Man Ray’s Portraits of Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Marcel Duchamp & Many Other 1920s Icons

in Art, Literature, Photography | November 5th, 2015

Hemingway Man Ray

When pho­tog­ra­phers spe­cial­ize in por­traits of famous peo­ple, they often speak of find­ing a visu­al way to reveal their oft-pho­tographed sub­jec­t’s rarely exposed nature; to bring their depths, in oth­er words, to the sur­face. Man Ray (1890–1976), the Sur­re­al­ist pho­tog­ra­ph­er and artist, had his own way of doing most every­thing, and he cer­tain­ly had his own approach to celebri­ty por­trai­ture. Take, for exam­ple, his 1923 shot of Ernest Hem­ing­way above, tak­en just a cou­ple years after both the writer and pho­tog­ra­ph­er joined the move­able feast of Paris, which Man Ray would call home for most of his career.

Pound Man Ray

That same year and in that same urban bohemia, Man Ray pho­tographed anoth­er famed man of let­ters, the mod­ernist poet Ezra Pound. You can see the some­what more con­ven­tion­al-look­ing result of that encounter just above. Below, we have a far less con­ven­tion­al-look­ing por­trait from 1922, which takes as its sub­ject the dancer Bro­nisla­va Nijin­s­ka, who per­haps only counts as famous to you if you know the his­to­ry of 20th-cen­tu­ry bal­let — but I say any­one will­ing to appear in a por­trait look­ing that fright­en­ing has earned all the fame they can get.

Nijinska

Mar­cel Duchamp, who appears below, sat for Man Ray in 1921 look­ing less scary than sil­ly, but as one of the wit­ti­est and most artis­ti­cal­ly for­ward-think­ing fig­ures of the era, he sure­ly got the joke. These appear in the book Man Ray: Paris — Hol­ly­wood — Paris, which col­lects 500 of the por­traits Man Ray left in his archives when he died in 1976, all of “mem­bers of Dadaist and Sur­re­al­ist cir­cles, of artists and painters, of writ­ers and US emi­grants of the Lost Gen­er­a­tion, of aris­to­crats, and paragons of the worlds of fash­ion and the­ater.”

Duchamp Man ray

You can sam­ple more such works, which cap­ture as only Man Ray would the natures of such icons as André Bre­ton, Sal­vador Dalí, and Lee Miller, at Mon­do Blo­go. You can also find many more works, in gen­er­al, by Man Ray on the MoMA’s web­site.

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three Essen­tial Dadaist Films: Ground­break­ing Works by Hans Richter, Man Ray & Mar­cel Duchamp

Andy Warhol’s 85 Polaroid Por­traits: Mick Jag­ger, Yoko Ono, O.J. Simp­son & Many Oth­ers (1970–1987)

Philoso­pher Por­traits: Famous Philoso­phers Paint­ed in the Style of Influ­en­tial Artists

Por­traits of Vir­ginia Woolf, James Joyce, Wal­ter Ben­jamin & Oth­er Lit­er­ary Leg­ends by Gisèle Fre­und

Cof­fee Por­traits of John Lennon, Albert Ein­stein, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe & Oth­er Icons

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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New Video Game Inspired by 20 Haruki Murakami Stories Is Coming Your Way: Help Kickstart It

in Literature, Video Games | November 4th, 2015

Back in grade school, I got into the genre of com­put­er games known as “graph­ic adven­tures,” nar­ra­tive expe­ri­ences — and often quite elab­o­rate ones — through which the play­er guides the pro­tag­o­nist with points and clicks: games like Mani­ac Man­sion, Space Quest, Mean Streets, Zak McCrack­en and the Alien Mind­ben­ders. In col­lege I got into the writ­ing of Haru­ki Muraka­mi, the inter­na­tion­al super­star of Japan­ese lit­er­a­ture spe­cial­iz­ing in the kind of sto­ries that, in his words, have under­gone “a kind of mag­i­cal bap­tism to link the world on this side with the world on the oth­er side.” More recent­ly, I’ve cul­ti­vat­ed an inter­est in projects crowd­fund­ed on plat­forms like Kick­starter. At long last, some­one has come up with a cre­ation that unites all three: Mem­o­randa, a Muraka­mi-inspired graph­ic adven­ture now rais­ing its bud­get on Kick­starter.

memoranda 2

“Three years ago I sat down with a friend to brain­storm for mak­ing a game,” writes one of Mem­o­ran­da’s devel­op­ers. Murakami’s work “had inspired us pro­found­ly and we thought that the vague, sur­re­al­is­tic real­i­ty of his fic­tion­al world would have a great poten­tial for being turned into some­thing visu­al and could lead to the cre­ation of odd char­ac­ters, an essen­tial ele­ment in game design.” This led to a “script inspired by more than 20 sto­ries by Muraka­mi” involv­ing a lit­tle town (which has “Euro­pean-like archi­tec­ture but that does­n’t mean it belongs to some­where in Europe”) “where there are both lap­tops and bam­boo water clocks,” a cast of char­ac­ters from “a WWII sur­viv­ing sol­dier to an ele­phant tak­ing shel­ter in a man’s house hop­ing to become human,” and a pro­tag­o­nist “who lit­tle by lit­tle real­izes she is for­get­ting her own name.”

Kick­starter has proven a viable financ­ing medi­um for a new wave of graph­ic adven­ture games, some of them by the cre­ators of the old wave: Tim Schafer, known for Mani­ac Man­sion’s beloved sequel Day of the Ten­ta­cle, raised $3.3 mil­lion for what would become Bro­ken Age, and Space Quest mas­ter­minds Scott Mur­phy and Mark Crowe more recent­ly reunit­ed to raise over $500,000 for SpaceVen­ture. Mem­o­ran­da, by com­par­i­son, requires no more than a shoe­string, and, with ten days to go in its fund­ing dri­ve, it has already raised more than the $13,695 request­ed by Bit Byterz, its Van­cou­ver-based Iran­ian devel­op­ers (how’s that for a demon­stra­tion of Murakami’s glob­al appeal?). But you can still con­tribute at its Kick­starter page, and as a reward could get a copy of the game, its sound­track, a dig­i­tal art book, or even — enthu­si­asts of Muraka­mi tropes, take note — the inclu­sion of your own cat in the sto­ry. No game com­pa­ny ever offered me that in grade school.

You can watch a trail­er for Mem­o­ran­da above.

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Murakami’s Advice Col­umn (“Mr. Murakami’s Place”) Is Now Online: Read Eng­lish Trans­la­tions

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Dis­cov­er Haru­ki Murakami’s Adver­to­r­i­al Short Sto­ries: Rare Short-Short Fic­tion from the 1980s

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear All of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia Novels as Free Audio Books

in Audio Books, Books, K-12, Literature, Religion | November 2nd, 2015

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I have not seen the sec­ond two of a promised sev­en films based on the nov­els in C.S. Lewis’ The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia series. But I tend to agree with sev­er­al crit­ics of the first filmed adap­ta­tion, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “The PG-rat­ed movie feels safe and con­strict­ed,” Peter Tra­vers observed, “in a way the sto­ry nev­er does on the page.” Although Lewis “did noth­ing to hide his devout Chris­tian­i­ty” in his alle­gor­i­cal Nar­nia books for young adults, nor in his grown-up sci-fi fan­ta­sy series, The Space Tril­o­gy, Lewis on the page comes across as a rig­or­ous writer first and a Chris­t­ian apol­o­gist sec­ond. Except, I’d argue, for his work of explic­it­ly pop­ulist, and rather facile, apolo­get­ics, Mere Chris­tian­i­ty (orig­i­nal­ly a series of radio lec­tures), his fic­tion and pop­u­lar non-fic­tion alike present readers—whatever their beliefs—with chal­leng­ing, inven­tive, wit­ty, and mov­ing ways to think about the human con­di­tion.

Lewis’ immer­sion in Euro­pean Medieval and Renais­sance lit­er­a­ture in his day-job role as an Oxford don—and his ecu­meni­cal, almost Jun­gian, approach to lit­er­a­ture generally—gives his fic­tion a seri­ous arche­typ­al depth that most mod­ern reli­gious nov­el­ists lack, mak­ing him, along with fel­low “Inkling” J.R.R. Tolkien, some­thing of a lit­er­ary saint in mod­ern Chris­tian­i­ty. Though it may offend the ortho­dox to say so, Lewis’ nov­els cap­ture a “deep mag­ic” at the heart of all mytho­log­i­cal and lit­er­ary tra­di­tions. And they do so in a way that makes explor­ing heavy, grown-up themes excit­ing for both chil­dren and adults. Though I’ve per­son­al­ly left behind the beliefs that ani­mat­ed my first read­ings of his books, I can still return to The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia and find in them deep mag­ic and mys­tery.

There’s no deny­ing the enor­mous influ­ence these books have had on children’s fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture, from Har­ry Pot­ter to Lewis’ athe­ist antag­o­nist Philip Pull­man. I look for­ward to shar­ing his books with my daugh­ter, what­ev­er she ends up mak­ing of their reli­gios­i­ty. I’ve still got my tat­tered paper­back copies, and I’ll glad­ly read them to her before she can tack­le them her­self, but I’m also grate­ful for the com­plete audio record­ings of The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, avail­able free online and read by Eng­lish child psy­chol­o­gist and author Chris­si Hart. In install­ments of two chap­ters at a time, Hart reads all sev­en of the Nar­nia books, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspi­an, The Voy­age of the Dawn Tread­er, The Sil­ver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Bat­tle.

You can hear the first two chap­ters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe above, and stream or down­load the remain­ing chap­ters, and the remain­ing six books, at Ancientfaith.com. Although Hart and the Ancient Faith site who host her read­ings clear­ly approach the nov­els from an explic­it­ly Ortho­dox per­spec­tive, I don’t think read­ers need to share their beliefs, or Lewis’, to enjoy and appre­ci­ate the sto­ry­telling mag­ic of The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia.

And it should be not­ed that CS Lewis Pte. Ltd. grant­ed per­mis­sion to put these record­ings online, accord­ing to the Ancient Faith web site. The record­ings are there­fore list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

C.S. Lewis’ Pre­scient 1937 Review of The Hob­bit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It “May Well Prove a Clas­sic”

Watch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. LewisWatch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. LewisWatch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. Lewis

The Only Known Record­ings of C.S. Lewis (1944–1948)

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

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Hear Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” Read by the Great Bela Lugosi (1946)

in Film, Literature | October 30th, 2015

A cou­ple days ago, we fea­tured some intrigu­ing clips from the new ani­mat­ed Edgar Allan Poe film, Extra­or­di­nary Tales. Direct­ed by ani­ma­tor Raul Gar­cia, the film draws on the voice tal­ents of sev­er­al clas­sic hor­ror actors and direc­tors, includ­ing the late Christo­pher Lee, Roger Cor­man, and—in an archival read­ing of Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart”—the leg­endary Bela Lugosi. You can hear his read­ing above, a record­ing that seems to date from 1946. The Hun­gar­i­an actor, who strug­gled to find work late in his career, and wres­tled with a mor­phine addic­tion, like­ly “record­ed it for his agent,” writes Ronald L. Smith, “who would have been dep­u­tized to make copies and send them out to any­one inter­est­ed in book­ing Bela’s solo stage act (which includ­ed an enact­ment of the Poe tale).”

All of the great hor­ror stars of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry cut their teeth on Poe, and per­formed his macabre sto­ries through­out their careers. Lugosi was no excep­tion. After his type­cast­ing as an exot­ic vil­lain in the stage adap­ta­tion of Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la in the late 20s, then in Tod Browning’s famous 1931 film, Lugosi would remark, “I am def­i­nite­ly typed, doomed to be an expo­nent of evil.”

He appeared the fol­low­ing year as the mad sci­en­tist in Universal’s adap­ta­tion of Poe’s Mur­ders in the Rue Morgue (watch here). Then, in 1935, Lugosi played yet anoth­er crazed doc­tor, who is obsessed with all things Poe, in The Raven (view here), a film that also fea­tures Universal’s oth­er major hor­ror star of the time, Boris Karloff. The two had teamed up the year pre­vi­ous in Edgar G. Ulmer’s Poe adap­ta­tion, The Black Cat, a huge hit for Uni­ver­sal, in which Lugosi plays yet anoth­er evil doc­tor.

After Lugosi’s suc­cess­es with Poe-inspired films in the thir­ties, his career pre­cip­i­tous­ly declined, and by the for­ties, when he made the “Tell Tale Heart” record­ing at the top of the post, he’d been reduced to play­ing par­o­dies of his Drac­u­la char­ac­ter, notably in 1948’s Abbott and Costel­lo Meet Franken­stein. Lugosi attempt­ed to bank on ear­li­er suc­cess­es with Poe, or Poe-like, char­ac­ters. Before Ed Wood found and res­ur­rect­ed him in now-clas­sic fifties B‑movies like Glen or Glen­da, Bride of the Mon­ster, and—posthumously—Plan 9 from Out­er Space, Lugosi made one final appear­ance onscreen in a Poe adap­ta­tion. Click here and see him in an adap­ta­tion of “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” an episode from tele­vi­sion series Sus­pense. Set in Italy dur­ing World War II, this ver­sion of “Amon­til­la­do” casts Lugosi as Nazi offi­cer “Gen­er­al For­tu­na­to,” whom one fan describes as a “ruth­less, amoral roué, with equal­ly ruth­less storm troop­ers at his beck and call.” It’s not Lugosi’s great­est per­for­mance, but it’s “Bela doing his 1949 best,” and an impor­tant entry in his cat­a­log of Poe per­for­mances, if only because it’s the last of them.

Hap­py Hal­loween!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Film Extra­or­di­nary Tales Ani­mates Edgar Poe Sto­ries, with Nar­ra­tions by Guiller­mo Del Toro, Christo­pher Lee & More

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Bela Lugosi Dis­cuss­es His Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hos­pi­tal in 1955

Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Out­er Space: “The Worst Movie Ever Made,” “The Ulti­mate Cult Flick,” or Both?

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

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Stephen King Creates a List of 82 Books for Aspiring Writers (to Supplement an Earlier List of 96 Recommend Books)

in Books, Literature, Writing | October 29th, 2015

Image by The USO, via Flickr Com­mons

Stephen King has giv­en writ­ers a lot to think about these past few years in his numer­ous inter­views and in his state­ment of craft, On Writ­ing. He deems one of his most salient pieces of advice on writ­ing so impor­tant that he repeats it twice in his Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers: writ­ers, he says, “learn best by read­ing a lot…. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.” To help his read­ers dis­cov­er the right tools, King attached a list of 96 books at the end of On Writ­ing, of which he said, “In some way or oth­er, I sus­pect each book in the list had an influ­ence on the books I wrote…. a good many of these might show you some new ways of doing your work.”

King’s orig­i­nal list of 96 books for aspir­ing writ­ers gen­er­at­ed a fair amount of com­ment on Aero­gramme Writer’s Stu­dio, who brought it to our atten­tion last year. Lat­er, the same web site brought us anoth­er list of 82 books, which King pub­lished in the 10th anniver­sary edi­tion of On Writ­ing. With King’s sec­ond list, as with the first, you’ll find that best-sell­ing genre writ­ers sit com­fort­ably next to lit-class sta­ples.

In this list, the spec­trum of acces­si­bil­i­ty is a lit­tle nar­row­er. We have few­er clas­sic writ­ers like Dick­ens or Con­rad and few­er com­mer­cial nov­el­ists like Nel­son DeMille. Instead the list is most­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry lit­er­ary fic­tion by most­ly liv­ing con­tem­po­raries, with lit­tle genre fic­tion save per­haps sci-fi/­fan­ta­sy writer Neal Stephenson’s Quick­sil­ver, thriller author Lee Child’s Jack Reach­er series, huge­ly pop­u­lar mys­tery writer Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Drag­on Tat­too, and Patrick O’Brian’s adven­ture series. Below, we’ve excerpt­ed a list of 15 books King recommends—books, he says, “which enter­tained and taught me.”

Kate Atkin­son, One Good Turn
Mar­garet Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Robert Bolaño, 2666
Michael Chabon, The Yid­dish Policemen’s Union
Junot Diaz, The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao
Neil Gaiman, Amer­i­can Gods
Denis John­son, Tree of Smoke
Sue Monk Kid, The Secret Life of Bees
Elmore Leonard, Up in Honey’s Room
Cor­mac McCarthy, No Coun­try for Old Men
Jodi Picoult, Nine­teen Min­utes
Philip Roth, Amer­i­can Pas­toral
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Chil­dren
Don­na Tartt, The Lit­tle Friend
Leo Tol­stoy, War and Peace 

King almost shrugs in his short intro­duc­tion, writ­ing, “you could do worse.” I expect many read­ers of this post might have sug­ges­tions for how they think you could also do bet­ter, espe­cial­ly giv­en the five years that have passed since this list’s com­pi­la­tion and some of the blind spots that seem to per­sist in King’s read­ing habits. I doubt he would object much to any of us adding to, or sub­tract­ing from, his lists—or ignor­ing them alto­geth­er. It seems clear he thinks that like him, we should read what we like, as long as we’re always read­ing some­thing. See the full list of 82 titles here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

7 Free Stephen King Sto­ries: Pre­sent­ed in Text, Audio, Web Com­ic & a Graph­ic Nov­el Video

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

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New Film Extraordinary Tales Animates Edgar Poe Stories, with Narrations by Guillermo Del Toro, Christopher Lee & More

in Animation, Film, Literature | October 28th, 2015

Edgar Allan Poe cre­at­ed a body of work that will seem­ing­ly nev­er go out of style, espe­cial­ly around Hal­loween time. Not only do his sto­ries and poems still inspire dread in the 21st cen­tu­ry, but so also do the many hun­dreds of Poe retellings and adap­ta­tions cre­at­ed in the 166 years since the author’s mys­te­ri­ous death. But, we might ask, after so many film adap­ta­tions from so many clas­sic hor­ror actors and direc­tors, whether we need yet anoth­er one? You’ll have to make up your own mind, but if you’re any­thing like me, you’ll watch the trail­er above for Lion King and Aladdin ani­ma­tor Raul Garcia’s Poe anthol­o­gy Extra­or­di­nary Tales and answer “Yes!” and “More please!” And you can see more, in the clips below from Garcia’s incred­i­ble-look­ing film, hit­ting the­aters on Octo­ber 23rd.

One rea­son the new treat­ment of the five sto­ries Gar­cia ani­mates seems to work so well is that they draw on the tal­ents of actors and direc­tors who have pre­vi­ous­ly deliv­ered clas­sic Poe retellings. For exam­ple, “The Fall of the House of Ush­er,” above, is nar­rat­ed by the late, great Christo­pher Lee, who joins hor­ror leg­end Vin­cent Price as one of the great­est read­ers of Poe’s “The Raven.” The voice-over is Lee’s last role, and it’s hard to think of a more fit­ting final act for the ven­er­a­ble hor­ror maven. (Lee was also at the time record­ing “a heavy-met­al-rock-opera based on Charlemagne’s life”—one of many met­al albums he record­ed.)

Gar­cia has cre­at­ed a unique look for each fea­turette. For “Ush­er,” he tells Car­los Aguilar at Indiewire, “the idea was for the char­ac­ters to look as if they were carved out of wood, like if they were fig­ures that belonged to Czech ani­ma­tor Jirí Trn­ka.” Just hear­ing Lee above intone the phrase “an unex­pect­ed sense of insuf­fer­able gloom” is enough to con­vince me I need to see the rest of this film.

Just above, we have a clip from a much less famous Poe sto­ry, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valde­mar,” a chill­ing detec­tive tale about a man mes­mer­ized in artic­u­lo mor­tis—at the moment of death. Nar­rat­ed by Eng­lish actor Julian Sands, who has made his own appear­ances in sev­er­al hor­ror films, the ani­ma­tion style comes direct­ly out of clas­sic E.C. hor­ror comics like Tales From the Crypt, which drew many an idea from Poe, bas­ing one sto­ry “The Liv­ing Death!” on “M. Valde­mar.” The “mauve, yel­low and mossy green com­ic-book pan­els,” writes a New York Times review, “prove that you don’t need fan­cy tech­nol­o­gy to achieve a third dimen­sion.”

You’ll notice the unmis­tak­able vis­age of Vin­cent Price in the char­ac­ter of the mes­merist, and you’ll like­ly know of Price’s own turn as Poe him­self in An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe. Price also starred in Roger Cor­man’s many Poe adap­ta­tions—begin­ning with House of Ush­er—and Gar­cia has tapped the leg­endary Cor­man’s voice for Extra­or­di­nary Tales, as well as con­tem­po­rary hor­ror direc­tor extra­or­di­naire Guiller­mo Del Toro. And if this weren’t hor­ror roy­al­ty enough, Garcia’s ani­mat­ed take on “The Tell-Tale Heart” fea­tures none oth­er than Bela Lugosi, in an archival read­ing of the sto­ry the Drac­u­la actor made some­time before his death in 1956. Read more about how Gar­cia found the Lugosi audio and con­ceived of Extra­or­di­nary Tales in his inter­view here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Vin­cent Price Turn Into Edgar Allan Poe & Read Four Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries (1970)

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Clas­sics Sto­ries by Edgar Allan Poe Nar­rat­ed by James Mason in a 1953 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Ani­ma­tion & 1958 Dec­ca Album

The Mys­tery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 The­o­ries on What Caused the Poet’s Demise 166 Years Ago Today

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

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How Cultured Are You? Test Your Knowledge With Cultural Quizzes from 1958

in Art, Education, History, Literature | October 20th, 2015

1ArtQuiz.jpg.CROP.original-original

Do you con­sid­er your­self well-edu­cat­ed? Cul­tured, even? By whose stan­dards?

We may super­fi­cial­ly assume these terms name immutable qual­i­ties, but they are in any analy­sis depen­dent on where and when we hap­pen to be sit­u­at­ed in his­to­ry. The most sophis­ti­cat­ed of Medieval doctors—a title then clos­er to the Euro­pean “docent” than our gen­er­al use of Dr.—would appear pro­found­ly igno­rant to us; and we, with our painful­ly inad­e­quate grasp of church Latin, Aris­totelian­ism, and arcane the­o­log­i­cal argu­ments, would appear pro­found­ly igno­rant to him.

What does it mean to be cul­tured? Is it the acqui­si­tion of most­ly use­less cul­tur­al cap­i­tal for its own sake, or of a set of codes that helps us nav­i­gate the world suc­cess­ful­ly? In an attempt to address these fraught ques­tions, Ash­ley Mon­tagu, a stu­dent of huge­ly influ­en­tial Ger­man-born anthro­pol­o­gist Franz Boas, wrote The Cul­tured Man in 1958. Rebec­ca Onion at Slate describes the book as con­tain­ing “quizzes for 50 cat­e­gories of knowl­edge in the arts and sci­ences, with 30 ques­tions each.” In the page above, we have the first 22 ques­tions of Montagu’s “Art” quiz (with the answers here).

You’ll prob­a­bly notice right away that while most of the ques­tions have def­i­nite, unam­bigu­ous answers, oth­ers like “Define art,” seem patent­ly unan­swer­able in all but the most gen­er­al and unsat­is­fac­to­ry ways. Mon­tagu defines art in one suc­cinct sen­tence: “Art is the mak­ing or doing of things that have form and beauty”—which strikes me as ane­mic, though func­tion­al enough.

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Mon­tagu intend­ed his book to test not only knowl­edge of cul­tur­al facts, but also of “atti­tudes”: a per­son “con­sid­ered ‘cul­tured,’” writes Onion, “would not just be able to read­i­ly sum­mon facts, but also to access humane feel­ings, which would nec­es­sar­i­ly come about after con­tact with cul­ture.” Many admin­is­tra­tors of “culture”—curators, art his­to­ri­ans, lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors, etc—would agree with the premise: ide­al­ly, the more cul­tur­al knowl­edge we acquire, the more empa­thy and under­stand­ing of oth­er peo­ples and cul­tures we should man­i­fest. Whether this rou­tine­ly occurs in prac­tice is anoth­er mat­ter. For Mon­tagu, Onion remarks, a “cul­tured man” is “curi­ous, unprej­u­diced, ratio­nal, and eth­i­cal.”

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Giv­en Montagu’s enlight­ened philo­soph­i­cal bent, we can char­i­ta­bly ascribe lan­guage in his book that itself seems prej­u­diced to our view­ing this arti­fact from a dis­tance of almost sev­en­ty years in the future. We might also find that many of his ques­tions push us to exam­ine our 21st cen­tu­ry bias­es more care­ful­ly. His approach may remind us of friv­o­lous inter­net diver­sions or the stan­dard­ized tests we’ve grown to think of as the pre­cise oppo­site of live­ly, crit­i­cal­ly-engaged edu­ca­tion­al tools. Yet Mon­tagu intend­ed his quizzes to be “both dynam­ic and con­struc­tive,” to alert read­ers to areas of igno­rance and encour­age them to fill gaps in their cul­tur­al knowl­edge. Many of his answers offer ref­er­ences for fur­ther study. “No one grows who stands still,” he wrote.

To see more of Montagu’s quiz questions—such as those above from the “Cul­ture His­to­ry” cat­e­go­ry (get the answers here)—and find out how you stack up against the cul­tured elite of the 50s, head over to Rebec­ca Onion’s post at Slate.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Watch Har­vard Stu­dents Fail the Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote in 1964

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See? (1921)

Take the 146-Ques­tion Knowl­edge Test Thomas Edi­son Gave to Prospec­tive Employ­ees (1921)

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

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Watch All 18,225 Lines of The Iliad Read by 66 Actors in a Marathon Event For an Audience of 50,000

in Audio Books, Literature | October 19th, 2015

Despite its ancient ori­gins, The Odyssey is an epic for moder­ni­ty. The Greek poem gives us the hero as a home­sick wan­der­er and uproot­ed seek­er, an exile or a refugee, sus­tained by his cun­ning; he even comes across, writes schol­ar Deirdre McClosky, as “a crafty mer­chant type,” while also rep­re­sent­ing “three pagan virtues—temperance, jus­tice, and pru­dence.” He’s a com­pli­cat­ed hero, that is to say—most unlike Achilles, his antithe­sis in the pri­or epic The Ili­ad, the “foun­da­tion­al text,” says Simon Gold­hill, “of West­ern cul­ture.”

Gold­hill, a Cam­bridge clas­sics pro­fes­sor, intro­duces an under­tak­ing itself admirably epic: a read­ing of The Ili­ad fea­tur­ing “six­ty-six artists, 18,225 lines of text” and—on the day it took place, August 14th of this year—an “audi­ence of more than 50,000 peo­ple across the world, watch­ing online or in per­son at the Almei­da and the British Muse­um.” Now you can watch all 68 sec­tions of the marathon event at the Almeida’s web­site until Sep­tem­ber 21, 2016. (Access the videos on pages One, Two, and Three.) Just above, see a short video that doc­u­ments the mak­ing of this his­toric read­ing.

Gold­hill goes on to say that the epic poem, “puts in place most of the great themes of West­ern lit­er­a­ture, from pow­er to adul­tery.” In a way, it’s fit­ting that it be a huge com­mu­nal event: If The Odyssey is nov­el­is­tic in many ways, as James Joyce’s Ulysses seems to have defin­i­tive­ly shown, The Ili­ad is like a block­buster com­ic book film. Achilles, writes McClosky, “is what the Vikings called a berserker”—his motive force, over and above com­pan­ion­ship or love—is kleos: fame and glo­ry. The one ques­tion that dri­ves the “whole of The Ili­ad,” says Gold­smith, is “the ques­tion of what is worth dying for. For Achilles, the answer is sim­ple.”

Undoubt­ed­ly we admire Achilles even as we cringe at his fury, and we cel­e­brate all sorts of peo­ple who run head­long into what seems like cer­tain death. But we also find fig­ures who embody his vio­lence and cer­tain­ty dis­turb­ing, to say the least, both on and off the bat­tle­field. Though crafty Odysseus tem­porar­i­ly stays Achilles’ rage, the war­rior even­tu­al­ly kills so many Tro­jans that a riv­er turns against him, and his abuse of Hector’s body makes for stom­ach-turn­ing reading—or lis­ten­ing as the case may be. Prag­mat­ic Odysseus may have giv­en us the mod­ern hero, and anti-hero, but pow­er and glo­ry-mad strong­men like Agamem­non and Achilles may be even more with us these days, and The Ili­ad is still an essen­tial part of the archi­tec­ture of West­ern grand nar­ra­tive tra­di­tions.

After Goldhill’s intro­duc­tion, see “great­est stage actor of his gen­er­a­tion” Simon Rus­sell Beale pick up the text, then younger actors Pip­pa Ben­nett-Warn­er and Mari­ah Gale, fol­lowed by gruff Bri­an Cox. (Find the read­ings on this page.) Few of the read­ers are as famous as Scot­tish film and stage star Cox, but near­ly all are British the­ater-trained actors who deliv­er stir­ring, often thrilling, read­ings of the Robert Fagles trans­la­tion. See the remain­ing 63 read­ings at the Almei­da Theatre’s web­site here.

h/t @EWyres

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Homer’s Ili­ad and Odyssey: Free Audio­Books & eBooks

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

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

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