Read the Lost Sherlock Holmes Story That Was Just Discovered in an Attic in Scotland

in e-books, Literature | February 22nd, 2015

sherlock_holmes_in_public-domain

In Novem­ber, we pre­sent­ed for you a quick way to down­load The Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes — not know­ing that, a few months lat­er, a lost Sher­lock Holmes sto­ry, seem­ing­ly attrib­uted to Arthur Conan Doyle, would be dis­cov­ered in an attic in Scot­land.

The sto­ry, The Guardian writes, was “part of a pam­phlet print­ed in 1903 to raise mon­ey to restore a bridge in the Scot­tish bor­der town of Selkirk.” Dis­cov­ered by the his­to­ri­an Wal­ter Elliot, the tale enti­tled “Sher­lock Holmes: Dis­cov­er­ing the Bor­der Burghs and, By Deduc­tion, the Brig Bazaar” can be read below, thanks to Vul­ture.

In 2013, a US judge ruled that Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries now belonged in the pub­lic domain. The same would appear to hold true for this hap­pi­ly dis­cov­ered, 1300-word sto­ry. You can find more Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

“Sher­lock Holmes: Dis­cov­er­ing the Bor­der Burghs and, By Deduc­tion, the Brig Bazaar”

We’ve had enough of old roman­cists and the men of trav­el” said the Edi­tor, as he blue-pen­cilled his copy, and made arrange­ments for the great Sat­ur­day edi­tion of the Bazaar Book. “We want some­thing up-to-date. Why not have a word from ‘Sher­lock Holmes?’ ”

Edi­tors have only to speak and it is done, at least, they think so. “Sher­lock Holmes!” As well talk of inter­view­ing the Man in the Moon. But it does not do to tell Edi­tors all that you think. I had no objec­tions what­ev­er, I assured the Edi­tor, to but­ton­hole “Sher­lock Holmes,” but to do so I should have to go to Lon­don.

“Lon­don!” scorn­ful­ly sniffed the Great Man. “And you pro­fess to be a jour­nal­ist? Have you nev­er heard of the tele­graph, the tele­phone, or the phono­grah? Go to Lon­don! And are you not aware that all jour­nal­ists are sup­posed to be qual­i­fied mem­bers of the Insti­tute of Fic­tion, and to be qual­i­fied to make use of the Fac­ul­ty of Imag­i­na­tion? By the use of the lat­ter men have been inter­viewed, who were hun­dreds of miles away; some have been ‘inter­viewed’ with­out either knowl­edge or con­sent. See that you have a top­i­cal arti­cle ready for the press for Sat­ur­day. Good day.”

I was dis­missed and had to find copy by hook or by crook. Well, the Fac­ul­ty of Imag­i­na­tion might be worth a tri­al.

The famil­iar house in Sloan Street met my bewil­dered gaze. The door was shut, the blinds drawn. I entered; doors are no bar­ri­er to one who uses the Fac­ul­ty of Imag­i­na­tion. The soft light from an elec­tric bulb flood­ed the room. “Sher­lock Holmes” sits by the side of the table; Dr Wat­son is on his feet about to leave for the night. Sher­lock Holmes, as has late­ly been shown by a promi­nent jour­nal, is a pro­nounced Free Trad­er. Dr. Wat­son is a mild Pro­tec­tion­ist, who would take his gru­elling behind a Martel­lo tow­er, as Lord Goschen wit­ti­ly put it, but not “lying down!” The twain had just fin­ished a stiff argu­ment on Fis­cal pol­i­cy. Holmes loq—

“And when shall I see you again, Wat­son? The inquiry into the ‘Mys­ter­ies of the Secret Cab­i­net’ will be con­tin­ued in Edin­burgh on Sat­ur­day. Do you mind a run down to Scot­land? You would get some cap­i­tal data which you might turn to good account lat­er.”

“I am very sor­ry,” replied Dr Wat­son, “I should have liked to have gone with you, but a pri­or engage­ment pre­vents me. I will, how­ev­er, have the plea­sure of being in kind­ly Scot­tish com­pa­ny that day. I, also, am going to Scot­land.”

“Ah! Then you are going to the Bor­der coun­try at that time?”

“How do you know that?”

“My dear Wat­son, it’s all a mat­ter of deduc­tion.”

“Will you explain?”

“Well, when a man becomes absorbed in a cer­tain theme, the mur­der will out some day. In many dis­cus­sions you and I have on the fis­cal ques­tion from time to time I have not failed to notice that you have tak­en up an atti­tude antag­o­nis­tic to a cer­tain school of thought, and on sev­er­al occa­sions you have com­ment­ed on the pass­ing of “so-called’ reforms, as you describe them, which you say were not the result of a spon­ta­neous move­ment from or by the peo­ple, but sole­ly due to the pres­sure of the Man­ches­ter School of politi­cians appeal­ing to the mob. One of these allu­sions you made a pecu­liar ref­er­ence to ‘Huz an’ Main­ches­ter’ who had ‘turned the world upside down.’ The word ‘Huz’ stuck to me, but after con­sult­ing many authors with­out learn­ing any­thing as to the source of the word, I one day in read­ing a provin­cial paper noticed the same expres­sion, which the writer said was descrip­tive of the way Haw­ick peo­ple looked at the progress of Reform. ‘Huz an’ Main­ches­ter’ led the way. So, thought I, Wat­son has a knowl­edge of Haw­ick. I was still fur­ther con­firmed in this idea by hear­ing you in sev­er­al absent moments croon­ing a weird song of the Nor­we­gian God Thor. Again I made enquires, and writ­ing to a friend in the South coun­try I pro­cured a copy of ‘Teribus.’ So, I rea­soned, so — there’s some­thing in the air! What attrac­tion has Haw­ick for Wat­son?”

“Won­der­ful,” Wat­son said, “and —”

“Yes, and when you char­ac­terised the action of the Ger­man Gov­ern­ment in seek­ing to ham­per Cana­di­an trade by rais­ing her tar­iff wall against her, as a case of ‘Sour Plums,’ and again in a draw­ing room asked a mutu­al lady friend to sing you that fine old song, ‘Braw, braw lads,’ I was curi­ous enough to look up the old bal­lad, and find­ing it had ref­er­ence to a small town near to Haw­ick, I began to see a ray of day­light. Haw­ick had a place in your mind; like­wise so had Galashiels — so much was appar­ent. The ques­tion to be decid­ed was why?”

“So far so good. And—”

“Lat­er still the plot deep­ened. Why, when I was retail­ing to you the steps that led up to the arrest of the Nor­wood builder by the impres­sion of his thumb, I found a very great sur­prise that you were not lis­ten­ing at all to my rea­son­ing, but were lilt­ing a very sweet — a very sweet tune, Wat­son — ‘The Flow­ers of the For­est;’ then I in turn con­sult­ed an author­i­ty on the sub­ject, and found that that love­ly if trag­ic song had a spe­cial ref­er­ence to Selkirk. And you remem­ber, Wat­son, how very enthu­si­as­tic you grew all of a sud­den on the sub­ject of Com­mon-Rid­ings, and how much you stud­ied the his­to­ry of James IV., with spe­cial ref­er­ence to Flod­den Field. All these things speak, Wat­son, to the order­ly brain of a thinker. Haw­ick, Galashiels, and Selkirk. What did the com­bi­na­tion mean? I felt I must solve the prob­lem, Wat­son; so that night when you left me, after we had dis­cussed the “Tragedy of a Divid­ed House,” I ordered in a ton of tobac­co, wrapped my cloak about me, and spent the night in thought. When you came round in the morn­ing the prob­lem was solved. I could not on the accu­mu­la­tive evi­dence but come to the con­clu­sion that you con­tem­plat­ed anoth­er Par­lia­men­tary con­test. Wat­son, you have the Bor­der Burghs in your eye!”

“In my heart, Holmes,” said Wat­son.

“And where do you trav­el to on Sat­ur­day, Wat­son?”

“I am going to Selkirk; I have an engage­ment there to open a Bazaar.”

“Is it in aide of a Bridge, Wat­son?”

“Yes,’ replied Wat­son in sur­prise; “but how do you know? I have nev­er men­tioned the mat­ter to you.”

“By word, no; but by your action you have revealed the bent of your mind.”

“Impos­si­ble!”

“Let me explain. A week ago you came round to my rooms and asked for a look at ‘Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome.’ (You know I admire Macaulay’s works, and have a full set.) That vol­ume, after a casu­al look at, you took with you. When you returned it a day or two lat­er I noticed it was marked with a slip of paper at the ‘Lay of Hor­atius,’ and I detect­ed a faint pen­cil mark on the slip not­ing that the clos­ing stan­za was very appro­pri­ate. As you know, Wat­son, the lay is all descrip­tive of the keep­ing of a bridge. Let me remind you how nice­ly you would per­orate —

When the good­man mends his armour
And trims his hel­met’s plume,
When the good­wife’s shut­tle mer­ri­ly
Goes flash­ing through the loom,
With weep­ing and with laugh­ter.
Still the sto­ry told —
How well Hor­atius kept the bridge,
In the brave days of old.

Could I, being mor­tal, help think­ing you were bent on some such exploit your­self?”

“Very true!”

“Well, good­bye, Wat­son; shall be glad of your com­pa­ny after Sat­ur­day. Remem­ber Hor­atius’ words when you go to Bor­der Burghs: ‘How can man die bet­ter than fac­ing fear­ful odds.’ But there, these words are only illus­tra­tions. Safe jour­ney, and suc­cess to the Brig!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Hear the Voice of Arthur Conan Doyle After His Death

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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Read 3 Stories from Haruki Murakami’s Short Story Collection Published in Japan Last Year

in e-books, Literature | February 17th, 2015

Briefly not­ed: Last spring, Haru­ki Muraka­mi released a new col­lec­tion of short sto­ries in Japan, rough­ly trans­lat­ed as Men With­out Women. If past trends hold, this vol­ume may nev­er see the light of day in the States. But we may get to read all of the indi­vid­ual sto­ries in the pages of The New York­er. Last year, the mag­a­zine pub­lished two of Murakami’s six new sto­ries — “Scheherazade” and “Yes­ter­day.” And now comes anoth­er, “Kino.”  You can read it online here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 6 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Reads in Eng­lish from The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle in a Rare Pub­lic Read­ing (1998)

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

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7 Short Stories by Junot Díaz Free Online, In Text and Audio

in Literature | February 16th, 2015

As much as any con­tem­po­rary writer of lit­er­ary fic­tion ever does, Junot Díaz has become some­thing of a house­hold name in the years since his debut nov­el, The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao appeared in 2007, then went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, among oth­er many oth­er hon­ors. The nov­el has recent­ly topped crit­ics lists of the best 21st cen­tu­ry nov­els (so far), and the recog­ni­tion is well-deserved, and very hard-won. Díaz spent a decade writ­ing the book, his process, in the words of The New York Times’ Sam Ander­son, “noto­ri­ous­ly slow” and labo­ri­ous. But none of his time work­ing on Oscar Wao, it seems, was spent idle. Dur­ing the long ges­ta­tion peri­od between his first book of sto­ries, 1996’s Drown, his first nov­el, and the many acco­lades to fol­low, Diaz has reli­ably turned out short sto­ries for the likes of The New York­er, cul­mi­nat­ing in his most recent col­lec­tion from 2012, This Is How You Lose Her.

Díaz is his own worst critic—even he admits as much, call­ing his over­bear­ing crit­i­cal self “a char­ac­ter defect” and “way too harsh.” Per­haps one of the rea­sons he finds his process “mis­er­able” is that his “nar­ra­tive space,” as crit­ic Liz­a­beth Par­avisi­ni-Gebert writes, con­sists not of “nos­tal­gic recre­ations of ide­al­ized child­hood land­scapes,” but rather the “bleak, bar­ren, and decayed mar­gins of New Jersey’s inner cities,” as well as the trag­ic, bloody past of his native Domini­can Repub­lic.

Despite the his­tor­i­cal vio­lence from which his char­ac­ters emerge, the voic­es of Diaz’s nar­ra­tives are a vital force, full of light­en­ing-fast recall of pop cul­tur­al touch­stones, hip-hop, his­toric and folk­loric allu­sions, and the minu­ti­ae of high geek­ery, from sci-fi film, to gam­ing, to com­ic book lore. (Watch Diaz dis­cuss geek cul­ture at New York’s St. Mark’s Comics above.)

Like a nerdy New World Joyce, Díaz works in a dizzy­ing swirl of ref­er­ences that crit­ic and play­wright Gregg Bar­rios calls a “deft mash-up of Domini­can his­to­ry, comics, sci-fi, mag­ic real­ism and foot­notes.” The writer’s unique idiom—swinging with ease from the most street­wise and pro­fane ver­nac­u­lar to the most for­mal aca­d­e­m­ic prose and back again—interrogates cat­e­gories of gen­der and nation­al iden­ti­ty at every turn, ask­ing, writes Bar­rios, “Who is Amer­i­can? What is the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence?” Diaz’s nar­ra­tive voice—described by Leah Hager Cohen as one of “rad­i­cal inclusion”—provides its own answers.

That noto­ri­ous­ly slow process pays div­i­dends when it comes to ful­ly-real­ized char­ac­ters who seem to live and breathe in a space out­side the page, a con­se­quence of Díaz “sit­ting with my char­ac­ters” for a long time, he tells Cres­si­da Leyshon, “before I can write a sin­gle word, good or bad, about them. I seem to have to make my char­ac­ters fam­i­ly before I can access their hearts in any way that mat­ters.” You can read the results of all that sit­ting and ago­niz­ing below, in sev­en sto­ries that are avail­able free online, in text and audio. Sto­ries with an aster­isk next to them appear in This Is How You Lose Her. The final sto­ry comes from Diaz’s first col­lec­tion, Drown.

  • “The Cheater’s Guide to Love” * (The New York­er, July 2012—text, audio)
  • “Mon­stro” (The New York­er, June 2012—text)
  • “Miss Lora” * (The New York­er, April 2012—text)
  • “The Pura Prin­ci­ple” * (The New York­er, March 2010—text)
  • “Alma” * (The New York­er, Decem­ber 2007—text, audio)
  • “Wild­wood” (The New York­er, June 2007—text)
  • “How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or hal­fie)” (text, audio)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

A Sneak Peek at Junot Díaz’s Syl­labi for His MIT Writ­ing Class­es, and the Nov­els on His Read­ing List

Junot Díaz Anno­tates a Selec­tion of The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao for “Poet­ry Genius”

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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

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Predict Which 21st Century Novels Will Enter the Literary Canon? And Which Overrated Ones Won’t?

in Books, Literature | February 13th, 2015

oscarwao11

Last year, we fea­tured a 1936 poll where read­ers pre­dict­ed what writ­ers would make it into the lit­er­ary canon of the year 2000. But what results would the same inquiry yield today? What 21st-cen­tu­ry nov­els (ear­ly in the game, I know, but still) will remain wide­ly read over half a cen­tu­ry from now? How much more pre­science have we evolved com­pared to that of our equiv­a­lents almost 80 years ago? How many mod­ern Sin­clair Lewis­es and Willa Cathers would we pick — ver­sus how many mod­ern James Truslow Adamses and James Branch Cabells?

Writ­ing for Arts.Mic, Claire Luchette gives one pos­si­ble set of answers to this ques­tion with her list of “11 Twen­ty-First Cen­tu­ry Books Our Kids Will Be Taught in School,” which runs as fol­lows:

  1. White Teeth (Zadie Smith, 2000)
  2. Life of Pi (Yann Mar­tel, 2001)
  3. Mid­dle­sex (Jef­frey Eugenides, 2002)
  4. The Kite Run­ner (Khaled Hos­sei­ni, 2003)
  5. The Name­sake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)
  6. Gilead by Mar­i­lynne Robin­son (2004)
  7. The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz, 2008)
  8. A Vis­it From the Goon Squad (Jen­nifer Egan, 2010)
  9. Free­dom (Jonathan Franzen, 2010)
  10. Dear Life (Alice Munro, 2012)
  11. Tenth of Decem­ber (George Saun­ders, 2013)

The future already looks bright for sev­er­al of Luchet­te’s picks. Junot Diaz’s “habit-form­ing­ly col­or­ful and bright” (not to men­tion Pulitzer-win­ning) The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao recent­ly topped BBC Cul­ture’s crit­ics poll for the best nov­el of the 21st cen­tu­ry so far. Oth­ers face longer odds. As high a point in the zeit­geist as Yann Martel’s Life of Pi reached — and no less an opin­ion leader than Barack Oba­ma called it “an ele­gant proof of God” — I per­son­al­ly tend to agree with the assess­ment of James Wood, who likens its cen­tral rev­e­la­tion to “an edi­to­r­i­al meet­ing of Social Text.”

And so we hand it over to you, Open Cul­ture read­ers. What does the future’s canon look like from where you stand? In the com­ments, name the books you think will remain wide­ly read (or grow more so) at the end of the cen­tu­ry, or indeed, the ones wide­ly read now that will have, by that point, col­lect­ed the bet­ter part of a cen­tu­ry’s dust. Bonus points for telling us why.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read­ers Pre­dict in 1936 Which Nov­el­ists Would Still Be Wide­ly Read in the Year 2000

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

The 25 Best Non-Fic­tion Books Ever: Read­ers’ Picks

The Books You Think Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read: Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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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In Animated Cartoon, Alison Bechdel Sees Her Life Go From Pulitizer Prize Winning Comic to Broadway Musical

in Comics/Cartoons, Life, Literature, Music, Theatre | February 13th, 2015

No one is sur­prised when authors mine their per­son­al expe­ri­ences. If they’re lucky enough to strike gold, oth­er min­ers may be brought on to bring the sto­ries to the sil­ver screen. Here’s where things get tricky (if lucra­tive). No one wants to see his or her impor­tant life details get­ting roy­al­ly botched, espe­cial­ly when the results are blown up 70 feet across.

Car­toon­ist Ali­son Bechdel’s path to let­ting oth­ers take the reins as her sto­ry is immor­tal­ized in front of a live audi­ence is not the usu­al mod­el. The fam­i­ly his­to­ry she shared in the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning Fun Home: A Fam­i­ly Tragi­com­ic has been turned into a Broad­way musi­cal.

Now that would be a nail biter, espe­cial­ly if the non-fic­tion­al source mate­r­i­al includes a graph­i­cal­ly awk­ward first sex­u­al encounter and your clos­et­ed father’s sui­cide.

In the ani­mat­ed com­ic above, Bechdel recounts the sur­re­al expe­ri­ence of see­ing her most per­son­al expe­ri­ences musi­cal­ized dur­ing Fun Home’s recent Off-Broad­way run at the Pub­lic The­ater.

In the wrong hands, it could have been an excru­ci­at­ing evening, but Fun Home, the musi­cal, has had excel­lent pedi­gree from the get go.

It’s also worth not­ing that this show pass­es the infa­mous Bechdel Test (below) both onstage and off, with a book and lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jea­nine Tesori.

Pre­views begin next month in New York City.

bechdel-rule

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Car­toon­ist Kate Beat­on Plays on Lit­er­ary Clas­sics — The Great Gats­by, Julius Cae­sar & More

Lyn­da Bar­ry, Car­toon­ist Turned Pro­fes­sor, Gives Her Old Fash­ioned Take on the Future of Edu­ca­tion

Under­ground Car­toon­ist R. Crumb Intro­duces Us to His Rol­lick­ing Album Cov­er Designs

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

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Illustrations for a Chinese Lord of the Rings in a Stunning “Glass Painting Style”

in Art, Literature | February 13th, 2015

lotr-chinese-covers-fellowship

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy has had an enor­mous­ly wide, cross-cul­tur­al appeal. This despite the fact that its cre­ator was a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of a long-dead lan­guage, Anglo-Sax­on, who set his sto­ry in a world of cus­toms and mores—supernatural ele­ments aside—that bear a fair­ly close resem­blance to ancient and medieval Eng­land. But such sim­i­lar­ly provin­cial set­tings have raised no bar­ri­ers to the glob­al reach of the Ili­ad, say, or Shake­speare. West­ern epics, ancient and mod­ern, may on the one hand have trav­eled the globe on waves of cul­tur­al impe­ri­al­ism (and Hol­ly­wood film), and, on the oth­er, they have their own built-in glob­al reach because they tap into arche­typ­al sto­ry-types and human characteristics—because their use of myth and folk­lore reads as uni­ver­sal, though the par­tic­u­lars change from place to place and age to age.

lotr-chinese-covers-two-towers

The mul­ti­lin­gual among us have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see how well, or not, great sto­ries trans­late into dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al con­texts. Read­ers, for exam­ple, of both Chi­nese and Eng­lish will be able to com­pare Tolkien’s orig­i­nals with forth­com­ing edi­tions of the books from Wen­Jing Pub­lish­ing. The rest of us provin­cial mono­lin­guals can still make com­par­isons of visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the text, like these pos­si­ble book cov­ers drawn by artist Jian Guo. Part of a com­pe­ti­tion held by the pub­lish­er of the new Chi­nese text, the beau­ti­ful, mono­chro­mat­ic illus­tra­tions draw on many of the design ele­ments of Tolkien’s orig­i­nal paint­ings for the trilogy’s cov­ers, elab­o­rat­ing on the icon­ic ring and tow­ers with intri­cate Asian lines and flour­ish­es. At the top, see The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, above The Two Tow­ers, and below, The Return of the King.

lotr-chinese-covers-return

The artist, an archi­tec­tur­al stu­dent, describes his style as “glass paint­ing style,” which he uses for its “sense of reli­gious mag­nif­i­cence.” Inter­est­ing­ly, before see­ing Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adap­ta­tion in 2002, he had nev­er heard of the books. (Pre­vi­ous Chi­nese trans­la­tions of the books fea­ture rather unimag­i­na­tive cov­ers with images from Jackson’s movies.) The films con­vert­ed him into an avid read­er of Tolkien—see a Hob­bit illus­tra­tion at the bot­tom of the post. Jian is also a lover of J.K. Rowling’s pop­u­lar fan­ta­sy series and has designed some won­der­ful­ly styl­ized illus­tra­tions for Har­ry Pot­ter and the Cham­ber of Secrets and Har­ry Pot­ter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

a_long_long_adventure_with_hobbit_by_breathing2004-d5q4spj

via Tor

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Illus­tra­tions of The Lord of the Rings in Russ­ian Iconog­ra­phy Style (1993)

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

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

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

in Art, Literature | February 12th, 2015

Burroughs Steadman pics

Ralph Stead­man is best known as the artist who real­ized the gonzo vision of Hunter S. Thomp­son in illus­tra­tions for the latter’s books and arti­cles (and more recent­ly, per­haps, for the labels on Colorado’s Fly­ing Dog brew). His work has famous­ly appeared over the past sev­er­al decades in Punch, Pri­vate Eye, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, and he pro­duced a bril­liant­ly illus­trat­ed edi­tion of Alice in Won­der­land. Like his friend Ger­ald Scarfe, anoth­er wicked­ly satir­i­cal car­toon­ist who cre­at­ed the look of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Stead­man has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the look of the coun­ter­cul­ture.

WSB_Paranoid

But while Steadman’s work with Hunter Thomp­son may large­ly define his career, anoth­er notable col­lab­o­ra­tion with a lit­er­ary fig­ure, William S. Bur­roughs, also proved fruit­ful many years lat­er. In 1995, Stead­man brought togeth­er his own illus­tra­tions with Bur­roughs love of guns, ask­ing the octo­ge­nar­i­an writer to blast holes in orig­i­nal Stead­man cre­ations.

Some of these paint­ings fea­ture the Polaroid por­traits of Bur­roughs above and at the top of the post (see a result­ing Steadman/Burroughs silkscreen print, with gun­shot holes, here). Just above, you can see Stead­man tak­ing the pho­tos. First, he makes some test shots with an assis­tant, then, at 2:50, we see him with Bur­roughs and an entourage. As The Inde­pen­dent described the meet­ing at Bur­roughs’ house in Lawrence, Kansas, it was some­thing of a “con­trived event,” with “swarms of assis­tants” and “acolytes” in atten­dance, “tap­ing the whole thing on video.”

Luck­i­ly for us, I’d say. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we don’t seem to have video from lat­er in the day, when the group drove “out to Burrough’s friends place out­side town, where he does his shoot­ing.” Once there, “Bur­roughs, Stead­man and his wife Anna and Bur­roughs’ entourage take turns blaz­ing away with .33s, .45s, pump-action shot­guns and Sat­ur­day-night spe­cials at a vari­ety of tar­gets,” includ­ing Steadman’s art. That would be some­thing to see. We’ll have to set­tle for the art itself, and Steadman’s fas­ci­nat­ing demon­stra­tion below of his approach to por­trai­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Hunter S. Thomp­son — and Psilo­cy­bin — Influ­enced the Art of Ralph Stead­man, Cre­at­ing the “Gonzo” Style

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

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

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

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William Faulkner Outlines on His Office Wall the Plot of His Pulitzer Prize Winning Novel, A Fable (1954)

in Literature | February 12th, 2015

200809_OAH_william_faulkner

Image cour­tesy of enotes

This past sum­mer I had occa­sion to vis­it Oxford Mis­sis­sip­pi for a con­fer­ence on William Faulkn­er, host­ed by the uni­ver­si­ty he briefly attend­ed, Ole Miss. Own­er of Faulkner’s estate, Rowan Oak, since 1972, the uni­ver­si­ty often stages events on the novelist’s for­mer grounds—particularly to cel­e­brate meet­ings devot­ed to his work. While I had wan­dered around the prop­er­ty a few times dur­ing my stay on cam­pus, I thought I’d wait until the cap­stone bar­be­cue at the conference’s close to enter the house itself. More fool me. A rain­storm forced the fes­tiv­i­ties into a col­lege hall, and I had to depart ear­ly the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

And so, sad­ly, I missed out on walk­ing Faulkner’s floor­boards, peer­ing out through his win­dows, and, espe­cial­ly, see­ing first­hand the notes he scrawled on the walls of his study to out­line the plot of his 1954 nov­el A Fable. The Pulitzer Prize and Nation­al Book Award-win­ning book, which—depending on your tol­er­ance for Faulkner’s excess­es is either a “crown­ing achieve­ment or self-indul­gent mess”—occu­pied the author for over a decade. He began A Fable—set in France dur­ing World War 1—just after the end of the Sec­ond World War, and did much of the writ­ing in the small office he added to the house in 1950, the year after he won the Nobel Prize. (Hear him read his Nobel Prize Speech here.)

Faulkner Wall Writing-L

Pho­to by Nick Rus­sell

Plot­ting the chronol­o­gy on the walls helped him become ful­ly immersed in the novel’s den­si­ty, but, writes edu­ca­tion blog Enotes, “not every­body was so pleased with the method”: “Faulkner’s wife, dis­ap­point­ed with the deci­sion, had the walls repaint­ed. In return, Faulkn­er rewrote the out­line and then shel­lacked the wall to ensure a per­ma­nent record.”

There are much worse ways to antag­o­nize one’s spouse, I sup­pose, but I’m sure that wasn’t his pri­ma­ry intent. Faulkn­er con­sid­ered the nov­el his masterpiece—Pulitzer and Nation­al Book Award com­mit­tees agreed—but crit­ics have not been so kind. It’s now one of his less­er-known works, one of the few not set in the fic­tion­al Yoknopataw­pha, a stand-in for his own Lafayette coun­ty, which he mined for sto­ries all of his mature career after some brief adven­tur­ing abroad.

Per­haps his defi­ant preser­va­tion of the plan for A Fable rep­re­sents his deep desire to leave behind the “postage stamp” of Oxford and its surrounds—to ven­ture into oth­er imag­i­na­tive ter­ri­to­ries. If so, his plan failed. Faulkn­er will be for­ev­er asso­ci­at­ed with the South—with Mis­sis­sip­pi, and with Rowan Oak. And like so many devo­tees, I’ll like­ly make my pil­grim­age to his well-pre­served home a year­ly event. The next time I’m down there, how­ev­er, I’ll actu­al­ly make it inside to see the writ­ing on the walls.

garabatos-novelas-adictamente.blogspot (2)

Pho­to by John Lawrence, from Faulkner’s Rowan Oak , by John Lawrence and Dan Hise

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

How Famous Writ­ers — From J.K. Rowl­ing to William Faulkn­er — Visu­al­ly Out­lined Their Nov­els

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

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