H.G. Wells Reads Finnegans Wake & Tells James Joyce: It’s “A Dead End,” “You Have Turned Your Back on Common Men” (1928)

in Letters, Literature | October 19th, 2016

wells-joyce

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I first heard the phrase “ter­mi­nal aes­thet­ic” in a class on T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, who col­lab­o­rat­ed on the final ver­sion of Eliot’s post World War I edi­fice, The Waste Land. That poem, went the argu­ment, trav­eled so far out on the edge, with its frag­ment­ed lan­guage and incon­gru­ous lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences, that it couldn’t pos­si­bly serve as a basis for new forms of writ­ing. Instead, Eliot had walked to the end of a promon­to­ry, and plant­ed a flag to mark a cre­ative and, per­haps, spir­i­tu­al dead end.

I’m not sure I agree, but the idea has always fas­ci­nat­ed me, that a work of art could be so rar­i­fied, so ahead of its read­ers, so idio­syn­crat­ic, inac­ces­si­ble, and strange, that it might escape all attempts at imi­ta­tion and domes­ti­ca­tion. There may be no greater exam­ple of such a project than James Joyce’s final work, Finnegans Wake. For all the admi­ra­tion and obses­sion it has inspired, for the many artists who have learned from this strange book (includ­ing, notably, A Clock­work Orange’s Antho­ny Burgess), it remains for near­ly all of us, in the words of H.G. Wells, a repos­i­to­ry of “vast rid­dles.”

Wells wrote to Joyce in 1928, regard­ing what was then sim­ply known as the Irish author’s “Work in Progress.” Excerpts were just then appear­ing piece­meal in jour­nals and being “passed around in lit­er­ary cir­cles,” writes Let­ters of Note,” to a large­ly baf­fled audi­ence.” It seems that Wells had been asked—perhaps by Joyce himself—to offer pub­lic com­ment or a blurb of some sort. He declined. “I’ve been study­ing you and think­ing over you a lot,” he begins. “The out­come is that I don’t think I can do any­thing for the pro­pa­gan­da of your work.”

Wells pro­fess­es a “great per­son­al lik­ing” for Joyce, but then details the “absolute­ly dif­fer­ent cours­es” their lives and thought had tak­en: “Your men­tal exis­tence is obsessed by a mon­strous sys­tem of con­tra­dic­tions,” Wells writes, and elab­o­rates with some dis­taste on Joyce’s scat­o­log­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal obses­sions. Then he turns to the work at hand, which would become Finnegans Wake:

Now with regard to this lit­er­ary exper­i­ment of yours. It’s a con­sid­er­able thing because you are a very con­sid­er­able man and you have in your crowd­ed com­po­si­tion a mighty genius for expres­sion which has escaped dis­ci­pline. But I don’t think it gets any­where. You have turned your back on com­mon men — on their ele­men­tary needs and their restrict­ed time and intel­li­gence… What is the result? Vast rid­dles. Your last two works have been more amus­ing and excit­ing to write than they will ever be to read. Take me as a typ­i­cal com­mon read­er. Do I get much plea­sure from this work? … No. So I ask: Who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many wak­ing hours of the few thou­sand I have still to live for a prop­er appre­ci­a­tion of his quirks and fan­cies and flash­es of ren­der­ing?

A fair enough ques­tion, I sup­pose, and fair enough critique—one we might expect from the self-described “sci­en­tif­ic, con­struc­tive” mind of Wells. “To me,” he writes, “it is a dead end.”

Finnegans Wake con­tin­ues to baf­fle and frus­trate con­tem­po­rary read­ers, and writ­ers like Michael Chabon, who once described it as “hulk­ing, chimeri­cal, gib­ber­ing to itself in an out­landish tongue, a fright­en­ing beast out of leg­end.” Does Finnegans Wake speak to us com­mon read­ers, or does it “gib­ber” only to itself, leav­ing the rest of us behind? Like Ulysses, it’s best to tra­verse the book with a guide. Burgess has writ­ten a few (and has even auda­cious­ly abridged the nov­el). We must also remem­ber that Finnegans Wake is as much about sound as sense, and should be heard as well as read. (Hear Joyce him­self read from the nov­el here.)

Then there are the “frac­tal” expli­ca­tions of the nov­el, like Ter­rence McKenna’s and that of a recent sci­en­tif­ic study of its “mul­ti­frac­tal­i­ty.” I doubt any of this would have moved Wells, who demand­ed a clar­i­ty of thought and expres­sion that was anath­e­ma to the lat­er Joyce, immersed as he was in a project to dis­as­sem­ble the roots and branch­es of lan­guage and his­to­ry and repur­pose them for his own means. For all his puz­zle­ment over Joyce’s “exper­i­ment,” how­ev­er, Wells does seem to have found exact­ly the right word to cap­ture Joyce’s rad­i­cal lit­er­ary aims, describ­ing the writer of Ulysses and the inscrutable Finnegans Wake as “insur­rec­tionary.”

Read Wells’ full let­ter at Let­ters of Note, who also bring us a let­ter from a “Vladimir Dixon,” writ­ten in imi­ta­tion of Finnegans Wake, and pos­si­bly penned by Joyce him­self.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

Hear All of Finnegans Wake Read Aloud: A 35 Hour Read­ing

James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Gets Turned into an Inter­ac­tive Web Film, the Medi­um It Was Des­tined For

H.G. Wells Pans Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis in a 1927 Movie Review: It’s “the Sil­li­est Film”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Raymond Chandler & Ian Fleming–Two Masters of Suspense–Talk with One Another in Rare 1958 Audio

in Literature, Radio | October 14th, 2016

In the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, the red-blood­ed read­ing man in Amer­i­ca and Britain each had a char­ac­ter on whom he could rely to have vivid, in their sep­a­rate ways exot­ic, and on a cer­tain lev­el some­how relat­able adven­tures on the page: Philip Mar­lowe in the for­mer, and James Bond in the lat­ter. Ray­mond Chan­dler’s luck­less Los Ange­les pri­vate detec­tive and Ian Flem­ing’s always impec­ca­bly kit­ted-out agent on Her Majesty’s Secret Ser­vice would seem at first to have lit­tle in com­mon, but when their cre­ators got togeth­er on the BBC’s Third Pro­gramme in 1958, they had a lot to talk about.

Chan­dler, two decades Flem­ing’s senior and then in the final year of his life, had seen bet­ter days. “This once-hand­some man was, at the age of 66, a wreck,” says the announc­er in a pref­ace to this 1988 re-broad­cast, “depressed, alco­holic, writ­ten out. But he was lion­ized, and one of his new friends was Ian Flem­ing, whose Bond nov­els he’d been the first to appre­ci­ate. He reviewed Dia­monds Are For­ev­er in the Sun­day Times, pro­vid­ing the kind of seri­ous crit­i­cism he want­ed him­self, and in 1956, in a let­ter to Flem­ing, Chan­dler said, ‘I did not think that I did quite do you jus­tice in my review of your book, because any­one who writes as dash­ing­ly as you ought, I think, to try for a lit­tle high­er grade.”

This mix of praise and crit­i­cism from the elder writer invig­o­rat­ed Flem­ing, who prompt­ly redou­bled his efforts in Bond­craft. Two years lat­er, osten­si­bly to pro­mote his sev­enth nov­el (and, it turned out, his last) Play­back, the Lon­don-raised Chan­dler joined Flem­ing on the air to talk about British and Amer­i­can thrillers. “In Amer­i­ca, a thriller or mys­tery sto­ry writer is slight­ly below the salt,” com­plains Chan­dler, who’d pre­ced­ed this morn­ing record­ing ses­sion with whisky. “You can write a very lousy, long his­tor­i­cal nov­el full of sex and it can be a best­seller, it can be treat­ed respect­ful­ly. But a very good thriller writer who writes far, far bet­ter just gets a lit­tle para­graph — that’s all.”

The two go on to dis­cuss where they get their mate­r­i­al, how to write vil­lains (“I don’t think I ever in my own mind think any­body is a vil­lain,” says Chan­dler when Flem­ing brings up the dif­fi­cul­ty of cre­at­ing such char­ac­ters), the emer­gence of heroes (Flem­ing first intend­ed Bond as “a sort of blank instru­ment wield­ed by a gov­ern­ment depart­ment”), the secrets of lit­er­ary pro­duc­tiv­i­ty (Flem­ing took two months off in Jamaica from his Sun­day Times job each year to write anoth­er book), the mechan­ics of gang­land killings, and whether they have any­body they per­son­al­ly want to shoot (Chan­dler does, reply­ing only that “I just thought they’d be bet­ter dead,” when Flem­ing asks why).

And what, at bot­tom, does Dia­monds Are For­ev­er’s kind of writ­ing and The Big Sleep’s kind of writ­ing real­ly have in com­mon? “We both like mak­ing fun­ny jokes,” says Flem­ing. Toward the end of this broad­cast, now the sole extant record­ing of Chan­dler’s voice, the cre­ator of Philip Mar­lowe leaves us with some wise words in addi­tion: “A solemn thriller is real­ly rather a bore.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray­mond Chandler’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Writ­ing a Detec­tive Nov­el

Ray­mond Chan­dler Denounces Strangers on a Train in Sharply-Word­ed Let­ter to Alfred Hitch­cock

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

Watch Ray­mond Chandler’s Long-Unno­ticed Cameo in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty

James Bond: 50 Years in Film (and a Big Blu-Ray Release)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize in Literature for Creating “New Poetic Expressions within the Great American Song Tradition”

in Literature, Music | October 13th, 2016

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Image cour­tesy of The Nobel Prize’s Twit­ter stream.

His apoc­a­lyp­tic poet­ry plucks images and forms from the blues, the Bible, the Beats, Sym­bol­ists, William Blake, T.S. Eliot, and a bal­ladeer tra­di­tion dat­ing from medieval French and Eng­lish min­strel­sy to Appalachi­an set­tle­ment to Woody Guthrie, his first muse. His nar­ra­tive voice shifts from work to work as he has ful­ly embod­ied var­i­ous Amer­i­can char­ac­ters for over half a century—folk trou­ba­dour, rock and roll trick­ster, earnest coun­try croon­er, evan­ge­list, weary blues­man, star­ry-eyed jazz singer. “There is no sys­tem­at­ic way of ana­lyz­ing Dylan’s song lyrics or poems,” writes Julia Call­away at the Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies blog; “they span more than five decades of his­tor­i­cal con­text and musi­cal style. But per­haps one of the most inter­est­ing sides of Dylan is how he uses lan­guage and his lyrics to project cer­tain iden­ti­ties, includ­ing folksinger and protest-musi­cian.”

Dylan began in that tra­di­tion with songs like “The Times They Are A‑Changin’” and “A Hard Rains A‑Gonna Fall”—pick­ing up Guthrie’s inflec­tions and man­ner­isms in bal­lads much more sophis­ti­cat­ed than they seemed at first lis­ten. “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” is a “sev­en minute epic,” writes Rolling Stone, “that warns against a com­ing apoc­a­lypse while cat­a­loging hor­rif­ic visions—gun-toting chil­dren, a tree drip­ping blood—with the wide-eyed fer­vor of John the Rev­e­la­tor.” The song “began life as a poem, which Dylan like­ly banged out on a type­writer owned by his bud­dy… Wavy Gravy.” Dylan has been ambiva­lent about whether or not we should call him a poet, but this is how so much of his work took shape—banged out on type­writ­ers in New York apartments—as poet­ry set to music. “Every line in [A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall] is actu­al­ly the start of a whole song,” said Dylan, “but when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all those songs, so I put all I could into this one.”

After over five decades of lyrics packed with allu­sion and dense­ly woven themes and mean­ings, Dylan has had time to write those songs—several more apoc­a­lyp­tic epics set to a few chords on the acoustic gui­tar. “There are some nov­els, some trilo­gies, in fact, with less actu­al con­tent than Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watch­tow­er,’” says the Nerd­writer in the analy­sis of that cryp­tic John Wes­ley Hard­ing song above. One could say the same about cer­tain songs that appear on near­ly every Dylan record, like the 11-minute “Des­o­la­tion Row,” below. Amid only a few mis­steps, Dylan has released album after album, decade after decade, that show­case his unpar­al­leled word­craft in var­i­ous song forms. And some of his finest work has appeared only in recent years, when it seems his career might have come to a close. Despite some mixed reac­tions—and some con­cern for Philip Roth—most peo­ple have respond­ed to news this morn­ing of his win for the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture with a decid­ed, “yes, of course.”

Dylan’s recog­ni­tion by the Nobel Com­mit­tee val­i­dates not only the song­writer him­self, but the form he embraced and shaped. As per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Swedish Acad­e­my Sara Danius remarked in her announce­ment, Dylan “cre­at­ed new poet­ic expres­sions with­in the Amer­i­can song tra­di­tion.”  The award rep­re­sents “a recog­ni­tion of the whole tra­di­tion that Bob Dylan rep­re­sents,” says crit­ic David Had­ju, “so it’s part­ly a retroac­tive award for Robert John­son and Hank Williams and Smokey Robin­son and the Bea­t­les. It should have been tak­en seri­ous­ly as an art form a long time ago.” One could argue that Amer­i­can song has already been tak­en as seri­ous­ly as any art form, but that it isn’t lit­er­a­ture.

Sev­er­al peo­ple have done so. As New York Times writer Hiroko Tabuchi put it, “this might be a dis­ap­point­ing day for book­sellers and pub­lish­ers.” Hard­ly. Not only does Dylan have a mem­oir out, Chron­i­cles: Vol­ume One, the first of a planned tril­o­gy, but we may also find renewed appre­ci­a­tion for his first book, 1966’s Taran­tu­la. Dylan’s songs and draw­ings have been turned into pic­ture books, pub­lished in col­lec­tions, and pored over in biog­ra­phy after biog­ra­phy, com­men­tary after com­men­tary. And next month, Dylan him­self will release The Lyrics: Since 1962, a com­pre­hen­sive, defin­i­tive col­lec­tion of the song­writer’s lyrics, com­plete with expert anno­ta­tions. You can pre-order a copy here.

The lit­er­ary out­put by and about Dylan should keep book­sellers busy for many months after this announce­ment. But Dylan’s is pri­mar­i­ly a liv­ing, bardic tra­di­tion, lest we for­get that all lit­er­a­ture began as song. So con­grat­u­la­tions to Dylan and for per­haps long-over­due recog­ni­tion of Amer­i­can songcraft as a gen­uine­ly lit­er­ary art form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Young Bob Dylan, Before Releas­ing His First Album, Tell Amaz­ing Tales About Grow­ing Up in a Car­ni­val

Hear Bob Dylan’s Unedit­ed & Bewil­der­ing Inter­view With Nat Hentoff for Play­boy Mag­a­zine (1965)

The Reli­gions of Bob Dylan: From Deliv­er­ing Evan­gel­i­cal Ser­mons to Singing Hava Nag­i­la With Har­ry Dean Stan­ton

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How to Fill the Blank Page: Advice from Jonathan Franzen, Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell & 5 Other Authors

in Literature, Writing | October 13th, 2016

A cou­ple months ago we fea­tured a video of eight writ­ers on how to face the blank page pro­duced by Den­mark’s Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. (And if you should ever find your­self in Copen­hagen with time for a bit of a train ride, I do rec­om­mend a vis­it to the muse­um itself.) Now, Louisiana has released eight sep­a­rate videos, each offer­ing one notable writer’s view­point on that scari­est of all con­fronta­tions in their pro­fes­sion. But as The Cor­rec­tions and Free­dom author Jonathan Franzen puts it, “the blank page in the mind has to be filled before you have the courage to face the actu­al blank page.”

“If you say, ‘I want to write,’ and turn on the com­put­er and look at the blank page, it’s over. It’s not going to hap­pen,” says the man who some­how man­ages to turn out his weighty, Amer­i­can-zeit­geist-cap­tur­ing nov­els faster as the years go by. “It’s when you have had a thought in the show­er before, you’ve wok­en in the mid­dle of the night, and sud­den­ly you have a sen­tence or two — you have some­thing. You’ve already writ­ten it in your mind.” In con­trast, the even more expe­ri­enced and pro­lif­ic Mar­garet Atwood, author of The Hand­maid­’s Tale and Oryx and Crake, sees “some­thing com­pelling about the blank page that beck­ons you in to write some­thing on it. It must be filled,” whether or not you’ve filled your mind already.

She likens this phe­nom­e­non to “an invi­ta­tion, but it’s an invi­ta­tion to some­thing like going swim­ming in a very cold lake. So you approach it in a sim­i­lar fash­ion: you put your toe in, you change your mind, ‘Maybe I won’t do that,’ you put your foot in, ‘Real­ly, do I want to do that?’ You come back, and final­ly you just run scream­ing and you plunge in. Unless you plunge in, you’re nev­er going to begin.” The immense­ly imag­i­na­tive number9dream and Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell uses a dif­fer­ent metaphor: “A blank page is a door. It con­tains infin­i­ty, like a night sky with a super­moon real­ly close to the Earth, with all the stars and the galax­ies you can see — it’s very, very clear, maybe at a high alti­tude. You know how that just makes your heart beat faster?”

If that image does­n’t get you writ­ing, Mitchell has anoth­er: “A slight­ly over­weight, bald boss say­ing, “It’s time to work. Get to work, come on. You’re sup­posed to be a writer, aren’t you? You can’t just sit around on your fat arse wait­ing to be inspired, wait­ing for cre­ativ­i­ty. You’re stuck? Fine. Why are you stuck? Why isn’t this work­ing? Why can’t you push on with this scene? What are you try­ing to hold on to what just isn’t work­ing here? Be more hon­est.’ ” Have a look at the series’ entire playlist (embed­ded above), which also fea­tures Joyce Car­ol Oates, Lydia Davis, and oth­ers, and you’ll find as many strate­gies for bat­tling the blank page as writ­ers who win that bat­tle. Whether you use ideas thought up in the show­er, plunge straight into the lake, or stare up at the night sky or a both­er­some boss, only one thing mat­ters: that your page ends up with some words on it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

8 Writ­ers on How to Face Writer’s Block and the Blank Page: Mar­garet Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Joyce Car­ol Oates & More

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & More

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Free Audio Book: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Read by British Actor Hayward Morse

in Audio Books, Literature | October 12th, 2016

free-heart-of-darkness-reading

Select­ed by the Mod­ern Library as one of the 100 best nov­els of all time, Joseph Con­rad’s Heart of Dark­ness was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as a three-part ser­i­al sto­ry in Black­wood’s Mag­a­zine in 1899, then lat­er as a novel­la in the 1902 col­lec­tion Youth: A Nar­ra­tive; and Two Oth­er Sto­ries. A com­plex and con­tro­ver­sial “med­i­ta­tion on colo­nial­ism, evil, and the thin line between civ­i­liza­tion and bar­bar­i­ty,” Heart of Dark­ness gained lit­er­ary stature dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s, before peak­ing in the late 1970s–precisely around when Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la released Apoc­a­lypse Now, a film loose­ly based on Con­rad’s tale. What halt­ed the novel­la’s momen­tum was a sting­ing rebuke from Chin­ua Achebe, father of mod­ern African lit­er­a­ture, who crit­i­cized the way it “projects the image of Africa as ‘the oth­er world,’ the antithe­sis of Europe and there­fore of civ­i­liza­tion…”

Despite the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the text, Heart of Dark­ness remains wide­ly read in Amer­i­can high schools and uni­ver­si­ties. And, notes Harold Bloom, it has “had a strik­ing influ­ence on writ­ers, artists, and thinkers from all over the globe.” Below, you can lis­ten to a read­ing of Heart of Dark­ness by British stage and voice actor Hay­ward Morse. It’s free on Spo­ti­fy and will be added to our list, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. In Novem­ber, Ken­neth Branagh will release his own version–which you can down­load for free if you join Audible.com’s 30 free tri­al pro­gram. Oth­er free read­ings of Con­rad’s novel­la can be found on Lib­rivox.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Orson Welles Turns Heart of Dark­ness Into a Radio Dra­ma, and Almost His First Great Film

See the Orig­i­nal Mag­a­zine Pub­li­ca­tion of Heart of Dark­ness and Oth­er Great Works by Joseph Con­rad

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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Hear Bill Murray’s Favorite Poems Read Aloud by Murray Himself & Their Authors

in Film, Literature, Magazines, Poetry | October 10th, 2016

I’d be wary of any movie star who invites me to his hotel room to “read poet­ry” unless said star was doc­u­ment­ed poet­ry nut, Bill Mur­ray.

Ear­li­er this year, Leigh Haber, book edi­tor of O, The Oprah Mag­a­zine, reached out to Mur­ray to see if he’d share some of his favorite poems in cel­e­bra­tion of Nation­al Poet­ry Month. In true Mur­ray-esque fash­ion, he wait­ed until dead­line to return her call, sug­gest­ing that they meet in his room at the Car­lyle, where he would recite his choic­es in per­son.

Such celebri­ty shenani­gans are unheard of at the Chateau Mar­mont!

Murray’s favorite poems:

“What the Mir­ror Said” by Lucille Clifton

At the top of the page, Mur­ray reads the poem at a ben­e­fit for New York’s Poets House, adopt­ing a light accent sug­gest­ed by the dialect of the nar­ra­tor, a mir­ror full of appre­ci­a­tion for the poet’s wom­an­ly body. Clifton said that the “germ” of the poem was vis­it­ing her hus­band at Har­vard, and feel­ing out of place among all the slim young coeds. Thus­ly does Mur­ray posi­tion him­self as a hero to every female above the age of … you decide.

“Oat­meal” by Gal­way Kin­nell

Kin­nell, who sought to enliv­en a drea­ry bowl of oat­meal with such din­ing com­pan­ions as Keats, Spenser and Mil­ton, shared Murray’s play­ful sen­si­bil­i­ty. In an inter­view con­duct­ed as part of Michele Root-Bernstein’s World­play Project he remarked:

… it doesn’t seem like play at the time of doing it, but part of the whole con­struct of the work, and even though the work might be extreme­ly seri­ous and even morose, still there’s that ele­ment of play that is just an insep­a­ra­ble part of it.

“I Love You Sweat­h­eart” by Thomas Lux

Mur­ray told O, which incor­rect­ly report­ed the poem’s title as “I Love You Sweet­heart” that he expe­ri­enced this one as a vibra­tion on the inside of his ribs “where the meat is most ten­der.” It would make a ter­rif­ic scene in a movie, and who bet­ter to play the lover risk­ing his life to mis­spell a term of endear­ment on a bridge than Bill Mur­ray?

“Famous” by Nao­mi Shi­hab Nye

Alas, we could find no footage of Nye read­ing her love­ly poem aloud, but you can read it in full over at The Poet­ry Foun­da­tion. It’s easy to see why it speaks to Mur­ray.

via O, The Oprah Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry at a Con­struc­tion Site: Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins & More

Bill Mur­ray Reads Great Poet­ry by Bil­ly Collins, Cole Porter, and Sarah Man­gu­so

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Read­ing of Twain’s Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1996)

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry at a Con­struc­tion Site: Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Henri Matisse Illustrates James Joyce’s Ulysses (1935)

in Art, Books, Literature | October 10th, 2016

Last year, fans of mod­ernist Irish lit­er­a­ture and impres­sion­ist art saw a must-own vol­ume go under the ham­mer at Bon­hams. “In 1935 the French artist, Hen­ri Matisse, was com­mis­sioned to illus­trate an edi­tion of Ulysses for sub­scribers to the Lim­it­ed Edi­tion Club in Amer­i­ca,” announced Artlyst. “Each of the 1,000 copies was signed by Matisse and 250 were also signed by James Joyce. A copy of the book signed by both men is esti­mat­ed at £6,000 to £8,000.”

In the event it went for £6,250, not a bad deal con­sid­er­ing the hands that wrote those sig­na­tures and the rar­i­ty, signed or unsigned, of this unusu­al book itself. (It cer­tain­ly beats, say, $37,000.) Brain­pick­ings’ Maria Popo­va writes that, after first spot­ting the Matisse-illus­trat­ed Ulysses here on Open Cul­ture, “I gath­ered up my year’s worth of lunch mon­ey and was able to grab one of the last copies avail­able online — a glo­ri­ous leather-bound tome with 22-karat gold accents, gilt edges, moire fab­ric end­pa­pers, and a satin page mark­er.” Ver­sions signed by Matisse are appar­ent­ly available–at a steep price–on Ama­zon.

Popo­va adds that “the Matisse draw­ings inside it, of course, are the most price­less of its offer­ings — dou­bly so because, for all their beau­ty, they’re a tragi­com­e­dy of qua­si-col­lab­o­ra­tion.” From whence the tragi­com­e­dy? Pub­lish­ing lore has it that, despite the pro­vi­sion of a full French trans­la­tion of the Ulysses text, Matisse made his illus­tra­tive etch­ings — in the fash­ion of many an under­grad­u­ate with a paper due — with­out ever hav­ing got around to read­ing the book him­self.

“I’ve nev­er ‘read’ Joyce’s Ulysses, and it’s quite plau­si­ble that I nev­er will,” Matis­se’s coun­try­man Pierre Bayard would write sev­en­ty years lat­er in his best­selling How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Yet “I feel per­fect­ly com­fort­able when Ulysses comes up in con­ver­sa­tion, because I can sit­u­ate it with rel­a­tive pre­ci­sion in rela­tion to oth­er books. I know, for exam­ple, that it is a retelling of the Odyssey, that its nar­ra­tion takes the form of a stream of con­scious­ness, that its action unfolds in Dublin over the course of a sin­gle day, etc.” — all things that Matisse, too, prob­a­bly knew about Ulysses.

He cer­tain­ly knew that it sup­pos­ed­ly retold the sto­ry of the Odyssey, and so, in a now-inge­nious-look­ing strat­e­gy to not just talk about an unread book but to illus­trate it, he went to the source. Or rather, he went to one of the count­less cul­tur­al, lit­er­ary, his­tor­i­cal, and lin­guis­tic sources upon which Joyce drew to com­pose his mas­ter­piece, bas­ing his art direct­ly on Home­r’s epic poem, in its own way a work more talked about than read. Joyce him­self, who once described much of the tex­tu­al con­tent of Ulysses as intend­ed to “keep the pro­fes­sors busy for cen­turies argu­ing over what I meant,” may well have admired Matis­se’s clar­i­ty of vision, no mat­ter how much-non read­ing it took to refine.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load as a Free Audio Book & Free eBook

Vladimir Nabokov Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Read Ulysses Seen, A Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of James Joyce’s Clas­sic

New Art Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses Fea­tures All 265,000 Words Writ­ten by Hand on Big Wood­en Poles

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates Baudelaire’s Cen­sored Poet­ry Col­lec­tion, Les Fleurs du Mal

Vin­tage Film: Watch Hen­ri Matisse Sketch and Make His Famous Cut-Outs (1946)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Anthony Burgess Names the 99 Best Novels in English Between 1939 & 1983: Orwell, Nabokov, Huxley & More

in Books, Literature | October 6th, 2016

1984

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 1983, Antho­ny Burgess took up a com­mis­sion from a Niger­ian pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny and, in two weeks, deliv­ered to them the man­u­script for Nine­ty-Nine Nov­els: The Best in Eng­lish since 1939 — A Per­son­al Choice. Pub­lished the fol­low­ing year, the book deliv­ers exact­ly what its title, sub­ti­tle, and sub-sub­ti­tle promis­es: the finest nov­els Eng­lish-lan­guage writ­ers pro­duced between the years 1939 and 1983, accord­ing to the pref­er­ences of the writer of more than a few nov­els him­self, includ­ing A Clock­work Orange, Earth­ly Pow­ers, and 1985.

Burgess wrote that last one, so its own title may sug­gest, as a trib­ute to George Orwell’s 1984, one of those 99 nov­els. “Nine­teen eighty four has arrived, but George Orwell’s glum prophe­cy has not been ful­filled,” Burgess declared in a New York Times piece pub­lished as that year began. Yet “for 35 years a mere nov­el, an arti­fact meant pri­mar­i­ly for diver­sion, has been scar­ing the pants off us all. Evi­dent­ly the nov­el is a pow­er­ful lit­er­ary form which is capa­ble of reach­ing out into the real world and mod­i­fy­ing it. It is a form which even the non­lit­er­ary had bet­ter take seri­ous­ly.”

Pro­lif­ic in his lit­er­ary con­sump­tion as well as pro­duc­tion, Burgess got plen­ty of prac­tice tak­ing the nov­el seri­ous­ly in his capac­i­ty as a book review­er. “It was clear that cer­tain nov­els had to be reviewed whether I wished to review them or not,” he writes. “A new Gra­ham Greene or Eve­lyn Waugh — this was the known brand-name which would grant an expect­ed sat­is­fac­tion. But the unknown had to be con­sid­ered as well. After all, both Greene and Waugh pro­duced first nov­els. V. S. Naipaul’s first nov­el went total­ly unre­viewed.” Greene appears among the 99 for The Pow­er and the Glo­ry and The Heart of the Mat­ter, Waugh for Brideshead Revis­it­ed and Sword of Hon­or, and Naipaul for A Bend in the Riv­er.

What makes these nov­els, and Burgess’ oth­er 93 picks, so good? “The pri­ma­ry sub­stance I have con­sid­ered in mak­ing my selec­tion is human char­ac­ter,” mean­ing that their authors have cre­at­ed “human beings whom we accept as liv­ing crea­tures filled with com­plex­i­ties and armed with free will” — and who thus, to a great extent, shape the sto­ry inde­pen­dent­ly of autho­r­i­al inten­tion. “At best there will be a com­pro­mise between the nar­ra­tive line you have dreamed up and the course of action pre­ferred by the char­ac­ters,” writes Burgess, as if address­ing his col­leagues in the enter­prise of pre­sent­ing “the pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of real human beings through invent­ed ones.”

You can see Burgess’ full list of 99 nov­els below, which includes such oth­er favorite writ­ers here at Open Cul­ture as J.G. Bal­lard, Aldous Hux­ley (who scores three hits), James Joyce, and Vladimir Nabokov, all of whom, beyond their duty to char­ac­ter, “have man­aged lan­guage well, have clar­i­fied the moti­va­tions of action, and have some­times expand­ed the bounds of imag­i­na­tion. And they enter­tain or divert, which means to turn our faces away from the repet­i­tive pat­terns of dai­ly life and look at human­i­ty and the world with a new inter­est and even joy.” Only one ques­tion remains: why exact­ly 99? “The read­er can decide on his own 100th,” Burgess replies. “He may even choose one of my own nov­els.”

Note: you can pur­chase online used copies of Nine­ty-Nine Nov­els: The Best in Eng­lish since 1939 — A Per­son­al Choice. It runs about 160 pages. Now here’s the basic list.

Achebe, Chin­ua — A Man of the Peo­ple — (1966)

Ald­iss, Bri­an — Life in the West (1980)

Amis, Kings­ley — Lucky Jim (1954)

Amis, Kings­ley — The Anti-Death League (1966)

Bald­win, James — Anoth­er Coun­try (1962)

Bal­lard, J.G. — The Unlim­it­ed Dream Com­pa­ny (1979)

Barth, John — Giles Goat-Boy (1966)

Bel­low, Saul — The Vic­tim (1947)

Bel­low, Saul — Hum­boldt’s Gift (1975)

Bowen, Eliz­a­beth — The Heat of the Day (1949)

Brad­bury, Mal­colm — The His­to­ry Man (1975)

Braine, John — Room at the Top (1957)

Cary, Joyce — The Horse’s Mouth (1944)

Chan­dler, Ray­mond — The Long Good­bye (1953)

Comp­ton-Bur­nett, Ivy — The Mighty and Their Fall (1961)

Coop­er, William — Scenes from Provin­cial Life (1950)

Davies, Robert­son — The Rebel Angels (1982)

Deighton, Len — Bomber (1970)

Dur­rell, Lawrence — The Alexan­dria Quar­tet (1957)

Elli­son, Ralph — Invis­i­ble Man (1952)

Faulkn­er, William — The Man­sion (1959)

Flem­ing, Ian — Goldfin­ger (1959)

Fowles, John — The French Lieu­tenan­t’s Woman (1969)

Frayn, Michael — Sweet Dreams (1973)

Gold­ing, William — The Spire (1964)

Gordimer, Nadine — The Late Bour­geois World (1966)

Gray, Alas­dair — Lanark (1981)

Green, Hen­ry — Par­ty Going (1939)

Greene, Gra­ham — The Pow­er and the Glo­ry (1940)

Greene, Gra­ham — The Heart of the Mat­ter (1948)

Har­ris, Wil­son — Heart­land (1964)

Hart­ley, L.P. — Facial Jus­tice (1960)

Heller, Joseph — Catch-22 (1961)

Hem­ing­way, Ernest — For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

Hem­ing­way, Ernest — Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Hoban, Rus­sell — Rid­dley Walk­er (1980)

Hugh­es, Richard — The Fox in the Attic (1961)

Hux­ley, Aldous — After Many a Sum­mer (1939)

Hux­ley, Aldous — Ape and Essence (1948)

Hux­ley, Aldous — Island (1962)

Ish­er­wood, Christo­pher — A Sin­gle Man (1964)

John­son, Pamela Hans­ford — An Error of Judge­ment (1962)

Jong, Eri­ca — How to Save Your Own Life (1977)

Joyce, James — Finnegans Wake (1939)

Less­ing, Doris — The Gold­en Note­book (1962)

Lodge, David — How Far Can You Go? (1980)

Lowry, Mal­colm — Under the Vol­cano (1947)

MacInnes, Col­in — The Lon­don Nov­els (1957)

Mail­er, Nor­man — The Naked and the Dead (1948)

Mail­er, Nor­man — Ancient Evenings (1983)

Mala­mud, Bernard - The Assis­tant (1957)

Mala­mud, Bernard — Dubin’s Lives (1979)

Man­ning, Olivia — The Balka­ns Tril­o­gy (1960)

Maugh­am, Som­er­set — The Razor’s Edge (1944)

McCarthy, Mary — The Groves of Acad­eme (1952)

Moore, Bri­an — The Doc­tor’s Wife (1976)

Mur­doch, Iris — The Bell (1958)

Nabokov, Vladimir — Pale Fire (1962)

Nabokov, Vladimir — The Defence (1964)

Naipaul, V.S. — A Bend in the Riv­er (1979)

Narayan, R.K. — The Ven­dor of Sweets (1967)

Nye, Robert — Fal­staff (1976)

O’Brien, Flann — At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)

O’Con­nor, Flan­nery — Wise Blood (1952)

O’Hara, John — The Lock­wood Con­cern (1965)

Orwell, George — Nine­teen Eighty-Four (1949)

Peake, Mervyn — Titus Groan (1946)

Per­cy, Walk­er — The Last Gen­tle­man (1966)

Plun­kett, James — Farewell Com­pan­ions (1977)

Pow­ell, Antho­ny — A Dance to the Music of Time (1951)

Priest­ley, J.B. — The Image Men (1968)

Pyn­chon, Thomas — Grav­i­ty’s Rain­bow (1973)

Rich­ler, Morde­cai — Cock­sure (1968)

Roberts, Kei­th — Pavane (1968)

Roth, Phillip — Port­noy’s Com­plaint (1969)

Salinger, J.D. — The Catch­er in the Rye (1951)

San­som, William — The Body (1949)

Schul­berg, Budd — The Dis­en­chant­ed (1950)

Scott, Paul — Stay­ing On (1977)

Shute, Nevil — No High­way (1948)

Sil­li­toe, Alan — Sat­ur­day Night and Sun­day Morn­ing (1958)

Snow, C.P. - Strangers and Broth­ers (1940)

Spark, Muriel — The Girls of Slen­der Means (1963)

Spark, Muriel — The Man­del­baum Gate (1965)

Sty­ron, William — Sophie’s Choice (1979)

Ther­oux, Alexan­der — Dar­conville’s Cat (1981)

Ther­oux, Paul — The Mos­qui­to Coast (1981)

Toole, John Kennedy — A Con­fed­er­a­cy of Dunces (1980)

Updike, John — The Coup (1978)

Vidal, Gore — Cre­ation (1981)

Warn­er, Rex — The Aero­drome (1941)

Waugh, Eve­lyn — Brideshead Revis­it­ed (1945)

Waugh, Eve­lyn — Sword of Hon­or (1952)

White, T.H. — The Once and Future King (1958)

White, Patrick — Rid­ers in the Char­i­ot (1961)

Williamson, Hen­ry — A Chron­i­cle of Ancient Sun­light (1951)

Wil­son, Angus — The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)

Wil­son, Angus — Late Call (1964)

Wouk, Her­man — The Caine Mutiny (1951)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Clock­work Orange Author Antho­ny Burgess Lists His Five Favorite Dystopi­an Nov­els: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & More

Antho­ny Burgess’ Lost Intro­duc­tion to Joyce’s Dublin­ers Now Online

Vladimir Nabokov Names the Great­est (and Most Over­rat­ed) Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

The 100 Best Nov­els: A Lit­er­ary Crit­ic Cre­ates a List in 1898

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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