Annotated Photographs of Beat Writers Featured in The Allen Ginsberg Festival, Starting Today

in Literature, Photography | July 11th, 2013

BurroughsKerouac

Start­ing today, the Con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish Muse­um (CJM) begins its four-day cel­e­bra­tion of Allen Gins­berg with The Allen Gins­berg Fes­ti­val in San Fran­cis­co, pro­duced in coop­er­a­tion with The Beat Muse­um, City Lights Book­store, and sev­er­al oth­er orga­ni­za­tions. The fes­ti­val, which runs from the 11th to the 14th of this month, cel­e­brates Ginsberg’s life and art with a host of events (some free, some rang­ing from $10 to $15 for admis­sion). While the lit­er­ary tours, pan­el dis­cus­sions, and lec­tures promise to be a treat for those lucky enough to attend, per­haps the cen­ter­piece of the Gins­berg Fes­ti­val is an exhi­bi­tion of the poet’s anno­tat­ed pho­tographs, on view at CJM until Sep­tem­ber 8th.

The pho­tos, which moved through NYU’s Grey Art Gallery ear­li­er this year, show Gins­berg and his beat bud­dies in inti­mate and unguard­ed moments, such as the snap above of William Bur­roughs and Jack Ker­ouac. In his tidy script hand­writ­ing, Gins­berg writes below the pho­to:

“Now Jack as I warned you far back as 1945, if you keep going home to live with your ‘Memère’ you’ll find your­self wound tighter and tighter in her apron strings till you’re an old man and can’t escape…” William Seward Bur­roughs camp­ing as an André Gide-ian sophis­ti­cate lec­tur­ing the earnest Thomas Wolfean All-Amer­i­can youth Jack Ker­ouac who lis­tens sober­ly dead-pan to “the most intel­li­gent man in Amer­i­ca” for a fun­ny second’s cha­rade in my liv­ing room 206 East 7th Street Apt 16, Man­hat­tan, one evening Fall 1953

Fla­vor­wire has com­piled 25 of these pho­tos, includ­ing the por­trait of the young mer­chant marine, Allen Gins­berg, below, which he anno­tates as, “Allen Gins­berg, util­i­ty man S.S. John Blair just back from Galve­ston-Dakar dol­drums trip, I hand­ed my cam­era to the radio-man on the ship’s fan­tail, smok­ing what? In New York har­bor, cir­ca Octo­ber 30, 1947.”

Ginsberg47

As the CJM page notes, “the late 1940s and ear­ly 1950s marked a cru­cial peri­od for Allen Gins­berg as he found his poet­ic and sex­u­al voic­es simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.” The pho­tos in this exhib­it doc­u­ment not only Gins­berg find­ing him­self, but also find­ing him­self among a group of men—Burroughs, Ker­ouac, Neal Cas­sady, Gre­go­ry Corso—whose rest­less­ness and eru­dite enthu­si­asm changed the course of twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Very First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing His Epic Poem “Howl” (1956)

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

Allen Ginsberg’s Per­son­al Recipe for Cold Sum­mer Borscht

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Listening to Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, (Maybe) the Longest Audio Book Ever Made

in Audio Books, Literature | July 9th, 2013

I’m impressed by the under­tak­ing. Neville Jason and Nax­os Audio Books have com­plet­ed an unabridged audio ver­sion of Proust’s epic, sev­en-part nov­el, Remem­brance of Things Past. Proust pub­lished the first vol­ume, Swan­n’s Way, one hun­dred years ago, in 1913, and com­plet­ed the last vol­ume, Time Regained, four­teen years lat­er, in 1927. By that time, Proust had a mas­ter­piece on his hands — a very long mas­ter­piece. The clas­sic (avail­able in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks) spans some 3,000 pages and con­tains more than 1.5 mil­lion words. Until now, Remem­brance of Things Past has nev­er been avail­able in an unabridged audio for­mat, per­haps because it would amount to the longest audio book ever made (or some­thing approach­ing that). But Neville Jason has pulled it off, pro­duc­ing a 151-hour record­ing that’s now avail­able on Audible.com. Below, we’ve pro­vid­ed sev­en free audio excerpts (one from each vol­ume), and if you care to sign up for Audi­ble’s 30-Day Free Tri­al, you can down­load any one vol­ume for free. NB: Audi­ble is an Amazon.com sub­sidiary, and we’re a mem­ber of their affil­i­ate pro­gram. If Proust isn’t your cup of tea, you can find many oth­er great works in our col­lec­tion of 630 Free Audio Books.

Swan­n’s Way 

With­in a Bud­ding Grove

The Guer­mantes Way 

Sodom and Gomor­rah

The Cap­tive 

The Fugi­tive 

Time Regained

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

Arthur Conan Doyle Fills Out the Ques­tion­naire Made Famous By Mar­cel Proust (1899)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Vi Hart Uses Her Video Magic to Demystify Stravinsky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Compositions

in Literature, Math, Music, Random | July 8th, 2013

Hav­ing one of those morn­ings where you wake up think­ing it’d be “awe­some” if you jazzed up Stravin­sky’s aton­al musi­cal set­ting of Edward Lear’s famous non­sense poem, “The Owl and the Pussy­cat”?

You are? Wow! What luck! Appar­ent­ly Recre­ation­al Math­e­mu­si­cian Vi Hart had the exact same kind of morn­ing recent­ly, and used it as the spring­board for address­ing the 12-Tone Tech­nique orig­i­nal­ly devised by Arnold Schoen­berg. Unini­ti­at­ed philistines may want to dou­ble down on the caf­feinat­ed bev­er­age of their choice, as this stuff is dense, and Hart talks the way a hum­ming­bird flies.

But as she notes at the 15 minute mark, “Cre­ativ­i­ty means fear­less­ly embrac­ing things that seem odd, even ran­dom, know­ing that if you keep your brain open you’ll even­tu­al­ly find the con­nec­tions.”

Ergo, those of us whose ref­er­ence lev­el (or, it must be said, inter­est) is no match for a 30 minute trea­tise on the his­to­ry and log­ic of order­ing the twelve pitch-class­es of the chro­mat­ic scale into numer­i­cal­ly des­ig­nat­ed sets should find some­thing to chew on, too: copy­right and Fair Use Law, for starters; the con­straint-bound exper­i­men­tal fic­tion of French lit­er­ary group Oulipo, not to men­tion Borges’ “Library of Babel” and the orga­nized ran­dom­ness of Rorschach blots and con­stel­la­tions; zom­bies… John Cage…

(Easy to imag­ine the sort of jacked-up, expla­na­tion-crazed, bed-resis­tant child she must have been.)

As ever, her sharpie-on-spi­ral stop-motion visu­als add dimen­sion, espe­cial­ly now that she seems to be exper­i­ment­ing with giv­ing her on-the-fly stick fig­ures a cer­tain Hyper­bole-and-a-Half exu­ber­ance.

For good mea­sure, we’ve added a con­ven­tion­al video primer on the 12 Tone Tech­nique by The New York Times below.

H/T Hannes

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Math­e­mu­si­cian Vi Hart Explains the Space-Time Con­tin­u­um With a Music Box, Bach, and a Möbius Strip

Math Doo­dling

Inter­views with Schoen­berg and Bartók

Ayun Hal­l­i­day would’ve resort­ed to Vi Hart’s snake draw­ing tech­nique had this been a live lec­ture. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

George Orwell Explains How to Make a Proper Cup of Tea

in Food & Drink, Literature | July 8th, 2013

george-orwells-nice-cup-of-tea1

Next to my bed lies George Orwell’s Essays, the brick­like Every­man’s Library edi­tion of the 1984 author’s thoughts on ide­ol­o­gy, colo­nial­ism, the abuse of lan­guage, crime and pun­ish­ment, and just what con­sti­tutes a nice cup of tea. The astute essay­ist keeps his mind pre­pared to go any­where, and Orwell’s rig­or­ous love of sim­ple Eng­lish plea­sures places him espe­cial­ly well to write on the sub­ject of how best to pre­pare a serv­ing of “one of the main stays of civ­i­liza­tion in this coun­try, as well as in Eire, Aus­tralia and New Zealand.” His essay “A Nice Cup of Tea,” which first ran in the Evening Stan­dard of Jan­u­ary 12, 1946, breaks the process down into eleven points, from “One should use Indi­an or Cey­lonese tea” to “One should take the teapot to the ket­tle and not the oth­er way about” to, final­ly, “Tea — unless one is drink­ing it in the Russ­ian style — should be drunk with­out sug­ar.” These guide­lines may sound to us a tad aus­tere at worst, but Orwell presents some of them as down­right “con­tro­ver­sial.” Dare he so bold­ly insist upon drink­ing only out of a “good break­fast cup,” de-cream­ing milk before pour­ing it into tea, and nev­er, ever using strain­ers nor bags?

Douglas-Adams

He does indeed. His­to­ry has remem­bered Orwell as one of author­i­tar­i­an­is­m’s most out­spo­ken ene­mies, but clear­ly he had moments, espe­cial­ly when it came to his bev­er­age of choice, where he him­self would brook no dis­sent. Decades lat­er, a much more easy­go­ing writer would make his own con­tri­bu­tion to the lit­er­a­ture of Eng­lish tea pro­ce­dure: A short piece by Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy author Dou­glas Adams sug­gests that you “go to Marks and Spencer and buy a pack­et of Earl Grey tea” (this may, depend­ing upon your loca­tion, require an over­seas trip), that “the water has to be boiling (not boiled) when it hits the tea leaves,” and that “it’s prob­a­bly best to put some milk into the bot­tom of the cup before you pour in the tea,” since “if you pour milk into a cup of hot tea you will scald the milk.” Though we here at Open Cul­ture have made no secret of our inter­est in cof­fee, how could we turn down a cup of tea made to the stan­dards of such well-respect­ed men of let­ters?

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Gold­en Rules for Mak­ing the Per­fect Cup of Tea (1941)

Epic Tea Time with Alan Rick­man

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

Mark Twain Drafts the Ultimate Letter of Complaint (1905)

in Life, Literature, Writing | July 5th, 2013

TwainComplaint

Click above for a larg­er ver­sion of page one and click here to see page two. 

I recent­ly made the mis­take of craft­ing a let­ter of com­plaint that sound­ed much more tem­per­ate than I felt. On the advice of my hus­band, I delet­ed any­thing smack­ing of emo­tion, lim­it­ing my griev­ances to incon­tro­vert­ible fact. A month lat­er and I am still wait­ing for a reply.

Wish that I had let it all hang out, as Mark Twain did in the above 1905 let­ter to J. H. Todd, a snake oil sales­man whose “Elixir of Life” was alleged to cure even the most ter­mi­nal of med­ical con­di­tions. How sat­is­fy­ing it would have been to indulge in phras­es like “idiot of the 33rd degree” and “scion of an ances­tral pro­ces­sion of idiots stretch­ing back to the Miss­ing Link”!

Hav­ing answered phones in cus­tomer ser­vice, I can attest that there are times when such phras­es are mis­di­rect­ed. This was not one of them. Sub­ject your­self to a thor­ough read­ing of the Elixir’s claims (a typog­ra­phy chal­lenge on order of a Dr. Bron­ner’s label) and you will share the author’s out­rage.

Char­la­tans could be dealt with light­ly in lit­er­a­ture—wit­ness Huck­le­ber­ry Finn’s self-pro­claimed Duke—but hav­ing lost chil­dren to two of the dis­eases Tod­d’s potion pur­port­ed to cure, Twain refused to let Todd off the hook in real life. His “unkind state of mind” is as brac­ing as it is war­rant­ed.

Though I doubt he got a reply either.

Tran­scrip­tion:

Nov. 20. 1905

J. H. Todd

1212 Web­ster St.

San Fran­cis­co, Cal.

Dear Sir,

Your let­ter is an insol­u­ble puz­zle to me. The hand­writ­ing is good and exhibits con­sid­er­able char­ac­ter, and there are even traces of intel­li­gence in what you say, yet the let­ter and the accom­pa­ny­ing adver­tise­ments pro­fess to be the work of the same hand. The per­son who wrote the adver­tise­ments is with­out doubt the most igno­rant per­son now alive on the plan­et; also with­out doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ances­tral pro­ces­sion of idiots stretch­ing back to the Miss­ing Link. It puz­zles me to make out how the same hand could have con­struct­ed your let­ter and your adver­tise­ments. Puz­zles fret me, puz­zles annoy me, puz­zles exas­per­ate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the per­son who has puz­zled me. A few moments from now my resent­ment will have fad­ed and passed and I shall prob­a­bly even be pray­ing for you; but while there is yet time I has­ten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poi­son by mis­take, and enter swift­ly into the damna­tion which you and all oth­er patent med­i­cine assas­sins have so remorse­less­ly earned and do so rich­ly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain

via Let­ters of Note

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.

Ayun Hal­l­i­day sus­pects Mum­my Pow­der is not an effec­tive treat­ment for epilep­sy. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Watch Franz Kafka, the Wonderful Animated Film by Piotr Dumala

in Animation, Film, Literature | July 3rd, 2013


Let’s sneak in a quick birth­day cel­e­bra­tion before the 4th. Franz Kaf­ka was born on this day (July 3), a good 130 years ago. To com­mem­o­rate the occa­sion, we’re pre­sent­ing Piotr Dumala’s 1992 short ani­mat­ed film called, quite sim­ply, Franz Kaf­ka. Dumala’s ani­ma­tion tech­nique grew out of his train­ing as a sculp­tor, when he start­ed exper­i­ment­ing with scratch­ing images into paint­ed plas­ter. Lat­er he devel­oped a more full blown method known as “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion,” which is on full dis­play in the film. You can learn more about Dumala and his approach here. The 16-minute film is based on The Diaries of Franz Kaf­ka, and now appears in our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online. Also on our site, you can view Dumala’s adap­ta­tion of Dos­to­evsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment.

Note: This film/post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2010. Still enam­ored by Dumala’s work, we thought it was time to bring it back.

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:

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Improve­ments to Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis

Find works by Kaf­ka in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Story “The Happy Prince”

in Audio Books, Literature | July 1st, 2013

I first encoun­tered Oscar Wilde’s sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince” while work­ing part-time as a tutor on New York’s Upper East Side. Look­ing for suit­able read­ing mate­r­i­al, I came across Wilde’s children’s sto­ries, which I had not known exist­ed. They were perfect—vivid, charm­ing, lit­er­ary fairy tales with some­thing more besides. Some­thing best described by avid Wilde read­er Stephen Fry.

In the pro­mo­tion of a recent Kick­starter project to fund a 20-minute ani­ma­tion of “The Hap­py Prince” around Fry’s read­ing of the sto­ry, the actor talks of com­ing to know Wilde’s fairy tales as a child, before he knew any­thing else about the 19th cen­tu­ry Irish writer. He loved the lan­guage, he says, of all of the sto­ries, and “the beau­ty of thought, the nobil­i­ty of thought.” But “The Hap­py Prince” affect­ed him espe­cial­ly, as it affect­ed my young stu­dents and me. It is a sto­ry, he says, “about the cost of beau­ty. It is hard for me to read The Hap­py Prince with­out cry­ing. I guess because it is also some­how a love sto­ry between the swal­low and the Prince.”

Fry alludes to the two cen­tral char­ac­ters in the sto­ry, but I won’t sum­ma­rize the plot here. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured a 1974 ani­mat­ed film of “The Hap­py Prince.” In the video at the top, hear Fry read the entire­ty of the sto­ry, and direct­ly above, watch the video pre­view for the b good Pic­ture Company’s Kick­starter to bring his read­ing, and Wilde’s sto­ry, to new life. The project has met its min­i­mum goal and now seeks more fund­ing for an orig­i­nal score and a self-pub­lished sto­ry­book, among oth­er things.

Fry’s rela­tion­ship to Wilde, whom he calls “Oscar,” has been, accord­ing to him, life­long, capped by his por­tray­al of the writer in the 1997 biopic Wilde. He has dis­cussed how his read­ing of Wilde helped him come to terms with his own sex­u­al­i­ty. But his love for Wilde’s work exceeds the per­son­al. As he says in the video above, from 2008, he “fell in love with the writ­ing of Oscar Wilde” at the age of 11; after see­ing a film ver­sion of The Impor­tance of Being Earnest,” he found his “idea of what lan­guage could be… com­plete­ly trans­formed.” Fry also says above that he was not exposed to Wilde’s fairy tales as a child, in seem­ing con­tra­dic­tion to his more recent state­ments. Did he read Oscar as a child or did­n’t he?  Only Stephen Fry can say for sure. In any case, as an adult, he’s tak­en on the man­tle of Wilde’s pop­u­lar inter­preter, and I think he wears it pret­ty well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

Oscar Wilde Offers Prac­ti­cal Advice on the Writ­ing Life in a New­ly-Dis­cov­ered Let­ter from 1890

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Two Drawings by Jorge Luis Borges Illustrate the Author’s Obsessions

in Literature | June 28th, 2013

borgestango

Jorge Luis Borges had many fascinations—detective nov­els, gau­chos, libraries, and labyrinths. Two promi­nent fig­ures that occu­pied his mind, the tan­go and myth­i­cal mon­sters, appear in draw­ings Borges made in his man­u­scripts. Of the tan­go, Borges did much to spread the idea that the sen­su­al Argen­tine dance orig­i­nat­ed in broth­els. In his draw­ing above of a tan­go-ing cou­ple, he writes at the top (in Span­ish): “The tan­go is a broth­el dance. Of this I have no doubt.”

Borges would repeat this claim on many occa­sions. In his 1930 biog­ra­phy of Evaris­to Car­reiego, he writes, “my infor­mants con­cur on one essen­tial fact: the tan­go orig­i­nat­ed in the broth­els.”

Why this his­to­ry so intrigued Borges I do not know, but I do know that he once col­lab­o­rat­ed with Argen­tine com­pos­er Astor Piaz­zo­la on an album of tan­gos in 1965. The draw­ing comes from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame’s spe­cial col­lec­tions (you can read a Span­ish tran­scrip­tion of the rest of the text at their site).

borgeshydra

Above, see anoth­er of Borges’ sketch­es, this one from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia’s exten­sive Borges col­lec­tion. The draw­ing appears in a man­u­script titled “The Old Argen­tine Habit,” penned in 1946 and pub­lished (as “Our Poor Indi­vid­u­al­ism”) in Borges’ 1952 essay col­lec­tion Oth­er Inqui­si­tions. Accord­ing to C. Jared Lowen­stein, the draw­ing is titled in Ger­man, “Die Hydra der Dik­ta­tor” (“The Hydra of the Dic­ta­tors”) and depicts Rosas, Per­on, Mus­soli­ni, Hitler, and Marx and is signed “Jorge Luis Borges 46.” Lowen­stein writes:

The theme of the art­work is a stun­ning polit­i­cal state­ment by a writer who has often been deemed apo­lit­i­cal. It is also a remark­ably detailed draw­ing, espe­cial­ly for some­one who was los­ing his eye­sight as Borges was at this time. This mar­velous depic­tion sup­ple­ments Borges’s dec­la­ra­tion in his text that Argen­tineans see them­selves as indi­vid­u­als, not as cit­i­zens of a spe­cif­ic nation.

It is indeed a remark­ably detailed work. I only wish Borges had sup­plied illus­tra­tions for his Book of Imag­i­nary Beings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

Two Child­hood Draw­ings from Poet E.E. Cum­mings Show the Young Artist’s Play­ful Seri­ous­ness

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast