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

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)

George Orwell Got a B- at Harvard, When Michael Crichton Submitted an Orwell Essay as His Own

in Literature | January 24th, 2014

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In his 2002 mem­oir, Trav­els, Michael Crich­ton took his read­ers back sev­er­al decades, to the ear­ly 1960s when, as a Har­vard stu­dent, he tried an inter­est­ing lit­tle exper­i­ment in his Eng­lish class. He recalled:

I had gone to col­lege plan­ning to become a writer, but ear­ly on a sci­en­tif­ic ten­den­cy appeared. In the Eng­lish depart­ment at Har­vard, my writ­ing style was severe­ly crit­i­cized and I was receiv­ing grades of C or C+ on my papers. At eigh­teen, I was vain about my writ­ing and felt it was Har­vard, and not I, that was in error, so I decid­ed to make an exper­i­ment. The next assign­ment was a paper on Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els, and I remem­bered an essay by George Orwell that might fit. With some hes­i­ta­tion, I retyped Orwell’s essay and sub­mit­ted it as my own. I hes­i­tat­ed because if I were caught for pla­gia­rism I would be expelled; but I was pret­ty sure that my instruc­tor was not only wrong about writ­ing styles, but poor­ly read as well. In any case, George Orwell got a B- at Har­vard, which con­vinced me that the Eng­lish depart­ment was too dif­fi­cult for me.

I decid­ed to study anthro­pol­o­gy instead. But I doubt­ed my desire to con­tin­ue as a grad­u­ate stu­dent in anthro­pol­o­gy, so I began tak­ing premed cours­es, just in case.

Most like­ly Crich­ton sub­mit­ted Orwell’s essay 1946 essay, “Pol­i­tics vs. Lit­er­a­ture: An Exam­i­na­tion of Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els.”  He even­tu­al­ly went to Har­vard Med­ical School but kept writ­ing on the side. Per­haps get­ting a grade just a shade below Orwell’s B- gave Crich­ton some bizarre con­fir­ma­tion that he could one day make it as a writer.

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Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com, includ­ing works by Crich­ton and Orwell? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

T.S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

George Orwell’s Har­row­ing Race to Fin­ish 1984 Before His Death

“The Tolkien Professor” Presents Three Free Courses on The Lord of the Rings

in Literature, Online Courses | January 15th, 2014

A quick update: Last year, we told you about Corey Olsen, an Eng­lish Pro­fes­sor at Wash­ing­ton Col­lege, who start­ed pub­lish­ing online lec­tures on the writ­ing of J.R.R. Tolkien. We ini­tial­ly fea­tured his lec­ture series on The Hob­bit. Now “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” as Olsen is oth­er­wise known, presents a series of online cours­es on The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy:

• Lord of the Rings I: The Road Goes Ever On — iTune­sU
• Lord of the Rings II: The Two Tow­ers — iTune­sU — Web
• Lord of the Rings III: Return of the King - iTunes U — Web

As a bonus, you can access Olsen’s Under­grad­u­ate Sur­vey Course on Tolkien (avail­able on the web). The 14-week course was pre­sent­ed and record­ed at Wash­ing­ton Col­lege in the Spring of 2010.

All of Olsen’s cours­es are cat­a­logued in the Lit­er­a­ture sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read Poems from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, in Elvish and Eng­lish (1952)

Fan­tas­tic BBC Footage of J.R.R. Tolkien in 1968

Free Audio: Down­load the Com­plete Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis

Vintage Photos of a Young Virginia Woolf Playing Cricket (Ages 5 & 12)

in Literature | January 14th, 2014

Scenes, I note, sel­dom illus­trate my rela­tion with Vanes­sa; it has been too deep for ‘scenes’. Vanes­sa and I were both what we call tomboys; that is, we played crick­et, scram­bled over rocks, climbed trees, were said not to care for clothes and so on.

Until she was fif­teen indeed, she was out­ward­ly sober and aus­tere, the most trust­wor­thy, and always the eldest; some­times she would lament her “respon­si­bil­i­ties”. But beneath the seri­ous sur­face … there burnt also the…passion for art. …Once I saw her scrawl on a black door a great maze of lines, with white chalk. “When I am a famous painter-” she began, and then turned shy and rubbed it out in her capa­ble way…She was awk­ward as a long-legged colt.

This is how Vir­ginia Woolf remem­bered her sis­ter Vanes­sa Bell in cor­re­spon­dence that’s been revived by a Smith Col­lege web site. Lat­er in life, of course, Woolf wrote some of the finest mod­ernist works of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Mean­while Vanes­sa became a respect­ed painter — see 142 of her paint­ings here — and a cen­tral mem­ber of the avant-garde Blooms­bury Group. As adults, they both had a lot of cul­tur­al clout. But dur­ing anoth­er time — dur­ing their “tomboy” years — they were just kids look­ing for a good game of crick­et. Above, we have an 1894 pic­ture of Vir­ginia (in the front, about 12 years old) and Vanes­sa, play­ing crick­et at St. Ives. Below we have a shot, cour­tesy of Smith’s web site, of 5‑year-old Vir­ginia play­ing crick­et with her lit­tle broth­er Adri­an Stephen (also lat­er a mem­ber of the Blooms­bury Group) in 1886.

Works by Woolf can be found in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Vir­ginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200

Por­traits of Vir­ginia Woolf, James Joyce, Wal­ter Ben­jamin & Oth­er Lit­er­ary Leg­ends by Gisèle Fre­und

“Lol My Thesis” Showcases Painfully Hilarious Attempts to Sum up Years of Academic Work in One Sentence

in Comedy, Education | January 9th, 2014

Image from Ph.D. Comics

A true fact about the the­sis stage of an advanced degree: What­ev­er the aca­d­e­m­ic field, whether writ­ing a fifty page bachelor’s or master’s the­sis or 250 plus page doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion, at some point, you will need to win­now your argu­ment down to an abstract sum­ma­ry of a cou­ple suc­cinct para­graphs. Then, one inevitably finds—when rid­ing ele­va­tors with col­leagues and men­tors, talk­ing to rel­a­tives over hol­i­day din­ners, jus­ti­fy­ing one’s exis­tence to friends and acquaintances—that the whole damned thing needs to some­how reduce to one intel­li­gi­ble sen­tence or two. It’s all any­one has the patience for, hon­est­ly, and it saves you the trou­ble of try­ing to recon­struct com­plex argu­ments for peo­ple who won’t under­stand or care about them and who gen­er­al­ly only asked out of polite­ness any­way.

But how, how, to cram years of research, agony, tur­moil, crush­ing fail­ure and soar­ing epiphany into bite-sized con­ver­sa­tion­al nuggets with­out gross over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion to the point of tau­to­log­i­cal absur­di­ty? Can it even be done?! The blog “lol my the­sis,” start­ed last year by a Har­vard senior study­ing Human Devel­op­men­tal and Regen­er­a­tive Biol­o­gy, sug­gests that it can, but not with­out hilar­i­ous results. Part of an explod­ing genre of aca­d­e­m­ic par­o­dy (and pro­cras­ti­na­tion) sites, lol my the­sis proud­ly ven­tures forth in its mis­sion of “sum­ming up years of work in one sen­tence” with open sub­mis­sions from cur­rent stu­dents. Many of the sub­mis­sions are from the sci­ences, and many from under­grad­u­ate the­ses, but a fair num­ber also come from human­i­ties and post-grad­u­ate stud­ies. Take, for exam­ple, the fol­low­ing sub­mis­sion from an MFA Cre­ative Non­fic­tion stu­dent at Emer­son Col­lege, which direct­ly address­es the intend­ed audi­ence:

“A col­lec­tion of non­fic­tion essays, which means they’re writ­ten about real peo­ple and events, mom. Remem­ber all those times you accused me of not lis­ten­ing to the things you said?”

A pas­sive aggres­sive exam­ple that most of us who’ve been through the process can relate to at some lev­el. Anoth­er one that hits home is this, from a Vas­sar Polit­i­cal Sci­ence major, who dis­cov­ers too late that the argu­ment doesn’t work: “Oops: Turns out self-pub­lished poet­ry didn’t actu­al­ly affect Indi­an pol­i­tics but I’m 60 pages in, so.”

The sub­mis­sions from the sci­ences do not dis­ap­point. For exam­ple, from a Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land stu­dent of Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences: “We spent thou­sands of gov­ern­ment dol­lars to cre­ate a mouse mod­el for a dis­ease only 32 peo­ple in the world have.” And a Sci­ence Writ­ing stu­dent at M.I.T. gives us this par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive exam­ple of brevi­ty: “Wolves + humans, the ulti­mate fren­e­mies.” Not to be out­done, a Stem Cell Biol­o­gy stu­dent at Har­vard offers a grim­ly terse con­fes­sion­al: “I have killed so many fish.”

The sub­mis­sions are anony­mous, but some good sports have cho­sen to include links to their the­ses, endear­ing­ly hop­ing that some­one besides their advi­sor will actu­al­ly want to read them. Most of the sub­mis­sions, how­ev­er, sim­ply com­bine two qual­i­ties every advanced stu­dent knows all too well: a well-earned feel­ing of futil­i­ty and the mor­dant wit required to keep going any­way.

More wit­ty sum­maries can be found at lol my the­sis.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Grad­u­ate School Bar­bie: A New Gift Idea for The Demor­al­ized Grad Stu­dent in Your Life

The Ph.D. Grind: Philip J. Guo’s Free Mem­oir Offers An Insider’s Look at Doc­tor­al Study

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

The University of Richmond Animates the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

in History, Maps | January 7th, 2014

In 1902, the new­ly estab­lished Carnegie Insti­tu­tion of Wash­ing­ton set out to devel­op “a real­ly first rate atlas of Amer­i­can his­to­ry.” Work on the atlas began in earnest in 1912, under the direc­tion of the naval his­to­ri­an Charles O. Paullin, who spent the bet­ter part of the next 15 years bring­ing it to life. In 1929, the Amer­i­can Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety (AGS), along with the emi­nent geo­g­ra­ph­er John K. Wright, took over the project and brought it to com­ple­tion. The Atlas of the His­tor­i­cal Geog­ra­phy of the Unit­ed States was final­ly pub­lished in 1932 to wide crit­i­cal acclaim. Called a “mon­u­ment to his­tor­i­cal schol­ar­ship,” the com­pendi­um fea­tured near­ly 700 indi­vid­ual maps that gave visu­al insights into 500 years of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Top­ic cov­ered includ­ed the “explo­ration and set­tle­ment of the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent, the loca­tion of col­leges and church­es, dis­putes over inter­na­tion­al and state bound­aries, vot­ing in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions and in Con­gress, reforms from women’s suf­frage to workmen’s com­pen­sa­tion, trans­porta­tion, indus­tries, agri­cul­ture, com­merce, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, mil­i­tary his­to­ry” and much more.

The Atlas of the His­tor­i­cal Geog­ra­phy of the Unit­ed States remains a valu­able his­tor­i­cal resource today. But, for all of these years, it had one notable short­com­ing. Around the time of its first pub­li­ca­tion, John K. Wright acknowl­edged that “The ide­al his­tor­i­cal atlas might well be a col­lec­tion of motion-pic­ture maps, if these could be dis­played on the pages of a book with­out the para­pher­na­lia of pro­jec­tor, reel, and screen.” The tech­nol­o­gy that would lend itself to cre­at­ing motion-pic­ture maps was­n’t avail­able in the 1930s. But it is today. And thanks to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Richmond’s Dig­i­tal Schol­ar­ship Lab, we can now view The Atlas of the His­tor­i­cal Geog­ra­phy of the Unit­ed States in a new dig­i­tal, some­times ani­mat­ed for­mat. If you want to see a good exam­ple of his­tor­i­cal data put into motion, then you might want to check out this map of Amer­i­can Explo­rations in the West, 1803–1852. (Click here and then click “Ani­mate” at the bot­tom of the screen.) This map will trace for you the expe­di­tions of Lewis and Clark and many oth­er explor­ers. Then, if you’re ready to be an explor­er your­self, you can start your jour­ney through the dig­i­tized atlas by enter­ing the Table of Con­tents.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

Hen­ry David Thoreau’s Hand-Drawn Map of Cape Cod (1866)

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

Geog­ra­phy of World Cul­tures by Mar­tin Lewis (Stan­ford) in our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es

Download 100 Free Philosophy Courses and Start Living the Examined Life

in Online Courses, Philosophy | December 21st, 2013

The Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big Free Online Cours­es col­lec­tion just went through anoth­er update, and it now fea­tures 100 cours­es. Enough to give you a soup-to-nuts intro­duc­tion to a time­less dis­ci­pline. You can start with one of sev­er­al intro­duc­to­ry cours­es.

• Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners – iTunes – Web Video – Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Oxford
  
• Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – Web Video – Oxford
• A Romp through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners — iTunes Video – Web Video – Oxford
• Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy – YouTube – iTunes – Web Video — Steven B. Smith, Yale
• The Art of Liv­ing — Web Video – Stan­ford
• The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps - Mul­ti­ple For­mats– Peter Adam­son, King’s Col­lege Lon­don

Then, once you’ve found your foot­ing, you can head off in some amaz­ing direc­tions. As we men­tioned many moons ago, you can access cours­es and lec­tures by mod­ern day leg­ends – Michel Fou­cault, Bertrand Rus­sell, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus and Michael Sandel. Then you can sit back and let them intro­duce you to the think­ing of Aris­to­tle, Socrates, Pla­to, Hobbes, Hegel, Hei­deg­ger, Kierkegaard, Kant, Niet­zsche, Sartre and the rest of the gang. The cours­es list­ed here are gen­er­al­ly avail­able via YouTube, iTunes, or the web.

Explore our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, to find top­ics in many oth­er dis­ci­plines — His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, Physics, Com­put­er Sci­ence and beyond. As we like to say, it’s the most valu­able sin­gle page on the web.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

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

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

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

Short Film Shows What Happens When a Letter from World War II Finally Gets Delivered 69 Years Later

in History, Letters, Life, Random | December 20th, 2013

A few years ago, I stum­bled upon a nev­er-sent let­ter writ­ten to a friend when we were both in col­lege. The con­tents weren’t heavy. Dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion is the most like­ly expla­na­tion for why it nev­er went in the mail. I cracked the enve­lope and had a look.

It was a time cap­sule, for sure, a cringe-induc­ing one. It was­n’t so much the life I was report­ing on as how I framed it, self-aggran­dize­ment strain­ing to pass as non­cha­lance. For­tu­nate­ly, an artist acquain­tance hap­pened to be run­ning a project— send her your shred­d­a­ble doc­u­ments, and even­tu­al­ly, she’d send you a few sheets of hand­made paper in which your mulched data min­gled with that of oth­ers. Tru­ly a beau­ti­ful way to dis­pose of the evi­dence.

But what hap­pens when nei­ther the writer, nor the intend­ed recip­i­ent, is the find­er of the lost let­ter? In Feb­ru­ary 2013, some mail post­ed by Lt. Joseph O. Matthews, a sol­dier sta­tioned at a mil­i­tary train­ing facil­i­ty in Jack­sonville, North Car­oli­na, found its way to Abbi Jacob­son, an actress (and col­or­ing book author!) rent­ing an apart­ment on Mac­Dou­gal Street in New York City. Addressed to Matthew’s wife, the can­cel­la­tion mark was dat­ed Decem­ber 2, 1944.

Jacob­son opened the let­ter, the con­di­tion of the enve­lope hav­ing sug­gest­ed that she would not be the first to breach its con­tents dur­ing the 69 years it had spent wan­der­ing in the wilder­ness. The words inside were roman­tic, a young offi­cer inform­ing the bride he’d left back home that he’d soon be ship­ping out to Oki­nawa. Eager to pull an Amélie by reunit­ing the let­ter with those to whom it would mean the most, Jacob­son enlist­ed the help of her friend, doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Todd Bieber. Togeth­er they searched records at City Hall, look­ing for clues. When that approach proved fruit­less, they cre­at­ed the Lost Let­ter Project, a web por­tal that invit­ed the pub­lic to join in the search.

An avalanche of tweets, Face­book updates, and human inter­est pieces ensued. In no time at all, they had their man, or rather his descen­dants, Lt. Matthews hav­ing passed away in 1999, crush­ing Jacob­son’s dreams of hand deliv­er­ing the let­ter to “a lit­tle old man and a lit­tle old lady.” (I’m will­ing to bet Jacob­son will one day wish there was a giant blender capa­ble of turn­ing dig­i­tal state­ments like how cute would that be, my god, right? I love old peo­ple into hand­made paper.)

Bieber’s video reveals what became of Lt. Matthews and his wife. Even more inter­est­ing is how the let­ter res­onates with his grown chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly a cer­tain the­o­log­i­cal ref­er­ence at odds with the man they thought they knew.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

“Noth­ing Good Gets Away”: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)

Stephen King Writes A Let­ter to His 16-Year-Old Self: “Stay Away from Recre­ation­al Drugs”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is all for stuff­ing your stock­ing with a hol­i­day gift sub­scrip­tion to the East Vil­lage Inky, her award win­ning hand-illus­trat­ed zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Hear Michel Foucault Deliver His Lecture on “Truth and Subjectivity” at UC Berkeley, In English (1980)

in Philosophy | December 20th, 2013

Michel Fou­cault first arrived at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley in 1975. By this time, he was already a celebri­ty in France. He had just pub­lished his enor­mous­ly influ­en­tial his­to­ry and cri­tique of the penal sys­tem, Dis­ci­pline and Pun­ish, and he occu­pied a posi­tion at the pres­ti­gious Col­lège de France as chair in the “his­to­ry of sys­tems of thought,” a posi­tion he cre­at­ed for him­self. But when he arrived on the West Coast, writes Mar­cus Wohlsen, “few at Berke­ley had heard of Michel Fou­cault.” Leo Bersani, then chair­man of the French depart­ment, even had to call phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Hubert Drey­fus to help “come and fill out the ranks” for Foucault’s lec­tures.

After the pub­li­ca­tion of vol­ume one of The His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, Fou­cault would return to Berke­ley in the fall of 1979, then again in 1980. By then, the scene had changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Fou­cault was invit­ed to deliv­er the How­i­son Lec­ture that year, a dis­tin­guished invi­ta­tion pre­vi­ous­ly extend­ed to such thinkers as John Dewey, Willard V.O. Quine and, the year pre­vi­ous, John Rawls. By this time, Wohlsen writes, Fou­cault was, reluc­tant­ly, “an inter­na­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic super­star.” Fill­ing the hall for his lec­tures would not be an issue. In fact, Wohlsen tells us,

Crowds crammed the 2,000-seat Zeller­bach Hall so quick­ly that police had to bar the doors. Fou­cault fans milled around rest­less­ly out­side until [phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Hans] Slu­ga arranged for a live broad­cast of the letures to Wheel­er Hall. Its 760 seats filled almost imme­di­ate­ly.

Accord­ing to Slu­ga, Fou­cault, increas­ing­ly wary of his fame, inten­tion­al­ly titled his lecture—“Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty: the Sto­ic Prac­tice of Self Examination”—to sound “learned, abstract, remote” in order to deter a large crowd. That ploy clear­ly failed.

In the first part of the lec­ture (at top), the pre­sen­ter who intro­duces Fou­cault begins by ges­tur­ing to the philosopher’s fame, then com­ments that Foucault’s promi­nent post at the Col­lège de France was “very para­dox­i­cal, since Michel Fou­cault, although pres­ti­gious, is not a typ­i­cal kind of aca­d­e­m­ic. He is sus­pi­cious of all titles and claims to dis­in­ter­est­ed truth that has been [sic] asso­ci­at­ed with acad­e­mia.” After men­tion­ing Foucault’s fierce crit­i­cism of every his­tor­i­cal assump­tion and method­ol­o­gy (he was a guest of the His­to­ry and French Depart­ments), he breaks off his remarks to note that “there’s a mob of peo­ple all around, try­ing to get in.”

Fou­cault begins his lec­ture in French (at 8:08), then switch­es to Eng­lish for the remain­der (at 9:18). He quotes from a his­tor­i­cal French psychiatrist’s account of a “cure” involv­ing an “inter­ro­ga­tion” and a coerced con­fes­sion of mad­ness. Fou­cault calls this one among many exam­ples of “truth ther­a­pies,” and it serves—as do such vivid­ly spe­cif­ic archival exam­ples in his books—as a har­row­ing intro­duc­tion to the polic­ing of capital‑T Truth that is the essence of the human­ist enter­prise.

Despite the often pro­found­ly unset­tling nature of his inves­ti­ga­tions, and his attempt to scare off the crowd, Fou­cault is not dour or bor­ing, nor does he seem at all unap­proach­able or for­bid­ding. He is patient and self-dep­re­cat­ing­ly fun­ny: in a cut­ting, rue­ful ref­er­ence to the grow­ing dom­i­nance of ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy in British and Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties, he says, “I con­fess, with the appro­pri­ate cha­grin, that I am not an ana­lyt­i­cal philoso­pher. Nobody is per­fect.” Then he sums up his project suc­cinct­ly: “I have tried to explore anoth­er direc­tion. I have tried to get from a phi­los­o­phy of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty to a geneal­o­gy of the sub­ject.”

Fou­cault is a very charm­ing speak­er, sprin­kling his lec­ture with lit­tle jokes like “It goes with­out say­ing… but it goes bet­ter with say­ing…” and drop­ping in Amer­i­can­isms like “Mon­day morn­ing quar­ter­back­ing,” to the amuse­ment of the crowd. He shows him­self to be very much aware of his audience—these are deeply seri­ous lec­tures, with­out a doubt, but Fou­cault nev­er for­gets that he’s fac­ing liv­ing human beings, with their own domains of knowl­edge and subjectivities—and he seeks to reach them where they are while report­ing on his dis­turb­ing dis­cov­er­ies as an archae­ol­o­gist of West­ern human­ist dis­course.

Fou­cault returned to Berke­ley again as a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor in 1981 and again 1983, the year before his death. Alain Beaulieu, who has cat­a­logued Foucault’s Berke­ley archives, described his time in Cal­i­for­nia as hap­py and pro­duc­tive, “while he remain[ed] crit­i­cal of some fea­tures asso­ci­at­ed with the ‘Cal­i­forn­ian cult of the self.’” In fact, “Cult of the Self” was the title of three lec­tures Fou­cault deliv­ered at Berke­ley in 1983 (lis­ten here), along with six lec­tures on “Dis­course and Truth.” Dur­ing his time at Berke­ley in 1980, when he deliv­ered the lec­ture above, grad­u­ate stu­dent Michael Bess inter­viewed the philoso­pher. Fou­cault spoke plain­ly and pas­sion­ate­ly about the impe­tus for his relent­less cri­tiques of insti­tu­tion­al pow­er and knowl­edge:

In a sense, I am a moral­ist, inso­far as I believe that one of the tasks, one of the mean­ings of human existence—the source of human freedom—is nev­er to accept any­thing as defin­i­tive, untouch­able, obvi­ous, or immo­bile. No aspect of real­i­ty should be allowed to become a defin­i­tive and inhu­man law for us.

We have to rise up against all forms of power—but not just pow­er in the nar­row sense of the word, refer­ring to the pow­er of a gov­ern­ment or of one social group over anoth­er: these are only a few par­tic­u­lar instances of pow­er.

Pow­er is any­thing that tends to ren­der immo­bile and untouch­able those things that are offered to us as real, as true, as good.

Read the com­plete inter­view, first pub­lished in the Novem­ber 10, 1980 Dai­ly Cal­i­forn­ian, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Foucault’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy Explored in a Reveal­ing 1993 Doc­u­men­tary

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 800 Free Cours­es Online

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