Leonard Bernstein Demystifies the Rock Revolution for Curious (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

in Music | March 28th, 2013

Many of today’s thir­teen-year-olds sure­ly have the Bea­t­les on their iPods (or their iPhones or Androids, or what­ev­er now ranks as the cut­ting-edge ado­les­cen­t’s lis­ten­ing device of choice). Yet they would have been born in 2000, forty years after the dis­so­lu­tion of the Bea­t­les them­selves. Their par­ents would prob­a­bly have been born in the six­ties, already the height of the band’s cre­ativ­i­ty. The star­tling impli­ca­tion: these kids rock out to some of the very same songs their grand­par­ents may well have loved. As P.J. O’Rourke once wrote upon spot­ting an aged hip­pie with a walk­er and a hear­ing aid at an Iraq War protest, sic tran­sit gen­er­a­tion gap. But back in 1967, when that gap yawned so chas­mi­cal­ly wide as to ren­der any com­mu­ni­ca­tion across it seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble, the young Baby Boomers and their own Great Depres­sion, Sec­ond World War-forged par­ents used the musi­cal land­scape to draw their bat­tle lines. Who could bro­ker a peace? Enter com­pos­er, pianist, and New York Phil­har­mon­ic direc­tor Leonard Bern­stein. Born in 1918 and hailed as one of the most accom­plished and astute musi­cal minds in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, he could not only appre­ci­ate the tech­niques and inno­va­tions of the youth-dri­ven pop-rock explo­sion of the six­ties, he could get the ear of his mid­dle-aged peers and explain to them just what they were miss­ing.

The tele­vi­sion broad­cast Inside Pop: The Rock Rev­o­lu­tion gave Bern­stein a mass-com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form on which per­form this analy­sis, ask­ing aloud the ques­tions of (a) why this music so infu­ri­ates Amer­i­cans over a cer­tain age and (b) why he him­self likes it so much. Decked out in a square-friend­ly suit and tie and appear­ing on the even square-friend­lier CBS net­work, Bern­stein plays clips of songs by the Bea­t­les, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, and the Asso­ci­a­tion, break­ing down the gen­uine musi­co­log­i­cal mer­its of each: their vocal expres­sions, their unex­pect­ed key changes, their count­less son­ic lay­ers, their stripped-down melod­ic sense, and their lyrics’ adept­ness of impli­ca­tion (“one of our teenager’s strongest weapons”). Bern­stein also calls upon “Soci­ety’s Child” singer-song­writer Janis Ian and Beach Boys mas­ter­mind Bri­an Wil­son to per­form live. Quite a few crew-cut, cardi­gan-clad, mar­ti­ni-sip­ping adults must have come away from Inside Pop with a new, if grudg­ing, appre­ci­a­tion for the craft of these long-haired young­sters. But now, to address the con­cerns of the 21st cen­tu­ry’s bewil­dered grown-ups, who will go on tele­vi­sion and explain dub­step?

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!

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed in 1973)

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Con­cert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

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

David Foster Wallace Breaks Down Five Common Word Usage Mistakes in English

in Education, English Language, Writing | March 7th, 2013

What advan­tage, I recent­ly asked a trilin­gual writer, could you pos­si­bly find in using such an impro­vised, con­fus­ing, irreg­u­lar patch­work of a lan­guage as Eng­lish? She replied that this very impro­vi­sa­tion, irreg­u­lar­i­ty, and even con­fu­sion comes from the vast free­dom of expres­sion (and of inven­tion of new expres­sions) that Eng­lish offers over oth­er Euro­pean tongues. This goes even more so for Amer­i­can Eng­lish, the vari­ant with whose com­bi­na­tion of care­ful­ly shad­ed nuances and smash­ing col­lo­qui­alisms David Fos­ter Wal­lace so daz­zled his read­ers. Like many writ­ers, Wal­lace also taught writ­ing, but those of us not lucky enough to receive his direct instruc­tion can still behold his teach­ing mate­ri­als, archived online at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

See, for instance, Wal­lace’s hand­out on five com­mon usage mis­takes, from his Fall 2002 sec­tion of Eng­lish 183A at Pomona Col­lege (an advanced fic­tion writ­ing class, taught last Spring by Jonathan Lethem). “The prepo­si­tion towards is British usage; the US spelling is toward.” Fair enough. “And is a con­junc­tion; so is so,” he con­tin­ues. “Except in dia­logue between par­tic­u­lar kinds of char­ac­ters, you nev­er need both con­junc­tions.” Handy to know! Then, things get more tech­ni­cal: “For a com­pound sen­tence to require a com­ma plus a con­junc­tion, both its con­stituent claus­es must be inde­pen­dent.” As Wal­lace goes deep­er, I feel even more sym­pa­thy for those who learn Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage, as I did when I read “Tense Present,” his Harper’s review of Bryan A. Gar­ner’s A Dic­tio­nary of Mod­ern Amer­i­can Usage. If the hard­core gram­mar talk tires you, feel free to peruse the Ran­som Cen­ter’s oth­er arti­facts of Wal­lace’s time in the class­room—which we cov­ered in a post last week—such as his syl­labus for Eng­lish 102: Lit­er­ary Analy­sis, his guide­lines for papers, and the mar­gin­a­lia in his copy of Car­rie.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

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

David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s 1994 Syl­labus

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

Visit the Museum of Endangered Sounds, and Experience a Blast from Technology’s Past

in Design, Life | February 28th, 2013

As gear­heads go, Bren­dan Chil­cut­t’s a pret­ty sen­ti­men­tal guy, and not just because he signs his cor­re­spon­dence with “love.” In Jan­u­ary, 2012, he found­ed the Muse­um of Endan­gered Sounds to keep out­mod­ed tech­nol­o­gy’s most icon­ic nois­es from van­ish­ing from the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry. Click on any image in the muse­um’s online col­lec­tion to be trans­port­ed in the Prous­t­ian sense.

Some of the exhibits—a man­u­al type­writer, a rotary phone—were already amply pre­served, thanks to a pro­lif­er­a­tion of cin­e­mat­ic appear­ances in their hey­day.

Oth­ers might well have slipped away unno­ticed, if not for Chil­cut­t’s cura­to­r­i­al efforts. Remem­ber that num­ber you could call to have a record­ed voice inform you of the cor­rect time? How about the sta­t­ic of an ana­log TV tuned to an emp­ty sta­tion? The hum of a mal­func­tion­ing Dis­c­man, the chirp of a Tamagotchi…wait, what’s that I hear? The dis­con­cert­ing whoosh of time speed­ing up?

Drown it out by acti­vat­ing all thir­ty exhibits at once. Let them sound their bar­bar­ic yaw­ps simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as the kids try to fig­ure out what that rack­et is.

h/t goes to @sheerly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Glitch” Artists Com­pose with Soft­ware Crash­es and Cor­rupt­ed Files

40 Great Film­mak­ers Go Old School, Shoot Short Films with 100 Year Old Cam­era

How Film Was Made: A Kodak Nos­tal­gia Moment

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is still try­ing to text on a cell phone from 2003

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

in Literature | February 25th, 2013

Note: click here to see the full syl­labus and oth­er relat­ed teach­ing mate­ri­als.

As any­one who’s ever done it knows, the art of syl­labussing is a fine one. (Yes, it’s a word; don’t look it up, take my word for it—Syl­labussing: cre­at­ing the per­fect syl­labus for a col­lege-lev­el course). It requires pre­ci­sion plan­ning, stel­lar for­mat­ting and copy-edit­ing skills, and near-per­fect knowl­edge of the col­lege-stu­dent psy­che. For one, the syl­labus must explain in clear terms what stu­dents can expect from the class and what the class expects from them. And it must do this with­out sound­ing so dry and pedan­tic that half the class drops in the first week. For anoth­er, the per­fect syl­labus (there’s no such thing, but one must strive) should func­tion as both an FAQ and a con­tract: need to know how to for­mat your papers? See the syl­labus. For­got when the paper was due? Too bad—see the syl­labus. And so on. Most teach­ers learn over time that a class can stand or fall on the strength of this doc­u­ment.

Which brings us to the syl­labussing skills of one David Fos­ter Wal­lace, ency­clo­pe­dic lit­er­ary obses­sive, mod­ern-day moral­ist, Eng­lish pro­fes­sor. Love his work or hate it, it may be safe to say that Wal­lace was per­haps one of the most care­ful (or care-full) writ­ers of his gen­er­a­tion. And giv­en the cri­te­ria above, you might just have to admire the fine art of his syl­labi. Well, so you can, thanks to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, which has scans avail­able online of the syl­labus for Wal­lace’s intro course “Eng­lish 102-Lit­er­ary Analy­sis: Prose Fic­tion” (first page above), along with oth­er course doc­u­ments. These documents—From the Fall ’94 semes­ter at Illi­nois State Uni­ver­si­ty, where Wal­lace taught from 1993 to 2002—reveal the pro­fes­sion­al­ly ped­a­gog­i­cal side of the lit­er­ary wun­derkind, a side every teacher will con­nect with right away.

The text in the image above is admit­ted­ly tiny (you can request high­er res­o­lu­tion scans on the UT Austin site), but if you squint hard, you’ll see under “Aims of Course” that Wal­lace quotes the offi­cial ISU descrip­tion of his class, then trans­lates it into his own words:

In less nar­co­tiz­ing words, Eng­lish 102 aims to show you some ways to read fic­tion more deeply, to come up with more inter­est­ing insights on how pieces of fic­tion work, to have informed intel­li­gent rea­sons for lik­ing or dis­lik­ing a piece of fic­tion, and to write—clearly, per­sua­sive­ly, and above all interestingly—about stuff you’ve read.

Hav­ing taught my own ver­sions of such a class, I’m a lit­tle jeal­ous of his (unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly?) infor­mal con­ci­sion.

Wallace’s choice of texts is of inter­est as well—surprising for a writer most detrac­tors call “pre­ten­tious.” For his class, Wal­lace pre­scribed air­port-book­store standards—what he calls “pop­u­lar or com­mer­cial fiction”—such as Jack­ie Collins’ Rock Star, Stephen King’s Car­rie, Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs, and James Elroy’s The Big Nowhere. The UT Austin site also has scans of some well-worn paper­back teacher’s copies, with the red-ink mar­gin­al notes, dis­cus­sion ques­tions, and under­lines one finds behind every podi­um. In the image above, Wal­lace has under­lined a line of dia­logue in Car­rie, anno­tat­ing it with the word “vic­tim” in all-caps. Of the books Wal­lace requires, he writes in a sec­tion of the syl­labus above called “Warn­ing”:

Don’t let any poten­tial light­weight­ish-look­ing qual­i­ties of the texts delude you into think­ing that this will be a blow-off-type class. These “pop­u­lar” texts will end up being hard­er than more con­ven­tion­al­ly “lit­er­ary” works to unpack and read crit­i­cal­ly. You’ll end up doing more work in here than in oth­er sec­tions of 102, prob­a­bly.

Some­thing about that “prob­a­bly” at the end grabs me (again: the pre­ci­sion… the col­lege-stu­dent psy­che). I admire this brave approach. Hav­ing taught con­ven­tion­al­ly “lit­er­ary” stuff for years, I can say that some so-called lit­er­ary fic­tion is for­mu­la­ic in the extreme, all but con­tain­ing check­box­es for the stan­dard lit-crit cat­e­gories. The com­mer­cial stuff isn’t always so care­ful (which is why it’s so often more fun).

UT Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter hous­es David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s library and papers, but you’ll have to make a trip to Texas (and present some aca­d­e­m­ic cre­den­tials) to access most of the archive. They have scanned a few oth­er choice pieces, how­ev­er, such as the hand­writ­ten first page from a draft of his lit­er­ary mas­ter­piece/­dorm-room doorstop, Infi­nite Jest.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Don­ald Barthelme’s Syl­labus High­lights 81 Books Essen­tial for a Lit­er­ary Edu­ca­tion

What Books Do Writ­ers Teach?: Zadie Smith and Gary Shteyngart’s Syl­labi from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

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

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, musi­cian, and often­time Eng­lish teacher to eas­i­ly-dis­tract­ed under­grad­u­ates. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Download Eight Free Lectures on The Hobbit by “The Tolkien Professor,” Corey Olsen

in Education, Literature, Online Courses | February 13th, 2013

The name Corey Olsen may already be famil­iar to some readers—or at least those read­ers who ven­er­ate the lit­er­ary accom­plish­ments of one J.R.R. Tolkien. And if you don’t know Olsen by his real name, you may know him as “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” his inter­net moniker since 2009, when Olsen, an Eng­lish Pro­fes­sor at Wash­ing­ton Col­lege and life­long stu­dent of Tolkien’s writ­ing, decid­ed to share his own schol­ar­ly work with a pub­lic “eager to be includ­ed in thought­ful, lit­er­ary con­ver­sa­tion” about The Hob­bit and The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy.

For the past four years, Olsen has pub­lished specif­i­cal­ly online lec­tures about Tolkien’s work, as well as record­ings of his Wash­ing­ton Col­lege sem­i­nars on Tolkien’s fic­tion and aca­d­e­m­ic work. He has most recent­ly found­ed Signum Uni­ver­si­ty, an online, non-prof­it Lib­er­al Arts col­lege that aims to open the expe­ri­ence of high-qual­i­ty high­er ed to every­one, regard­less of their means or their loca­tion. Signum has, in turn, spawned the Myth­gard Insti­tute, which seems (as the name implies) more exclu­sive­ly focused on the fan­ta­sy and sci­ence fic­tion gen­res that are Olsen’s méti­er. (There are also col­lege prep options in Signum and Myth­gard Acad­e­mies).

So, Pro­fes­sor Olsen is busy, and he’s hap­py to be shar­ing his wealth of Tolkien knowl­edge with a very recep­tive pub­lic. His most recent course, an eight-part lec­ture series on The Hob­bit, is now avail­able on his site. (iTunes U also has it as of Jan­u­ary 31st. Watch the pro­mo for the course above. We also have the class list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 650 Free Cours­es Online.) The course comes via the Myth­gard Insti­tute and begins at the begin­ning in a lec­ture enti­tled “Took & Bag­gins” focused on The Hob­bit’s first chap­ter, “An Unex­pect­ed Par­ty.” Record­ed before the release of Peter Jackson’s first install­ment of his tril­o­gy of Hob­bit films, the lec­ture starts with Olsen’s spec­u­la­tions about what those films might look like. He says:

From the begin­ning, I have thought this was a mis­take… a big mis­take to go back­wards. It seems to me that an audi­ence famil­iar with the epic grandeur of Peter Jackson’s tril­o­gy is going to bring expec­ta­tions to a new Tolkien movie that’s going to set a Hob­bit film up for one of two very like­ly fail­ures. Either the movie is going to try tell Bilbo’s sto­ry in the mode and reg­is­ter of the Lord of the Rings, and there­fore strip the sto­ry of the light-heart­ed­ness and whim­si­cal­i­ty that makes it so delight­ful, or it’s going to try to be true to the tone and spir­it of the book, and will there­fore seem kind of sil­ly and child­ish to an audi­ence hop­ing for a suc­ces­sor to Peter Jackson’s films.

This is a very can­ny pre­dic­tion, and such can­ni­ness dis­tin­guish­es Olsen’s approach to every­thing Tolkien. He is attuned not only to all of the schol­ar­ly minu­ti­ae that dis­tin­guish­es aca­d­e­m­ic Tolkien stud­ies, but he is also well-aware of issues of audi­ence recep­tion and the ever-evolv­ing role of Tolkien’s work in pop­u­lar cul­ture. As his first lec­ture con­tin­ues, Pro­fes­sor Olsen makes it quite clear that The Hob­bit was delib­er­ate­ly writ­ten as a children’s sto­ry, and the suc­ces­sive books were meant to be as well. The Lord of the Rings books became more adult, dark­er and more fraught with heavy the­o­log­i­cal and myth­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance, as Tolkien com­posed them. This hap­pened in part because Tolkien was writ­ing with his own chil­dren in mind as his read­ers, and as he wrote, his kids grew up.

Tolkien, Olsen points out, was by train­ing a philologist—a schol­ar who spe­cial­izes in the study of languages—so he thought about not only what words mean, but where they come from and when. As such, he intend­ed The Hob­bit to pos­sess a “lin­guis­tic play­ful­ness,” mix­ing ancient and mod­ern words and usages, mak­ing up words a la Lewis Car­roll, to cre­ate a light­heart­ed and com­ic atmos­phere from the begin­ning of the nov­el. Olsen pro­vides us with sev­er­al exam­ples of this method in his first lec­ture. Over­all, his analy­sis is a thor­ough eval­u­a­tion of the nov­el in the terms of its lan­guage, its com­po­si­tion, its many lay­ers of genre and style—drawing from Tolkien’s explic­it­ly artic­u­lat­ed the­o­ries of narrative—and its his­tor­i­cal and lit­er­ary allu­sions. All pre­sent­ed in a very enthu­si­as­tic and acces­si­ble style that is aimed at every adult read­er and lover of Tolkien, not just fel­low schol­ars, who tend to speak a spe­cial­ized lan­guage that excludes near­ly every­one out­side their nar­row coterie.

In the video above—a TED talk Olsen deliv­ered at TEDx Chester Riv­er—he dis­cuss­es how the world of acad­eme, that spe­cial­ized world that excludes almost every­one, had become a sti­fling and rather mean­ing­less place for him when he decid­ed to become the online Tolkien Pro­fes­sor.  Olsen had what he calls an exis­ten­tial cri­sis about acad­e­mia and schol­ar­ly publishing—What’s the point?, he thought. Who’s going to read it? Since most peo­ple can’t access schol­ar­ly pub­li­ca­tions even if they want­ed to, and since he was writ­ing on Tolkien, one of the world’s most pop­u­lar authors, he felt dou­bly irrel­e­vant as a clois­tered aca­d­e­m­ic, since Tolkien fans are every­where. Then he dis­cov­ered some­thing every­body else already knew about the internet—it’s an ide­al medi­um for pub­lish­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing any kind of infor­ma­tion, and it’s crowd­ed with peo­ple des­per­ate to learn about and dis­cuss the lib­er­al arts. As more and more aca­d­e­mics dis­cov­er this as well, more also cure their exis­ten­tial malaise by open­ing up their work to every­one online, becom­ing resources, not gate­keep­ers, for knowl­edge.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read Poems from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, in Elvish and Eng­lish (1952)

Fan­tas­tic BBC Footage of J.R.R. Tolkien in 1968

Free Audio: Down­load the Com­plete Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Hear Walt Whitman (Maybe) Reading the First Four Lines of His Poem, “America” (1890)

in History, Literature, Poetry | February 12th, 2013

Of all Amer­i­can poets, almost no one looms larg­er than Walt Whit­man. As I once heard an old poet acquain­tance say, Amer­i­can poets don’t need Shake­speare and the Bible; we’ve got Dick­in­son and Whit­man. Indeed, Whitman’s voice emerges from the past like some Amer­i­can Moses, show­ing the way for­ward, open­ing his arms to hold his frac­tious coun­try­men togeth­er. One can blovi­ate all day about Walt Whit­man. He tends to have that effect. But even Whit­man, he of the ser­pen­tine lines full of the car­go of the con­ti­nent, stretch­ing from left mar­gin to right, ocean to ocean, could be rel­a­tive­ly suc­cinct, and even about his favorite sub­ject, Amer­i­ca. Take his poem “Amer­i­ca” from 1888:

Cen­tre of equal daugh­ters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, endur­ing, capa­ble, rich,
Peren­ni­al with the Earth, with Free­dom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, tow­er­ing, seat­ed Moth­er,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

Now, believe it or not, you can hear what may well be the voice of Walt Whit­man, Amer­i­can Moses, emerg­ing from the past to read the first four lines of “Amer­i­ca,” from a wax cylin­der record­ing above. Most like­ly cap­tured in 1889 or 1890 by Thomas Edi­son, this read­ing was orig­i­nal­ly found on a cas­sette called “The Voice of the Poets,” dis­cov­ered in a library by Whit­man schol­ar Lar­ry Don Grif­fin. The cas­sette, made in 1974 and includ­ing the voic­es of Edna St. Vin­cent Mil­lay and William Car­los Williams, takes the Whit­man audio from a 1951 NBC radio pro­gram, whose announc­er, Leon Pear­son, claims comes from a wax cylin­der record­ing made in 1890.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, the ’74 cas­sette tape, which land­ed in libraries across the coun­try, seemed to go unno­ticed by schol­ars until Grif­fin men­tioned it in the Walt Whit­man Quar­ter­ly Review in 1992. This men­tion sparked debate about the authen­tic­i­ty of the record­ing, and once schol­ar­ly debate is sparked, the fire can burn for decades, whole careers built on its embers. In this case, some schol­ars, includ­ing his­to­ri­an Allen Koenigs­berg, argued that since no orig­i­nal wax cylin­der has appeared, and men­tion of the record­ing in Edison’s cor­re­spon­dence is incon­clu­sive, the prove­nance is sus­pect. Fur­ther­more, Koenigs­berg argued, the record­ing qual­i­ty seems too good for the peri­od. His con­clu­sion comes backed by the analy­sis of audio experts. Accord­ing to The Edis­on­ian, a Rut­ger’s Uni­ver­si­ty Edi­son newslet­ter:

Ana­lysts for both the Library of Con­gress and the Rodgers and Ham­mer­stein Archives con­sult­ed on the case and agreed that the clar­i­ty of the record­ing was beyond what could be achieved in 1889 or 1890… the sound analy­sis along with the doc­u­men­ta­tion dif­fi­cul­ties led Koen­ings­berg to con­clude that “the sup­posed Whit­man record­ing is a fas­ci­nat­ing fake.”

On the oth­er side of this debate is the edi­tor of the Walt Whit­man Quar­ter­ly Review, Ed Fol­som, who presents his case in an arti­cle sim­ply titled “The Whit­man Record­ing,” in which he dis­cuss­es prob­lems with the Library of Con­gress analy­sis. Yet anoth­er par­ti­san for authen­tic­i­ty, William Grimes—who cov­ered the con­tro­ver­sy for The New York Times points out that the voice sounds like what Whitman’s would have, and he makes a com­pelling argu­ment that the poem would not at all be the obvi­ous choice for a fake. Grimes cites unnamed “spe­cial­ists in the his­to­ry of the phono­graph,” whom, he writes, “agree… that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of out­right fraud or a hoax is unlike­ly.”

And on it goes. No one can defin­i­tive­ly set­tle the case, unless new evi­dence should come to light. With no inten­tion of malign­ing Ed Folsom’s good faith, I can imag­ine the Whit­man Quar­ter­ly edi­tor want­i­ng this to be true more than his­to­ri­an Koenigs­berg and the LOC ana­lysts. But I also want it to be Whit­man, and so I’m glad to make an exu­ber­ant leap of Amer­i­can faith and think it’s him. From Edi­son wax cylin­der record­ing, to radio broad­cast, to cas­sette, to mp3, over more than a cen­tu­ry of Amer­i­can poetry—it would be a per­fect­ly Whit­manesque jour­ney.

via @stevesilberman

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Voic­es from the 19th Cen­tu­ry: Ten­nyson, Glad­stone, Whit­man & Tchaikovsky

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son in 1909.

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Alain de Botton Proposes a Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success

in Life, Philosophy, TED Talks | February 7th, 2013

For bet­ter or worse, Alain de Bot­ton is the face of pop phi­los­o­phy. He has advo­cat­ed “reli­gion for athe­ists” in a book of the same name (to the deep con­ster­na­tion of some athe­ists and the elo­quent inter­est of oth­ers); he has dis­tilled select­ed philo­soph­i­cal nuggets into self-help in his The Con­so­la­tions of Phi­los­o­phy; and most recent­ly, he’s tack­led a sub­ject close to everybody’s heart (to put it char­i­ta­bly) in How to Think More About Sex. As a corol­lary to his intel­lec­tu­al inter­ests in human bet­ter­ment, de Bot­ton also over­sees The School of Life, a “cul­tur­al enter­prise offer­ing good ideas for every­day life” with a base in Cen­tral Lon­don and a col­or­ful online pres­ence. Many crit­ics dis­dain de Botton’s shot­gun approach to phi­los­o­phy, but it gets peo­ple read­ing (not just his own books), and gets them talk­ing, rather than just shout­ing at each oth­er.

In addi­tion to his pub­lish­ing, de Bot­ton is an accom­plished and engag­ing speak­er. Although him­self a com­mit­ted sec­u­lar­ist, in his TED talks, he has posed some for­mi­da­ble chal­lenges to the smug cer­tain­ties of lib­er­al sec­u­lar­ism and the often bru­tal cer­tain­ties of lib­er­tar­i­an mer­i­toc­ra­cy. Apro­pos of the lat­ter, in the talk above, de Bot­ton takes on what he calls “job snob­bery,” the dom­i­nant form of snob­bery today, he says, and a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. Cer­tain­ly, we can all remem­ber any num­ber of times when the ques­tion “What do you do?” has either made us exhale with pride or feel like we might shriv­el up and blow away. De Bot­ton takes this com­mon expe­ri­ence and draws from it some inter­est­ing infer­ences: for exam­ple, against the idea that we (one assumes he means West­ern­ers) live in a mate­ri­al­is­tic soci­ety, de Bot­ton posits that we pri­mar­i­ly use mate­r­i­al goods and career sta­tus not as ends in them­selves but as the means to receive emo­tion­al rewards from those who choose how much love or respect to “spend” on us based on where we land in any social hier­ar­chy.

Accord­ing­ly, de Bot­ton asks us to see some­one in a Fer­rari not as greedy but as “incred­i­bly vul­ner­a­ble and in need of love” (he does not address oth­er pos­si­ble com­pen­sa­tions of mid­dle-aged men in over­ly-expen­sive cars). For de Bot­ton, mod­ern soci­ety turns the whole world into a school, where equals com­pete with each oth­er relent­less­ly.  But the prob­lem with the anal­o­gy is that in the wider world, the admirable spir­it of equal­i­ty runs up against the real­i­ties of increas­ing­ly entrenched inequities. Our inabil­i­ty to see this is nur­turned, de Bot­ton points out, by an indus­try that sells us all the fic­tion that, with just enough know-how and gump­tion, any­one can become the next Mark Zucker­berg or Steve Jobs. But if this were true, of course, there would be hun­dreds of thou­sands of Zucker­bergs and Jobs.

For de Bot­ton, when we believe that those who make it to the top do so only on mer­it, we also, in a cal­lous way, believe those at the bot­tom deserve their place and should stay there—a belief that takes no account of the acci­dents of birth and the enor­mi­ty of fac­tors out­side anyone’s con­trol. This shift in think­ing, he says—especially in the Unit­ed States—gets reflect­ed in a shift in lan­guage. Where in for­mer times some­one in tough cir­cum­stances might be called “unfor­tu­nate” or “down on their luck,” they are now more like­ly to be called “a los­er,” a social con­di­tion that exac­er­bates feel­ings of per­son­al fail­ure and increas­es the num­bers of sui­cides. The rest of de Botton’s rich­ly observed talk lays out his philo­soph­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal alter­na­tives to the irra­tional rea­son­ing that makes every­one respon­si­ble for every­thing that hap­pens to them. As a con­se­quence of soft­en­ing the harsh bina­ry log­ic of success/failure, de Bot­ton con­cludes, we can find greater mean­ing and hap­pi­ness in the work we choose to do—because we love it, not because it buys us love.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alain De Bot­ton Turns His Philo­soph­i­cal Mind To Devel­op­ing “Bet­ter Porn”

Alain de Botton’s Quest for The Per­fect Home and Archi­tec­tur­al Hap­pi­ness

Socrates on TV, Cour­tesy of Alain de Bot­ton (2000)

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Meet “Dashan,” the Canadian Comedian Who Achieved Accidental Stardom in China

in Comedy, Life | January 25th, 2013

West­ern stu­dents of the Chi­nese lan­guage tend to know Dashan. Some­times they don’t like him very much. The vari­ety of pos­si­ble expla­na­tions obvi­ous­ly includes sim­ple jeal­ousy, since Dashan (giv­en name Mark Rowswell) enjoys fame across Chi­na for his mas­tery of Man­darin. But just as this anti-Dashan resent­ment actu­al­ly springs from more com­pli­cat­ed caus­es, so the fer­vent­ly pro-Dashan feel­ings of mil­lions of Chi­nese fans spring from more than his unusu­al flu­en­cy. Ambas­sador to Chi­na’s Fun­ny Bone, the fifty-minute doc­u­men­tary above, traces Dashan’s seem­ing­ly uncal­cu­lat­ed rise from his under­grad­u­ate days in Chi­nese stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, to his break­through appear­ance on Chi­na Cen­tral Tele­vi­sion’s 1988 New Year’s Gala, to his inescapable pres­ence on the Chi­nese stage and screen — includ­ing but by no means lim­it­ed to endors­ing a “Cana­di­an fast food restau­rant.” This sort of celebri­ty makes one instinc­tive­ly want to para­phrase Samuel John­son’s line about the dog walk­ing on its hind legs: even if a west­ern­er speak­ing Chi­nese on tele­vi­sion is not done well, audi­ences are sur­prised to find it done at all.

But Dashan does do it well, and he does it in a con­text even more chal­leng­ing than a four-legged ani­mal walk­ing upright: the tra­di­tion­al form of lan­guage com­e­dy known as xiang­sheng. The doc­u­men­tary shows Dashan per­form­ing as part of a duo, and just above you can see him going solo. Out­side of this spe­cial­ized set­ting, observers have com­pared his mild, easy­go­ing, friend­ly — dare I say Cana­di­an? — per­sona to Dick Clark’s; one inter­vie­wee in Ambas­sador even describes him as harm­less­ly sym­bol­iz­ing Cana­da just as a pan­da sym­bol­izes Chi­na. Yet his detrac­tors have grown vocal enough to prompt some­one to pub­licly ask, on ques­tion-and-answer site Quo­ra, “Why do so many Chi­nese learn­ers seem to hate Dashan?” The top answer comes from Dashan him­self, who pro­vides a thor­ough, clear­head­ed, and self-aware analy­sis of the per­cep­tion of his char­ac­ter. He even cites, approv­ing­ly, the answer from Chi­na watch­er and rock­er Kaiser Kuo: “Dashan seems like a nice enough guy, but for some rea­son every once in a while I have the urge to punch him in the face.”

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

Cornell Launches Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Animal Sounds, with Recordings Going Back to 1929

in Archives, Biology, Science | January 22nd, 2013

Ornithol­o­gists and bird watch­ers rejoice. After a dozen years, The Cor­nell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library has ful­ly dig­i­tized its near­ly 150,000 audio record­ings (a total run­ning time of 7,513 hours), rep­re­sent­ing close to 9,000 dif­fer­ent species, such as the very unset­tling-sound­ing Barred Owl (above). While the col­lec­tion also includes the sounds of whales, ele­phants, frogs, pri­mates, and oth­er ani­mals, the pri­ma­ry empha­sis here is on birds (it is a Lab of Ornithol­o­gy, after all), and there is an incred­i­ble range of calls. Cor­nell rec­om­mends some of the high­lights below:

Ear­li­est record­ing: Cor­nell Lab founder Arthur Allen was a pio­neer in sound record­ing. On a spring day in 1929 he record­ed this Song Spar­row sound­ing much as they do today

Youngest bird: This clip from 1966 records the sounds of an Ostrich chick while it is still inside the egg – and the researchers as they watch

Liveli­est wake-up call: A dawn cho­rus in trop­i­cal Queens­land, Aus­tralia is burst­ing at the seams with war­bles, squeals, whis­tles, booms and hoots

Best can­di­date to appear on a John Coltrane record: The indri, a lemur with a voice that is part moan, part jazz clar­inet

Most spines tin­gled: The incom­pa­ra­ble voice of a Com­mon Loon on an Adiron­dacks lake in 1992

Most errat­ic con­struc­tion project: the stac­ca­to ham­mer­ing sounds of a wal­rus under water

Most like­ly to be mis­tak­en for aliens arriv­ing: Birds-of-par­adise make some amaz­ing sounds – here’s the UFO-sound of a Curl-crest­ed Manu­code in New Guinea

Whether you’re an enthu­si­as­tic bird­er, prac­tic­ing sci­en­tist, or sound-sam­ple hunter, you’ll find some­thing to blow your mind at the exten­sive col­lec­tions of the Macaulay Library. Both ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al nat­u­ral­ists, for exam­ple, can acquire, visu­al­ize, mea­sure, and ana­lyze ani­mal sounds with a free ver­sion of the Cor­nell Lab’s pro­pri­etary inter­ac­tive sound analy­sis soft­ware, Raven.

And admir­ers of the aston­ish­ing vari­ety and beau­ty of the bird-of-par­adise should stay tuned for the Bird-of-Par­adise Project web­site, launch­ing this month. Sign up to receive an email when the full site launch­es. Mean­while, watch the project’s spell­bind­ing trail­er below.

Vis­it the Cor­nell Lab of Ornithol­o­gy’s YouTube page for more fas­ci­nat­ing bird videos.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Para­Hawk­ing in Nepal: What It’s Real­ly Like to Fly with Birds

The Wild King­dom: Brought to You by Mutu­al of Oma­ha (and YouTube)

Josh Jones is a free­lance writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Watch Häxan, the Classic Cinematic Study of Witchcraft Narrated by William S. Burroughs (1922)

in Film | January 21st, 2013

Some pic­tures from the silent era, like F.W. Mur­nau’s Nos­fer­atu, could­n’t look more clear­ly like ances­tors of the mod­ern hor­ror film. Trac­ing the dis­tant ori­gins of oth­er forms — of doc­u­men­tary, say — proves a trick­i­er task. Hence the val­ue of a movie like Ben­jamin Chris­tensen’s Häx­an, also known as Witch­craft Through the Ages, which not only mounts a non­fic­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tion into human­i­ty’s per­cep­tion of “witch­es” through­out the ages, but does so with the aid of dra­mat­ic sequences as eerie as any of Count Orlok run­ning amok. Giv­en that Chris­tensen’s metic­u­lous­ly researched his­tor­i­cal cre­ation demand­ed a larg­er bud­get than any oth­er Scan­di­na­vian film to that point, you could also view it as an antecedent of today’s visu­al­ly elab­o­rate, spec­ta­cle-inten­sive block­busters. Like many well-known silent films, Häx­an has under­gone mul­ti­ple releas­es, each run­ning dif­fer­ent lengths, with dif­fer­ent scores. You see above the 1968 ver­sion, which reduces Chris­tensen’s orig­i­nal 104-minute cut to a brisk 77 min­utes and accom­pa­nies it with a jaun­ty, rich­ly incon­gru­ous five-piece jazz score by Daniel Humair.

Atop the music we hear the his­to­ry of the per­se­cu­tion of  “witch­es,” from the prim­i­tive era to medieval times to then-mod­ern times, when the idea of the “hys­ter­i­cal woman” gained pur­chase in the zeit­geist. Nar­rat­ing this sto­ry in the 1968 ver­sion is none oth­er than writer and Beat icon William S. Bur­roughs, who, despite his flam­boy­ant­ly artis­tic per­son­al­i­ty, deliv­ers an ulti­mate­ly sober analy­sis. The film takes the posi­tion that witch­craft, far from a real­i­ty in and of itself, aris­es and re-aris­es as an inven­tion of the super­sti­tious, the irra­tional, and those dis­in­clined to under­stand the nature of men­tal ill­ness. If that sub­ject sounds more suit­able for an aca­d­e­m­ic paper, remem­ber that this research comes deliv­ered by the bold visu­al strokes of pro­to-hor­ror silent film, close read­ing of the fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry inquisi­tor’s trea­tise Malleus Malefi­carum, and the man who wrote Naked Lunch.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Quin­tes­sen­tial Vam­pire Film Nos­fer­atu Free Online as Hal­loween Approach­es

The Pix­ies’ Black Fran­cis Cre­ates Sound­track for Famous Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Film, The Golem

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