Famous Authors Read Other Famous Authors

in Audio Books, Literature | December 14th, 2010

Through Decem­ber 22, the Guardian’s new Short Sto­ries pod­cast (iTunes — RSS — Web Site) will present 12 well-known authors read­ing sto­ries by oth­er famous writ­ers. So far, we have Philip Pull­man read­ing Chekhov, Anne Enright pre­sent­ing Ray­mond Carver’s sto­ry “Fat,” and William Boyd read­ing JG Bal­lard’s “My Dream of Fly­ing to Wake Island.” The sched­ule for the nine remain­ing sto­ries is right here.

If this pod­cast feels vague­ly famil­iar, it’s per­haps because you have already encoun­tered The New York­er Fic­tion pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Here again, lead­ing authors read short works by oth­er great writ­ers – Paul Ther­oux reads “The Gospel Accord­ing to Mark” by Jorge Luis Borges, Joyce Car­ol Oates reads Eudo­ra Wel­ty’s “Where Is the Voice Com­ing From?,” Orhan Pamuk reads Vladimir Nabokov’s “My Russ­ian Edu­ca­tion,” the parade of great read­ings goes on.

All of these read­ings, plus many more, are cat­a­logued in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. And there they will remain. Thanks to Stephen for the heads up on the new Guardian pod­cast…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Great Authors (and Actors) Read Famous Lit­er­a­ture Out Loud

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Saul Bellow Reads from Humboldt’s Gift (1988)

in Literature | December 7th, 2010

The 92nd Street Y, a cul­tur­al pil­lar of New York City, has released from its audio archive anoth­er lit­tle gem – Saul Bel­low read­ing from his 1975 nov­el Hum­boldt’s Gift, which won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion and con­tributed to Bel­low’s Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture.

Bel­low’s read­ing (access it via iTunes, RSS, or the mp3 play­er below) runs 11 min­utes, and it sits nice­ly along­side two oth­er 92nd Street Y record­ings – Tru­man Capote read­ing from Break­fast at Tiffany’s (1963) and William Car­los Williams read­ing select­ed poems in 1954. We fea­tured both items in our pop­u­lar post, 45 Great Cul­tur­al Icons Revis­it­ed.

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H.G. Wells’ 1930s Radio Broadcasts

in Literature, Radio, Science | November 29th, 2010

H.G. Wells (1866–1946) gave us The Time Machine, The Invis­i­ble Man, and The War of the Worlds and prac­ti­cal­ly invent­ed sci­ence fic­tion as we know it. (Find his clas­sic texts in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.) Now, thanks to the BBC, you can trav­el back in time and get a glimpse into Wells’ cre­ative mind. Dur­ing the 1930s and 1940s, Wells made reg­u­lar radio broad­casts for the BBC, where he had the free­dom to range wide­ly, to talk about “world pol­i­tics, the his­to­ry of the print­ing press, the pos­si­bil­i­ties of tech­nol­o­gy and the shape of things to come…” Nine record­ings now appear online. You can start lis­ten­ing here, or dip into an archive of Wells’ per­son­al let­ters.

Final­ly, don’t miss one of my per­son­al favorites. Orson Welles read­ing a dra­ma­tized ver­sion of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in 1938. It’s per­haps the most famous radio broad­cast in Amer­i­can his­to­ry and it drove Amer­i­ca into a bout of mass hys­te­ria, at least for a night …

H/T to @fionaatzler for flag­ging these BBC audio record­ings.


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45 Great Cultural Icons Revisited

in Art, Literature, Most Popular, Philosophy | November 21st, 2010

It’s no secret. We love to high­light vin­tage video of cul­tur­al icons. This week­end, we showed you the last days of Leo Tol­stoy to com­mem­o­rate the cen­ten­ni­al of the great writer’s death, and you expressed your appre­ci­a­tion. And it led us to think: why not dig through our archive, and revive some of the great trea­sures pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture? And so here it goes: Below, you will find 45+ video & audio clips that record the words and actions of major fig­ures from a bygone era. Artists, archi­tects, film­mak­ers, actors, poets, nov­el­ists, com­posers, musi­cians, world-chang­ing lead­ers, and those not eas­i­ly cat­e­go­rized – they’re all here. So close, you can almost touch them. Enjoy the list, and if we’re miss­ing some good clips, don’t hes­i­tate to send them our way…

Video

  1. Sal­vador Dali (and Oth­er VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”
  2. Arthur Conan Doyle Recounts the Back­sto­ry to Sher­lock Holmes
  3. Orson Welles’ Final Moments
  4. William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare
  5. Borges: The Task of Art
  6. Jack Ker­ouac Meets William F. Buck­ley (1968)
  7. Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its Dick Cavett, 1971
  8. Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass
  9. Leonard Bern­stein Breaks Down Beethoven
  10. Record Mak­ing With Duke Elling­ton (1937)
  11. Bertrand Rus­sell on God
  12. Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son (1909)
  13. A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach
  14. Rod Ser­ling: Where Do Ideas Come From?
  15. Richard Feyn­man: Fun to Imag­ine
  16. Rare Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock Now Online
  17. Miles and Coltrane on YouTube: The Jazz Greats
  18. Footage of Nietzsche’s Final Days (May be bogus)
  19. Samuel Beck­ett Speaks
  20. Jimi Hen­drix Plays Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band
  21. Djan­go Rein­hardt at 100
  22. When Pavarot­ti Met James Brown, the God­fa­ther of Soul
  23. James Dean and Ronald Rea­gan Clash in New­ly Dis­cov­ered Video
  24. The Last Czar (1896)
  25. Leon Trot­sky: Love, Death and Exile in Mex­i­co
  26. Revis­it­ing JFK on YouTube
  27. Mahat­ma Gand­hi Talks (in First Record­ed Video)
  28. Mal­colm X at Oxford, 1964
  29. Helen Keller Cap­tured on Video
  30. Anne Frank: The Only Exist­ing Video Now Online
  31. Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties (Frank Lloyd Wright, Pearl Buck, Sal­vador Dali, Rein­hold Niebuhr, Aldous Hux­ley, Erich Fromm, etc.)

Audio:

  1. Tchaikovsky’s Voice Cap­tured on an Edi­son Cylin­der (1890)
  2. Aldous Hux­ley Nar­rates Brave New World
  3. Tru­man Capote Reads from Break­fast at Tiffany’s
  4. Kurt Von­negut Reads from Slaugh­ter­house-Five
  5. William Faulkn­er Audio Archive Goes Online
  6. The John Lennon Inter­views
  7. Rare Record­ing of Walt Whit­man Read­ing
  8. Vir­ginia Woolf: Her Voice Recap­tured
  9. T.S. Eliot Reads The Waste Land
  10. Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”
  11. F. Scott Fitzger­ald Reads Shake­speare
  12. James Joyce Read­ing from Finnegans Wake
  13. Rare Ezra Pound Record­ings Now Online
  14. William Car­los Williams Reads His Poet­ry (1954)
  15. Inter­views with Schoen­berg and Bartók

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Frankenstein Hits the Silver Screen (1910)

in Film, Literature | November 17th, 2010

100 years ago, J. Sear­le Daw­ley wrote and direct­ed Franken­stein. It took him three days to shoot the short, 12-minute film (when most films were actu­al­ly shot in just one day). It marked the first time that Mary Shel­ley’s lit­er­ary cre­ation was adapt­ed to film. And, some­what notably, Thomas Edi­son had a hand (albeit it an indi­rect one) in mak­ing the film. The first Franken­stein was shot at Edi­son Stu­dios, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny owned by the famous inven­tor.

You can down­load the movie at the Inter­net Archive, or find it per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. (Also, you can find Mary Shel­ley’s nov­el  in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.) To get more infor­ma­tion on Daw­ley’s short film, please vis­it The Franken­stein blog.

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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Paul Auster Reads from New Novel, Sunset Park

in Books, Literature | November 10th, 2010

This week, Paul Auster releas­es his 16th nov­el, Sun­set Park, which gives lit­er­ary expres­sion to the eco­nom­ic mis­for­tunes weigh­ing on the coun­try. The fore­clo­sures. The unem­ploy­ment. The reces­sion and depres­sion. The nov­el starts to paint the des­per­ate pic­ture quick­ly. Above, we have Paul Auster read­ing the begin­ning pages, and you can fol­low along with this tran­script post­ed online by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media.

Auster also hap­pens to nar­rate the entire audio ver­sion of Sun­set Park, and, as pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned here, you can down­load a free audio copy of the nov­el (or pret­ty much any oth­er book of your choice) if you reg­is­ter for a 14-day free tri­al of Audible.com. Once the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it. It’s up to you. But, either way, you keep the book.

Thanks to Mike for spot­ting the Auster read­ing…

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A‑List Authors, Artists & Thinkers Draw Self Portraits

in Art, Literature | November 8th, 2010

Over the years, Burt Brit­ton con­vinced A‑list writ­ers and artists to draw self-por­traits of them­selves. He first enticed Nor­man Mail­er long ago, while work­ing as a bar­tender at the Vil­lage Van­guard in NYC. Then came Miles Davis, Jorge Luis Borges (who was already blind), Mar­garet Atwood, Frank Gehry, Saul Bel­low, David Hock­ney, Allen Gins­berg, Cor­mac McCarthy (see above) and a parade of oth­ers. The doo­dled por­traits were lat­er col­lect­ed in a now out-of-print book, Self-Por­trait: Book Peo­ple Pic­ture Them­selves. You can still find a small­er col­lec­tion online at The Dai­ly Beast. The New York Times gives you more of the back­sto­ry on this col­lec­tion here.

via Maud New­ton

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Talking Literature with Great British Novelists

in Books, Literature | November 4th, 2010

woolf joyce

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

For decades, the BBC has inter­viewed leg­endary British nov­el­ists, ask­ing them how they cre­ate their mem­o­rable char­ac­ters, paint their evoca­tive set­tings with words, and devel­op plots that keep us turn­ing pages. Now, these audio inter­views appear online in a col­lec­tion called In Their  Own Words. The archive takes you back to 1937, to a con­ver­sa­tion with Vir­ginia Woolf, then moves you for­ward to inter­views with Aldous Hux­ley, JRR Tolkien, Doris Less­ing, Mar­tin Amis, VS Naipaul, and Salman Rushdie, to name just a few. These record­ings sit nice­ly along­side a giant archive of lit­er­ary inter­views recent­ly pub­lished online by The Paris Review. (More on that here.) So, if you want to get into the “how” of lit­er­a­ture, you can now tap instant­ly into the col­lec­tive wis­dom of the lit­er­ary greats.

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