James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plurabelle’ from Finnegans Wake

in Books, Literature | February 2nd, 2012

Today is the birth­day of James Joyce, who was born in Dublin on Feb­ru­ary 2, 1882, and wrote in A Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man: “Wel­come, O life! I go to encounter for the mil­lionth time the real­i­ty of expe­ri­ence and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncre­at­ed con­science of my race.”

To cel­e­brate his life, we present an August 1929 record­ing of Joyce read­ing a melo­di­ous pas­sage from the “Anna Livia Plura­belle” chap­ter of his Work in Progress, which would be pub­lished ten years lat­er as Finnegans Wake. The record­ing was made in Cam­bridge, Eng­land, at the arrange­ment of Joyce’s friend and pub­lish­er Sylvia Beach. “How beau­ti­ful the ‘Anna Livia’ record­ing is,” wrote Beach in her mem­oir, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, “and how amus­ing Joyce’s ren­der­ing of an Irish wash­er­wom­an’s brogue!”

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:

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Play­ground (1955)

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Death Masks: From Dante to James Joyce and Friedrich Niet­zsche

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Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Read in Celebrity Voices

in Comedy, Literature | February 2nd, 2012

Last sum­mer, actor Jim Meski­men pro­duced a viral video where he imper­son­at­ed 25 famous fig­ures recit­ing Clarence’s mono­logue from Shake­speare’s great his­to­ry play, Richard III. Woody Allen, Jack Nichol­son, Jim­my Stew­art — they all made an appear­ance.

Now, Meski­men returns with a new cast of char­ac­ters, and this time he’s read­ing lines from Marc Antony’s famous speech in Julius Cae­sar.

If you live in LA, you can see the impres­sion­ist per­form live at The Act­ing Cen­ter on Feb­ru­ary 17 & 18 at 8 p.m. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nine Imper­son­ations by Kevin Spacey in Six Min­utes

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Reads Shake­speare

William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare

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Three Passions of Bertrand Russell (and a Collection of Free Texts)

in Literature, Math, Philosophy | January 31st, 2012

“Three pas­sions, sim­ple but over­whelm­ing­ly strong, have gov­erned my life,” wrote Bertrand Rus­sell in the pro­logue to his auto­bi­og­ra­phy: “the long­ing for love, the search for knowl­edge, and unbear­able pity for the suf­fer­ing of mankind.”

This five minute video, a pre­view of a three-part series pro­duced in 2005 for Ontario pub­lic tele­vi­sion called “The Three Pas­sions of Bertrand Rus­sell,” fea­tures a record­ing of Rus­sell read­ing pas­sages from the pro­logue, enti­tled “What I Have Lived For.” You can read the orig­i­nal text at the Bertrand Rus­sell Soci­ety, an excel­lent online resource, that also makes avail­able free books by Rus­sell, includ­ing:

You can also down­load the first edi­tion of Rus­sel­l’s land­mark 1910–13 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Alfred North White­head, Prin­cip­ia Math­e­mat­i­ca, as well as many of Rus­sel­l’s essays, includ­ing:

To explore the full list of avail­able resources, and to learn how you can sup­port the soci­ety’s activ­i­ties, vis­it the Bertrand Rus­sell Soci­ety web­site.

Also don’t miss some great Rus­sell mate­r­i­al in our own archives, includ­ing all six of his 1948 BBC Rei­th Lec­tures, a clip from a Cana­di­an tele­vi­sion inter­view fea­tur­ing his views on God, and his elo­quent 1959 mes­sage to the future.

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Richard Brautigan’s Story, ‘One Afternoon in 1939,’ Read From a Wooden Spool

in Books, Literature | January 30th, 2012

Today is the birth­day of Richard Brauti­gan, whose fun­ny and imag­i­na­tive books were a touch­stone for the 1960s coun­ter­cul­ture and have remained an inspi­ra­tion to free spir­its ever since. He would have been 77.

In this video, uploaded to the Inter­net exact­ly a year ago, Ianthe Brauti­gan Swensen reads her father’s sto­ry, “One After­noon in 1939,” from his col­lec­tion Revenge of the Lawn. Ianthe was one year old in 1961 when her father sat down with a portable type­writer on a fam­i­ly camp­ing trip to write his most famous work, Trout Fish­ing in Amer­i­ca, and she was 24 when he took his own life in 1984. Now she’s a writer and a teacher.

In 2001 Brauti­gan Swensen pub­lished You Can’t Catch Death: A Daugh­ter’s Mem­oir about her life with a dif­fi­cult but lov­ing father who liked to take her with him to his favorite San Fran­cis­co haunts dur­ing the 60s. “When I’m here,” she told the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle on a vis­it to the city in 2000, “I still feel my father walk­ing the streets, I still feel my hand in his. And that’s a very hap­py feel­ing.”

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!

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30 Renowned Writers Speaking About God & Reason

in Books, Literature, Religion | January 30th, 2012

This past sum­mer, Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham, a neu­ro­sur­geon in Lon­don, cre­at­ed a mon­tage of 100 renowned aca­d­e­mics, most­ly all sci­en­tists, talk­ing about their thoughts on the exis­tence of God. (Find it in two parts here and here.) Now’s he back with a new video, 30 Renowned Writ­ers Speak­ing About God. It runs 25 min­utes, and it offers as much a cri­tique of ortho­dox reli­gious belief as it does a lit­er­ary trib­ute to human­ism and ratio­nal­ism. Isaac Asi­mov, Arthur C. Clarke, Salman Rushdie (who kind­ly tweet­ed us this week­end), Mar­garet Atwood, Philip Roth — they all make an appear­ance. The full list of writ­ers appears below the jump.

And, before we close, let me say this. When­ev­er we post videos like these, we get the ques­tion. Why the occa­sion­al focus on atheism/rationalism/humanism? And the sim­ple answer comes down to this: If you cov­er writ­ers, aca­d­e­mics and sci­en­tists, the think­ing skews in that direc­tion. Yes, there are excep­tions, but they are in short­er sup­ply. But if some­one pulls them togeth­er and makes a mon­tage, we’ll like­ly fea­ture it too. H/T RichardDawkins.net

Note: As you may have noticed, we have been expe­ri­enc­ing inter­mit­tent out­ages over the past cou­ple of days. Our host, Dreamhost, has been stum­bling more than we’d like. So we’re fig­ur­ing out alter­na­tives and hope­ful­ly mak­ing a move soon. Our apolo­gies for the incon­ve­nience!

(more…)

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The Last (Faxed) Poem of Charles Bukowski

in Literature, Technology | January 30th, 2012

On Feb­ru­ary 18, 1994, Charles Bukows­ki had a fax machine installed in his home and imme­di­ate­ly sent his first Fax poem to his pub­lish­er:

oh, for­give me For Whom the Bell Tolls,
oh, for­give me Man who walked on water,
oh, for­give me lit­tle old woman who lived in a shoe,
oh, for­give me the moun­tain that roared at mid­night,
oh, for­give me the dumb sounds of night and day and death,
oh, for­give me the death of the last beau­ti­ful pan­ther,
oh, for­give me all the sunken ships and defeat­ed armies,
this is my first FAX POEM.
It’s too late:
I have been
smit­ten.

Alas this was also Bukowski’s last poem. Just 18 days after Bukows­ki embraced tech­nol­o­gy, the poet (once famous­ly called the “lau­re­ate of Amer­i­can lowlife” by Pico Iyer) died of leukemia in Cal­i­for­nia. He was 73 years old. Accord­ing to John Mar­tin at Black Spar­row Press, the Fax poem has nev­er been pub­lished or col­lect­ed in a book. Book­tryst has a whole lot more on the sto­ry, and we have the singer/songwriter Tom Waits read­ing Charles Bukowski’s poem, The Laugh­ing Heart. You can also lis­ten to three oth­er Bukows­ki poems (in audio) here on YouTube:

Find more great reads in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

via Poet­ry Foun­da­tion

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We Were Wanderers on a Prehistoric Earth: A Short Film Inspired by Joseph Conrad

in Film, Literature | January 27th, 2012

“We were wan­der­ers on a pre­his­toric earth,” says the nar­ra­tor Mar­low in Joseph Con­rad’s Heart of Dark­ness, “on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown plan­et. We could have fan­cied our­selves the first of men tak­ing pos­ses­sion of an accursed inher­i­tance, to be sub­dued at the cost of pro­found anguish and of exces­sive toil.”

The pal­pa­ble men­ace that per­me­ates Con­rad’s clas­sic novel­la has been edit­ed out of the nar­ra­tion in this short film, made for Tourism Malaysia by British film­mak­er James W. Grif­fiths. What remains is a poet­ic sense of won­der for a nat­ur­al world that is no longer fright­en­ing, no longer in need of being sub­dued. In the orig­i­nal, the twist­ing and turn­ing sen­tences are like a micro­cosm of a jour­ney up the wind­ing Con­go Riv­er, into the metaphor­i­cal dark­ness that lies at the heart of all men. Out of the still­ness of the page, Con­rad’s imag­i­na­tion wash­es over us in a rolling wave of words:

The great wall of veg­e­ta­tion, an exu­ber­ant and entan­gled mass of trunks, branch­es, leaves, boughs, fes­toons, motion­less in the moon­light, was like a riot­ing inva­sion of sound­less life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crest­ed, ready to top­ple over the creek, to sweep every lit­tle man of us out of his lit­tle exis­tence. And it moved not.

Grif­fiths can per­haps be for­giv­en for defang­ing Con­rad. We Were Wan­der­ers on a Pre­his­toric Earth is a beau­ti­ful lit­tle film, a qui­et med­i­ta­tion on the unspoiled rain­for­est of West Malaysia shot in Novem­ber by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Christo­pher Moon, who also col­lab­o­rat­ed with Grif­fiths on last year’s award-win­ning Nokia cell­phone film Splitscreen. The music is by Lennert Busch, the sound design is by Mauri­cio d’Orey, and Con­rad’s words are spo­ken by Ter­ry Burns.

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Johnny Depp Reads Letters from Hunter S. Thompson (NSFW)

in Books, Film, Literature | January 14th, 2012

Back in 1998, Hunter S. Thomp­son’s most famous piece of Gonzo jour­nal­ism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was brought to the sil­ver screen, with John­ny Depp play­ing a lead role. From this point for­ward, Depp and Thomp­son became fast friends. Indeed, Depp would end up pay­ing for Thomp­son’s elab­o­rate funer­al, which involved shoot­ing the writer’s ash­es out of a can­non to the tune of Nor­man Green­baum’s Spir­it in the Sky and Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tam­bourine Man.

Above we fea­ture John­ny read­ing aloud some let­ters he received from Hunter. The let­ters are very Thomp­son-esque, which means, among things, they’re NOT SAFE for work! Part 2 can be found here, and Part 3 here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by the Hell’s Angels

John­ny Depp Nar­rates New Kei­th Richards Auto­bi­og­ra­phy (and How to Snag a Free Copy)

Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary: a ‘Warped Casablan­ca’

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