Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Personal Library

in Books, Literature | March 10th, 2015

borges personal library

“Jorge Luis Borges 1951, by Grete Stern” by Grete Stern (1904–1999). Licensed under Pub­lic Domain via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons.

Jorge Luis Borges’ terse, mind-expand­ing sto­ries reshaped mod­ern fic­tion. He was one of the first authors to mix high cul­ture with low, merg­ing such pop­u­lar gen­res as sci­ence fic­tion and the detec­tive sto­ry with heady philo­soph­i­cal dis­cours­es on author­ship, real­i­ty and exis­tence. His sto­ry “The Gar­den of the Fork­ing Paths,” which describes a nov­el that is also a labyrinth, pre­saged the hyper­tex­tu­al­i­ty of the inter­net age. His tone of iron­ic detach­ment influ­enced gen­er­a­tions of Latin Amer­i­can authors. The BBC argued that Borges was the most impor­tant writer of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Of course, Borges wasn’t just an author. When not writ­ing fic­tion, Borges worked as a lit­er­ary crit­ic, occa­sion­al film crit­ic, a librar­i­an, and, for a spell, as the direc­tor of the Bib­liote­ca Nacional in Buenos Aires. His tastes were famous­ly eclec­tic. He did not think of much of canon­i­cal writ­ers like Goethe, Jane Austen, James Joyce and Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez. He favored the 19th sto­ry­tellers like Edgar Allan Poe and Rud­yard Kipling.

In 1985, Argen­tine pub­lish­er Hys­pamer­i­ca asked Borges to cre­ate A Per­son­al Library — which involved curat­ing 100 great works of lit­er­a­ture and writ­ing intro­duc­tions for each vol­ume. Though he only got through 74 books before he died of liv­er can­cer in 1988, Borges’s selec­tions are fas­ci­nat­ing and deeply idio­syn­crat­ic. He list­ed adven­ture tales by Robert Louis Steven­son and H.G. Wells along­side exot­ic holy books, 8th cen­tu­ry Japan­ese poet­ry and the mus­ing of Kierkegaard. You can see the full list below. A num­ber of the select­ed works can be found in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.

1. Sto­ries by Julio Cortázar (not sure if this refers to Hop­scotch, Blow-Up and Oth­er Sto­ries, or nei­ther)
2. & 3. The Apoc­ryphal Gospels
4. Ameri­ka and The Com­plete Sto­ries by Franz Kaf­ka
5. The Blue Cross: A Father Brown Mys­tery by G.K. Chester­ton
6. & 7. The Moon­stone by Wilkie Collins
8. The Intel­li­gence of Flow­ers by Mau­rice Maeter­linck
9. The Desert of the Tar­tars by Dino Buz­za­ti
10. Peer Gynt and Hed­da Gabler by Hen­rik Ibsen
11. The Man­darin: And Oth­er Sto­ries by Eça de Queirós
12. The Jesuit Empire by Leopol­do Lugones
13. The Coun­ter­feit­ers by André Gide
14. The Time Machine and The Invis­i­ble Man by H.G. Wells
15. The Greek Myths by Robert Graves
16. & 17. Demons by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky
18. Math­e­mat­ics and the Imag­i­na­tion by Edward Kas­ner
19. The Great God Brown and Oth­er Plays, Strange Inter­lude, and Mourn­ing Becomes Elec­tra by Eugene O’Neill
20. Tales of Ise by Ari­wara no Nar­i­hara
21. Ben­i­to Cereno, Bil­ly Budd, and Bartle­by, the Scriven­er by Her­man Melville
22. The Trag­ic Every­day, The Blind Pilot, and Words and Blood by Gio­van­ni Pap­i­ni
23. The Three Impos­tors
24. Songs of Songs tr. by Fray Luis de León
25. An Expla­na­tion of the Book of Job tr. by Fray Luis de León
26. The End of the Teth­er and Heart of Dark­ness by Joseph Con­rad
27. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gib­bon
28. Essays & Dia­logues by Oscar Wilde
29. Bar­bar­ian in Asia by Hen­ri Michaux
30. The Glass Bead Game by Her­mann Hesse
31. Buried Alive by Arnold Ben­nett
32. On the Nature of Ani­mals by Claudius Elianus
33. The The­o­ry of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
34. The Temp­ta­tion of St. Antony by Gus­tave Flaubert
35. Trav­els by Mar­co Polo
36. Imag­i­nary lives by Mar­cel Schwob
37. Cae­sar and Cleopa­tra, Major Bar­bara, and Can­dide by George Bernard Shaw
38. Macus Bru­tus and The Hour of All by Fran­cis­co de Queve­do
39. The Red Red­maynes by Eden Phillpotts
40. Fear and Trem­bling by Søren Kierkegaard
41. The Golem by Gus­tav Meyrink
42. The Les­son of the Mas­ter, The Fig­ure in the Car­pet, and The Pri­vate Life by Hen­ry James
43. & 44. The Nine Books of the His­to­ry of Herodotus by Her­do­tus
45. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rul­fo
46. Tales by Rud­yard Kipling
47. Vathek by William Beck­ford
48. Moll Flan­ders by Daniel Defoe
49. The Pro­fes­sion­al Secret & Oth­er Texts by Jean Cocteau
50. The Last Days of Emmanuel Kant and Oth­er Sto­ries by Thomas de Quincey
51. Pro­logue to the Work of Sil­ve­rio Lan­za by Ramon Gomez de la Ser­na
52. The Thou­sand and One Nights
53. New Ara­bi­an Nights and Markheim by Robert Louis Steven­son
54. Sal­va­tion of the Jews, The Blood of the Poor, and In the Dark­ness by Léon Bloy
55. The Bha­gavad Gita and The Epic of Gil­gamesh
56. Fan­tas­tic Sto­ries by Juan José Arreo­la
57. Lady into Fox, A Man in the Zoo, and The Sailor’s Return by David Gar­nett
58. Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els by Jonathan Swift
59. Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism by Paul Grous­sac
60. The Idols by Manuel Muji­ca Láinez
61. The Book of Good Love by Juan Ruiz
62. Com­plete Poet­ry by William Blake
63. Above the Dark Cir­cus by Hugh Wal­pole
64. Poet­i­cal Works by Eze­quiel Mar­tinez Estra­da
65. Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
66. The Aeneid by Vir­gil
67. Sto­ries by Voltaire
68. An Exper­i­ment with Time by J.W. Dunne
69. An Essay on Orlan­do Furioso by Atilio Momigliano
70. & 71. The Vari­eties of Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence and The Study of Human Nature by William James
72. Egil’s Saga by Snor­ri Sturlu­son
73. The Book of the Dead
74. & 75. The Prob­lem of Time by J. Alexan­der Gunn

As you will observe, Borges’ list is very short on books by women writ­ers. As a counter-offer­ing, you might want to explore this list: 74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Borges: Pro­file of a Writer” Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

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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The Visual Art of William S. Burroughs: Book Covers, Portraits, Collage, Shotgun Art & More

in Art, Literature | March 10th, 2015

burroughs_books

As an artist, William S. Bur­roughs was undoubt­ed­ly his own man, behold­en to no par­tic­u­lar aes­thet­ic, move­ment, or school, always inde­pen­dent even as a fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor with many oth­er notable writ­ers and artists. It didn’t hurt that he came from money—Burroughs’ grand­fa­ther invent­ed the adding machine, and the writer’s inher­i­tance, writes the Dai­ly Beast, “left the young scion free to pur­sue edu­ca­tion and drugs at his leisure.” Yet, although he pur­sued the lat­ter with­out reser­va­tion, he also worked hard­er than most of his con­tem­po­raries, con­stant­ly inno­vat­ing and pur­su­ing new paths. Bur­roughs’ “entire cre­ative project,” writes blog­ger Dan She­lalevy, “encom­passed art, graph­ics, cal­lig­ra­phy, type, pho­tog­ra­phy, film, assem­blage, poet­ry, spo­ken word, and music…. Cul­ture itself was his medi­um.”

Burroughs Art 1

He may be asso­ci­at­ed pri­mar­i­ly with the Beats, but Bur­roughs him­self reject­ed the label, say­ing, “We’re not doing at all the same thing, either in writ­ing or in out­look.” As a visu­al artist, London’s Octo­ber Gallery informs us, he “col­lab­o­rat­ed with Kei­th Har­ing, George Con­do, Robert Rauschen­berg, and oth­ers.” As in his writ­ing, Bur­roughs exper­i­ment­ed through­out his art career with col­lage, incor­po­rat­ing pho­tographs and pop cul­ture ephemera like com­ic strips and adver­tis­ing into paint­ings rich­ly textured—as in the thick impas­to sur­round­ing the por­trait of Samuel Beck­ett above—and often vio­lent, as below.

burroughs_mink1

The noto­ri­ous gun enthu­si­ast often blast­ed holes through his can­vass­es and even exper­i­ment­ed with shot­gun paint­ing. (See him with his shot­gun below, on the front page of a Times arti­cle cov­er­ing a 2005 exhib­it of his work.) Bur­roughs also incor­po­rat­ed gun imagery into his paintings—often made on slabs of plywood—and used pop art tech­niques like sten­cils and spray paint, as below.

burroughs2

Bur­roughs even designed his own book cov­ers, as you can see at the top of the post in the rel­a­tive­ly aus­tere paper­back cov­ers for Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine, both fea­tur­ing repeat­ing pat­terns of sym­bols. His visu­al art reflects the same obses­sions we find in all of his work. These recur­ring motifs are what Paul Pieroni, co-orga­niz­er of the 2005 gallery show at The Rifle­mak­er gallery in Lon­don, describes as a “het­ero-ontol­ogy of forces at work,” includ­ing the “cen­tral themes” of “vice, vio­lence and pas­sion.”

Burroughs-Times

The same imagery that recurs in hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry nov­els like Junky, Naked Lunch, and The West­ern Lands appears in the writer’s art­work: “thus, as in his lit­er­a­ture,” says Pieroni, “we find war, cocks, vio­lence, dirt, par­a­sites, guns—junk.” In Bur­roughs’ hands the detri­tus of Amer­i­can culture—the con­tents of adver­tise­ments, for­eign pol­i­cy briefs, and seedy motel rooms—takes on an omi­nous, myth­ic sig­nif­i­cance that shows us as much about our­selves as it does about the artist.

burroughs_face

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gun Nut William S. Bur­roughs & Gonzo Illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man Make Polaroid Por­traits Togeth­er

William S. Bur­roughs Shows You How to Make “Shot­gun Art”

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

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

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Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh & Other Arists Tell Their Musical Stories in the Animated Video Series, “California Inspires Me”

in Animation, Creativity, Literature, Music | March 6th, 2015

I’ve lived all of my life in var­i­ous cities on the East Coast, north and south. Var­i­ous cul­tur­al and geo­graph­ic fea­tures of the mid-Atlantic have shaped me in ways I’m prob­a­bly only par­tial­ly aware of. But this past sum­mer I spent more time on the West Coast—L.A. to be precise—than I ever have before, and I found it com­plete­ly refresh­ing. Of course, mass com­merce being what it is, no mat­ter where you go in the U.S., you run smack into a Tar­get, usu­al­ly flanked by strips of oth­er tedious­ly famil­iar chains. But instead of the tow­er­ing pines of my cur­rent locale, I gazed up at lan­guid palm fronds, and instead of the typ­i­cal East Coast swel­ter, I rel­ished the arid heat and the faint ocean tang in the air. A change in cli­mate changes one’s per­cep­tions of the world, and that’s not even to men­tion my—admittedly superficial—tourist’s appre­ci­a­tion of myr­i­ad archi­tec­tur­al, culi­nary, and oth­er SoCal eccen­tric­i­ties.

On return­ing and set­tling back into the grind, I still felt the pull west­ward, toward L.A.’s weird­ness. This is unsurprising—it’s a city, and a state, that have always sym­bol­ized escapism, as well as dis­ap­point­ment, whether that of the Joads, Nor­ma Desmond, or count­less real anony­mous hope­fuls. The sto­ry of mov­ing west in pur­suit of some Amer­i­can Dream is as old as Lewis and Clark and as new as Devo, one of whose found­ing mem­bers, native Cal­i­forn­ian Mark Moth­ers­baugh, nar­rates above his jour­ney to Hol­ly­wood with his band­mates after col­lege at Kent State (at the top of the post). He begins with some for­ma­tive child­hood experiences—getting his first pair of glass­es in 2nd grade (Moth­ers­baugh is legal­ly blind), see­ing the Bea­t­les on Ed Sul­li­van. He then tells, in brief, the sto­ry of Devo vs. the record com­pa­ny, or how a quirky art-rock band co-opt­ed Madi­son Avenue strate­gies to “tell the good news of de-evo­lu­tion,” only to them­selves become a com­mod­i­ty after scor­ing a hit with “Whip It.”

The video is part of a series called “Cal­i­for­nia Inspires Me,” a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Google Play and Cal­i­for­nia Sun­day mag­a­zine. Beneath Mothersbaugh’s ani­mat­ed sto­ry, see one from film­mak­er and artist Mike Mills, who talks about skate­board­ing and punk rock in his L.A. youth. In the video above, singer/songwriter Thao Nguyen shares her “real­ly deep appre­ci­a­tion for the his­to­ry of San Fran­cis­co in music.” And below, Jack Black relates his expe­ri­ences grow­ing up in the “deep, deep South” of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, specif­i­cal­ly Her­mosa Beach, with its surf cul­ture, and “free-wheel­ing hip­pie love.” If there’s one thing that ties all four videos together—besides the music by Shan­non Ferguson—it’s the mel­low per­son­al­i­ties of the four Cal­i­forn­ian artists. Watch­ing the series from my cur­rent­ly blus­tery win­ter cli­mate gave me the East Coast jit­ters, fir­ing up that urge again to hit the dusty trail and revis­it, or maybe relo­cate to the Sun­shine State.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Huell Howser’s Decades of Tele­vi­sion Trav­els Online. It’s Cal­i­for­nia Gold!

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Shows Off His Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

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

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Watch a 1953 Animation of James Thurber’s “Unicorn in the Garden,” Voted One of the Best Animations Ever

in Animation, Literature, Magazines | March 3rd, 2015

Humorist James Thurber nev­er tired of sub­ject­ing puny male mil­que­toasts to pow­er­ful female bul­lies.

In his view, mem­bers of the fair­er sex were nev­er femme fatales or fussy matrons, but rather bat­tle-lov­ing war­riors in sim­ple Wilma Flint­stone-esque frocks. They are immune to the tra­di­tion­al­ly fem­i­nine con­cerns of the period—hair, chil­dren, the liv­ing room drapes… they get their plea­sure dom­i­nat­ing Wal­ter Mit­ty and his ilk.

(Was he ter­ri­fied of Woman? Resent­ful of her? The sto­ry he stuck to was that he’d con­ceived of his com­ic por­tray­al for the sole pur­pose of “egging her on.”)

There is one mem­o­rable instance where the lit­tle guy was allowed to come out on top. “The Uni­corn in the Gar­den” is a sto­ry first pub­lished in The New York­er on Octo­ber 31, 1939. No spoil­ers, but there’s a close resem­blance to Har­vey, Mary Chase’s much-pro­duced play about a mild-man­nered gent whose devo­tion to a 6’ tall invis­i­ble rab­bit dri­ves his dom­i­neer­ing sis­ter around the bend.

The 1953 car­toon adap­ta­tion above brought Thurber’s draw­ings to life, whilst pre­serv­ing the dia­logue of the orig­i­nal in its entire­ty. The orig­i­nal sto­ry was pub­lished with only a sin­gle illus­tra­tion, but direc­tor William T. Hurtz’s had hun­dreds of New York­er car­toons to draw upon. Leg­end has it that Hurtz pur­pose­ful­ly assigned some of Unit­ed Pro­duc­tions of America’s least gift­ed ani­ma­tors to the project, hop­ing to dupli­cate Thurber’s ”nice, lumpy look.” The plan was for “The Uni­corn in the Gar­den” to be part of a full-length Thurber fea­ture, but alas, the stu­dio pulled the plug on Men, Women and Dogs before it could be com­plet­ed. Moral: Don’t count your boo­bies until they are hatched.

“A Uni­corn in the Gar­den” was lat­er vot­ed #48 of the 50 Great­est Car­toons of all time by mem­bers of the ani­ma­tion field. You can find more lit­er­ary ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Unicorn-Garden

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eudo­ra Wel­ty Writes a Quirky Let­ter Apply­ing for a Job at The New York­er (1933)

20 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Dos­to­evsky, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way & Brad­bury

New York­er Car­toon Edi­tor Bob Mankoff Reveals the Secret of a Suc­cess­ful New York­er Car­toon

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

 

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The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa: A Wonderful Sand Animation of the Classic Kafka Story (1977)

in Film, Literature | March 2nd, 2015

At home I often watch EBS, essen­tial­ly Kore­a’s equiv­a­lent of PBS, which often airs short inter­sti­tial seg­ments drawn in sand to fill the time between pro­grams. Only recent­ly have I learned that sand actu­al­ly has a gen­uine his­to­ry as a medi­um for ani­ma­tion, one that has pro­duced a work as strik­ing as Car­o­line Leaf’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis of Mr. Sam­sa back in 1977. Astute (or even not-very-astute) Kaf­ka fans will rec­og­nize this as an adap­ta­tion of The Meta­mor­pho­sis, far and away the writer’s best-known sto­ry, in which the young sales­man Gre­gor Sam­sa wakes up trans­formed into a giant bug. Find it in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

We see this bug writhing his way out of bed before we see any oth­er action in Leaf’s ten-minute sand short, whose (yes) ever-shift­ing visu­al tex­ture lends itself well to the theme of the tale. Not that this con­ver­gence of form and sub­stance came eas­i­ly: “What makes [Leaf’s] work stand out is the con­trol of the mate­r­i­al,” writes John­ny Chew, About Tech’s ani­ma­tion expert. “The Meta­mor­pho­sis of Mr. Sam­sa is an awe­some short film on its own, and a great adap­ta­tion of the Kaf­ka work, but when you con­sid­er the style in which it was made and the con­trol that would have to go into each frame, it’s unbe­liev­able.”

“The medi­um of ani­ma­tion, and specif­i­cal­ly cer­tain ani­mat­ed tech­niques, offer an abil­i­ty to faith­ful­ly repro­duce in part both the con­tent and the per­cep­tu­al expe­ri­ence of a lit­er­ary work,” writes Geof­frey Beat­ty in his paper “The Prob­lem of Adap­ta­tion Solved!.” In it, he quotes the ani­ma­tor on why she chose this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry: “ ‘Kafka’s sto­ries give this kind of room to invent,’ she says. This was an impor­tant val­ue for Leaf as she was estab­lish­ing a body of work based on a unique visu­al approach. The Meta­mor­pho­sis, sug­gest­ed to her by a friend and men­tor, was a good fit, as her own ‘black and white sand images had the poten­tial to have a Kaf­ka-esque feel – dark and mys­te­ri­ous.’ ”

The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa

Any worth­while artis­tic medi­um impos­es lim­i­ta­tions — and sand, as you’d imag­ine, impos­es some pret­ty seri­ous ones. Work­ing with it, Leaf “would not be able to cre­ate high­ly detailed images [such as] the fes­ter­ing wound on Gregor’s back or his over­all dete­ri­o­ra­tion and decay. How­ev­er, this lim­i­ta­tion was not nec­es­sar­i­ly a prob­lem. ‘I think that the lim­i­ta­tions of draw­ing in sand, the sim­pli­fi­ca­tions that it requires, made me inven­tive in the sto­ry­telling in the ways I men­tioned above. Sand forced me to adapt the sto­ry to sand, which is inter­est­ing.’ ”

Those read­ers who apply the word “Kafkan” to any point­less­ly dif­fi­cult task (like, say, get­ting out the door to work when you’ve become a giant bug) might also use it to describe Leaf’s labor-inten­sive sand ani­ma­tion process. But unlike a tru­ly Kafkan labor, Leaf’s gen­er­at­ed a result — and a delight­ful one at that. Now if only the next gen­er­a­tion of sand ani­ma­tors would step foward to adapt the rest of Kafka’s oeu­vre. Maybe we could inter­est PBS in air­ing it?

Find more lit­er­ary ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Dos­to­evsky, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way & Brad­bury

Watch Franz Kaf­ka, the Won­der­ful Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

Franz Kafka’s It’s a Won­der­ful Life: The Oscar-Win­ning Film About Kaf­ka Writ­ing The Meta­mor­pho­sis

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

in History, Literature | February 27th, 2015

Faulkner1

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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Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov Strikingly Illustrated by Expressionist Painter Alice Neel (1938)

in Art, Literature | February 26th, 2015

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Images belong to The Estate of Alice Neel.

We all know the rep­u­ta­tion of 19th-cen­tu­ry Russ­ian nov­els: long, dense bricks of pure prose, freight­ed with deep moral con­cerns and, to the unini­ti­at­ed, enlivened only by a con­fus­ing far­ra­go of patronymics. And sure, while they may have a bit of a learn­ing curve to them, these clas­sic works of lit­er­a­ture also, so their advo­cates assure us, boast plen­ty to keep them rel­e­vant today — just the qual­i­ty, of course, that makes them clas­sic works of lit­er­a­ture in the first place.

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While we should by all means read them, that does­n’t mean we can’t get a taste of these much-dis­cussed books before we heft them and turn to page one by, for exam­ple, check­ing out their illus­tra­tions. These vary in qual­i­ty with the edi­tions, of course, but how much of the art that has ever accom­pa­nied, say, Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky’s The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov has looked quite as evoca­tive as the nev­er-pub­lished illus­tra­tions here? They come from the hand of the Penn­syl­va­nia-born artist Alice Neel, com­mis­sioned in the 1930s for an edi­tion of the nov­el that nev­er saw the print­ing press.

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The Paris Review’s Dan Piepen­berg, post­ing eight of Neel’s illus­tra­tions, high­lights “how attuned these two sen­si­bil­i­ties are: it’s the mar­riage of one kind of dark­ness to anoth­er”; “the black storm cloud of Neel’s pen is well suit­ed to Dostoyevsky’s ques­tions of God, rea­son, and doubt.” And yet Neel also man­ages to express the nov­el­’s “mad­ness and com­e­dy,” bring­ing “a man­ic bathos to these scenes that lends them both grav­i­ty and lev­i­ty; in every wide, glassy pair of eyes, grave ques­tions of moral cer­ti­tude are under­cut by the absurd.”

You can see all of eight of Neel’s Kara­ma­zov illus­tra­tions at The Paris Review, not that they pro­vide a sub­sti­tute for read­ing the nov­el itself (which you can find in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks). After all, that’s the only way to find out what exact­ly hap­pens at that bac­cha­nal just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky Draws Elab­o­rate Doo­dles In His Man­u­scripts

Albert Camus Talks About Adapt­ing Dos­toyevsky for the The­atre, 1959

Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky Told in a Beau­ti­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

The Dig­i­tal Dos­to­evsky: Down­load Free eBooks & Audio Books of the Russ­ian Novelist’s Major Works

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, Existentialist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Finding Meaning in Life

in Life, Literature, Philosophy | February 24th, 2015

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Image by Steve Ander­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

At first blush, Hunter S. Thomp­son might be the last per­son you would want to ask for advice. After all, his dai­ly rou­tine involved copi­ous amounts of cocaine, LSD and Chivas Regal. He once raked a neighbor’s house with gun­fire. And he once almost acci­den­tal­ly blew up John­ny Depp. Yet beneath his gonzo per­sona lay a man who thought deeply and often about the mean­ing of it all. He was some­one who spent a life­time star­ing into the abyss.

So in 1958, before he became a counter-cul­ture icon, before he even start­ed writ­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly, Thomp­son wrote a long let­ter about some of the big ques­tions in life to his friend, Hume Logan, who was in the throes of an exis­ten­tial cri­sis.

While the first cou­ple of para­graphs warns against the dan­gers of seek­ing advice, Hunter then expounds at length on some deep, and sur­pris­ing­ly lev­el-head­ed truths. Below are a few pearls of wis­dom:

  • Whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly at one time in our lives. So few peo­ple under­stand this!
  • You might also try some­thing called Being and Noth­ing­ness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and anoth­er lit­tle thing called Exis­ten­tial­ism: From Dos­toyevsky to Sartre. These are mere­ly sug­ges­tions. If you’re gen­uine­ly sat­is­fied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleep­ing dogs lie.)
  • To put our faith in tan­gi­ble goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. We do not strive to be fire­men, we do not strive to be bankers, nor police­men, nor doc­tors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.
  • Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to fol­low (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real pur­pose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.
  • Is it worth giv­ing up what I have to look for some­thing bet­ter? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that deci­sion but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward mak­ing the choice.

The let­ter was pub­lished in the 2013 book, Let­ters of Note. You can read it in its entire­ty below.

April 22, 1958
57 Per­ry Street
New York City

Dear Hume,

You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dan­ger­ous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies some­thing very close to ego­ma­nia. To pre­sume to point a man to the right and ulti­mate goal— to point with a trem­bling fin­ger in the RIGHT direc­tion is some­thing only a fool would take upon him­self.

I am not a fool, but I respect your sin­cer­i­ty in ask­ing my advice. I ask you though, in lis­ten­ing to what I say, to remem­ber that all advice can only be a prod­uct of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be dis­as­ter to anoth­er. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you spe­cif­ic advice, it would be too much like the blind lead­ing the blind.

“To be, or not to be: that is the ques­tion: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suf­fer the slings and arrows of out­ra­geous for­tune, or to take arms against a sea of trou­bles … ” (Shake­speare)

And indeed, that IS the ques­tion: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly at one time in our lives. So few peo­ple under­stand this! Think of any deci­sion you’ve ever made which had a bear­ing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been any­thing but a choice how­ev­er indi­rect— between the two things I’ve men­tioned: the float­ing or the swim­ming.

But why not float if you have no goal? That is anoth­er ques­tion. It is unques­tion­ably bet­ter to enjoy the float­ing than to swim in uncer­tain­ty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a cas­tle in the stars, but a real and tan­gi­ble thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock can­dy moun­tain,” the entic­ing sug­ar-can­dy goal that has lit­tle taste and no sub­stance?

The answer— and, in a sense, the tragedy of life— is that we seek to under­stand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us cer­tain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a con­cept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you want­ed to be a fire­man. I feel rea­son­ably safe in say­ing that you no longer want to be a fire­man. Why? Because your per­spec­tive has changed. It’s not the fire­man who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reac­tions to expe­ri­ence. As your expe­ri­ences dif­fer and mul­ti­ply, you become a dif­fer­ent man, and hence your per­spec­tive changes. This goes on and on. Every reac­tion is a learn­ing process; every sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence alters your per­spec­tive.

So it would seem fool­ish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a dif­fer­ent angle every day? How could we ever hope to accom­plish any­thing oth­er than gal­lop­ing neu­ro­sis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tan­gi­ble goals, any­way. It would take reams of paper to devel­op this sub­ject to ful­fill­ment. God only knows how many books have been writ­ten on “the mean­ing of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many peo­ple have pon­dered the sub­ject. (I use the term “god only knows” pure­ly as an expres­sion.) There’s very lit­tle sense in my try­ing to give it up to you in the prover­bial nut­shell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions for reduc­ing the mean­ing of life to one or two para­graphs.

I’m going to steer clear of the word “exis­ten­tial­ism,” but you might keep it in mind as a key of sorts. You might also try some­thing called Being and Noth­ing­ness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and anoth­er lit­tle thing called Exis­ten­tial­ism: From Dos­toyevsky to Sartre. These are mere­ly sug­ges­tions. If you’re gen­uine­ly sat­is­fied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleep­ing dogs lie.) But back to the answer. As I said, to put our faith in tan­gi­ble goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be fire­men, we do not strive to be bankers, nor police­men, nor doc­tors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t mis­un­der­stand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE fire­men, bankers, or doc­tors— but that we must make the goal con­form to the indi­vid­ual, rather than make the indi­vid­ual con­form to the goal. In every man, hered­i­ty and envi­ron­ment have com­bined to pro­duce a crea­ture of cer­tain abil­i­ties and desires— includ­ing a deeply ingrained need to func­tion in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE some­thing; he has to mat­ter.

As I see it then, the for­mu­la runs some­thing like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES func­tion at max­i­mum effi­cien­cy toward the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is ful­fill­ing a need (giv­ing him­self iden­ti­ty by func­tion­ing in a set pat­tern toward a set goal), he avoids frus­trat­ing his poten­tial (choos­ing a path which puts no lim­it on his self-devel­op­ment), and he avoids the ter­ror of see­ing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws clos­er to it (rather than bend­ing him­self to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to con­form to his own abil­i­ties and desires).

In short, he has not ded­i­cat­ed his life to reach­ing a pre-defined goal, but he has rather cho­sen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolute­ly sec­ondary: it is the func­tion­ing toward the goal which is impor­tant. And it seems almost ridicu­lous to say that a man MUST func­tion in a pat­tern of his own choos­ing; for to let anoth­er man define your own goals is to give up one of the most mean­ing­ful aspects of life— the defin­i­tive act of will which makes a man an indi­vid­ual.

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to fol­low (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real pur­pose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Nat­u­ral­ly, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’ve lived a rel­a­tive­ly nar­row life, a ver­ti­cal rather than a hor­i­zon­tal exis­tence. So it isn’t any too dif­fi­cult to under­stand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who pro­cras­ti­nates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by cir­cum­stance.

So if you now num­ber your­self among the dis­en­chant­ed, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seri­ous­ly seek some­thing else. But beware of look­ing for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a liv­ing WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giv­ing up what I have to look for some­thing bet­ter? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that deci­sion but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward mak­ing the choice.

If I don’t call this to a halt, I’m going to find myself writ­ing a book. I hope it’s not as con­fus­ing as it looks at first glance. Keep in mind, of course, that this is MY WAY of look­ing at things. I hap­pen to think that it’s pret­ty gen­er­al­ly applic­a­ble, but you may not. Each of us has to cre­ate our own cre­do— this mere­ly hap­pens to be mine.

If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my atten­tion. I’m not try­ing to send you out “on the road” in search of Val­hal­la, but mere­ly point­ing out that it is not nec­es­sary to accept the choic­es hand­ed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that— no one HAS to do some­thing he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means con­vince your­self that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of com­pa­ny.

And that’s it for now. Until I hear from you again, I remain,

your friend,
Hunter

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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