A Rare, Early Version of the King Arthur Legend Found & Translated


The sto­ries of King Arthur and his court took shape over a peri­od of a few hun­dred years; like most ancient leg­ends, they evolved through many iter­a­tions — not a lit­tle like the sto­ries in mod­ern-day com­ic books. “The medieval Arthuri­an leg­ends were a bit like the Mar­vel Uni­verse,” explains Lau­ra Camp­bell, a medieval lan­guage schol­ar at Durham Uni­ver­si­ty. “They con­sti­tut­ed a coher­ent fic­tion­al world that had cer­tain rules and a set of well-known char­ac­ters who appeared and inter­act­ed with each oth­er in mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent sto­ries.”

The first account of Arthur comes from a text in Latin called the His­to­ria Brit­ton­um, a com­pi­la­tion of sources assem­bled some­time in 829 or 830. Here, Arthur is men­tioned as a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure, “var­i­ous­ly described,” notes the British Library, “as a war lord (dux bel­lo­rum), as a Chris­t­ian sol­dier who car­ries either an image of the vir­gin or Christ’s cross, and as a leg­endary fig­ure asso­ci­at­ed with mirac­u­lous events.”

Mer­lin the magi­cian — the fig­ure we most asso­ciate with mirac­u­lous events in the Arthuri­an leg­ends — doesn’t show up for anoth­er two hun­dred years or so, in Geof­frey of Monmouth’s His­to­ry of the Kings of Britain. “After Geof­frey,” writes Kathryn Wal­ton at Medievalists.net, “Mer­lin becomes a fix­ture of the Arthuri­an leg­end and appears in all kinds of dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the sto­ry across the Mid­dle Ages.” One Mer­lin sto­ry that appears in many ver­sions involves a fig­ure called Nimue, Viviane, and oth­er names in French, Eng­lish, and Welsh. (She is some­times iden­ti­fied with the Lady of the Lake).

The Mer­lin and Vivien sto­ries have “sur­vived through­out the ages in a way that not many oth­er sto­ries have,” the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester’s Robyn Pol­lack writes, “because writ­ers have found remark­able ways to trans­form the char­ac­ters and the nar­ra­tive over the cen­turies.” Now, schol­ars at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol have announced, two years after its dis­cov­ery, the authen­ti­ca­tion of a frag­ment con­tain­ing yet anoth­er ver­sion of the sto­ry.

Found glued into the bind­ing of a late 15th cen­tu­ry book at the Bris­tol pub­lic library (one of the world’s old­est libraries), the sev­en frag­ments in Old French, dat­ed between 1250 and 1275, con­tain the “most chaste ver­sion” of the Mer­lin and Viviane leg­end, says Leah Teth­er, co-author of the new Eng­lish trans­la­tion and com­men­tary, The Bris­tol Mer­lin: Reveal­ing the Secrets of a Medieval Frag­ment. “The most sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence to be found in this par­tic­u­lar set of frag­ments is where Viviane, the enchantress, casts a spell.”

In oth­er ver­sions, her mag­ic inscribes three names on her groin, a spell that keeps Mer­lin away from the same area. In the re-dis­cov­ered frag­ment, which shows evi­dence of two scrib­al hands, Viviane engraves the three names on a ring, there­by pre­vent­ing Mer­lin from speak­ing to her. “With medieval texts there was no such thing as copy­right,” says Camp­bell, one of the pro­jec­t’s trans­la­tors and authors. “So, if you were a scribe copy­ing a man­u­script, there was noth­ing to stop you from just chang­ing things a bit.”

Part of a col­lec­tion of Arthuri­an sto­ries known as the Vul­gate Cycle, the frag­ment pro­vides fur­ther evi­dence of the Mer­lin char­ac­ter’s evo­lu­tion, and con­sid­er­able soft­en­ing, over time. At his first intro­duc­tion, Mer­lin was the lit­er­al son of Satan, a kind of antichrist sent to earth to wreak hav­oc. Over the cen­turies, he became much less sin­is­ter, trans­form­ing into the wise advi­sor of the ide­al Eng­lish king, Arthur, a char­ac­ter who did a fair bit of trans­form­ing him­self as his leg­end grew and changed.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

King Arthur in Film: Our Most Endur­ing Pop­u­lar Enter­tain­ment Fran­chise? Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #104

160,000 Pages of Glo­ri­ous Medieval Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized: Vis­it the Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis

Medieval Scribes Dis­cour­aged Theft of Man­u­scripts by Adding Curs­es Threat­en­ing Death & Damna­tion to Their Pages

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

Behold the Newly-Discovered Sketch by Vincent van Gogh Sketch, “Study for Worn Out” (1882)

Hav­ing been dead for more than 130 years now, Vin­cent van Gogh sel­dom comes up with a new piece of work. But when he does, you can be sure it will draw the art world’s atten­tion as few works by liv­ing artists could. Such has been the case with the new­ly dis­cov­ered Study for Worn Out, an 1882 sketch that recent­ly came into pos­ses­sion of the Van Gogh Muse­um, accord­ing to Margheri­ta Cole at My Mod­ern Met, “when a Dutch fam­i­ly request­ed that spe­cial­ists take a look at their unsigned draw­ing.” The fig­ure in the draw­ing strong­ly resem­bles the one in van Gogh’s 1890 paint­ing At Eter­ni­ty’s Gate. But it took the experts at the muse­um to deter­mine that the artist was none oth­er than van Gogh him­self.

“Today and yes­ter­day I drew two fig­ures of an old man with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands,” wrote the 29-year-old van Gogh to his broth­er in a let­ter from 1882. “What a fine sight an old work­ing man makes, in his patched bom­bazine suit with his bald head.” The imme­di­ate fruit of these labors was the pen­cil draw­ing Worn Out, for which “the artist employed one of his favorite mod­els, an elder­ly man named Adri­anus Jacobus Zuy­der­land who boast­ed dis­tinc­tive side­burns (and who appears in at least 40 of van Gogh’s sketch­es from this peri­od).” So writes Smithsonian.com’s Nora McGreevy, who adds that van Gogh revis­it­ed the work to adapt it as a paint­ing “just two months before his death” in an asy­lum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

“In draw­ings like these,”  says the Van Gogh Muse­um, “the artist not only dis­played his sym­pa­thy for the social­ly dis­ad­van­taged — no way infe­ri­or in his eyes to the well-to-do bour­geoisie — he active­ly called atten­tion to them too.” Anoth­er aim with Worn Out, adds McGreevy, was “to seek employ­ment at a British pub­li­ca­tion, but he either failed to fol­low through on this idea or had his work reject­ed.” This would have count­ed as just anoth­er seem­ing instance of fail­ure, the likes of which char­ac­ter­ized the painter’s short life. Lit­tle could he, his cor­re­spon­dents, or his mod­els have imag­ined that his works would one day become some of the most famous in the world — and cer­tain­ly not that one of his sketch­es would go on to be enshrined well over a cen­tu­ry lat­er, as it has been since last Fri­day at the muse­um that bears his name.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000+ Art­works by Vin­cent Van Gogh Dig­i­tized & Put Online by Dutch Muse­ums: Enter Van Gogh World­wide

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Rare Vin­cent van Gogh Paint­ing Goes on Pub­lic Dis­play for the First Time: Explore the 1887 Paint­ing Online

Expe­ri­ence the Van Gogh Muse­um in 4K Res­o­lu­tion: A Video Tour in Sev­en Parts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear the Brazilian Metal Band Singing in–and Trying to Save–Their Native Language of Tupi-Guarani

The indige­nous lan­guages spo­ken in Brazil num­ber around 170, a tes­ta­ment to the sur­vival of trib­al com­mu­ni­ties near­ly wiped out by colo­nial­ism and com­merce. Yet 40 of those lan­guages have few­er than 100 speak­ers, and many more are declin­ing rapid­ly. For lin­guists, “it’s a fight against time,” Luisi Destri writes at Pesquisa. Researchers esti­mate most, if not all, of these lan­guages could dis­ap­pear with­in 50 to 100 years, and some believe 30 per­cent might fade in the next 15 years.

“Knowl­edge is passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion,” says Luciano Stor­to, pro­fes­sor of lin­guis­tics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of São Paulo, “main­ly through nar­ra­tives told by the old­est and most expe­ri­enced to the community’s youngest mem­bers.” What hap­pens when those younger gen­er­a­tions are uproot­ed and leave home. When their elders die with­out pass­ing on their knowl­edge? (What hap­pens to lan­guage in gen­er­al as the lin­guis­tic gene pool shrinks?) These ques­tions weighed on Zhân­dio Aquino in 2004 when he found­ed Brazil­ian met­al band Aran­du Arakuaa.

Aquino has a degree in ped­a­gogy and his band has been invit­ed to play in schools and lec­ture at uni­ver­si­ties. But they do not use indige­nous instru­men­ta­tion and sing in an indige­nous Tupi-Guarani lan­guage as a pure­ly aca­d­e­m­ic exer­cise. Raised in the north­ern state of Tocan­tins and descend­ed from a Guarani-speak­ing tribe, the gui­tarist and singer says, “I [had] very close con­tact with indige­nous cul­ture because of my grand­moth­er and class­mates. When I [began] play­ing in bands, it just felt nat­ur­al to put my back­ground on it.”

When he moved to Brasil­ia in 2004, Aquino searched for like-mind­ed musi­cians and formed what may be the country’s first folk met­al band. While folk met­al as a cat­e­go­ry is hard­ly new (met­al has always incor­po­rat­ed ele­ments of folk music, from its ear­li­est incar­na­tions in Black Sab­bath and Led Zep­pelin to the bleak­est of Scan­di­na­vian black met­al bands), most folk met­al has been Euro­pean (and Pagan or Viking or Pirate), and some of it has allied, sad­ly, with the same fas­cist move­ments that threat­en indige­nous exis­tence.

While Aran­du Arakuaa — the name trans­lates to “cos­mos knowl­edge” — may be one of the first folk met­al bands in Brazil, it isn’t the only one. Along with bands like Aclla, Armah­da, and Tamuya Thrash Tribe, the band is part of a move­ment called the Lev­ante do Met­al Nati­vo, or Native Met­al Upris­ing, a col­lec­tion of musi­cians using native instru­ments, themes, and lan­guages — or all three in the case of Aran­du Arakuaa, who incor­po­rate mara­cas and the gui­tar-like vio­la caipi­ra.

How do acoustic indige­nous folk and the elec­tric crunch and growl of met­al come togeth­er? Hear for your­self in the videos here. Aquino knows Aran­du Arakuaa does­n’t win every­one over at first. “Peo­ple are not indif­fer­ent to our music,” he says. “They will love it or hate it. Most peo­ple think it’s strange at first and then we have to prove that we are good.”

While intel­li­gi­ble lyrics are hard­ly nec­es­sary in met­al, the lan­guage bar­ri­er may turn some lis­ten­ers away. But sub­ti­tled videos help. Aran­du Arakuaa might seem to have a dif­fer­ent focus than most met­al bands, but in songs like “Red Peo­ple,” we hear the rage and the resis­tance to war and depre­da­tion that bands like Black Sab­bath, Iron Maid­en, and Metal­li­ca — all influ­ences on the Brazil­ian band –have chan­neled in their music:

Some of us ran away, we hide in the for­est
We still fight
The red peo­ple still resist­ing, while there is land, while there is for­est
Every­thing became dif­fer­ent
Our spir­its are called demons
Each day less trees, less ani­mals, less his­to­ries, less songs…

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Native Lands: An Inter­ac­tive Map Reveals the Indige­nous Lands on Which Mod­ern Nations Were Built

The Hu, a New Break­through Band from Mon­go­lia, Plays Heavy Met­al with Tra­di­tion­al Folk Instru­ments and Throat Singing

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

Hobbes, Locke & Rousseau: An Animated Introduction to Their Political Theories

The phrase “state of nature” doesn’t get much use in phi­los­o­phy these days, but every polit­i­cal philoso­pher must grap­ple with the his­to­ry of the idea — a foun­da­tion­al con­ceit of mod­ern Euro-Amer­i­can thought in the work of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. These three “con­trac­tu­al­ist” philoso­phers, often grouped togeth­er in syl­labi and select­ed intro­duc­to­ry texts, relied on the notion that humans once exist­ed in an anar­chic state pre­dat­ing civ­il soci­ety, and that this state might be re-dis­cov­er­able in indige­nous ways of life in the Amer­i­c­as. In the three School of Life videos here, you can learn the basics about each of these philoso­phers and their polit­i­cal the­o­ries.

Unlike the Bib­li­cal gar­den of Eden, the state of nature was hard­ly per­fect, at least for Hobbes and Locke, who saw gov­ern­ment as a nec­es­sary medi­a­tor for com­pet­ing self-inter­ests. The kinds of gov­ern­ments they the­o­rized were vast­ly dif­fer­ent from each oth­er — one an absolute monar­chy and the oth­er a cap­i­tal­ist repub­lic. But in each theorist’s pseu­do-pre­his­to­ry, ear­ly humans gave up their inde­pen­dence by mak­ing social con­tracts for pro­tec­tion and mutu­al inter­est. These “con­tracts,” claimed both Hobbes and Locke, were the ori­gin of gov­ern­ments.

Hobbes was the first major thinker to elab­o­rate a ver­sion of this sto­ry, and his descrip­tion of life before gov­ern­ment is well-known: “soli­tary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Because of their painful exis­tence, humans would have sought out a pow­er­ful ruler to pro­tect them. They were right to do so, Hobbes believed, because only a king, as he argued in Leviathan, could pro­vide the pro­tec­tion peo­ple need. It was per­haps no coin­ci­dence that Hobbes worked for a king, his for­mer stu­dent, Charles II, restored to the throne after the Eng­lish Civ­il War that drove Hobbes to his author­i­tar­i­an views, sup­pos­ed­ly.

Despite his defense of divine pow­er, Hobbes stood accused of athe­ism and blas­phe­my for, among oth­er things, writ­ing a sec­u­lar jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for monar­chy that was not based on rev­e­la­tion or the divine right of kings. Like­wise, the first part of John Locke’s Two Trea­tis­es on Gov­ern­ment was a force­ful refu­ta­tion of divine right. But Locke’s ideas of tol­er­a­tion were far more threat­en­ing to the state, which is why he pub­lished anony­mous­ly. In his Sec­ond Trea­tise, he laid out his ver­sion of the state of nature and the social con­tract — ideas drawn in part from trav­el­ogues writ­ten by ear­ly colo­nial adven­tur­ers.

Locke’s the­o­ry of gov­ern­ment is also a the­o­ry of pri­vate prop­er­ty — the right­ful source of polit­i­cal pow­er, he believed — and who should own it. Decades lat­er, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote his most salient works, includ­ing a book titled The Social Con­tract, in oppo­si­tion to the inequal­i­ty of Hobbe­sian and Lock­ean states. Rousseau believed in human per­fectibil­i­ty and claimed that gov­ern­ments imposed a “gen­er­al will” on indi­vid­u­als, repress­ing an essen­tial­ly benev­o­lent state of nature in which resources were shared.

Rousseau’s rejoin­der to the myth of vicious sav­agery gave rise to anoth­er: that of the noble sav­age, an appeal­ing image for the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies of late-18th cen­tu­ry France and lat­er utopi­an social­ists tasked with the dif­fi­cult project of imag­in­ing an alter­na­tive to polit­i­cal hier­ar­chy. In social con­tract the­o­ry, the imag­ined way for­ward derives from an imag­ined pre­colo­nial past, more “moral fic­tion” than “his­tor­i­cal fact,” as schol­ar Richard Ashcraft argues. Learn more about the myth­i­cal state of nature and the pri­ma­ry the­o­rists of the social con­tract above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

Social and Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course 

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty 

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

When the Nobel Prize Committee Rejected The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien “Has Not Measured Up to Storytelling of the Highest Quality” (1961)

When J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books appeared in the mid-1950s, they were met with very mixed reviews, an unsur­pris­ing recep­tion giv­en that noth­ing like them had been writ­ten for adult read­ers since Edmund Spenser’s epic 16th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish poem The Faerie Queene, per­haps. At least, this was the con­tention of review­er Richard Hugh­es, who went on to write that “for width of imag­i­na­tion,” The Lord of the Rings “almost beg­gars par­al­lel.”

Scot­tish writer Nao­mi Mitchi­son did find a com­par­i­son: to Sir Thomas Mal­o­ry, author of the 15th cen­tu­ry Le Morte d’Arthur — hard­ly mis­placed, giv­en Tolkien’s day job as an Oxford don of Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, but not the sort of thing that passed for con­tem­po­rary writ­ing in the 1950s, notwith­stand­ing the seri­ous appre­ci­a­tion of writ­ers like W.H. Auden for Tolkien’s tril­o­gy. “No pre­vi­ous writer,” the poet remarked in a New York Times review, “has, to my knowl­edge, cre­at­ed an imag­i­nary world and a feigned his­to­ry in such detail.”

Auden did find fault with Tolkien’s poet­ry, a fact upon which crit­ic Edmund Wil­son seized in his scathing 1956 Lord of the Rings review. “Mr. Auden is appar­ent­ly quite insen­si­tive — through lack of inter­est in the oth­er depart­ment,” wrote Wil­son, “to the fact that Tolkien’s prose is just as bad. Prose and verse are on the same lev­el of pro­fes­so­r­i­al ama­teur­ish­ness.” Five years lat­er, the Nobel prize jury would make the same judge­ment when they exclud­ed Tolkien’s books from con­sid­er­a­tion. Tolkien’s prose, wrote jury mem­ber Anders Öster­ling, “has not in any way mea­sured up to sto­ry­telling of the high­est qual­i­ty.”

The note was dis­cov­ered recent­ly by Swedish jour­nal­ist Andreas Ekström, who delved into the Nobel archive for 1961 and found that “the jury passed over names includ­ing Lawrence Dur­rell, Robert Frost, Gra­ham Green, E.M. Forster, and Tolkien to come up with their even­tu­al win­ner, Yugosla­vian writer Ivo Andrić,” as Ali­son Flood reports at The Guardian. (The Nobel archives are sealed until 50 years after the year the award is giv­en.) Ekström has been read­ing through the archives “for the past five years or so,” he says, “and this was the first time I have seen Tolkien’s name among the sug­gest­ed can­di­dates.” His name appeared on the list chiefly through the machi­na­tions of his clos­est friend and chief sup­port­er, C.S. Lewis.

Lewis, “also of Oxford,” Wil­son sneered, “is able to top them all” in praise of Tolkien’s books. From the first appear­ance of his Mid­dle Earth fan­ta­sy in The Hob­bit, Lewis promised to “do all in my pow­er to secure for Tolkien’s great book the recog­ni­tion it deserves,” as he wrote in a 1953 let­ter to British pub­lish­er Stan­ley Unwin. In what might be con­sid­ered an uneth­i­cal pro­mo­tion of his friend’s work today, Lewis respond­ed tire­less­ly to crit­ics of the tril­o­gy, going so far, after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Two Tow­ers, to pen an essay on the sub­ject titled “The Dethrone­ment of Pow­er.” Here, Lewis explains the pro­lix qual­i­ty of Tolkien’s prose — that which crit­ics called “tedious” — as a nar­ra­tive neces­si­ty: “I do not think he could have done it any oth­er way.”

Tolkien’s biggest fan also urged read­ers to spend more time with the books and promised that the rewards would be great. In defense of the sec­ond work of the tril­o­gy, he con­clud­ed, “the book is too orig­i­nal and too opu­lent for any final judg­ment on a first read­ing. But we know at once that it has done things to us. We are not quite the same men. And though we must ration our­selves in our reread­ings, I have lit­tle doubt that the book will soon take its place among the indis­pens­ables.” And so has all of Tolkien’s work, becom­ing the lit­er­ary stan­dard by which high fan­ta­sy is mea­sured, with or with­out a Nobel prize.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Largest J.R.R. Tolkien Exhib­it in Gen­er­a­tions Is Com­ing to the U.S.: Orig­i­nal Draw­ings, Man­u­scripts, Maps & More

Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read from The Lord of the Rings and The Hob­bit in Vin­tage Record­ings from the Ear­ly 1950s

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lit­tle-Known and Hand-Illus­trat­ed Children’s Book, Mr. Bliss

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

Good with Words: A Series of Writing & Editing Courses from the University of Michigan

We’ve all used words just about as long as we’ve been alive. This obvi­ous truth, alas, has led too many of us into the delu­sion that we’re good with words: that we’re good speak­ers and, even more com­mon­ly and less jus­ti­fi­ably, that we’re good writ­ers. Yet any­one who’s seen or heard much of how words are used in the realms of busi­ness and acad­e­mia — to say noth­ing of per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence — does under­stand, on some lev­el, the true rar­i­ty of these skills. Now, those of us who rec­og­nize the need to shore up our own skills can do so through Good with Words, a spe­cial­iza­tion in writ­ing and edit­ing now offered by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan through online edu­ca­tion plat­form Cours­era.

Good with Words com­pris­es indi­vid­ual cours­es on word choice and word order, struc­ture and orga­ni­za­tion, draft­ing, and revis­ing. Here to teach them is Michi­gan Law School Clin­i­cal Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Law Patrick Bar­ry, of whose lec­tur­ing style you can get a taste in this Youtube playlist col­lect­ing clips of a writ­ing work­shop held for Michi­gan Law stu­dents in 2014.

In the clip above, he takes on the com­mon prob­lem of ver­bal clut­ter, work­ing from the def­i­n­i­tion orig­i­nal­ly laid out by On Writ­ing Well author William Zinss­er (whose ten writ­ing tips we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). In oth­er brief views, Bar­ry touch­es on every­thing from the pow­er of descrip­tion and sen­tence flow to facts ver­sus truths and zom­bie nouns.

In one work­shop clip, Bar­ry reminds his stu­dents that, in order to write good sen­tences, they must read good sen­tences. This point bears repeat­ing, and indeed Bar­ry repeats it in his Cours­era course, the rel­e­vant excerpt of which you can view here. “A young writer must read,” he quotes Colum McCann declar­ing in the book Let­ters to a Young Writer. “She must read and read and read. Adven­tur­ous­ly. Promis­cu­ous­ly. Unfail­ing­ly.” But tak­ing a course as well could­n’t hurt, espe­cial­ly when, as with Good with Words, it can be audit­ed for free. (Cours­era also offers a paid option for stu­dents who would like to receive a cer­tifi­cate upon com­plet­ing the spe­cial­iza­tion.) Bar­ry offers plen­ty of exam­ple sen­tences, good and less so, but the true writ­ers among us will nev­er stop look­ing for their own, even after Good with Words’ sug­gest­ed four-month dura­tion is over.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Writ­ing & Jour­nal­ism Cours­es

The Craft of Writ­ing Effec­tive­ly: Essen­tial Lessons from the Long­time Direc­tor of UChicago’s Writ­ing Pro­gram

10 Writ­ing Tips from Leg­endary Writ­ing Teacher William Zinss­er

Mar­tin Amis Explains His Method for Writ­ing Great Sen­tences

Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Man­u­scripts: Before the Word Proces­sor & White-Out

Google & Cours­era Launch Career Cer­tifi­cates That Pre­pare Stu­dents for Jobs in 6 Months: Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment and UX Design

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Death of Soap Operas (Is Greatly Exaggerated) — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #105

Writ­ers Sarahlyn Bruck and Kay­la Dreysse join your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er to dis­cuss how this once very pop­u­lar TV show type has simul­ta­ne­ous­ly become niche, yet has had a tremen­dous influ­ence on cur­rent pres­tige TV as well as real­i­ty shows. We talk about soaps’ sto­ry and struc­ture con­ven­tions, the demands on soap actors and writ­ers, and how chang­ing mar­ket forces and tech­nol­o­gy have affect­ed the genre. How much of a role does sex­ism play in the crit­i­cal dis­missal of soaps?

In addi­tion to the day­time soaps like Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and The Bold and the Beau­ti­ful, we touch on night­time soaps like Dal­las, teen soaps like Bev­er­ly Hills 90210, Down­ton Abbey, White Orchid, Break­ing Bad, 24, Gray’s Anato­my, and more.

Get Sarahlyn’s nov­el Day­time Dra­ma and fol­low her at @sarahlynbruck.

We all watched the 2020 doc­u­men­tary The Sto­ry of Soaps, which is avail­able on YouTube. A fun pod­cast Mark lis­tened to some of is A Trip Down Soap Lane.

Oth­er sources that inspired us includ­ed:

Sam­ple the Mup­pets’ fake soap opera that Mark’s intro ref­er­ences.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

Superstar Violinist Nigel Kennedy Reinvents Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”: Watch Two Dynamic Performances

Vio­lin­ists don’t often make the news these days, but when one does, you can be rea­son­ably assured either that a musi­cal con­tro­ver­sy is afoot, or that the vio­lin­ist in ques­tion is Nigel Kennedy. This time, both of those are the case: Kennedy, as The Guardian’s Dalya Alberge reports, “has pulled out of a con­cert at the Roy­al Albert Hall with only days to go after accus­ing the radio sta­tion Clas­sic FM of pre­vent­ing him from per­form­ing a Jimi Hen­drix trib­ute.” At issue is his intent to per­form a ver­sion of Hen­drix’s “Lit­tle Wing,” but even with its “Celtic-sound­ing melody,” that com­po­si­tion was ulti­mate­ly deemed “not suit­able” for the audi­ence.

It seems that Clas­sic FM’s man­age­ment would have pre­ferred Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons, of which Kennedy record­ed the world’s best-sell­ing ver­sion in 1989. That a clas­si­cal radio sta­tion famous for con­cen­trat­ing its pro­gram­ming on the “hits” and a clas­si­cal per­former famous for delib­er­ate­ly unortho­dox musi­cal turns would fail to see eye-to-eye should not, per­haps, come as a sur­prise.

But then, Kennedy has long dis­played a keen instinct for pub­lic­i­ty and a ten­den­cy to — well, one would say épa­ter les bour­geois, were Hen­drix not now regard­ed as so thor­ough­ly respectable in his own right. As Kennedy sees it, he was “one of the fore­most com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry, along with Stravin­sky and Duke Elling­ton.”

The gui­tarist’s exalt­ed sta­tus rests, Kennedy argues, on his hav­ing “brought all types of music togeth­er.” Even in a song like “Pur­ple Haze” — which you can see Kennedy rein­ter­pret with the Pol­ish Cham­ber Orches­tra in 2005, and again at the 2015 Thanks Jim Fes­ti­val in Wro­claw — musi­col­o­gists hear traces of both the Amer­i­can blues and the Mixoly­di­an mode, along with such uncon­ven­tion­al-for-1967 touch­es as the dimin­ished-fifth melod­ic inter­val, long known as the “dia­bo­lus in musi­ca” and the E7♯9 chord, now known as the “Hen­drix chord.” Much of the song only uses two oth­er chords, mak­ing “Pur­ple Haze” the rare three-chord, under-three-minute rock hit that con­tains more than enough sub­stance to inspire an uncon­ven­tion­al­ly mind­ed clas­si­cal musi­cian. But then, try telling that to a pro­gram direc­tor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Japan­ese Vio­lin­ist Cov­ers Eddie Van Halen’s “Erup­tion”: Met­al Meets Clas­si­cal Again

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” Shred­ded on the Ukulele

How Sci­ence Fic­tion Formed Jimi Hen­drix

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Explore Thousands of Free Vintage Cocktail Recipes Online (1705–1951)

Where do the hip­ster mixol­o­gists of TokyoMex­i­co City and Brook­lyn take their inspi­ra­tion?

If not from the Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle des Vins et Spir­itueux’ free col­lec­tion of dig­i­tized vin­tage cock­tail recipe books, per­haps they should start.

An ini­tia­tive of the Muse­um of Wine and Spir­its on the Ile de Ben­dor in South­east­ern France, the col­lec­tion is a boon to any­one with an inter­est in cock­tail cul­ture …dit­to design, illus­tra­tion, evolv­ing social mores…

1928’s Chee­rio, a Book of Punch­es and Cock­tails was writ­ten by Charles, for­mer­ly of Delmonico’s, tout­ed in the intro­duc­to­ry note as “one who has served drinks to Princes, Mag­nates and Sen­a­tors of many nations”. No doubt dis­cre­tion pre­vent­ed him from pub­lish­ing his sur­name.

Charles appar­ent­ly abid­ed by the the­o­ry that it’s five o’clock some­where, with drinks geared to var­i­ous times of day, from the moment you “stag­ger out of bed, grog­gy, grouchy and cross-tem­pered” (try a Charleston Brac­er or a Brandy Port Nog) to the mid­night hour when “insom­nia, bad dreams, dis­il­lu­sion­ment and despair” call for such reme­dies as a Cholera Cock­tail or an Egg Whiskey Fizz.

As not­ed on the cov­er, there’s a sec­tion devot­ed to favorite recipes of celebri­ties. These big­wigs’ names will like­ly mean noth­ing to you near­ly one hun­dred years lat­er, but their first per­son rem­i­nis­cences bring them roar­ing back to the­atri­cal, boozy life.

Here’s cel­e­brat­ed vaude­vil­lian Trix­ie Frig­an­za:

In that nau­ti­cal city of Venice, I first made the acquain­tance of a remark­ably deli­cious drink known as ‘Port and Star­board’. Pour one half part Grena­dine or rasp­ber­ry syrup in a cor­dial glass. Then on top of this pour one half por­tion of Creme de Men­the slow­ly so that the ingre­di­ents will not mix. Dear old Venice. 

Indeed.

Pre­sum­ably any cock­tail recipe in the EUVS’s vast col­lec­tion could be adapt­ed as a mock­tail, but Charles gives a delib­er­ate nod to Pro­hi­bi­tion with a sec­tion on alco­hol-free (and extreme­ly easy to pre­pare) Tem­per­ance Drinks.

Don’t expect a Shirley Tem­ple — the triple threat child star was but an infant when Chee­rio was pub­lished. Expand your options with a Sarato­ga Cool­er or an Oggle Nog­gle instead.

Before attempt­ing to recite the poem that opens 1949’s Bot­toms Up: A Guide to Pleas­ant Drink­ing, you may want to slam a cou­ple of Depth Bombs Cock­tails or a Mer­ry Wid­ow Cock­tail No. 1.

In an abstemious con­di­tion, there’s no way this dit­ty can be made to scan…or rhyme:

The Advent of the Cock­tail

A lone­ly, aban­doned jig­ger of gin
Sat on a table top. “Alas”, cried he,
“Who will join me?” And he tried a friend­ly grin.
Came a pret­ty youth, Mam’selle Ver­mouth,
Who was bored with just being winey.
Said she to Sir Gin: “You’d be ever so nice
With Olive and Ice. And so they were Mar­ti­ni.

The cock­tail recipes are sol­id, through­out, how­ev­er, as one might expect from a book that dou­bled as an ad for spon­sor First Avenue Wine and Liquor Cor­po­ra­tion — “for Liquor…Quicker.”

We’ve yet to try any­thing from the “wines in cook­ery” sec­tion — but sus­pect that stur­dy fare like Pota­to Soup and Baked Beans could help sop up some of the alco­hol, even if con­tains some hair of the dog…

Shak­ing in the 60’s author Eddie Clark’s pre­vi­ous titles include Shak­ing with Eddie, Shake Again with Eddie and 1954’s Prac­ti­cal Bar Man­age­ment. 

Clark, who served as head bar­tender at London’s Savoy Hotel, Berke­ley Hotel and Albany Club, gets in the swing­ing 60s spir­it, by ded­i­cat­ing this work to “all imbib­ing lovers.”

William S. McCall’s decid­ed­ly boozy illus­tra­tions of ele­phants, anthro­po­mor­phized cock­tail glass­es and scant­i­ly clad ladies con­tribute to the fes­tive atmos­phere, though you prob­a­bly won’t be sur­prise to learn that some of them have not aged well.

Shak­ing in the 60’s boasts dozens of straight for­ward cock­tail recipes (the Beat­nik the Bun­ny Hug and the Mon­key Hugall fea­ture Pern­od), a sur­pris­ing­ly seri­ous-mind­ed sec­tion on wine, and a cou­ple of pages devot­ed to non-alco­holic drinks.

If your child turns up their nose at Clark’s Remain Sober, serve ‘em an Alber­mar­le Pussy­cat.

Clark also draws on his pro­fes­sion­al exper­tise to help home bar­tenders get a grip on mea­sure­ment con­ver­sionssup­ply lists, and toasts.

So con­fi­dent is he in his abil­i­ty to help read­ers throw a tru­ly mem­o­rable par­ty, he includes a dishy par­ty log, that prob­a­bly should be kept under lock and key after it’s been filled out. We imag­ine it would pair well with the Morn­ing Mashie, anoth­er Pern­od-based con­coc­tion ded­i­cat­ed to “all those enter­ing the hang­over class.”

Delve into the Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle des Vins et Spir­itueux’ free col­lec­tion of dig­i­tized vin­tage cock­tail recipe books from the 1820s through the 1960s here.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Dig­i­tal Library for Bar­tenders: Vin­tage Cock­tail Books with Recipes Dat­ing Back to 1753

A New Dig­i­tized Menu Col­lec­tion Lets You Revis­it the Cui­sine from the “Gold­en Age of Rail­road Din­ing”

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Why Do People Hate Modern Architecture?: A Video Essay

This month brought the 20th anniver­sary of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, which prompt­ed peo­ple around the world to remem­ber all that was lost on that day. The fall­en Twin Tow­ers of Minoru Yamasak­i’s World Trade Cen­ter have only gained sym­bol­ic res­o­nance over the past two decades, despite hav­ing been unloved when they still stood. “They often appeared to New York­ers like a pair of mid­dle fin­gers — to good devel­op­ment, to good eco­nom­ics, to good taste,” writes Gothamist’s Hen­ry Stew­art. “They brought all, high and low, rich and poor, togeth­er to hate.” Some crit­ics of the World Trade Cen­ter made com­plaints root­ed in pol­i­tics, finance, and urban design; most just did­n’t like how the thing looked.

For 28 years, what the World Trade Cen­ter in gen­er­al and its Twin Tow­ers in par­tic­u­lar sym­bol­ized was all that the Amer­i­can pub­lic detest­ed about what it thought of as the out­landish scale, aes­thet­ic drea­ri­ness, and sheer inhu­man­i­ty of “mod­ern archi­tec­ture.” But as Bet­ty Chen of ARTic­u­la­tions points out in the video above, there’s mod­ern archi­tec­ture, and then there’s Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture.

“A tru­ly Mod­ernist design,” she says, “adheres to a strict set of for­mal rules that upholds Mod­ernism’s fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple: form fol­lows func­tion.” Such Mod­ernists as Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Cor­busier sub­scribed to the notion that “archi­tec­tur­al design should be dis­as­so­ci­at­ed from his­toric ref­er­ence, be free of unnec­es­sary orna­men­ta­tion, and be sim­pli­fied to the essen­tials of func­tion.”

As ver­sions of these prin­ci­ples for rebuild­ing a new post­war civ­i­liza­tion — vul­gar­ized ver­sions, some might say — caught on in the mid­dle of the 20th cen­tu­ry, cities around the world set enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly about putting up “emp­ty box­es of noth­ing­ness.” Or so argued Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture’s detrac­tors, who gained the cul­tur­al upper hand short­ly there­after. “If the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry is con­sid­ered to be the age of Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture,” says Chen, “then the lat­ter half of the cen­tu­ry can be defined by a con­tin­u­al, unre­lent­ing assault on Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture.” That assault includ­ed the demo­li­tion of anoth­er of Yamasak­i’s mid-cen­tu­ry projects, the Pruitt-Igoe hous­ing com­plex, which began on March 16, 1972. Though car­ried out with­out mur­der­ous intent, it did involve a notable death: the death, as archi­tect Charles Jencks famous­ly declared, of archi­tec­tur­al Mod­ernism itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

The World Accord­ing to Le Cor­busier: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Mod­ern of All Archi­tects

How the Rad­i­cal Build­ings of the Bauhaus Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture: A Short Intro­duc­tion

A Quick Ani­mat­ed Tour of Icon­ic Mod­ernist Hous­es

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

1,300 Pho­tos of Famous Mod­ern Amer­i­can Homes Now Online, Cour­tesy of USC

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Cartoonist Lynda Barry Teaches You How to Make a Visual Daily Diary

Car­toon­ist and edu­ca­tor Lyn­da Barry is a favorite here at Open Cul­ture.

We’re always excit­ed to share exer­cis­es from her books and intel on her class­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, but noth­ing beats the warmth and humor of her live instruc­tion… even when it’s deliv­ered vir­tu­al­ly.

Last week, she took to Insta­gram to inform the four­teen lucky U of W stu­dents enrolled in her fall Mak­ing Comics class to pre­pare for a new way of keep­ing their required dai­ly diaries, using a tech­nique she calls “sis­ter images.”

Those of us at home can play along, above.

Grab a com­po­si­tion book, or two blank sheets of paper, and a black felt tip pen. (Even­tu­al­ly you’ll need a timer, but not today.)

Rather than describe the ten-minute writ­ing and draw­ing exer­cise in advance, we encour­age you to jump right in, con­fi­dent that teacher Bar­ry would approve.

There are plen­ty of resources out there for those who want to learn how to out­linescript, and sto­ry­board comics.

Bar­ry aims to tap a deep­er vein of cre­ativ­i­ty with exer­cis­es that help stu­dents embrace the unknown.

The sis­ter diary’s pur­pose, she says, is to “let our hands lead the way in terms of fig­ur­ing out our sto­ries.”

Whether or not you seek to make comics, it’s an engag­ing way to doc­u­ment your life. You can also imple­ment the sis­ter diary tech­nique for dis­cov­er­ing more about char­ac­ters in your fic­tion­al work.

You’ll also pick up some bonus tips on draw­ing back­grounds, using all caps, allot­ting enough space with­in a pan­el for full body ren­der­ings, and stay­ing in the moment should you find your­self at a tem­po­rary loss.


Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Barry’s Two-Hour Draw­ing Work­shop

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Teach­es You How to Draw

Take a Road Trip Across Amer­i­ca with Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry in the 90s Doc­u­men­tary, Grandma’s Way Out Par­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday


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