Heartless: The Story of the Tin Man

in Film, Literature | June 17th, 2010

In 1900, L. Frank Baum wrote The Won­der­ful Wiz­ard of Oz, which went on to become one of the most beloved chil­dren’s books of all time, reprint­ed and rein­vent­ed in a myr­i­ad stage plays, films, TV series, musi­cals and oth­er adap­ta­tions. But Baum’s orig­i­nal tale fea­tured a lit­tle-known back­sto­ry about the Tin Woods­man – a moral­i­ty tale about a man who gets so caught up in his work that he los­es sight of what real­ly mat­ters in life.

Direc­tor Bri­an McCormick decid­ed to cap­ture this poet­ic tale and the hid­den love sto­ry about a sim­ple woods­man and a beau­ti­ful maid­en in Heart­less: The Sto­ry of the Tin Man — an art­ful­ly shot short film, view­able for free online.

Addi­tion­al behind-the-scenes footage reveals the pro­duc­tion process and metic­u­lous crafts­man­ship of the film’s art direc­tion, sound design and cin­e­matog­ra­phy.

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 too much time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

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Crime and Punishment: Free AudioBook and eBook

in Audio Books, Literature | June 17th, 2010

In 1865, Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky found him­self in a deep hole. He had gam­bled away his last sav­ings and wracked up big debts. He also had to sup­port the fam­i­ly of his recent­ly deceased broth­er. Look­ing to make some quick mon­ey, Dos­to­evsky asked Mikhail Katkov, pub­lish­er of The Russ­ian Mes­sen­ger, for an advance. Then he began writ­ing in earnest a novel­la that soon sprawled into a grand nov­el. The first part of Crime and Pun­ish­ment would appear in The Russ­ian Mes­sen­ger in Jan­u­ary 1866; the sec­ond part in Decem­ber of that same year. Like The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov (Dos­to­evsky’s oth­er major work), Crime and Pun­ish­ment probes the dark side of human psy­chol­o­gy and asks some hard exis­ten­tial ques­tions. Niet­zsche would lat­er call Dos­to­evsky “the only psy­chol­o­gist from whom I have some­thing to learn: he belongs to the hap­pi­est wind­falls of my life, hap­pi­er even than the dis­cov­ery of Stend­hal.” One of the mas­ter­pieces of the Russ­ian lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, Crime and Pun­ish­ment is now avail­able as a free audio book thanks to Lit2Go. You can down­load the nov­el in full via iTunes, or as mp3s via the Lit2Go web site. Mean­while, if you’re look­ing for a free etext ver­sion of the nov­el, you can find it in the fol­low­ing for­mats: Google Mobile – Kin­dle – Feed­books — ePub.

Note: Crime and Pun­ish­ment appears in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

Learn how you can get a Free Audio Book (no strings attached) from Audible.com here.

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Brontë Sisters Power Dolls

in Comedy, Literature | June 16th, 2010

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.

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William S. Burroughs Shoots Shakespeare

in Literature | June 7th, 2010

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

William S. Bur­roughs’ “The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

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Letters with Literary Character

in Literature | May 27th, 2010

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

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Mark Twain Finally to Publish Autobiography

in Books, Literature | May 24th, 2010

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

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James Joyce Encoded in Venter’s Artificial Life

in Literature, Science | May 23rd, 2010

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.

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HuffPo on Literary One-Hit Wonders

in Books, Literature | May 20th, 2010

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?”

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