Google’s Shakespeare

in Books, Literature | December 13th, 2006

Google has always shied away from the con­tent cre­ation busi­ness. While Yahoo spent pre­cious resources devel­op­ing expen­sive con­tent, the Google folks con­tent­ed them­selves with devel­op­ing tech­nol­o­gy that orga­nized the rest of the world’s infor­ma­tion. And it paid off well. Giv­en this approach, it was some­what strange to stum­ble upon an edi­to­ri­al­ized part of their web site that invites users to “Explore Shake­speare with Google.” But we’re glad we did.

Google’s Shake­speare prod­uct is part of the com­pa­ny’s larg­er Book Search ini­tia­tive, which, to boil it down, involves scan­ning mil­lions of books, putting them on Google’s servers, and allow­ing users to search the print uni­verse like they do the world of web con­tent. Although some aspects of the project have proven to be high­ly con­tro­ver­sial (name­ly, the deci­sion to scan mil­lions of copy­right­ed texts), oth­er aspects have been eas­i­ly wel­comed by the pub­lish­ing com­mu­ni­ty. This includes the deci­sion to scan and archive a panoply of old, pub­lic domain texts.

This is where we get to Google’s Shake­speare. What you’ll find here is a col­lec­tion of all of the Bard’s plays in full text. The his­to­ries, tragedies, come­dies, romances — they are all here. The folks at Google­plex give you the abil­i­ty to access each play in its entire­ty and peruse it online. Or, alter­na­tive­ly,  you can down­load each play as a PDF file, which gives you the abil­i­ty to print the text and work through it in new ways. This kind of edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tion is hard to argue with. In fact, we’d like to see more col­lec­tions like it. But some­thing tells us that this isn’t like­ly — that the Bard (oh, and Chi­na) is just about the only thing for which Google will make an excep­tion.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Coltrane Spotify Sample

in Art, Creativity, Literature | December 1st, 2006

Sec­ond attempt

Third

 

Amer­i­ca lost more than it real­ized today. Sty­ron was, of course, appre­ci­at­ed by a great num­ber of writ­ers, read­ers, and crit­ics. But, these days, he isn’t usu­al­ly men­tioned in the same sen­tence as Philip Roth, John Updike, or Nor­man Mail­er, the elder states­men of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture. There are some legit­i­mate rea­sons for that. Rep­u­ta­tion is often sim­ply a func­tion of out­put and, since 1993, Sty­ron had­n’t pub­lished any­thing new. He was then deal­ing with seri­ous depres­sion, which he wrote elo­quent­ly about in one of his last works, Dark­ness Vis­i­ble: A Mem­oir of Mad­ness, and he would be in and out of hos­pi­tals from there.

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The 10 Best Books of the Year

in Books, Literature | November 29th, 2006

Last week, The New York Times’ Book Review pub­lished its list, 100 Notable Books of the Year and it has since fol­lowed up with a whit­tled down list, The 10 Best Books of 2006. It’s boiled down to 5 works of fic­tion, and 5 non-fic­tion, and here’s what it looks like:

FICTION

ABSURDISTAN — Gary Shteyn­gart
THE COLLECTED STORIES OF AMY HEMPEL — Amy Hempel
THE EMPEROR’S CHILDREN — Claire Mes­sud
THE LAY OF THE LAND — Richard Ford
SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS — Mar­isha Pessl

NONFICTION

FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH: A Mem­oir — Danielle Trussoni
THE LOOMING TOWER: Al-Qae­da and the Road to 9/11. — Lawrence Wright.
MAYFLOWER: A Sto­ry of Courage, Com­mu­ni­ty, and War — Nathaniel Philbrick
THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA: A Nat­ur­al His­to­ry of Four Meals — Michael Pol­lan
THE PLACES IN BETWEEN — Rory Stew­art

(Note: This list won’t appear in print until the Decem­ber 10th.)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Nobel Prize in Literature: Who is Orhan Pamuk?

in Books, Literature | November 28th, 2006

Image by David Shankbone, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We now know the list of Nobel Prize win­ners for 2006, and the award cer­e­mo­ny in Stock­holm is not far off (Decem­ber 10th). This year’s prize in lit­er­a­ture went to Orhan Pamuk, who is almost a rock star in his home coun­try, Turkey, but less well known out­side. But that’s clear­ly about to change. If you’re not already famil­iar with Pamuk’s work, we’ve pulled togeth­er some resources for you. Born in Istan­bul in 1952 (check out the Nobel bio here), Pamuk has writ­ten 10 books in Turk­ish — of which 7 have been trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish — and, through com­plex plots and post-mod­ern devices, his books repeat­ed­ly come back to explor­ing a dual­i­ty — the rela­tion­ship between East and West, Islam­ic val­ues and West­ern val­ues, reli­gion and sec­u­lar­ism. As John Updike puts it in a review of Snow, a par­tic­u­lar­ly acclaimed work, what Pamuk deliv­ers is an artis­tic look at “the ten­sion between the sec­u­lar­ism estab­lished by Kemal Atatürk in the nine­teen-twen­ties and the recent rise of polit­i­cal Islam; … the cul­tur­al divide between a West­ern­ized élite and the the­is­tic mass­es.”

Much to his cha­grin, Pamuk has gained pub­lic stature not sim­ply because of his lit­er­ary achieve­ments, but because he has tak­en strong pub­lic stands against the repres­sive ten­den­cies of his gov­ern­ment and Islam­ic rad­i­cal­ism more gen­er­al­ly. And he has paid a per­son­al price. Notably, he was the first writer in the Mus­lim world to denounce the fat­wa against Salman Rushdie. Also, when he declared in a 2005 inter­view that “Thir­ty thou­sand Kurds and a mil­lion Arme­ni­ans were killed in these lands [Turkey between 1915 and 1917] and nobody dares to talk about it,” the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment respond­ed by har­rass­ing him and then bring­ing him up on charges — charges it was even­tu­al­ly forced to drop because of inter­na­tion­al pres­sure. As this inter­view makes clear, Pamuk is not exact­ly what you’d call an eager dis­si­dent. Rather, you get the strong sense that it’s a moral oblig­a­tion for him, the eth­i­cal cost of being famous in a coun­try that has too few peo­ple will­ing to call on the gov­ern­ment to account for its actions.

Resources:

Text

Media

  • Orhan Pamuk Inter­view: Nobel Prize Win­ner 2006 (Real Play­er — Audio)
  • Pamuk on his nov­el, “Snow” (Online Stream)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Pynchon Reviews Roll Out

in Literature | November 20th, 2006

And it’s not look­ing too pret­ty. The New York Times review begins:

Thomas Pynchon’s new nov­el, “Against the Day,” reads like the sort of imi­ta­tion of a Thomas Pyn­chon nov­el that a dogged but ungain­ly fan of this author’s might have writ­ten on quaaludes. It is a humon­gous, bloat­ed jig­saw puz­zle of a sto­ry, pre­ten­tious with­out being provoca­tive, ellip­ti­cal with­out being illu­mi­nat­ing, com­pli­cat­ed with­out being reward­ing­ly com­plex.

You can read the rest here.

Also see the New York­er review.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Google Presents the Classics (for Free)

in Books, Literature | November 16th, 2006

There’s more to Google Book Search than a good law­suit. These days, they’re serv­ing up the clas­sics — all in the pub­lic domain– for free. Lit­er­ary folks can now read and search the com­plete col­lec­tion of Shake­speare’s works. And, in some cas­es, you can even down­load PDF ver­sions to your com­put­er. Beyond the Bard, you can also get The Ili­ad and The Odyssey, from the orig­i­nal bard, Homer. A lit­tle Dan­te’s Infer­no in Ital­ian, plus Machi­avel­li’s The Prince in trans­la­tion. And Jane Austen’s Pride and Prej­u­dice. I think you get the pic­ture. If it’s old and clas­sic, you can nab it at Google Book Search.

Resources:

  • Google’s Scary Sto­ries — For Hal­loween, Google put togeth­er a nice page where you can read or down­load some spooky clas­sics on the cheap. Here, you’ll find Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, Hen­ry Jame’s Turn of the Screw, Robert Louis Steven­son’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, and more. For more info, see Google’s Blog entry.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Dave Eggers’ Real and Imagined Sudan

in Literature | November 14th, 2006

Dave Eggers entered the lit­er­ary world with a big bang. His first book, A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius (2000), came out of nowhere and sat on the best­seller list for 14 weeks. It also made Eggers a Pulitzer Prize final­ist and almost the recip­i­ent of a rich movie deal — had he not turned it down.

This wun­derkind’s ear­ly suc­cess nat­u­ral­ly cre­at­ed high expec­ta­tions, and his next efforts, a nov­el in 2002 and a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries in 2004, nev­er quite cap­tured read­ers’ imag­i­na­tion in the same way. Now, with What Is the What, we see Eggers com­ing back home to non-fic­tion, albeit a very dif­fer­ent form of non-fic­tion than the one we dis­cov­ered in AHWOSG. Here, the post-mod­ern devices drop out of sight, and what we get is more the imag­i­nary jour­nal­ism that we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly encoun­tered in the works of Tru­man Capote and Nor­man Mail­er.

The What is the What recounts the long jour­ney of Valenti­no Achak Deng, one of the 20,000 “Lost Boys,” who fled the Sudanese Civ­il War (1983–2005) and, though most­ly younger than than 10, trav­eled alone to Ethiopia, Kenya and, in some cas­es, the Unit­ed States. (About 4,000 end­ed up in the US in 2001.) Because Valenti­no began his odyssey as a mere six year-old, the whole ques­tion of mem­o­ry get raised. How much does a child remem­ber? Broad out­lines maybe. But how many facts, details and con­ver­sa­tions fade away? As Eggers explains in a recent inter­view , the cre­ative ele­ments added to this oth­er­wise fac­tu­al account serve to fill in these gaps in rec­ol­lec­tion, and the ele­ments, them­selves, are based on his­tor­i­cal records and Valenti­no’s gen­er­al sense of things. It is here that Eggers’ notion of imag­i­na­tive jour­nal­ism sets itself apart from many oth­er attempts at new jour­nal­ism. The point of imag­i­na­tion for Eggers isn’t so much to dress up dry facts and dri­ve the nar­ra­tive along, but to make the his­tor­i­cal record more com­plete and, in a gen­uine way, give a fuller account of a per­son­al expe­ri­ence. Per­haps this comes off as a mean­ing­less shade of dif­fer­ence. But, when you get down to it, it’s more sub­stan­tive than not.

Arti­cles and Reviews:

This hour-long radio inter­view with Eggers and Valenti­no is def­i­nite­ly worth a lis­ten.

NPR Fact Page: Ded­i­cat­ed to Eggers’ new book, this page includes links to a recent NPR inter­view, excerpts from the new book, and his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the Lost Boys.

You can get more con­tex­tu­al infor­ma­tion from the PBS site, which accom­pa­nies its film, Lost Boys of Sudan.

Plus check out the reviews in New York Mag­a­zine and The New York Times.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back
Quantcast