Hear Allen Ginsberg Teach “Literary History of the Beats”: Audio Lectures from His 1977 & 1981 Naropa Courses

in Poetry | September 22nd, 2014

Image by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It’s not often one gets the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take a course on a major lit­er­ary move­ment taught by a found­ing mem­ber of that move­ment. Imag­ine sit­ting in on lec­tures on Roman­tic poet­ry taught by John Keats or William Wordsworth? It may be the case, how­ev­er, that the Roman­tic poets would have a hard time of it in the cut­throat world of pro­fes­sion­al­ized aca­d­e­m­ic poet­ry, a world Allen Gins­berg helped cre­ate in 1974 with the found­ing of his Jack Ker­ouac School of Dis­em­bod­ied Poet­ics at Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty, almost twen­ty years after he brought hip mod­ern poet­ry to the mass­es with the wild­ly pop­u­lar City Lights paper­back edi­tion of Howl and Oth­er Poems. (Here you can lis­ten to the first record­ing of Gins­berg read­ing that famous poem.)

Dis­missed by the mod­ernist old guard as “vac­u­ous self-pro­mot­ers” in their time, the Beats’ leg­end often por­trays them as paragons of artis­tic integri­ty. There’s no rea­son they couldn’t be both in some sense. The anti-author­i­tar­i­an pranks and pos­es gained them noto­ri­ety for mat­ters of style, and their ded­i­ca­tion to rad­i­cal­iz­ing Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture pro­vid­ed the sub­stance.

As the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets writes, “there is a clear work eth­ic that rever­ber­ates in their lives and in their writ­ing, and in the eyes of many read­ers and crit­ics, the Beats fos­tered a sus­tained, authen­tic, and com­pelling attack on post-World War II Amer­i­can Cul­ture,” reject­ing both “the stul­ti­fy­ing mate­ri­al­ism and con­formism of the cold war era” and “the high­ly wrought and con­trolled aes­thet­ic of mod­ernist stal­warts.”

Thanks to the archives at Naropa, we can hear Gins­berg him­self lec­ture on both the style and sub­stance of Beat lit­er­ary cul­ture in a series of lec­tures he deliv­ered in 1977 for his sum­mer course called “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats.” We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the exten­sive “spe­cial­ized read­ing list” Gins­berg hand­ed stu­dents for that class, which he titled “Celes­tial Home­work.” In the first series of lectures—divided in 18 parts in the archive—hear him dis­cuss the list. The Naropa archive describes the first lec­ture as div­ing “right into the 40’s lives of Gins­berg, Ker­ouac, Bur­roughs, Her­bert Huncke, and oth­ers liv­ing in NYC at that time. From con­sum­ing Ben­zadrine inhalers to the dis­cov­ery of the void, Gins­berg’s account and analy­ses are enter­tain­ing and live­ly as well as insight­ful.” Hear part one of that talk at the top of the post, and part two just above.

Gins­berg focus­es on the 40s as the peri­od of Beat ori­gins in his 1977 class. Anoth­er sec­tion of the course—taught in 1981—cov­ers the 50s, with top­ics such as “Bur­roughs’ rec­om­mend­ed read­ing lists,” “Bur­roughs on drugs and soci­ety,” and “the found­ing of the study of seman­tics.” Hear the first lec­ture in that series just above.

Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Image above was tak­en by Marce­lo Noah.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

“Expan­sive Poet­ics” by Allen Gins­berg: A Free Course from 1981

13 Lec­tures from Allen Ginsberg’s “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” Course (1975)

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

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

Watch Frank Zappa Play Michael Nesmith on The Monkees (1967)

in Comedy, Music, Television | September 18th, 2014

In Decem­ber 1967, The Mon­kees blew their audi­ence’s minds by host­ing Frank Zap­pa, “par­tic­i­pant in and per­haps even leader of” the Moth­ers Of Inven­tion.

Or did they?

The tidal wave of affec­tion that com­pris­es twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Mon­kees mania makes us for­get that chil­dren were the pri­ma­ry audi­ence for The Mon­kees’ tit­u­lar sit­com. (One might also say that The Mon­kees were the sitcom’s tit­u­lar band.)

But even if the kids at home weren’t suf­fi­cient­ly con­ver­sant in the musi­cal under­ground to iden­ti­fy the spe­cial guest star of the episode, “The Mon­kees Blow Their Minds,” we are.

It’s a joy to see Zap­pa and The Mon­kees’ supreme­ly laid back Michael Nesmith (he audi­tioned for the show with his laun­dry bag in tow) imper­son­at­ing each oth­er.

Zappa’s idea, appar­ent­ly. He’s in com­plete con­trol of the gim­mick from the get go, where­as Nesmith strug­gles to keep their names straight and his pros­thet­ic nose in place before get­ting up to speed.

It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that it’s not Frank, but Nesmith play­ing Frank who accus­es The Mon­kees’ music of being banal and insipid.

Zap­pa him­self was a great sup­port­er of The Mon­kees. “When peo­ple hat­ed us more than any­thing, he said kind things about us,” Nesmith recalled in Bar­ry Miles’ Zap­pa biog­ra­phy. Zap­pa attempt­ed to teach Nesmith how to play lead gui­tar, and offered drum­mer Micky Dolenz a post-Mon­kees gig with The Moth­ers of Inven­tion.

Their mutu­al warmth makes lines like “You’re the pop­u­lar musi­cian! I’m dirty gross and ugly” palat­able. It put me in mind of come­di­an Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis’ Between Two Ferns, and count­less oth­er loose­ly rehearsed web series.

After a cou­ple of min­utes, Nesmith gets his hat back to con­duct as Zap­pa smash­es up a car to the tune of the Moth­er’s Of Inven­tion’s “Moth­er Peo­ple.”

Watch the full episode here, or if pressed for time, per­haps just Zappa’s cameo in the Mon­kees’ movie Head, as a stu­dio lot bull wran­gler who coun­sels lead singer Davy Jones on his career.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

In One of his Final Inter­views, Frank Zap­pa Pro­nounces Him­self “Total­ly Unre­pen­tant”

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

The Avant-Garde Project: An Archive of Music by 200 Cutting-Edge Composers, Including Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Cage & More

in Music | September 17th, 2014

Every sphere of record­ed music, from late-1960s folk to Philadel­phia hip-hop to Japan­ese jazz (a per­son­al pur­suit of mine), has its crate-dig­gers, those hap­py to flip through hun­dreds — nay, hun­dreds of thou­sands — of obscure, for­got­ten vinyl albums in search of their sub­gen­re’s even obscur­er, more for­got­ten gems. This holds espe­cial­ly true, if not in num­ber than in avid­i­ty, for enthu­si­asts of the 20th-cen­tu­ry clas­si­cal-exper­i­men­tal-elec­troa­coustic tra­di­tion that The Avant-Garde Project takes as its preser­va­tion man­date. The site offers mate­r­i­al “dig­i­tized from LPs whose music has in most cas­es nev­er been released on CD, and so is effec­tive­ly inac­ces­si­ble to the vast major­i­ty of music lis­ten­ers today.” To the best of the Archive’s knowl­edge, the LPs are all cur­rent­ly out of print, and all the music is extract­ed with an ana­log rig that ranks as “near state-of-the-art, pro­duc­ing almost none of the track­ing dis­tor­tion or sur­face noise nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with LPs.”

The Avant-Garde Pro­jec­t’s efforts, the archive of which you can browse here (or alpha­bet­i­cal­ly by com­pos­er, or through choice sam­plers, or through the “AGP top twen­ty,” or through the founder’s per­son­al favorites), has borne a great deal of fruit so far, espe­cial­ly from such music-his­to­ry class favorites as Arnold Schoen­berg, whose String Trio per­formed by the Los Ange­les String Trio you can hear above, and Igor Stravin­sky, whose Sym­pho­ny of Psalms you’ll find below. Every­thing in the Avant-Garde Pro­jec­t’s archive comes down­load­able as tor­rents of Free Loss­less Audio Codec (FLAC) files. This audio­phile’s com­pres­sion for­mat of choice requires a bit of spe­cial but eas­i­ly obtained soft­ware to play or burn to CDs, all of which you can get explained here (with even more infor­ma­tion here). Those who’d like to keep it sim­ple (if not quite as aural­ly pris­tine) can lis­ten through a small­er ver­sion of the archive at Ubuweb. Either way, you’ll enjoy all the artis­tic rich­ness of rare 20th-cen­tu­ry clas­si­cal-exper­i­men­tal-elec­troa­coustic music with none of the dig­ging.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

Vi Hart Uses Her Video Mag­ic to Demys­ti­fy Stravin­sky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Com­po­si­tions

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Visu­al­ized in a Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion for Its 100th Anniver­sary

Inter­views with Schoen­berg and Bartók

Hear Theodor Adorno’s Avant-Garde Musi­cal Com­po­si­tions

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear David Foster Wallace Read His Own Essays & Short Fiction on the 6th Anniversary of His Death,

in Literature | September 12th, 2014

Yes­ter­day, of course, marked the 13th anniver­sary of the hor­ri­ble attacks on the Twin Tow­ers and the Pen­ta­gon. Today marks the 6th anniver­sary of David Fos­ter Wallace’s death by sui­cide. The two events are relat­ed not only by prox­im­i­ty, and not because they are com­pa­ra­ble tragedies, but because Wallace’s work, in par­tic­u­lar his 1993 essay “E Unibus Plu­ram: Tele­vi­sion and U.S. Fic­tion,” has become such a touch­stone for the dis­course of “post-irony” or “the new sin­cer­i­ty” since 9/11, when Van­i­ty Fair edi­tor Gray­don Carter and oth­ers pro­claimed the “end of irony.” But the cul­tur­al con­scious­ness has shift­ed mea­sur­ably since those heady days of fer­vent affir­ma­tion. In a recon­sid­er­a­tion of Wal­lace on irony, Bradley War­shauer writes, “he wasn’t wrong—but he is obso­lete.” Our nation­al discourse—as much as it can be defined in broad terms—may have, some argue, swung fur­ther toward sin­cer­i­ty and sen­ti­men­tal rev­er­ence than Wal­lace would have liked. And he may have been much more an iro­nist than he liked to believe.

Wal­lace, writes War­shauer, was “a wannabe sen­ti­men­tal­ist who was too absurd­ly tal­ent­ed and prob­a­bly too obsessed with the arti­fi­cial­i­ty of fic­tion to be the sort of ‘anti-rebel’ that he him­self talked about.” While he may have roman­ti­cized the high-mind­ed fig­ure who “stands for” things in uncom­pli­cat­ed ways, Wal­lace him­self was com­pli­cat­ed, prick­ly, and just too hyper-aware—of him­self and others—to be seduced by easy sen­ti­ment, what Som­er­set Maugh­am called “unearned emo­tion.” While his work pulls us still toward deep­er lev­els of analy­sis, toward con­tem­pla­tion and cri­tique, toward seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tions of val­ue, it does not do so by eschew­ing irony. In the descrip­tive force of his prose are the eva­sions, par­ries, asides, cir­cum­lo­cu­tions, and jar­ring­ly odd jux­ta­po­si­tions of the iro­nist, the satirist, and—what might be the same thing—the moral­ist. “The inher­ent contradiction”—the irony, if you will—of Wallace’s stance, Washauer argues, cit­ing 1999’s Brief Inter­views With Hideous Men, is that he him­self “was addict­ed to iron­ic detach­ment.” But, of course, it’s not so sim­ple as that.

Today we bring you sev­er­al read­ings by David Fos­ter Wal­lace of his own work. We begin at the top with “Death is Not the End” from Brief Inter­views, that col­lec­tion of “weird metafic­tion” that couch­es raw and painful con­fes­sions in lay­ers of irony. Below it, from that same col­lec­tion, we have “Sui­cide as a Sort of Present,” a piece that, in hind­sight, offers its own poten­tial mor­bid­ly iron­ic read­ings. Just above, hear Wal­lace read the short sto­ry “Incar­na­tions of Burned Chil­dren” from the 2005 col­lec­tion Obliv­ion, full of sto­ries Wyatt Mason described as “tight­ly withhold[ing]… hid­ing on high shelves the keys that unlock their trea­sures.” Replete with tiny mech­a­nisms that can take many care­ful read­ings to parse, these sto­ries are fine-art stud­ies in iron­ic lan­guage and sit­u­a­tions.

One may class David Fos­ter Wal­lace as a mas­ter iro­nist, despite his crit­i­cal stance against its overuse, but this reduces the full range of his mas­tery to one mode among so many. His work embraced the voice of irony and the voice of sin­cer­i­ty as equal­ly valid rhetor­i­cal means, alter­nat­ing between the two in what A.O. Scott once called a “feed­back loop.” “The View From Mrs. Thompson’s,” the essay Wal­lace reads above from 2005’s essay col­lec­tion Con­sid­er the Lob­ster, is a piece he wrote just days after 9/11. Writ­ten quick­ly as a com­mis­sion from Rolling Stone, the essay records his tren­chant obser­va­tions of the reac­tions in Bloom­ing­ton, Illi­nois between Sep­tem­ber 11–13. It’s a piece that show­cas­es the ten­sion between Wallace’s sin­cere desire for imme­di­a­cy and his almost uncon­trol­lable impulse to amused detach­ment. And hear­ing Wal­lace com­mem­o­rate the trag­ic events we remem­bered yes­ter­day high­lights the sad irony of memo­ri­al­iz­ing his own death today.

You can hear many more of David Fos­ter Wallace’s read­ings and inter­views at the David Fos­ter Wal­lace Audio Project, and be sure to stop by our siz­able col­lec­tion, 30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

Read Two Poems David Fos­ter Wal­lace Wrote Dur­ing His Ele­men­tary School Days

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

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

in Writing | September 3rd, 2014

Image by wakari­m­a­sita, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve brought you a wealth of Haru­ki Muraka­mi late­ly, and for good rea­son. Not only does the wild­ly pop­u­lar Japan­ese nov­el­ist have a new nov­el out, he also has an upcom­ing novel­la, The Strange Library, a 96-page sto­ry about, well, a “strange trip to the library,” due from Knopf on Decem­ber 2nd. Admirably pro­lif­ic, writ­ing rough­ly 3–4 nov­els per decade since his first in 1979, and a few col­lec­tions of sto­ries and essays, the noto­ri­ous­ly shy Muraka­mi took to writ­ing some­what late in life at age 30, and to run­ning even lat­er at 33. The lat­ter pur­suit gave him a great deal of mate­r­i­al for his essay col­lec­tion What I Talk About When I Talk About Run­ning.

Like oth­er authors who write non­fic­tion pieces on their avocations—Jamaica Kin­caid on gar­den­ing, Hem­ing­way on hunt­ing—in his run­ning book, Muraka­mi can’t help but turn his pas­sion for fit­ness into a metaphor for read­ing and writ­ing. Giv­en his nat­ur­al ret­i­cence, he begins, with a dis­claimer: “a gen­tle­man shouldn’t go on and on about what he does to stay fit.”

Nev­er­the­less, the ultra-marathon­er can’t help but indulge. At one point, the writ­ing on run­ning turns to writ­ing on writ­ing, and a sum­ma­ry of the qual­i­ties the good nov­el­ist must have. Read his thoughts con­densed below.

Tal­ent:

Like Flan­nery O’Connor, whose thoughts on the MFA degree we quot­ed a few days ago, Muraka­mi frames tal­ent as an attribute that can’t be taught or bought. For the writer, tal­ent is “more of a pre­req­ui­site than a nec­es­sary qual­i­ty […] No mat­ter how much enthu­si­asm and effort you put into writ­ing, if you total­ly lack lit­er­ary tal­ent you can for­get about being a nov­el­ist.” One feels this should go with­out say­ing, but for what­ev­er rea­son, it seems that more peo­ple enter­tain the idea of becom­ing a writer longer in life than that of becom­ing, say, a musi­cian or a painter. Maybe this is why Muraka­mi then makes an anal­o­gy to music as a pur­suit in which, ide­al­ly, nat­ur­al apti­tude is indis­pens­able. But in men­tion­ing two of his favorite com­posers, Schu­bert and Mozart, Muraka­mi makes the point that these are exam­ples of artists “whose genius went out in a blaze of glo­ry.” He is quick to point out that “for the vast major­i­ty of us this isn’t the mod­el we fol­low.” The nov­el­ist as run­ner, we might say, should train for a career run­ning marathons.

Focus:

Muraka­mi-as-run­ner, an Econ­o­mist review mus­es, is “if not a mad­man […] a very focused man.” One would have to be to fin­ish 27 marathons, includ­ing a 62-mile mon­ster in Hokkai­do, and sev­er­al triathlons. The qual­i­ties that serve him in his phys­i­cal dis­ci­pline are also those he iden­ti­fies as nec­es­sary in the nov­el­ist. Muraka­mi defines focus as “the abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate all your lim­it­ed tal­ents on whatever’s crit­i­cal at the moment. With­out that you can’t accom­plish any­thing of val­ue.” He “gen­er­al­ly concentrate[s] on work for three or four hours every morn­ing. I sit at my desk and focus total­ly on what I’m writ­ing. I don’t see any­thing else, I don’t think about any­thing else.” Murakami’s run­ning mem­oir may con­tain “long descrip­tions of train­ing sched­ules and diet,” but when it comes to writ­ing, there seems to be one over­whelm­ing­ly sin­gu­lar way to go about things. Just sit down and do it.

Endurance:

Con­sid­er your­self more of a sprint­er? Maybe stick to short sto­ries. “If you con­cen­trate on writ­ing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this,” Muraka­mi chides, “you’re not going to be able to write a long work. What’s need­ed of the writer of fiction—at least one who hopes to write a novel—is the ener­gy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, or two years. For­tu­nate­ly, these two disciplines—focus and endurance—are dif­fer­ent from tal­ent, since they can be acquired and sharp­ened through train­ing.” The act of acqui­si­tion, Muraka­mi writes, “is a lot like the train­ing of mus­cles I wrote of a moment ago. [It] involves the same process as jog­ging every day to strength­en your mus­cles and devel­op a runner’s physique.”

Clear­ly there’s lit­tle room for spac­ing out wait­ing around for inspi­ra­tion. To extend the anal­o­gy, this might be likened to the rare desire one gets to try a new, chal­leng­ing rou­tine, an impulse that wanes pret­ty quick­ly once things get painful and dull. But in writ­ing, Muraka­mi sug­gests, some­times it’s enough just to show up. He refers to the dis­ci­pline of Ray­mond Chan­dler, who “made sure he sat down at his desk every sin­gle day and con­cen­trat­ed” even if he wrote not a word. It’s a fit­ting image for what Muraka­mi describes as the writer’s need to “trans­mit the object of your focus to your entire body.” I won­der if it’s not going too far to claim that this sen­tence betrays the real sub­ject of Murakami’s run­ning book.

via 99u

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

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

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

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

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

in Photography | August 27th, 2014

Polaroid pho­tog­ra­phy, which looked about to fade out for­ev­er for a while there, has in recent years made a come­back. Chalk it up, if you must, to a grand revalu­ing wave of the phys­i­cal­ly ana­log in our age of dig­i­tal ephemer­al­i­ty — the same tide on which enthu­si­asm for vinyl, zines, and even VHS tapes has risen again. But we must acknowl­edge that Andy Warhol, in a sense, got there first. It hard­ly counts as the only mat­ter on which the mas­ter­mind of the Fac­to­ry showed pre­science; take, for instance, his quip about every­one in the future get­ting fif­teen min­utes of fame, a pre­dic­tion which, as Jonathan Lethem put it, has in our present hard­ened into “drab pro­ces­sion­al.” Some of these very 21st-cen­tu­ry peo­ple now enjoy­ing (or endur­ing) their own fif­teen min­utes — most of them pre­sum­ably not even born with­in Warhol’s life­time — sure­ly keep a Polaroid cam­era at hand. They acknowl­edge, on some lev­el, what the con­sum­mate 20th-cen­tu­ry “pop artist” sensed: that the osten­si­bly cheap and dis­pos­able, includ­ing self-devel­op­ing film used for untrained vaca­tion snap­shots and mere ref­er­ence mate­r­i­al for “real” works of art, has its own kind of per­ma­nence.

Here we have a selec­tion of Warhol’s own works of Polaroid pho­tog­ra­phy, a medi­um he took up around 1970 and used to fur­ther his inter­est in por­trai­ture. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley Art Muse­um, just one of the insti­tu­tions to put them on dis­play, says that “these images often served as the basis for his com­mis­sioned por­traits, silk-screen paint­ings, draw­ings, and prints.” The wide sub­set they showed “reveals that super­stars were not the only fig­ures that Warhol pho­tographed with his Polaroid Big Shot, the dis­tinct plas­tic cam­era he used for the major­i­ty of his sit­tings. Over half of those who sat for him were lit­tle known or remain uniden­ti­fied.” Whether of Mick Jag­ger, Yoko Ono, O.J. Simp­son, Deb­bie Har­ry, him­self, a row of bananas, or some­one faint­ly rec­og­niz­able yet ulti­mate­ly unnam­able, each of Warhol’s Polaroids remains “ful­ly iden­ti­fied with the art­work that ulti­mate­ly grew out of it; the face depict­ed becomes a kind of sig­ni­fi­er for larg­er cul­tur­al con­cepts of beau­ty, pow­er, and worth.”

You can see at least 85 of Warhol’s polaroid por­traits at a site called These Amer­i­cans.

Now what would Warhol, a known ear­ly enthu­si­ast of com­put­er art, have said about the arrival of Insta­gram fil­ters meant to make our instan­ta­neous, high-res­o­lu­tion dig­i­tal pho­tos look like Polaroids again?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

Andy Warhol’s Lost Com­put­er Art Found on 30-Year-Old Flop­py Disks

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Watch Lau­rence Olivi­er, Liv Ull­mann and Christo­pher Plummer’s Clas­sic Polaroid Ads

Ital­ian Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mau­r­izio Gal­im­ber­ti Cre­ates Cubist Polaroid Col­lages of Artists & Celebri­ties

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

William S. Burroughs Sends Anti-Fan Letter to In Cold Blood Author Truman Capote: “You Have Sold Out Your Talent”

in Letters, Literature | August 26th, 2014

On July 23, 1970, William S. Bur­roughs wrote Tru­man Capote a let­ter. “This is not a fan let­ter in the usu­al sense — unless you refer to ceil­ing fans in Pana­ma.” Instead, Bur­rough­s’s mis­sive is a poi­son pen let­ter, blis­ter­ing even by the high stan­dards of New York lit­er­ary cir­cles. Of course, Capote, author of Break­fast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, was no stranger to feuds. He often trad­ed wit­ty, ven­omous barbs with the likes of Gore Vidal and Nor­man Mail­er. Yet Burroughs’s let­ter comes off as much dark­er and, with the ben­e­fit of hind­sight, much more unnerv­ing.

As Thom Robin­son thor­ough­ly details in his arti­cle for Real­i­tyS­tu­dio, the two had a long and com­pli­cat­ed past filled with pro­fes­sion­al jeal­ousy and per­son­al dis­dain. They first met when Bur­roughs was a strug­gling writer and Capote was work­ing as a copy boy at The New York­er in the ear­ly 1940s. Bur­roughs was no doubt ran­kled by Capote’s mete­oric rise to lit­er­ary star­dom just after the war, thanks to some high­ly-praised short sto­ries that appeared in Harper’s Bazaar and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. Bur­roughs and his fel­low Beat writ­ers ridiculed Capote in their pri­vate let­ters. In a let­ter to Allen Gins­berg, Jack Ker­ouac described Capote’s work as “full of bull on every page.” When Kerouac’s On the Road was pub­lished, Capote dis­missed the book by say­ing, “[it] isn’t writ­ing at all — it’s typ­ing.”

When Naked Lunch was final­ly released in Amer­i­ca in 1962, three years after its pub­li­ca­tion in France, William S. Bur­roughs became a lit­er­ary icon. (Hear Bur­roughs read Naked Lunch here.) At the same time, Capote was start­ing to devel­op a genre he called cre­ative non-fic­tion, which would even­tu­al­ly cul­mi­nate with In Cold Blood. When talk­ing about his book in a 1968 inter­view with Play­boy, Capote com­pared Burroughs’s writ­ing with his own. In Cold Blood “is real­ly the most avant-garde form of writ­ing exis­tent today […] cre­ative fic­tion writ­ing has gone as far as it can exper­i­men­tal­ly. […] Of course we have writ­ers like William Bur­roughs, whose brand of ver­bal sur­face triv­ia is amus­ing and occa­sion­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, but there’s no base for mov­ing for­ward in that area.” At anoth­er point, Capote quipped, “Nor­man Mail­er thinks [he] is a genius, which I think is ludi­crous beyond words. I don’t think William Bur­roughs has an ounce of tal­ent.”

So when Bur­roughs put pen to paper in 1970, he already had plen­ty of rea­sons to dis­like Capote. In the let­ter, though, Bur­rough­s’s ire was specif­i­cal­ly direct­ed at Capote’s dubi­ous ethics in writ­ing In Cold Blood, a book that Bur­roughs described as “a dull unread­able book which could have been writ­ten by any staff writer on The New York­er.” (Note: You can read an ear­ly ver­sion of In Cold Blood in The New York­er itself.)

The spine of In Cold Blood is the first-hand account of con­vict­ed killers Dick Hick­ock and Per­ry Smith. Capote spent hours inter­view­ing them and in the process grew close to them, espe­cial­ly Smith. In spite of this, Capote did lit­tle to help their defense. (This is the sub­ject of not one but two movies, by the way, Capote and Infa­mous.) Crit­ic Ken­neth Tynan, in a scathing review for The Observ­er, cried foul. “For the first time an influ­en­tial writer of the front rank has been placed in a posi­tion of priv­i­leged inti­ma­cy with crim­i­nals about to die, and–in my view–done less than he might have to save them,” he wrote. “An attempt to help (by sup­ply­ing new psy­chi­atric tes­ti­mo­ny) might eas­i­ly have failed: what one miss­es is any sign that it was ever con­tem­plat­ed.” The fact of the mat­ter was that the book worked bet­ter if they died. Though Capote’s biog­ra­ph­er Ger­ald Clarke argued that there was lit­tle that the writer could have done to save the two, he con­ced­ed that “Tynan was right when he sug­gest­ed that Tru­man did not want to save them.”

Seem­ing­ly repulsed by Capote’s entire project, Bur­roughs took the Tynan’s cri­tique one step fur­ther. He argued that Capote not only sold out his sub­jects but served as a mouth­piece for those in pow­er.

I feel that [Tynan] was much too lenient. Your recent appear­ance before a sen­a­to­r­i­al com­mit­tee on which occa­sion you spoke in favor of con­tin­u­ing the present police prac­tice of extract­ing con­fes­sions by deny­ing the accused the right of con­sult­ing con­sul pri­or to mak­ing a state­ment also came to my atten­tion. In effect you were speak­ing in approval of stan­dard police pro­ce­dure: obtain­ing state­ments through bru­tal­i­ty and duress, where­as an intel­li­gent police force would rely on evi­dence rather than enforced con­fes­sions. […] You have placed your ser­vices at the dis­pos­al of inter­ests who are turn­ing Amer­i­ca into a police state by the sim­ple device of delib­er­ate­ly fos­ter­ing the con­di­tions that give rise to crim­i­nal­i­ty and then demand­ing increased police pow­ers and the reten­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to deal with the sit­u­a­tion they have cre­at­ed.

For some­one who had fre­quent­ly been on the wrong end of the law and for some­one who spent his life giv­ing voice to the mar­gin­al­ized, this was an anath­e­ma. Bur­roughs then deliv­ered a chill­ing, voodoo-style curse:

You have betrayed and sold out the tal­ent that was grant­ed you by this depart­ment. That tal­ent is now offi­cial­ly with­drawn. Enjoy your dirty mon­ey. You will nev­er have any­thing else. You will nev­er write anoth­er sen­tence above the lev­el of In Cold Blood. As a writer you are fin­ished. Over and out.

Bur­roughs’ curse seemed to have worked. 1970 was the high-water mark of Capote’s career. He nev­er wrote anoth­er nov­el after In Cold Blood, though he labored for years on a nev­er com­plet­ed book called Answered Prayers. He spent the rest of his life on a down­ward alco­holic spi­ral until his death in 1984.

You can read the entire let­ter, which is kept at the Bur­roughs Archive of the New York Pub­lic Library’s Berg Col­lec­tion, below:

July 23, 1970
My Dear Mr. Tru­man Capote
This is not a fan let­ter in the usu­al sense — unless you refer to ceil­ing fans in Pana­ma. Rather call this a let­ter from “the read­er” — vital sta­tis­tics are not in cap­i­tal let­ters — a selec­tion from mar­gin­al notes on mate­r­i­al sub­mit­ted as all “writ­ing” is sub­mit­ted to this depart­ment. I have fol­lowed your lit­er­ary devel­op­ment from its incep­tion, con­duct­ing on behalf of the depart­ment I rep­re­sent a series of inquiries as exhaus­tive as your own recent inves­ti­ga­tions in the sun flower state. I have inter­viewed all your char­ac­ters begin­ning with Miri­am — in her case with­hold­ing sug­ar over a peri­od of sev­er­al days proved suf­fi­cient induce­ment to ren­der her quite com­mu­nica­tive — I pre­fer to have all the facts at my dis­pos­al before tak­ing action. Need­less to say, I have read the recent exchange of genial­i­ties between Mr. Ken­neth Tynan and your­self. I feel that he was much too lenient. Your recent appear­ance before a sen­a­to­r­i­al com­mit­tee on which occa­sion you spoke in favor of con­tin­u­ing the present police prac­tice of extract­ing con­fes­sions by deny­ing the accused the right of con­sult­ing con­sul pri­or to mak­ing a state­ment also came to my atten­tion. In effect you were speak­ing in approval of stan­dard police pro­ce­dure: obtain­ing state­ments through bru­tal­i­ty and duress, where­as an intel­li­gent police force would rely on evi­dence rather than enforced con­fes­sions. You fur­ther cheap­ened your­self by reit­er­at­ing the banal argu­ment that echoes through let­ters to the edi­tor when­ev­er the issue of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is raised: “Why all this sym­pa­thy for the mur­der­er and none for his inno­cent vic­tims?” I have in line of duty read all your pub­lished work. The ear­ly work was in some respects promis­ing — I refer par­tic­u­lar­ly to the short sto­ries. You were grant­ed an area for psy­chic devel­op­ment. It seemed for a while as if you would make good use of this grant. You choose instead to sell out a tal­ent that is not yours to sell. You have writ­ten a dull unread­able book which could have been writ­ten by any staff writer on the New York­er — (an under­cov­er reac­tionary peri­od­i­cal ded­i­cat­ed to the inter­ests of vest­ed Amer­i­can wealth). You have placed your ser­vices at the dis­pos­al of inter­ests who are turn­ing Amer­i­ca into a police state by the sim­ple device of delib­er­ate­ly fos­ter­ing the con­di­tions that give rise to crim­i­nal­i­ty and then demand­ing increased police pow­ers and the reten­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to deal with the sit­u­a­tion they have cre­at­ed. You have betrayed and sold out the tal­ent that was grant­ed you by this depart­ment. That tal­ent is now offi­cial­ly with­drawn. Enjoy your dirty mon­ey. You will nev­er have any­thing else. You will nev­er write anoth­er sen­tence above the lev­el of In Cold Blood. As a writer you are fin­ished. Over and out. Are you track­ing me? Know who I am? You know me, Tru­man. You have known me for a long time. This is my last vis­it.

The polaroids above were tak­en by Andy Warhol.

via: Fla­vor­wire/Let­ters of Note/Real­i­tyS­tu­dio

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

550 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

Fellini’s Three Bank of Rome Commercials, the Last Thing He Did Behind a Camera (1992)

in Film, Television | August 25th, 2014

It hap­pened before, and it still hap­pens now and again today, but in the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, auteurs real­ly got into mak­ing com­mer­cials: Ing­mar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, David Lynch. Not, per­haps, the first names in film­mak­ing you’d asso­ciate with com­mer­cial­i­ty, but there we have it. Where, though, to place Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, direc­tor of La Dolce Vita, Satyri­con, and Amar­cord, movies that, while hard­ly assem­bled by the num­bers, could nev­er resist the enter­tain­ing and even plea­sur­able (or the some­how plea­sur­ably dis­plea­sur­able) spec­ta­cle? On one hand, Felli­ni went so far as to cam­paign against com­mer­cials air­ing dur­ing the broad­cast of motion pic­tures; on the oth­er hand, he made a few of the things, and not minor ones, either. In a post here on Fellini’s own com­mer­cials, Mike Springer ref­er­enced a trio shot for the Bank of Rome, quot­ing on the sub­ject Felli­ni biog­ra­ph­er Peter Bon­danel­la, who notes their inspi­ra­tion by “var­i­ous dreams Felli­ni had sketched out in his dream note­books,” and oth­er Felli­ni biog­ra­ph­er Tul­lio Kezich, who describes them as “the gold­en autumn of a patri­arch of cin­e­ma who, for a moment, holds again the reins of cre­ation.” Today, we present all three.

“Mon­ey is every­where but so is poet­ry,” Felli­ni him­self once said. “What we lack are the poets.” In these three spots, the cre­ator syn­ony­mous with Ital­ian auteur­hood brings poet­ry and mon­ey togeth­er — even more so than most com­mer­cial-mak­ing “cre­ative” film­mak­ers, giv­en the overt­ly finan­cial nature of the clien­t’s busi­ness. You can read more about the project, “the last thing he did behind a cam­era,” at Sight & Sound: “In 1992, the year before his death, [Felli­ni] realised his best cor­po­rate work. [ … ] Here Felli­ni com­pre­hend­ed, skil­ful­ly con­veyed and exposed the ulti­mate essence of adver­tis­ing: the cre­ation of needs and fears that the giv­en prod­uct will mag­i­cal­ly solve.” The set­up involves Pao­lo Vil­lag­gio as a night­mare-plagued man and Fer­nan­do Rey as his atten­tive­ly lis­ten­ing ana­lyst — and in addi­tion to his pro­fes­sion­al inter­ests, evi­dent­ly quite a Bank of Rome enthu­si­ast. The spot at the top of the post includes Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, but as with Fellini’s fea­tures, even non-Italo­phones can expect rich, long-form (by com­mer­cial stan­dards) audio­vi­su­al expe­ri­ences watch­ing the oth­er two as well (above) — and ones, unlike any expe­ri­ence you’d have actu­al­ly step­ping into a bank, not quite of this real­i­ty. Today, we present all three, the last films Felli­ni ever made.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Watch All of the Com­mer­cials That David Lynch Has Direct­ed: A Big 30-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Jorge Luis Borges Reviews Citizen Kane — and Gets a Response from Orson Welles

in Film, Literature | August 12th, 2014

When we dis­cov­er Jorge Luis Borges, we usu­al­ly dis­cov­er him through his short sto­ries — or at least through his own high­ly dis­tinc­tive uses of the short sto­ry form. Those many of us who there­upon decide to read every­thing the man ever wrote soon­er or lat­er find that he ven­tured into oth­er realms of short text as well. Borges spent time as a poet, an essay­ist, and even as some­thing of a film crit­ic, a peri­od of his career that will delight the siz­able cinephilic seg­ment of his read­er­ship. “I’m almost a cen­tu­ry late to this par­ty,” writes one such fan, Bren­dan Kiley at The Stranger, “but I recent­ly stum­bled into the movie reviews of Jorge Luis Borges (in his Select­ed Non-Fic­tions) and they’re fan­tas­tic: gloomy, some­times bitchy, hilar­i­ous.” He first high­lights Borges’ 1941 assess­ment of Cit­i­zen Kane, which Inter­rel­e­vant pro­vides in its inci­sive, unspar­ing, ref­er­en­tial, and very brief entire­ty:

AN OVERWHELMING FILM

Cit­i­zen Kane (called The Cit­i­zen in Argenti­na) has at least two plots. The first, point­less­ly banal, attempts to milk applause from dimwits: a vain mil­lion­aire col­lects stat­ues, gar­dens, palaces, swim­ming pools, dia­monds, cars, libraries, man and women. Like an ear­li­er col­lec­tor (whose obser­va­tions are usu­al­ly ascribed to the Holy Ghost), he dis­cov­ers that this cor­nu­copia of mis­cel­lany is a van­i­ty of van­i­ties: all is van­i­ty. At the point of death, he yearns for one sin­gle thing in the uni­verse, the hum­ble sled he played with as a child!

The sec­ond plot is far supe­ri­or. It links the Koheleth to the mem­o­ry of anoth­er nihilist, Franz Kaf­ka. A kind of meta­phys­i­cal detec­tive sto­ry, its sub­ject (both psy­cho­log­i­cal and alle­gor­i­cal) is the inves­ti­ga­tion of a man’s inner self, through the works he has wrought, the words he has spo­ken, the many lives he has ruined. The same tech­nique was used by Joseph Con­rad in Chance (1914) and in that beau­ti­ful film The Pow­er and the Glo­ry: a rhap­sody of mis­cel­la­neous scenes with­out chrono­log­i­cal order. Over­whelm­ing­ly, end­less­ly, Orson Welles shows frag­ments of the life of the man, Charles Fos­ter Kane, and invites us to com­bine them and to recon­struct him.

Form of mul­ti­plic­i­ty and incon­gruity abound in the film: the first scenes record the trea­sures amassed by Kane; in one of the last, a poor woman, lux­u­ri­ant and suf­fer­ing, plays with an enor­mous jig­saw puz­zle on the floor of a palace that is also a muse­um. At the end we real­ize that the frag­ments are not gov­erned by any secret uni­ty: the detest­ed Charles Fos­ter Kane is a sim­u­lacrum, a chaos of appear­ances. (A pos­si­ble corol­lary, fore­seen by David Hume, Ernst Mach, and our own Mace­do­nio Fer­nan­dez: no man knows who he is, no man is any­one.) In a sto­ry by Chester­ton — “The Head of Cae­sar,” I think — the hero observes that noth­ing is so fright­en­ing as a labyrinth with no cen­ter. This film is pre­cise­ly that labyrinth.

We all know that a par­ty, a palace, a great under­tak­ing, a lunch for writ­ers and jour­nal­ists, an atmos­phere of cor­dial and spon­ta­neous cama­raderie, are essen­tial­ly hor­ren­dous. Cit­i­zen Kane is the first film to show such things with an aware­ness of this truth.

The pro­duc­tion is, in gen­er­al, wor­thy of its vast sub­ject. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy has a strik­ing depth, and there are shots whose far­thest planes (like Pre-Raphaelite paint­ings) are as pre­cise and detailed as the close-ups. I ven­ture to guess, nonethe­less, that Cit­i­zen Kane will endure as a cer­tain Grif­fith or Pudovkin films have “endured”—films whose his­tor­i­cal val­ue is unde­ni­able but which no one cares to see again. It is too gigan­tic, pedan­tic, tedious. It is not intel­li­gent, though it is the work of genius—in the most noc­tur­nal and Ger­man­ic sense of that bad word.

“A kind of meta­phys­i­cal detec­tive sto­ry,” “a labyrinth with no cen­ter,” “the work of a genius” — why, if I did­n’t know bet­ter, I’d think Borges here describes his own work. Welles him­self did­n’t go igno­rant of his film’s Bor­ge­sian nature, or at least of the ten­den­cy of oth­ers to point out its Bor­ge­sian nature, not always in a pos­i­tive light. “Some peo­ple called it warmed-over Borges,” Welles recalled in a con­ver­sa­tion 42 years lat­er with the film­mak­er Hen­ry Jaglom. Nor did he for­get Borges’ own cri­tique: “He said that it was pedan­tic, which is a very strange thing to say about it, and that it was a labyrinth. And that the worst thing about a labyrinth is that there’s no way out. And this is a labyrinth of a movie with no way out. Borges is half-blind. Nev­er for­get that. But you know, I could take it that he and Sartre” — who thought the film’s image “too much in love with itself” — “sim­ply hat­ed Kane. In their minds, they were see­ing— and attack­ing — some­thing else. It’s them, not my work.” Defen­sive though this may sound, it iden­ti­fies the impulse that had the author of Labyrinths see­ing all those labyrinths in the movie: to quote Anaïs Nin, a writer con­tem­po­rary though not often brought into the same con­text with Borges, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

You can also read Borges’ 1933 review of King Kong here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Two Draw­ings by Jorge Luis Borges Illus­trate the Author’s Obses­sions

Jorge Luis Borges: “Soc­cer is Pop­u­lar Because Stu­pid­i­ty is Pop­u­lar”

Borges: Pro­file of a Writer Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear Michel Foucault’s Lecture “The Culture of the Self,” Presented in English at UC Berkeley (1983)

in Philosophy, UC Berkeley | August 6th, 2014

Michel Foucault’s time in the Unit­ed States in the last years of his life, par­tic­u­lar­ly his time as a lec­tur­er at UC Berke­ley, proved to be extra­or­di­nar­i­ly pro­duc­tive in the devel­op­ment of his the­o­ret­i­cal under­stand­ing of what he saw as the cen­tral ques­tion fac­ing the con­tem­po­rary West: the ques­tion of the self. In his 1983 Berke­ley lec­tures in Eng­lish on “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Fou­cault stat­ed and restat­ed the ques­tion in a vari­ety of ways—“What are we in our actu­al­i­ty?,” “What are we today?”—and his inves­ti­ga­tions amount to “an alter­na­tive to the tra­di­tion­al philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions: What is the world? What is man? What is truth? What is knowl­edge? How can we know some­thing? And so on.” So write the edi­tors of the posthu­mous­ly pub­lished 1988 essay col­lec­tion Tech­nolo­gies of the Self, titled after a lec­ture Fou­cault deliv­ered at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont in 1982.

In that talk, Fou­cault notes that “the hermeneu­tics of the self has been con­fused with the­olo­gies of the soul—concupiscence, sin, and the fall from grace.” The tech­nique of con­fes­sion, cen­tral even to sec­u­lar psy­cho­analy­sis, informs a sub­jec­tiv­i­ty that, for Fou­cault, always devel­ops under the ever-watch­ful eyes of nor­mal­iz­ing insti­tu­tions. But in “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Fou­cault reach­es back to ancient Greek con­cep­tions of “care of the self” (epimelieia beautou) to locate a sub­jec­tiv­i­ty derived from a dif­fer­ent tradition—a coun­ter­point to reli­gious con­fes­sion­al and Freudi­an sub­jec­tiv­i­ties and one he has dis­cussed in terms of the tech­nique of “self writ­ing.” (The Care of the Self also hap­pens to be the sub­ti­tle of the third vol­ume of Foucault’s His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, and “The Cul­ture of the Self” the title of its sec­ond chap­ter.)

The notion that one is grant­ed self­hood through the min­is­tra­tions of oth­ers comes in for ridicule in the first few min­utes of his “Cul­ture of the Self” lec­ture above. Fou­cault relates a sto­ry by sec­ond cen­tu­ry Greek satirist Lucian to illus­trate a humor­ous point about “those guys who nowa­days reg­u­lar­ly vis­it a kind of mas­ter who takes their mon­ey from them in order to teach them how to take care of them­selves.” He iden­ti­fies the ancient ver­sion of this dubi­ous author­i­ty as the philoso­pher, but it seems that he intends in mod­ern times to refer more broad­ly to psy­chi­a­trists, psy­chol­o­gists, and all man­ner of reli­gious fig­ures and self-help gurus.

Fou­cault sets up the joke to intro­duce his first entrée into the pur­suit of “the his­tor­i­cal ontol­ogy of our­selves,” a con­sid­er­a­tion of Kant’s essay “What is Enlight­en­ment?” In that work, the most promi­nent Ger­man Enlight­en­ment philoso­pher describes “man’s emer­gence from his self-imposed nonage,” a term he defines as “the inabil­i­ty to use one’s own under­stand­ing with­out another’s guid­ance.” From there, Fou­cault opens up his inves­ti­ga­tion to an analy­sis of “three sets of rela­tions: our rela­tions to truth, our rela­tions to oblig­a­tion, our rela­tions to our­selves and to the oth­ers.” You’ll have to lis­ten to the full set of lec­tures, above in all five parts, to fol­low Foucault’s inquiry through its many pas­sages and diver­gences and learn how he arrives at this con­clu­sion: “The self is not so much some­thing hid­den and there­fore some­thing to be exca­vat­ed but as a cor­re­late of the tech­nolo­gies of self that it co-evolves with over mil­len­ni­um.”

The Q&A ses­sion, above, was held on a dif­fer­ent day and is also well worth a lis­ten. Fou­cault address­es sev­er­al queries about his own method­ol­o­gy, issues of dis­ci­pli­nary bound­aries, and oth­er clar­i­fy­ing (or not) con­cerns relat­ed to his main lec­ture. See this site for a tran­script of the ques­tions from the audi­ences and Foucault’s insight­ful, and some­times quite fun­ny, answers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Michel Fou­cault Deliv­er His Lec­ture on “Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty” at UC Berke­ley, In Eng­lish (1980)

Michel Fou­cault and Alain Badiou Dis­cuss “Phi­los­o­phy and Psy­chol­o­gy” on French TV (1965)

Watch a “Lost Inter­view” With Michel Fou­cault: Miss­ing for 30 Years But Now Recov­ered

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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