Christopher Hitchens Remembers Ayatollah Khomeini’s Fatwa Against His Friend Salman Rushdie, 2010

in Books, History, Literature, Politics | September 25th, 2012

When his tele­phone rang on Feb­ru­ary 14, 1989, Christo­pher Hitchens was thun­der­struck. A news­pa­per reporter was on the line, ask­ing for his reac­tion to a radio speech from Tehran ear­li­er that day in which the theo­crat­ic ruler of Iran, Aya­tol­lah Ruhol­lah Khome­i­ni, called on Mus­lims around the world to mur­der his friend the nov­el­ist Salman Rushdie because of some­thing Rushdie had writ­ten in his book The Satan­ic Vers­es. As Hitchens lat­er wrote in his mem­oir, Hitch-22:

I felt at once that here was some­thing that com­plete­ly com­mit­ted me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a mat­ter of every­thing I hat­ed ver­sus every­thing I loved. In the hate col­umn: dic­ta­tor­ship, reli­gion, stu­pid­i­ty, dem­a­gogy, cen­sor­ship, bul­ly­ing, and intim­i­da­tion. In the love col­umn: lit­er­a­ture, irony, humor, the indi­vid­ual, and the defense of free expres­sion. Plus, of course, friendship–though I like to think that my reac­tion would have been the same if I had­n’t known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argu­ment again: the theo­crat­ic head of a for­eign despo­tism offers mon­ey in his own name in order to sub­orn the mur­der of a civil­ian cit­i­zen of anoth­er coun­try, for the offense of writ­ing a work of fic­tion. No more root-and-branch chal­lenge to the val­ues of the Enlight­en­ment (on the bicen­ten­ni­al of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion, could be imag­ined.

Rushdie went into hid­ing, but his Japan­ese trans­la­tor, Hitoshi Igarashi, was mur­dered, and attempts were made against the lives of sev­er­al oth­er trans­la­tors and a pub­lish­er. Book­stores in Eng­land and Cal­i­for­nia were fire­bombed, and many more received threats of vio­lence. The pub­lic reac­tion to all of this was a bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment to Hitchens. In his book, God is Not Great: How Reli­gion Poi­sons Every­thing, he wrote:

One might have thought that such arro­gant state-spon­sored homi­cide, direct­ed at a lone­ly and peace­ful indi­vid­ual who pur­sued a life devot­ed to lan­guage, would have called forth a gen­er­al con­dem­na­tion. But such was not the case. In con­sid­ered state­ments, the Vat­i­can, the arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury, the chief sephardic rab­bi of Israel all took a stand in sym­pa­thy with–the aya­tol­lah. So did the car­di­nal arch­bish­op of New York and many oth­er less­er reli­gious fig­ures. While they usu­al­ly man­aged a few words in which to deplore the resort to vio­lence, all these men stat­ed that the main prob­lem raised by the pub­li­ca­tion of The Satan­ic Vers­es was not mur­der by mer­ce­nar­ies, but blas­phe­my. Some pub­lic fig­ures not in holy orders, such as the Marx­ist writer John Berg­er, the Tory his­to­ri­an Hugh Trevor-Rop­er, and the doyen of espi­onage authors John Le Car­ré, also pro­nounced that Rushdie was the author of his own trou­bles, and had brought them on him­self by “offend­ing” a great monothe­is­tic reli­gion. There seemed noth­ing fan­tas­tic, to these peo­ple, in the British police hav­ing to defend an Indi­an-born ex-Mus­lim cit­i­zen from a con­cert­ed cam­paign to take his life in the name of god.

This month Rushdie pub­lished Joseph Anton: A Mem­oir, describ­ing his nine-years of life in hid­ing under the Ayotol­lah’s death order. The new book’s rel­e­vance could not be more obvi­ous, giv­en the Anti-Amer­i­can riot­ing that broke out in much of the Mus­lim world this month in reac­tion to a YouTube video called Inno­cence of Mus­lims. Hitchens died last Decem­ber, and his voice in the mat­ter is sore­ly missed. But it isn’t hard to imag­ine what he might have said. In a 2009 Van­i­ty Fair essay, “Assas­sins of the Mind,” Hitchens wrote: “For our time and gen­er­a­tion, the great con­flict between the iron­ic mind and the lit­er­al mind, the exper­i­men­tal and the dog­mat­ic, the tol­er­ant and the fanat­i­cal, is the argu­ment that was kin­dled by The Satan­ic Vers­es.”

For a recent dis­cus­sion with Rushdie, lis­ten to his Sep­tem­ber 21 inter­view with Studio360:

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Vladimir Nabokov Makes Editorial Tweaks to Franz Kafka’s Novella The Metamorphosis

in Literature, Writing | September 25th, 2012

Vladimir Nabokov admired Franz Kafka’s novel­la, The Meta­mor­pho­sis. Hence the lec­ture that Nabokov ded­i­cat­ed to the work here. But he also saw some small ways to word­smith the sto­ry, or at least the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of it. Above, we have some edits — the nips and tucks — that Nabokov scrib­bled on his per­son­al copy of Kafka’s most famous work.

In 1989, Nabokov’s lec­ture on The Meta­mor­pho­sis was actu­al­ly turned into a tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion star­ring Christo­pher Plum­mer. You can watch The Meta­mor­pho­sis — A Study: Nabokov on Kaf­ka online. It runs 30 min­utes. Of course, you can also down­load your own copy of Kafka’s near per­fect work of poet­ic imag­i­na­tion, to bor­row a phrase from Elias Canet­ti. Vis­it our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books.

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:

Take Vladimir Nabokov’s Quiz to See If You’re a Good Reader–The Same One He Gave to His Stu­dents

Vladimir Nabokov Names the Great­est (and Most Over­rat­ed) Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Vladimir Nabokov Talks About Life, Lit­er­a­ture & Love in a Metic­u­lous­ly Pre­pared Inter­view, 1969

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Discovered: Lord Byron’s Copy of Frankenstein Signed by Mary Shelley

in Books, Literature | September 22nd, 2012

The sto­ry behind the writ­ing of Franken­stein is famous. In 1816, Mary Shel­ley and Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley, sum­mer­ing near Lake Gene­va in Switzer­land, were chal­lenged by Lord Byron to take part in a com­pe­ti­tion to write a fright­en­ing tale. Mary, only 18 years old, lat­er had a wak­ing dream of sorts where she imag­ined the premise of her book:

When I placed my head on my pil­low, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imag­i­na­tion, unbid­den, pos­sessed and guid­ed me, gift­ing the suc­ces­sive images that arose in my mind with a vivid­ness far beyond the usu­al bounds of rever­ie. I saw — with shut eyes, but acute men­tal vision, — I saw the pale stu­dent of unhal­lowed arts kneel­ing beside the thing he had put togeth­er. I saw the hideous phan­tasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the work­ing of some pow­er­ful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion.

This became the ker­nel of Franken­stein; or, The Mod­ern Prometheus, the nov­el first pub­lished in Lon­don in 1818, with only 500 copies put in cir­cu­la­tion.

Near­ly two cen­turies lat­er, a first edi­tion signed by Shel­ley has turned up in the ves­tiges of Lord Byron’s library. The grand­son of Lord Jay notes, “I saw the book lying at an angle in the cor­ner of the top shelf. On open­ing it, I saw the title page, recog­nised what it was at once and leafed hun­gri­ly through the text — it was only when I flicked idly back to the first blank that I saw the inscrip­tion in cur­sive black ink, “To Lord Byron, from the author.”

Today this inscribed copy is on dis­play at Peter Har­ring­ton’s, a Lon­don spe­cial­ist in rare books. And there it will be put on auc­tion, like­ly fetch­ing north of £350,000, or $575,000. The video above gives you more of the back­sto­ry on the writ­ing and gift­ing of the book.

You can find Franken­stein in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books. Also don’t miss the first film adap­ta­tion of Franken­stein from 1910 here, or the 1931 ver­sion list­ed in our meta list of Free Movies Online.

via Huff­Po

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

The Moby Dick Big Read: Tilda Swinton & Others Read a Chapter a Day from the Great American Novel

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | September 21st, 2012

“Moby-Dick is the great Amer­i­can nov­el. But it is also the great unread Amer­i­can nov­el. Sprawl­ing, mag­nif­i­cent, deliri­ous­ly digres­sive, it stands over and above all oth­er works of fic­tion, since it is bare­ly a work of fic­tion itself. Rather, it is an explo­sive expo­si­tion of one man’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the world of the whale, and the way humans have relat­ed to it. Yet it is so much more than that.”

That’s how Ply­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty intro­duces Her­man Melville’s clas­sic tale from 1851. And it’s what sets the stage for their web project launched ear­li­er this week. It’s called The Moby Dick Big Read, and it fea­tures celebri­ties and less­er known fig­ures read­ing all 135 chap­ters from Moby Dick — chap­ters that you can start down­load­ing (as free audio files) on a rolling, dai­ly basis. Find them on iTunes, Sound­cloud, RSS Feed, or the Big Read web site itself.

The project start­ed with the first chap­ters being read by Til­da Swin­ton (Chap­ter 1), Cap­tain R.N. Hone (Chap­ter 2), Nigel Williams (Chap­ter 3), Caleb Crain (Chap­ter 4), Musa Okwon­ga (Chap­ter 5), and Mary Nor­ris (Chap­ter 6). John Waters, Stephen Fry, Simon Cal­low and even Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron will read future chap­ters, which often find them­selves accom­pa­nied by con­tem­po­rary art­work inspired by the nov­el.

If you want to read the nov­el as you go along, find the text in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. We also have ver­sions read by one nar­ra­tor in our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion. Til­da Swin­ton’s nar­ra­tion of Chap­ter 1 appears right below:

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Hear Zora Neale Hurston Sing Traditional American Folk Song “Mule on the Mount” (1939)

in Literature, Music | September 20th, 2012

zora neal hurston

Two years before the 1937 pub­li­ca­tion of her nov­el Their Eyes Were Watch­ing God, Zora Neale Hurston pub­lished a col­lec­tion of African-Amer­i­can folk­lore called Of Mules and Men. She did so as an author­i­ty on the sub­ject and a trained anthro­pol­o­gist who had stud­ied under the most well-regard­ed fig­ure in the dis­ci­pline at the time, Franz Boas. Her study was both a per­son­al and a pro­fes­sion­al under­tak­ing for her; although Hurston had grown up in the Deep South—in Eatonville, Florida—she cred­it­ed her aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing with giv­ing her the crit­i­cal dis­tance to real­ly see the cul­ture on its own terms. As she puts it in the Intro­duc­tion to Of Mules and Men, she had known black South­ern cul­ture “from the ear­li­est rock­ing of my cra­dle… but it was fit­ting me like a tight chemise. I couldn’t see it for wear­ing it…. I had to have the spy-glass of Anthro­pol­o­gy to look through at that.”

After receiv­ing her B.A. from Barnard, Hurston trav­eled exten­sive­ly in the South and the Caribbean in the 1930s to doc­u­ment local cul­tures and con­duct field research. Her work was part­ly spon­sored by a Guggen­heim fel­low­ship and part­ly by Roosevelt’s Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion, whose Fed­er­al Writ­ers Project spon­sored sev­er­al oth­er black writ­ers like Ralph Elli­son, Claude McK­ay, and Richard Wright. Work­ing at times with cel­e­brat­ed folk­lorists Stet­son Kennedy and Alan Lomax, Hurston col­lect­ed record­ings of South­ern and Caribbean sto­ries and folk songs, often telling or singing them her­self. In the clip above, from June 18, 1939, Hurston sings a song she calls “Mule on the Mount.” In the first minute and a half of the record­ing, you can hear Hurston describe the song’s ori­gins and many vari­a­tions to some­one (pos­si­bly Lomax) in the back­ground. She explains how she came to know the song, first hear­ing it in her home­town of Eatonville. Then she begins to sing, in a high, sweet voice, with all the into­na­tion of a true blues singer, punc­tu­at­ing the vers­es with snorts and grunts, as many folk songs—often work songs—would be, though in this case, the snorts may be mule snorts. The record­ing reveals Hurston as a tal­ent­ed inter­preter of her mate­r­i­al, to say the least.

The songs and sto­ries Hurston col­lect­ed, in addi­tion to her child­hood expe­ri­ences, pro­vid­ed her with much of the mate­r­i­al for her nov­els, sto­ries, and plays. Sev­er­al more of her WPA record­ings, also sung by her, are online as mp3s at the Flori­da Depart­ment of State’s “Flori­da Mem­o­ry” project. The orig­i­nals are housed at the Library of Congress’s “Flori­da Folk­life” col­lec­tion. Hurston’s crit­i­cal and cre­ative work brought her renown in her life­time not only as a writer, but as a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al and folk­lorist as well—hear her talk, some­what reluc­tant­ly, about Hait­ian zom­bies in a 1943 radio inter­view on the pop­u­lar Mary Mar­garet McBride show. Sad­ly, Hurston passed her final years in obscu­ri­ty and her work was neglect­ed for a cou­ple decades until a revival in the 70s lead by Alice Walk­er. She’s nev­er been known as a singer, but after lis­ten­ing to the above record­ing, you might agree she should be.

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

“Single Sentence Animations” Visualize the Short Stories of Contemporary Writers

in Animation, Books, Literature | September 19th, 2012

Lit­er­ary jour­nal Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture has a mis­sion, to “use new media and inno­v­a­tive dis­tri­b­u­tion to return the short sto­ry to a place of promi­nence in pop­u­lar cul­ture.” In so doing, they promise to deliv­er their quar­ter­ly, 5‑story anthol­o­gy “in every viable medi­um”: paper­back, enhanced pdf, Kin­dle, and ePub.  One clever way they pro­mote short fic­tion is with a free, week­ly sin­gle-sto­ry fea­ture called “Rec­om­mend­ed Read­ing.” And with the help of an ani­ma­tor and a musi­cian, Elec­tric Jour­nal pro­duces what it calls a “Sin­gle Sen­tence Ani­ma­tion” of each week’s rec­om­mend­ed sto­ry.

As the jour­nal describes these short videos, “Sin­gle Sen­tence Ani­ma­tions are cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tions. The writer selects a favorite sen­tence from his or her work and the ani­ma­tor cre­ates a short film in response.” The Sin­gle Sen­tence Ani­ma­tion above draws from from A.M. Homes’ “Hel­lo Every­body,” as imag­ined by artist Gret­ta John­son and with music by Michael Asif. The ani­ma­tion cap­tures some­thing of Homes’ “par­tic­u­lar blend of log­ic and unre­al­i­ty” as well as her strange and often unnerv­ing twists of lan­guage.  Homes chose the ser­pen­tine sen­tence:

They are mak­ing their bod­ies their own—renovating, redec­o­rat­ing, the body not just as cor­pus but as object of self-expres­sion, a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion between imag­i­na­tion and real­i­ty.

Johnson’s ani­ma­tion imag­ines the body as Play-doh, a mal­leable sub­stance, unre­strict­ed by fixed forms.

In anoth­er “Sin­gle Sen­tence Ani­ma­tion,” Ben Marcus’s intri­cate “Watch­ing Mys­ter­ies with My Moth­er” gets inter­pret­ed by Edwin Ros­tron, with music by Supreme Vagabond Crafts­man. The sen­tence Mar­cus chose is:

We speak of hav­ing one foot in the grave, but we do not speak of hav­ing both feet and both legs and then one’s entire tor­so, arms, and head in the grave, inside a cof­fin, which is cov­ered in dirt, upon which is plant­ed a pret­ty lit­tle stone.

As Marcus’s sen­tence drills through clichéd euphemism into the mor­bid and mun­dane, Rostron’s ani­ma­tion peels back lay­ers of dead metaphor to encounter the pro­sa­ic.

Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture’s Rec­om­mend­ed Read­ing series also fea­tures free online sto­ries from Mary Gait­skill, Clarice Lispec­tor, Peter Stamm, and many oth­ers, in HTML, Kin­dle, or ePub. You can watch all of the Sin­gle Sen­tence Ani­ma­tions 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How Leo Tolstoy Learned to Ride a Bike at 67, and Other Tales of Lifelong Learning

in Life, Literature | September 15th, 2012

Some say you’re nev­er too old to learn some­thing new. Oth­ers say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Well, you know where we come down on this. And we’ve got some celebri­ty case stud­ies to back us up. In a blog post yes­ter­day, The New York Times fea­tured four cul­tur­al icons and one war hero who learned new skills lat­er in life. Miles Davis start­ed box­ing when most box­ers are hang­ing up their gloves. Ayn Rand, in her 60s, improb­a­bly took up the hob­by of stamp col­lect­ing. Marie Curie learned to swim in her 50s. And the great nov­el­ist Leo Tol­stoy took his first bike ride at the age of 67. The Times writes that he start­ed cycling:

only a month after the death of his 7‑year-old son, Vanich­ka. He was still griev­ing, and the Moscow Soci­ety of Veloci­pede-Lovers pro­vid­ed him a free bike and instruc­tion along the gar­den paths on his estate. He became a devo­tee, tak­ing rides after his morn­ing chores. “Count Leo Tol­stoy … now rides the wheel,” declared Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can in 1896, “much to the aston­ish­ment of the peas­ants on his estate.”

Appar­ent­ly that’s Tol­stoy and his bike above.

via @kirstinbutler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Last Days of Leo Tol­stoy Cap­tured on Video

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

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

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

William S. Burroughs Shows You How to Make “Shotgun Art”

in Art, Literature | September 14th, 2012

It’s no secret that William S. Bur­roughs liked guns. He’s shot both Shake­speare and him­self in effi­gy, and in a bizarre and trag­ic acci­dent, he shot and killed his wife. In addi­tion to shoot­ing at peo­ple, he also shot at spray paint cans to cre­ate abstract paint­ings, known as “shot­gun art.” His paint­ings have appeared in gal­leries and one of them, once owned by Tim­o­thy Leary, was auc­tioned off a few years ago on Ebay. In the film above (date unknown), watch Bur­roughs in action with a rifle. He described the process in an inter­view with Gre­go­ry Ego:

There is no exact process. If you want to do shot­gun art, you take a piece of ply­wood, put a can of spray paint in front of it, and shoot it with a shot­gun or high pow­ered rifle. The paint’s under high pres­sure so it explodes! Throws the can 300 feet. The paint sprays in explod­ing col­or across your sur­face. You can have as many col­ors as you want. Turn it around, do it side­ways, and have one col­or com­ing in from this side and this side. Of course, they hit. Mix in all kinds of unpre­dictable pat­terns. This is relat­ed to Pol­lack­’s drip can­vas­es, although this is a rather more basi­cal­ly ran­dom process, there’s no pos­si­bil­i­ty of pre­dict­ing what pat­terns you’re going to get.

This is, admit­ted­ly, a very lo-fi film. It appears to have been shot on super‑8, and about two thirds of the way through, the cam­era flips upside down, then seems to have been tossed into a car. The sound goes out, and the last minute cap­tures a cloud-strewn Kansans sky speed­ing by in silence. It’s a strange and cap­ti­vat­ing piece of found art that, like Bur­roughs’ work, con­tains casu­al vio­lence, odd per­spec­tives, herky-jerky edit­ing, sud­den con­fu­sion and upheaval, and rare moments of beau­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

William S. Bur­roughs Sends Anti-Fan Let­ter to In Cold Blood Author Tru­man Capote: “You Have Sold Out Your Tal­ent”

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

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