sto­ry.             

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

In 1988, Kurt Von­negut Writes a Let­ter to Peo­ple Liv­ing in 2088, Giv­ing 7 Pieces of Advice

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

H.G. Wells Reads Finnegans Wake & Tells James Joyce: It’s “A Dead End,” “You Have Turned Your Back on Common Men” (1928)

wells-joyce

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I first heard the phrase “ter­mi­nal aes­thet­ic” in a class on T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, who col­lab­o­rat­ed on the final ver­sion of Eliot’s post World War I edi­fice, The Waste Land. That poem, went the argu­ment, trav­eled so far out on the edge, with its frag­ment­ed lan­guage and incon­gru­ous lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences, that it couldn’t pos­si­bly serve as a basis for new forms of writ­ing. Instead, Eliot had walked to the end of a promon­to­ry, and plant­ed a flag to mark a cre­ative and, per­haps, spir­i­tu­al dead end.

I’m not sure I agree, but the idea has always fas­ci­nat­ed me, that a work of art could be so rar­i­fied, so ahead of its read­ers, so idio­syn­crat­ic, inac­ces­si­ble, and strange, that it might escape all attempts at imi­ta­tion and domes­ti­ca­tion. There may be no greater exam­ple of such a project than James Joyce’s final work, Finnegans Wake. For all the admi­ra­tion and obses­sion it has inspired, for the many artists who have learned from this strange book (includ­ing, notably, A Clock­work Orange’s Antho­ny Burgess), it remains for near­ly all of us, in the words of H.G. Wells, a repos­i­to­ry of “vast rid­dles.”

Wells wrote to Joyce in 1928, regard­ing what was then sim­ply known as the Irish author’s “Work in Progress.” Excerpts were just then appear­ing piece­meal in jour­nals and being “passed around in lit­er­ary cir­cles,” writes Let­ters of Note,” to a large­ly baf­fled audi­ence.” It seems that Wells had been asked—perhaps by Joyce himself—to offer pub­lic com­ment or a blurb of some sort. He declined. “I’ve been study­ing you and think­ing over you a lot,” he begins. “The out­come is that I don’t think I can do any­thing for the pro­pa­gan­da of your work.”

Wells pro­fess­es a “great per­son­al lik­ing” for Joyce, but then details the “absolute­ly dif­fer­ent cours­es” their lives and thought had tak­en: “Your men­tal exis­tence is obsessed by a mon­strous sys­tem of con­tra­dic­tions,” Wells writes, and elab­o­rates with some dis­taste on Joyce’s scat­o­log­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal obses­sions. Then he turns to the work at hand, which would become Finnegans Wake:

Now with regard to this lit­er­ary exper­i­ment of yours. It’s a con­sid­er­able thing because you are a very con­sid­er­able man and you have in your crowd­ed com­po­si­tion a mighty genius for expres­sion which has escaped dis­ci­pline. But I don’t think it gets any­where. You have turned your back on com­mon men — on their ele­men­tary needs and their restrict­ed time and intel­li­gence… What is the result? Vast rid­dles. Your last two works have been more amus­ing and excit­ing to write than they will ever be to read. Take me as a typ­i­cal com­mon read­er. Do I get much plea­sure from this work? … No. So I ask: Who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many wak­ing hours of the few thou­sand I have still to live for a prop­er appre­ci­a­tion of his quirks and fan­cies and flash­es of ren­der­ing?

A fair enough ques­tion, I sup­pose, and fair enough critique—one we might expect from the self-described “sci­en­tif­ic, con­struc­tive” mind of Wells. “To me,” he writes, “it is a dead end.”

Finnegans Wake con­tin­ues to baf­fle and frus­trate con­tem­po­rary read­ers, and writ­ers like Michael Chabon, who once described it as “hulk­ing, chimeri­cal, gib­ber­ing to itself in an out­landish tongue, a fright­en­ing beast out of leg­end.” Does Finnegans Wake speak to us com­mon read­ers, or does it “gib­ber” only to itself, leav­ing the rest of us behind? Like Ulysses, it’s best to tra­verse the book with a guide. Burgess has writ­ten a few (and has even auda­cious­ly abridged the nov­el). We must also remem­ber that Finnegans Wake is as much about sound as sense, and should be heard as well as read. (Hear Joyce him­self read from the nov­el here.)

Then there are the “frac­tal” expli­ca­tions of the nov­el, like Ter­rence McKenna’s and that of a recent sci­en­tif­ic study of its “mul­ti­frac­tal­i­ty.” I doubt any of this would have moved Wells, who demand­ed a clar­i­ty of thought and expres­sion that was anath­e­ma to the lat­er Joyce, immersed as he was in a project to dis­as­sem­ble the roots and branch­es of lan­guage and his­to­ry and repur­pose them for his own means. For all his puz­zle­ment over Joyce’s “exper­i­ment,” how­ev­er, Wells does seem to have found exact­ly the right word to cap­ture Joyce’s rad­i­cal lit­er­ary aims, describ­ing the writer of Ulysses and the inscrutable Finnegans Wake as “insur­rec­tionary.”

Read Wells’ full let­ter at Let­ters of Note, who also bring us a let­ter from a “Vladimir Dixon,” writ­ten in imi­ta­tion of Finnegans Wake, and pos­si­bly penned by Joyce him­self.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

Hear All of Finnegans Wake Read Aloud: A 35 Hour Read­ing

James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Gets Turned into an Inter­ac­tive Web Film, the Medi­um It Was Des­tined For

H.G. Wells Pans Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis in a 1927 Movie Review: It’s “the Sil­li­est Film”

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

Helen Keller Had Impeccable Handwriting: See a Collection of Her Childhood Letters

keller-handwriting

Image by Flickr, cour­tesy of Perkins School for the Blind

The inspi­ra­tional blind and deaf activist and edu­ca­tor Helen Keller learned to speak aloud, but, to her great regret, nev­er clear­ly.

Her care­ful pen­man­ship, above, is anoth­er mat­ter. Her impec­ca­bly ren­dered upright hand puts that of a great many sight­ed peo­ple—not all of them physi­cians—to shame.

Keller learned to write—and read—with the help of embossed books as a stu­dent at Perkins School for the Blind. The Unit­ed States didn’t adopt Stan­dard Braille as its offi­cial sys­tem for blind read­ers and writ­ers until 1918, when Keller was in her late 30’s. Pri­or to that blind read­ers and writ­ers were sub­ject­ed to a num­ber of com­pet­ing sys­tems, a sit­u­a­tion she decried as “absurd.”

Some of these sys­tems had their basis in the Roman alpha­bet, includ­ing Boston Line Type, the brain­child of Perkins’ Found­ing Direc­tor, Samuel Gri­d­ley Howe, an oppo­nent of Braille. Stu­dents may have pre­ferred dot-based sys­tems for tak­ing notes and writ­ing let­ters, but Boston Line Type remained Perkins’ approved print­ing sys­tem until 1908.

There’s more than an echo of Boston Line Type in Keller’s blocky char­ac­ters, as well as her spac­ing. Devi­at­ing from pen­man­ship forms learned at school is a lux­u­ry exclu­sive to the sight­ed. Until for­ma­tion became instinc­tu­al, Keller relied on a grooved board to help her size her char­ac­ters cor­rect­ly, an exhaust­ing process. Small won­der that she end­ed many of her ear­ly let­ters with “I am too tired to write more.”

Perkins has pub­lished a Flickr album of let­ters Keller wrote between the ages of 8 and 11 to then-direc­tor Michael Anag­nos, includ­ing 3 pages in French. Leaf­ing through them, I mar­veled less at her abil­i­ty and deter­mi­na­tion than my (sight­ed) 16-year-old son’s lack of inter­est in devel­op­ing a respectable-look­ing hand.

Keller’s hand­writ­ing is so above reproach that it quick­ly fades to the back­ground, upstaged by her charm­ing man­ners and girl­ish pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. A sam­ple:

If you go to Rou­ma­nia, please ask the good queen Eliz­a­beth about her lit­tle invalid broth­er and tell her that I am very sor­ry that her dar­ling lit­tle girl died. I should like to send a kiss to Vit­to­rio, the lit­tle prince of Naples, but teacher says she is afraid you will not remem­ber so many mes­sages.

Browse Perkins’ col­lec­tion of Keller’s hand­writ­ten let­ters to Michael Anag­nos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

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

“A Glo­ri­ous Hour”: Helen Keller Describes The Ecsta­sy of Feel­ing Beethoven’s Ninth Played on the Radio (1924)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and wine­mak­er who played Annie Sul­li­van in her high school’s pro­duc­tion of The Mir­a­cle Work­er. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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