On the lighter side…
On a more serious note, if you want some free audio books by the Brontë’s (including Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre), simply find them in our collection of Free Audio Books.
Thanks to @wesalwan for sending our way.
William S. Burroughs Shoots Shakespeare
Even at the age of 81, the Beat writer William S. Burroughs was still resisting literary convention. This footage was shot in Lawrence, Kansas, just two years before his death in 1997.
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William S. Burroughs Reads His First Novel, Junky
William S. Burroughs’ “The Thanksgiving Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant
Letters with Literary Character
Ben Greenman, a fiction writer and editor at the New Yorker, has a short story collection coming out this June. What He’s Poised To Do makes letters and letter-writing a thematic focus, and even before its official publication, Greenman’s collection has inspired a blog that encourages everyday people to write letters to great literary characters. The sample below gives you the gist of the project … and then some. If so inspired, send your own letter to: Le******************@***il.com.
Ernest Hemingway | The Sun Also Rises | 1926
Dear Brett,
I find myself in the horrible position of telling you what a truly terrible human being you are. I know what you’re doing with Jake and Robert when you’re very much engaged to Michael. Now, don’t give me any sob story about how you lost your “only true love” at such a young age. This gives you NO right to be a tramp. Also, half the women in Paris would agree that you are NOT charming when you are drunk like you think you are. In fact I would go as far as to say you are repulsive in all forms of the word. Occasionally, I cringe when you speak because it is always to use someone. You’re despicable. Disgusting. You’re a pedantic weenie.
Sincerely,
Alexandria Smith
Mark Twain Finally to Publish Autobiography
File this under “better late than never.” Mark Twain spent his last decade writing his memoirs, producing some 5,000 unedited pages. However, he stipulated that they couldn’t be published for at least a century following his death. (Apropos see this very rare footage recorded by Thomas Edison showing Twain in his last year.) Fast forward to 2010. We have now clocked 100 years. And this November, UC Berkeley will publish the first volume of Twain’s manuscript. The Independent tells you more about this literary event, and suggests why Twain wanted to keep his autobiography under wraps. Get the full article here.
via @ebertchicago
James Joyce Encoded in Venter’s Artificial Life
You may have heard the news last week: J. Craig Venter and a team of scientists created the first living organism – a “synthetic cell” – by way of a computer-generated genome. We’re now seeing the beginnings of artificial life. And it’s a big story, with many far-reaching implications. But where does James Joyce fit into this picture? Let me add this little factoid to the mix: According to The Christian Science Monitor, Venter’s team inserted DNA watermark codes into the genome so that they can distinguish between natural and synthetic bacteria moving forward. And when this code is translated into English, it will “spell out the names of the 46 researchers who helped with the project, quotations from James Joyce, physicist Richard Feynman and J. Robert Oppenheimer, and a URL that anyone who deciphers the code can e‑mail.” Lots of smarts packed into the tiniest of packages.
UPDATE: The quotes in watermark apparently read: “TO LIVE, TO ERR, TO FALL, TO TRIUMPH, TO RECREATE LIFE OUT OF LIFE.” — James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; “SEE THINGS NOT AS THEY ARE, BUT AS THEY MIGHT BE.”-A quote from an Oppenheimer biography, American Prometheus; “WHAT I CANNOT BUILD, I CANNOT UNDERSTAND.” — Richard Feynman.
HuffPo on Literary One-Hit Wonders
HuffPo has pulled together a list of The 12 Greatest Literary One-Hit Wonders. And it’s a strange list indeed. When you think of “one-hit wonders,” you think of memorable songs recorded by very unmemorable artists – artists who got their 15 minutes of fame and then fell right off the radar. Meanwhile, the HuffPo list includes some of the most enduring names in American literature – F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger, and Herman Melville. They gave us their big novels – The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, and Moby Dick – then wrote some other lasting pieces of fiction, both short and long. They hardly faded into oblivion. And, years later, we’re certainly not asking, “what ever happened to old what’s his name?”
Spring: A Short Film Based on Hemingway’s Memoir
British filmmaker Temujin Doran may be better known for his strong, highly opinionated views on democracy and politics, but his adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast, is something else entirely.
Though still narrated in Doran’s characteristically urgent, restless tone, Spring offers a quiet tribute to Parisian urbanity and the richness of seasonality, captured with cinematic minimalism and eerily indulgent aesthetic austerity.
Maria Popova is the founder and editor in chief of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of eclectic interestingness and indiscriminate curiosity. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Magazine, BigThink and Huffington Post, and spends a disturbing amount of time curating interestingness on Twitter.
Insults Shakespeare Style
Searching for a stinging insult that has a nice literary quality? Let the Shakespeare Insult Finder be your guide. And, if you find yourself needing a good insult on the go, you can always download a free app for the iPhone.
“Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.”
–Henry IV, part 2
(Thanks Veronica!)
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