Philip Roth Reads the Last Pages of His Last Work of Fiction: “The End of the Line After Thirty-One Books”

in Books, Literature | November 20th, 2012

After half a cen­tu­ry and 31 books, Philip Roth casu­al­ly announced last month in an inter­view with a French mag­a­zine that he was call­ing it quits. He actu­al­ly made the deci­sion back in 2010, after the pub­li­ca­tion of his Book­er Prize-win­ning nov­el Neme­sis. “I did­n’t say any­thing about it because I want­ed to be sure it was true,” the 79-year-old Roth told New York Times reporter Charles McGrath last week in what he said would be his last inter­view. “I thought, ‘Wait a minute, don’t announce your retire­ment and then come out of it.’ I’m not Frank Sina­tra. So I did­n’t say any­thing to any­one, just to see if it was so.”

Although Roth had been pri­vate­ly telling friends about his retire­ment for two years, accord­ing to David Rem­nick in The New York­er, the pub­lic announce­ment came as a shock for many. From his 1959 Nation­al Book Award-win­ning debut Good­bye, Colum­bus and Five Short Sto­ries and his out­ra­geous­ly fun­ny 1969 clas­sic Port­noy’s Com­plaint through his remark­ably pro­lif­ic late peri­od, with its steady stream of beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed nov­els like Oper­a­tion Shy­lock, Sab­bath’s The­ater and The Human Stain, it seemed as though Roth had the cre­ative ener­gy to keep writ­ing until he took his last breath.

But per­haps if we’d paid clos­er atten­tion we would­n’t be so sur­prised. In this 2011 video, for exam­ple, which shows Roth read­ing a few pages from Neme­sis after it won the Man Book­er Inter­na­tion­al Prize, he basi­cal­ly says it: “Com­ing where they do, they’re the pages I like best in Neme­sis. They con­sti­tute the last pages of the last work of fic­tion I’ve published–the end of the line after 31 books.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Philip Roth on Aging

Philip Roth’s Cre­ative Surge and the Death of the Nov­el

Philip Roth Pre­dicts the Death of the Nov­el; Paul Auster Coun­ters

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David Sedaris Reads You a Story By Miranda July

in Literature, Podcasts, Radio | November 19th, 2012

Thanks to his fre­quent appear­ances on radio’s This Amer­i­can Life, David Sedaris pos­sess­es one of the most rec­og­niz­able author voic­es in the world. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly light and insin­u­at­ing, it has come to seem as much a part of his oeu­vre as the San­ta­land Diaries and his anec­dotes about his par­ents, sib­lings and boyfriend. His arch spin on var­i­ous region­al and gen­er­a­tional phras­es is noth­ing if not instant­ly rec­og­niz­able.

What a plea­sure, then, to hear the sin­cer­i­ty with which he deploys this instru­ment in ser­vice of a fel­low author’s work. Invit­ed to choose a sto­ry to read aloud for the New York­er’s fic­tion pod­cast, Sedaris went with “Roy Spivey” by Miran­da July, anoth­er writer who could nev­er be accused of hid­ing behind her work. One sus­pects there are ele­ments of auto­bi­og­ra­phy with­in this tale, though don’t dri­ve your­self nuts try­ing to fig­ure out the iden­ti­ty of the male movie star seat­ed next to the main char­ac­ter. Just enjoy the non-wink­ing gen­eros­i­ty with which Sedaris embod­ies July’s female nar­ra­tor, even when called upon to get her through a bath­room scene that — in spir­it, any­way — recalls one of his most cel­e­brat­ed, non­fic­tion­al fol­lies.

(Speak­ing of which, stay tuned for the post-sto­ry inter­view for the sort of admis­sion Sedaris fans have come to crave.)

For more lit­er­ary read­ings, see our pre­vi­ous post: The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s region­al accent does noth­ing for her book sales.

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The Best Music to Write By, Part II: Your Favorites Brought Together in a Special Playlist

in Literature, Music | November 19th, 2012

Last Fri­day, we raised the top­ic of writ­ing to music, and we asked all of you out there what music you write to, if you write to music at all. The num­ber and vari­ety of your sug­ges­tions was a lit­tle over­whelm­ing, and very wel­come, and pro­vid­ed a wealth of rec­om­men­da­tions to put togeth­er into a playlist. There was quite a lot of agree­ment among you and a near-con­sen­sus on instru­men­tal music over vocal. But it also came as no sur­prise that Open Cul­ture read­ers’ tastes span a range of gen­res, cul­tures, and peri­ods and that every­one who wrote in seemed to raise the bar a lit­tle high­er for drop-dead gor­geous, med­i­ta­tive com­po­si­tions.

Out of all of your rec­om­men­da­tions, I have made a selec­tion of six­teen artists that I believe is rep­re­sen­ta­tive. (Apolo­gies if your sug­ges­tions didn’t make the cut—there’s bound to be some bias here). What­ev­er your pos­ture and pref­er­ence for vol­ume lev­els, light­ing arrange­ments, or time of day or night, you might try on each of these while you tap away at your lat­est piece of work. Who knows? You could strike a new rhythm, hit an unfa­mil­iar groove and shake out of a too-famil­iar rut, or shift the tem­po just so, change per­spec­tive, tem­per an unruly mood….

Or maybe just find some cool new music to dig while you cook din­ner.

Last week’s post began with Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way, which I believe inspired some jazz lovers to com­ment. Komiska sug­gest­ed the top-notch Mod­ern Jazz Quartet’s ren­di­tion of “Lone­ly Woman” (above).

Bill Evans’ name also came up quite a bit in your sug­ges­tions. Below is his “You Must Believe in Spring.”

Min­i­mal­ist com­pos­er Steve Reich, and oth­er con­tem­po­raries of his like Philip Glass, got many a men­tion. Below is a live per­for­mance of the first two sec­tions of Reich’s Music for 18 Musi­cians.

Ambi­ent syn­the­siz­er music by the likes of the Scot­tish duo Boards of Cana­da, Tan­ger­ine Dream, for­mer Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie, and Bri­an Eno came up quite a bit as well. Com­menter Emma Gray Munthe men­tioned the work of less famous but very influ­en­tial elec­tron­ic com­pos­er Jean Michel Jarre. Lis­ten to his ground­break­ing album Equinoxe below:

A few of you point­ed out that any kind of music serves to dis­tract from your process. Cheeky Michael West said as much and more how­ev­er with his lacon­ic ref­er­ence to John Cage’s 4’33″, the ulti­mate min­i­mal­ist com­po­si­tion. Below, lis­ten to (or observe, rather) an orches­tral inter­pre­ta­tion of Cage’s con­cept:

(more…)

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The Best Music to Write By: Give Us Your Recommendations

in Books, Literature, Music, Writing | November 16th, 2012

Writ­ing is hard. It’s hard to begin, hard to con­tin­ue, hard to fin­ish. To write suc­cess­ful­ly and con­sis­tent­ly requires an alchem­i­cal com­bi­na­tion of dis­ci­pline and inspi­ra­tion so per­son­al that read­ing advice on the sub­ject amounts to watch­ing some­one else die to learn how it’s done. And while it often feels enlight­en­ing to read about the habits of, say, Stein­beck or Austen, their meth­ods are non-trans­fer­able. You’ve got to find your own way. So it is with writ­ing to music. It’s always there in the back­ground, goad­ing you on qui­et­ly. Not every­one writes to music; not every­one can. But a good many do, includ­ing Wired con­trib­u­tor Steve Sil­ber­man who calls the prac­tice one of many rit­u­als writ­ers use “to evoke that elu­sive flow of inspi­ra­tion.”

Sil­ber­man just wrote a piece for Neu­roTribes in which he sur­veyed ten authors on their favorite music to write by. One of Silberman’s own choic­es, Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way (above), is one I’m steal­ing. With its bril­liant assem­blage of musi­cians and haunt­ing mood­i­ness it sets the per­fect tone for my process. Also, there’s no singing. Like Sil­ber­man, I can’t com­pete with a wise, wit­ty lyri­cist (he men­tions Elvis Costel­lo, I pre­fer Mor­ris­sey). In Sil­ber­man’s piece, John Schwartz, a New York Times reporter, lis­tens to noth­ing. Jane Hirschfield, a chan­cel­lor of the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets, likes David Byrne, Dylan’s Mod­ern Times, and Gillians Welch’s The Har­row and the Har­vest. Wired con­tribut­ing edi­tor David Wol­man makes a playlist of most­ly indie-pop songs enti­tled “Write the Book!” His main cri­te­ri­on for the songs he choos­es: DO NOT BE BORING! My default writ­ing music is exem­pli­fied by Aus­tralian three-piece instru­men­tal rock band Dirty Three (below).

So now it’s your turn, read­ers. Do you write to music? If so, what is it? What artists/composers/albums help you find your rhythm and why? Can you stand lyrics in the music you write by or no? Leave your selec­tions in the com­ments. On Mon­day, we’ll com­pile them in an arti­cle and leave you with a great Open Cul­ture playlist. Whether you find some­thing you can steal or not, it should be a fun exer­cise.

*See our fol­low-up post with a list of your favorites here

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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The Ten Best American Essays Since 1950, According to Robert Atwan

in Books, Literature | November 15th, 2012

Robert Atwan’s favorite lit­er­ary genre is the essay. As edi­tor and founder of The Best Amer­i­can Essays series, Atwan has read thou­sands of exam­ples of the remark­ably flex­i­ble form.

“Essays can be lots of things, maybe too many things,” writes Atwan in his fore­ward to the 2012 install­ment in the Best Amer­i­can series, “but at the core of the genre is an unmis­tak­able recep­tiv­i­ty to the ever-shift­ing process­es of our minds and moods. If there is any essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic we can attribute to the essay, it may be this: that the truest exam­ples of the form enact that ever-shift­ing process, and in that enact­ment we can find the basis for the essay’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion to be regard­ed seri­ous­ly as imag­i­na­tive lit­er­a­ture and the essay­ist’s claim to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as a cre­ative writer.”

In 2001 Atwan and Joyce Car­ol Oates took on the daunt­ing task of trac­ing that ever-shift­ing process through the pre­vi­ous 100 years for The Best Amer­i­can Essays of the Cen­tu­ry. Recent­ly Atwan returned with a more focused selec­tion for Pub­lish­ers Week­ly: “The Top 10 Essays Since 1950.” To pare it all down to such a small num­ber, Atwan decid­ed to reserve the “New Jour­nal­ism” cat­e­go­ry, with its many mem­o­rable works by Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Michael Herr and oth­ers, for some future list. He also made a point of select­ing the best essays, as opposed to exam­ples from the best essay­ists. “A list of the top ten essay­ists since 1950 would fea­ture some dif­fer­ent writ­ers.”

We were inter­est­ed to see that six of the ten best essays are avail­able for free read­ing online. Here is Atwan’s list, along with links to those essays that are on the Web:

  • James Bald­win, “Notes of a Native Son,” 1955 (Read it here.)
  • Nor­man Mail­er, “The White Negro,” 1957 (Read it here.)
  • Susan Son­tag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” 1964 (Read it here.)
  • John McPhee, “The Search for Mar­vin Gar­dens,” 1972 (Read it here with a sub­scrip­tion.)
  • Joan Did­ion, “The White Album,” 1979
  • Annie Dil­lard, “Total Eclipse,” 1982
  • Phillip Lopate, “Against Joie de Vivre,” 1986 (Read it here.)
  • Edward Hoagland, “Heav­en and Nature,” 1988
  • Jo Ann Beard, “The Fourth State of Mat­ter,” 1996 (Read it here.)
  • David Fos­ter Wal­lace, “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster,” 2004 (Read it here in a ver­sion dif­fer­ent from the one pub­lished in his 2005 book of the same name.)

“To my mind,” writes Atwan in his arti­cle, “the best essays are deeply per­son­al (that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal) and deeply engaged with issues and ideas. And the best essays show that the name of the genre is also a verb, so they demon­strate a mind in process–reflecting, try­ing-out, essay­ing.”

To read more of Atwan’s com­men­tary, see his arti­cle in Pub­lish­ers Week­ly.

The pho­to above of Susan Son­tag was tak­en by Peter Hujar in 1966.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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Meryl Streep Shrooms Her Way Through Modern Alice in Wonderland

in Literature, Poetry, Television, Theatre, Video - Arts & Culture | November 12th, 2012

Beware the Jub­jub bird…

Beware post-70s the­atri­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion…

Beware a chil­dren’s clas­sic — Alice in Won­der­land, in a mod­ern musi­cal update …

Beware a grown woman cast as a lit­tle girl…

On the oth­er hand, what if we’re talk­ing about Meryl Streep? Specif­i­cal­ly the Deer Hunter / Kramer vs. Kramer-era Streep, star­ring in Alice in Con­cert, play­wright Eliz­a­beth Swa­dos and direc­tor Joe Pap­p’s 1981 adap­ta­tion of Lewis Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal trip­py tale. If Alice at the Palace, a slight­ly restaged for tele­vi­sion ver­sion, is any evi­dence, Amer­i­ca’s Most Seri­ous Actress had a blast, bound­ing around in bag­gy over­alls, doing every­thing in her con­sid­er­able pow­er to upend the pris­sy pinafore-sport­ing Dis­ney stan­dard. She jigged. She pout­ed. She slew the Jab­ber­wock and almost imme­di­ate­ly regret­ted it.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, giv­en the con­text, she also got to play stoned. Her spacey mean­der­ings ush­ered in the most fan­tas­ti­cal­ly para­noid inter­pre­ta­tion of the Jab­ber­wocky you’re ever like­ly to hear, cour­tesy of a sup­port­ing ensem­ble that includ­ed Mark Linn-Bak­er and the late Michael Jeter. Sud­den­ly, that which has long proved mad­den­ing starts to make sense.

It’s  a feat all around.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pho­to: The Real Alice in Won­der­land Cir­ca 1862

Alice in Won­der­land: The 1903 Orig­i­nal Film

Lewis Car­rol­l’s Alice in Won­der­land avail­able in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

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Rare Footage of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald From the 1920s

in Books, Literature | November 7th, 2012

The writer F. Scott Fitzger­ald and his flam­boy­ant wife Zel­da are often remem­bered as the embod­i­ment of the boom and bust that con­vulsed Amer­i­ca in the peri­od between the two world wars.

Like char­ac­ters in The Great Gats­by, Scott and Zel­da lived lives of wild aban­don in the Roar­ing Twen­ties, rid­ing on top of taxi cabs and splash­ing in the Plaza Hotel foun­tain. Scott was inspired and prod­ded along in his dis­si­pa­tion by the noto­ri­ous­ly eccen­tric Zel­da. As Ring Lard­ner once put it, “Mr. Fitzger­ald is a nov­el­ist and Mrs. Fitzger­ald is a nov­el­ty.”

But by the time the stock mar­ket crashed in 1929, so too had the Fitzger­alds. Scot­t’s drink­ing caught up with him, and Zel­da’s eccen­tric­i­ty evolved into schiz­o­phre­nia. Their sad down­fall is cap­tured in Fitzger­ald’s 1930 sto­ry, “Baby­lon Revis­it­ed.” Zel­da would live the rest of her life in men­tal insti­tu­tions while Scott spent his final years in Hol­ly­wood, strug­gling to pay for her treat­ment and try­ing to recap­ture his lost glo­ry. Their daugh­ter, Scot­tie, was raised by oth­er peo­ple.

In this video we catch a few glimpses of the Fitzger­alds in their hey­day, before the par­ty came to an end. The film clips are fun to watch but the YouTube video on which they are col­lect­ed should per­haps be tak­en with a grain of salt. We’re not sure, for exam­ple, that the clip pur­port­ing to show Zel­da being “very live­ly in a street” is actu­al­ly of her. It appears to show some­one else. And one of the cap­tions claims that Fitzger­ald is pic­tured writ­ing The Great Gats­by, but accord­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na’s Fitzger­ald Web site, the sen­tence he is writ­ing on paper is: “Every­body has been pre­dict­ing a bad end for the flap­per, but I don’t think there is any­thing to wor­ry about.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Win­ter Dreams: F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s Life Remem­bered in a Fine Film

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Recites From Shake­speare’s Oth­el­lo and John Mase­field­’s ‘On Grow­ing Old’

Find F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s works in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

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Download a Free, New Halloween Story by Neil Gaiman (and Help Charities Along the Way)

in Audio Books, Literature | October 29th, 2012

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the free, down­load­able sto­ries and nov­els by author Neil Gaiman avail­able online in video, audio, and text for­mat. This is a won­der­ful thing, to be sure; Gaiman’s a fan­tas­tic writer of dark fan­ta­sy for chil­dren and adults alike, so who bet­ter to inau­gu­rate this year’s Hal­loween cel­e­bra­tions with a new free sto­ry, avail­able for down­load through Audible.com and read by Neil him­self?

Gaiman’s new sto­ry, enti­tled “Click-Clack the Rat­tle­bag,” is creepy, for sure, but that’s all I’m going say about it. You’ll need to down­load it your­self to find out more, and you real­ly should because for every down­load of the sto­ry, Audi­ble has agreed to donate a dol­lar to one of two char­i­ties that Neil has chosen—one for the U.S. and one for the U.K.. Gaiman has more infor­ma­tion on his per­son­al web­site, where he describes his nego­ti­a­tions with Audi­ble in set­ting up the dona­tions and the process of record­ing the sto­ry. He writes:

The sto­ry is unpub­lished (it will be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing anthol­o­gy called Impos­si­ble Mon­sters, edit­ed by Kasey Lans­dale and com­ing out from Sub­ter­ranean Press). It’s fun­ny, a lit­tle bit, and it’s scary, just enough for Hal­lowe’en, I hope.

Gaiman also has a few requests: first, you need to down­load the sto­ry by Hal­loween in order to make the dona­tion; sec­ond, please don’t give the sto­ry away—encourage peo­ple to go down­load it for them­selves; and last­ly, “wait to lis­ten to it until after dark.” Atmos­phere mat­ters.

You do not need an Audi­ble account to down­load the sto­ry, but you do need to give them your email address to prove you’re a human. U.S. read­ers should go to www.audible.com/ScareUs and U.K. read­ers to www.audible.co.uk/ScareUs. (Gaiman pro­vides no instruc­tions for read­ers in oth­er coun­tries; I sup­pose they could go to either site). So don’t wait—help Audi­ble raise mon­ey for some wor­thy edu­ca­tion­al char­i­ties and get in the spir­it with some great new fic­tion from one of the most imag­i­na­tive writ­ers work­ing today. Final­ly, if you’re look­ing for more scary reads this Hal­loween, down­load Gaiman’s “All Hal­low’s Read” book rec­om­men­da­tions in a .pdf.

Note: Do you want to lis­ten to oth­er free audio books by Neil Gaiman? Just head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al. You can down­load any audio­book for free. Then, when the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it, and still keep the audio book. The choice is entire­ly yours. And, in full dis­clo­sure, let me tell you that we have a nice arrange­ment with Audi­ble. When­ev­er some­one signs up for a free tri­al, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Final­ly, we also sug­gest that you explore our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Audio Books. It’s loaded with great clas­sics.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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