Chicken Infinite: A 532 Page Avant-Garde Chicken Recipe

in Food & Drink | May 26th, 2014

Ear­li­er this year, Gre­gor Weich­brodt, a Ger­man col­lege stu­dent, took all of the geo­graph­ic stops men­tioned in Jack Ker­ouac’s On the Road, plugged them into Google Maps, and end­ed up with a 45-page man­u­al of dri­ving direc­tions, divid­ed into chap­ters par­al­lel­ing those of Kerouac’s orig­i­nal book. Now he’s back with a culi­nary mashup. Not mashed pota­toes, but mashed up recipes for cook­ing chick­en.

“Cook­ing recipes from the web have been col­lect­ed and mixed ran­dom­ly togeth­er,” and the result is Chick­en Infi­nite, an avant-garde recipe for mak­ing chick­en that spans some 532 pages. Accord­ing to Weich­brodt, Chick­en Infi­nite – avail­able as a free PDF or paper­back – “plays with the con­cept of instruc­tions itself” that you reg­u­lar­ly see on web­sites or in man­u­als. It’s a con­cept that cut-up artist William S. Bur­roughs could love. As for how Chick­en Infi­nite actu­al­ly tastes, some­one (with a lit­tle time and a sense of adven­ture) will have to let us know.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al, Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Cui­sine All at Once (Free Online Course)

NPR Launches Database of Best Commencement Speeches Ever

in Graduation Speech, Life | May 23rd, 2014

NPR has cre­at­ed a brand new com­mence­ment speech data­base, “an inspi­ra­tion machine full of wise and fun­ny words going back to 1774.” You can search the data­base by name, school, date or theme. Take a spin and you will find speech­es by Adri­enne Rich at Dou­glass Col­lege (1977), the Dalai Lama at Tulane (2013), David Fos­ter Wal­lace at Keny­on Col­lege (2005), J.K. Rowl­ing at Har­vard  (2008), Jill Abram­son at Wake For­est (2014), Joseph Brod­sky at U. of Michi­gan (1988), Ray Brad­bury at Cal­tech (2000) and much more. Most of the speech­es are pre­sent­ed in text for­mat, some in video.

On NPR’s blog, they’ve high­light­ed some of the key take­aways from the long his­to­ry of com­mence­ment speech­es: Be kind, dream, remem­ber his­to­ry, embrace fail­ure, don’t give up, etc.  Right above, you can see NPR’s new ani­ma­tion fea­tur­ing for­mer Clin­ton and Oba­ma speech­writer Jon Lovett at Pitzer Col­lege’s com­mence­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Dis­si­dent Poet Joseph Brod­sky Gives Six Life Tips to Col­lege Grads (1988)

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

Meryl Streep Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech at Barnard

Neil Gaiman Gives Grad­u­ates 10 Essen­tial Tips for Work­ing in the Arts

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

Jimmy Page Gives Commencement Address at Berklee; Students Perform Led Zep Classics for Him

in Graduation Speech, Music | May 13th, 2014

Grad­u­a­tion sea­son is upon us and, last week­end, the great Jim­my Page had a busy week­end at the Berklee Col­lege of Music in Boston. The school gave the Led Zep­pelin gui­tarist an hon­orary doc­tor­al degree in music, before let­ting him present — or rather “busk” — a short com­mence­ment address to near­ly 900 hun­dred grad­u­ates at the Agga­n­is Are­na. But prob­a­bly the high­light came the night before, when Berklee stu­dents per­formed for Page, play­ing ren­di­tions of Kash­mir, Stair­way to Heav­en, Dazed and Con­fused and Whole Lot­ta Love, among oth­er Led Zep­pelin clas­sics. Hap­pi­ly, some footage from that per­for­mance has popped up on Face­book. Watch it right below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of “Kash­mir”

Jim­my Page, 13, Plays Gui­tar on BBC Tal­ent Show (1957)

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

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

in Education, Literature | May 9th, 2014

Here at Open Cul­ture, we don’t just fea­ture edu­ca­tion in your rec­om­mend­ed dai­ly serv­ings of cul­tur­al­ly wide-rang­ing video, audio, text, and image — we also fea­ture it in a form that goes deep: whole cours­es you can down­load to your com­put­er or mobile device of choice and expe­ri­ence at your own pace. If you nev­er quite stud­ied all the lit­er­a­ture you want­ed to — or if you sim­ply can’t get enough study of the stuff — pay a vis­it to our col­lec­tion of over 50 free lit­er­a­ture cours­es online. Some of them may even cov­er the same tex­tu­al ground as the class­es you felt curi­ous about tak­ing in col­lege but could nev­er quite fit into your sched­ule: “Dante in Trans­la­tion” (Free Online Video — Free iTunes Audio - Free iTunes Video — Course Mate­ri­als), for instance, or “Intro­duc­tion to The­o­ry of Lit­er­a­ture” (Free Online Video — Free iTunes Audio – Free iTunes Video — Course Mate­ri­als), or “Intro­duc­tion to World Lit­er­a­ture (Free Online Video).

Our col­lec­tion offers cours­es with rel­a­tive­ly broad lit­er­ary sub­ject mat­ter, such as “Amer­i­can Pas­sages: A Lit­er­ary Sur­vey” (Free Online Video) and “Con­tem­po­rary Lit­er­a­ture” (Free Online Video – Free Video Down­load), and oth­ers spe­cif­ic to one peri­od or even one writer, like “Oscar Wilde” (Free Online Audio ). and the Allen Gins­berg-taught “Jack Ker­ouac” (Free Online Audio Part 1 and Part 2). Oth­er offer­ings in our col­lec­tion more close­ly resem­ble the cours­es you may have always want­ed to take, but nev­er found offered, like these from “Tolkien Pro­fes­sor” Corey Olsen:

• The Hob­bit – Free iTunes Video — Free Online Audio — More
• Lord of the Rings I: The Road Goes Ever On — Free iTunes Video & Audio
• Lord of the Rings II: The Two Tow­ers — Free Tunes Video & Audio — Free Online Video & Audio
• Lord of the Rings III: Return of the King — Free iTunes Video & Audio — Free Online Video & Audio

And yes, for those tru­ly intent on con­tin­u­ing their edu­ca­tion in Mid­dle-Earth, Olsen also offers a “Sil­mar­il­lion Sem­i­nar” (Free Online Video & Audio). If none of these appeal to your own intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty, how­ev­er, do vis­it the col­lec­tion’s page for more options from exis­ten­tial­ism to George Eliot to Shake­speare. (Nor should you miss our com­plete list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, which includes oth­er sub­jects like phi­los­o­phy, com­put­er sci­ence, psy­chol­o­gy, physics, reli­gion and more.) And if you feel like some­thing lighter, might I sug­gest John Green’s crash course on lit­er­a­ture?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es & Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture: Watch John Green’s Fun Intro­duc­tions to Gats­by, Catch­er in the Rye & Oth­er Clas­sics

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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

Watch the Talking Heads Play a Vintage Concert in Syracuse (1978)

in Music | May 2nd, 2014

We’ve brought you Talk­ing Heads shows from New York’s CBGB in 1975, Dort­mund, Ger­many in 1980, and Rome that same year. Now we’ve got one more valu­able live find from that for­ma­tive, busy era for the David Byrne-led, Rhode Island School of Design-forged new-wave band: their Novem­ber 1978 per­for­mance in Syra­cuse. The exact venue? Per­haps some­where at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, per­haps not, though a col­lege per­for­mance space would make sense, giv­en how many insti­tu­tions of high­er edu­ca­tion they played in 1978. The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert His­to­ry blog has a com­plete list, and the total num­ber of shows in that year alone comes in, aston­ish­ing­ly, at over 130, a fair few of them at schools like NYU, Brown, Berklee, Berke­ley, UCLA, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona. “It was real­ly an edu­ca­tion for us,” the page quotes drum­mer Chris Frantz as say­ing of the 1978 tour. “I’m afraid we bit off more than we could chew. We thought that we could play every night, and we found that after four months we were feel­ing pret­ty unin­spired.”

Yet this Syra­cuse gig, which came ten months in, sounds pret­ty inspired to me. It looks it, too, at least from what I can dis­cern from the lo-fi footage. What the image lacks in crisp­ness, though, it makes up for in tech­no­log­i­cal inter­est; it has the sig­na­ture look of the Sony Por­ta­pak, one of the very ear­ly portable con­sumer video record­ing sys­tems beloved of the 1970s’ video ama­teurs and video artists alike. Who­ev­er manned the Por­ta­pak for these 92 min­utes in Syra­cuse cap­tured a valu­able chap­ter in the Talk­ing Heads sto­ry, one the band spent work­ing as hard as pos­si­ble — which, of course, meant play­ing as hard, and as often, as pos­si­ble — and refin­ing their inim­itable sound and sen­si­bil­i­ty in con­cert spaces that, while often low-pro­file, nev­er­the­less pro­vid­ed them with excit­ed and appre­cia­tive audi­ences. Col­lege stu­dents and oth­er­wise, came eager to hear some­thing new — and giv­en that the 70s, that decade of slick dis­co and smooth rock, had almost come to a close, some­thing a bit askew. The Talk­ing Heads, as we see them here, could glad­ly deliv­er.

Set list:

1. The Big Coun­try
2. Warn­ing Sign
3. The Book I Read
4. Stay Hun­gry
5. Artists Only
6. The Girls Want to Be with the Girls
7. The Good Thing
8. Love Goes to Build­ings on Fire
9. Elec­tric­i­ty
10. Found a Job
11. Take Me to the Riv­er
12. I’m Not in Love
13. No Com­pas­sion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play Live in Dort­mund, Ger­many Dur­ing Their Hey­day (1980)

Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

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

Carl Sagan Writes a Letter to 17-Year-Old Neil deGrasse Tyson (1975)

in Science, Television | April 29th, 2014

Carl Sagan, the turtle­neck-sport­ing astro­physi­cist from Cor­nell, was the great­est com­mu­ni­ca­tor of sci­ence of his gen­er­a­tion. Not only did he pub­lish hun­dreds of sci­en­tif­ic papers and was instru­men­tal in putting togeth­er that gold­en record on the Voy­ager space­crafts but he also wrote twen­ty crit­i­cal­ly praised best sell­ers on sci­ence, appeared reg­u­lar­ly on the Tonight Show, and even had a catch phrase — “bil­lions and bil­lions.” But Sagan is per­haps best known for his land­mark 1980 series Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age (watch it here). He took view­ers through a tour of the uni­verse, show­ing them things from the mind-bog­gling big to the infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small and every­thing in between. The show proved to be a huge hit; close to a half-bil­lion peo­ple tuned in world­wide.

Even before the reboot of Cos­mos pre­miered on FOX in March, Neil deGrasse Tyson — who hosts the show — was already seen as Sagan’s suc­ces­sor. Not only does he serve as the direc­tor of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in New York City and was instru­men­tal in kick­ing Plu­to out of the broth­er­hood of plan­ets, but he also authored numer­ous books, appears reg­u­lar­ly on The Dai­ly Show, and fre­quent­ly hosts AMAs on Red­dit. He’s also one of Amer­i­ca’s most vocal defend­ers of sci­ence at a time, unlike Sagan’s hey­day, when Cre­ation­ism, cli­mate change denial, and anti-vac­ci­na­tion hys­te­ria seem to be mak­ing inroads in our cul­ture.

Any­one who saw Tyson’s heart felt trib­ute to Sagan at the begin­ning of the first episode of Cos­mos knows that Sagan’s influ­ence on his younger coun­ter­part extend­ed much fur­ther than his media appear­ances. It was per­son­al. In 1975, Sagan, who was already famous at that time, was so impressed by Tyson’s col­lege appli­ca­tion that he per­son­al­ly reached out to him, hop­ing to con­vince the high school stu­dent to attend Cor­nell. He even offered to per­son­al­ly show Tyson around his lab.

You can read Sagan’s let­ter, dat­ed Novem­ber 12, 1975, below.

Dear Neil:

Thanks for your let­ter and most inter­est­ing resume. I was espe­cial­ly glad to see that, for a career in astron­o­my, you intend to do your under­grad­u­ate work in physics. In this way, you will acquire the essen­tial tools for a wide range of sub­se­quent astro­nom­i­cal endeav­ors.

I would guess from your resume that your inter­ests in astron­o­my are suf­fi­cient­ly deep and your math­e­mat­i­cal and phys­i­cal back­ground suf­fi­cient­ly strong that we could prob­a­bly engage you in real astro­nom­i­cal research dur­ing your under­grad­u­ate career here, if the pos­si­bil­i­ty inter­ests you. For exam­ple, we hope to be bring­ing back to Itha­ca in late cal­en­dar year 1976 an enor­mous array of Viking data on Mars both from the orbiters and from the lan­ders.

I would be delight­ed to meet with you when you vis­it Itha­ca. Please try and give as much advance notice of the date as you can because my trav­el sched­ule is quite hec­tic right now and I real­ly would like to be in Itha­ca when you drop by.

With all good wish­es,

Carl Sagan

Tyson was deeply moved by Sagan’s kind­ness and sin­cer­i­ty. He did ven­ture out to Itha­ca from the Bronx on a snowy after­noon. As Tyson recalled years lat­er, “I thought to myself, who am I? I’m just some high school kid.” In the end, Sagan’s per­son­al plea wasn’t quite enough to con­vince young Tyson to attend his school. As you can read in his response below, dat­ed April 30, 1976, Tyson decid­ed to go to Har­vard.

Dear Prof. Sagan

Thank you for your offer con­cern­ing the Viking Mis­sions. After long thought and deci­sion mak­ing I have cho­sen to attend Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty this Sep­tem­ber. I chose it not sim­ply because of its “valu­able” name but because they have a larg­er astron­o­my depart­ment in addi­tion to the Smith­son­ian Astro­phys­i­cal Obser­va­to­ry, so while I am major­ing in physics I will have more sur­round­ing me in the way of on-going research in astron­o­my.

I want to say that I did enjoy meet­ing you and I am very grate­ful for your hos­pi­tal­i­ty and the time you spent with me while at Cor­nell. I will through­out my under­grad­u­ate years keep you informed on any note­wor­thy news con­cern­ing astron­o­my-relat­ed work that I’m involved in. I do plan to apply again for the Viking Intern­ship next sum­mer.

Thanks again

Neil D. Tyson

You can see Tyson talk about his after­noon with Sagan. 40 years lat­er, he still seems incred­u­lous that it hap­pened.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

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.

Sylvia Plath Annotates Her Copy of The Great Gatsby

in Literature | April 23rd, 2014

The true fan of a writer desires not just that writer’s com­plete works, even if they all come signed and in first edi­tions. No — the enthu­si­ast most ded­i­cat­ed to their lit­er­ary lumi­nary of choice must have, in addi­tion, the books writ­ten by that author, those owned by that author, prefer­ably anoint­ed with lib­er­al quan­ti­ties of reveal­ing mar­gin­a­lia. In the case of such rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly deceased writ­ers as David Mark­son, the whole of whose well-anno­tat­ed per­son­al library got donat­ed to The Strand short­ly after his pass­ing, you can some­times actu­al­ly come to pos­sess such trea­sures. In the case of poet Sylvia Plath, part of a page of whose copy of F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s The Great Gats­by you see above, you might have a trick­i­er time get­ting your hands on them. Justin Ray’s post at Com­plex, which quotes Plath as call­ing Fitzger­ald “a word painter with a vivid palette” who choos­es words with “jew­el-cut pre­ci­sion,” has more on the book and its mark­ings.

“Plath stud­ied a crap-ton of lit­er­a­ture in school,” Ray writes. “It isn’t imme­di­ate­ly clear whether she was in high school or col­lege when she anno­tat­ed Gats­by,” but when­ev­er she did it, she under­lined “Daisy’s pre­dic­tion of what her daugh­ter will be like” with the word “L’Ennui,” a word she would use to name an ear­ly poem that reflects “a post roman­ti­cism and the death of ide­al­ism, two ideas also in Gats­by, accord­ing to an essay by Anna Jour­ney.” Else­where, you can also read “Princess Daisy,” Park Buck­er’s piece on Plath’s anno­tat­ed Gats­by. “The vol­ume rep­re­sents a fas­ci­nat­ing piece of evi­dence of Fitzgerald’s ris­ing rep­u­ta­tion and influ­ence in the ear­ly 1950s, as well as the aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground and tastes of a major Amer­i­can poet,” writes Buck­er. “Although Sylvia Plath and F. Scott Fitzger­ald rarely inhab­it the same sen­tence, their asso­ci­a­tion should not appear strained. A young, intense poet would nat­u­ral­ly be drawn to the lyric qual­i­ty of Fitzgerald’s prose.” And just imag­ine its val­ue to die-hard fans of both of those trag­ic pil­lars of Amer­i­can let­ters — a group in which, if you’ve read this post and every­thing to which it links, you should per­haps con­sid­er count­ing your­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fif­teen Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

See F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­scripts for The Great Gats­by, This Side of Par­adise & More

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Trans­lates The Great Gats­by, the Nov­el That Influ­enced Him Most

83 Years of Great Gats­by Book Cov­er Designs: A Pho­to Gallery

Read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gats­by & Oth­er Major Works Free Online

Gertrude Stein Sends a “Review” of The Great Gats­by to F. Scott Fitzger­ald (1925)

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

The Drawings of Jean-Paul Sartre

in Art, Letters, Philosophy | April 21st, 2014

We’ve estab­lished some­thing of a tra­di­tion here of fea­tur­ing draw­ings by famous authors. It seems, unsur­pris­ing­ly, that skill with the pen often goes hand-in-glove with a keen visu­al sense, though admit­ted­ly some writ­ers are more tal­ent­ed drafts­men than oth­ers. William Faulkn­er, for exam­ple, cre­at­ed some very fine pen-and-ink illus­tra­tions for his col­lege news­pa­per dur­ing his brief time at Ole Miss. Franz Kafka’s expres­sion­is­tic sketch­es are quite strik­ing, despite his anguished protes­ta­tions to the con­trary. And Jorge Luis Borges’ doo­dles are as quirky and play­ful as the author him­self. Today we bring you the sketch­es of that great French exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher, nov­el­ist, and play­wright Jean-Paul Sartre—a col­lec­tion of six rough, child­like car­i­ca­tures that are, shall we say, rather less than accom­plished. It’s cer­tain­ly for the best—as the cliché goes—that Sartre nev­er quit his day job for an art career.

But there is a cer­tain wicked charm in Sartre’s visu­al satires of human moral fail­ings, which he calls a “series de ‘douze vices sans allusion’”—roughly, “a series of twelve vices with­out ref­er­ence.” Either Sartre only com­plet­ed half the series, or—more likely—half have been lost, since the author assures the recip­i­ent of his hand­i­work, a Made­moi­selle Suzanne Guille, that he presents to her a “série com­plete.” Who was Suzanne Guille? Your guess is as good as mine. Yale’s Bei­necke Rare Book & Man­u­script Library, which hous­es these sketch­es, gives us no indi­ca­tion. Per­haps she was a rel­a­tive, per­haps the spouse, of Pierre Guille, Simon de Beauvoir’s last lover? Giv­en the many com­pli­cat­ed liaisons pur­sued by both Sartre and his part­ner, the pos­si­bil­i­ties are indeed intrigu­ing. As for the draw­ings? Their sub­jects hold more inter­est than their exe­cu­tion, pro­vid­ing us with keys to Sartre’s moral uni­verse.

The first car­i­ca­ture, at the top, is titled “Le Con­tent­ment de soi”—“Self-Satisfaction”—and the character’s pompous expres­sion says as much. Below it, the curi­ous lit­tle fel­low with the curlicue nose is called “L’Esprit Critique”—“The Spir­it of Crit­i­cism.” And above we have “Le respect de la con­signe et de la jurée”—“Keeping a Sworn Oath.” You can see the remain­ing three draw­ings, and read Sartre’s let­ter (in French, of course) to Made­moi­selle Guille in pdf form here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philosophy’s Pow­er Cou­ple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir, Fea­tured in 1967 TV Inter­view

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

Two Child­hood Draw­ings from Poet E.E. Cum­mings Show the Young Artist’s Play­ful Seri­ous­ness

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

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

Read 10 Short Stories by Gabriel García Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Interviews)

in Literature | April 18th, 2014

Image by Fes­ti­val Inter­na­cional de Cine en Guadala­jara via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“Our inde­pen­dence from Span­ish dom­i­na­tion did not put us beyond the reach of mad­ness,” said Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez in his 1982 Nobel Prize accep­tance speech. Gar­cía Márquez, who died yes­ter­day at the age of 87, refers of course to all of Spain’s for­mer colonies in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, from his own Colom­bia to Cuba, the island nation whose artis­tic strug­gle to come to terms with its his­to­ry con­tributed so much to that art form gen­er­al­ly known as “mag­i­cal real­ism,” a syn­cretism of Euro­pean mod­ernism and indige­nous art and folk­lore, Catholi­cism and the rem­nants of Amerindi­an and African reli­gions.

While the term has per­haps been overused to the point of banal­i­ty in crit­i­cal and pop­u­lar appraisals of Latin-Amer­i­can writ­ers (some pre­fer Cuban nov­el­ist Ale­jo Carpentier’s lo real mar­avil­loso, “the mar­velous real”), in Marquez’s case, it’s hard to think of a bet­ter way to describe the dense inter­weav­ing of fact and fic­tion in his life’s work as a writer of both fan­tas­tic sto­ries and unflinch­ing jour­nal­is­tic accounts, both of which grap­pled with the gross hor­rors of colo­nial plun­der and exploita­tion and the sub­se­quent rule of blood­thirsty dic­ta­tors, incom­pe­tent patri­archs, venal oli­garchs, and cor­po­rate gang­sters in much of the South­ern Hemi­sphere.

Nev­er­the­less, it’s a descrip­tion that some­times seems to obscure Gar­cía Mar­quez’s great pur­pose, mar­gin­al­iz­ing his lit­er­ary vision as trendy exot­i­ca or a “post­colo­nial hang­over.” Once asked in a Paris Review inter­view the year before his Nobel win about the dif­fer­ence between the nov­el and jour­nal­ism, Gar­cía Márquez replied, “Noth­ing. I don’t think there is any dif­fer­ence. The sources are the same, the mate­r­i­al is the same, the resources and the lan­guage are the same.”

In jour­nal­ism just one fact that is false prej­u­dices the entire work. In con­trast, in fic­tion one sin­gle fact that is true gives legit­i­ma­cy to the entire work. That’s the only dif­fer­ence, and it lies in the com­mit­ment of the writer. A nov­el­ist can do any­thing he wants so long as he makes peo­ple believe in it.

Gar­cía Márquez made us believe. One would be hard-pressed to find a 20th cen­tu­ry writer more com­mit­ted to the truth, whether expressed in dense mythol­o­gy and baroque metaphor or in the dry ratio­nal­ist dis­course of the West­ern epis­teme. For its mul­ti­tude of incred­i­ble ele­ments, the 1967 nov­el for which Gar­cía Márquez is best known—One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude—cap­tures the almost unbe­liev­able human his­to­ry of the region with more emo­tion­al and moral fideli­ty than any strict­ly fac­tu­al account: “How­ev­er bizarre or grotesque some par­tic­u­lars may be,” wrote a New York Times review­er in 1970, “Macon­do is no nev­er-nev­er land.” In fact, Gar­cía Márquez’s nov­el helped dis­man­tle the very real and bru­tal South Amer­i­can empire of banana com­pa­ny Unit­ed Fruit, a “great irony,” writes Rich Cohen, of one mythol­o­gy lay­ing bare anoth­er: “In col­lege, they call it ‘mag­i­cal real­ism,’ but, if you know his­to­ry, you under­stand it’s less mag­i­cal than just plain real, the stuff of news­pa­pers returned as lived expe­ri­ence.”

Edith Gross­man, trans­la­tor of sev­er­al of Gar­cía Márquez’s works—including Love in the Time of Cholera and his 2004 auto­bi­og­ra­phy Liv­ing to Tell the Tale (Vivir para Cotar­la)—agrees. “He doesn’t use that term at all, as far as I know,” she said in a 2005 inter­view with Guer­ni­ca’s Joel Whit­ney: “It’s always struck me as an easy, emp­ty kind of remark.” Instead, Gar­cía Márquez’s style, says Gross­man, “seemed like a way of writ­ing about the excep­tion­al­ness of so much of Latin Amer­i­ca.”

Today, in hon­or and with tremen­dous grat­i­tude for that inde­fati­ga­ble chron­i­cler of excep­tion­al lived expe­ri­ence, we offer sev­er­al online texts of Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez’s short works at the links below.

Harper­Collins’ online pre­view of Gar­cía Mar­quez’s Col­lect­ed Sto­ries includes the full text of “The Third Res­ig­na­tion,” “The Oth­er Side of Death,” “Eva Is Inside Her Cat,” “Bit­ter­ness for Three Sleep­walk­ers,” and “Dia­logue with the Mir­ror,” all from the author’s 1972 col­lec­tion Eyes of a Blue Dog (Ojos de per­ro azul).

At The New York­er, you can read Gar­cía Mar­quez’s sto­ry “The Autumn of the Patri­arch” (1976) and his 2003 auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal essay “The Chal­lenge.”

Fol­low the links below for more of Gar­cía Mar­quez’s short fic­tion from var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ty web­sites:

“Death Con­stant Beyond Love” (1970)

“The Hand­somest Drowned Man in the World” (1968)

“A Very Old Man with Enor­mous Wings” (1955)

Vis­it The Mod­ern Word for an excel­lent bio­graph­i­cal sketch of the author.

See The New York Times for “A Talk with Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez” in the year of his Nobel win, an essay in which he recounts his 1957 meet­ing with Ernest Hem­ing­way, and many more reviews and essays.

Final­ly, we should also men­tion that you can down­load Love in the Time of Cholera or Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude for free (as audio books) if you join Audible.com’s 30-day pro­gram. We have details on it here.

As we say farewell to one of the world’s great­est writ­ers, we can remem­ber him not only as a writer of “mag­i­cal real­ism,” what­ev­er that phrase may mean, but as a teller of com­pli­cat­ed, won­drous, and some­times painful truths, in what­ev­er form he hap­pened to find them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

Read 12 Mas­ter­ful Essays by Joan Did­ion for Free Online, Span­ning Her Career From 1965 to 2013

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

600 Free eBooks: Down­load Great Books for Free

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

Before The Simpsons, Matt Groening Illustrated a “Student’s Guide” for Apple Computers (1989)

in Comics/Cartoons, Technology | April 10th, 2014

A friend once told me of his old­er cousin who, for the freak­ish act of installing a com­put­er in his col­lege dorm room, found him­self imme­di­ate­ly and irrev­o­ca­bly dubbed “com­put­er Jon.” This hap­pened in the ear­ly 1980s, and boy, have times changed. They’d even changed by the late 1980s, by which time Apple’s col­lege mar­ket­ing efforts had become suf­fi­cient­ly advanced to require the tal­ents of Matt Groen­ing, best known as the man who cre­at­ed The Simp­sons. But that prime-time ani­mat­ed sit­com would­n’t begin its record-break­ing run (still with­out an end in sight) until Christ­mas 1989, while the Groen­ing-illus­trat­ed Who Needs a Com­put­er Any­way? (which you can flip through above) appeared ear­li­er that year. Back then, read­ers might well have known him first and fore­most as the cre­ator of the satir­i­cal alter­na­tive-week­ly com­ic strip Life in Hell, which had debuted in 1977. One of its stars, the hap­less but good-heart­ed young one-eared rab­bit Bon­go, even made his way to Apple brochure’s cov­er. Though com­put­ers them­selves had long since come to dom­i­nate Amer­i­ca’s cam­pus­es by the time I entered col­lege, he and Groen­ing’s oth­er now-less­er-known char­ac­ters did do their part to pre­pare me for acad­e­mia.

I refer, of course, to School is Hell, his 1987 Life in Hell book offer­ing sar­don­ic primers on each and every phase of mod­ern edu­ca­tion from kinder­garten to grad school (“when you haven’t had enough pun­ish­ment”). Groen­ing’s pages in Who Needs a Com­put­er Any­way? read like a less sharp-edged ver­sion of those car­toons, fol­low­ing Life in Hel­l’s sig­na­ture “The 9 Types of…” for­mat to present the read­er with their nine types of future col­lege class­mates, from “the stressed” to “the tech­noid” to “the unem­ployed.” Between these, you can read Apple’s pitch for why you’ll find a piece of equip­ment still some­what out­landish and expen­sive so essen­tial to every aspect of your col­lege career. Though dat­ed tech­ni­cal­ly — the text men­tions noth­ing of the inter­net, for instance, which this gen­er­a­tion of col­lege stu­dents would soon­er drop out than do with­out — it nev­er­the­less under­scores the design virtues of Apple com­put­ers — an intu­itive inter­face, appli­ca­tion inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, “every­thing you need in one small, trans­portable case” — that remain design virtues today. It also dis­plays an impres­sive pre­science of the per­son­al com­put­er’s com­ing indis­pens­abil­i­ty, a con­fi­dent pre­dic­tion that, if not for the slack­er’s lev­i­ty lent by Groen­ing’s hand, might, at the time, actu­al­ly have sound­ed implau­si­ble.

via Retro­naut/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Edgy 1990s Com­mer­cial for Apple’s Mac­in­tosh Com­put­er

Every Apple Ad Ever Aired on TV

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984″ Com­mer­cial, Aired 30 Years Ago on Super Bowl Sun­day

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