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

in Literature | February 27th, 2014

Image by Carl Van Vecht­en, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

My two favorite William Faulkn­er nov­els are, with­out a doubt, Absa­lom, Absa­lom! and The Sound and The Fury. After read­ers get thrust into the nar­ra­tors’ dizzy­ing streams of con­scious­ness, both books mount in ten­sion to a fright­ful, almost unbear­able pitch, before reach­ing their grim, cathar­tic cli­max­es. I’ve always felt that the white-hot inten­si­ty of the nov­els meant that, some­how, they had meant more to Faulkn­er than his oth­er writ­ings. Accord­ing to an audio record­ing of Faulkn­er him­self, it turns out that I was half right.

In 1957 and 1958, Faulkn­er served as the Writer-in-Res­i­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia at Char­lottesville, and today the school retains what is like­ly to be the largest Faulkn­er archive in the world. In addi­tion to Faulkner’s pri­vate library, orig­i­nal man­u­scripts, let­ters, and per­son­al effects, the archive also con­tains hours upon hours of Faulkner’s Q & A ses­sions, speech­es, and read­ings. In April of 1957, dur­ing a class lec­ture, a stu­dent asked Faulkn­er about his favorite nov­el. Lis­ten to the audio clip here:

Uniden­ti­fied par­tic­i­pant: Mr. Faulkn­er, what do you con­sid­er your best book?

William Faulkn­er: The one that—that failed the most trag­i­cal­ly and the most splen­did­ly. That was The Sound and the Fury—the one I worked at the longest, the hard­est, that was to me the—the most pas­sion­ate and mov­ing idea, and made the most splen­did fail­ure. That’s the one that’s my—I con­sid­er the best, not—well, best is the wrong word—that’s the one that I love the most.

The record­ings them­selves are a fas­ci­nat­ing resource, with Faulkn­er com­ment­ing wide­ly on his nov­els and sto­ries. Where else could one hear, for exam­ple, what the author con­sid­ered the best book to start with when read­ing him? Lis­ten here.

Uniden­ti­fied par­tic­i­pant: Do you think that there’s a par­tic­u­lar order in which your works should be read […]? Many peo­ple have offered a sequence. Do you think there’s a par­tic­u­lar sequence that your books should be read in?

William Faulkn­er: Prob­a­bly to begin with a book called Sar­toris. That has the germ of my apoc­rypha in it. A lot of the char­ac­ters are pos­tu­lat­ed in that book. I’d say that’s a good one to begin with.

For those inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about Faulkn­er and his writ­ing, the South­east Mis­souri State University’s Cen­ter for Faulkn­er Stud­ies is offer­ing a promis­ing MOOC called Faulkn­er 101, led by the Center’s founder, Dr. Robert Ham­blin, as well as its cur­rent direc­tor, Dr. Chris Rieger. You can sign up now. Or find count­less oth­er MOOCs in our big, ever-expand­ing list of MOOCs.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Faulkn­er Reads from As I Lay Dying

William Faulkn­er Audio Archive Goes Online

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

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Watch Boy and Bicycle: Ridley Scott’s Very First Film (1965)

in Film | February 24th, 2014

Alien, Blade Run­ner, Glad­i­a­tor, Prometheus, the Apple Mac­in­tosh 1984 Super Bowl ad, the upcom­ing Bib­li­cal­ly-based (and Bib­li­cal­ly-sized) Exo­dus: if you want a thor­ough­ly through-and-through vision, exe­cut­ed at full scale and tint­ed with more than a touch of dystopi­an grim­ness, you go to Rid­ley Scott. But no direc­tor com­mences his career mak­ing pic­tures like these; most of them have to begin in hum­bler places, pulling togeth­er what­ev­er grant mon­ey, film-school resources, and help­ful acquain­tances they can to real­ize, and in the process often com­pro­mise, their long-incu­bat­ed cin­e­mat­ic dreams. So it went with Scott him­self, who made the short film above, 1965’s Boy and Bicy­cle, while a stu­dent at Lon­don’s Roy­al Col­lege of Art. But even this com­par­a­tive­ly tiny project, with its rich 16-mil­lime­ter images, adept cam­era move­ment, and utter­ly hope­less set­ting, shows signs of what sort of film­mak­er the twen­tysome­thing Scott would become a decade or two lat­er.

Though he received his pho­to­graph­ic edu­ca­tion in Lon­don, Scott took his cam­era out for the Boy and Bicy­cle shoot to West Hartle­pool, where he’d attend­ed art school sev­er­al years ear­li­er. That bit of the soon-to-be-dein­dus­tri­al­ized north of Eng­land pro­vid­ed, espe­cial­ly in the British Steel North Works cool­ing tow­er and blast fur­nace, just the sort of back­ground we’d expect to see in the mature direc­tor’s work. And through this bleak land­scape (which reminds me of noth­ing so much as the inhos­pitable Osa­ka he would por­tray more than twen­ty years lat­er in Black Rain) we have the tit­u­lar boy on the tit­u­lar bicy­cle, played by — clas­sic first-time film­mak­er’s strat­e­gy — the direc­tor’s younger broth­er. In this case, that broth­er would grow up to become Tony Scott, a cel­e­brat­ed if aes­thet­i­cal­ly polar­iz­ing direc­tor (Top Gun, True Romance, Domi­no) in his own right. Not one to waste a res­o­nant image, Rid­ley Scott would a decade lat­er revis­it Boy and Bicy­cle in the beloved adver­tise­ment for Hov­is bread just above.

Oth­er ear­ly short films by great direc­tors can be found below, and in our col­lec­tion of 635 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Very First Films: Three Stu­dent Films, 1956–1960

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

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

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“Be All You Can Be. Read”: Peter Max’s 1969 Psychedelic Poster for National Library Week

in Art, Books | February 22nd, 2014

In 1969, Peter Max was cre­at­ing psy­che­del­ic illus­tra­tions that cap­tured the coun­ter­cul­tur­al spir­it of the 1960s. Bright, trip­py, and thought-pro­vok­ing, Max’s art­work fused togeth­er “east­ern yogi phi­los­o­phy, astron­o­my, com­ic books, stud­ies in col­or, and music.” And it cer­tain­ly found an audi­ence. By the late 60s, col­lege dorm rooms across the U.S. were plas­tered with Max’s posters. 72 cor­po­ra­tions — from Gen­er­al Elec­tric to Burling­ton Mills, a man­u­fac­tur­er of socks — licensed his art for com­mer­cial use. Mean­while, in ’69, Max appeared on The Tonight Show, The Ed Sul­li­van Show, and the cov­er of LIFE mag­a­zine (with main arti­cle titled “Peter Max: Por­trait of the artist as a very rich man”).

Even while the cor­po­rate gigs were rolling in, the Ger­man-born illus­tra­tor took on less com­mer­cial projects, like cre­at­ing this poster for Nation­al Library Week, an annu­al event orga­nized by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion. Mea­sur­ing 36 x 24 inch­es, the 1969 poster, aes­thet­i­cal­ly speak­ing, is vin­tage Max. And it car­ries a mes­sage that sounds as good today as it did then: “Be All You Can Be. Read.” Now dare I steer you toward of our col­lec­tion of 500 Free eBooks? An easy way to make you, a bet­ter you.

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

via Bib­liok­lept

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15 Minute History: Quick History Lessons from a New, Chart-Topping Podcast

in History | February 17th, 2014

I’ve always been jeal­ous of friends who stud­ied his­to­ry in col­lege. They’ve got a work­ing knowl­edge of the caus­es of wars, eco­nom­ic crises, polit­i­cal upheavals, and any oth­er triv­ia ques­tion-wor­thy events. Thank­ful­ly, what­ev­er I’d like to learn is mere­ly a click away: we’ve got over 800 free online cours­es (includ­ing 67 free his­to­ry cours­es) list­ed on Open Cul­ture at the time of writ­ing, and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions con­tin­ue to upload new lec­tures every week. Most of the lec­tures, how­ev­er, last from 30 min­utes to an hour, requir­ing users to cor­don off a block of time for study. Want some­thing short­er? Enter the 15 Minute His­to­ry pod­cast, cur­rent­ly the fourth most pop­u­lar pod­cast on iTune­sU.

The result of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Hemi­spheres and Not Even Past pub­lic out­reach efforts, the 15 Minute His­to­ry pod­cast focus­es on key sub­jects in world his­to­ry and U.S. his­to­ry. Although the pod­cast is tai­lored to Texas teach­ers and stu­dents, empha­siz­ing the state’s K‑12 cur­ricu­lum, it also hap­pens to be a trea­sure trove of free con­tent for any­one inter­est­ed in his­to­ry. The short pod­casts, which last some 15 min­utes on aver­age, cov­er every­thing from Russia’s Octo­ber 1917 Rev­o­lu­tion, to the Ottoman Empire, to the glob­al con­text of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Each episode is led by one of three UT Austin aca­d­e­mics, who dis­cuss the top­ic at hand with anoth­er uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor or grad­u­ate stu­dent. Con­ve­nient­ly, on the 15 Minute His­to­ry web site, the pod­casts are accom­pa­nied by a care­ful­ly for­mat­ted tran­script, plus addi­tion­al read­ing mate­ri­als for those who find them­selves curi­ous about a par­tic­u­lar top­ic.

Inter­est­ed read­ers can find the whole pod­cast series on iTunes, or on the web.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the World (and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty) in 100 Objects

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

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The Very First Written Use of the F Word in English (1528)

in History, Writing | February 11th, 2014

Eng­lish speak­ers enjoy what seems like an unmatched curios­i­ty about the ori­gins and his­tor­i­cal usages of their lan­guage’s curs­es. The exceed­ing­ly pop­u­lar “F word” has accret­ed an espe­cial­ly wide body of tex­tu­al inves­ti­ga­tion, wide-eyed spec­u­la­tion, and implau­si­ble folk ety­mol­o­gy. (One of the ter­m’s well-known if spu­ri­ous cre­ation myths even has a Van Halen album named after it.) “The his­to­ry begins in murky cir­cum­stances,” says the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary’s site, and that dic­tio­nary of dic­tio­nar­ies has man­aged to place the word’s ear­li­est print appear­ance in the ear­ly six­teenth cen­tu­ry, albeit writ­ten “in code” and “in a mixed Latin-and-Eng­lish con­text.” Above, you can see one of the few con­crete pieces of infor­ma­tion we have on the mat­ter: the first defin­i­tive use of the F word in “the Eng­lish adjec­ti­val form, which implies use of the verb.”

Here the word appears (for the first time if not the last) not­ed down by hand in the mar­gins of a prop­er text, in this case Cicero’s De Offici­is. “It’s a monk express­ing his dis­plea­sure at an abbot,” writes Katharine Tren­da­cos­ta at i09. “In the mar­gins of a guide to moral con­duct. Because of course.” She quotes Melis­sa Mohr, author of Holy Sh*t: A Brief His­to­ry of Swear­ing, as declar­ing it “dif­fi­cult to know” whether this mar­gin­a­lia-mak­ing monk meant the word lit­er­al­ly, to accuse this abbott of “ques­tion­able monas­tic morals,” or whether he used it “as an inten­si­fi­er, to con­vey his extreme dis­may.” Either way, it holds a great deal of val­ue for schol­ars of lan­guage, giv­en, as the OED puts it, “the absence of the word from most print­ed text before the mid twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry” and the “quo­ta­tion dif­fi­cul­ties” that caus­es. If you find noth­ing to like in the F word’s ever-increas­ing preva­lence in the media, think of it this way: at least future lex­i­cog­ra­phers of swear­ing will have more to go on.

To view the com­plete man­u­script page, click here. The doc­u­ment seem­ing­ly resides at Brasenose Col­lege, Oxford.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Stephen Fry, Lan­guage Enthu­si­ast, Defends The “Unnec­es­sary” Art Of Swear­ing

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

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

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How a Book Thief Forged a Rare Edition of Galileo’s Scientific Work, and Almost Pulled it Off

in Books | February 11th, 2014

A cou­ple of weeks ago, we pub­lished a post that fea­tured Galileo’s Moon draw­ings, “the first real­is­tic depic­tions of the moon in his­to­ry.” As it turns out—some read­ers alert­ed us—some of the Moon illus­tra­tions attrib­uted to Galileo are actu­al­ly very con­vinc­ing forg­eries, so con­vinc­ing, in fact that when the draw­ings sur­faced in 2005, they ini­tial­ly swayed such experts as rare books deal­er Richard Lan, Har­vard pro­fes­sor of astron­o­my and his­to­ry of sci­ence Owen Gin­gerich, and art his­to­ri­an Horst Bre­dekamp. All of these experts have since come to learn—partially through the inves­ti­ga­tions of Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ri­an Nick Wild­ing—that an unusu­al edi­tion con­tain­ing detailed water­col­ors, pur­port­ed­ly in Galileo’s own hand (above and below), was in fact cre­at­ed by forg­er, book thief, and for­mer direc­tor of the State Library of Giro­lami­ni, Mari­no Mas­si­mo De Caro, who now stands accused of steal­ing thou­sands of vol­umes, includ­ing cen­turies-old edi­tions of Aris­to­tle, Descartes, Galileo and Machi­avel­li.

The draw­ings we fea­tured at the top of our pre­vi­ous post—from a set of five inkwash­es made in 1609, called “the Flo­rence Sheet”—are gen­uine, as are the etch­ings in the orig­i­nal text of Galileo’s sci­en­tif­ic trea­tise, Sidereus Nun­cius. How­ev­er, as inves­tiga­tive reporter Nicholas Schmi­dle doc­u­ment­ed in a lengthy arti­cle pub­lished in last December’s New York­er, the edi­tion pic­tured above—purchased for half a mil­lion dol­lars by Richard Lan of rare book­sellers Mar­tayan Lan and once val­ued at over ten mil­lion dol­lars for its unique rust-col­ored illustrations—is a fake, despite being authen­ti­cat­ed by a team of schol­ars in 2007.

The sto­ry of how De Caro’s forgery came to fool near­ly every­one who exam­ined it (end­ing up in Time mag­a­zine and dozens of oth­er pub­li­ca­tions and schol­ar­ly web­sites) is a long and wind­ing tale. Like many forg­ers, De Caro act­ed out of a mix­ture of greed, envy, and a desire to prove him­self to a field he felt did not rec­og­nize his tal­ents (De Caro also forged a copy of Galileo’s 1606 Com­pas­so to replace a stolen ver­sion). A col­lege dropout, he “held an impe­ri­ous grudge against peo­ple who had spent years study­ing in libraries,” writes Schmi­dle. Instead, De Caro had earned an hon­orary pro­fes­sor­ship by donat­ing four Galileo edi­tions (pre­sum­ably gen­uine) and a chunk of mete­orite to a pri­vate insti­tu­tion in Buenos Aires. More than just a sto­ry of fraud and theft, De Caro’s is one of aca­d­e­m­ic impos­ture. In 2006, for exam­ple, he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pan­el dis­cus­sion on Galileo at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, and despite the skep­ti­cism of actu­al schol­ars, his exper­tise was trust­ed in the rare books and muse­um worlds until his dis­cov­ery.

Accord­ing to Schmi­dle, De Caro and an accom­plice artist aged sev­er­al bot­tles of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry ink to cre­ate the Galileo draw­ings, using the Flo­rence Sheet as a guide for the sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry astronomer’s hand. After open­ing a bot­tle of red wine, he had his accom­plice trace the out­line of the moons with the foot of his wine­glass. Then they baked the pages in his home oven to age them. It’s hard to believe De Caro’s fake sur­vived scruti­ny for over five years, until Wild­ing began to express his doubts in 2011. Though fac­ing sev­er­al years in prison, De Caro hopes to work some­day with the F.B.I., help­ing them dis­cov­er forged and stolen books. He cites famous con man Frank Abag­nale, played by Leonar­do Di Caprio in the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, as an inspi­ra­tion. “I want to do for books what he did for checks,” says De Caro. “I can help them find all the black, off­shore accounts of all the book­sellers.” Read a fac­sim­i­le of Schmidle’s arti­cle here. And for more on De Caro’s brazen crimes, see this detailed Exam­in­er arti­cle.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

Galileo’s Moon Draw­ings, the First Real­is­tic Depic­tions of the Moon in His­to­ry (1609–1610)

Meet “Father Phil­an­thropy”: America’s Most Pro­lif­ic and Unlike­ly Mas­ter Art Forg­er

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

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Jack Kerouac’s On The Road Turned Into Google Driving Directions & Published as a Free eBook

in Literature, Maps | February 10th, 2014

A cou­ple weeks ago, Col­in Mar­shall high­light­ed for you Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitch­hik­ing Trip Nar­rat­ed in On the Road. Now we have anoth­er Ker­oua­cian map for you — a map for our times. Gre­gor Weich­brodt, a Ger­man col­lege stu­dent, took all of the geo­graph­ic stops men­tioned in 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. You can read the man­u­al — On the Road for 17,527 Miles– as a free ebook. Just click the image above to view it online (or click here). Like­wise, you can pur­chase a print copy on Lulu and per­haps make it the basis for your own road trip. Won­der­ing how long such a trip might take? Google Maps indi­cates that Ker­ouac’s jour­ney cov­ered some 17,527 miles and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly took some 272 hours.

Note: You can find lec­tures (1 + 2) dis­cussing the impor­tance of On the Road in Yale’s course, The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945. It appears in the Lit­er­a­ture sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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

via @SteveSilberman and PRI

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

500 Free eBooks: Down­load Great Books for Free

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The President of Northwestern University Predicts Online Learning … in 1934!

in History, MOOCs | January 31st, 2014

One of our most pop­u­lar posts this year cen­tered around a pre­scient set of pre­dic­tions that Isaac Asi­mov made for 2014, way back in 1964. Asi­mov, how­ev­er, wasn’t the only one whose vision of the future seems to have been real­ized.

The web site Pale­o­fu­ture fea­tures a 1934 issue of Every­day Sci­ence and Mechan­ics mag­a­zine, where North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent Wal­ter Dill Scott made some far­sight­ed pro­nounce­ments of his own. Scott believed that the phys­i­cal col­lege cam­pus would no longer need to be a lynch­pin for edu­ca­tion, and that stu­dents could learn by way of radio and pic­tures. Fax machines and tele­vi­sions would allow stu­dents to access lec­ture mate­ri­als world­wide, and ensure that researchers could con­duct their research remote­ly. He also fig­ured that we’d all end up com­mut­ing by planes. Every­day Sci­ence and Mechan­ics wrote:

The uni­ver­si­ty of twen­ty-five years from now will be a dif­fer­ent look­ing place, says Pres­i­dent Scott of North­west­ern. Instead of con­cen­trat­ing fac­ul­ty and stu­dents around a cam­pus, they will “com­mute” by air, and the uni­ver­si­ty will be sur­round­ed by air­ports and hangars. The course will be car­ried on, to a large extent, by radio and pic­tures. Fac­sim­i­le broad­cast­ing and tele­vi­sion will enlarge great­ly the range of a library; and research may be car­ried on by schol­ars at great dis­tances.

Air­ports and hangars aside, Scott’s con­jec­tures hit pret­ty close to home. While fax machines and radio may have been sup­plant­ed by the Inter­net, the essence of our edu­ca­tion­al advance­ments is the same: uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents can often lis­ten to lec­tures and com­plete assign­ments online, spend­ing only a few short face-to-face hours in the class­room. Oth­er times, class­es may be whol­ly avail­able online, and stu­dents may nev­er step foot on cam­pus alto­geth­er. Schol­ars, too, can trawl through data­bas­es like JSTOR and PsycIN­FO with­out get­ting out of bed, con­duct­ing research as they trav­el.

In fact, today almost any­one can have access to uni­ver­si­ty knowl­edge. Feel like tak­ing a Tech­nol­o­gy Entre­pre­neur­ship class offered by Stan­ford, or learn about Walt Whit­man, cour­tesy of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa? Noth­ing sim­pler! Mas­sive Open Online cours­es (MOOCs) are pro­lif­er­at­ing, and you can down­load audio & video lec­tures from top tier uni­ver­si­ties. Vis­it our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es to see what we mean.

In the end, it’s a good thing Scott was right. Oth­er­wise, there’d be no Open Cul­ture.

via Pale­o­fu­ture

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Wal­ter Cronkite Imag­ines the Home of the 21st Cen­tu­ry … Back in 1967

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

Mar­shall McLuhan Announces That The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

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David Foster Wallace Talks About Literature (and More) in an Internet Chatroom: Read the 1996 Transcript

in Books, Technology | January 28th, 2014

Reddit’s Ask Me Any­thing (AMA) series, where users get the chance to pose ques­tions to the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen King, and Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy, pro­vides a sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple way to inter­act with celebri­ties. Before Reddit’s arrival in 2005, how­ev­er, real-time exchanges between your gar­den-vari­ety Inter­net user and famous per­son­al­i­ties were occa­sion­al­ly con­duct­ed in Inter­net cha­t­rooms. One such ear­ly case appears to be a chat between the read­ers of WORD Mag­a­zine and David Fos­ter Wal­lace (read 30 of his essays free online), which seems to have tak­en place in May of 1996.

If AMAs are an order­ly, if vast, Q & A ses­sion, this chat is more like a boozy group meet­ing with your favorite Eng­lish lit pro­fes­sor in a smoky bar. (Read the tran­script here.) Wal­lace, using the han­dle “dfw,” is on a refresh­ing­ly lev­el field with the oth­er chat par­tic­i­pants, and the con­ver­sa­tion nat­u­ral­ly drifts from one top­ic to anoth­er. Things, as they often do, begin with a bit of ban­ter:

dfw: I’ve had some unpleas­ant nick­naames and monikers in my time, but nobody’s ever hung “fos­ty” on me before.

Keats: You know, I still think it should be spelled Fos­tie, or Fos­tey.
Keats: Fos­ty looks too much like “Frosty” and “sty” to me.

Keats: And makes me think of eye­balls packed in ice.

dfw: “Sty” as in an impact­ed eye­lash or a pig­pen, you mean?

Keats: Yeah. Is that what a sty as in “sty in your eye” is?

Marisa: I used to think the word “sty” was pro­nounced “stee”.

Keats: I had no idea exact­ly, just an unpleas­ant feel­ing about it.

dfw: Yes. Mas­sive­ly painful and embar­rass­ing, too. Like a car­bun­cle on the exact tip of your nose — that sort of thing.

Keats: I used to think the word “trough” was pro­nounced “troff.”

Keats: You know, I hap­pen to have a car­bun­cle on the tip of my nose right now.

Keats: Except it’s not a car­bun­cle, it’s more like a welt. It’s still embar­rass­ing.

dfw: In my very first sem­i­nar in col­lege, I pro­nounced facade “fakade.” The mem­o­ry’s still fresh and raw.

Soon, things take a turn for the seri­ous, and read­ers begin to ask Wal­lace about irony:

dfw: I don’t think irony’s meant to syn­er­gize with any­thing as heart­felt as sad­ness. I think the main func­tion of con­tem­po­rary irony is to pro­tect the speak­er from being inter­pret­ed as naive or sen­ti­men­tal.

Marisa: Why are peo­ple afraid to be seen as naive and sen­ti­men­tal?

dfw: Marisa: I think that’s a very deep, very hard ques­tion. One answer is that com­mer­cial com­e­dy’s often set up to fea­ture an iro­nist mak­ing dev­as­tat­ing sport of some­one who’s naive or sen­ti­men­tal or pre­ten­tious or pompous.

Keats: I’m start­ing to see a lot of irony in Hol­ly­wood and in adver­tis­ing, but its func­tion seems to be to let them talk out of both sides of their mouths.

dfw: Keats: adver­tis­ing that makes fun of itself is so pow­er­ful because it implic­it­ly con­grat­u­lates both itself and the view­er (for mak­ing the joke and get­ting the joke, respec­tive­ly).

Wal­lace also drops a few men­tions of some of his favorite authors:

DaleK: Mr. Wal­lace, I’m curious…who among cur­rent nov­el­ists do you find the most inter­est­ing?

dfw: Dalek — DeLil­lo, Ozick, R. Pow­ers, AM Homes, Denis John­son, David Mark­son, (old) JA Phillips and Louise Erdrich.

While we can’t con­clu­sive­ly con­firm that this was indeed the real DFW con­duct­ing the chat, it’s hard to deny that “dfw” sounds very much like the author. Cer­tain­ly, the com­plete exchange is as much fun to read for its mid-90s inter­net cha­t­room nos­tal­gia as it is for Wallace’s thoughts on irony, Infi­nite Jest, and the sound of one hand clap­ping. The whole tran­script is avail­able here.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

The David Fos­ter Wal­lace Audio Archive: A Lit­tle Gift For the Novelist’s 50th Birth­day

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Harold Bloom Creates a Massive List of Works in The “Western Canon”: Read Many of the Books Free Online

in Books, Education, Literature | January 28th, 2014

I have lit­tle desire to rehash the pol­i­tics, but the facts are plain: by the time I arrived in col­lege as an under­grad­u­ate Eng­lish major in the mid-90s, the idea of the “West­ern Canon” as a con­tain­er of—in the words of a famous hymn—“all that’s good, and great, and true” was seri­ous­ly on the wane, to put it mild­ly. And in many quar­ters of acad­e­mia, men­tion of the name of Yale lit­er­ary crit­ic Harold Bloom pro­voked, at the very least, a raised eye­brow and point­ed silence. Bloom’s rep­u­ta­tion per­haps unfair­ly fell vic­tim to the so-called “Canon Wars,” like­ly at times because of a misiden­ti­fi­ca­tion with polit­i­cal philoso­pher Allan Bloom. That Bloom was him­self no ide­o­logue, writes Jim Sleep­er; he was a close friend of Saul Bel­low and “an eccen­tric inter­preter of Enlight­en­ment thought who led an Epi­cure­an, qui­et­ly gay life.” Nonethe­less, his fiery attack on chang­ing aca­d­e­m­ic val­ues, The Clos­ing of the Amer­i­can Mind, became a text­book of the neo­con­ser­v­a­tive right.

Though Harold Bloom wished to dis­tance him­self from cul­ture war polemics, he has unapolo­get­i­cal­ly prac­ticed what Allan Bloom preached, teach­ing the Canon­i­cal “great books” of lit­er­a­ture and reli­gion and oppos­ing all man­ner of crit­ics on the left, whom he lumps togeth­er in the phrase “the School of Resent­ment.” Bloom’s 1973 The Anx­i­ety of Influ­ence has itself exert­ed a major influ­ence on lit­er­ary stud­ies, and best-sell­ing pop­u­lar works, like 1998’s Shake­speare: The Inven­tion of the Human, have kept Harold Bloom’s name in cir­cu­la­tion even when schol­ar­ly cita­tions of his work declined. In 1994, Bloom re-affirmed his com­mit­ment to the Canon with The West­ern Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, a fierce sor­tie against his so-called “School of Resent­ment” adver­saries and a work Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta pro­fes­sor Nor­man Fru­man called a “hero­ical­ly brave, for­mi­da­bly learned and often unbear­ably sad response to the present state of the human­i­ties.” (Hear Bloom dis­cuss the book with  Eleanor Wach­tel in a 1995 CBC inter­view.)

The West­ern Canon is tight­ly focused on only 26 authors, but in a series of four appen­dices, Bloom lists the hun­dreds of oth­er names he con­sid­ers canon­i­cal. For all of Bloom’s ornery defen­sive­ness, his list is sur­pris­ing­ly inclu­sive, as well as—for Fruman—surprisingly idio­syn­crat­ic. (Bloom lat­er dis­avowed the list, claim­ing that his edi­tor insist­ed on it.) Like a clas­si­cal philol­o­gist, Bloom divides his Canon into four “ages” or peri­ods: The Theo­crat­ic Age (2000 BCE-1321 CE); The Aris­to­crat­ic Age (1321–1832); The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Age: 1832–1900); and The Chaot­ic Age (20th Cen­tu­ry). You can view the com­plete list here. Below, we’ve com­piled a very par­tial, but still siz­able, excerpt of texts from Bloom’s list that are avail­able online through the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ade­laide’s ebook library. For all of the unpop­u­lar posi­tions he has tak­en over the past few decades, Bloom’s immense eru­di­tion, expan­sive intel­lect, and sin­cere com­mit­ment to the human­i­ties have nev­er been in ques­tion. As a dis­tin­guished exem­plar of a fad­ing tra­di­tion, he is an invalu­able resource for stu­dents and lovers of lit­er­a­ture.

A: “The Theocratic Age”

The Ancient Greeks

Homer (ca.800BC)

Ili­ad; Odyssey.

Hes­iod (ca.700BC)

Works and Days; Theogony.

Sap­pho (ca.600BC)

Aeschy­lus (525 BC — 456 BC)

Oresteia; Sev­en Against Thebes; Prometheus Bound; Per­sians; Sup­pli­ant Women.

Sopho­cles (c. 496‑c. 405 BC)

Oedi­pus the King; Oedi­pus at Colonus; Antigone; Elec­tra; Ajax; Women of Tra­chis; Philoctetes.

Euripi­des (480 or 484–406 BC)

Cyclops; Her­a­cles; Alces­tis; Hecu­ba; Bac­chae; Orestes; Andro­mache; Medea; Ion; Hip­poly­tus; Helen; Iphi­ge­nia at Aulis.

Aristo­phanes (ca. 446 BC — 385 BC)

The Birds; The Clouds; The Frogs; Lysis­tra­ta; The Knights; The Wasps; The Assem­bly­women.

Herodotus, 485–420BCE

The His­to­ries.

Thucy­dides, ca.460 BCE

The Pelo­pon­nesian Wars.

Pla­to, c.427‑c.347 BCE

Dia­logues.

Aris­to­tle, 384–322 BCE

Poet­ics; Ethics.

Hellenistic Greeks

Menan­der, ca. 342–291 BC

The Girl from Samos.

Plutarch, 46–120

Lives; Moralia.

Aesop (620 — 560 BC)

Fables.

Petro­n­ius, c.27–66

The Romans

Ter­ence, 195/185–159 BC

The Girl from Andros; The Eunuch; The Moth­er-in-Law.

Lucretius, 98?–55 BCE

The Way Things Are.

Mar­cus Tul­lius Cicero, 106–43 BCE

On the Gods.

Horace, 65–8 BCE

Odes; Epis­tles; Satires.

Cat­ul­lus (c.84 B.C. — c.54 B.C.)

Attis and Oth­er Poems.

Vir­gil (70–19 BC)

Aeneid; Eclogues; Geor­gics.

Ovid (43 BC — 17 AD)

Meta­mor­phoses; The Art of Love; Hero­ides.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, ca.4 BCE–65 CE

Tragedies, par­tic­u­lar­ly Medea and Her­cules Furens.

Petro­n­ius, c.27–66

Satyri­con.

Apuleius, c. 123/125‑c. 180

The Gold­en Ass.

The Middle Ages: Latin, Arabic, and the Vernacular Before Dante

Augus­tine of Hip­po, 354–430

City of God; Con­fes­sions.

Wol­fram von Eschen­bach, 1170–1220

Parzi­val.

Chré­tien de Troyes, 12th cent

Yvain: The Knight of the Lion.

Beowulf (ca.800)

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