Marlon Brando Opens Up to Tennessee Williams

in Film, Literature, Theatre | March 27th, 2010

I had no idea that Mar­lon Bran­do was much of a writer, but this 1955 let­ter to Ten­nessee Williams is superb. Per­haps I just can’t help iden­ti­fy­ing him with Stan­ley Kowal­s­ki of the “Napoleon­ic code,” Stel­la!” and “Hoity-toity, describ­in’ me like a ape.” Espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing is his atti­tude towards suc­cess. (Note some of the lan­guage is a lit­tle strong/racy):

I have been afraid for you some­times, because suc­cess sings a dead­ly lul­la­by to most peo­ple. Suc­cess is a real and sub­tle whore, who would like noth­ing bet­ter than to catch you sleep­ing and bite your cock off. You have been as brave as any­body I’ve known, and it is com­fort­ing to think about it. You prob­a­bly don’t think of your­self as brave because nobody who real­ly has courage does, but I know you are and I get food from that.

This pas­sage echoes Williams’ own views on suc­cess, espe­cial­ly his beau­ti­ful (and iron­i­cal­ly inspir­ing) essay On a Street­car Named Suc­cess, writ­ten eight years ear­li­er:

It is nev­er alto­geth­er too late, unless you embrace the Bitch God­dess, as William James called her, with both arms and find in her smoth­er­ing caress­es exact­ly what the home­sick lit­tle boy in you always want­ed, absolute pro­tec­tion and utter effort­less­ness. Secu­ri­ty is a kind of death, I think, and it can come to you in a storm of roy­al­ty checks beside a kid­ney-shaped pool in Bev­er­ly Hills or any­where at all that is removed from the con­di­tions that made you an artist, if that’s what you are or were intend­ed to be. Ask any­one who has expe­ri­enced the kind of suc­cess I am talk­ing about–What good is it? Per­haps to get an hon­est answer you will have to give him a shot of truth-serum but the word he will final­ly groan is unprint­able in gen­teel pub­li­ca­tions.

You’ll find the rest of Bran­do’s let­ter (includ­ing an image of the orig­i­nal) — which includes reflec­tions on actors Anna Mag­nani and Burt Lan­cast­er — here.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.

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Orson Welles Reads Moby Dick

in Literature | March 26th, 2010

Welles is read­ing just a short intro­duc­tion here. But if you want a com­plete audio down­load of Moby Dick, let me tell you how to get one. You can down­load a free read­ing of Melville’s clas­sic at Lib­rivox. The full mp3 zip file is right 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.

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Mark Twain Captured on Film by Thomas Edison in 1909. It’s the Only Known Footage of the Author.

in Books, Literature | March 18th, 2010

Here’s a lit­tle nugget for you. The great inven­tor Thomas Edi­son vis­it­ed the home of Mark Twain in 1909, and cap­tured footage of “the father of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture” (says Faulkn­er) walk­ing around his estate and play­ing cards with his daugh­ters, Clara and Jean. The film is silent and dete­ri­o­rat­ed. But it’s appar­ent­ly the only known footage of the author who gave us Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Twain would die the next year.

Find works by Twain in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

And if you like what we serve up, don’t miss us on Twit­ter on Face­book. It’s any easy way to share cul­tur­al gems with fam­i­ly and friends.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Shirt­less in 1883 Pho­to

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

Thomas Edison’s Box­ing Cats (1894), or Where the LOL­Cats All Began

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GoodReads

in Books, Literature | March 9th, 2010

A quick heads up for book lovers: Goodreads is a large social net­work for read­ers, with over 3,000,000 mem­bers who review, rec­om­mend and swap books. The site also fea­tures “book-give-aways” for its mem­bers. This month you can enter to win a free copy of If You Fol­low Me, a nov­el by Male­na Watrous, a tal­ent­ed col­league of mine at Stan­ford. About the book one review­er said: It’s “the kind of book you fin­ish and then clutch to your heart as you run around telling every­one you know that they have to read it.” The book is hit­ting the book­store shelves today, and you can sign up to win a free copy until March 16.

PS Male­na will be teach­ing an online writ­ing course through Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies this spring. The course, called The Cre­ative Writ­ing Coach, is open to all. Mean­while, we’re also pilot­ing our first online human­i­ties course, a phi­los­o­phy course called Envi­sion­ing the Good Life. Watch the video intro­duc­tion for the course here.

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Join the Facebook Committee to Support Liao Yiwu

in Life, Literature | March 2nd, 2010

For the 13th time, Chi­nese author­i­ties arrest­ed the well-known Chi­nese writer Liao Yiwu (The Corpse Walk­er) as he board­ed a plane to attend a lit­er­ary fes­ti­val in Cologne, Ger­many. He has now been placed under house arrest. You can learn more about it here. (Also read Philip Goure­vitch’s blog post for The New York­er.) Please join this new­ly cre­at­ed Face­book Group ded­i­cat­ed to pub­li­ciz­ing this sto­ry and win­ning his release. Be among the first to join. Make a dif­fer­ence here.

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Henry Miller on New York

in Books, Film, Literature | February 28th, 2010

(NOTE: some strong lan­guage here...)

Back in 1975, film­mak­er Tom Schiller (only 20 years old at the time) made a short doc­u­men­tary on the nov­el­ist Hen­ry Miller (Trop­ic of Can­cer, Trop­ic of Capri­corn). In the scene above, Miller, then 81 years old, rem­i­nisces about his dif­fi­cult ear­ly life in New York, and it all takes place on the set used to shoot the movie Hel­lo, Dol­ly!. Schiller’s com­plete film, Hen­ry Miller Asleep and Awake, can be watched for free on Snag­films. (It’s also avail­able at Ama­zon on DVD here.) The run time is 34 min­utes. Excel­lent find by Mike.

Note: We’ve added Hen­ry Miller Asleep and Awake to our grow­ing film col­lec­tion: Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Film Noir, Doc­u­men­taries & More

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Ten Rules for Writing Fiction

in Literature, Writing | February 25th, 2010

The Guardian asked twen­ty nine writ­ers to give their 10 Rules for Writ­ing Fic­tion. Those giv­en by Jonathan Franzen (The Cor­rec­tions) were arguably the pithi­est, and we list them below. The full line­up of writ­ers (includ­ing Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, and Richard Ford) can be found here. (The New York­er has since fol­lowed up with some com­men­tary on the Guardian list.)

  • The read­er is a friend, not an adver­sary, not a spec­ta­tor.
  • Fic­tion that isn’t an author’s per­son­al adven­ture into the fright­en­ing or the unknown isn’t worth writ­ing for any­thing but mon­ey.
  • Nev­er use the word “then” as a con­junc­tion – we have “and” for this pur­pose. Sub­sti­tut­ing “then” is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solu­tion to the prob­lem of too many “ands” on the page.
  • Write in the third per­son unless a real­ly dis­tinc­tive first-per­son voice ­offers itself irre­sistibly.
  • When infor­ma­tion becomes free and uni­ver­sal­ly acces­si­ble, volu­mi­nous research for a nov­el is deval­ued along with it.
  • The most pure­ly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal fic­tion requires pure inven­tion. Nobody ever wrote a more auto bio­graph­i­cal sto­ry than “The Meta­morphosis”.
  • You see more sit­ting still than chas­ing after.
  • It’s doubt­ful that any­one with an inter­net con­nec­tion at his work­place is writ­ing good fic­tion.
  • Inter­est­ing verbs are sel­dom very inter­est­ing.
  • You have to love before you can be relent­less.

via @kirstinbutler

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Google Lit Trips

in Google, Literature | February 19th, 2010

For three years, Eng­lish teacher Jerome Burg has been using Google Earth to teach lit­er­a­ture. Each â€śLit Trip” involves map­ping the move­ments of char­ac­ters over a plot’s time­line and pro­vid­ing excerpts, pic­tures, and links at each loca­tion. I found a lit trip for one of my favorite nov­els, Cor­mac McCarthy’s Blood Merid­i­an, which involves a lot of move­ment across the old West. McCarthy him­self is said to have spent years trac­ing these paths and study­ing loca­tions in prepa­ra­tion for writ­ing the nov­el. You’ll find a com­plete list of lit trips here, includ­ing such clas­sics as Mac­beth, Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man, and The Odyssey. It’s dif­fi­cult to get a sense of the fan­tas­tic effect of visu­al­ly unpack­ing a plot with­out down­load­ing a lit trip and try­ing it with­in Google Earth (down­load here). But here’s a video of a lit trip for Make Way for Duck­lings by Robert McCloskey. It will give you a quick taste of the lit trip expe­ri­ence:

Final­ly, you can find a two-part video intro­duc­tion to Lit Trips by Kate Reavey, a pro­fes­sor at Penin­su­la Col­lege, here and here.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.

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