LEGO Releases the Most Elaborate Lord of the Rings Set: A 6,167-Piece Rivendell

Many of us built our first LEGO mod­els in child­hood and, a few years there­after in ado­les­cence, read our first Lord of the Rings nov­el. We con­tin­ue to look fond­ly back on such for­ma­tive cul­tur­al expe­ri­ences in adult­hood, and indeed, some of us retain a gen­uine appre­ci­a­tion for the arti­facts them­selves well into mid­dle age.

It is toward that very inter­sec­tion of enthu­si­asm and means that LEGO has tar­get­ed its lat­est and largest Lord of the Rings-themed set: a 6,167-piece mod­el of the Riven­dell, the sanc­tu­ary locat­ed in the epony­mous Elvish val­ley, which is set to retail for $500 USD.

This new LEGO Riven­dell has room “for the entire Fel­low­ship to debate The One Ring, and the shards of a par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy sword,” writes The Verge’s Sean Hol­lis­ter, and it includes “tiled rooftops, imag­i­na­tive arch­es, and enough dis­tinct spaces to recre­ate mul­ti­ple scenes from the movies.”

This marks a con­sid­er­able improve­ment on the sets that came out at the time of Peter Jack­son’s Lord of the Rings movies in the ear­ly 2000s: Andrew Liszews­ki at Giz­mo­do notes that “the largest one was a 1,300+-piece recre­ation of the Bat­tle of Helm’s Deep that, by today’s LEGO stan­dards, was rel­a­tive­ly small. The col­lec­tion also includ­ed a tiny 243-piece recre­ation of the Coun­cil of Elrond, which, under­stand­ably, left LOTR fans dis­ap­point­ed.”

You can see an in-depth review of the new Riven­dell set in the video just above from LEGO Youtu­ber Brick­sie. He has a great deal of praise for the details of its com­po­nents, yet what­ev­er resources LEGO can put toward an offi­cial con­sumer prod­uct, they can hard­ly match the pow­er of sheer fan obses­sion.

If you want to expe­ri­ence a tru­ly faith­ful re-cre­ation of Riven­dell in the medi­um of LEGO, you’ll have to attend a con­ven­tion with Alice Finch and David Frank, builders of an elab­o­rate mod­el that includes no few­er than 200,000 bricks: a sprawl­ing mon­u­ment to the kind of qua­si-reli­gious (and some­times life­long) devo­tion inspired by both the imag­i­na­tion of Tolkien and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of LEGO.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Lord of the Rings Mythol­o­gy Explained in 10 Min­utes, in Two Illus­trat­ed Videos

Hokusai’s Icon­ic Print The Great Wave off Kana­gawa Recre­at­ed with 50,000 LEGO Bricks

The Vin­cent van Gogh Star­ry Night LEGO Set Is Now Avail­able: It’s Cre­at­ed in Col­lab­o­ra­tion with MoMA

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty to Cre­ate a LEGO Pro­fes­sor­ship

Why Did LEGO Become a Media Empire? Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #37

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

When Leonard Bernstein Turned Voltaire’s Candide into an Opera (with Help from Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker & Stephen Sondheim)

The sev­en­teen-fifties found West­ern civ­i­liza­tion in the mid­dle of its Age of Enlight­en­ment. That long era intro­duced on a large scale the notion that, through the use of ratio­nal­i­ty and sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge, human­i­ty could make progress. For the Enlight­en­men­t’s true believ­ers, it would have even­tu­al­ly become quite easy indeed to assume that we had nowhere to go but up, and would soon­er or lat­er attain a state of per­fec­tion. No such fan­tasies, of course, for Jean-Marie Arou­et, bet­ter known as Voltaire. Despite being an Enlight­en­ment icon, he pulled no punch­es in attack­ing what he saw as its delu­sions, most last­ing­ly in his 1759 satir­i­cal nov­el Can­dide, ou l’Op­ti­misme.

Two cen­turies lat­er, West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, and espe­cial­ly the fresh­ly formed civ­i­liza­tion of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, had entered a new age of rea­son. Or rather, it had entered an age of tech­ni­cal, indus­tri­al, and orga­ni­za­tion­al “know-how.”

The con­vic­tion that Amer­i­ca could be per­fect­ed through engi­neered sys­tems played its part in gen­er­at­ing a degree of pros­per­i­ty the world had nev­er known (and would have scarce­ly been imag­in­able in Voltaire’s day). But it also had grim­mer man­i­fes­ta­tions, such as McCarthy­ism and the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee, whose pro­ce­dures ground away at the core of the anti-Com­mu­nist “red scare.”

In Can­dide, Voltaire takes to task a vari­ety of not just beliefs but insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Por­tuguese Inqui­si­tion. The play­wright Lil­lian Hell­man, who’d been black­list­ed after appear­ing before the HUAC in 1947, “observed a sin­is­ter par­al­lel between the Inqui­si­tion’s church-spon­sored purges and the ‘Wash­ing­ton Witch Tri­als,’ fueled by anti-Com­mu­nist hys­te­ria.” So says the web site of Leonard Bern­stein, Hell­man’s col­lab­o­ra­tor on what would become a com­ic-operetta adap­ta­tion of Can­dide. With con­tri­bu­tions from lyri­cist John LaTouche, poet Richard Wilbur, and Algo­nquin Round Table wit Dorothy Park­er, their pro­duc­tion was ready to open in the fall of 1956.

Stripped in the eleventh hour of Hell­man’s most direct top­i­cal attacks, and even then crit­i­cized for over-seri­ous­ness, the orig­i­nal Broad­way pro­duc­tion of Can­dide end­ed after 73 per­for­mances. (Record­ings of the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion can be pur­chased online.) Nev­er­the­less, there was cause for opti­mism about its future: the show would be revived in Lon­don with a revised book two years lat­er, with fur­ther new ver­sions to fol­low in the nine­teen-sev­en­ties and eight­ies, its lyrics sup­ple­ment­ed by no less a Broad­way mas­ter than Stephen Sond­heim. The two-and-a-half hour video above com­bines high­lights of two con­sec­u­tive per­for­mances in 1989, con­duct­ed by Bern­stein him­self in the year before his death. “Like its hero, Can­dide is per­haps des­tined nev­er to find its per­fect form and func­tion,” notes Bern­stein’s site. “In the final analy­sis, how­ev­er, that may prove philo­soph­i­cal­ly appro­pri­ate.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Voltaire: Enlight­en­ment Philoso­pher of Plu­ral­ism & Tol­er­ance

What Voltaire Meant When He Said That “We Must Cul­ti­vate Our Gar­den”: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

Hear the Famous­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Con­cert Where Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces Glenn Gould & His Idio­syn­crat­ic Per­for­mance of Brahms’ First Piano Con­cer­to (1962)

Leonard Bern­stein Awk­ward­ly Turns the Screws on Tenor Jose Car­reras While Record­ing West Side Sto­ry (1984)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Liam Neeson Stars as Raymond Chandler’s Legendary Detective Philip Marlowe: Watch the Trailer for the New Film

Behold the new trail­er for Mar­lowe, a new film direct­ed by Neil Jor­dan. As the title sug­gests, the film cen­ters around Philip Mar­lowe, the gumshoe detec­tive that Ray­mond Chan­dler first unveiled in The Big Sleep in 1939. Between then and now, Mar­lowe has been por­trayed in films by Humphrey Bog­a­rt, Robert Mitchum, Elliott Gould, and James Gar­ner. Now, Liam Nee­son takes his turn. Here’s how the pro­duc­ers pitch the film:

MARLOWE, a grip­ping noir crime thriller set in late 1930’s Los Ange­les, cen­ters around a street-wise, down on his luck detec­tive; Philip Mar­lowe, played by Liam Nee­son, who is hired to find the ex-lover of a glam­orous heiress (Diane Kruger), daugh­ter of a well-known movie star (Jes­si­ca Lange). The dis­ap­pear­ance unearths a web of lies, and soon Mar­lowe is involved in a dan­ger­ous, dead­ly inves­ti­ga­tion where every­one involved has some­thing to hide.

Mar­lowe arrives in the­aters on Feb­ru­ary 15.

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 

Ray­mond Chandler’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Writ­ing a Detec­tive Nov­el

Hear Ray­mond Chan­dler & Ian Fleming–Two Mas­ters of Suspense–Talk with One Anoth­er in Rare 1958 Audio

Ray­mond Chandler’s 36 Great Unused Titles: From “The Man With the Shred­ded Ear,” to “Quick, Hide the Body”

Watch Ray­mond Chandler’s Long-Unno­ticed Cameo in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty

via Boing­Bo­ing

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The Only Footage of Mark Twain: The Original & Digitally Restored Films Shot by Thomas Edison

We know what Mark Twain looked like, and we think we know what he sound­ed like. Just above see what he looked like in motion, strolling around Storm­field, his house in Red­ding, Connecticut—signature white suit draped loose­ly around his frame, sig­na­ture cig­ar puff­ing white smoke between his fin­gers. After Twain’s leisure­ly walk along the house’s façade, we see him with his daugh­ters, Clara and Jean, seat­ed indoors. Below you can see the orig­i­nal murky ver­sion, fea­tured on our site way back in 2010. A dig­i­tal restora­tion (top) does won­ders for the watch­a­bil­i­ty of this price­less silent arti­fact, so vivid­ly cap­tur­ing the writer/contrarian/raconteur’s essence that you’ll find your­self reach­ing to turn the vol­ume up, expect­ing to hear that famil­iar cur­mud­geon­ly drawl.

Shot by Thomas Edi­son in 1909, the short film is most like­ly the only mov­ing image of Twain in exis­tence. We might assume that Edi­son also record­ed Twain’s voice, since we seem to know it so well, from por­tray­als of the great Amer­i­can humorist in pop cul­tur­al touch­stones like Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion and par­o­dies by Alec Bald­win and Val Kilmer.

Kilmer’s sur­pris­ing­ly fun­ny in the role, but he doesn’t come near the pitch per­fect imper­son­ation Hal Hol­brook had giv­en us for the bet­ter part of six­ty years in his mas­ter­ful Mark Twain Tonight. Holbrook’s vocal man­ner­isms have become a defin­i­tive mod­el for actors play­ing Twain on stage and screen.

Giv­en the num­ber of Twain vocal imper­son­ations out there, and Edis­on’s inter­est in doc­u­ment­ing the author, we might be sur­prised to learn that no orig­i­nal record­ings of his voice exist. Twain, we find out in the short film below, exper­i­ment­ed with audio record­ing tech­nol­o­gy, but aban­doned his efforts. It seems that none of the wax cylin­ders he worked with have survived—perhaps he destroyed them him­self.

As nar­ra­tor Rod Rawlings—himself a Twain imper­son­ator and afi­ciona­do—informs us, what we do have is a record­ing made in 1934 by actor and play­wright William Gillette,  an able mim­ic of Twain, his patron and long­time neigh­bor. Like Hol­brook, Gillette spent a good part of his career trav­el­ing from town to town play­ing Mark Twain. Below, you’ll hear Gillette address a class of stu­dents at Har­vard, first in his own voice, then in the voice of the author, read­ing from “The Cel­e­brat­ed Jump­ing Frog of Calav­eras Coun­ty.” Gillet­te’s per­for­mance is like­ly the clos­est we’ll ever come to hear­ing the voice of the real Twain, whose major works appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Mark Twain’s Vicious­ly Fun­ny Mar­gin­a­lia Took Aim at Some Lit­er­ary Greats

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

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Contribute a Song to WNYC’s Public Song Project & Use Your Creativity to Explore the Public Domain

We rec­og­nize that Open Cul­ture read­ers are a cre­ative bunch.

As proof, we point to your Get­ty Muse­um Chal­lenge entries and the fact that one of your num­ber won Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press’s Kaf­ka Cap­tion Con­test.

We’ve iden­ti­fied anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to show off your cre­ative streak, com­pli­ments of All Of It with Ali­son Stew­art, a dai­ly live cul­ture pro­gram on WNYC, New York City’s pub­lic radio sta­tion.

You have until Feb­ru­ary 13 to write and record an orig­i­nal song inspired by a work in the pub­lic domain, and sub­mit it to The All Of It Pub­lic Song Project.

Ama­teurs are wel­come to take a crack at it and any genre is crick­et, includ­ing rap, spo­ken word, and instru­men­tals.

Even if you lim­it your­self to the works that entered the pub­lic domain on Jan­u­ary 1 of this year, the pos­si­bil­i­ties are almost end­less.

Should you be inclined toward a faith­ful cov­er, we encour­age you to con­sid­er one of 1927’s deep cuts, like Fats Waller’s “Sooth­in’ Syrup Stomp” or Jel­ly Roll Mor­ton’s “Hye­na Stomp,” though we under­stand the attrac­tion of Irv­ing Berlin’s endur­ing­ly pop­u­lar “Puttin’ on the Ritz”.

Apolo­gies to Emi­ly Joy, the accom­plished young clas­si­cal pianist, above — par­tic­i­pa­tion is lim­it­ed to entrants aged 18 or old­er.

The rest of us are free to invent new lyrics for an exist­ing com­po­si­tion, or a brand new tune for exist­ing lyrics.

You might musi­cal­ize a poem or speech, some dia­logue from a film, or a page from a book.

A blue­grass spin on Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis, per­haps?

A death met­al re-envi­sion­ing of But­ter­cup Days from A.A. Milne’s Now We Are Six?

How about a sis­sy bounce take on these lines from “The Adven­ture of the Mazarin Stone,” the first short sto­ry in Arthur Conan Doyle’s col­lec­tion, The Case-Book of Sher­lock Holmes:

“Bil­ly, you will see a large and ugly gen­tle­man out­side the front door. Ask him to come up.”

“If he won’t come, sir?”

“No vio­lence, Bil­ly. Don’t be rough with him. If you tell him that Count Sylvius wants him he will cer­tain­ly come.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked the Count as Bil­ly dis­ap­peared.

“My friend Wat­son was with me just now. I told him that I had a shark and a gud­geon in my net; now I am draw­ing the net and up they come togeth­er.”

The Count had risen from his chair, and his hand was behind his back. Holmes held some­thing half pro­trud­ing from the pock­et of his dress­ing-gown.

“You won’t die in your bed, Holmes.”

Okay, we’re being sil­ly, but only because we don’t want to put ideas in your head!

You could even con­coct some­thing entire­ly new — per­haps a bal­lad from the POV of To the Light­house’s young James Ram­say, or a dit­ty apol­o­giz­ing to Vir­ginia Woolf for read­ing the Cliffs Notes instead of the actu­al nov­el when it was assigned in your col­lege Women’s Lit­er­a­ture class.

…we’re doing it again, aren’t we?

All right, we’ll leave you to it, with a reminder that any­thing out­side of your pub­lic domain source mate­r­i­al must be whol­ly orig­i­nal — no bor­row­ing a catchy tune from Lennon and McCart­ney, capis­ci?

Win­ners will get a chance to dis­cuss their works on WNYC and all qual­i­fy­ing entries will be post­ed at contest’s end for the public’s lis­ten­ing plea­sure.

Con­test rules and infor­ma­tion on how to sub­mit to The All Of It Pub­lic Song Project can be found here.

Good luck! We can’t wait to hear what you come up with.

Relat­ed Con­tent

What’s Enter­ing the Pub­lic Domain in 2023: Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis, Vir­ginia Woolf’s To the Light­house, Franz Kafka’s Ameri­ka & More

A Search Engine for Find­ing Free, Pub­lic Domain Images from World-Class Muse­ums

400,000+ Sound Record­ings Made Before 1923 Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery: A New Online Collection Presents All of the Original Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels

At the height of his fame, Charles Dick­ens could have com­mand­ed any illus­tra­tor he liked for his nov­els. But at the begin­ning of his lit­er­ary career, it was he who was charged with accom­pa­ny­ing the artist, not the oth­er way around. His first seri­al­ized nov­el The Posthu­mous Papers of the Pick­wick Club, bet­ter known as The Pick­wick Papers, began as a series of com­i­cal “cock­ney sport­ing plates” by  Robert Sey­mour. Hon­est enough to admit his igno­rance of the cock­ney sport­ing life but shrewd enough to know an oppor­tu­ni­ty when he saw one, the young Dick­ens accept­ed the pub­lish­er’s request for sto­ries meant to elab­o­rate on the images.

Even then, Dick­ens pos­sessed irre­press­ible tal­ent as a pop­u­lar sto­ry­teller, and it was his writ­ing — which evi­denced scant inter­est in adher­ence to the exist­ing art — that made The Pick­wick Papers into a great suc­cess, a mass-cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non com­pa­ra­ble to a hit sit­com avant la let­tre.

187 years lat­er there remains a whiff of scan­dal around this chap­ter of lit­er­ary his­to­ry, Sey­mour hav­ing com­mit­ted sui­cide ear­ly in the seri­al­iza­tion process the day after an argu­ment with Dick­ens. Even­tu­al­ly the author found a per­ma­nent replace­ment for Sey­mour in Hablot Knight Browne, or Phiz, who would go on to pro­vide the art­work for most of his nov­els.

You can see all of Phiz’s work for Dick­ens at the Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery, a project of Michael John Good­man, whom we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his Vic­to­ri­an Illus­trat­ed Shake­speare Archive (and his col­lec­tion of AI-gen­er­at­ed Shake­speare art). “The world of Dick­ens illus­tra­tion is beset with poor repro­duc­tions of the source mate­r­i­al, so for this project I have searched out what I con­sid­er to be some of the best edi­tions that fea­ture the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions print­ed to a decent qual­i­ty,” Good­man writes on his pro­jec­t’s About page. These tend to date from the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry and come with “col­ored fron­tispieces (which the orig­i­nal nov­els did not have).”

One such fron­tispiece appears at the top of this post, depict­ing the first appear­ance of The Pick­wick Papers’ most beloved char­ac­ter, the cock­ney valet Samuel Weller (who over­took the title char­ac­ter in pop­u­lar­i­ty in much the same man­ner as Dick­ens’ writ­ing over­took the illus­tra­tions). The Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery con­tains numer­ous plates from that book, as well as from all the rest: Oliv­er Twist (a col­lab­o­ra­tion with not Phiz but George Cruik­shank), A Christ­mas Car­ol (with John Leech), Bleak House (its grim atmos­phere height­ened by Phiz’s “dark plates”), even the nev­er-fin­ished The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood. Today’s read­ers are like­ly to dis­miss these illus­tra­tions, how­ev­er well-ren­dered, as extra­ne­ous to the text. But we must bear in mind that most were seen and approved by Dick­ens him­self, who knew what he want­ed — and even more so, what his read­ers want­ed.

Enter the The Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Charles Dick­ens’ Life & Lit­er­ary Works

An Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion of Charles Dick­ens’ Clas­sic Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol (1971)

The Code of Charles Dick­ens’ Short­hand Has Been Cracked by Com­put­er Pro­gram­mers, Solv­ing a 160-Year-Old Mys­tery

Behold Illus­tra­tions of Every Shake­speare Play Cre­at­ed by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

3,000 Illus­tra­tions of Shakespeare’s Com­plete Works from Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, Neat­ly Pre­sent­ed in a New Dig­i­tal Archive

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Benedict Cumberbatch & Ian McKellen Read Epic Letters Written by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Von­negut is one of those writ­ers whose wit, human­ism and lack of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty leave you han­ker­ing for more.

For­tu­nate­ly, the pro­lif­ic nov­el­ist was an equal­ly pro­lif­ic let­ter writer.

His pub­lished cor­re­spon­dence includes a descrip­tion of the fire­bomb­ing of Dres­den penned upon his release from the Slaugh­ter­house Five POW camp, an admis­sion to daugh­ter Nanette that most parental mis­sives “con­tain a par­en­t’s own lost dreams dis­guised as good advice,” and some unvar­nished exchanges with many of famil­iar lit­er­ary names. (“I am cuter than you are,” he taunt­ed Cape Cod neigh­bor Nor­man Mail­er.)

No won­der these let­ters are cat­nip to per­form­ers with the pedi­gree to rec­og­nize good writ­ing when they see it.

Hav­ing inter­pret­ed Shake­speare, Ibsen, and Ionesco, book lover Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch obvi­ous­ly rel­ish­es the straight­for­ward ire of Vonnegut’s 1973 response to a North Dako­ta school board chair­man who ordered a school jan­i­tor to burn all copies of Slaugh­ter­house-Five assigned by Bruce Sev­ery, a recent­ly hired, young Eng­lish teacher.

In addi­tion to Slaugh­ter­house-Five, the board also con­signed two oth­er vol­umes on the syl­labus — James Dick­ey’s Deliv­er­ance and an anthol­o­gy con­tain­ing short sto­ries by Faulkn­er, Hem­ing­way and Stein­beck — to the fire.

Revis­it­ing the event, the Bis­mar­ck Tri­bune reports that “the objec­tion to (Slaugh­ter­house-Five) had to do with pro­fan­i­ty, (Deliv­er­ance) with some homo­sex­u­al mate­r­i­al and the (anthol­o­gy) because the first two ren­dered all of Severy’s choic­es sus­pect.”

A decade lat­er, Von­negut also revis­it­ed the school board’s “insult­ing” objec­tions in the pages of  the New York Times:

Even by the stan­dards of Queen Vic­to­ria, the only offen­sive line in the entire nov­el is this: ”Get out of the road, you dumb m(———–).” This is spo­ken by an Amer­i­can anti­tank gun­ner to an unarmed Amer­i­can chap­lain’s assis­tant dur­ing the Bat­tle of the Bulge in Europe in Decem­ber 1944, the largest sin­gle defeat of Amer­i­can arms (the Con­fed­er­a­cy exclud­ed) in his­to­ry. The chap­lain’s assis­tant had attract­ed ene­my fire.

Word is Von­negut’s let­ter nev­er received the cour­tesy of a reply.

One won­ders if the recip­i­ent burned it, too.


If that 50 year old let­ter feels ger­mane, check out Vonnegut’s 1988 let­ter to peo­ple liv­ing 100 years in the future, a lit­tle more than 50 years from where we are now.

In many ways, its com­mon­sense advice sur­pass­es the ever­green words of those it namechecks — Shakespeare’s Polo­nius, St. John the Divine, and the Big Book of Alco­holics Anony­mous. The threat of envi­ron­men­tal col­lapse it seeks to stave off has become even more dire in the ensu­ing years.

Vonnegut’s advice (list­ed below) clear­ly res­onates with Cum­ber­batch, a veg­an who lever­aged his celebri­ty to bring atten­tion to the cli­mate cri­sis when he par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Extinc­tion Rebel­lion Protests in Lon­don.

1. Reduce and sta­bi­lize your pop­u­la­tion.

2. Stop poi­son­ing the air, the water, and the top­soil.

3. Stop prepar­ing for war and start deal­ing with your real prob­lems.

4. Teach your kids, and your­selves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhab­it a small plan­et with­out help­ing to kill it.

5. Stop think­ing sci­ence can fix any­thing if you give it a tril­lion dol­lars.

6. Stop think­ing your grand­chil­dren will be OK no mat­ter how waste­ful or destruc­tive you may be, since they can go to a nice new plan­et on a space­ship. That is real­ly mean, and stu­pid.

7. And so on. Or else.

Von­negut, who died in 2007 at the age of 84, nev­er lost his touch with young read­ers. Who bet­ter to recite his 2006 let­ter to his fans in New York City’s Xavier High School’s stu­dent body than the ever youth­ful, ever curi­ous actor and activist, Sir Ian McK­ellen?

Cum­ber­batch is a won­der­ful read­er, but he’d require a bit more sea­son­ing to pull these lines off with­out the aid of major pros­thet­ics:

You sure know how to cheer up a real­ly old geezer (84) in his sun­set years. I don’t make pub­lic appear­ances any more because I now resem­ble noth­ing so much as an igua­na. 

Now if only these gents would attempt a Hoosier accent…

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Ian McK­ellen Recites Shakespeare’s Son­net 20, Backed by Garage Rock Band, the Flesh­tones, on Andy Warhol’s MTV Vari­ety Show (1987)

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Nick Cave’s Beau­ti­ful Let­ter About Grief

Watch Sir Ian McKellen’s 1979 Mas­ter Class on Macbeth’s Final Mono­logue

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads “the Best Cov­er Let­ter Ever Writ­ten”

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Its cur­rent issue cel­e­brates Kurt Vonnegut’s cen­ten­ni­al. Her most recent books are Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Hear Neil Gaiman Read A Christmas Carol Just Like Charles Dickens Read It

In Christ­mases past, we fea­tured Charles Dick­ens’ hand-edit­ed copy of his beloved 1843 novel­la A Christ­mas Car­ol. He did that hand edit­ing for the pur­pos­es of giv­ing pub­lic read­ings, a prac­tice that, in his time, “was con­sid­ered a des­e­cra­tion of one’s art and a low­er­ing of one’s dig­ni­ty.” That time, how­ev­er, has gone, and many of the most pres­ti­gious writ­ers alive today take the read­ing aloud of their own work to the lev­el of art, or at least high enter­tain­ment, that Dick­ens must have sus­pect­ed one could. Some writ­ers even do a bang-up job of read­ing oth­er writ­ers’ work: mod­ern mas­ter sto­ry­teller Neil Gaiman gave us a dose of that when we fea­tured his recita­tion of Lewis Car­rol­l’s “Jab­ber­wocky” from mem­o­ry. Today, how­ev­er, comes the full meal: Gaiman’s telling of A Christ­mas Car­ol straight from that very Dick­ens-edit­ed read­ing copy.

Gaiman read to a full house at the New York Pub­lic Library, an insti­tu­tion known for its stim­u­lat­ing events, hol­i­day-themed or oth­er­wise. But he did­n’t have to hold up the after­noon him­self; tak­ing the stage before him, BBC researcher and The Secret Muse­um author Mol­ly Old­field talked about her two years spent seek­ing out fas­ci­nat­ing cul­tur­al arti­facts the world over, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to the NYPL’s own col­lec­tion of things Dick­en­sian. You can hear both Old­field and Gaiman in the record­ing below. But per­haps the great­est gift of all came in the form of the lat­ter’s attire for his read­ing: not only did he go ful­ly Vic­to­ri­an, he even went to the length of repli­cat­ing the 19th-cen­tu­ry lit­er­ary super­star’s own severe hair part and long goa­tee. And School Library Jour­nal has pic­tures. The sto­ry real­ly gets start­ed around the 11:00 mark. Gaiman’s read­ing will be added to our list of Free Audio Books. You can find the text of Dick­ens’ clas­sic here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Decem­ber 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion of Charles Dick­ens’ Clas­sic Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol (1971)

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

Hear Charles Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol Read by His Great-Grand­daugh­ter, Mon­i­ca

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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