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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Harper Lee on the Joy of Reading Real Books: “Some Things Should Happen On Soft Pages, Not Cold Metal”

in Books, Letters, Literature | February 12th, 2015

News of the new, long-await­ed but hard­ly expect­ed Harp­er Lee nov­el, Go Set a Watch­man—a sequel to the 1960’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird—has been met with vary­ing degrees of skep­ti­cism, sure­ly war­rant­ed giv­en her late sis­ter Alice and oth­ers’ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Lee’s phys­i­cal and men­tal decline. On the oth­er hand, the nov­el­ist, it’s been report­ed, is “extreme­ly hurt” by alle­ga­tions that she has been pres­sured to pub­lish. It would be a shame if the con­tro­ver­sy over the pub­li­ca­tion of the nov­el eclipsed the nov­el itself. While it had become some­thing of a tru­ism that Harp­er Lee would only pub­lish the one, great nov­el and nev­er anoth­er, I for one greet this lat­est news with joy.

For one thing, cir­cum­stances aside, the new Harp­er Lee nov­el has the mass media doing some­thing it rarely does anymore—talking about lit­er­ary fic­tion. And for the thou­sands of school kids required to read To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and won­der­ing why they should both­er, the con­ver­sa­tion hope­ful­ly com­mu­ni­cates that books still mat­ter, and not just dystopi­an YA sci-fi and mass-mar­ket trade books about BDSM fan­tasies, but books about ordi­nary peo­ple in ordi­nary times and places. It’s a les­son Lee learned ear­ly. In a 2006 let­ter to Oprah Win­frey, pub­lished in O mag­a­zine, Lee wrote about her child­hood expe­ri­ences with read­ing, and being read to. She recalls arriv­ing “in the first grade, lit­er­ate,” because of her upbring­ing. She also acknowl­edges that “books were scarce”; her and her sib­lings ear­ly lit­er­a­cy meant they were “priv­i­leged” com­pared to oth­er chil­dren, “most­ly from rur­al areas,” and the “chil­dren of our African-Amer­i­can ser­vants.”

While we may dis­miss Lee’s con­tention that in “an abun­dant soci­ety where peo­ple have lap­tops, cell phones” and “iPods” they also have “minds like emp­ty rooms” as the kvetch­ing of a senior cit­i­zen, I doubt most peo­ple who respect Lee’s wis­dom and good humor would do so light­ly. Her poet­ic evo­ca­tion of the tac­tile dif­fer­ences between books and gad­gets alone should give us pause: “some things should only hap­pen on soft pages, not cold met­al.”

Read the full let­ter below.

May 7, 2006

Dear Oprah,

Do you remem­ber when you learned to read, or like me, can you not even remem­ber a time when you did­n’t know how? I must have learned from hav­ing been read to by my fam­i­ly. My sis­ters and broth­er, much old­er, read aloud to keep me from pes­ter­ing them; my moth­er read me a sto­ry every day, usu­al­ly a chil­dren’s clas­sic, and my father read from the four news­pa­pers he got through every evening. Then, of course, it was Uncle Wig­gi­ly at bed­time.

So I arrived in the first grade, lit­er­ate, with a curi­ous cul­tur­al assim­i­la­tion of Amer­i­can his­to­ry, romance, the Rover Boys, Rapun­zel, and The Mobile Press. Ear­ly signs of genius? Far from it. Read­ing was an accom­plish­ment I shared with sev­er­al local con­tem­po­raries. Why this endem­ic pre­coc­i­ty? Because in my home­town, a remote vil­lage in the ear­ly 1930s, young­sters had lit­tle to do but read. A movie? Not often — movies weren’t for small chil­dren. A park for games? Not a hope. We’re talk­ing unpaved streets here, and the Depres­sion.

Books were scarce. There was noth­ing you could call a pub­lic library, we were a hun­dred miles away from a depart­ment store’s books sec­tion, so we chil­dren began to cir­cu­late read­ing mate­r­i­al among our­selves until each child had read anoth­er’s entire stock. There were long dry spells bro­ken by the new Christ­mas books, which start­ed the rounds again.

As we grew old­er, we began to real­ize what our books were worth: Anne of Green Gables was worth two Bobb­sey Twins; two Rover Boys were an even swap for two Tom Swifts. Aes­thet­ic fris­sons ran a poor sec­ond to the thrills of acqui­si­tion. The goal, a full set of a series, was attained only once by an indi­vid­ual of excep­tion­al greed — he swapped his sis­ter’s doll bug­gy.

We were priv­i­leged. There were chil­dren, most­ly from rur­al areas, who had nev­er looked into a book until they went to school. They had to be taught to read in the first grade, and we were impa­tient with them for hav­ing to catch up. We ignored them.

And it was­n’t until we were grown, some of us, that we dis­cov­ered what had befall­en the chil­dren of our African-Amer­i­can ser­vants. In some of their schools, pupils learned to read three-to-one — three chil­dren to one book, which was more than like­ly a cast-off primer from a white gram­mar school. We sel­dom saw them until, old­er, they came to work for us.

Now, 75 years lat­er in an abun­dant soci­ety where peo­ple have lap­tops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like emp­ty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant infor­ma­tion is not for me. I pre­fer to search library stacks because when I work to learn some­thing, I remem­ber it. 

And, Oprah, can you imag­ine curl­ing up in bed to read a com­put­er? Weep­ing for Anna Karen­i­na and being ter­ri­fied by Han­ni­bal Lecter, enter­ing the heart of dark­ness with Mis­tah Kurtz, hav­ing Hold­en Caulfield ring you up — some things should hap­pen on soft pages, not cold met­al.

The vil­lage of my child­hood is gone, with it most of the book col­lec­tors, includ­ing the dodgy one who swapped his com­plete set of Seck­atary Hawkins­es for a shot­gun and kept it until it was retrieved by an irate par­ent.

Now we are three in num­ber and live hun­dreds of miles away from each oth­er. We still keep in touch by tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions of recur­rent theme: “What is your name again?” fol­lowed by “What are you read­ing?” We don’t always remem­ber. 

Much love, 

Harp­er

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

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

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

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

in Books, Literature | February 11th, 2015

Murakami 92Y

Note: It looks like the 92nd St Y took the read­ing off of its Youtube chan­nel for unknown rea­sons. How­ev­er you can stream it here.

Haru­ki Muraka­mi does­n’t make many pub­lic appear­ances, but when he does, his fans savor them. This record­ing of a read­ing he gave at New York’s 92nd Street Y back in 1998 (stream it here) counts as a trea­sured piece of mate­r­i­al among Eng­lish-speak­ing Murakamists, espe­cial­ly those who love his eighth nov­el, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle. When asked to read from that book, the author explains here, he usu­al­ly reads from chap­ter one, “but I’m tired of read­ing the same thing over and over, so I’m going to read chap­ter three today.” And that’s what he does after giv­ing some back­ground on the book, its 29-year-old pro­tag­o­nist Toru Oka­da, and his own thoughts on how it feels to be 29.

The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, pub­lished in three parts in Japan in 1994 and 1995 and in its entire­ty in Eng­lish in 1997, began a new chap­ter in the writer’s career. You could tell by its size alone: the page count rose to 600 in the Eng­lish-lan­guage edi­tion, where­as none of his pre­vi­ous nov­els had clocked in above 400. The­mat­i­cal­ly, too, Murakami’s mis­sion had clear­ly broad­ened: where its pre­de­ces­sors con­cern them­selves pri­mar­i­ly with West­ern pop cul­ture, dis­ap­pear­ing girls, twen­tysome­thing lan­guor, and mys­te­ri­ous ani­mal-men, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle takes on Japan­ese his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly the coun­try’s ill-advised wartime colo­nial ven­ture in Manchuria.

As a result, the book final­ly earned Muraka­mi some respect — albeit respect he’d nev­er direct­ly sought — from his home­land’s long-dis­dain­ful lit­er­ary estab­lish­ment. Despite hav­ing held its place since the time of this read­ing as Murakami’s “impor­tant” book, and one many read­ers name as their favorite, it might not offer the eas­i­est point of entry into his work. When I asked Wang Chung lead singer Jack Hues about a Muraka­mi ref­er­ence in the band’s song “City of Light,” he told me he put it there after read­ing The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle on his daugh­ter’s rec­om­men­da­tion and not lik­ing it very much. I sug­gest­ed he try Nor­we­gian Wood instead.

Note: You can down­load a com­plete audio ver­sion of The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle if you take part in one of the free tri­als offered by our part­ners Audible.com and/or Audiobooks.com. Click on the respec­tive links to get more infor­ma­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

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

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

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

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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Listen to 90 Famous Authors & Celebrities Read Great Stories & Poems

in Literature | February 9th, 2015

In a logo­cen­tric culture—as Jacques Der­ri­da defined it—such as has exist­ed in the West for hun­dreds of years, writ­ing occu­pies a hal­lowed space, and lit­er­ary or philo­soph­i­cal writ­ing all the more so. The rhythms of every­day speech, the ges­tures and sig­nif­i­cant looks that char­ac­ter­ize our quo­tid­i­an inter­ac­tions are deemed less impor­tant than the pre­sum­ably indeli­ble marks on the page. Of course, before the writ­ten word, or at least the print­ed word and wide­spread lit­er­a­cy, speech was pri­ma­ry, and no lit­er­ary cul­ture exist­ed with­out it. From philoso­phers con­duct­ing peri­patet­ic dia­logues, to priests recit­ing scrip­ture, to bards recit­ing poet­ry in tav­erns, the nuances of voice and ges­ture were insep­a­ra­ble from the text.

Of the many rev­o­lu­tion­ary qual­i­ties of the inter­net, one of them has been to restore to lit­er­a­ture its voice, as lit­er­ary read­ings (pre­vi­ous­ly the pre­serve of a priv­i­leged few able to attend spe­cial­ized events and con­fer­ences) become avail­able to all. Whether through Youtube video and audio or mp3, lovers of lit­er­a­ture around the world can access the voic­es and vis­ages of authors like Maya Angelou (top, read­ing “Still I Rise,” with some ad libs), whose total­ly dis­tinc­tive face and voice don’t sim­ply sup­ple­ment her work but seem to com­plete it. We can hear W.H. Auden him­self read “As I Walked Out One Evening” (above, from a 1937 record­ing) in his deep bari­tone. We can hear Sylvia Plath read “Ariel” (below) and many more poems from her final col­lec­tion of the same name.

We also have the plea­sure of hear­ing, and see­ing, oth­er read­ers inter­pret the work of authors we love, such as the per­fect con­flu­ence of text and voice in the Tom Waits’ read­ing of Charles Bukowski’s “The Laugh­ing Heart,” below. Oth­er notable poet­ry read­ings by some­one oth­er than the author include James Earl Jones’ ren­di­tion of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and Allen Ginsberg’s reading—or singing, rather—of the poet­ry of William Blake. And while poet­ry should always be read aloud, it can be equal­ly rev­e­la­to­ry to hear great prose works read, by their authors and oth­ers.

In the list of 90 read­ings below, excerpt­ed from our col­lec­tion of 630 Free Audio Books, you can find works by Faulkn­er and Hem­ing­way, read by Faulkn­er and Hem­ing­way, and Melville’s Moby Dick, read by a host of celebri­ty voic­es. And much, much more. So take some time and recon­nect with the voic­es and faces of lit­er­a­ture, which are as impor­tant as the words they pro­duce. And if you know of any read­ings online that aren’t on our list, feel free to leave a link to them in the com­ments.

  • Angelou, Maya – Still I Rise & On the Pulse of the Morn­ing (read by author) – YouTube
  • Apol­li­naire, Guil­laume – Le pont Mirabeau (Read by author in 1913) – Free MP3
  • Auden, W.H. - As I Walked Out One Evening (read by author) – YouTube
  • Auster, Paul – Free MP3 – The Red Note­book (read by the author)
  • Barthelme, Don­ald - “Con­cern­ing the Body­guard” (read by Salman Rushdie) – Free MP3
  • Blake, William - Songs of Inno­cence and Songs of Expe­ri­ence, as read by Allen Gins­berg — Free Stream/MP3
  • Borges, Jorge Luis – The Gospel Accord­ing to Mark (read by Paul Ther­oux) – Free MP3
  • Brad­bury, Ray – If Only We Had Taller Been (read by the author) – YouTube
  • Brad­bury, Ray – The Veldt (Read by Stephen Col­bert) – YouTube
  • Brad­bury, Ray – Sto­ries Read by Leonard Nimoy – YouTube
  • Brod­key, Harold – Spring Fugue (read by Jef­frey Eugenides) – Free MP3
  • Brod­key, Harold – The State of Grace (read by Richard Ford ) – Free Stream
  • Brown, Mar­garet Wise – Good Night Moon (Read by Susan Saran­don) – YouTube
  • Bukows­ki, Charles – The Laugh­ing Heart (read by Tom Waits) – YouTube Audio
  • Bukows­ki, Charles – The Crunch and Roll The Dice (read by Bono) – YouTube Audio
  • Bukows­ki, Charles – The Secret to My Endurance (read by the author) – YouTube Audio
  • Calvi­no, Ita­lo – Invis­i­ble Cities (excerpts read by Calvi­no) – Free Stream
  • Car­roll, Lewis – Alice in Won­der­land – Alter­na­tive ver­sion read by Cory Doc­torow of Boing­Bo­ing
  • Carv­er, Ray­mond - “Fat” (read by Anne Enright) – Free MP3
  • Carv­er, Ray­mond – “The Stu­dents’ Wife (read by Richard Ford) – Free MP3
  • Carv­er, Ray­mond – “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (Read by Carv­er) – Free MP3
  • Cheev­er, John – “The Death of Justi­na” (read by John Cheev­er) – Free Stream/Download
  • Cheev­er, John ” The Enor­mous Radio” (read by Nathan Eng­lan­der) –Free Stream
  • Cheev­er, John - “The Reunion” (read by Richard Ford) – Free MP3
  • Cheev­er, John – “The Swim­mer” (read by Anne Enright) – Free MP3
  • Cheev­er, John – “The Swim­mer” (read by Cheev­er) – Free Stream/Download
  • Chabon, Michael – “S Angel” (read by author) – Free Stream/Download
  • Coleridge, Samuel – Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Ver­sion read by Orson Welles
  • Cum­mings, EE - Some­where I Have Nev­er Trav­elled – (read by author) – YouTube
  • Cum­mings, EE - Any­one Lived in a Pret­ty How Town – (read by author) – YouTube
  • Dan­ti­cat, Edwidge - Water Child (read by Junot Diaz) – Free MP3 – Free iTunes
  • DeLillo’s, Don – “Baad­er-Mein­hof” (read by Chang-rae Lee) – MP3
  • Dick­ens, Charles – A Christ­mas Car­ol (Read by Neil Gaiman) – Free Stream
  • Faulkn­er, William – Faulkn­er Reads – Free Stream
  • Fer­linghet­ti, Lawrence – Selec­tions from A Coney Island of the Mind (read by author) – Free MP3 – Free Stream
  • Frost, Robert – Stop­ping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (read by author) – YouTube
  • Frost, Robert – The Gift Out­right (read by author) – YouTube
  • Gins­berg, Allen – A Super­mar­ket in Cal­i­for­nia (read by Gins­berg) – Free MP3
  • Gins­berg, Allen – Amer­i­ca (read by Gins­berg) – Free YouTube Stream
  • Gins­berg, Allen - Howl, A Strange New Cot­tage in Berke­ley, and Super­mar­ket in Cal­i­for­nia (read by Gins­berg) – Free MP3/Stream
  • Gordimer, Nadine – “A Style of Her Own” and “The Bride­groom” (read by the author, 1961) – Free Stream/Download
  • Gordimer, Nadine – “Loot” (read by author) – YouTube
  • Hem­ing­way, Ernest – Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads Ernest Hem­ing­way –Free Stream
  • Hem­ing­way, Ernest - Homage to Switzer­land (read by Julian Barnes) – Free MP3
  • Hem­ing­way, Ernest – “In Harry’s Bar in Venice” (a short sto­ry read by Hem­ing­way: .au for­mat, .gsm for­mat, .ra for­mat)
  • Hem­ing­way, Ernest – “The Snows of Kil­i­man­jaro” (read by Charleston Hes­ton) – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4
  • Joyce, James – “The Dead” (Read by Cyn­thia Nixon & Colum McCann) – Free Stream
  • July, Miran­da - “Ron Spivey” (read by David Sedaris) – Free MP3
  • Kaf­ka, Franz – “A Hunger Artist” (read by Hanif Kureishi) – Free MP3
  • Kin­caid, Jamaica - “Fig­ures in the Dis­tance” (read by Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie) – Free Stream
  • Kin­caid, Jamaica – “Girl” and “Wing­less” (read by Edwidge Dan­ti­cat) – Free Stream
  • McCann, Colum – “Transat­lantic” (read by author) – Free MP3
  • Melville, Her­man – Moby Dick read by Celebri­ties – Free iTunes – Sound­cloud – Big Read – More details
  • Moore, Lor­rie – “Paper Loss­es” (read by Gary Shteyn­gart) – Free Stream
  • Nabokov, Vladimir - My Russ­ian Edu­ca­tion (Read by Orhan Pamuk) – Free MP3 – Free iTunes
  • O’Connor, Flan­nery – “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” (Read by author in 1959) – Stream/Download
  • Oates, Joyce Car­ol - “Mas­tiff” (read by Louise Erdrich) – Free Stream
  • Ozick, Cyn­thia – “The Shawl” (read by Joyce Car­ol Oates) – Free Stream
  • Paley, Grace – “Love” (read by George Saun­ders) – Free Stream
  • Plath, Sylvia – Ariel (read by author) – YouTube Stream
  • Poe, Edgar Allan - The Raven (as read by Christo­pher Walken) – Free YouTube Audio
  • Poe, Edgar Allan - The Raven (as read by James Earl Jones) – Free YouTube Audio
  • Pound, Ezra – Ses­ti­na: Altaforte (read by author) – YouTube
  • Pritch­ett, V.S. – The Res­cue (Read by Jonathan Lethem) – Free Stream
  • Rich, Adri­enne – Mourn­ing Poem, Spring Thun­der, White Night and oth­er poems (read by author) – Free Stream/Download
  • Rumi – Like This (read by Til­da Swin­ton) – YouTube
  • Sara­m­a­go, José - “The Cen­taur” (Read by Nadine Gordimer) – Free MP3
  • Seuss, Dr. – Green Eggs and Ham (read by Neil Gaiman) – YouTube
  • Sex­ton, Anne – Wait­ing to Die (read by author) – YouTube
  • Shake­speare, William – The Son­nets (read by Sir John Giel­gud) – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
  • Shel­ley, Per­cy Bysshe – Ozy­man­dias (read by Bryan Cranston) – Free YouTube
  • Singer, Isaac Bashe­vis – Dis­guised – Free MP3 (read by Nathan Eng­lan­der)
  • Stevens, Wal­lace – “Cre­dences of Sum­mer” and “An Ordi­nary Evening in New Haven” (read by the author) – Free Stream/Download
  • Thomas, Dylan – A Child’s Christ­mas in Wales (read by Thomas) –Youtube
  • Thomas, Dylan – Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night (read by the author) – Free MP3/Stream
  • Thomas, Dylan – Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night (read by the Sir Antho­ny Hop­kins) – Free YouTube
  • Thomas, Dylan – The Wild West (read by the author) – Free MP3/Stream
  • Thomas, Dylan – Under Milk Wood (read by the author) – Free MP3/Stream
  • Updike, John - “Play­ing with Dyna­mite” (read by Roger Angell) – Free MP3
  • Updike, John – “A & P.” (read by Alle­gra Good­man) – Free MP3
  • Wal­lace, David Fos­ter - “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster” (read by DFW) – Free MP3
  • Wal­lace, David Fos­ter - “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s” (read by DFW) – Free MP3
  • Wel­ty, Eudo­ra - “Where Is the Voice Com­ing From?” (read by Joyce Car­ol Oates) (MP3)
  • Whit­man, Walt – Song of Myself (read by James Earl Jones) – Free Stream/Download
  • Wilde, Oscar – The Hap­py Prince read by Stephen Fry – YouTube
  • Williams, Willam Car­los – The Red Wheel­bar­row, Tract, The Defec­tive Record, To a Poor Old Woman, A Coro­nal, To Elsie, The Wind Increas­es, Clas­sic Scene (read by poet 1954) – Free
  • Wolff, Tobias – “Bul­let in the Brain” (read by T. Cor­aghes­san Boyle) (MP3)
  • Wolff, Tobias – “The Night in Ques­tion” (read by Akhil Shar­ma) (MP3)
  • Yeats, William But­ler – The Fid­dler of Dooney (read by the author) – Free MP3
  • Yeats, William But­ler – The Song of the Old Moth­er (read by the author) Free MP3

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture: Watch John Green’s Fun Intro­duc­tions to Gats­by, Catch­er in the Rye & Oth­er Clas­sics

Thug Notes Demys­ti­fies 60 Lit­er­ary Clas­sics (from Shake­speare to Gats­by) with a Fresh Urban Twist

What Are Lit­er­a­ture, Phi­los­o­phy & His­to­ry For? Alain de Bot­ton Explains with Mon­ty Python-Style Videos

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

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William S. Burroughs’ Home Movies, Featuring Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Steve Buscemi & Cats

in Literature | February 6th, 2015

Giv­ing Gus Van San­t’s Drug­store Cow­boy a re-watch a cou­ple of weeks ago, I found I espe­cial­ly enjoyed William S. Bur­roughs’ appear­ance toward the end as — what else? — an aged but wise drug user in whose benev­o­lent pres­ence Matt Dil­lon’s pro­tag­o­nist comes to life-chang­ing con­clu­sions. That pic­ture rep­re­sent­ed a break into the main­stream, or close to it, for Van Sant, a direc­tor pre­vi­ous­ly known for Mala Noche, a stark black-and-white take on street hus­tlers on Port­land’s Skid Row.

But Bur­roughs’ pres­ence, among oth­er things, allowed Drug­store Cow­boy to keep a cer­tain raw edge. If you real­ly want to see Bur­roughs’ in a con­text of cin­e­mat­ic raw­ness, though, have a look at these home movies. We’ve pulled them out of the inter­net’s attic as a cel­e­bra­tion of the Naked Lunch author’s 101st birth­day. Only light­ly and taste­ful­ly edit­ed, these VHS gems (part one, part two) can­did­ly depict Bur­roughs at home in Lawrence, Kansas in 1996, just a year before his death.

They also find him in the com­pa­ny of such notable friends as Pat­ti Smith, Steve Busce­mi, and Allen Gins­berg, smok­ing, drink­ing, and — in Smith’s case — bust­ing out the gui­tar. Cats, as promised, roam through the frame. You might not call Bur­roughs him­self, made some­what less exu­ber­ant by time, the life of the par­ty, but he does seem to have radi­at­ed a kind of askew ani­mat­ing spir­it until the end. It cer­tain­ly kept him sur­round­ed by coun­ter­cul­tur­al lumi­nar­ies, all of them sure­ly still as keen as that young phar­ma­cy-rob­ber to learn from him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Drug­store Cow­boy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989)

Hear a Great Radio Doc­u­men­tary on William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rat­ed by Iggy Pop

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

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

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

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

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Watch Between Time and Timbuktu, an Obscure TV Gem Based on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut

in Comedy, Literature, Television | February 6th, 2015

Just won­der­ing, who among us knows how to sing the zip code of Boston’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion, WGBH-TV?

If you war­bled “02134” with­out hes­i­ta­tion, you prob­a­bly grew up watch­ing a beloved children’s tele­vi­sion show of the 70s.

It turns out Zoom wasn’t the only cool pro­gram WGBH hatched in 1972. On March 13, just a cou­ple of months after Zoom’s debut, the sta­tion aired Between Time and Tim­buk­tu, a 90-minute spe­cial inspired by the work of Kurt Von­negut.

The script was writ­ten by David Odell, who lat­er won an Emmy for The Mup­pet Show, but Von­negut advised, pinch­ing char­ac­ters and scenes from such favorites as Cat’s Cra­dle, Sirens of Titan, and “Har­ri­son Berg­eron.”

Von­negut also wrote the intro­duc­tion to the pub­lished script, a paper­back quick­ie enhanced by pro­duc­tion stills and pho­tos tak­en by Vonnegut’s wife, Jill Kre­mentz. It was as good a forum as any for him to announce his retire­ment from film, which he cit­ed as a medi­um “too clank­ing and real” for his com­fort.

The show itself is like­ly to cause nos­tal­gia for television’s free­wheel­ing, Mon­ty Python era.

Though 1972 wasn’t an entire­ly sil­ly peri­od, if you’ll recall. The Viet­nam War was rag­ing, with Wal­ter Cronkite hold­ing down the CBS Evening News desk.

Between Time and Tim­buk­tu cap­i­tal­izes on the vet­er­an broad­cast­er’s ubiq­ui­ty by cast­ing come­di­an Ray Gould­ing of Bob and Ray fame, as an appro­pri­ate­ly grave Wal­ter Gesund­heit. Bob joined him at the news desk as a fic­ti­tious for­mer astro­naut. Von­negut was appre­cia­tive of their efforts, stat­ing that Amer­i­can come­di­ans had prob­a­bly done more to shape his think­ing than any oth­er writer.

Also look for William Hick­ey, who played Prizzi’s Honor’s genial, aged mafia don, in the lead role of Stony Stevenson—now there’s a peri­od char­ac­ter name! If you’ll remem­ber, Stony is also the first civil­ian in space, at least accord­ing to the Sirens of Titan.

via The Air­ship

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

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

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Invisible Cities Illustrated: Three Artists Paint Every City in Italo Calvino’s Classic Novel

in Art, Literature | February 5th, 2015

Cities-Thekla

The medieval trav­el­ogue presents present-day writ­ers and artists with an abun­dance of mate­r­i­al. Writ­ing in an age when the bound­aries between fic­tion and non- were not so sharply drawn, ear­ly explor­ers and sailors had lit­tle com­punc­tion about embell­ish­ing their tales with exag­ger­a­tions and out­right lies. Trav­el­ers cir­cu­lat­ed sto­ries of giants and mon­sters and cred­u­lous read­ers back home swal­lowed them whole. Well, some­times. In the case of the most famed medieval trav­el­er, Mar­co Polo, schol­ars have debat­ed whether Il Mil­ione—one of the titles of a nar­ra­tive based on his accounts—refers to a fam­i­ly nick­name or to Polo’s rep­u­ta­tion for telling “a mil­lion lies.” But whether Polo told the truth or not hard­ly mat­tered to Ita­lo Calvi­no, who found in the explorer’s col­or­ful tales just the inspi­ra­tion he need­ed for his 1972 nov­el Invis­i­ble Cities.

Cities-Irene Kuth

More a series of vignettes than a nar­ra­tive, the book con­sists of chap­ter after chap­ter of Polo describ­ing for Kublai Khan the var­i­ous cities he encoun­tered on his trav­els, each one more fan­tas­tic and mag­i­cal than the last. “Kublai Khan does not nec­es­sar­i­ly believe every­thing Mar­co Polo says,” Calvi­no tells us in his intro­duc­tion, “but the emper­or of the Tar­tars does con­tin­ue lis­ten­ing to the young Venet­ian with greater atten­tion and curios­i­ty than he shows any oth­er mes­sen­ger or explor­er of his.” As read­ers, we too lis­ten with rapt atten­tion to curi­ous sto­ries of cities like Olin­da, which “grows in con­cen­tric cir­cles, like tree trunks which each year add one more ring” and Eusapia, where “the inhab­i­tants have con­struct­ed an iden­ti­cal copy of their city, under­ground,” so that the dead can “con­tin­ue their for­mer activ­i­ties.”

Cities-Beersheba Connor

Play­ing on the bizarre nature of trav­el­ers’ tales and the imag­i­na­tive excess­es of exot­ic romances, Calvino’s nov­el abounds in delight­ful archi­tec­tur­al absur­di­ties and puz­zling alle­gories, almost demand­ing to be illu­mi­nat­ed like a medieval man­u­script. Decid­ing to meet the chal­lenge, artists Matt Kish, Leighton Con­nor, Joe Kuth began illus­trat­ing Invis­i­ble Cities in April of 2014. Their tum­blr, See­ing Calvi­no, updates every Wednes­day with a new inter­pre­ta­tion of the novel’s many strange cities. At the top of the post, see “Thekla,” the “city for­ev­er under con­struc­tion,” by Kish. Below it, Kuth’s imag­in­ing of “Irene,” the “name for a city in the dis­tance, and if you approach it, it changes.” And just above, Connor’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “Beer­she­ba,” in which it is believed that “sus­pend­ed in the heav­ens, there exists anoth­er Beer­she­ba … They also believe, these inhab­i­tants, that anoth­er Beer­she­ba exists under­ground.”

Cities-Adelma Kish

See­ing Calvi­no isn’t Kish’s first for­ay into lit­er­ary illus­tra­tion. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he under­took an illus­tra­tion of every page of Melville’s Moby Dick, an impres­sive effort we fea­tured last week. (Above, see anoth­er of his Invis­i­ble Cities pieces, “Adel­ma.”) Of the new, col­lab­o­ra­tive Calvi­no project, Kish tells us, “the episod­ic struc­ture real­ly appealed to us and we thought it was the per­fect kind of thing to build a tum­blr around and share with peo­ple.”

Invis­i­ble Cities has been fas­ci­nat­ing to cre­ate… each of us brings a very dif­fer­ent approach to the work. Joe’s Cities tend to be far more lit­er­al, real­is­tic and rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al, which I find kind of stag­ger­ing because that is so dif­fi­cult to do with Calvi­no. My illus­tra­tions are far more abstract and con­cep­tu­al, try­ing to show in sym­bol­ic ways the ideas behind each chap­ter. Leighton falls some­where between us on that spec­trum, and his work has ele­ments of real­ism and abstrac­tion. None of us even talked about this before we start­ed, we sim­ply began inde­pen­dent­ly (after set­tling on a rota­tion) and watched each oth­er’s work evolve.

The three artists of See­ing Calvi­no have to date paint­ed 45 of the 56 cities in Calvino’s nov­el. Kish has also illus­trat­ed Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Dark­ness, and his blog fea­tures many oth­er graph­ic inter­pre­ta­tions of lit­er­ary and cin­e­mat­ic works. The Moby Dick project saw pub­li­ca­tion as a book in 2011. We can only hope that Calvino’s pub­lish­er sees the val­ue of an Invis­i­ble Cities edi­tion incor­po­rat­ing Kish, Kuth, and Connor’s illus­tra­tions.

You can vis­it See­ing Calvi­no here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Illus­tra­tion of Every Page of Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick

Hear Ita­lo Calvi­no Read Selec­tions From Invis­i­ble Cities, Mr. Palo­mar & Oth­er Enchant­i­ng Fic­tions

Expe­ri­ence Invis­i­ble Cities, an Inno­v­a­tive, Ita­lo Calvi­no-Inspired Opera Staged in LA’s Union Sta­tion

Watch a Whim­si­cal Ani­ma­tion of Ita­lo Calvino’s Short Sto­ry “The Dis­tance of the Moon”

Ita­lo Calvi­no Offers 14 Rea­sons We Should Read the Clas­sics

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

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Romantic Poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge & Robert Southey Write About Their Experiments with Laughing Gas (1799)

in History, Literature, Science | February 5th, 2015

800px-Laughing_gas_Rumford_Davy

A hun­dred years before Sig­mund Freud used him­self as a test sub­ject for his exper­i­ments with cocaine, anoth­er sci­en­tist, Humphry Davy, Eng­lish chemist and future pres­i­dent of the Roy­al Soci­ety, began “a very rad­i­cal bout of self exper­i­men­ta­tion to deter­mine the effects of” anoth­er drug—nitrous oxide, bet­ter known as “laugh­ing gas.” Davy’s find­ings — Research­es, Chem­i­cal and Philo­soph­i­cal Chiefly Con­cern­ing Nitrous Oxide, or Diphlo­gis­ti­cat­ed Nitrous Air, And Its Res­pi­ra­tion By Humphry Davy—pub­lished in 1800, come to us via The Pub­lic Domain Review, who describe the 1799 exper­i­ments thus:

With his assis­tant Dr. Kinglake, he would heat crys­tals of ammo­ni­um nitrate, col­lect the gas released in a green oiled-silk bag, pass it through water vapour to remove impu­ri­ties and then inhale it through a mouth­piece. The effects were superb. Of these first exper­i­ments he described gid­di­ness, flushed cheeks, intense plea­sure, and “sub­lime emo­tion con­nect­ed with high­ly vivid ideas.”

Though we don’t typ­i­cal­ly think of nitrous oxide as an addic­tive sub­stance, like Freud’s exper­i­ments, Davy’s pro­gressed rapid­ly from curios­i­ty to recre­ation: “He began to take the gas out­side of lab­o­ra­to­ry con­di­tions, return­ing alone for soli­tary ses­sions in the dark, inhal­ing huge amounts, ‘occu­pied only by an ide­al exis­tence,’ and also after drink­ing in the evening.” For­tu­nate­ly for us, how­ev­er, also like Freud, Davy “con­tin­ued to be metic­u­lous in his sci­en­tif­ic records through­out.” Even­tu­al­ly, the twen­ty-year-old Davy con­struct­ed an “air-tight breath­ing box.” Seal­ing him­self inside, writes Mike Jay, Davy had Dr. Kinglake “release twen­ty quarts of nitrous oxide every five min­utes for as long as he could retain con­scious­ness.”

Also, like Freud’s use of cocaine, Davy’s research briefly led to a fad­dish recre­ation­al use of the drug, well into the ear­ly part of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, as you can see in the car­i­ca­tures at the top and below, from 1830 and 1829, respec­tive­ly. But despite what these humor­ous images sug­gest, “laugh­ing gas” became known not only as a par­ty drug, but also as a means of achiev­ing height­ened states of con­scious­ness con­ducive to philo­soph­i­cal reflec­tion and poet­ic cre­ation (hence the “Philo­soph­i­cal” ref­er­ence in the title of Davy’s research). Dur­ing his own expe­ri­ences “under the influ­ence of the largest does of nitrous oxide any­one had ever tak­en,” Davy “’lost all con­nec­tion with exter­nal things,’ and entered a self-envelop­ing realm of the sens­es,” writes Jay, find­ing him­self “‘in a world of new­ly con­nect­ed and mod­i­fied ideas,’ where he could the­o­rise with­out lim­its and make new dis­cov­er­ies at will.”

The appeal of this state to a sci­en­tist may be obvi­ous, and to a poet even more so. Davy’s friend Robert Southey, the future Poet Lau­re­ate, became “as effu­sive” as Davy after tak­ing the gas, exclaim­ing, “the atmos­phere of the high­est of all pos­si­ble heav­ens must be com­posed of this gas.” In addi­tion to Southey, Davy’s “free­wheel­ing pro­gram of con­scious­ness expan­sion… co-opt­ed some of the most remark­able fig­ures of his day”—including Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge, who is already well-known for find­ing some of his poet­ic inspi­ra­tion under the influ­ence of opi­um. Coleridge at the time had just pub­lished to great acclaim The Lyri­cal Bal­lads with William Wordsworth and had returned from a brief sojourn in Ger­many, where he had become heav­i­ly influ­enced by the Ger­man Ide­al­ist phi­los­o­phy of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schelling.

Laughing Gas--Poetry

Coleridge, who was “cap­ti­vat­ed by the young chemist” Davy, described his expe­ri­ence of tak­ing nitrous oxide for the first time in very pre­cise terms, avoid­ing the “extrav­a­gant metaphors” oth­ers tend­ed to rely on. He recalled the sen­sa­tions as resem­bling “that which I remem­ber once to have expe­ri­enced after return­ing from the snow into a warm room,” and, in a lat­er tri­al, said he was “more vio­lent­ly act­ed upon” and that “towards the last I could not avoid, nor felt any wish to avoid, beat­ing the ground with my feet; and after the mouth­piece was removed, I remained for a few sec­onds motion­less, in great ecsta­cy.” Under the influ­ence of both nitrous oxide and philo­soph­i­cal meta­physics, Coleridge had come to believe “the mate­r­i­al world only an illu­sion pro­ject­ed by” the mind.

Davy, who ful­ly endorsed this view, claim­ing “noth­ing exists but thoughts,” brought his “chaot­ic mélange of hedo­nism, hero­ism, poet­ry and phi­los­o­phy” to heel in the “coher­ent and pow­er­ful” 580-page mono­graph above, which makes the case for laugh­ing gas’s sci­en­tif­ic and poet­ic worth. The report, writes Jay, com­bines “two mutu­al­ly unin­tel­li­gi­ble languages—organic chem­istry and sub­jec­tive experience—to cre­ate a ground­break­ing hybrid, a poet­ic sci­ence.” Like Freud’s use of cocaine or Tim­o­thy Leary’s exper­i­ments with LSD decades lat­er, Davy’s exper­i­ments fur­ther demon­strate, per­haps, that the few times the sci­ences, phi­los­o­phy, and poet­ry com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er, it’s gen­er­al­ly under the influ­ence of mind-alter­ing sub­stances.

For more on Davy and nine­teenth cen­tu­ry England’s fas­ci­na­tion with laugh­ing gas, see Mike Jay’s Pub­lic Domain Review essay here and read this New York Review of Books arti­cle on his book-length treat­ment of the sub­ject, The Atmos­phere of Heav­en: The Unnat­ur­al Exper­i­ments of Dr. Bed­does and His Sons of Genius.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

Woman Takes LSD in 1956: “I’ve Nev­er Seen Such Infi­nite Beau­ty in All My Life,” “I Wish I Could Talk in Tech­ni­col­or”

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Carl Sagan Extols the Virtues of Cannabis (1969)

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

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