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 “Lit 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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Carl Sandburg on “What’s My Line?”

in Literature, Poetry, Television | February 17th, 2010

What’s My Line? aired on CBS from 1950 to 1967, mak­ing it the longest-run­ning game show in Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. Dur­ing its eigh­teen sea­sons, the show fea­tured hun­dreds of celebri­ties, includ­ing some of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing cul­tur­al fig­ures. The clip above dusts off the 1960 appear­ance made by Carl Sand­burg, the poet, writer, and three time win­ner of the Pulitzer Prize. And now for a video that’s not all fun and games: here’s audio of Sand­burg read­ing his anti­war poem Grass. (You can also get more free audio record­ings of Sand­burg’s poet­ry over at the Inter­net Archive.)

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F. Scott Fitzgerald Reads Shakespeare

in Literature | February 7th, 2010

The Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na hosts a few gems, includ­ing F. Scott Fitzger­ald (The Great Gats­by) read­ing lines from Shake­speare’s Oth­el­lo. Or, more specif­i­cal­ly, Oth­el­lo’s ora­tion to Venet­ian sen­a­tors.

This comes to us via Mike. Thanks to all who start­ed send­ing good links our way. When­ev­er you see some­thing good, please fire us a quick email. It will take one minute out of your day and make the day for many oth­ers.

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Virginia Woolf: Her Voice Recaptured

in Literature | February 2nd, 2010

Lis­ten up. The clip above fea­tures the only sur­viv­ing record­ing of Vir­ginia Woolf’s voice. It comes from a 1937 BBC radio broad­cast. The talk, enti­tled “Crafts­man­ship,” was part of a series called “Words Fail Me.” You can find a tran­script of the record­ed por­tion here. Thanks Kirstin for help­ing get this nugget out there.

via mhp­books

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J.D. Salinger Dies at 91

in Books, Life, Literature | January 28th, 2010

More sad news. J.D. Salinger, who brought us The Catch­er in the Rye, has died at 91. Here’s the ini­tial news release.

Boy, when you’re dead, they real­ly fix you up.  I hope to hell when I do die some­body has sense enough to just dump me in the riv­er or some­thing.  Any­thing except stick­ing me in a god­dam ceme­tery.  Peo­ple com­ing and putting a bunch of flow­ers on your stom­ach on Sun­day, and all that crap.  Who wants flow­ers when you’re dead?  Nobody.  ~J.D. Salinger, The Catch­er in the Rye, Chap­ter 20

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Rod Serling: Where Do Ideas Come From? (1972)

in Literature, Television | January 18th, 2010

Rod Ser­ling, the Amer­i­can screen­writer & tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er best known for The Twi­light Zone, field­ed ques­tions from stu­dents about the whole art of writ­ing for tele­vi­sion. In the clip above, he gives a rather dra­mat­ic response to the ques­tion, “Where do ideas come from?” (They come from the Earth… They’re in the air. And, to put them on paper, you bleed!) If you keep watch­ing, the con­ver­sa­tion with Ser­ling con­tin­ues for a good while.

This con­tri­bu­tion was sent to us by Elan, who dates the clip to around 1972. You can always write us and sug­gest a link here.

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Two Gentlemen of Lebowski

in Film, Literature | January 13th, 2010

Take the Coen Broth­ers’ 1998 cult film, The Big Lebows­ki, and put it in Shake­speare­an verse, and what do you get? Two Gen­tle­men of Lebowski as writ­ten by Adam Bertoc­ci. It begins:

In wayfarer’s worlds out west was once a man,
A man I come not to bury, but to praise.
His name was Geof­frey Lebows­ki called, yet
Not called, except­ing by his kin.
That which we call a knave by any oth­er name
Might bowl just as sweet. Lebows­ki, then,
Did call him­self ‘the Knave’, a name that I,
Your hum­ble cho­rus, would not self-apply
In home­lands mine; but, then, this Knave was one
From whom sense was a bur­den to extract,
And of the arid vale in which he dwelt,
Also dis­like in sen­si­bil­i­ty;
May­hap the very search for sense reveals
The rea­son that it striketh me as most
Int’resting, yea, inspir­ing me to odes.

The Wall Street Jour­nal has more on this cre­ative bit that has gone viral dur­ing the past week, and will be soon per­formed on stage in NYC. See Kottke.org for more on that.

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The Best of Books, 2009–2010

in Books, Literature | January 7th, 2010

This almost slipped by me. As 2009 drew to a close, The New York Times post­ed two annu­al lists. First, its list of 100 Notable Books and then its 10 Best Books of 2009. 5 Fic­tion. 5 Non­fic­tion. It’s a pret­ty good dis­til­la­tion of the bet­ter works pub­lished last year. But enough about ’09. What’s com­ing in 2010? The Mil­lions has pre­viewed the most antic­i­pat­ed books (all fic­tion) set for pub­li­ca­tion this year.

Look­ing for more good reads? Check out the col­lec­tion of Life Chang­ing Books assem­bled by our read­ers.

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