David Carr Gives 10 Pieces of Work & Life Advice to UC Berkeley Graduates

in Graduation Speech, Life, Media | February 14th, 2015

David Carr took sev­en years to get through col­lege. He did­n’t have a Mas­ter’s degree or a PhD. Before he made it big writ­ing for The New York Times, he spent time in rehab and on wel­fare. David Carr did­n’t fit the pro­file of your aver­age com­mence­ment speak­er.

And yet Carr, who died in the Times news­room on Thurs­day night, earned his spot speak­ing before the 2014 grad­u­at­ing class at UC Berke­ley’s Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism. Known for his insight­ful report­ing on changes in pub­lish­ing, tele­vi­sion and social media, Carr under­stood the world these young jour­nal­ists were enter­ing. And when he offered 10 pieces of grad­u­a­tion advice, you know the stu­dents took note. You should too:

1.) Some­one who is under­es­ti­mat­ed will be the one who changes the world. It’s not the per­son every­one expects. It might be you.

2.) “Do what is front of you.” Focus on the small steps ahead of you.

3.) Don’t wor­ry about achiev­ing a mas­ter plan, about the plot to take over the world.

4.) Be a work­er among work­ers. It’s more impor­tant that you fit in before you stick out.

5.) Fol­low the “Mom Rule.” Don’t do any­thing you couldn’t explain or jus­ti­fy to your mom.

6.) Don’t just do what you’re good at. Get out­side of your com­fort zone. Being a jour­nal­ist is per­mis­sion for life­time learn­ing.

7.) Be present. Don’t wor­ry about doc­u­ment­ing the moment with your smart­phone. Expe­ri­ence it your­self.

8.) Take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the good and the bad. Learn to own your fail­ures.

9.) Be hon­est, and be will­ing to have the dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion.

10.) Don’t be afraid to be ambi­tious. It’s not a crime.

He says it’s a lis­ti­cle that won’t appear on Buz­zfeed. But it fits per­fect­ly on OC. David, we’re so sor­ry to see you go.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michael Pol­lan Presents an Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion, A Free Online Course From UC Berke­ley

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 2005 Com­mence­ment Speech “This is Water” Visu­al­ized in Short Film

NPR Launch­es Data­base of Best Com­mence­ment Speech­es Ever

William Faulkner Outlines on His Office Wall the Plot of His Pulitzer Prize Winning Novel, A Fable (1954)

in Literature | February 12th, 2015

Image cour­tesy of enotes

This past sum­mer I had occa­sion to vis­it Oxford Mis­sis­sip­pi for a con­fer­ence on William Faulkn­er, host­ed by the uni­ver­si­ty he briefly attend­ed, Ole Miss. Own­er of Faulkner’s estate, Rowan Oak, since 1972, the uni­ver­si­ty often stages events on the novelist’s for­mer grounds—particularly to cel­e­brate meet­ings devot­ed to his work. While I had wan­dered around the prop­er­ty a few times dur­ing my stay on cam­pus, I thought I’d wait until the cap­stone bar­be­cue at the conference’s close to enter the house itself. More fool me. A rain­storm forced the fes­tiv­i­ties into a col­lege hall, and I had to depart ear­ly the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

And so, sad­ly, I missed out on walk­ing Faulkner’s floor­boards, peer­ing out through his win­dows, and, espe­cial­ly, see­ing first­hand the notes he scrawled on the walls of his study to out­line the plot of his 1954 nov­el A Fable. The Pulitzer Prize and Nation­al Book Award-win­ning book, which—depending on your tol­er­ance for Faulkner’s excess­es is either a “crown­ing achieve­ment or self-indul­gent mess”—occu­pied the author for over a decade. He began A Fable—set in France dur­ing World War 1—just after the end of the Sec­ond World War, and did much of the writ­ing in the small office he added to the house in 1950, the year after he won the Nobel Prize. (Hear him read his Nobel Prize Speech here.)

Pho­to by Nick Rus­sell

Plot­ting the chronol­o­gy on the walls helped him become ful­ly immersed in the novel’s den­si­ty, but, writes edu­ca­tion blog Enotes, “not every­body was so pleased with the method”: “Faulkner’s wife, dis­ap­point­ed with the deci­sion, had the walls repaint­ed. In return, Faulkn­er rewrote the out­line and then shel­lacked the wall to ensure a per­ma­nent record.”

There are much worse ways to antag­o­nize one’s spouse, I sup­pose, but I’m sure that wasn’t his pri­ma­ry intent. Faulkn­er con­sid­ered the nov­el his masterpiece—Pulitzer and Nation­al Book Award com­mit­tees agreed—but crit­ics have not been so kind. It’s now one of his less­er-known works, one of the few not set in the fic­tion­al Yoknopataw­pha, a stand-in for his own Lafayette coun­ty, which he mined for sto­ries all of his mature career after some brief adven­tur­ing abroad.

Per­haps his defi­ant preser­va­tion of the plan for A Fable rep­re­sents his deep desire to leave behind the “postage stamp” of Oxford and its surrounds—to ven­ture into oth­er imag­i­na­tive ter­ri­to­ries. If so, his plan failed. Faulkn­er will be for­ev­er asso­ci­at­ed with the South—with Mis­sis­sip­pi, and with Rowan Oak. And like so many devo­tees, I’ll like­ly make my pil­grim­age to his well-pre­served home a year­ly event. The next time I’m down there, how­ev­er, I’ll actu­al­ly make it inside to see the writ­ing on the walls.

Pho­to by John Lawrence, from Faulkner’s Rowan Oak , by John Lawrence and Dan Hise

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Audio: William Faulkn­er Names His Best Nov­el, And the First Faulkn­er Nov­el You Should Read

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

How Famous Writ­ers — From J.K. Rowl­ing to William Faulkn­er — Visu­al­ly Out­lined Their Nov­els

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

All You Need is Love: The Keys to Happiness Revealed by a 75-Year Harvard Study

in Health, Life, Psychology | February 9th, 2015

The lat­est install­ment from PBS’ Brain­Craft video series intro­duces us to two sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies that teach us a thing or two about what brings us hap­pi­ness. One set of results comes from Dr. John Gottman’s Fam­i­ly Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry (a.k.a. the “Love Lab”); the oth­er from the Har­vard Grant Study, a 75-year study that has traced the lives and devel­op­ment of 268 Har­vard sopho­mores from the class­es of 1939–1944. Although the study focus­es on priv­i­leged white men (the demo­graph­ic that attend­ed Har­vard Col­lege dur­ing the 1930s and 40s), the Har­vard Grant Study has yield­ed con­clu­sions that apply to a broad­er pop­u­la­tion.

One of the longest-run­ning stud­ies of adult devel­op­ment, the study has found, for exam­ple, that alco­holism has some of the most ruinous effects on mar­riages, fam­i­ly finances and per­son­al health. Like­wise, it reveals that lib­er­als have sex much fur­ther into old age than their con­ser­v­a­tive peers.

But those aren’t the big take­aways — the con­clu­sions that talk about hap­pi­ness. If you watch the inter­view below with George Vail­lant, the long­time direc­tor of the study, you will hear him con­clude that hap­pi­ness isn’t about “con­form­ing, keep­ing up with the Jone­ses. It is about play­ing, and work­ing, and lov­ing. And lov­ing is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant. Hap­pi­ness is love.”

Accord­ing to Vail­lant, “warmth of rela­tion­ships through­out life have the great­est pos­i­tive impact on ‘life sat­is­fac­tion.’ ” When we have warm rela­tion­ships with our par­ents, spous­es, friends and fam­i­ly, we expe­ri­ence less dai­ly anx­i­ety and a greater sense of over­all plea­sure; we have bet­ter health (includ­ing low­er lev­els of demen­tia lat­er in life); and we’re more effec­tive at work and make more mon­ey.

Essen­tial­ly The Bea­t­les had it right, “All you need is love. Love is all you need.”

You can read more about the Har­vard study over at The Atlantic.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

Take the ‘Hap­pi­ness Exper­i­ment’

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

A Crash Course on Psy­chol­o­gy: A 30-Part Video Series from Hank Green

Rare Interview: Tim Curry Discusses The Rocky Horror Picture Show, During the Week of Its Release (1975)

in Film, Television | February 9th, 2015

A defin­ing role can be both bless­ing and curse. In August of 1975, the week the The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show opened, its 29-year-old star, Tim Cur­ry gave an inter­view to STOIC, the Stu­dent Tele­vi­sion Of Impe­r­i­al Col­lege.

In between clips of Curry’s Frank-n-Furter sashay­ing through such des­tined-to-become cult favorites as “Sweet Trans­ves­tite” and “The Time Warp,” in fish­nets, mer­ry wid­ow, and maquil­lage designed by David Bowie’s per­son­al make­up artist, the actor enter­tained questions…in lus­cious black and white!

Kudos to the young inter­view­er, Mark Cald­well, for nev­er inter­rupt­ing or try­ing to elbow his way into the spot­light with jokey asides or dou­ble enten­dres. The reward is a seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the film­mak­ing process and the actor’s craft.

(Bear in mind that it would be at least a year until mid­night audi­ences at New York’s Waver­ly The­ater start­ed throw­ing toast, rice, and toi­let paper at the screen, thus ini­ti­at­ing an entire script’s worth of audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion.)

Hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed the role on the Lon­don stage (he audi­tioned with Lit­tle Richard’s “Tut­ti Frut­ti”) and reprised it in L.A., Cur­ry was clear­ly ready to put some space between him­self and his icon­ic cre­ation, announcing—correctly, as it turns out—that any sequels would have to pro­ceed with­out him.

Then he clammed up for three decades, refus­ing to dis­cuss his most icon­ic role until 2005, when he broke the silence dur­ing an inter­view on NPR’s Fresh Air .

It’s clear that Cur­ry saw the mak­ing of the film as a seri­ous busi­ness, but Rocky Hor­ror fans will find plen­ty of juicy morsels to feed their obses­sion. Even vir­gins will enjoy the sto­ry of Frank’s evolv­ing accent —from mid­dle Euro­pean to “Bel­gravia Host­ess with the Mostest.”

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

Watch a Young Bob Marley and The Wailers Perform Live in England (1973): For His 70th Birthday Today

in Music | February 6th, 2015

If you’ve spent any time at all on a col­lege cam­pus, you’ve heard Bob Mar­ley and the Wailer’s 1984 com­pi­la­tion album Leg­end waft­ing from dorm rooms and frat house win­dows. The longest chart­ing album in the his­to­ry of Bill­board mag­a­zine, it con­tains all of the band’s top 40 hits and more or less stands as every young American’s intro­duc­tion to the icon­ic Jamaican singer, if not to reg­gae music itself. Before Leg­end, there was Eric Clapton’s cov­er of Marley’s 1973 sin­gle “I Shot the Sher­iff.” Clapton’s ver­sion hit num­ber one on the Bill­board Hot 100 in ’74—his only num­ber one hit in the U.S.—and intro­duced Amer­i­can audi­ences to Marley’s fiery pol­i­tics, if not always to Mar­ley him­self. On what would have been Mar­ley’s 70th birth­day, we bring you some ear­ly footage of the man and his band.

While many Amer­i­cans may been rather late to the Bob Mar­ley par­ty, and to reg­gae, the Eng­lish have long had a fas­ci­na­tion with West Indi­an music. Ska pio­neers like Desmond Dekker drew huge crowds in the UK while remain­ing much less pop­u­lar state­side (though Dekker had a num­ber one hit in the U.S. in 1969). But even some Brits didn’t quite know what to do with Mar­ley when he and the Wail­ers hit Eng­lish shores in the spring of 1973. Play­ing the Sun­down The­ater in the Lon­don sub­urb of Edmon­ton in sup­port of Dekker and a host of oth­er acts (top), Mar­ley, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “was still some­what of an enig­ma and the Wail­ers were son­i­cal­ly much more adven­tur­ous than some of the oth­er acts on the bill that day…. Accord­ing to reports at the time, most of the audi­ence at this Wail­ers gig didn’t ‘get’ the group.”

Nev­er­the­less, that ’73 tour changed the band’s for­tunes for­ev­er. After three albums, a pre­vi­ous UK tour, and sev­er­al attempts to break into the pop charts, the Wailer’s fourth record, major label-debut Catch a Fire, final­ly made them inter­na­tion­al stars, if not yet every Amer­i­can col­lege freshman’s favorite band. Just above, hear an FM broad­cast of anoth­er date from the UK leg of the Catch a Fire tour (see the Youtube page for the full setlist). After Britain, the band played a run of shows at Paul’s Mall in Boston, then four nights at New York’s Max’s Kansas City. Just a few months lat­er, they hit major cities all over the U.S. before return­ing to Eng­land in Novem­ber in sup­port of Burnin’, and the song Clap­ton made famous.

While we tend to asso­ciate Mar­ley with peace, love, and patchouli—an impres­sion fur­thered by Leg­end, which leans rather heav­i­ly on the love songs—these ear­ly albums are fierce and mil­i­tant, and do not hold back from explic­it calls for vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion and con­dem­na­tion of his­tor­i­cal oppres­sion. It’s a some­what neglect­ed side of Marley’s leg­end, but in these con­certs, we see just how mul­ti­fac­eted a song­writer and per­former he was. Charis­mat­ic and vibrant, and flanked by the tal­ent­ed Peter Tosh, Mar­ley exudes star pow­er. Today on his 70th birth­day, it’s still as good a time as any to cel­e­brate his life and remem­ber his stri­dent yet soul­ful calls for love and jus­tice.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Video: The Day Bob Mar­ley Played a Big Soc­cer Match in Brazil, 1980

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

Bill Graham’s Con­cert Vault: From Miles Davis to Bob Mar­ley

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

Richard Dawkins Reads “Love Letters” from “Fans” (NSFW)

in Random, Religion | January 28th, 2015

Richard Dawkins — some know him as the Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist who coined the term “meme” in his influ­en­tial 1976 book, The Self­ish Gene; oth­ers con­sid­er him a lead­ing fig­ure in the New Athe­ism move­ment, a posi­tion he has assumed unapolo­get­i­cal­ly. In recent years, Dawkins has made his case against reli­gion though dif­fer­ent forms of media: books, doc­u­men­taries, col­lege lec­tures, and pub­lic debates. He can be aggres­sive and snide, to be sure. But he dish­es out far less than he receives in return. Just wit­ness him read­ing the “love let­ters” (as he euphemisti­cal­ly calls them) that he has received from the gen­er­al pub­lic. They are not safe for work. You can see him read­ing a pre­vi­ous batch of let­ters here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Richard Dawkins’ Doc­u­men­tary The God Delu­sion Tack­les Faith & Reli­gious Vio­lence (2006)

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

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

in Literature | January 23rd, 2015

When Flan­nery O’Connor start­ed writ­ing in the mid­dle of the 20th cen­tu­ry, short sto­ries — or at least fash­ion­able short sto­ries that were pub­lished in The New York­er –unfold­ed del­i­cate­ly reveal­ing gos­samer-like lay­ers of expe­ri­ence. O’Connor’s sto­ries, in con­trast, were pun­gent, grotesque, often vio­lent moral tales deal­ing with unabashed­ly Chris­t­ian themes. They def­i­nite­ly weren’t fash­ion­able at the time. Yet since her untime­ly death at age 39 in 1964, O’Connor’s rep­u­ta­tion has only increased. Even for read­ers who aren’t immersed in Catholic the­ol­o­gy, her sto­ries — which pair out­landish, often com­ic char­ac­ters with har­row­ing, exis­ten­tial sit­u­a­tions — have a way of bur­row­ing into your con­scious­ness and stay­ing there. For O’Con­nor, the goth­ic tales were a means to an end: “To the hard of hear­ing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and star­tling fig­ures.”

In 1961, an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor wrote to O’Connor hop­ing to help his stu­dents under­stand “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The sto­ry, per­haps the author’s most famous, is a slip­pery, trou­bling work about a fam­i­ly of six casu­al­ly mur­dered by an escaped con­vict called the Mis­fit in the back­woods of Geor­gia. The story’s main char­ac­ter is clear­ly the Grand­moth­er. The sto­ry is seen through her eyes, and she is the one who ulti­mate­ly dooms the fam­i­ly. Yet the pro­fes­sor didn’t quite see it that way:

We have debat­ed at length sev­er­al pos­si­ble inter­pre­ta­tions, none of which ful­ly sat­is­fies us. In gen­er­al we believe that the appear­ance of the Mis­fit is not ‘real’ in the same sense that the inci­dents of the first half of the sto­ry are real. Bai­ley, we believe, imag­ines the appear­ance of the Mis­fit, whose activ­i­ties have been called to his atten­tion on the night before the trip and again dur­ing the stopover at the road­side restau­rant. Bai­ley, we fur­ther believe, iden­ti­fies him­self with the Mis­fit and so plays two roles in the imag­i­nary last half of the sto­ry. But we can­not, after great effort, deter­mine the point at which real­i­ty fades into illu­sion or rever­ie. Does the acci­dent lit­er­al­ly occur, or is it part of Bai­ley’s dream? Please believe me when I say we are not seek­ing an easy way out of our dif­fi­cul­ty. We admire your sto­ry and have exam­ined it with great care, but we are not con­vinced that we are miss­ing some­thing impor­tant which you intend­ed us to grasp. We will all be very grate­ful if you com­ment on the inter­pre­ta­tion which I have out­lined above and if you will give us fur­ther com­ments about your inten­tion in writ­ing ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find.’

O’Connor was under­stand­ably baf­fled by this read­ing. Her response:

28 March 1961

The inter­pre­ta­tion of your nine­ty stu­dents and three teach­ers is fan­tas­tic and about as far from my inten­tions as it could get to be. If it were a legit­i­mate inter­pre­ta­tion, the sto­ry would be lit­tle more than a trick and its inter­est would be sim­ply for abnor­mal psy­chol­o­gy. I am not inter­est­ed in abnor­mal psy­chol­o­gy.

There is a change of ten­sion from the first part of the sto­ry to the sec­ond where the Mis­fit enters, but this is no less­en­ing of real­i­ty. This sto­ry is, of course, not meant to be real­is­tic in the sense that it por­trays the every­day doings of peo­ple in Geor­gia. It is styl­ized and its con­ven­tions are com­ic even though its mean­ing is seri­ous.

Bailey’s only impor­tance is as the Grandmother’s boy and the dri­ver of the car. It is the Grand­moth­er who first rec­og­nized the Mis­fit and who is most con­cerned with him through­out. The sto­ry is a duel of sorts between the Grand­moth­er and her super­fi­cial beliefs and the Misfit’s more pro­found­ly felt involve­ment with Christ’s action which set the world off bal­ance for him.

The mean­ing of a sto­ry should go on expand­ing for the read­er the more he thinks about it, but mean­ing can­not be cap­tured in an inter­pre­ta­tion. If teach­ers are in the habit of approach­ing a sto­ry as if it were a research prob­lem for which any answer is believ­able so long as it is not obvi­ous, then I think stu­dents will nev­er learn to enjoy fic­tion. Too much inter­pre­ta­tion is cer­tain­ly worse than too lit­tle, and where feel­ing for a sto­ry is absent, the­o­ry will not sup­ply it.

My tone is not meant to be obnox­ious. I am in a state of shock.

Flan­nery O’Con­nor

You can hear O’Connor read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” below. We have more infor­ma­tion on the 1959 read­ing here:

Via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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

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 lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Read The Very First Comic Book: The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck (1837)

in Comics/Cartoons | January 23rd, 2015

Com­ic books, as any enthu­si­ast of comics books won’t hes­i­tate to tell you, have a long and robust his­to­ry, one that extends far wider and deep­er than the 20th-cen­tu­ry caped mus­cle­men, carous­ing teenagers, and wise­crack­ing ani­mals so many asso­ciate with the medi­um. The schol­ar­ship on com­ic-book his­to­ry — still a rel­a­tive­ly young field, you under­stand — has more than once revised its con­clu­sions on exact­ly how far back its roots go, but as of now, the ear­li­est acknowl­edged com­ic book dates to 1837.

The Adven­tures of Oba­di­ah Old­buck, accord­ing to thecomicbooks.com’s page on ear­ly com­ic-book his­to­ry, “was done by Switzer­land’s Rudolphe Töpf­fer, who has been con­sid­ered in Europe (and start­ing to become here in Amer­i­ca) as the cre­ator of the pic­ture sto­ry. He cre­at­ed the com­ic strip in 1827,” going on to cre­ate com­ic books “that were extreme­ly suc­cess­ful and reprint­ed in many dif­fer­ent lan­guages; sev­er­al of them had Eng­lish ver­sions in Amer­i­ca in 1846. The books remained in print in Amer­i­ca until 1877.”

Also known as His­toire de M. Vieux Bois, Les amours de Mr. Vieux Bois, or sim­ply Mon­sieur Vieuxbois, the orig­i­nal 1837 Adven­tures of Oba­di­ah Old­buck earned Töpf­fer the des­ig­na­tion of “the father of the mod­ern com­ic” from no less an author­i­ty on the mat­ter than Under­stand­ing Comics author Scott McCloud, who cites the series’ pio­neer­ing use of bor­dered pan­els and “the inter­de­pen­dent com­bi­na­tion of words and pic­tures.” You can see for your­self at the web site of Dart­mouth Col­lege’s Library.

Alas, con­tem­po­rary crit­ics — and to an extent Töpf­fer him­self, who con­sid­ered it a work tar­get­ed at chil­dren and “the low­er class­es” — could­n’t see the inno­va­tion in all this. They wrote off Oba­di­ah Old­buck’s har­row­ing yet strange­ly light­heart­ed pic­to­r­i­al sto­ries of failed courtship, duel­ing, attempt­ed sui­cide, rob­bery, drag, elope­ment, ghosts, stray bul­lets, attack dogs, dou­ble-cross­ing, and the threat of exe­cu­tion as mere tri­fles by an oth­er­wise capa­ble artist. So the next time any­one gets on your case about read­ing com­ic books, just tell ’em they said the same thing about Oba­di­ah Old­buck. Then send them this way so they can fig­ure out what you mean. You can read The Adven­tures of Oba­di­ah Old­buck in its total­i­ty here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from the Com­ic Book Plus Archive

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

The Reli­gious Affil­i­a­tion of Com­ic Book Heroes

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma 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.

How Paul Thomas Anderson Dropped Out of NYU Film School in 2 Days; Studied Literature with David Foster Wallace

in Film, Literature | January 13th, 2015

See­ing how the ever-more-dis­tinc­tive cin­e­ma of Paul Thomas Ander­son has devel­oped from his fea­ture debut Hard Eight to his new Thomas Pyn­chon adap­ta­tion Inher­ent Vice, you have to won­der how he learned his craft. Boo­gie Nights, Mag­no­lia, Punch-Drunk Love, The Mas­ter: ambi­tious pic­tures like these, artis­ti­cal­ly unusu­al and heav­i­ly ref­er­en­tial but also sur­pris­ing­ly pop­u­lar, make you sense an unschooled film­mak­er behind the cam­era (a path to film­mak­ing great­ness best exem­pli­fied by Quentin Taran­ti­no).

But Ander­son did­n’t get this far entire­ly with­out high­er edu­ca­tion: let the record show that he did spend two semes­ters at Emer­son Col­lege — a brief peri­od, but one in which he took an Eng­lish class from none oth­er than David Fos­ter Wal­lace. “It was the first teacher I fell in love with,” he told Marc Maron in an inter­view on Maron’s pod­cast WTF . “I’d nev­er found any­body else like that at any of the oth­er schools I’d been to.” Ander­son even called Wal­lace, a pro­fes­sor “gen­er­ous with his phone num­ber,” to dis­cuss “a cou­ple crazy ideas” on a paper he was writ­ing about Don DeLil­lo’s White Noise at “mid­night the night before it was due.”

(At The Paris Review, Dan Piepen­bring has more on the inter­sec­tion of Ander­son­’s life and Wal­lace’s, includ­ing the lat­ter’s opin­ions on the for­mer’s movies: “he was a fan of Boo­gie Nights, which he told a friend was ‘exact­ly the sto­ry’ he’d want­ed to write. He was less jazzed about Mag­no­lia, though, which he found pre­ten­tious, hol­low, and ‘100% grad­school­ish in a bad way.‘”)

Ander­son also enrolled at New York Uni­ver­si­ty’s film school, but rather than stay­ing only two semes­ters, he stayed only two days. In the clip up top, from an inter­view with crit­ic Elvis Mitchell, Ander­son recounts the whole of his NYU expe­ri­ence. His first instruc­tor announced, “If any­one is here to write Ter­mi­na­tor 2, get out.” And so Ander­son thought, “What if I do want to write Ter­mi­na­tor 2? Ter­mi­na­tor 2’s a pret­ty awe­some movie.” (An assess­ment, inci­den­tal­ly, from which Wal­lace’s great­ly dif­fers.) When he turned in a page from a David Mamet script for his first assign­ment and his unsus­pect­ing teacher gave it a C+, Ander­son knew he had to leave. Liv­ing off of the tuition NYU returned to him, he got to work on a short film of his own.

“My film­mak­ing edu­ca­tion con­sist­ed of find­ing out what film­mak­ers I liked were watch­ing, then see­ing those films,” he told the Los Ange­les Times. “I learned the tech­ni­cal stuff from books and mag­a­zines, and with the new tech­nol­o­gy you can watch entire movies accom­pa­nied by audio com­men­tary from the direc­tor. You can learn more from John Sturges’ audio track on the Bad Day at Black Rock laserdisc than you can in 20 years of film school.” He said that just a few years after leav­ing NYU, when he hit it big with Boo­gie Nights — a film whose high­ly enter­tain­ing DVD com­men­tary from Ander­son him­self pro­vides anoth­er few years’ worth of film school at least.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Syl­labus for His 2008 Cre­ative Non­fic­tion Course: Includes Read­ing List & Foot­notes

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

Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Gueril­la Film­mak­ing & Lock-Pick­ing

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma 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.

Download 140 Free Philosophy Courses: Develop Critical Thinking Skills & Live the Examined Life

in Education, Online Courses, Philosophy | December 31st, 2014

What is “Phi­los­o­phy”? Yes, we know, the word comes from the Greek philosophia, which means “the love of wis­dom.” This rote ety­mo­log­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion does lit­tle, I think, to enhance our under­stand­ing of the sub­ject, though it may describe the moti­va­tion of many a stu­dent. Like cer­tain dis­eases, maybe phi­los­o­phy is a spec­trum, a col­lec­tion of loose­ly relat­ed behav­iors. Maybe a bet­ter ques­tion would be, “what are all the symp­toms of this thing we call phi­los­o­phy?” The med­ical metaphor is time­ly. We live in an age when the dis­ci­pline of phi­los­o­phy, like many of the human­i­ties, gets treat­ed like a pathol­o­gy, in uni­ver­si­ties and in the wider cul­ture. See, for exam­ple, pop­u­lar arti­cles on whether sci­ence has ren­dered phi­los­o­phy (and reli­gion) obso­lete. There seems to be an under­ly­ing assump­tion in our soci­ety that phi­los­o­phy is some­thing to be erad­i­cat­ed, like small­pox.

Per­haps this sort of thing is just an emp­ty provo­ca­tion; after all, many log­i­cal pos­i­tivists of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry also claimed to have inval­i­dat­ed large areas of philo­soph­i­cal inquiry by ban­ish­ing every unclear con­cept to the dust­bin. And yet, phi­los­o­phy per­sists, infect­ing us with its relent­less dri­ve to define, inquire, cri­tique, sys­tem­atize, prob­lema­tize, and decon­struct.

And of course, in a less tech­ni­cal sense, phi­los­o­phy infects us with the dri­ve to won­der. With­out its tools, I main­tain, we would not only lack the basis for under­stand­ing the world we live in, but we would also lack impor­tant means of imag­in­ing, and cre­at­ing, a bet­ter one. If this sounds grandiose, wait till you encounter the thought of Pla­to, Spin­oza, Hegel, Kant, Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard, and jazz-futur­ist Sun Ra—all unac­cus­tomed to think­ing small and stay­ing in their lane.

Some philoso­phers are more cir­cum­spect, some more pre­cise, some more lit­er­ary and imag­i­na­tive, some more prac­ti­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly inclined. Like I said, many symp­toms, one dis­ease.

We at Open Cul­ture have com­piled a list of 140 free phi­los­o­phy cours­es from as much of the wide spec­trum as we could, span­ning such diverse ways of think­ing as Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s Leo Strauss on Aristotle’s Ethics (Free Online Audio) and Plato’s Laws (Free Online Audio), to Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Bud­dhist schol­ar Robert Thur­man (Uma’s dad) on “The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet” (Free Online Audio). We have spe­cif­ic cours­es on Med­ical Ethics, taught by Notre Dame’s David Solomon (Free Online Audio) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Orlean’s Frank Schalow (Free iTunes Audio). We have huge­ly gen­er­al cours­es like “The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps,” from King’s College’s Peter Adam­son (Free Course in Mul­ti­ple For­mats). We have phi­los­o­phy cours­es on death, love, reli­gion, film, law, the self, the ancients and the mod­erns…. See what I mean about the spec­trum?

Per­haps phi­los­o­phy incurs resent­ment because it roams at large and won’t be pack­aged into neat­ly salable—or jailable—units. Per­haps its amor­phous nature, its tol­er­ance of uncer­tain­ty and doubt, makes some kinds of peo­ple uncom­fort­able. Or per­haps some think it’s too abstruse and dif­fi­cult to make sense of, or to mat­ter. Not so! Vis­it our list of 140 phi­los­o­phy cours­es and you will sure­ly find a point of entry some­where. One class will lead to anoth­er, and anoth­er, and before you know it, you’ll be ask­ing ques­tions all the time, of every­thing, and think­ing rig­or­ous­ly and crit­i­cal­ly about the answers, and… well, by then it may be too late for a cure.

Look­ing for a good place to start? Try Oxford’s Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

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

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