Mark Twain #1 on Amazon

in Books, e-books, Literature | October 17th, 2010

The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Mark Twain (Vol. 1) hit the stands just yes­ter­day, and already it stands atop the Ama­zon best­seller list, leapfrog­ging past Stieg Lars­son, Bill Bryson, Jon Stew­art, and even the lat­est, sup­pos­ed­ly great­est Amer­i­can nov­el­ist, Jonathan Franzen. Although he died a cen­tu­ry again, Twain has still got it.

The 766 page auto­bi­og­ra­phy pub­lished by UC Press runs $18.99 in hard­cov­er on Ama­zon, and the Kin­dle ver­sion a far cool­er $9.99. You can read excerpts in PDF for­mat here and here. Mean­while you can also find free ver­sions of Twain’s clas­sics – Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and Tom Sawyer – in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son (1909)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch a Hair-Raising 1954 Animation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” Narrated by James Mason

in Film, Literature | October 6th, 2010

In 1849, the great Amer­i­can writer Edgar Allan Poe met a strange death in Bal­ti­more. If you recall, Poe was dis­cov­ered, either in a state of delir­i­um or uncon­scious (accounts dif­fer) and appar­ent­ly wear­ing some­one else’s tat­tered clothes, out­side a tav­ern. He was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal where he remained, unable to explain what had hap­pened to him, until he died. (A post in our archive breaks down the strange cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his death pret­ty well.)

To mark the admit­ted­ly grim occa­sion, we are high­light­ing today the 1953 ani­mat­ed film ver­sion of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” nar­rat­ed by James Mason. Upon its release, the film was giv­en a bizarre recep­tion. In the UK, the British Board of Film Cen­sors gave the film an “x” rat­ing, deem­ing it unsuit­able for adult audi­ences. Mean­while, “The Tell-Tale Heart” was nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film in the US, though it ulti­mate­ly lost to a Dis­ney pro­duc­tion. The film runs a short 7:24, and now appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Bonus: You can also down­load a free text ver­sion of Poe’s clas­sic via Project Guten­berg, and then a free audio ver­sion from our list of Free Audio Books.

Many thanks to Mike S. for send­ing this our way. Have a great piece of Open Cul­ture to share with your fel­low read­ers? Get in touch here.

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:

The Mys­tery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 The­o­ries on What Caused the Poet’s Demise

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Édouard Manet Illus­trates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edi­tion Trans­lat­ed by Stephane Mal­lar­mé (1875)

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

74 Free Banned Books (for Banned Books Week)

in Books, Literature, Most Popular | October 1st, 2010

To com­mem­o­rate Banned Books Week, the always great Inter­net Archive has opened up access to 74 banned books. The col­lec­tion fea­tures some seri­ous pieces of lit­er­a­ture (James Joyce’s Ulysses, F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s Ten­der is the Night, Hux­ley’s Brave New World, etc.); some tra­di­tion­al chil­dren’s clas­sics (Win­nie the Pooh); and some sin­is­ter books of unques­tion­able his­tor­i­cal impor­tance (Mein Kampf). These books can be down­loaded in mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal for­mats, includ­ing some­times ePub and Kin­dle for­mats. This gives you the abil­i­ty to read the the works on the Kin­dle, iPad, Nook and oth­er main­stream ebook read­ers. (See note below.) But the old fash­ioned com­put­er will also do the job.

Cen­sor­ship remains a seri­ous prob­lem in the US and beyond. The Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion record­ed 460 attempts in 2009 to restrict books in US schools and libraries. But they esti­mate that this rep­re­sents only 20–25% of actu­al attempts to cen­sor. All of this cen­sor­ship is neat­ly (and rather specif­i­cal­ly) tracked on Google Maps.

NOTE: Please see our pre­vi­ous post describ­ing how to add files to the Kin­dle. Mean­while this page describes how to trans­fer ePub files to the iPad.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 15 ) |

The Paris Review Interviews Now Online

in Books, Literature, Writing | September 22nd, 2010

The Paris Review, the great lit­er­ary jour­nal co-found­ed by George Plimp­ton, unveiled last week a new web site and a big archive of inter­views with famous lit­er­ary fig­ures. Span­ning five decades, the inter­views often talk about the “how” of lit­er­a­ture (to bor­row a phrase from Salman Rushdie) – that is, how writ­ers go about writ­ing. Rum­mag­ing through the archive, you will encounter con­ver­sa­tions with TS Eliot, William Faulkn­er, Ralph Elli­son, Ernest Hem­ing­way, Simone de Beau­voir, Saul Bel­low, Jorge Luis Borges, Nor­man Mail­er, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, John Stein­beck, Joan Did­ion, Kurt Von­negut, Eudo­ra Wel­ty, Ray­mond Carv­er, Rus­sell Banks, Don DeLil­lo, Toni Mor­ri­son, Paul Auster, etc. And, amaz­ing­ly, this list only scratch­es the sur­face of what’s avail­able.

Note: These inter­views are sep­a­rate­ly avail­able in book for­mat: The Paris Review Inter­views, Vol­umes 1–4.

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!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Reviewing Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” with Wit

in Comedy, Literature | September 16th, 2010

Every­where you turn, there’s a review of Jonathan Franzen’s new nov­el, Free­dom. Most appear in print, and they’re but­toned down. Not this one. It’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. The video above fea­tures Ron Charles, The Wash­ing­ton Post’s fic­tion crit­ic, tak­ing his own approach.

Speak­ing of Franzen and book reviews: Franzen appeared on San Fran­cis­co radio ear­li­er this week. And the con­ver­sa­tion was mov­ing along quite smooth­ly until Franzen was asked about Michiko Kaku­tani, The New York Times book crit­ic. That’s when the knives came out. You can catch the com­ments below at the 33:20 mark…

[gplay­er href=“http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/forum/2010/09/2010–09-13b-forum.mp3” ] Jonathan Franzen Inter­viewed on KQED Forum. Sep­tem­ber 13, 2010 [/gplayer]

Thanks Male­na for the tip!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Online

in Literature | September 15th, 2010

Togeth­er, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and King’s Col­lege Lon­don are lead­ing a three year effort to unite in one dig­i­tal archive the sur­viv­ing man­u­scripts of Jane Austen’s fic­tion. Since 1845, these texts have been dis­persed among libraries and pri­vate col­lec­tions. Now, they’re get­ting back togeth­er, at least vir­tu­al­ly. When fin­ished, the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion will include every man­u­script Austen pro­duced, start­ing dur­ing her youth (around 11 years old) and end­ing with her death at age 41. You can start review­ing some of the first man­u­scripts brought online here, and get more back­ground on the project here. Good find by Kot­tke.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

Dominic West (aka Jim­my McNul­ty) Reads Jane Austen

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

William S. Burroughs Reviews a Led Zeppelin Concert for Crawdaddy! Magazine (1975)

in Literature, Music | September 13th, 2010

jimmyandbill

Craw­dad­dy! It was the first US mag­a­zine of rock music crit­i­cism, pre­ced­ing both Rolling Stone and Creem. Paul Williams, then a stu­dent at Swarth­more Col­lege, first launched the mag­a­zine in 1966. And by the 1970s, Craw­dad­dy! hit its stride, pub­lish­ing exclu­sive con­tri­bu­tions by John Lennon, Joseph Heller, and Studs Terkel, to name a few. On one occa­sion, the self-described “first mag­a­zine to take rock and roll seri­ous­ly” sent William S. Bur­roughs, the great beat writer, to a Led Zep­pelin con­cert. He came back in June 1975 with a rather off­beat con­cert review. There’s a strange inno­cence, even naivete, to the whole piece (though we know bet­ter than to con­fuse Bur­roughs him­self with inno­cence). We give you an excerpt right below, and the rest here.

So there we sat, I decline earplugs; I am used to loud drum and horn music from Moroc­co, and it always has, if skill­ful­ly per­formed, an exhil­a­rat­ing and ener­giz­ing effect on me. As the per­for­mance got under­way I expe­ri­enced this musi­cal exhil­a­ra­tion, which was all the more pleas­ant for being eas­i­ly con­trolled, and I knew then that noth­ing bad was going to hap­pen. This was a safe and friend­ly area–but at the same time high­ly charged. There was a pal­pa­ble inter­change of ener­gy between the per­form­ers and the audi­ence which was nev­er fran­tic or jagged. The spe­cial effects were han­dled well and not over­done.

A few spe­cial effects are much bet­ter than too many. I can see the laser beams cut­ting dry ice smoke, which drew an appre­cia­tive cheer from the audi­ence. Jim­my Page’s num­ber with the bro­ken gui­tar strings came across with a real impact, as did John Bonham’s drum solo and the lyrics deliv­ered with unfail­ing vital­i­ty by Robert Plant. The per­form­ers were doing their best, and it was very good. The last num­ber, “Stair­way to Heav­en”, where the audi­ence lit match­es and there was a scat­ter­ing of sparklers here and there, found the audi­ence well-behaved and joy­ous, cre­at­ing the atmos­phere of a high school Christ­mas play. All in all a good show; nei­ther low nor insipid. Leav­ing the con­cert hall was like get­ting off a jet plane.

The Bur­roughs piece con­tin­ues here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Delet­ed Scene from Almost Famous: Mom, “Stair­way to Heav­en” is Based on the Lit­er­a­ture of Tolkien

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Syllabus & Book List for Sci-Fi Newbies

in Literature, Sci Fi | September 1st, 2010

Always want­ed to read sci­ence fic­tion? But nev­er knew where to start? io9, a blog ded­i­cat­ed to futur­ism and sci-fi, has you cov­ered. Today, they pub­lished a handy sci-fi syllabus/reading list “intend­ed to intro­duce the novice stu­dent … to the major themes in the genre, as well as books and authors who are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of dif­fer­ent eras in SF lit (includ­ing the present day).” The io9 read­ing list breaks down a vast body of sci-fi lit­er­a­ture into six use­ful cat­e­gories – 1) Foun­da­tion­al Works/Classics, 2) Utopias and Dystopias, 3) Robots, 4) Aliens, 5) Space Trav­el, and 6)  Sci­ence Fic­tion as Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy. Wells, Love­craft, Hux­ley, Orwell, Dick, Asi­mov, Gib­son, Hein­lein, LeGuin – they’re all on the list.

Relat­ed FYIs: you can find many of HP Love­craft’s writ­ings online here. Thanks Julie for the recent heads up.

Also, you can down­load an audio ver­sion of Hux­ley nar­rat­ing A Brave New World here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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