Search Results for "college"

Free Textbooks: Computer Science

in | June 8th, 2014

Free text­books (aka open text­books) writ­ten by knowl­edgable schol­ars are a rel­a­tive­ly new phe­nom­e­non. Below, find a meta list of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Text­books, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion 200 Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion. Also see our online col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Matthew Weiner on The Art of Writing Mad Men: The Paris Review Interview

in Television | May 28th, 2014

mad-men-title

This week­end, AMC aired episode 7 of Mad Men’s final sea­son. The show will now take a break, until episodes 8–14 hit the air­waves ear­ly next year. Before you turn your atten­tion else­where, you may want to spend some time with the Paris Review’s big inter­view with Matthew Wein­er, the cre­ator of Mad Men. The inter­view cov­ers a lot of ground.

We learn that Wein­er is a par­tic­u­lar fan of John Cheev­er. “[W]ith John Cheev­er, I rec­og­nized myself in the voice of the nar­ra­tor.” “Cheev­er holds my atten­tion more than any oth­er writer. He is in every aspect of Mad Men, start­ing with the fact that Don lives in Ossin­ing on Bul­let Park Road.” (Find the Paris Review’s 1976 inter­view with Cheev­er here.)

We also dis­cov­er that Wein­er stud­ied poet­ry in col­lege with Christo­pher Reeve’s father, Frank Reeve, and there were a cou­ple of years when Wein­er con­sid­ered T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land “the most inter­est­ing thing in the world.”

Then the con­ver­sa­tion turns to Mad Men, where Wein­er reveals what’s at the heart of the show: “I’ve always said this is a show about becom­ing white. That’s the def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess in America—becoming a WASP. A WASP male.” “Don Drap­er knows he’s poor, very much in the mod­el of [Lee] Iacoc­ca or [Sam] Wal­ton, who came out of the Great Depres­sion, out of real­ly hum­ble begin­nings. Or like Con­rad Hilton, on the show. These men don’t take no for an answer, they build these big busi­ness­es, these empires, but real­ly it’s all based on fail­ure, inse­cu­ri­ty, and an iden­ti­ty mod­eled on some abstract ide­al of white pow­er.”

Wein­er has lots more to say, includ­ing about his days writ­ing for The Sopra­nos. Read the com­plete inter­view here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Gay Talese: Drink­ing at New York Times Put Mad Men to Shame

The Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

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Chicken Infinite: A 532 Page Avant-Garde Chicken Recipe

in Food & Drink | May 26th, 2014

chicken-recipe

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)

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NPR Launches Database of Best Commencement Speeches Ever

in Graduation Speech, Life | May 23rd, 2014

best grad speeches npr

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

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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)

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

in Education, Literature | May 9th, 2014

milton and kerouac

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:

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.

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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.

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

in Science, Television | April 29th, 2014

sagan letter to tyson

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.

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Sylvia Plath Annotates Her Copy of The Great Gatsby

in Literature | April 23rd, 2014

gatsbyedited

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.

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The Drawings of Jean-Paul Sartre

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

SartreDrawings1

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.

SartreDrawings2

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.

SartreDrawings3

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

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