Ernest Hemingway Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

in Literature | April 26th, 2010

Per­haps Ernest Hem­ing­way was­n’t the best at read­ing lit­er­a­ture aloud. And it’s why A.E. Hotch­n­er once said, “one of Ernest Hem­ing­way’s dead­liest ene­mies was The Micro­phone.”

But even so, it’s worth recap­tur­ing the voice of the Amer­i­can lit­er­ary giant – espe­cial­ly when we can hear him read from his  own work. The read­ing is called “In Har­ry’s Bar in Venice,” and it was record­ed with a pock­et recorder some­time in the late 1950s. You can access the record­ing (thanks to Harper­Au­dio) in mul­ti­ple for­mats here: .au for­mat, .gsm for­mat, .ra for­mat. Or you can buy it as part of a larg­er col­lec­tion called Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads Ernest Hem­ing­way.

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City Poems: A New Literary iPhone App

in Apple, iPhone, Literature, Poetry | April 20th, 2010

Writ­ing in The Guardian, Vic­tor Kee­gan, a long­time jour­nal­ist and poet, talks about his new iPhone app, City Poems. The new­ly released app will run you $2.99 on iTunes, which makes it less than open, I know. (Have you seen our free app, by the way?) But it’s admit­ted­ly a pret­ty nice con­cept for the cul­tur­al crowd, enough to jus­ti­fy giv­ing it a quick men­tion here. About City Poems, Kee­gan says:

City Poems – pub­lished today – … uses satel­lite nav­i­ga­tion to guide cul­ture vul­tures and tourists alike through the streets of cen­tral Lon­don poem by poem. After weeks of research­ing poems about the city, I realised that you can learn more about the past life of a city from poems than from most guide books and his­to­ries. Wher­ev­er you are stand­ing in Lon­don (or New York for that mat­ter) with an iPhone (or iPod Touch or iPad) in your hand it will tell you how many metres you are away from places and events that poems have been writ­ten about.

They include the exe­cu­tion of the crim­i­nal Jonathan Wild (one of the inspi­ra­tions for John Gay’s The Beg­gar’s Opera), pub­lic burn­ings in Smith­field (“His guts filled a bar­rel”) or the curi­ous sto­ries behind the stat­ues in Trafal­gar Square, which I had passed by in igno­rance for many decades…

Like I said, an intrigu­ing con­cept, and it seems as though Kee­gan has plans to bring this mate­r­i­al to oth­er mobile plat­forms. You can grab the app on iTunes here.

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Johnny Depp Reads Letters from Hunter S. Thompson

in Film, Literature | April 13th, 2010

Back in 1998, Hunter S. Thomp­son’s most famous piece of Gonzo jour­nal­ism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was brought to the sil­ver screen, with John­ny Depp play­ing a lead role. From this point for­ward, Depp and Thomp­son became fast friends. (Indeed, Depp would end up pay­ing for Thomp­son’s elab­o­rate funer­al, which involved shoot­ing the writer’s ash­es out of a can­non to the tune of Nor­man Green­baum’s Spir­it in the Sky and Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tam­bourine Man.) Above we fea­ture John­ny read­ing out loud some let­ters he received from Hunter. The let­ters are very Thomp­son-esque, which means, among things, they’re NOT SAFE for work! Part 2 can be found here, and Part 3 here.

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!

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Samuel Beckett Speaks

in Film, Literature | April 13th, 2010

Samuel Beck­ett gave us Wait­ing for Godot, one of the great plays of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Today, he would have turned 104 years old. He died back in 1989, and just two years before that, the pub­lic­i­ty-shy play­wright was cap­tured in some rare footage that appeared in an Amer­i­can doc­u­men­tary called “Wait­ing for Beck­ett.” The images and voic­es can be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to make out, but it’s worth giv­ing this clip a lit­tle bit of time to unfold. Mean­while, you can find more film clips involv­ing Beck­ett (as writer and direc­tor) on UBUWeb, the avant-garde media site we fea­tured here last month.

Thanks Mike for send­ing this one our way.

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Allen Ginsberg on a Tugboat Ride (1969)

in Literature | April 12th, 2010

via The New York­er

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William Faulkner Reads from As I Lay Dying

in Audio Books, Literature | April 5th, 2010

William Faulkn­er’s As I Lay Dying is wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the great Amer­i­can nov­els. Quite an accom­plish­ment, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that Faulkn­er wrote the nov­el in six weeks while work­ing at a pow­er plant in 1929–30. Read more about his day jobs here.

Thanks to Harper­Collins, you can now lis­ten to Faulkn­er, him­self, read­ing from his mas­ter­piece: .au file (4.4 Mb), .gsm file (0.9 Mb), .ra file (0.5 Mb). The audio can be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to make out at times. But you can read right along with the text in Google Books. Enjoy. Thanks MS.

For more audio clas­sics, check out our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

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“April is the Cruellest Month…”

in Literature, Poetry | March 31st, 2010


T.S. Eliot reads from The Waste­land, one of the great poems of the last cen­tu­ry. It begins famous­ly:

APRIL is the cru­ellest month, breed­ing
Lilacs out of the dead land, mix­ing
Mem­o­ry and desire, stir­ring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Win­ter kept us warm, cov­er­ing
Earth in for­get­ful snow, feed­ing
A lit­tle life with dried tubers.
Sum­mer sur­prised us, com­ing over the Starn­berg­ersee
With a show­er of rain; we stopped in the colon­nade,
And went on in sun­light, into the Hof­garten,
And drank cof­fee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were chil­dren, stay­ing at the arch­duke’s,
My cous­in’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was fright­ened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the moun­tains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the win­ter.

Get the full text here.

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Kurt Vonnegut Reads from Slaughterhouse-Five

in Audio Books, Literature, Sci Fi | March 31st, 2010

Kurt Von­negut’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five was pub­lished back in 1969, and the anti-war sci fi nov­el quick­ly became a clas­sic. (The book now appears, for exam­ple, on Time Mag­a­zine’s list of All Time 100 Nov­els.) Whether you’ve read the nov­el or not, you’ll want to check this out. Harper­Collins has post­ed online a record­ing of Von­negut him­self read­ing a lengthy pas­sage from the work. And he does it with the “casu­al irony that com­ple­ments the nov­el­’s won­der­ful­ly eccen­tric tone.” You can stream Von­negut’s read­ing in the fol­low­ing for­mats:  .au for­mat (4.5 Mb), .gsm for­mat (900 Kb), .ra for­mat ( Mb). (Sor­ry a straight­for­ward mp3 is not avail­able.) Also, if you want some more Von­negut, feel free to down­load his 1962 sci fi short sto­ry, 2BR02B, which is oth­er­wise list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Note: Audible.com offers a ver­sion of Slaugh­ter­house-Five nar­rat­ed by actor/writer Ethan Hawke. You can down­load it (or any anoth­er oth­er book) for free if you start a free 14 day tri­al. It has no strings attached. Get some more basic details here.

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