15 Great Films Adapted From Equally Great Novels

in Film, Literature | November 19th, 2014

clockwork orange adaptation

Warn­er Bros.

How often does a film adap­ta­tion of a nov­el you love meet your expec­ta­tions? Cir­cle one: A) Always B) Often C) Rarely D) Nev­er.

I’m guess­ing most peo­ple choose C, with a few falling solid­ly in the peren­ni­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed D camp. There are, of course, those very few films that rise so far above their source mate­r­i­al that we needn’t speak of the nov­el at all. I can think of one off the top of my head, involv­ing a cer­tain well-dressed mob­ster fam­i­ly.

Then there are adap­ta­tions of books that depart so far from the source that any com­par­i­son seems like a wast­ed exer­cise. Spike Jonze’s Adap­ta­tion is one inten­tion­al exam­ple, one that glee­ful­ly rev­els in its meta-poet­ic license-tak­ing.

Per­haps no sin­gle author save Shake­speare, Jane Austen, or Stephen King has had as many of his works adapt­ed to the screen as sci-fi vision­ary Philip K. Dick. The results vary, but the force of Dick’s imag­i­na­tion seems to make every cin­e­ma ver­sion of his nov­els worth watch­ing, I’d argue.

But all this talk of adap­ta­tion brings us to the ques­tion that the inter­net must ask of every sub­ject under the sun: what are nth best films made from novels—list them, damn you! Okay, well, you won’t get just my hum­ble opin­ion, but the col­lec­tive votes of hun­dreds of Guardian read­ers, cir­ca 2006, when writ­ers Peter Brad­shaw and Xan Brooks took a poll, then post­ed the results as “The Big 50.”

The list includes those dap­per mafiosi, but, as I said, I’m not much inclined—nor was Fran­cis Ford Coppola—to Mario Puzo’s nov­el. But there are sev­er­al films on the list made from books I do like quite a bit. In the 15 picks below, I like the movies almost or just as much. These are films from The Guardian’s big 50 that I feel do their source nov­els jus­tice. Go ahead and quib­ble, rage, or even agree in the com­ments below—or, by all means, make your own sug­ges­tions of cas­es where film and book meet equal­ly high stan­dards, whether those exam­ples appear on “The Big 50” or not.

1. A Clock­work Orange (1971)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s take on Antho­ny Burgess’ 1962 dystopi­an fable repli­cates the high­ly dis­ori­ent­ing expe­ri­ence of tra­vers­ing a fic­tion­al world through the eyes of a Beethoven-lov­ing, Nad­sat-speak­ing, sociopath. Mal­colm McDow­ell gives the per­for­mance of his career (see above). So dis­tinc­tive is the set design, it inspired a chain of Koro­va Milk Bars. Burgess him­self had a com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with the film and its direc­tor. Prais­ing the adap­ta­tion as bril­liant, he also found its bleak, sar­don­ic end­ing, and omis­sion of the novel’s redemp­tive final chapter—also miss­ing from U.S. edi­tions of the book pri­or to 1986—troubling. The film’s relent­less ultra­vi­o­lence, so dis­turb­ing to many a view­er, and many a reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, also dis­turbed the author who imag­ined it.

2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

A film adap­ta­tion with an even more brava­do ensem­ble cast (Dan­ny DeVi­to, Brad Dou­rif, Louise Fletch­er, Christo­pher Lloyd) and incred­i­bly charismatic—and dangerous—lead, Jack Nichol­son, Milos Forman’s Cuckoo’s Nest stands per­fect­ly well on its own. But lovers of Ken Kesey’s mad­cap nov­el have many rea­sons for favor­able com­par­i­son. One vast dif­fer­ence between the two, how­ev­er, lies in the nar­ra­tive point-of-view. The book is nar­rat­ed by will­ful­ly silent Chief Bromden—the film most­ly takes McMurphy’s point-of-view. With­out a voice-over, it would have been near-impos­si­ble to stay true to the source, but the result leaves the novel’s nar­ra­tor most­ly on the sidelines—along with many of his the­mat­ic con­cerns. Nonethe­less, actor Will Samp­son imbues the tow­er­ing Brom­den with deep pathos, empa­thy, and com­ic sto­icism. When he final­ly speaks, it’s almost like we’ve been hear­ing his voice all along (see above).

3. To Kill a Mock­ing­bird (1962)

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up! Your father’s pass­ing.” If this scene (above), doesn’t choke you up just a lit­tle, well… I don’t real­ly know what to say.… The sen­ti­men­tal adap­ta­tion of the reclu­sive Harp­er Lee’s only nov­el is flawed, right­eous, and love­able. Gre­go­ry Peck is Atti­cus Finch (and as far as adap­ta­tions go—despite the brave attempts of many a fine actor—is Ahab as well). And the young Mary Bad­ham is Scout. Robert Duvall makes his screen debut as kind­ly shut-in Boo Radley, audi­ences learn how to pro­nounce “chif­farobe”…. It’s as clas­sic a piece of work as the novel—seems almost impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate the two.

4. Apoc­a­lypse Now (1979)

Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and screen­writer John Milius—the Hol­ly­wood char­ac­ter so well car­i­ca­tured by John Good­man in The Big Lebows­ki—trans­form Joseph Conrad’s lean 1899 colo­nial­ist novel­la Heart of Dark­ness into a grandiose, bare­ly coher­ent, psy­che­del­ic tour-de-force set in the steam­ing jun­gles of Viet­nam. Bran­do glow­ers in shad­ow, Robert Duvall strikes hilar­i­ous­ly macho pos­es, Mar­tin Sheen gen­uine­ly los­es his mind, and a coked-up, man­ic Den­nis Hop­per shows up, quotes T.S. Eliot, and near­ly upstages every­one (above). Roger Ebert loved the even longer, cra­zier Redux, released in 2001, say­ing it “shames mod­ern Hollywood’s timid­i­ty.” Nov­el­ist Jes­si­ca Hage­dorn fic­tion­al­ized the movie’s leg­endary mak­ing in the Philip­pines. How much is left of Con­rad? I would say, sur­pris­ing­ly, quite a bit of the spir­it of Heart of Dark­ness survives—maybe even more than in Nico­las Roeg’s straight­for­ward 1994 adap­ta­tion with John Malkovich as Kurtz and Tim Roth as Mar­low.

5. Trainspot­ting (1996)

Dan­ny Boyle’s adap­ta­tion of Irvine Welsh’s addic­tion-themed first novel—or rather col­lec­tion of inter­linked stories—about a scrap­py bunch of Scot­tish lowlifes may be very much a prod­uct of its moment, but its hard to imag­ine a more per­fect screen real­iza­tion of Welsh’s punk prose. Char­ac­ter-dri­ven in the best sense of the phrase, Boyle’s com­ic Trainspot­ting man­ages the estimable feat of telling a sto­ry about drug addicts and crim­i­nal types that doesn’t fea­ture any gold­en-heart­ed hook­ers, mourn­ful inter­ven­tions, self-right­eous, didac­tic pop soci­ol­o­gy, or oth­er Hol­ly­wood drug-movie sta­ples. A sequel—based on Welsh’s fol­low-up nov­el Porno—may be forth­com­ing.

And below are 10 more selec­tions from The Guardian’s top 50 in which—I’d say—film and book are both, if not equal­ly, great:

6. Blade Run­ner (1982)
7. Dr. Zhiva­go (1965)
8. Empire of the Sun (1987)
9. Catch-22 (1970)
10. Loli­ta (1962)
11. Tess (1979)
12. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)
13. The Day of the Trif­fids (1962)
14. Alice (1988)
15. Lord of the Flies (1963)

So, there you have it—my top 15 from The Guardian’s list of 50 best adap­ta­tions. What are your favorites? Look over their oth­er 35—What glar­ing omis­sions deserve men­tion (The Shin­ing? Naked Lunch? Dr. Strangelove? Lawrence of Ara­bia? The Col­or Pur­ple?), which inclu­sions should be strick­en, for­got­ten, burned? (Why, oh, why was the Tim Bur­ton Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry remake picked over the orig­i­nal?) All of the films men­tioned are in English—what essen­tial adap­ta­tions in oth­er lan­guages should we attend to? And final­ly, what alter­nate ver­sions do you pre­fer to some of the most-seen adap­ta­tions of nov­els or sto­ries?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

700 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc. 

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

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Charles Dickens Gave His Cat “Bob” a Second Life as a Letter Opener

in History, Letters, Literature | November 17th, 2014

dicken's cat letter opener
Image via New York Pub­lic Library

Increas­ing­ly Face­book seems a vir­tu­al pet ceme­tery, with images of recent­ly depart­ed cats and dogs but­tressed with words of heart­break and con­so­la­tion. It feels hard-heart­ed to scroll past with­out lay­ing a com­ment at each fresh­ly dug cyber-mound, even when one has no per­son­al rela­tion­ship with the deceased, or, to large degree, the own­er. The lazy man may “like” news of a beloved Airedale’s demise, but acknowl­edg­ment can­not always be said to equal respect.

And what, pray tell, is the pro­to­col after? How many min­utes should elapse before it is accept­able to post Throw­back Thurs­day shots of one’s younger, big-haired self? What if one acci­den­tal­ly sends a Far­mville noti­fi­ca­tion to the bereaved?

If only we had a Vic­to­ri­an we could ask.

Prefer­ably, Charles Dick­ens.

He went to his reward eleven years before “Poor Cher­ry,” the first dog plant­ed in Hyde Park’s small pet ceme­tery, but he was a keen observ­er of mourn­ing cus­toms.

He was also an ani­mal lover, as his daugh­ter, Mamie not­ed in My Father as I Recall Him:

On account of our birds, cats were not allowed in the house; but from a friend in Lon­don I received a present of a white kit­ten — Williami­na — and she and her numer­ous off­spring had a hap­py home at “Gad’s Hill.” … As the kit­tens grow old­er they became more and more frol­ic­some, swarm­ing up the cur­tains, play­ing about on the writ­ing table and scam­per­ing behind the book­shelves. But they were nev­er com­plained of and lived hap­pi­ly in the study until the time came for find­ing them oth­er homes. One of these kit­tens was kept, who, as he was quite deaf, was left unnamed, and became known by ser­vants as “the mas­ter’s cat,” because of his devo­tion to my father. He was always with him, and used to fol­low him about the gar­den like a dog, and sit with him while he wrote. One evening we were all, except father, going to a ball, and when we start­ed, left “the mas­ter” and his cat in the draw­ing-room togeth­er. “The mas­ter” was read­ing at a small table, on which a light­ed can­dle was placed. Sud­den­ly the can­dle went out. My father, who was much inter­est­ed in his book, relight­ed the can­dle, stroked the cat, who was look­ing at him pathet­i­cal­ly he noticed, and con­tin­ued his read­ing. A few min­utes lat­er, as the light became dim, he looked up just in time to see puss delib­er­ate­ly put out the can­dle with his paw, and then look appeal­ing­ly towards him. This sec­ond and unmis­tak­able hint was not dis­re­gard­ed, and puss was giv­en the pet­ting he craved. Father was full of this anec­dote when all met at break­fast the next morn­ing.

One anec­dote Mamie chose not to include is that when Dick­ens’ Bob, the deaf kit­ten men­tioned above, left this earth­ly plane, the mas­ter turned him into a let­ter open­er.

Well, not the whole cat, actu­al­ly. Just a sin­gle paw, which the author had stuffed and attached to an ivory blade. The blade is engraved “C.D. In Mem­o­ry of Bob 1862” which is more grave mark­er than most pussy­cats can hope for.

Should any­one ever pub­lish a His­to­ry of Charles Dick­ens in 100 Objects, count on this object to make the cut.

Still, it’s an odd­i­ty most con­tem­po­rary West­ern­ers would view with dis­taste. (But not all. The Mor­bid Anato­my Museum’s fre­quent small mam­mal taxi­dermy work­shops draw might­i­ly from the ranks of Brook­lyn hip­sters.)

I cer­tain­ly felt the need to hus­tle my then 12-year-old son past this unusu­al sou­venir when it was dis­played as part of the New York Pub­lic Library’s cozy exhib­it, Charles Dick­ens: The Key to Char­ac­ter. The kid’s an ani­mal lover who was in Oliv­er!  at the time. I feared he’d respond with Tale of Two Cities-lev­el peas­ant rage, which is accept­able, except when there’s a show that must go on.

Pre­served!, a British taxi­dermy blog spon­sored by the Arts and Human­i­ties Research Coun­cil offers a ten­der take on Dick­ens’ moti­va­tion. Over the years, he had sev­er­al ani­mals, includ­ing a pet raven, stuffed, but his close­ness with Bob called for a spe­cial approach. 19th-cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture schol­ar Jen­ny Pyke writes that “the taxi­der­mied cat paw stands out in its tac­tile soft­ness and emo­tion­al ten­der­ness. Most often, as pop­u­lar as it was in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, taxi­dermy was con­sumed visu­al­ly only, dis­played in glass cas­es or crowd­ed cab­i­nets. With Bob’s paw, Dick­ens cre­at­ed an object meant to be held dai­ly.”

It’s not for the squea­mish, but I can see how this can­ni­ly orches­trat­ed hand-hold­ing could bring ongo­ing com­fort. More than the fleet­ing con­do­lences pro­lif­er­at­ing on Face­book, any­way.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats & Oth­er Clas­sic Poems (75 Min­utes, 1955)

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

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

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Watch the New Trailer for the Upcoming Joan Didion Documentary, We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live

in Film, Literature | November 17th, 2014

It did­n’t take long, only 25 hours, for Grif­fin Dunne and Susanne Ros­tock to raise enough mon­ey on Kick­starter to com­plete a doc­u­men­tary on nov­el­ist and essay­ist Joan Did­ion. Ini­tial­ly hop­ing to raise $80,000, they’ve already received com­mit­ments exceed­ing $211,000, and they still have four days to go.

We Tell Our­selves Sto­ries In Order to Live will be the first and only doc­u­men­tary about Joan Did­ion. And it will be made with Joan, using her own words.  The trail­er for the doc­u­men­tary just pre­miered on Vogue. It’s fit­ting, see­ing that Did­ion land­ed her first job, at Vogue, after win­ning an essay con­test spon­sored by the mag­a­zine. She also pub­lished her sem­i­nal essay, ““On Self Respect” in Vogue in 1961.

You can watch the trail­er above. Also don’t miss our roundup from ear­li­er this year: 13 Mas­ter­ful Essays by Joan Did­ion Free Online

via @michikokakutani

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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The Art of Leo Tolstoy: See His Drawings in the War & Peace Manuscript & Other Literary Texts

in Art, Literature | November 14th, 2014

War and Peace sketch

Like all great writ­ers, Leo Tol­stoy has inspired a great many visu­al adap­ta­tions of his work, of vary­ing degrees of qual­i­ty. Just this past month, the Vol­gograd Fine Arts Muse­um in Rus­sia held an exhi­bi­tion of “92 graph­ic works from the col­lec­tion of the Yas­naya Polyana Estate-Muse­um,” the author’s coun­try estate and birth­place. Each work of art “recre­ates immor­tal images of the char­ac­ters, recon­structs the his­toric epoch, and reflects the dynam­ics” of his mas­ter­pieces Anna Karen­i­na and War and Peace, as well as his short sto­ries for chil­dren.

ABC sketch

Trav­el to Moscow, how­ev­er, to the Leo Tol­stoy State Muse­um, and you’ll find Tolstoy’s own visu­al art, which he sketched both on the very man­u­script pages of those nov­els and sto­ries and in the note­books that inspired them. At the top of the post, see a man­u­script page of War and Peace with the fig­ures of a boy and a well-dressed woman drawn very faint­ly into the text. Direct­ly above, see a sketch for his ABC book, a primer he cre­at­ed for his peas­ant schools at Yas­naya Polyana.

Jules Verne sketch

Tol­stoy didn’t only illus­trate his own work; he also made some sketch­es of his con­tem­po­rary Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days—see one above—which he read in French with his chil­dren. These few draw­ings may seem like lit­tle more than doo­dles, but Tol­stoy in fact had a very fine hand, as you can see in the two sketch­es below from note­books he kept dur­ing his time in the Cau­cusus. It was then, while serv­ing in the army, that Tol­stoy began writ­ing, and the note­books he kept would even­tu­al­ly inspire his 1863 nov­el, The Cos­sacks.

Old Man sketch

These draw­ings are so well ren­dered they make me think Tol­stoy could have become a visu­al artist as well as a great writer. But per­haps the exact­ing nov­el­ist was too harsh a crit­ic to allow him­self to pur­sue that course. Over forty years after mak­ing these draw­ings, Tol­stoy pub­lished his thoughts on art in essay called What is Art?. In it, the great Russ­ian writer cre­ates what Gary R. Jahn in The Jour­nal of Aes­thet­ics and Art Crit­i­cism admits are some “unrea­son­ably nar­row, exclu­sive” cri­te­ria for defin­ing art.

Old Man 2 sketch

Tol­stoy also pro­pounds some­thing akin to a meme the­o­ry, which he calls a qual­i­ty of “infec­tious­ness.” Art, he writes, is “a human activ­i­ty con­sist­ing in this, that one man con­scious­ly, by means of cer­tain exter­nal signs, hands on to oth­ers feel­ings he has lived through, and that oth­er peo­ple are infect­ed by these feel­ings and also expe­ri­ence them.” At the cru­cial­ly for­ma­tive peri­od when these draw­ings were made, Tol­stoy obvi­ous­ly decid­ed he could best “infect” oth­ers through writ­ing. That same year, he pub­lished the first part of his auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tril­o­gy, Child­hood, under a pseu­do­nym, fol­lowed quick­ly by Boy­hood. By the time he retired from the army in 1856 and left the Cau­cusus for St. Peters­burg, he was already a lit­er­ary celebri­ty. See more of Tolstoy’s draw­ings from his Cau­cusus note­books here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky Draws Elab­o­rate Doo­dles In His Man­u­scripts

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

The Draw­ings of Jean-Paul Sartre

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

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David Foster Wallace’s Syllabus for His 2008 Creative Nonfiction Course: Includes Reading List & Footnotes

in Literature, Writing | November 13th, 2014

The_best_people_you_will_ever_know

Pho­to cour­tesy of Clau­dia Sher­man.

The term “cre­ative non­fic­tion” has picked up a great deal of trac­tion over the past decade — per­haps too much, depend­ing upon how valid or invalid you find it. Mean­ing­ful or not, the label has come into its cur­rent pop­u­lar­i­ty in part thanks to the essays of nov­el­ist David Fos­ter Wal­lace: whether writ­ing non­fic­tion­al­ly about the Illi­nois State Fair, David Lynch, pro­fes­sion­al ten­nis, or a sev­en-night Caribbean cruise, he did it in a way unlike any oth­er man or woman of let­ters. While nobody can learn to write quite like him — this we’ve seen when Wal­lace-imi­ta­tors write pas­tich­es of their own — he did spend time teach­ing the art of cre­ative non­fic­tion as he saw it,

a broad cat­e­go­ry of prose works such as per­son­al essays and mem­oirs, pro­files, nature and trav­el writ­ing, nar­ra­tive essays, obser­va­tion­al or descrip­tive essays, gen­er­al-inter­est tech­ni­cal writ­ing, argu­men­ta­tive or idea-based essays, gen­er­al-inter­est crit­i­cism, lit­er­ary jour­nal­ism, and so on. The term’s con­stituent words sug­gest a con­cep­tu­al axis on which these sorts of prose works lie. As non­fic­tion, the works are con­nect­ed to actu­al states of affairs in the world, are “true” to some reli­able extent. If, for exam­ple, a cer­tain event is alleged to have occurred, it must real­ly have occurred; if a propo­si­tion is assert­ed, the read­er expects some proof of (or argu­ment for) its accu­ra­cy. At the same time, the adjec­tive cre­ative sig­ni­fies that some goal(s) oth­er than sheer truth­ful­ness moti­vates the writer and informs her work. This cre­ative goal, broad­ly stat­ed, may be to inter­est read­ers, or to instruct them, or to enter­tain them, to move or per­suade, to edi­fy, to redeem, to amuse, to get read­ers to look more close­ly at or think more deeply about some­thing that’s worth their atten­tion… or some combination(s) of these.

This comes straight from the syl­labus of Eng­lish 183D, a work­shop Wal­lace taught at Pomona Col­lege in the spring of 2008, which you can read in its entire­ty at Salon (reprint­ed from The David Fos­ter Wal­lace Read­er). As you may remem­ber from the pre­vi­ous Wal­lace syl­labus we fea­tured, from a 1994 semes­ter of Eng­lish 102 — Lit­er­ary Analy­sis I: Prose Fic­tion at Illi­nois State Uni­ver­si­ty, the man could real­ly assem­ble a read­ing list. For his cre­ative non­fic­tion course, he had stu­dents read Jo Ann Beard’s “Wern­er,” Stephen Elliott’s “Where I Slept,” George Orwell’s clas­sic “Pol­i­tics and the Eng­lish Lan­guage,” Don­na Steiner’s “Cold,” David Gessner’s “Learn­ing to Surf,” Kathryn Harrison’s “The For­est of Mem­o­ry,” Hes­ter Kaplan’s “The Pri­vate Life of Skin,” and George Saunders’s “The Brain­dead Mega­phone.”

In some ways, Wal­lace syl­labi them­selves count as pieces of cre­ative non­fic­tion. What oth­er pro­fes­sor ever had the prose chops to make you actu­al­ly want to read any­thing under the “Class Rules & Pro­ce­dures” head­ing? In the ninth of its thir­teen points, he lays out the work­shop’s oper­a­tive belief:

that you’ll improve as a writer not just by writ­ing a lot and receiv­ing detailed crit­i­cism but also by becom­ing a more sophis­ti­cat­ed and artic­u­late crit­ic of oth­er writ­ers’ work. You are thus required to read each of your col­leagues’ essays at least twice, mak­ing help­ful and spe­cif­ic com­ments on the man­u­script copy wher­ev­er appro­pri­ate. You will then com­pose a one-to-three-page let­ter to the essay’s author, com­mu­ni­cat­ing your sense of the draft’s strengths and weak­ness­es and mak­ing clear, spe­cif­ic sug­ges­tions for revi­sion.

But what­ev­er the rig­ors of Eng­lish 183D, Wal­lace would have suc­ceed­ed, to my mind, if he’d instilled noth­ing more than this in the minds of his depart­ing stu­dents:

In the grown-up world, cre­ative non­fic­tion is not expres­sive writ­ing but rather com­mu­nica­tive writ­ing. And an axiom of com­mu­nica­tive writ­ing is that the read­er does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly care about you (the writer), nor does she find you fas­ci­nat­ing as a per­son, nor does she feel a deep nat­ur­al inter­est in the same things that inter­est you.

True to form, DFW’s syl­labus comes com­plete with foot­notes.

1 (A good dic­tio­nary and usage dic­tio­nary are strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed. You’re insane if you don’t own these already.)

You can read the Cre­ative Non­fic­tion syl­labus in full here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

Read David Fos­ter Wallace’s Notes From a Tax Account­ing Class, Tak­en to Help Him Write The Pale King

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Breaks Down Five Com­mon Word Usage Mis­takes in Eng­lish

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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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Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read From The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit

in Literature | November 13th, 2014

In “Epic Pooh,” a lengthy, can­tan­ker­ous essay on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings that sav­ages the trilogy’s nos­tal­gic, mid­dle-class ide­ol­o­gy, fan­ta­sy maven Michael Moor­cock takes a long quo­ta­tion from a 1969 review by Clyde S. Kil­by as his epi­graph. Artic­u­lat­ing just the view Moor­cock rails against, Kil­by writes,

For a cen­tu­ry at least the world has been increas­ing­ly demythol­o­gized. But such a con­di­tion is appar­ent­ly alien to the real nature of men. Now comes a writer such as John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and, as remythol­o­giz­er, strange­ly warms our souls.

We may uncrit­i­cal­ly enjoy Tolkien as “redo­lent of time­less­ness,” as does Kil­by, or see in his work—as does the skep­ti­cal Moorcock—a reac­tionary sen­ti­men­tal­ism, “the prose of the nurs­ery-room… meant to soothe and con­sole….”

In either case, the effect is achieved: what­ev­er else we make of The Lord of the Rings—Ortho­dox alle­go­ry, anti-mod­ern polemic, envi­ron­men­tal­ist fable, etc.—it is also, with­out a doubt, pos­sessed of a strange pow­er to soothe, to envel­op, to trans­port read­ers to a plane where all human action (or hob­bit, elf, or dwarf) is ampli­fied a hun­dred­fold and giv­en immea­sur­able sig­nif­i­cance. In this respect, his work may be com­pared to the ancient epics that inspired it, though some may think it hereti­cal to say so.

Tolkien fans couldn’t care less. As his biog­ra­ph­er at the Tolkien Soci­ety observes, “he has reg­u­lar­ly been con­demned by the Eng. Lit. estab­lish­ment, with hon­ourable excep­tions, but loved by lit­er­al­ly mil­lions of read­ers world­wide.” While hard­ly a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the “estab­lish­ment,” Moor­cock echoes their crit­i­cal judg­ments. I am sym­pa­thet­ic to some of them. But then I pick up the books, or watch the sweep­ing Peter Jack­son adap­ta­tions, and my sus­pi­cions drop away. I can become again the thir­teen-year-old read­er who spent hours ful­ly immersed in the grandeur, hero­ism, humor and dread of Mid­dle Earth. This respite from the fre­quent, har­ried con­fu­sion and fatigue of adult­hood is most wel­come, even if, in the end, it is found in what Moor­cock calls “com­fort­ing lies.” But per­haps that’s what we want from epic fan­ta­sy, after all, Moorcock’s high lit­er­ary seri­ous­ness notwith­stand­ing.

And as for myself, at least, the full immer­sion in Tolkien’s world goes dou­ble when I hear the author him­self read his work. We’ve fea­tured many selec­tions of Tolkien read­ing in the past—from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring (in Elvish!), The Two Tow­ers, and Rings pre­cur­sor The Hob­bit. Above, you can hear many of these read­ings and much more, com­piled by Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh researcher Sean Williams for his pod­cast Voice on Record (Part 1 at the top, Part 2 above). Along the way, Williams offers much help­ful con­text and reads the lin­er notes from the orig­i­nal LPs from which these record­ings come. And yes, Tolkien does, indeed, lapse into nurs­ery rhyme, in “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon” (or “There is an Inn,” at 10:30 in Part 1), a poem from The Hob­bit. In his voice, it is delight­ful to hear.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

“The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor” Presents Three Free Cours­es on The Lord of the Rings

Read an Excerpt of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1926 Trans­la­tion of Beowulf Before It’s Final­ly Pub­lished Next Month

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

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Mark Twain Predicts the Internet in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Story, “From The ‘London Times’ in 1904”

in Literature, Sci Fi | November 11th, 2014

Samuel_L_Clemens,_1909

Most peo­ple know that Mark Twain wrote about Jim and Huck­le­ber­ry Finn nav­i­gat­ing down the Mis­sis­sip­pi. Less well known is that he occa­sion­al­ly dab­bled in the bur­geon­ing genre of sci­ence fic­tion. His 1898 short sto­ry “The Great Dark” is about a ship that sails across a drop of water on a micro­scope slide. His nov­el Con­necti­cut Yan­kee in King Arthur’s Court is one of the first to explore time trav­el. And, in a short sto­ry called “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904,” Twain pre­dict­ed the inter­net. In 1898. Read it here.

Set five years into the future, the sto­ry starts off as a crime mys­tery. Clay­ton, a quick-tem­pered army offi­cer, is accused of mur­der­ing Szczepanik, the inven­tor of a new and promis­ing device called the Tel­elec­tro­scope. The tale’s unnamed nar­ra­tor describes it like this:

As soon as the Paris con­tract released the tel­elec­tro­scope, it was deliv­ered to pub­lic use, and was soon con­nect­ed with the tele­phon­ic sys­tems of the whole world. The improved ‘lim­it­less-dis­tance’ tele­phone was present­ly intro­duced and the dai­ly doings of the globe made vis­i­ble to every­body, and audi­bly dis­cuss­able too, by wit­ness­es sep­a­rat­ed by any num­ber of leagues.

That sounds a lot like social media. Mark Twain dreamed up Twit­ter and Youtube dur­ing the Grover Cleve­land admin­is­tra­tion.

Fac­ing the hangman’s noose, Clay­ton asks for, and receives, a tel­elec­tro­scope for his cell. As the nar­ra­tor describes Clay­ton’s tel­elec­tro­scop­ic rev­el­ry, it sounds uncan­ni­ly like a bored cubi­cle dweller surf­ing the web at work.

…day by day, and night by night, he called up one cor­ner of the globe after anoth­er, and looked upon its life, and stud­ied its strange sights, and spoke with its peo­ple, and real­ized that by grace of this mar­velous instru­ment he was almost as free as the birds of the air, although a pris­on­er under locks and bars. He sel­dom spoke, and I nev­er inter­rupt­ed him when he was absorbed in this amuse­ment. I sat in his par­lor and read, and smoked, and the nights were very qui­et and repose­ful­ly socia­ble, and I found them pleas­ant. Now and then I would hear him say ‘Give me Yedo;’ next, ‘Give me Hong-Kong;’ next, ‘Give me Mel­bourne.’ And I smoked on, and read in com­fort, while he wan­dered about the remote under­world, where the sun was shin­ing in the sky, and the peo­ple were at their dai­ly work.

The sto­ry itself is an admit­ted­ly minor work by the mas­ter of Amer­i­can fic­tion. In its last third, the sto­ry abrupt­ly turns into a sur­pris­ing­ly sour satire about the sad state of our legal sys­tem. As Clay­ton is get­ting marched to the gal­lows, the nar­ra­tor spots the guy Clay­ton sup­pos­ed­ly mur­dered on the tel­elec­tro­scope screen, stand­ing in a crowd for the coro­na­tion of the new “Czar” of Chi­na. Even though no crime took place, Clay­ton is still sen­tenced to hang.

“From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904” con­tains two long-run­ning themes in Twain’s work and life. One is the absur­di­ty of the courts – see, for exam­ple “The Facts in the Great Land­slide Case.”

And the oth­er is a fas­ci­na­tion with tech­nol­o­gy. In spite of his folksy image, he was, as they say now, an ear­ly adopter. He was the first in his neigh­bor­hood to get a tele­phone. He may or may not have been the first major author to use a type­writer to write a nov­el. He lost his shirt invest­ing in a Vic­to­ri­an-era start up hawk­ing an exceed­ing­ly com­plex print­ing press called the Paige Com­pos­i­tor. And he allowed him­self to be filmed by Thomas Edi­son in 1909, a year before his death.

One won­ders what he would have thought of his tel­elec­tro­scope in action.

Note: The char­ac­ter Szczepanik men­tioned above was clear­ly named after a Pol­ish inven­tor, Jan Szczepanik, who talked about cre­at­ing a “telec­tro­scope,” in the late 19th cen­tu­ry.  How­ev­er, if you read a report in The New York Times in 1898, it becomes appar­ent that Szczepanik’s “telec­tro­scope” was­n’t as vision­ary as what Twain had in mind.

via Cracked/TheTy­ee

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Mark Twain Shirt­less in 1883 Pho­to

Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son in 1909. It’s the Only Known Footage of the Author.

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 vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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The Complete Ulysses: Alec Baldwin, Garrison Keillor, Bob Odenkirk & Others Read Joyce’s Opus Aloud

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | November 5th, 2014

Bloom

Per­haps you’ve held off on lis­ten­ing to Re:Joyce, Frank Delaney’s line-by-line, episode-by-episode pod­cast exe­ge­sis of James Joyce’s Ulysses, because you want to lis­ten not just to a break­down of the nov­el, but to the nov­el itself. If so, then boy, have we got anoth­er ongo­ing project for you to fol­low: The Com­plete Ulysses, which has a man­date to record every word of Ulysses as “the first Amer­i­can pro­duc­tion” of the book “using most­ly Amer­i­can and Irish-Amer­i­can actors like Alec Bald­win, John Lith­gow, Jer­ry Stiller, Gar­ri­son Keil­lor, Anne Meara, Wal­lace Shawn, Bob Dishy, Anne Enright, Bob Odenkirk, Pulitzer-Prize-win­ning poet Paul Mul­doon, and Caraid O’Brien as Mol­ly Bloom.” The pro­duc­ers have planned to make avail­able record­ings of each chap­ter as soon as they fin­ish them, “on almost all cur­rent and future audio media.” You can browse the so-far com­plet­ed mate­r­i­al here.

“The project began more than 30 years ago,” says The Com­plete Ulysses’ site, “when [radio sta­tion] WBAI broad­cast a marathon read­ing of Ulysses from the Shake­speare & Co. book­store at 81st and Broad­way in New York.” Book­store own­er Lar­ry Joseph­son “took the idea of a long-form radio read­ing of Ulysses to Isa­iah Shef­fer, then Artis­tic Direc­tor of Sym­pho­ny Space.” This result­ed in Blooms­day on Broad­way, an 18-hour “live, staged read­ing of excerpts from Ulysses and oth­er Irish lit­er­a­ture and song.” Hav­ing then cre­at­ed Radio Blooms­day, a WBAI read­ing series “fea­tur­ing live and pre-record­ed read­ings from Ulysses and lots of oth­er things Irish,” Joseph­son “got the ‘insane’ idea of record­ing the entire book, which will run about 30 hours.”

Ambi­tious, yes, but then the same applies to Re:Joyce, and indeed to Ulysses itself, which you can find in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. Joyce has long had a way of inspir­ing cre­ators to exe­cute their own “insane” ideas, and this one in par­tic­u­lar gives his own work a whole new means of expres­sion. Tun­ing into Radio Blooms­day has, for a few years now, appeared as a main­stay on var­i­ous press out­lets’ “what to do on Blooms­day” lists, but with The Com­plete Ulysses, you cer­tain­ly don’t need to wait until June 16 for a Joycean expe­ri­ence; these days, a prop­er­ly equipped iPod can turn every day into Blooms­day.

If you can’t wait for The Com­plete Ulysses to be com­plet­ed, you can always down­load a read­ing of Ulysses in its entire­ty here (in audio for­mat).

Note: The draw­ing above is none oth­er than Leopold Bloom, drawn by Joyce him­self in 1926, when his eye­sight was fail­ing. We have more on that sto­ry here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing You Need to Enjoy Read­ing James Joyce’s Ulysses on Blooms­day

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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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