Browse a Gallery of Kurt Vonnegut Tattoos, and See Why He’s the Big Gorilla of Literary Tattoos

in Art, Books, Literature | October 12th, 2015

Vonnegut Tattoos 1

Accord­ing to Eva Tal­madge, co-author of The Word Made Flesh: Lit­er­ary Tat­toos from Book­worms World­wide, Kurt Von­negut is the big goril­la of lit tat­toos (a dis­tinc­tion he shares with poet e.e. cum­mings).

It’s not sur­pris­ing. Vonnegut’s humor and con­ci­sion make him one of the most quotable authors of all time, per­fect­ly suit­ed to the task.

Rep­e­ti­tion is the price Von­negut tat­too enthu­si­asts must pay for such endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty.

The phrase “so it goes” occurs 106 times in Slaugh­ter­house-Five, a fig­ure dwarfed many times over by the num­ber of hides upon which it is per­ma­nent­ly inked. Recur­rence is so fre­quent that the lit­er­ary tat­too blog, Con­trari­wise, recent­ly host­ed a round of So It Goes Sat­ur­days. So it goes.

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The sec­ond run­ner up, also from Slaugh­ter­house-Five,  is the painful­ly iron­ic “Every­thing was Beau­ti­ful and Noth­ing Hurt.”

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Those who’d rather put a bird on it than present an acces­si­ble sen­ti­ment to the unini­ti­at­ed can opt for “poo-tee-weet,” the catch­phrase of a bird who’s a wit­ness to war.  Cer­tain to con­found the folks star­ing at your tri­ceps in the gro­cery line.

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Slaugh­ter­house Five is not Vonnegut’s only tat­too-friend­ly nov­el, of course.

Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons is par­tic­u­lar­ly well suit­ed to the form, thanks to the author’s own line draw­ings.

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There’s also Slap­stick:

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Hocus Pocus:

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Cat’s Cra­dle:

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God Bless You Mr. Rose­wa­ter:

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And then there’s the infa­mous aster­isk, whose first appear­ance in Break­fast in Cham­pi­ons is pre­ced­ed thus­ly:

…to give an idea of the matu­ri­ty of my illus­tra­tions for this book, here is my pic­ture of an ass­hole”

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Hard­core fans can can prove their ded­i­ca­tion by tak­ing a por­trait of the mas­ter to the grave with them.

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Depend­ing on your tol­er­ance for pain, you could squeeze in a longer sen­ti­ment:

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“I want­ed all things

To seem to make some sense,

So we could all be hap­py, yes,

Instead of tense.

And I made up lies

So that they all fit nice,

And I made this sad world

A par-a-dise.”

― Kurt Von­negut, A Man With­out a Coun­try

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Daz­zling Gallery of Clock­work Orange Tat­toos

Meet Amer­i­ca & Britain’s First Female Tat­too Artists: Maud Wag­n­er (1877–1961) & Jessie Knight (1904–1994)

Why Tat­toos Are Per­ma­nent? New TED Ed Video Explains with Ani­ma­tion

Hear Kurt Von­negut Read Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Cat’s Cra­dle & Oth­er Nov­els

Kurt Von­negut Cre­ates a Report Card for His Nov­els, Rank­ing Them From A+ to D

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this month. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Arthur Conan Doyle Names His 19 Favorite Sherlock Holmes Stories

in Literature | October 9th, 2015

The_Strand_Magazine_(cover),_vol._73,_April_1927

Sher­lock Holmes has become such a cul­tur­al fix­ture since he first appeared in print that all of us have sure­ly, at one time or anoth­er, con­sid­ered read­ing through the Lon­don detec­tive’s com­plete case files. But where to start? One can always begin at the begin­ning with that first print appear­ance, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1887 nov­el A Study in Scar­let. But how best to progress through the Sher­lock Holmes canon, a body of 56 short sto­ries and four nov­els (and that num­ber count­ing only the mate­r­i­al writ­ten by Conan Doyle him­self), some more essen­tial than oth­ers?

You might con­sid­er read­ing the adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes accord­ing to the pref­er­ences of Sher­lock Holmes’ cre­ator. We know these pref­er­ences because of a 1927 com­pe­ti­tion in The Strand Mag­a­zine, where the char­ac­ter’s pop­u­lar­i­ty first blew up, which asked read­ers to name the twelve best Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries. They asked Conan Doyle the same ques­tion, and the list he came up with runs as fol­lows:

  1. “The Adven­ture of the Speck­led Band” (“a grim sto­ry” that “I am sure will be on every list”)
  2. “The Red­head­ed League”
  3. “The Adven­ture of the Danc­ing Men” (due, as with “The Red­head­ed League,” to “the orig­i­nal­i­ty of the plot”)
  4. “The Final Prob­lem” (“we could hard­ly leave out the sto­ry which deals with the only foe who ever real­ly extend­ed Holmes, and which deceived the pub­lic (and Wat­son) into the erro­neous infer­ence of his death”)
  5. “A Scan­dal in Bohemia” (since, as the first short sto­ry in the series, “it opened the path for the oth­ers,” and “it has more female inter­est than is usu­al”)
  6. “The Adven­ture of the Emp­ty House” (“the sto­ry which ess­says the dif­fi­cult task of explain­ing away the alleged death of Holmes”)
  7. “The Five Orange Pips” (“though it is short it has a cer­tain dra­mat­ic qual­i­ty of its own”)
  8. “The Adven­ture of the Sec­ond Stain” (for its treat­ment of “high diplo­ma­cy and intrigue”)
  9. “The Adven­ture of the Devil’s Foot” (“grim and new”)
  10. “The Adven­ture of the Pri­o­ry School” (“worth a place if only for the dra­mat­ic moment when Holmes points his fin­ger at the Duke”)
  11. “The Mus­grave Rit­u­al” (for its inclu­sion of “a his­tor­i­cal touch which gives it a lit­tle added dis­tinc­tion” and “a mem­o­ry from Holmes’ ear­ly life”)
  12. “The Reigate Squires” (in which “on the whole, Holmes him­self shows per­haps the most inge­nu­ity”)

He lat­er added sev­en more favorites, includ­ing some he’d writ­ten after The Strand’s con­test took place:

  1. “Sil­ver Blaze”
  2. “The Adven­ture of the Bruce-Part­ing­ton Plans”
  3. “The Crooked Man”
  4. “The Man with the Twist­ed Lip”
  5. “The Greek Inter­preter”
  6. “The Res­i­dent Patient”
  7. “The Naval Treaty”

“When this com­pe­ti­tion was first moot­ed I went into it in a most light-heart­ed way,” wrote Conan Doyle, “think­ing that it would be the eas­i­est thing in the world to pick out the twelve best of the Holmes sto­ries. In prac­tice I found that I had engaged myself in a seri­ous task.” And those who call them­selves Sher­lock Holmes enthu­si­asts know that, though they may have begun read­ing the sto­ries with an equal­ly light heart, they soon found them­selves going deep­er and deep­er into Holmes’ world in a much more seri­ous way than they’d expect­ed. Start­ing with Conan Doyle’s selec­tions may set you down the very same path; when you final­ly come out the oth­er side, feel free to name your own top twelve sto­ries in the com­ments below.

For a quick way to read Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries, get The Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Hear the Voice of Arthur Conan Doyle After His Death

Read the Lost Sher­lock Holmes Sto­ry That Was Just Dis­cov­ered in an Attic in Scot­land

Watch John Cleese as Sher­lock Holmes in The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

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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NBC University Theater Adapted Great Novels to Radio & Gives Listeners College Credit : Hear 110 Episodes from a 1940s eLearning Experiment

in Education, Literature, Radio | October 9th, 2015

Philco

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Joe Haupt

Before the inter­net became our pri­ma­ry source of infor­ma­tion and entertainment—before it became for many com­pa­nies a pri­ma­ry rev­enue stream—it promised to rev­o­lu­tion­ize edu­ca­tion. We would see a demo­c­ra­t­ic spread of knowl­edge, old hier­ar­chies would crum­ble, ancient divi­sions would cease to mat­ter in the new pri­mor­dial cyber-soup where any­one with entry-lev­el con­sumer hard­ware and the patience to learn basic HTML could cre­ate a plat­form and a com­mu­ni­ty. And even as that imag­ined utopia became just anoth­er econ­o­my, with its own win­ners and losers, large—and free—educational projects still seemed per­fect­ly fea­si­ble.

These days, that poten­tial hasn’t exact­ly evap­o­rat­ed, but we’ve had an increas­ing num­ber of reasons—the threat­ened sta­tus of net neu­tral­i­ty promi­nent among them—to curb our enthu­si­asm. Yet as we remind you dai­ly here at Open Cul­ture, free edu­ca­tion­al resources still abound online, even if the online world isn’t as rad­i­cal as some rad­i­cals had hoped. Fre­quent­ly, those resources reside in online libraries like the Inter­net Archive, who store some of the best edu­ca­tion­al mate­r­i­al from pre-inter­net times—such as the NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater, a pro­gram that comes from anoth­er tran­si­tion­al time for anoth­er form of mass media: radio.

Before pay­ola and tele­vi­sion took over in the fifties, radio also showed great poten­tial for democ­ra­tiz­ing edu­ca­tion. In 1942, at the height of the Gold­en Age of Radio, NBC “rein­au­gu­rat­ed” a pre­vi­ous con­cept for what it called the NBC Uni­ver­si­ty of the Air. “Through­out the mid-1940s,” writes the Dig­i­tal Deli, an online muse­um of gold­en age radio, “NBC pro­duced some twen­ty-five pro­duc­tions specif­i­cal­ly designed to both edu­cate and enter­tain. Indeed, many of those pro­grams were incor­po­rat­ed into the cur­ric­u­la of high schools, col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties through­out the U.S. and Cana­da.”

After 1948, the pro­gram was retooled as NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater, then sim­ply NBC The­ater. “Irre­spec­tive of the title change,” how­ev­er, the pro­gram “con­tin­ued to main­tain the same high stan­dards and con­tin­ued to expand the num­ber of col­leges offer­ing col­lege cred­it for lis­ten­ing to and study­ing the pro­gram­s’s offer­ings.” Dig­i­tal Deli has the full details of this pro­to-MOOC’s cur­ricu­lum. It con­sists of lis­ten­ing to adap­ta­tions of “great Amer­i­can sto­ries,” great “world” stories–from Voltaire, Swift, and others–and adap­ta­tions of mod­ern Amer­i­can and British fic­tion and “Great Works of World Lit­er­a­ture.”

In short, the NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater adap­ta­tions might sub­sti­tute for a col­lege-lev­el lit­er­ary edu­ca­tion for those unable to attend a col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty. In the playlist above, you can hear every episode from the show’s final run from 1948 to 1951. We begin with an adap­ta­tion of Sin­clair Lewis’s Main Street and end with Thomas Hardy’s “The With­ered Arm.” In-between hear clas­sic radio dra­ma adap­ta­tions of every­thing from Austen to Faulkn­er and Hem­ing­way to Ibsen. There are 110 episodes in total.

Each episode fea­tures com­men­tary from dis­tin­guished authors and crit­ics, includ­ing Robert Penn War­ren, E.M. Forster, and Kather­ine Anne Porter. “Apart from the obvi­ous aca­d­e­m­ic val­ue” of the series, writes Dig­i­tal Deli, “it’s clear that con­sid­er­able thought—and dar­ing—went into the selec­tions as well.” Despite the tremen­dous increase in col­lege atten­dance through the G.I. Bill, this was a peri­od of “ris­ing hos­til­i­ty towards aca­d­e­mics, pure­ly intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits, and the free exchange of philoso­phies in gen­er­al.”

The ensu­ing decade of the fifties might be char­ac­ter­ized cul­tur­al­ly, writes Dig­i­tal Deli, as an “intel­lec­tu­al vacuum”—anti-intellectual atti­tudes swept the coun­try, fueled by Cold War polit­i­cal repres­sion. And radio became pri­mar­i­ly a means of enter­tain­ment and adver­tis­ing, com­pet­ing with tele­vi­sion for an audi­ence. Qual­i­ty radio dra­mas continued—most notably of excel­lent sci­ence fic­tion. But nev­er again would an edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram of NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater’s scope, ambi­tion, and rad­i­cal poten­tial appear on U.S. radio waves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

Hear Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and 84 Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas from CBS Radio Work­shop (1956–57)

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

Free: Lis­ten to 298 Episodes of the Vin­tage Crime Radio Series, Drag­net

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

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20 New Lines from The Epic of Gilgamesh Discovered in Iraq, Adding New Details to the Story

in History, Literature, Poetry | October 5th, 2015

The Epic of Gil­gamesh, one of the old­est nar­ra­tives in the world, got a sur­prise update last month when the Sulay­maniyah Muse­um in the Kur­dis­tan region of Iraq announced that it had dis­cov­ered 20 new lines of the Baby­lon­ian-Era poem of gods, mor­tals, and mon­sters. Since the poem has exist­ed in frag­ments since the 18th cen­tu­ry BC, there has always been the pos­si­bil­i­ty that more would turn up. And yet the ver­sion we’re famil­iar with — the one dis­cov­ered in 1853 in Nin­eveh — has­n’t changed very much over recent decades. The text remained fair­ly fixed — that is, until the fall of Bagh­dad in 2003 and the intense loot­ing that fol­lowed yield­ed some­thing new.

Since that time, the His­to­ry Blog notes:

the [Sulay­maniyah] muse­um has a mat­ter of pol­i­cy paid smug­glers to keep arti­facts from leav­ing the coun­try, no ques­tions asked. The tablet was acquired by the muse­um in late 2011 as part of a col­lec­tion of 80–90 tablets sold by an unnamed shady char­ac­ter. Pro­fes­sor Farouk Al-Rawi exam­ined the col­lec­tion while the sell­er hag­gled with muse­um offi­cial Abdul­lah Hashim. When Al-Rawi saw this tablet, he told Hashim to pay what­ev­er the sell­er want­ed: $800.

That’s a pret­ty good deal for these extra lines that not only add to the poem’s length, but have now cleared up some of the mys­ter­ies in the oth­er chap­ters. These lines come from Chap­ter Five of the epic and cast the main char­ac­ters in a new light. Gil­gamesh and his com­pan­ion Enkidu are shown to feel guilt over killing Hum­ba­ba, the guardian of the cedar for­est, who is now seen as less a mon­ster and more a king. Just like a good director’s cut, these extra scenes clear up some mud­dy char­ac­ter moti­va­tion, and add an envi­ron­men­tal moral to the tale.

new lines of gilgamesh

The His­to­ry Blog arti­cle has an in depth descrip­tion of the trans­la­tion, with links to a schol­ar­ly paper on this very impor­tant find, and prompts the ques­tion, how much more is there to be dis­cov­ered?

In the video above, Hazha Jalal, man­ag­er of the tablet’s sec­tion of the Sulay­maniyah Muse­um talks (in Kur­dish) about the new dis­cov­ery, say­ing (in trans­la­tion): “The tablet dates back to the Neo-Bably­on­ian peri­od, 2000–1500 BCE. It is a part of tablet V of the epic. It was acquired by the Muse­um in the year 2011 and [then] Dr. Farouk Al-Raw translit­er­at­ed it. It was writ­ten as a poem and many new things this ver­sion has added, for exam­ple Gil­gamesh and his friend met a mon­key. We are hon­ored to house this tablet and any­one can vis­it the Muse­um dur­ing its open­ing hours from 8:30 morn­ing to noon. The entry is free for you and your guests. Thank you.”

In the mean­time, if you’ve got a few min­utes to spare, you can click here to Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia.

You can also find the epic in our twin col­lec­tions, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free and 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

via The His­to­ry Blog

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

Hear the “Seik­i­los Epi­taph,” the Old­est Com­plete Song in the World: An Inspir­ing Tune from 100 BC

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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What “Orwellian” Really Means: An Animated Lesson About the Use & Abuse of the Term

in English Language, Literature | October 5th, 2015

In all of our minds, the word “Orwellian” con­jures up a cer­tain kind of set­ting: a vast, fixed bureau­cra­cy; a dead-eyed pub­lic forced into gray, uni­form liv­ing con­di­tions; the very words we use man­gled in order to bet­ter serve the inter­ests of pow­er. We think, on the whole, of the kind of bleak­ness with which George Orwell sat­u­rat­ed the future Eng­land that pro­vides the set­ting for his famous nov­el Nine­teen Eighty-Four. Almost sev­en­ty years after that book’s pub­li­ca­tion, we now use “Orwellian” to describe the views of the polit­i­cal par­ty oppo­site us, the Depart­ment of Motor Vehi­cles — any­thing, in short, that strikes us as brutish, mono­lith­ic, implaca­ble, delib­er­ate­ly stripped of mean­ing, or in any way author­i­tar­i­an.

We use the word so much, in fact, that it can’t help but have come detached from its orig­i­nal mean­ing. “I can tell you that we live in Orwellian times,” writes the Guardian’s Sam Jordi­son. Or that “Amer­i­ca is wag­ing Orwellian wars, that TV is Orwellian, that the police are Orwellian, that Ama­zon is Orwellian, that pub­lish­ers are Orwellian too, that Ama­zon with­drew copies of Nine­teen Eighty-Four, which was Orwellian (although Orwell wouldn’t like it), that Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, David Cameron, Ed Mil­liband, Kim Jong-un and all his rel­a­tives are Orwellian, that the TV pro­gramme Big Broth­er is both Orwellian and not as Orwellian as it claims to be, that Oba­ma engages in Oba­ma­think, that cli­mate-change deniers and cli­mate change sci­en­tists are Orwellian, that neo­clas­si­cal eco­nom­ics employs Orwellian lan­guage. That, in fact, every­thing is Orwellian,” Jordi­son con­tin­ues.

Here to restore sense to our usage of the most com­mon word derived from the name of a writer, we have the Ted-Ed video at the top of the post. In it, and in the asso­ci­at­ed les­son on Ted-Ed’s site, Noah Tavlin breaks down the ter­m’s mean­ing, its ori­gin, the fail­ings of our mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion of it, and how tru­ly Orwellian phe­nom­e­na con­tin­ue to invade our dai­ly life with­out our even real­iz­ing it. “The next time you hear some­one say ‘Orwellian,’ ” says Tavlin, “pay close atten­tion. If they’re talk­ing about the decep­tive and manip­u­la­tive use of lan­guage, they’re on the right track. If they’re talk­ing about mass sur­veil­lance and intru­sive gov­ern­ment, they’re describ­ing some­thing author­i­tar­i­an, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly Orwellian. And if they use it as an all-pur­pose word for any ideas they dis­like, it’s pos­si­ble that their state­ments are more Orwellian than what­ev­er it is they’re crit­i­ciz­ing” — an out­come Orwell him­self might well have fore­seen.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

Hux­ley to Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

George Orwell and Dou­glas Adams Explain How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

For 95 Min­utes, the BBC Brings George Orwell to Life

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

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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As Benevolent Dictator, Vladimir Nabokov Would Abolish Muzak & Bidets: What Would Make Your List?

in Literature, Random | October 1st, 2015

nabokov abolish

In 1969, the BBC’s James Moss­man con­duct­ed an exten­sive inter­view with Vladimir Nabokov, which was first pub­lished in a mag­a­zine called The Lis­ten­er, and lat­er in a book enti­tled Strong Opin­ions. Some of Moss­man­’s ques­tions were seri­ous: “You’ve said that you’ve explored time’s prison and have found no way out. Are you still explor­ing…? Some were lighter: “Why do you live in hotels?” (Answer here.) And still oth­er ques­tions fell some­where in between, like: “If you ruled any mod­ern indus­tri­al state absolute­ly, what would you abol­ish?” It turns out that loud nois­es, muzak, bidets, and insec­ti­cides made the great nov­el­ist and lep­i­dopter­ist’s list.

Which rais­es the ques­tion, if allowed to play benev­o­lent dic­ta­tor for a day, what would you oblit­er­ate? Me? I’d prob­a­bly start with almost any­thing like­ly to appear in today’s Bill­board Top 5 — dreck that’s not too far from muzak.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

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

Vladimir Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Tweaks to Franz Kafka’s Novel­la The Meta­mor­pho­sis

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It’s Banned Books Week: Listen to Allen Ginsberg Read His Famously Banned Poem, “Howl,” in San Francisco, 1956

in Books, Literature, Poetry | September 30th, 2015

Howl Cover

Accord­ing to Ruth Gra­ham in Slate, Banned Books Week is a “crock,” an unnec­es­sary pub­lic   indul­gence since “there is basi­cal­ly no such thing as a ‘banned book’ in the Unit­ed States in 2015.” And though the aware­ness-rais­ing week’s spon­sor, the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, has shift­ed its focus to book cen­sor­ship in class­rooms, most of the chal­lenges posed to books in schools are sil­ly and eas­i­ly dis­missed. Yet, some oth­er cas­es, like that of Perse­po­lis—Mar­jane Satrapi’s graph­ic nov­el mem­oir of her Iran­ian child­hood dur­ing the revolution—are not. The book was pulled from Chica­go Pub­lic School class­rooms (but not from libraries) in 2013.

Even now, teach­ers who wish to use the book in class­es must com­plete “sup­ple­men­tal train­ing.” The osten­si­bly objec­tion­able con­tent in the book is no more graph­ic than that in most his­to­ry text­books, and it’s easy to make the case that Perse­po­lis and oth­er chal­lenged mem­oirs and nov­els that offer per­spec­tives from oth­er coun­tries, cul­tures, or polit­i­cal points of view have inher­ent edu­ca­tion­al val­ue. One might be tempt­ed to think that school offi­cials pulled the book for oth­er rea­sons. Per­haps we need Banned Books Week after all.

Anoth­er, per­haps fuzzi­er, case of a “banned” book—or poem—from this year involves a high school teacher’s fir­ing over his class­room read­ing of Allen Gins­berg’s porno­graph­ic poem “Please Mas­ter.” The case of “Please Mas­ter” should put us in mind of a once banned book writ­ten by Gins­berg: epic Beat jere­mi­ad “Howl.” When the poem’s pub­lish­er, Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, attempt­ed to import British copies of the poem in 1957, the books were seized by cus­toms, then he and his busi­ness part­ner were arrest­ed and put on tri­al for obscen­i­ty. After writ­ers and aca­d­e­mics tes­ti­fied to the poem’s cul­tur­al val­ue, the judge vin­di­cat­ed Fer­linghet­ti, and “Howl.”

But the tri­al demon­strat­ed at the time that the gov­ern­ment reserved the right to seize books, stop their pub­li­ca­tion and sale, and keep mate­r­i­al from the read­ing pub­lic if it so chose. As with this year’s dust-up over “Please Mas­ter,” the agents who con­fis­cat­ed “Howl” sup­pos­ed­ly object­ed to the sex­u­al con­tent of Gins­berg’s poem (and like­ly the homo­sex­u­al con­tent espe­cial­ly). But that rea­son­ing could also have been cov­er for oth­er objec­tions to the poem’s polit­i­cal con­tent. “Howl,” after all, was very sub­ver­sive in its day, and in a way served as a kind of man­i­festo against the sta­tus quo. It had a “cat­a­clysmic impact,” writes Fred Kaplan, “not just on the lit­er­ary world but on the broad­er soci­ety and cul­ture.”

We’ve fea­tured var­i­ous read­ings of “Howl” in the past, and if you’ve some­how missed hear­ing those, nev­er heard the poem read at all, or nev­er read the poem your­self, then con­sid­er dur­ing this Banned Books Week tak­ing the time to read it and hear it read—by the poet him­self. You can hear the first record­ed read­ing by Gins­berg, in 1956 at Port­land’s Reed Col­lege. You can hear anoth­er impas­sioned Gins­berg read­ing from 1959. And above, hear Gins­berg read the poem in 1956, in San Fran­cis­co, where it was first pub­lished and where it stood tri­al.

You can also hear Gins­berg fan James Franco—who played the poet in a film called Howl—read the poem over a visu­al­ly strik­ing ani­ma­tion of its vivid imagery. And if Gins­berg isn’t your thing, con­sid­er check­ing out the ALA’s list of chal­lenged or banned books for 2014–2015. (I could cer­tain­ly rec­om­mend Perse­po­lis.) While pro­hibit­ing books from the class­room may seem a far cry from gov­ern­ment cen­sor­ship, Banned Books Week reminds us that many peo­ple still find cer­tain kinds of books deeply threat­en­ing, and should push us to ask why that is.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

High School Teacher Reads Allen Ginsberg’s Explic­it Poem “Please Mas­ter” and Los­es His Job

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl (1959)

James Fran­co Reads a Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

Find great poems in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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

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Aubrey Beardsley’s Macabre Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Stories (1894)

in Art, Literature | September 30th, 2015

Aubrey_Beardsley_-_Edgar_Poe_2

Ear­li­er this month, we fea­tured Oscar Wilde’s scan­dalous play Salome as illus­trat­ed by Aubrey Beard­s­ley in 1894. Though Beard­s­ley’s short life and career would end a scant four years lat­er at the age of 25, the illus­tra­tor still had more than enough time to devel­op a clear and bold, yet elab­o­rate and even deca­dent style, still imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able and deeply influ­en­tial today.

Aubrey_Beardsley_-_Edgar_Poe_3

He also man­aged to visu­al­ize an impres­sive­ly wide range of mate­r­i­al, one that includes — in the very same year — the trans­gres­sive­ly wit­ty writ­ing of Oscar Wilde as well as the ground­break­ing­ly macabre writ­ings of Edgar Allan Poe.

Aubrey_Beardsley_-_Edgar_Poe_1

“Aubrey Beardsley’s four Poe illus­tra­tions were com­mis­sioned by Her­bert S. Stone and Com­pa­ny, Chica­go, in 1894 as embell­ish­ment for a mul­ti-vol­ume col­lec­tion of the author’s works,” writes artist and design­er John Coulthart. “The Black Cat (above) is jus­ti­fi­ably the most repro­duced of these.” The Lit­er­ary Archive blog argues that “what Beardsley’s illus­tra­tions do tell us of is that Poe’s sto­ries are not sta­t­ic, but liv­ing works that each new gen­er­a­tion gets to expe­ri­ence in [its] own way,” and that they “give us a glimpse into a slight deca­dence and goth­ic-ness still pre­ferred in hor­ror at the time (a giant orang­utan envelopes the girl in his arms—King Kong any­one?)”

Aubrey_Beardsley_-_Edgar_Poe_4

They also remind us that “our taste for creepi­ness, for hear­ing tales about the dark­er side of human life, hasn’t changed appre­cia­bly in over 150 years.” If the Amer­i­can author and the Eng­lish illus­tra­tor would seem to make for odd lit­er­ary and artis­tic bed­fel­lows, well, there­in lies the appeal: when one strong cre­ative sen­si­bil­i­ty comes up against anoth­er, things can well go off in the kind of rich­ly bizarre direc­tions you see hint­ed at in the images here.

If you’d like to own a piece of this odd chap­ter in the his­to­ry of illus­trat­ed texts, keep your eye on Sothe­by’s — you’ll only have to come up with between 4,000 and 6,000 pounds.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oscar Wilde’s Play Salome Illus­trat­ed by Aubrey Beard­s­ley in a Strik­ing Mod­ern Aes­thet­ic (1894)

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

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

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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