Jack Kerouac Was a Secret, Obsessive Fan of Fantasy Baseball

in Literature, Sports | April 3rd, 2015

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Bear in mind, fan­ta­sy base­ball fans, that with the sea­son about to start up again, you should­n’t feel like you have to take any grief for enjoy­ing the game. It counts among its enthu­si­asts no less a lumi­nary than Jack Ker­ouac, author of On The Road and The Dhar­ma Bums, and he did­n’t just enjoy it, he arguably invent­ed it. The New York Pub­lic library devot­ed an exhi­bi­tion to Ker­ouac’s near-life­long hob­by called “Fan­ta­sy Sports and the King of the Beats,” reveal­ing how the writer invent­ed an elab­o­rate means of expe­ri­enc­ing the joys of Amer­i­ca’s Nation­al Pas­time all on his own.

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He also cre­at­ed an entire world of imag­ined teams, imag­ined play­ers, and imag­ined ath­let­ic and finan­cial dra­mas as well. The New York Times’ Charles McGrath writes that Ker­ouac “obses­sive­ly played a fan­ta­sy base­ball game of his own inven­tion, chart­ing the exploits of made-up play­ers like Wino Love, War­by Pep­per, Heinie Twi­ett, Phe­gus Cody and Zagg Park­er, who toiled on imag­i­nary teams named either for cars (the Pitts­burgh Ply­mouths and New York Chevvies, for exam­ple) or for col­ors (the Boston Grays and Cincin­nati Blacks).”

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Rather than a dis­trac­tion from his writ­ing, all this proved to be “ide­al train­ing for a would-be author,” since his ver­sion of fan­ta­sy base­ball also required him come up with volu­mi­nous cov­er­age of the action which “imi­tates the over­heat­ed, epi­thet-stud­ded sports­writ­ing of the day.” Fan­ta­sy base­ball has since turned into a nation­al (and, to an extent, even inter­na­tion­al) phe­nom­e­non, but the game that thou­sands of base­ball nuts play today, which uses the real sta­tis­tics of non-made-up base­ball play­ers on actu­al teams, does­n’t demand near­ly as much cre­ativ­i­ty as did the one Ker­ouac played by him­self.

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Ker­ouac’s fan­ta­sy base­ball even achieved a kind of pre­science, not just in terms of pre­fig­ur­ing fan­ta­sy base­ball as we now know it, but events in base­ball prop­er: “As befit­ting the author of On the Road, the nar­ra­tor of which jour­neys three times to Cal­i­for­nia with a pil­grim’s zeal,” says the NYPL’s site, Ker­ouac “brought his fan­ta­sy base­ball league to Cal­i­for­nia. In this instance, fan­ta­sy trumped real­i­ty, since Ker­ouac’s Cal­i­for­nia teams are estab­lished at least one year before the Dodgers and Giants aban­doned New York for Cal­i­for­nia.” One won­ders what the vic­to­ries and tribu­la­tions of the Ply­mouths and the Chevvies, the Grays and the Blacks, their fates decid­ed with mar­bles, sticks, com­plex dia­grams, and cards full of now-inde­ci­pher­able sym­bols, might fore­tell about the fate of Major League Base­bal­l’s teams this com­ing sea­son.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitch­hik­ing Trip Nar­rat­ed in On the Road

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

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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Hunter S. Thompson’s Ballsy & Hilarious Job Application Letter (1958)

in Literature | April 1st, 2015

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Image by Steve Ander­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 1958, Hunter S. Thomp­son applied for a job with the Van­cou­ver Sun. He was fresh out of the Air Force and strug­gling to make a liv­ing in New York City, though from the tone of the let­ter you wouldn’t know it.

Peo­ple who are experts in such things say that good cov­er let­ters should match the employer’s needs with the appli­can­t’s abil­i­ties, should be tai­lored specif­i­cal­ly to the job in ques­tion and should show some per­son­al­i­ty. By those yard­sticks, Thompson’s let­ter to the Van­cou­ver Sun is a mod­el to be fol­lowed. He lays out his eager­ness to work: “I can work 25 hours a day if nec­es­sary, live on any rea­son­able salary.” Any HR man­ag­er would be tick­led with lines like that. He suc­cinct­ly describes his work expe­ri­ence: “most of my expe­ri­ence has been in sports writ­ing, but I can write every­thing from war­mon­ger­ing pro­pa­gan­da to learned book reviews.” And for any oth­er fault you might find with the let­ter, it def­i­nite­ly does­n’t lack in per­son­al­i­ty.

Yet the let­ter some­how failed to charm his would-be employ­er; Thomp­son nev­er moved to Van­cou­ver.  Per­haps they were giv­en pause by Thomp­son’s steady stream of insults direct­ed towards his for­mer edi­tor — “It was as if the Mar­quis De Sade had sud­den­ly found him­self work­ing for Bil­ly Gra­ham” — and towards jour­nal­ism in gen­er­al: “It’s a damned shame that a field as poten­tial­ly dynam­ic and vital as jour­nal­ism should be over­run with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-rid­den with myopia, apa­thy, and com­pla­cence, and gen­er­al­ly stuck in a bog of stag­nant medi­oc­rity.” Or per­haps it was his inten­tion­al­ly off-putting arro­gance, “I’d rather offend you now than after I start­ed work­ing for you.” In any case, it’s a hoot to read. More peo­ple should write job appli­ca­tion let­ters like this.

Read the full let­ter below.

Van­cou­ver Sun
TO JACK SCOTT, VANCOUVER SUN
Octo­ber 1, 1958 57 Per­ry Street New York City

Sir,
I got a hell of a kick read­ing the piece Time mag­a­zine did this week on The Sun. In addi­tion to wish­ing you the best of luck, I’d also like to offer my ser­vices.

Since I haven’t seen a copy of the “new” Sun yet, I’ll have to make this a ten­ta­tive offer. I stepped into a dung-hole the last time I took a job with a paper I did­n’t know any­thing about (see enclosed clip­pings) and I’m not quite ready to go charg­ing up anoth­er blind alley.

By the time you get this let­ter, I’ll have got­ten hold of some of the recent issues of The Sun. Unless it looks total­ly worth­less, I’ll let my offer stand. And don’t think that my arro­gance is unin­ten­tion­al: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I start­ed work­ing for you.

I did­n’t make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Mar­quis de Sade had sud­den­ly found him­self work­ing for Bil­ly Gra­ham. The man despised me, of course, and I had noth­ing but con­tempt for him and every­thing he stood for. If you asked him, he’d tell you that I’m “not very lik­able, (that I) hate peo­ple, (that I) just want to be left alone, and (that I) feel too supe­ri­or to min­gle with the aver­age per­son.” (That’s a direct quote from a memo he sent to the pub­lish­er.)

Noth­ing beats hav­ing good ref­er­ences.

Of course if you asked some of the oth­er peo­ple I’ve worked for, you’d get a dif­fer­ent set of answers. If you’re inter­est­ed enough to answer this let­ter, I’ll be glad to fur­nish you with a list of ref­er­ences — includ­ing the lad I work for now.

The enclosed clip­pings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It’s a year old, how­ev­er, and I’ve changed a bit since it was writ­ten. I’ve tak­en some writ­ing cours­es from Colum­bia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the news­pa­per busi­ness, and devel­oped a healthy con­tempt for jour­nal­ism as a pro­fes­sion.

As far as I’m con­cerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as poten­tial­ly dynam­ic and vital as jour­nal­ism should be over­run with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-rid­den with myopia, apa­thy, and com­pla­cence, and gen­er­al­ly stuck in a bog of stag­nant medi­oc­rity. If this is what you’re try­ing to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.

Most of my expe­ri­ence has been in sports writ­ing, but I can write every­thing from war­mon­ger­ing pro­pa­gan­da to learned book reviews.

I can work 25 hours a day if nec­es­sary, live on any rea­son­able salary, and don’t give a black damn for job secu­ri­ty, office pol­i­tics, or adverse pub­lic rela­tions.
I would rather be on the dole than work for a paper I was ashamed of.
It’s a long way from here to British Colum­bia, but I think I’d enjoy the trip.

If you think you can use me, drop me a line.

If not, good luck any­way.

Sin­cere­ly,

Hunter S. Thomp­son

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

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

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Download the Major Works of Jane Austen as Free eBooks & Audio Books

in Audio Books, e-books, Literature | April 1st, 2015

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Why does Jane Austen feel so much like our con­tem­po­rary? Is it the way she has been appro­pri­at­ed by pop­u­lar cul­ture, turned into a vamp­ish, mod­ern con­sumer icon in adap­ta­tions like From Pra­da to Nada, Clue­less, and Brid­get Jones’ Diary? Do these can­dy-col­ored updates of Austen tru­ly rep­re­sent the spir­it of the late 18th/early 19th cen­tu­ry novelist’s world? Or do we grav­i­tate toward Austen because of nos­tal­gia for a sim­pler, almost pre-indus­tri­al time, when—as in the rather reac­tionary world of Down­ton Abbey—the com­ings and goings in a sin­gle house­hold con­sti­tut­ed an entire human soci­ety?

Why not both? As the writ­ers and artists in the video above from the Mor­gan Library assert, Austen, like Shake­speare, is a writer for every age. “The Divine Jane” as the title dubs her, had an insight into human behav­ior that tran­scends the par­tic­u­lars of her his­tor­i­cal moment. But of course, the con­text of Austen’s fiction—a time of great Eng­lish coun­try hous­es and an emerg­ing class-con­scious­ness based on rapid­ly chang­ing social arrangements—is no mere back­drop. Like Shake­speare, we need to under­stand Austen on her own terms as much as we enjoy her wit trans­posed into our own.

The Mor­gan Library’s “A Woman’s Wit” exhib­it, moved online since its debut in the phys­i­cal space in 2009, offers an excel­lent col­lec­tion of resources for schol­ars and lay read­ers to dis­cov­er Austen’s world through her cor­re­spon­dence and man­u­scripts. You’ll also find there draw­ings by Austen and her con­tem­po­raries and com­men­tary from a num­ber of twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry writ­ers inspired by her work. Much of the Austen-mania of the past sev­er­al years treats the nov­el­ist as a more-or-less post­mod­ern ironist—“hotter,” wrote Mar­tin Amis in 1996, “than Quentin Taran­ti­no.” That she has become such fod­der for films, both good and frankly ter­ri­ble, can obscure her obses­sion with lan­guage, one rep­re­sent­ed by her nov­els, of course, as well as by her let­ters—so live­ly and imme­di­ate so as to have inspired a “Per­fect Love Let­ter” com­pe­ti­tion among Austen enthu­si­asts.

As for the nov­els, well, there real­ly is no sub­sti­tute. Dress­ing Austen up in Pra­da and Guc­ci and recast­ing her bum­bling suit­ors and imp­ish hero­ines as mall-savvy teenage Amer­i­cans has—one hopes—been done enough. Let not Austen’s appeal to our age eclipse the rich, fine-grained obser­va­tions she made of hers. Whether you’re new to Austen or a life­long read­er, her work is always avail­able, as she intend­ed it to be expe­ri­enced, on the page—or, er… the screen… thanks to inter­net pub­lish­ing and orga­ni­za­tions like Project Guten­berg and Lib­rivox. At the links below, you can find all of Austen’s major works in var­i­ous eBook and audio for­mats.

So by all means, enjoy the mod­ern clas­sic Clue­less, that hilar­i­ous ren­di­tion of Austen’s Emma. And by all means, read Emma, and Pride and Prej­u­dice, and Mans­field Park, and… well, you get the idea….

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Aban­doned Man­u­script, The Wat­sons

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

What Did Jane Austen Real­ly Look Like? New Wax Sculp­ture, Cre­at­ed by Foren­sic Spe­cial­ists, Shows Us

15-Year-Old Jane Austen Writes a Satir­i­cal His­to­ry Of Eng­land: Read the Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script Online (1791)

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

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Leo Tolstoy’s 17 “Rules of Life:” Wake at 5am, Help the Poor, & Only Two Brothel Visits Per Month

in Life, Literature, Writing | March 30th, 2015

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Many aspir­ing epic nov­el­ists sure­ly would­n’t mind writ­ing like Leo Tol­stoy. But can you write like the writer you admire with­out liv­ing like the writer you admire? Biogra­phies reveal plen­ty of facts about how the author of such immor­tal vol­umes as War and Peace and Anna Karen­i­na passed his 82 years, none more telling than that even Leo Tol­stoy strug­gled to live like Leo Tol­stoy. “I must get used to the idea, once and for all, that I am an excep­tion­al human being,” he wrote in 1853, at age 25, under­scor­ing that “I have not met one man who is moral­ly as good as I am, or ready to sac­ri­fice every­thing for his ide­al, as I am.”

Clear­ly, exces­sive mod­esty did­n’t count among Tol­stoy’s faults. Sev­en years before mak­ing that dec­la­ra­tion, he had already envi­sioned for him­self a life of virtue and indus­try, lay­ing out what he called his “rules of life,” per­haps a fore­shad­ow­ing of his search for a rig­or­ous­ly reli­gious life with­out belief in a high­er being. The web­site Tol­stoy Ther­a­py has post­ed a selec­tion of these rules, which com­mand­ed him as fol­lows:

  • Wake at five o’clock
  • Go to bed no lat­er than ten o’clock
  • Two hours per­mis­si­ble for sleep­ing dur­ing the day
  • Eat mod­er­ate­ly
  • Avoid sweet foods
  • Walk for an hour every day
  • Vis­it a broth­el only twice a month
  • Love those to whom I could be of ser­vice
  • Dis­re­gard all pub­lic opin­ion not based on rea­son
  • Only do one thing at a time
  • Dis­al­low flights of imag­i­na­tion unless nec­es­sary

To this list of pre­cepts drawn up at the dawn of his adult life, most of which would­n’t seem out of place as any of our 21st-cen­tu­ry new year’s res­o­lu­tions, Tol­stoy lat­er added these:

  • Nev­er to show emo­tion
  • Stop car­ing about oth­er peo­ple’s opin­ion of myself
  • Do good things incon­spic­u­ous­ly
  • Keep away from women
  • Sup­press lust by work­ing hard
  • Help those less for­tu­nate

Even if you haven’t read much about Tol­stoy’s life, you may sense in some of these gen­er­al prin­ci­ples evi­dence of bat­tles with par­tic­u­lar impuls­es: observe, for instance, how his twice-month­ly lim­it on broth­el vis­its becomes the much more strin­gent and much less real­is­tic for­bid­dance of women entire­ly. But per­haps his tech­nique of work­ing hard, how­ev­er well or poor­ly it sup­pressed his lust (the man did father four­teen chil­dren, after all), ben­e­fit­ed him in the end, giv­en the vast and (often lit­er­al­ly) weighty body of work he left behind.

“Between ‘rules of life’ and life itself, what a chasm!” exclaims biog­ra­ph­er Hen­ri Troy­at in Tol­stoy. But as rich with inter­est as we find books like that, we ulti­mate­ly care about writ­ers not because of how they live, but because of how they write. The young Tol­stoy knew that, too; “the pub­li­ca­tion of Child­hood and ‘The Raid’ hav­ing made him, in his own eyes, a gen­uine man of let­ters,” writes Troy­at, “he soon added no less peremp­to­ry ‘Rules of Writ­ing’ to his ‘Rules of Life’:”

  • When you crit­i­cize your work, always put your­self in the posi­tion of the most lim­it­ed read­er, who is look­ing only for enter­tain­ment in a book.
  • The most inter­est­ing books are those in which the author pre­tends to hide his own opin­ion and yet remains faith­ful to it.
  • When reread­ing and revis­ing, do not think about what should be added (no mat­ter how admirable the thoughts that come to mind) … but about how much can be tak­en away with­out dis­tort­ing the over­all mean­ing.

Then again, War and Peace has in the mod­ern day become a byword for sheer length, and few read­ers not already steeped in 19th-cen­tu­ry Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture would turn to Tol­stoy for pure enter­tain­ment. Per­haps the writer’s life implic­it­ly adds one caveat atop all the ever-stricter rules he made for him­self while liv­ing it: nobody’s per­fect.

via Tol­stoy Ther­a­py

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leo Tol­stoy Cre­ates a List of the 50+ Books That Influ­enced Him Most (1891)

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Vin­tage Footage of Leo Tol­stoy: Video Cap­tures the Great Nov­el­ist Dur­ing His Final Days

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Ray Brad­bury Offers 12 Essen­tial Writ­ing Tips and Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture Saves Civ­i­liza­tion

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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Hysterical Literature: Art & Sexuality Collide in Readings of Whitman, Emerson & Other Greats (NSFW)

in Biology, Film, Life, Literature | March 27th, 2015

With­out shame the man I like knows and avows the deli­cious­ness of his sex, 

With­out shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.

Thus spaketh Walt Whit­man in Leaves of Grass. 160 years after that poem’s pub­li­ca­tion, how might that most Amer­i­can of Amer­i­can Roman­tics react to the spec­ta­cle of an attrac­tive young woman plea­sur­ing her­self with his work, as an unseen hand beneath the table sur­rep­ti­tious­ly plea­sures her with the Cadil­lac of vibra­tors?

The peep­hole is much larg­er than it would’ve been in 1855. Hys­ter­i­cal Lit­er­a­ture was con­ceived as an online project in which each session’s fea­tured female par­tic­i­pant choos­es a res­o­nant text, then reads it aloud until a Hitachi Mag­ic Wand puts an end to her abil­i­ty to form coher­ent sen­tences.

Cre­ator Clay­ton Cubitt has com­plained that the orgas­mic ele­ment and the sta­tus of cer­tain celebri­ty par­tic­i­pants like come­di­an Mar­garet Cho  have pre­oc­cu­pied the press. His pref­er­ence is for view­ers to take a more holis­tic approach, view­ing the expe­ri­ence with some “mys­tery and mag­ic and ‘WTF.’”

Accord­ing­ly, let us focus upon some of the select­ed works:

Beloved by Toni Mor­ri­son

Sex­ing the Cher­ry by Jeanette Win­ter­son

The Necrophil­ia Vari­a­tions by Super­vert

Real­ly, no Anaïs Nin? I would’ve thought…

The most recent con­trib­u­tor to the series is also its old­est, 60-year-old Janet, below, who had to take leave of Whitman’s pal, Ralph Wal­do Emer­son, not once but twice in eight min­utes.

Cumu­la­tive­ly, these ses­sions make a mar­velous­ly frank primer for actors or direc­tors charged with cre­at­ing real­is­tic sex scenes. The dichoto­my of Hys­ter­i­cal Lit’s stag­ing ensures that things are fair­ly respectable above the waist, thus sat­is­fy­ing YouTube’s Com­mu­ni­ty Guide­lines.

Dar­ing female lovers of lit­er­a­ture should be advised that Cubitt seeks to include more women of col­or, old­er par­tic­i­pants, and non-Eng­lish texts. No word on who exact­ly is under that table. Drain your pent-up rivers by apply­ing here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Fan­ny Hill, the 18th-Cen­tu­ry Erot­ic Nov­el That Went to the Supreme Court in the 20th Cen­tu­ry

This is Your Brain on Sex and Reli­gion: Exper­i­ments in Neu­ro­science

An Intro­duc­tion to World Lit­er­a­ture by a Cast Of Lit­er­ary & Aca­d­e­m­ic Stars (Free Course)

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

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The (Urban) Legend of Ernest Hemingway’s Six-Word Story: “For sale, Baby shoes, Never worn.”

in Literature | March 24th, 2015

hemingway list free

A pierc­ing­ly dark piece of writ­ing, tak­ing the heart of a Dick­ens or Dos­to­evsky nov­el and carv­ing away all the rest, Ernest Hemingway’s six-word story—fabled fore­run­ner of flash- and twitter-fiction—is short­er than many a story’s title:

For sale, Baby shoes, Nev­er worn.

The extreme terse­ness in this ellip­ti­cal tragedy has made it a favorite exam­ple of writ­ing teach­ers over the past sev­er­al decades, a dis­play of the pow­er of lit­er­ary com­pres­sion in which, writes a quer­ent to the site Quote Inves­ti­ga­tor, “the read­er must coop­er­ate in the con­struc­tion of the larg­er nar­ra­tive that is oblique­ly limned by these words.” Sup­pos­ed­ly com­posed some­time in the ’20s at The Algo­nquin (or per­haps Luchow’s, depend­ing on whom you ask), the six-word sto­ry, it’s said, came from a ten-dol­lar bet Hem­ing­way made at a lunch with some oth­er writ­ers that he could write a nov­el in six words. After pen­ning the famous line on a nap­kin, he passed it around the table, and col­lect­ed his win­nings. That’s the pop­u­lar lore, any­way. But the truth is much less col­or­ful.

In fact, it seems that ver­sions of the six-word sto­ry appeared long before Hem­ing­way even began to write, at least as ear­ly as 1906, when he was only 7, in a news­pa­per clas­si­fied sec­tion called “Terse Tales of the Town,” which pub­lished an item that read, “For sale, baby car­riage, nev­er been used. Apply at this office.” Anoth­er, very sim­i­lar, ver­sion appeared in 1910, then anoth­er, sug­gest­ed as the title for a sto­ry about “a wife who has lost her baby,” in a 1917 essay by William R. Kane, who thought up “Lit­tle Shoes, Nev­er Worn.” Then again in 1920, writes David Haglund in Slate, the sup­posed Hem­ing­way line appears in a “1921 news­pa­per col­umn by Roy K. Moul­ton, who ‘print­ed a brief note that he attrib­uted to some­one named Jer­ry,’ ”:

There was an ad in the Brook­lyn “Home Talk” which read, “Baby car­riage for sale, nev­er used.” Would that make a won­der­ful plot for the movies?

Many more exam­ples of the nar­ra­tive device abound, includ­ing a 1927 com­ic strip describ­ing a sev­en-word version—“For Sale, A Baby Car­riage; Nev­er Used!”—as “the great­est short sto­ry in the world.” The more that Haglund and Quote Investigator’s Gar­son O’Toole looked into the mat­ter, the hard­er they found it to “believe that Hem­ing­way had any­thing to do with the tale.”

It is pos­si­ble Hem­ing­way, wit­ting­ly or not, stole the sto­ry from the clas­si­fieds or else­where. He was a news­pa­per­man after all, per­haps guar­an­teed to have come into con­tact with some ver­sion of it. But there’s no evi­dence that he wrote or talked about the six-word sto­ry, or that the lunch bet at The Algo­nquin ever took place. Instead, it appears that a lit­er­ary agent, Peter Miller, made up the sto­ry whole cloth in 1974 and lat­er pub­lished it in his 1991 book, Get Pub­lished! Get Pro­duced!: A Lit­er­ary Agent’s Tips on How to Sell Your Writ­ing.

The leg­end of the bet and the six-word sto­ry grew: Arthur C. Clarke repeat­ed it in a 1998 Read­er’s Digest essay, and Miller men­tioned it again in a 2006 book. Mean­while, sus­pi­cions arose, and the final debunk­ing occurred in a 2012 schol­ar­ly arti­cle in The Jour­nal of Pop­u­lar Cul­ture by Fred­er­ick A. Wright, who con­clud­ed that no evi­dence links the six-word sto­ry to Hem­ing­way.

So should we blame Miller for osten­si­bly cre­at­ing an urban leg­end, or thank him for giv­ing com­pet­i­tive min­i­mal­ists some­thing to beat, and inspir­ing the entire genre of the “six-word mem­oir”? That depends, I sup­pose, on what you think of com­pet­i­tive min­i­mal­ists and six-word mem­oirs. Per­haps the moral of the sto­ry, fit­ting in the Twit­ter age, is that the great man the­o­ry of author­ship so often gets it wrong; the most mem­o­rable sto­ries and ideas can arise spon­ta­neous­ly, anony­mous­ly, from any­where.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

Ernest Hemingway’s Very First Pub­lished Sto­ries, Free as an eBook

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

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

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

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Irish Navy Builds Ships Named After Samuel Beckett & James Joyce

in Literature | March 19th, 2015

640px-LÉ_Samuel_Beckett

It’s how things go around here. You do some research on Samuel Beck­et­t’s plays (see post from ear­li­er today) and you dis­cov­er there’s a naval ship ded­i­cat­ed to the Irish play­wright. Launched in Novem­ber 2013 and com­mis­sioned in May 2014, LÉ Samuel Beck­ett (P61) patrols Irish waters, allow­ing the Irish navy to con­duct search and res­cue oper­a­tions, under­take ves­sel board­ings, and also pro­tect fish­eries. Accord­ing to an Irish site, the ship “rep­re­sents an updat­ed and length­ened ver­sion of the orig­i­nal RÓISÍN Class OPVs… She is built to the high­est inter­na­tion­al stan­dards in terms of safe­ty, equip­ment fit, tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion and crew com­fort.” The cost, 56 mil­lion euros.

Of course, the Irish haven’t for­got­ten their oth­er great lit­er­ary son. LÉ James Joyce (P62) will be launched in May 2015. And guess what, LÉ Sea­mus Heaney may soon be on the hori­zon.

Does any­one know of anoth­er nation that hon­ors its artists in such a way?

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The Books Samuel Beckett Read and Really Liked (1941–1956)

in Books, Literature | March 18th, 2015

becket list 1

Samuel Beck­ett, Pic, 1″ by Roger Pic. Via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Clad in a black turtle­neck and with a shock of white hair, Samuel Beck­ett was a gaunt, gloomy high priest of mod­ernism. After the 1955 pre­miere of Samuel Beckett’s play Wait­ing for Godot (watch him stage a per­for­mance here), Ken­neth Tynan quipped, ”It has no plot, no cli­max, no denoue­ment; no begin­ning, no mid­dle and no end.” From there, Beckett’s work only got more aus­tere, bleak and despair­ing. His 1969 play Breath, for instance, runs just a minute long and fea­tures just the sound of breath­ing.

An intense­ly pri­vate man, he man­aged to mes­mer­ize the pub­lic even as he turned away from the lime­light. When he won the Nobel Prize in 1969, his wife Suzanne, fear­ing the onslaught of fame that the award would bring, decried it as a “cat­a­stro­phe.”

A recent­ly pub­lished col­lec­tion of his let­ters from 1941–1956, the peri­od lead­ing up to his inter­na­tion­al suc­cess with his play Wait­ing for Godot, casts some light on at least one cor­ner of the man’s pri­vate life – what books were pil­ing up on his bed stand. Below is an anno­tat­ed list of what he was read­ing dur­ing that time. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, he real­ly dug Albert Camus’s The Stranger. “Try and read it,” he writes. “I think it is impor­tant.” He dis­miss­es Agatha Christie’s Crooked House as “very tired Christie” but prais­es Around the World in 80 Days, “It is live­ly stuff.” But the book he reserves the most praise for is J.D. Salinger’s Catch­er in the Rye. “I liked it very much indeed, more than any­thing for a long time.”

You can see the full list below. It was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished online by Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press in 2011. Books with an aster­isk next to the title can be found in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free eBooks.

Andro­maque* by Jean Racine: “I read Andro­maque again with greater admi­ra­tion than ever and I think more under­stand­ing, at least more under­stand­ing of the chances of the the­atre today.”

Around the World in 80 Days* by Jules Verne: “It is live­ly stuff.”

The Cas­tle by Franz Kaf­ka: “I felt at home, too much so – per­haps that is what stopped me from read­ing on. Case closed there and then.”

The Catch­er in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: “I liked it very much indeed, more than any­thing for a long time.”

Crooked House by Agatha Christie: “very tired Christie”

Effi Briest* by Theodor Fontane: “I read it for the fourth time the oth­er day with the same old tears in the same old places.”

The Hunch­back of Notre Dame* by Vic­tor Hugo

Jour­ney to the End of the Night by Louis-Fer­di­nand Céline

Lautrea­mont and Sade by Mau­rice Blan­chot: “Some excel­lent ideas, or rather start­ing-points for ideas, and a fair bit of ver­biage, to be read quick­ly, not as a trans­la­tor does. What emerges from it though is a tru­ly gigan­tic Sade, jeal­ous of Satan and of his eter­nal tor­ments, and con­fronting nature more than with humankind.”

Man’s Fate by Andre Mal­raux

Mos­qui­toes by William Faulkn­er: “with a pref­ace by Que­neau that would make an ostrich puke”

The Stranger by Albert Camus: “Try and read it, I think it is impor­tant.”

The Temp­ta­tion to Exist by Emil Cio­ran: “Great stuff here and there. Must reread his first.”

La 628-E8* by Octave Mir­beau: “Damned good piece of work.”

via Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads Two Poems From His Nov­el Watt

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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