What If Money Was No Object?: Thoughts on the Art of Living from Eastern Philosopher Alan Watts

in Life, Philosophy | October 9th, 2012

Alan Watts came to San Fran­cis­co dur­ing the ear­ly 1950s, wrote his best­seller Way of Zen, and became one of the fore­most pop­u­lar­iz­ers of Zen Bud­dhism, Hin­duism, Tao­ism and var­i­ous forms of East­ern phi­los­o­phy. His TV show, East­ern Wis­dom and Mod­ern Life (1960), intro­duced Amer­i­cans to the seem­ing­ly exot­ic con­cept of med­i­ta­tion (watch here). And his radio show and lec­tures forced lis­ten­ers to pause and look at their lives from a fresh per­spec­tive. Again and again, Watts chal­lenged the West­ern empha­sis on mon­ey-mak­ing to the exclu­sion of all else. We’ve heard Watts rail against this soul-crush­ing val­ue in a lec­ture ani­mat­ed by the cre­ators of South Park. (I’m not kid­ding you.) And, in the new­ly-pro­duced video above, he con­tin­ues along the same tra­jec­to­ry. So, as you drink your morn­ing cof­fee and pon­der your day, ask your­self: Are you putting mon­ey-mak­ing before hap­pi­ness itself? Or are you pur­su­ing the pas­sions that bring hap­pi­ness, achiev­ing excel­lence, and then let­ting the mon­ey fol­low? With that, I’ll let you con­tin­ue with your day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Liv­ing: A Free Stan­ford Course Explores Time­less Ques­tions

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Tech­nol­o­gy Can’t Grasp Real­i­ty

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

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How Political Commitment Led Lucy Lawless (AKA Xena, the Warrior Princess) to Study Philosophy

in Philosophy, Podcasts, Politics, Television | October 8th, 2012

It’s cer­tain­ly not uncom­mon for celebri­ties to take up polit­i­cal caus­es, though this does not usu­al­ly lead to them get­ting arrest­ed for hol­ing up in a high tow­er oil-drilling ship for four days. What’s less com­mon is for this inter­est to bur­geon into a full-on obses­sion with all things philo­soph­i­cal, but that’s exact­ly what hap­pened to Lucy Law­less (best known as Xena, the War­rior Princess).

“I went to the UN sum­mit on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment after get­ting involved in the whole… big oil protest… and I saw all of these peo­ple work­ing very hard but seem­ing­ly at cross-pur­pos­es about how do we cre­ate a just soci­ety.” On a full two-hour episode of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast (which she claims was large­ly respon­si­ble for turn­ing her on to phi­los­o­phy), she describes how this polit­i­cal inter­est drove her to look at the foun­da­tions and his­to­ries of the­o­ries of jus­tice, and even­tu­al­ly decide to go back to school to study phi­los­o­phy, which she’s now doing in New Zealand between flights to the states to film TV spots such as her recent appear­ance on NBC’s Parks and Recre­ation.

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life inter­view with Law­less is a five-per­son, round­table dis­cus­sion of Tom Payne’s 2010 book, Fame: What the Clas­sics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebri­ty. You can lis­ten here:

The the­sis of the book is that celebri­ties serve as an out­let for soci­ety’s aggres­sive instincts. Draw­ing on canon­i­cal texts about reli­gious anthro­pol­o­gy like James Fraz­er’s The Gold­en Bough, the author com­pares the treat­ment of mod­ern celebri­ties to ancient rites where young maid­ens were lav­ish­ly bestowed with finer­ies and then sac­ri­fied. Lucy thinks this well match­es her own expe­ri­ences, and talks about the exis­ten­tial weird­ness involved with being and deal­ing with the famous.

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life has also cov­ered relat­ed top­ics of Freud’s Civ­i­liza­tion and its Dis­con­tents and Niet­zsche’s Geneal­o­gy of Morals. You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast on iTunes.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. 

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Marginal Revolution University Launches, Bringing Free Online Courses in Economics to the Web

in Economics, Online Courses | October 8th, 2012

A great year for open edu­ca­tion got even bet­ter with the launch of Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty. Found­ed by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabar­rok, two econ pro­fes­sors at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, MRUni­ver­si­ty promis­es to deliv­er free, inter­ac­tive cours­es in the eco­nom­ics space. And they’re get­ting start­ed with a course on Devel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics, a sub­dis­ci­pline that explores why some coun­tries grow rich and oth­ers remain poor. In short, issues that have real mean­ing for every­day peo­ple world­wide.

In an announce­ment on the Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion blog last month, Cowen out­lined a few of the prin­ci­ples guid­ing the project:

1. The prod­uct is free, and we offer more mate­r­i­al in less time.

2. Most of our videos are short, so you can view and lis­ten between tasks, rather than need­ing to sched­ule time for them.  The aver­age video is five min­utes, twen­ty-eight sec­onds long.  When need­ed, more videos are used to explain com­plex top­ics.

3. No talk­ing heads and no long, bor­ing lec­tures.  We have tried to recon­cep­tu­al­ize every aspect of the edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence to be friend­ly to the on-line world.

4. It is low band­width and mobile-friend­ly.  No ads.

5. We offer tests and quizzes.

6. We have plans to sub­ti­tle the videos in major lan­guages.  Our reach will be glob­al, and in doing so we are build­ing upon the glob­al empha­sis of our home insti­tu­tion, George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty.

7. We invite users to sub­mit con­tent.

8. It is a flex­i­ble learn­ing mod­ule.  It is not a “MOOC” per se, although it can be used to cre­ate a MOOC, name­ly a mas­sive, open on-line course.

9. It is designed to grow rapid­ly and flex­i­bly, absorb­ing new con­tent in mod­u­lar fash­ion — note the bee­hive struc­ture to our logo.  But we are start­ing with plen­ty of mate­r­i­al.

10. We are pleased to announce that our first course will begin on Octo­ber 1.

Book­mark MRUni­ver­si­ty and look out for its cur­ricu­lum to expand. In the mean­time, you can explore more Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT’s Intro­duc­tion to Eco­nom­ics: A Free Online Course

Free Online Eco­nom­ics & Finance Cours­es

Mas­ter­ing Econo­met­rics: A Free Online Course

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Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Tweeted Daily By 92nd Street Y

in Music | October 8th, 2012

You’ve no doubt heard of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach’s The Well-Tem­pered Clavier. What’s more, you’ve no doubt heard it, even if you could swear you haven’t. (Need a refresh­er? Lis­ten to Glenn Gould’s per­for­mance of it here.) If you’d like to gain much more famil­iar­i­ty with this deeply respect­ed piece of music, but in small pieces of it at a time, keep an ear on The Well-Tweet­ed Clavier, going on now from the 92nd Street Y in NYC. Known to pull a cul­tur­al stunt every now and again, 92Y has a plan to tweet about a pre­lude and fugue of The Well-Tem­pered Clavier each and every day. They launched this project on Sep­tem­ber 14, and it should run for a total of 48 days. You can see these tweets by fol­low­ing 92Y on Twit­ter, or sim­ply by check­ing the hash­tag #WTClavier. “The Well-Tem­pered Clavier can be played on any key­board,” 92Y Tweet­ed on Octo­ber 3. “Truth in adver­tis­ing?’ That day, they post­ed three videos asso­ci­at­ed with Pre­lude and Fugue No. 20 in A minor, BWV 865: a two-part per­for­mance and a short talk from pianist and con­duc­tor András Schiff.

At the end of this month, Schiff, famous­ly a boost­er of Bach’s work, opens the New York com­po­nent of his pro­gram The Bach Project, an effort that will, all told, include the San Fran­cis­co Sym­pho­ny, Los Ange­les Phil­har­mon­ic, New York Phil­har­mon­ic, 92nd Street Y, Carnegie Hall and Great Per­form­ers at Lin­coln Cen­ter. “To me, Bach’s music is not black and white; it’s full of colours,” Schiff writes in his essay “With­out the Ped­al But With Plen­ty of Col­ors.” “In my imag­i­na­tion, each tonal­i­ty cor­re­sponds to a colour. The Well-Tem­pered Clavier, with its 24 pre­ludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys, pro­vides an ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty for this fan­ci­ful fan­ta­sy.” You can explore these col­ors on 92Y’s main Well-Tweet­ed Clavier page, which actu­al­ly col­or-codes all the pre­ludes and fugues thus far tweet­ed so you can expe­ri­ence them as chro­mat­i­cal­ly as Schiff does. “Of course, this is a very per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tion, and each of you may have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion,” he adds. “Nev­er­the­less, if some of us hap­pen to believe that music is more than just a series of notes and sounds, then a lit­tle bit of fan­ta­sy is wel­come.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

A Big Bach Down­load: The Com­plete Organ Works for Free

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant.

A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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University Presses & Libraries Turn to Pinterest to Promote Books

in Books, Web/Tech | October 8th, 2012

I’ll admit it: I’m not a big Pin­ter­est user. Until very recent­ly I thought the social net­work­ing site was a bit twee—too much about cute clothes and crafts, not enough about ideas.

Turns out the web’s 15th largest site has a lot more to offer.

Open Cul­ture has its own embry­on­ic Pin­ter­est page. But, more impor­tant­ly, uni­ver­si­ty press­es are mak­ing wide­spread use of Pin­ter­est to pro­mote new book titles. Like­wise, aca­d­e­m­ic libraries are using their Pin­ter­est pages to pro­mote events and help fund major cap­i­tal improve­ments. For libraries and archives, a major ongo­ing mis­sion is to keep the col­lec­tions vis­i­ble. It’s not easy to let the world know about your one-of-a-kind hold­ings, and Pin­ter­est poten­tial­ly offers a great way to bring these mate­ri­als to new and  younger audi­ences.

Big retail­ers haven’t fig­ured out how to make real mon­ey off of Pin­ter­est yet, though one the­o­ry holds that the site’s high­ly visu­al nature puts peo­ple in the mood to click and buy. True or not, uni­ver­si­ty press­es and libraries need all the help they can get to gin up sales, so they’re wad­ing into the Pin­ter­est waters and see­ing what hap­pens.

Alice Northover has cre­at­ed a Tum­blr that cat­a­logues a few of the best uni­ver­si­ty press­es that have Pin­ter­est pages. The list is a handy map of trea­sures to be found online.

There are the usu­al, and com­plete­ly worth check­ing out, sus­pects: Of course, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press has a page that fea­tures, among oth­er things, inter­views with Har­vard Press authors. Watch math­e­mati­cian Paul Lock­hart, author of Mea­sure­ment, trip out on par­al­lel­o­grams.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi has a robust pres­ence that fea­tures an exten­sive col­lec­tion of Faulkn­er crit­i­cism and appre­ci­a­tion.

Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty’s page links to its audio archive, which includes a fun, episod­ic pro­gram called “Wait? They Banned What?”. You might be sur­prised to find out that Bing Cros­by song was banned dur­ing World War II for being too catchy.

One of the best may be one of the most unsung, how­ev­er. New Zealand’s Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty of Welling­ton’s library hous­es a major col­lec­tion of Samoan his­tor­i­cal objects. Check out the library’s repos­i­to­ry of amaz­ing South Pacif­ic his­to­ry.

These sites offer very few dec­o­rat­ing tips for your Air Stream trail­er, and I found no links to loca­vore jam-mak­ing busi­ness­es, but Alice, whomev­er she may be, has cre­at­ed a great cura­to­r­i­al tool for explor­ing a new trend in book pro­mo­tion.

But wait. Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press has a pin on its page called “Lib­ri­an­ista” that links to short-hem­line clothes mod­eled by bespec­ta­cled cuties. I guess even the world’s old­est pub­lish­er gets to have a lit­tle fun.

Thanks to Kirstin But­ler for send­ing Alice’s Tum­blr our way.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

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Steve Martin, “Home Crafts Expert,” Explains the Art of Paper Wadding, Endorses Bob Kerrey

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Politics | October 8th, 2012

Fed up with polit­i­cal ads? Had enough? Nev­er want to see anoth­er one as long as you live? Con­sid­er watch­ing just one more. Because this one is fun. No, real­ly! Steve Mar­tin, who made prop com­e­dy respectable, endors­es his friend Bob Ker­rey for Nebras­ka Sen­a­tor by pos­ing as a “Home Crafts Expert.” This is the most unob­tru­sive, watch­able piece of polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing I’ve seen, one that trades on what every­one knows to be true—political ads are annoy­ing and dull and politi­cians are not often the most like­able peo­ple. Martin’s ad avoids these pit­falls, and it also makes a very sub­tle point, per­haps with­out even intend­ing to: pol­i­tics is the busi­ness of the every­day (or should be any­way), as essen­tial to us as the com­mon house­hold items we rely on all the time but take for grant­ed.

Now it’s true, of course, not every can­di­date has, or needs, celebri­ty friends. But no mat­ter your pol­i­tics, Martin’s endorse­ment of Ker­rey works as an exam­ple of how polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing could be done dif­fer­ent­ly.

After you’ve watched the ad, you might want to wan­der over to NPR and lis­ten to Mar­tin dis­cuss his 18 years as a stand-up com­ic and his move into act­ing and writ­ing, expe­ri­ences he details in his mem­oir, Born Stand­ing Up.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Miranda July Teaches You How to Avoid Procrastination

in Film, Life, Psychology | October 8th, 2012

I’ve always thought of writer, actor and film­mak­er Miran­da July as some­one who cre­ates her own oppor­tu­ni­ties. Long before her sto­ries in The New York­er, and before Me and You and Every­one We Know, the award-win­ning first fea­ture that cement­ed her indie dar­ling sta­tus, she was cir­cu­lat­ing video chain let­ters fea­tur­ing her own work and that of oth­er young, female film­mak­ers. She record­ed LPs and toured orig­i­nal per­for­mance art pieces.

What a relief to find out she’s a pro­cras­ti­na­tor, too.

July insists that her chat­ter­ing mon­key mind near­ly deprived her of the con­cen­tra­tion nec­es­sary to fin­ish writ­ing The Future, her sec­ond full-length film. One of its most com­pelling parts actu­al­ly wound up on the cut­ting room floor. In it (above), we see Sophie, the under-employed would-be dancer played by July, com­ing to grips with her own self-sab­o­tag­ing ten­den­cy toward pro­cras­ti­na­tion.

Of course, the rea­son we’re able to see it at all is that July, whose indus­tri­ous­ness sure­ly has earned her the right to spend a decade or so doing noth­ing but watch­ing YouTube and Googling her own name, repur­posed it as a short, instruc­tion­al film (A Handy Tip for the Eas­i­ly Dis­tract­ed), which offers an anti­dote for those of us who share her afflic­tion.

(Admit it. You’re pro­cras­ti­nat­ing now, aren’t you?)

In addi­tion to the sound­ness of her advice, her method­ol­o­gy is endear­ing­ly low-tech. As one who’s been known to attribute a lack of cre­ative out­put to a less than ide­al work­space, I found the clut­tered, shab­by apart­ment set both famil­iar and gal­va­niz­ing. If we’re going to make excus­es, we may as well own them. July takes yet anoth­er step by har­ness­ing them and forc­ing them to work for her.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Life-Affirm­ing Talks by Cul­tur­al Mav­er­icks (Includ­ing Miran­da July) Pre­sent­ed at The School of Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of any num­ber of books includ­ing The Zinester’s Guide to NYC and No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late.

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Amazon Finally Gets the Kindle Right with the Paperwhite, Delivering on Price and Technology

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Technology | October 7th, 2012

It took five years and five mod­els, but Ama­zon has final­ly released a new gen­er­a­tion of the Kin­dle — the Kin­dle Paper­white — that deliv­ers the goods. The prob­lem with the pre­vi­ous mod­els boiled down to this. The screens were fair­ly mud­dy. The con­trast, poor. The words did­n’t pop off of the page. If you ever tried read­ing a Kin­dle indoors, espe­cial­ly in low­er light con­di­tions, you know what I mean.

With the Kin­dle Paper­white, Ama­zon has made a pret­ty big leap ahead. They’ve made improve­ments to the font con­trast and screen res­o­lu­tion, which def­i­nite­ly enhance the read­ing expe­ri­ence. They’ve also added a touch­screen to the e‑ink mod­el. But the big stride for­ward is the built-in light that illu­mi­nates the screen. The screen is sidelit, not back­lit (à la the iPad). The point of the light isn’t to make the screen glow like a com­put­er screen. It’s to make the screen stay white, like the page of a book, under vary­ing light con­di­tions. If you move from brighter to dim­mer light­ing con­di­tions, you nudge up the bright­ness so that the page con­tin­ues to look white. And then you stop there.

It all works quite well, until you start read­ing with the Paper­white in pret­ty dim light con­di­tions. Then you’ll need to dial up the light until the screen actu­al­ly glows, and that’s when you’ll start to see some imper­fec­tions in the design. As David Pogue men­tioned in his New York Times review, the Paper­white has some hotspots (areas of uneven light­ing) along the bot­tom of the screen, which detract minor­ly from the read­ing expe­ri­ence.

The last thing Ama­zon got right is the price. The entry mod­el starts at $119, which means that Ama­zon is basi­cal­ly sell­ing the e‑reader at cost, and then mak­ing mon­ey on book sales. But that does­n’t mean that you need to spend very much. You can always down­load texts from our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks. Or, if you’re an Ama­zon Prime Mem­ber, you can bor­row up to 180,000 books for free.

For a com­plete tour of the new Kin­dle, watch this 20 minute video.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 450 Free Audio Books

Read 160 Free Text­books Online

Down­load a Free Audio Book From Audible.com

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What an Astronaut’s Camera Sees (and What a Geographer Learns About Our Planet) from the ISS

in Astronomy, Video - Science | October 6th, 2012

Justin Wilkin­son has a pret­ty cool sound­ing gig. He’s the chief geo­sci­en­tist at NASA, and he learns all about plan­et Earth from space. When astro­nauts head to the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS), Wilkin­son asks them to snap pic­tures of var­i­ous geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions. And, from this van­tage point 250 miles above the plan­et’s sur­face, he learns many things — for exam­ple, he tells Slate, “there are a lot more exam­ples of a geo­graph­i­cal phe­nom­e­non called an inland delta or megafan—that is, deltas formed far from coastlines—than was once thought.”

Out of Wilkin­son’s research comes some great pic­tures and videos, and today we’re fea­tur­ing two clips. The first video above shows you what an astro­naut sees at night, giv­ing you an aer­i­al tour of cities and coast­lines in the Amer­i­c­as, the Mid­dle East and Europe. The equal­ly impres­sive video below gives you stel­lar shots (in day­light) of Namib­ia, Tunisia, Mada­gas­car, Sici­ly, Chi­na, Iran, and Utah. You’ll find these videos added to our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos. Cours­es on astron­o­my can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.  h/t @stevesilberman

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Christopher Lee Narrates a Beautiful Animation of Tim Burton’s Poem, Nightmare Before Christmas

in Animation, Film | October 5th, 2012

Almost nine­teen years ago, the ide­al fall-hol­i­day ani­mat­ed film first opened: The Night­mare Before Christ­mas, direct­ed by stop-motion mas­ter Hen­ry Selick and pro­duced by Tim Bur­ton, pos­ses­sor of one of the best-known imag­i­na­tions of our time. Over a decade before that, in 1982, Bur­ton wrote a poem of the same name, telling essen­tial­ly the same sto­ry as would the film. Work­ing at the time as an ani­ma­tor at Dis­ney, he man­aged to catch his employ­er’s atten­tion by turn­ing these vers­es into con­cept art, sto­ry­boards, and char­ac­ter mod­els for adap­ta­tion into a poten­tial half-hour tele­vi­sion spe­cial fea­tur­ing Vin­cent Price. But the world, much less Dis­ney, did­n’t yet seem ready for the Bur­ton­ian sen­si­bil­i­ty, much less the par­tic­u­lar note of jol­ly grim­ness struck by The Night­mare Before Christ­mas. Years would pass, both in terms of get­ting the project into the right hands and in terms of the painstak­ing pro­duc­tion itself, before we could enjoy Jack Skelling­ton’s acci­den­tal jour­ney into Christ­mas Town and his well-mean­ing but ill-fat­ed attempt to take that hol­i­day for him­self.

But when we got to enjoy it, boy, did we ever enjoy it: in its near­ly two decades of exis­tence, The Night­mare Christ­mas has, with its dis­tinc­tive intri­cate dark-yet-light aes­thet­ics, askew humor, and sur­pris­ing intel­li­gence, spawned a vast inter­na­tion­al sub­cul­ture of enthu­si­asts. But you can still expe­ri­ence the core of every­thing the film is, and every­thing it has become in the zeit­geist, in Bur­ton’s orig­i­nal poem. So why not also see it ani­mat­ed and read aloud by Christo­pher Lee, as you can in the video above? “It was late one fall in Hal­loween Land, and the air had quite a chill,” the hor­ror vet­er­an intones. “Against the moon a skele­ton sat, alone upon a hill.” Night­mare Before Christ­mas fans know where this is going, but they’ll still want to hear the rest; though clear­ly the direct source of so much in their beloved movie, the poem looks on Skelling­ton and his mis­ad­ven­tures from a few angles they would­n’t quite expect.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Six Ear­ly Short Films By Tim Bur­ton

Tim Bur­ton: A Look Inside His Visu­al Imag­i­na­tion

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Albert Camus Talks About Nihilism & Adapting Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed for the Theatre, 1959

in Books, Literature, Theatre | October 5th, 2012

If there is no God, said Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky, life is mean­ing­less. And with­out mean­ing, men and women will “go stark, rav­ing mad.” For the deeply skep­ti­cal and agnos­tic Albert Camus, Dos­toyevsky’s books were a rev­e­la­tion. While he could­n’t agree with the Russ­ian nov­el­ist’s pre­scrip­tion of faith in an unseen deity, Camus felt Dos­toyevsky had con­vinc­ing­ly described the tragedy of man’s exis­tence in an indif­fer­ent uni­verse.

Camus first read Dos­toyevsky when he was 20 years old, and lat­er called it a “soul-shak­ing expe­ri­ence.” He was moved by the moral weight of Dos­toyevsky’s words. When the hor­rors of Stal­in’s purges came to light, Camus refused to look away. As he lat­er said, “The real 19th cen­tu­ry prophet was Dos­toyevsky, not Karl Marx.”

One of Dos­toyevsky’s works that affect­ed Camus the most was the apoc­a­lyp­tic 1872 nov­el The Pos­sessed, which in recent years has been trans­lat­ed as Demons or The Dev­ils. It’s a com­plex sto­ry of a con­flict­ed Russ­ian soci­ety as it descends into anar­chy and chaos with the spread of nihilism. The themes explored in The Pos­sessed were so absorb­ing to Camus that in 1959 he pub­lished a three-act stage adap­ta­tion, Les Pos­sédés. The play pre­miered on Jan­u­ary 28, 1959 at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris, and on that day he gave an inter­est­ing inter­view with Pierre Dumayet for French tele­vi­sion, which you can watch in the video above. In the pro­gram hand­ed out at the the­ater that night, Camus described the nov­el­’s impor­tance: “Les Pos­sédés is one of the four or five works that I rank above all oth­ers. In more ways than one, I can say that it has enriched and shaped me.”

You can down­load a copy of The Pos­sessed and oth­er works by Dos­to­evsky from our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks. Major works by the great Russ­ian author can also be found in our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion.

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