The BBC reports: “An archaeological dig has recovered what is thought to be the remains of the theatre where Shakespeare’s plays were first performed.” Get the rest of the big story here.
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Here we have John Gielgud’s first recording of a scene from Hamlet, “recorded shortly after he became the youngest actor to take the lead in the play, in the 1929/30 Old Vic season.” It’s the audio that you will want to focus on here, not the video, even though there’s something a little amusing about the whole idea of watching an old record turn on YouTube. How quaint.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who chronicled the abuses of the Soviet regime and gained worldwide fame with A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, has died at 89. (Get the New York Times obit here.) Once asked what Solzhenitsyn means to literature and the history of Russia, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, had this to stay: “It’s impossible to imagine a writer whose affect on a society has been greater than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s affect on the fate of Russia …” In the video posted below, Remnick elaborates on Solzhenitsyn’s contributions, and it’s worth remembering that Remnick won a Pulitzer during the 90s for his bestseller, Lenin’s Tomb.
(Note: you can read the lecture Solzhenitsyn gave upon receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970 here, and listen to his 1978 Harvard graduation speech here.)
Every June 16 is Bloomsday, which commemorates Jame’s Joyce’s Ulysses (get free audio here). In Dublin and around the world, celebrations usually include a reading of Joyce’s classic. This year, in New York City, one high-profile event featured Stephen Colbert reading the part of Leopold Bloom, the character around which the sprawling novel turns. You can listen to Colbert read here and here. Enjoy, and I will catch you back here after the holiday weekend.
Here’s 1984, Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, The Great Gatsby and other classics boiled down to three lines, courtesy of McSweeny’s.
Segueing from our last post, I wanted to feature a reading given by Tobias Wolff, a master of the short story, who also happens to teach creative writing at Stanford.
In March, he released a new book, Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories. And below we have posted a clip of him reading from a piece called “The Benefit of the Doubt.” As you’ll see, Wolff knows how to give his stories a very good read. Enjoy.
(PS If you like literature in audio format, then feel free to peruse our Free Audio Book Collection. Also note that if you sign up for Audible, you can download two bestselling audio books for free. Get more info on the deal here.)
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Apparently, this is “an authentic wax cylinder recording of Whitman reading from his late poem ‘America’ that appeared in 1888 …”
A quick heads up: The first issue of The Straddler, a new quarterly online magazine, has just been launched. If the editors have their way, it will be the “anti-magazine of our day.” In the first issue, you’ll find:
Thanks Elaine for the heads up.
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