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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Spring: A Short Film Based on Hemingway’s Memoir

in Film, Literature | May 19th, 2010

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.

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Insults Shakespeare Style

in Literature | May 19th, 2010

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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Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukowski

in Literature, Music, Poetry | May 14th, 2010

Next up: Tom Waits reads Charles Bukowski’s poem, The Laugh­ing Heart. As Zoran (a read­er from Greece) observes, Waits reads the poem much like Bukows­ki would have read it him­self.

Of course, this rais­es the ques­tion: How did Bukows­ki read his poet­ry? The Secret of My Endurance holds the answer.

Thanks Zoran…

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Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man, A Free Documentary on the Argentine Writer

in Books, Film, Literature | May 12th, 2010

He was Argenti­na’s favorite son, one of the great South Amer­i­can writ­ers of the last cen­tu­ry (along with Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez, Car­los Fuentes, and Mario Var­gas Llosa), and the win­ner of 46 nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lit­er­ary prizes. We’re talk­ing about Jorge Luis Borges, the mas­ter of the post­mod­ern short sto­ry. Borges was born in 1899, and to cel­e­brate his 100th birth­day (though he died in 1986), Philippe Molins direct­ed the doc­u­men­tary, Jorge Luis Borges: The Mir­ror Man. The film’s major strength (as one review­er put it) is that it’s a “bit of every­thing – part biog­ra­phy, part lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, part hero-wor­ship, part book read­ing, and part psy­chol­o­gy.” It runs 47 min­utes and includes a fair amount of archival footage. (You can watch it in a larg­er for­mat on Vimeo here.)

A big thanks goes to Mike for send­ing The Mir­ror Man our way. If you have your own great piece of cul­tur­al media to share with us and your fel­low OC read­ers, please feel free to send it along.

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Listen to Brave New World for Free: Dramatized Version Read by Aldous Huxley

in Audio Books, Literature, Radio, Theatre | May 6th, 2010

The CBS Radio Work­shop was an “exper­i­men­tal dra­mat­ic radio anthol­o­gy series” that aired between 1956 and 1957. And it pre­miered with a two-part adap­ta­tion of Aldous Hux­ley’s now clas­sic 1932 nov­el, Brave New World. Hux­ley him­self intro­duced and nar­rat­ed the pro­gram, and now this clas­sic radio dra­ma has resur­faced online. You can lis­ten to Part 1 and Part 2 below. The mp3s will be per­ma­nent­ly housed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Part 1

Part 2

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William Carlos Williams Reads His Poetry (1954)

in Audio Books, Literature, Poetry | May 6th, 2010

William Car­los Williams – doc­tor by day, poet by night, and cer­tain­ly one of Amer­i­ca’s finest. In this 1954 audio clip, we hear Williams read­ing his own poet­ry at the sto­ried 92nd Street Y in New York City. Poems include: “A Sort of a Song,” “The Maneu­ver,” “Sea­far­er,” “The Three Graces,” “Pater­son, Episode 17,” “The Descent” and “Fish.” The reads are now added to the Poet­ry sec­tion of our Free Audio Books Col­lec­tion.

Poet­ry lovers take note: Peo­ple Read­ing Poems is a very new web site where users can come to hear record­ings of peo­ple read­ing poems they love, and also to share their own favorite poems. It’s all com­plete­ly free and easy to use. If you have a free moment, pay it a vis­it and help the site grow.

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