Get a Free Subscription to the Beta Version of The Great Courses Plus (Space Limited)

in Online Courses | August 13th, 2015

We’ve told you about the Great Cours­es Plus (now called Won­dri­um) before–a new video sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that lets you watch free cours­es (about 8,000 lec­tures in total) across a wide range of sub­jects, all taught by some of the best lec­tur­ers in the coun­try. The top­ics cov­er every­thing from His­to­ry, Phi­los­o­phy, Lit­er­a­ture, and Eco­nom­ics, to Math, Sci­ence, Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment, Cook­ing, and Pho­tog­ra­phy. And you can binge-watch entire col­lege cours­es in a mat­ter of days by watch­ing videos on your TV, tablet, lap­top and smart phone, with the help of apps designed for Apple, Google Play, Kin­dle Fire, and Roku.

Inter­est­ed in try­ing out this ser­vice? Right now, the Great Cours­es Plus/Won­dri­um is offer­ing a spe­cial deal for Open Cul­ture read­ers. If you click here, and sign up for a free tri­al, you can use this ser­vice for 30 days … for free. And then, if you would like, you can con­tin­ue to sub­scribe and pay their nor­mal prices. If you have time on your hands, this is a great way to keep your mind engaged and stream what PC Mag­a­zine has called “an excel­lent library of col­lege-lev­el lec­tures.”

Note: The Great Cours­es is a part­ner with Open Cul­ture. So if you sign up for a free tri­al, it ben­e­fits not just you and Great Cours­es Plus. It ben­e­fits Open Cul­ture too. So con­sid­er it win-win-win.

Learn to Speak 48 Languages for Free: Everything from Arabic to Indonesian to Yiddish on One Page

in Language Lessons | August 12th, 2015

Even by the stan­dards of Unit­ed States Pres­i­dents, Barack Oba­ma has led a pret­ty unusu­al life. His ear­ly expe­ri­ences includ­ed a child­hood plunge into inter­na­tion­al­ism in the form of not just his Kenyan father but his Indone­sian step­fa­ther, to whose home­land the fam­i­ly moved when Oba­ma was six years old. For the next four years, the young future Com­man­der in Chief attend­ed local schools in Jakar­ta, and the lan­guage he picked up then has stuck with him today. It cer­tain­ly served him well when he returned to Indone­sia as Pres­i­dent to give the speech above, in which he talks about his love for that coun­try and his belief in its impor­tance to the future, speak­ing bits and pieces in Indone­sian through­out — and draw­ing great applause each time.

If you want to be like Bar­ry and meet with a sim­i­lar­ly rap­tur­ous recep­tion when next you give a pub­lic address in the Emer­ald of the Equa­tor, start by learn­ing the basics of the Indone­sian lan­guage at our Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons page. There, you’ll find a wealth of pod­casts like Learn­ing Indone­sian (iTunes), Indonesianpod101 (iTunes), and Indone­sian Sur­vival Phras­es (iTunes). [Advanced learn­ers might pre­fer tun­ing in to news-in-Indone­sian pod­casts from SBS (iTunes) and NHK World (iTunes) radio.] Indonesianpod101 even has a Youtube page with video lessons like the one just above.

Even if you don’t plan on becom­ing Pres­i­dent, you may still have plen­ty of rea­sons to learn Indone­sian. With its famil­iar alpha­bet and sim­ple gram­mar with­out tens­es, gen­der forms, noun cas­es, and the like, it ranks as one of the very eas­i­est lan­guages in which to attain flu­en­cy. I know an Amer­i­can col­lege pro­fes­sor in South Korea who con­stant­ly urges his stu­dents to study Indone­sian, since it offers the “gold­en tip” of a wedge into the rest of Asia: mas­ter it, and you’ll have built up momen­tum to learn the oth­er, more com­pli­cat­ed lan­guages of the region, from Man­darin to Can­tonese to Japan­ese and beyond — all of which you can also begin study­ing at, of course, our Free Lan­guage Lessons page.

If your lin­guis­tic inter­ests slant toward Europe rather than Asia, don’t wor­ry, we’ve still got your back: our lists include learn­ing resources for lan­guages of that con­ti­nent as major as Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Russ­ian, Eng­lish, and Ger­man to niche lan­guages like Cata­lan, Finnish, Hun­gar­i­an, and Ser­bo-Croa­t­ian. If you notice we’ve missed any lan­guage you’ve har­bored a burn­ing desire to learn, drop us a line so we can start gath­er­ing pod­casts, videos, and PDFs on it. In the mean­time, sure­ly the Free Lan­guage Lessons page offers you some­thing to start on and get that incom­pa­ra­ble feel­ing of break­ing into a new lan­guage for the first time. Semoga berun­tung, as we say in Jakar­ta!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Study 40+ Lan­guages with Free Lessons from the U.S. For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute

Let’s Learn Japan­ese: Two Clas­sic Video Series to Get You Start­ed in the Lan­guage

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Performed by Great Actors: Gielgud, McKellen & More

in Literature, Theatre | July 20th, 2015

A cou­ple of years ago we pub­lished a post on “what Shake­speare sound­ed like to Shake­speare” which high­light­ed some promi­nent lin­guists’ attempts to recre­ate the Eliz­a­bethan speech pat­terns and accents of the play­wright’s day. There may be some small debate about whether or not they suc­ceed­ed, but we’ll nev­er know for cer­tain since his day is long behind us.

In some ways, the nature of Shake­speare’s lan­guage may have been more French, or more Lati­nate, or more Sax­on, than the Eng­lish we speak today—depending on the pro­por­tion of region­alisms com­min­gling in any giv­en play, like char­ac­ters in a nation­al bazaar.

Our cur­rent ver­sion of the lan­guage may have absorbed anoth­er four hun­dred years of glob­al influ­ence, but in the process it has also become more homog­e­nized and stan­dard­ized. Shake­speare’s lan­guage was both more provin­cial and more riotous­ly diverse–in spelling and pronunciation–than many kinds of Eng­lish we speak today.

Per­haps this is one rea­son we think of Shake­speare as a uni­ver­sal poet—the het­ero­doxy of his speech, and hence a vari­abil­i­ty of char­ac­ters found in few oth­er lit­er­a­tures. Even his stock types seem to have indi­vid­ual voic­es. The degree of inter­play between high and low speech—city and coun­try, com­ic and trag­ic, lyric and prosaic—may be why near­ly every world lan­guage has found a way to adapt his work, accent­ing some qual­i­ties and mut­ing oth­ers. You don’t have to take my word for it. You can see for your­self at the MIT Glob­al Shake­speare’s Video & Per­for­mance Archive, which hosts dozens of Shake­speare stag­ings in dozens of lan­guages, like the mes­mer­iz­ing Japan­ese Lear above, or the heartrac­ing­ly intense one-woman clip from the Argen­tine Ham­let la meta­mor­pho­sis at the top, a melo­dra­mat­ic pro­duc­tion that would thrill David Lynch. Addi­tion­al­ly, the data­base aggre­gates “essays and meta­da­ta pro­vid­ed by schol­ars and edu­ca­tors in the field” of inter­na­tion­al Shake­speare stud­ies.

Even among the thou­sands of Eng­lish-lan­guage adap­ta­tions of Shake­speare’s work we find an inter­na­tion­al diver­si­ty of speech. The Spo­ti­fy playlist above, brought to us by Ulysses Clas­si­cal (mak­ers of the Stan­ley Kubrick Playlist), presents a huge col­lec­tion of record­ed Shake­speare plays and poems, as well as the scores and inci­den­tal music for Eng­lish-lan­guage pro­duc­tions. The actors represented–Sirs Giel­gud, Olivi­er, and McK­ellen, Derek Jaco­bi, Edith Evans–are most­ly Eng­lish stage roy­al­ty, but we also have Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and actor Richard Bur­ton, and Amer­i­cans Paul Robe­son, Ros­alind Rus­sell, and Orson Welles. The val­ue of such a col­lec­tion is inestimable–68 hours of Shake­speare read and per­formed by some of the world’s finest actors. But it is indeed a spe­cif­ic slice of the world. Even in Eng­lish it feels (for­give the puns) that all the world could be rep­re­sent­ed here, doing Shake­speare in every kind of Eng­lish around the globe. Per­haps such a glob­al approach to teach­ing Shake­speare in Eng­lish would add nuance to debates about whether his work is still rel­e­vant in Amer­i­can high school and col­lege class­rooms. In any case, there seem to be few bar­ri­ers to actors and direc­tors for approach­ing Shake­speare with new trans­la­tions and with fresh eyes, ears, and cos­tumes, again and again.

You can access the Spo­ti­fy playlist on the web here. If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy, find it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Orson Welles’ Radio Per­for­mances of 10 Shake­speare Plays

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

2,200 Radical Political Posters Digitized: A New Archive

in Archives, History, Politics | July 2nd, 2015

I recent­ly heard some­one say his col­lege-bound nephew asked him, “What’s a union?” Whether you love unions, loathe them, or remain indif­fer­ent, the fact that an osten­si­bly edu­cat­ed young per­son might have such a sig­nif­i­cant gap in their knowl­edge should cause con­cern. A his­toric labor con­flict, after all, pro­vid­ed the occa­sion for Ronald Rea­gan to prove his bona fides to the new con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment that swept him into pow­er. His crush­ing of the Pro­fes­sion­al Air Traf­fic Con­trollers Orga­ni­za­tion (PATCO) in 1981 set the tone for the ensu­ing 30 years or so of eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, with the labor move­ment fight­ing an uphill bat­tle all the way. Pri­or to that defin­ing event, unions held sway over pol­i­tics local and nation­al, and had con­sol­i­dat­ed pow­er blocks in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape through decades of strug­gle against oppres­sive and dehu­man­iz­ing work­ing con­di­tions.

In prac­ti­cal terms, unions have stood in the way of cap­i­tal’s unceas­ing search for cheap labor and new con­sumer mar­kets; in social and cul­tur­al terms, the pol­i­tics of labor have rep­re­sent­ed a for­mi­da­ble ide­o­log­i­cal chal­lenge to con­ser­v­a­tives as well, by way of a vibrant assem­blage of anar­chists, civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans, anti-colo­nial­ists, com­mu­nists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, paci­fists, fem­i­nists, social­ists, etc. A host of rad­i­cal isms flour­ished among orga­nized work­ers espe­cial­ly in the decades between the 1870s and the 1970s, find­ing their voice in newslet­ters, mag­a­zines, pam­phlets, leaflets, and posters—fragile medi­ums that do not often weath­er well the rav­ages of time. Thus the advent of dig­i­tal archives has been a boon for stu­dents and his­to­ri­ans of work­ers’ move­ments and oth­er pop­ulist polit­i­cal groundswells. One such archive, the Joseph A. Labadie Col­lec­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Library, has recent­ly announced the dig­i­ti­za­tion of over 2,200 posters from their col­lec­tion, a data­base that spans the globe and the spec­trum of left­ist polit­i­cal speech and iconog­ra­phy.

We have clev­er­ly-designed visu­al puns like the Chica­go Indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World poster just above, titled “What is what in the world of labor?” Pro­mot­ing itself as “One Big Union of All Labor,” the IWW made some of the most ambi­tious pro­pa­gan­da, like the 1912 poster (mid­dle) in which an “Indus­tri­al Co-Oper­a­tive Com­mon­wealth” replaces the tyran­ny of the cap­i­tal­ist, who is told by his “trust man­ag­er” peer, “Our rule is end­ed, dis­mount and go to work.” In this post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary fan­ta­sy, the IWW promis­es that “A few hours of use­ful work insure all a lux­u­ri­ous liv­ing,” though it only hints at the details of this utopi­an arrange­ment. Up top, we have an ornate May Day poster from 1895 by Wal­ter Crane, hop­ing for a “Mer­rie Eng­land” with “No Child Toil­ers,” “Pro­duc­tion for Use Not For Prof­it,” and “The Land For the Peo­ple,” among oth­er, more nation­al­ist, sen­ti­ments like “Eng­land Should Feed Her Own Peo­ple.”

“While all of the posters were scanned at high res­o­lu­tion,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic, “they appear online as thumb­nails with nav­i­ga­tion to zoom.” You can down­load the images, but only the small­er, thumb­nail size in most cas­es. These hun­dreds of posters rep­re­sent “just a por­tion of the mate­r­i­al in the Labadie Collection”—named for a “Detroit-area labor orga­niz­er, anar­chist, and author” who “had the idea for the social protest archive at the uni­ver­si­ty in 1911.” You can view oth­er polit­i­cal arti­facts in the UMich library’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions here, includ­ing anar­chist pam­phlets, polit­i­cal but­tons, and a dig­i­tal pho­to col­lec­tion. The col­lec­tion as a whole gives us a poten­tial­ly inspir­ing, or infu­ri­at­ing, mosa­ic of polit­i­cal thought at its bold­est and most graph­i­cal­ly assertive from a time before online peti­tions and hash­tag cam­paigns took over as the pri­ma­ry cir­cu­la­tors of pop­u­lar rad­i­cal thought.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic (where you can find some oth­er big, visu­al­ly strik­ing posters)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Free Online Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Cours­es

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

See Flannery O’Connor’s Story “The Displaced Person” Adapted to a Film Starring a Young Samuel L. Jackson (1977)

in Film, Literature, Television | June 19th, 2015

There are strong peo­ple qui­et­ly will­ing to do “what needs to be done” for the pub­lic good, and then there are those who enjoy insin­u­at­ing that they are that sort of per­son, usu­al­ly as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their self-serv­ing, fre­quent­ly racist or xeno­pho­bic actions. When the lat­ter reach­es for the Bible as back up, look out!

No one ever had more fun with this mon­strous type than the writer Flan­nery O’Connor, a devout Catholic with a knack for wrap­ping her char­ac­ters’ foul pur­pos­es in the “stink­ing mad shad­ow of Jesus.”

In her longest sto­ry “The Dis­placed Per­son,” the boor­ish, Bible-thump­ing Mrs. Short­ley is not the only bad­die. The refined Mrs. McIn­tyre, wid­owed mis­tress of the dairy oper­a­tion that employs the Short­leys and a cou­ple of African-Amer­i­can farmhands, is just as quick to indict those with whom she imag­ines her­self at cross-pur­pos­es.

Trans­fer them to the small screen, and every actress over 40 would be clam­or­ing for the chance to sink her teeth into one or the oth­er.

In 1977, PBS hired play­wright Hor­ton Foote to adapt “The Dis­placed Per­son” for “The Amer­i­can Short Sto­ry,” and the roles of Short­ley and McIn­tyre went to Shirley Stol­er and Irene Worth, both excel­lent.

(See above…it’s always so much more amus­ing to play one of the vil­lains than the hard­work­ing, uncom­plain­ing, tit­u­lar char­ac­ter, here a Pol­ish refugee from WWII.)

The audio qual­i­ty is not the great­est, but stick with it to see Samuel L. Jack­son, not quite 30, as the younger of the two farmhands.

O’Connor buffs will be inter­est­ed to know that Andalu­sia, the writer’s own Geor­gia farm, served as the loca­tion for this hour-long project. (No need to rent a pea­cock!)

Despite the state­ly pro­duc­tion val­ues that were de rigeur for qual­i­ty view­ing of the peri­od, the sto­ry retains the unmis­tak­able tang of O’Connor—it’s a bit­ter, com­ic brew.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent

Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion’ (c. 1960)

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

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

Watch Lynda Barry’s Graduation Speech; Give a Shout Out to the Teachers Who Changed Your Life

in Comics/Cartoons, Graduation Speech, Life | June 15th, 2015

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts’ most recent grads are lucky ducks to have had a speak­er as engag­ing as car­toon­ist and edu­ca­tor Lyn­da Bar­ry deliv­er­ing their commencement’s keynote address.

Speak­er Bar­ry was also made an Hon­orary Doc­tor of Fine Arts, an award that occa­sioned the ill-fit­ting tam seen in the video above, as well as a new title—Doctor Nursey—conferred by pre-kinder­garten­ers with whom she works at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin. (Pre­vi­ous alias­es include Pro­fes­sor Chew­bac­ca and Pro­fes­sor Old Skull)

Bar­ry kept things live­ly by mix­ing in some tried and true mate­r­i­al from oth­er pub­lic appear­ances, includ­ing her Fil­ipino grandmother’s belief in the aswang, a poem set to music (here “Cot­ton Song” by Harlem Renais­sance poet, Jean Toomer) and the sto­ry of the col­lab­o­ra­tive car­toon, “Chick­en Attack by Jack.”

This last anec­dote con­tains a strong indict­ment of con­tem­po­rary society’s screen addic­tion, and it is heart­en­ing to see the graduates—members of the last gen­er­a­tion to pre-date the Internet—listening so atten­tive­ly, no one tex­ting or tweet­ing as the cam­era pans the crowd.

When Bar­ry exhort­ed them to shout out the names of their three most inspir­ing teach­ers on the count of three, most did!

For me, this was the most thrilling moment, though I also appre­ci­at­ed the advice on the best time to sched­ule oral surgery, and a bliss­ful untruth about Ever­green State Col­lege’s appli­ca­tion process cir­ca the mid-70s.

Not your typ­i­cal com­mence­ment speech… those lucky, lucky ducks!

Read­ers, we invite you to get in the spir­it and cel­e­brate the Class of 2015 by “shout­ing” the names of your most inspi­ra­tional teach­ers in the com­ment sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Barry’s Won­der­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her UW-Madi­son Class, “The Unthink­able Mind”

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth is Nev­er Hav­ing to Spend Time with A‑Holes

Robert De Niro Tells Grad­u­at­ing NYU Arts Grads, “You Made It… And You’re F*cked”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Con­grat­u­la­tions, grad­u­ates, espe­cial­ly the mem­bers of NYC’s most fresh­ly forged the­ater com­pa­ny, Ras­cal Arts. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

An Animated Ayn Rand Dispenses Terrible Love Advice to Mike Wallace (1959)

in Animation, Philosophy | June 9th, 2015

In the past, the good folks over at Blank on Blank have turned rarely-seen inter­views with the likes of Ray Brad­bury and John Coltrane into bril­liant lit­tle ani­mat­ed shorts. This week, their lat­est install­ment is on Ayn Rand.

Rand, of course, is the mind behind Objec­tivism, the patron saint of lais­sez faire cap­i­tal­ism, and the author of such unwieldy tomes as The Foun­tain­head and Atlas Shrugged. Among Wall Street bankers, Wash­ing­ton con­ser­v­a­tives and insuf­fer­able col­lege sopho­mores, Rand is a revered fig­ure. For­mer vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Paul Ryan and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Rand Paul are both acknowl­edged fol­low­ers. For­mer Fed­er­al Reserve head Alan Greenspan was Rand’s pro­tégé. To a lot of oth­er peo­ple, of course, her the­o­ries are lit­tle more than a shrill jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of sociopa­thy, an empa­thy-chal­lenged vision of social inter­ac­tion that flies in the face of basic ideas of human decen­cy.

The inter­view dates back to a 1959 inter­view by Mike Wal­lace (see the orig­i­nal here) who grills Rand on her con­cept of love and hap­pi­ness, which leads to this exchange:

Ayn Rand: I say that man is enti­tled to his own hap­pi­ness. And that he must achieve it him­self. But that he can­not demand that oth­ers give up their lives to make him hap­py. And nor should he wish to sac­ri­fice him­self for the hap­pi­ness of oth­ers. I hold that man should have self-esteem.

Mike Wal­lace: And can­not man have self-esteem if he loves his fel­low man? Christ, every impor­tant moral leader in man’s his­to­ry, has taught us that we should love one anoth­er. Why then is this kind of love in your mind immoral?

Ayn Rand: It is immoral if it is a love placed above one­self. It is more than immoral, it’s impos­si­ble. Because when you are asked to love every­body indis­crim­i­nate­ly. That is to love peo­ple with­out any stan­dard. To love them regard­less of whether they have any val­ue or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.

Watch­ing the piece, I kept hear­ing the title of Ray­mond Carver’s bril­liant short sto­ry run through my mind, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” (Hear Carv­er read that sto­ry here.) My sense is that her ver­sion of love is very dif­fer­ent from mine. Watch the full ani­mat­ed video above.

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 pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Ayn Rand Adamant­ly Defends Her Athe­ism on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

The Out­spo­ken Ayn Rand Inter­viewed by Mike Wal­lace (1959)

Ayn Rand Trash­es C.S. Lewis in Her Mar­gin­a­lia: He’s an “Abysmal Bas­tard”

A Creepy Cut Out Animation of Samuel Beckett’s 1953 Novel, The Unnamable

in Animation, English Language, Literature | June 8th, 2015

Morn­ing, friend! Ready to kick off your week with a Beck­et­t­ian night­mare vision?

Samuel Beck­ett schol­ar Jen­ny Trig­gs was earn­ing a mas­ters in Visu­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Edin­burgh Col­lege of Art when she cre­at­ed the unset­tling, cut out ani­ma­tion for his 1953 nov­el, The Unnam­able, above. (Her PhD exhi­bi­tion, a decade lat­er, was a mul­ti-screen video response to Beckett’s short sto­ry, Ping.)

The wretched crea­tures haunt­ing the film con­jure Bosch and Gilliam, in addi­tion to Ire­land’s best known avant-garde play­wright.

Trig­gs seem to have drawn inspi­ra­tion from the name­less narrator’s phys­i­cal self-assess­ment:

I of whom I know noth­ing, I know my eyes are open because of the tears that pour from them unceas­ing­ly. I know I am seat­ed, my hands on my knees, because of the pres­sure against my rump, against the soles of my feet? I don’t know. My spine is not sup­port­ed. I men­tion these details to make sure I am not lying on my back, my legs raised and bent, my eyes closed.

Despite the narrator’s effort to keep track of his parts, Trig­gs ensures that some­thing will always be miss­ing. Her char­ac­ters make do with rods, bits of chess pieces or noth­ing at all in places where limbs should be.

Are these birth defects or some sort of wartime dis­abil­i­ty that pre­cludes pros­thet­ics?

One char­ac­ter is described as “noth­ing but a shape­less heap… with a wild equine eye.”

The nar­ra­tor steels him­self “to invent anoth­er fairy tale with heads, trunks, arms, legs and all that fol­lows.” Mean­while, he’s tor­ment­ed by a spir­i­tu­al push-me-pull-you that feels very like the one afflict­ing Vladimir and Estragon in Wait­ing for Godot:

Where I am, I don’t know, I’ll nev­er know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

Trig­gs describes The Unnam­able as a book that begs to be read aloud, and her nar­ra­tors Louise Milne and Chris Noon are deserv­ing of praise for pars­ing the mean­der­ing text in such a way that it makes sense, at least atmos­pher­i­cal­ly.

To go on means going from here, means find­ing me, los­ing me, van­ish­ing and begin­ning again, a stranger first, then lit­tle by lit­tle the same as always, in anoth­er place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know noth­ing, being inca­pable of see­ing, mov­ing, think­ing, speak­ing, but of which lit­tle by lit­tle, in spite of these hand­i­caps, I shall begin to know some­thing, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swal­lows me up, I’ll nev­er know, which is per­haps mere­ly the inside of my dis­tant skull where once I wan­dered, now am fixed, lost for tini­ness, or strain­ing against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever mur­mur­ing my old sto­ries, my old sto­ry, as if it were the first time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads From His Nov­el Watt

Take a “Breath” and Watch Samuel Beckett’s One-Minute Play

Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That Fall, Embers, and More

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

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

in Current Affairs, Education, Poetry | June 1st, 2015

Image by Michiel Hendryckx.

Although the bound­aries of what should pass for free speech in high school Eng­lish class­rooms will be for­ev­er in debate, most every­one would agree some bound­aries must exist. But what of the speech of famous authors? Of tow­er­ing fig­ures of 20th cen­tu­ry poet­ry? Should their speech be sub­ject to review? What of an Eng­lish teacher who allows the most risqué Beat poem you’ve ever heard to be read aloud in class by the poet him­self, Allen Gins­berg, via an online video (per­haps this one)? Award-win­ning Eng­lish teacher David Olio, a beloved 19-year vet­er­an, did just that when a stu­dent asked to share Ginsberg’s ecsta­t­ic, and very explic­it, poem “Please Mas­ter” with the class.

After com­plaints from sev­er­al stu­dents, the school admin­is­tra­tion sus­pend­ed Olio, then forced him to resign. Whether or not this deci­sion was just is a debate that extends beyond the scope of this post. The vari­ables are many, as Slate’s sym­pa­thet­ic Mark Joseph Stern admits, includ­ing the fact that Olio did not exact­ly pre­pare his stu­dents for what was to come, nor give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to opt out. The high school seniors—on the thresh­old of adult­hood and some already with one foot in college—may not have had their “emo­tion­al health” endan­gered, as Olio’s ter­mi­na­tion let­ter alleged, but it’s lit­tle won­der some of them found the mate­r­i­al shock­ing.

Ginsberg’s poem, which you can hear him read above, describes a “fan­ta­sized sex­u­al encounter between Gins­berg and Neal Cas­sady, the inspi­ra­tion for the Dean Mori­ar­ty char­ac­ter in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.” It is graph­ic, writes Stern, but “not obscene.” Instead—in its allu­sions to St. Teresa’s angel­ic vis­i­ta­tion in a “pro­fane descrip­tion of anal sex as a near­ly divine act”—Ginsberg’s poem is “dan­ger­ous because it jux­ta­pos­es ten­der­ness with masochism; dan­ger­ous because it rap­tur­ous­ly cel­e­brates a vision of same-sex inti­ma­cy we are only sup­posed to whis­per about.” Read the poem, lis­ten to Gins­berg read it, and judge for your­self.

Of course, this is hard­ly the first time Ginsberg’s work has caused con­tro­ver­sy. His Beat epic “Howl” (1955), with its sex­u­al­ly charged lines, irked the U.S. gov­ern­ment, who seized copies of the poem and put its pub­lish­er, poet and City Lights’ book­seller Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, on tri­al for obscen­i­ty. Well over six­ty years lat­er, Fer­linghet­ti has writ­ten in defense of David Olio. We can safe­ly assume that Gins­berg, who died in 1997, also would approve. And while we have every right to be shocked by Ginsberg’s poem, or not, and find the deci­sion to fire Olio war­rant­ed, or not, I tend to agree with Stern when he writes “if every Eng­lish teacher were that enthu­si­as­tic about his sub­ject, Amer­i­ca would be a much more lit­er­ate, edu­cat­ed and inter­est­ing place.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Allen Gins­berg Reads a Poem He Wrote on LSD to William F. Buck­ley

Allen Gins­berg Talks About Com­ing Out to His Fam­i­ly & Fel­low Poets on 1978 Radio Show (NSFW)

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

Flannery O’Connor to Grace New U.S. Postage Stamp

in Literature | May 26th, 2015

Since 1979, the US Postal Ser­vice has made a prac­tice of issu­ing postage stamps hon­or­ing “skill­ful word­smiths” who have “spun our favorite tales — and Amer­i­can his­to­ry along with them.” Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Wright, Julia De Bur­gos, Mark Twain, O. Hen­ry, and Ralph Elli­son have all been fêt­ed since 2009. And soon we can add the South­ern Goth­ic writer Flan­nery O’Con­nor to the list. Her stamp will make its debut on June 5th. Until then, we’d encour­age you to stream rare record­ings of O’Con­nor read­ing her famous sto­ry, ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’, and her wit­ty essay, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion.” These are the only known record­ings of O’Con­nor read­ing her work, and they pro­vide a won­der­ful intro­duc­tion to O’Con­nor’s lit­er­ary tal­ents.

via LA Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Flan­nery O’Connor to Lit Pro­fes­sor: “My Tone Is Not Meant to Be Obnox­ious. I’m in a State of Shock”

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945