Animations Revive Lost Interviews with David Foster Wallace, Jim Morrison & Dave Brubeck

in Animation, Music | April 19th, 2013

David Ger­lach left a com­fort­able job work­ing as a TV pro­duc­er to launch Blank on Blank, a mul­ti­me­dia non­prof­it with a sim­ple mis­sion — to curate jour­nal­ists’ for­got­ten inter­views with cul­tur­al icons, and then bring them back to life again, some­times as ani­mat­ed shorts. You can start enjoy­ing the fruit of Blank on Blank’s labors by watch­ing a series of web ani­ma­tions, recent­ly pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with PBS Dig­i­tal Stu­dios. Above, we’re start­ing you off with a four-minute ani­ma­tion of David Fos­ter Wal­lace reflect­ing on his ear­ly ten­nis days, the per­ils of per­fec­tion­ism, and his ten­den­cy to be a “gram­mar nazi” when teach­ing col­lege stu­dents — some­thing we’ve cov­ered here before. The inter­view orig­i­nal­ly aired on WNY­C’s Leonard Lopate Show in 1996, and you can lis­ten to the con­ver­sa­tion in its entire­ty here.

Next comes some mem­o­rable moments with Jim Mor­ri­son, the great singer-song­writer, who met with Vil­lage Voice writer Howard Smith back in Novem­ber, 1969. Going into the meet­ing, Smith sensed that things would­n’t be easy. He lat­er recalled, “I had a feel­ing that it was going to be a tough inter­view. I just kin­da had a feel­ing that … it was going to be tricky, and I said .… if things get real­ly dif­fi­cult with him, I’m gonna sug­gest that we arm wres­tle.” As you’ll hear, Smith made his great arm-wrestling escape an inevitabil­i­ty when he nee­dled Mor­ri­son, sug­gest­ing that the singer had put on too much weight. You can see how things played out above, or catch the com­plete inter­view here.

Blank on Blank has pro­duced oth­er ani­mat­ed inter­views with Bono, Lar­ry King, and surfer Kel­ly Slater. But we’re going to wind things down with Dave Brubeck recall­ing how Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er sent him to East­ern Europe to fight Com­mu­nism with Jazz. Brubeck relat­ed this sto­ry at the Litch­field Jazz Fes­ti­val in 2008.

If you’re look­ing to rum­mage through a big archive of lost inter­views, I’d encour­age you to spend time with the Blank on Blank pod­cast avail­able on iTunes and rss.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

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

An Uplift­ing Musi­cal Sur­prise for Dave Brubeck in Moscow (1997)

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

in Books, Literature, Writing | April 18th, 2013

Here is a rare record­ing of Flan­nery O’Con­nor read­ing an ear­ly ver­sion of her wit­ty and reveal­ing essay, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion.”

O’Con­nor gives an elo­quent out­line of her vision as both a South­ern and a Catholic writer. She defends her work against crit­ics who say it is high­ly unre­al­is­tic. “All nov­el­ists are fun­da­men­tal­ly seek­ers and describers of the real,” she says, “but the real­ism of each nov­el­ist will depend on his view of the ulti­mate reach­es of real­i­ty.” In the pub­lished ver­sion of the essay, she writes:

When­ev­er I’m asked why South­ern writ­ers par­tic­u­lar­ly have a pen­chant for writ­ing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to rec­og­nize one. To be able to rec­og­nize a freak, you have to have some con­cep­tion of the whole man, and in the South the gen­er­al con­cep­tion of man is still, in the main, the­o­log­i­cal. That is a large state­ment, and it is dan­ger­ous to make it, for almost any­thing you say about South­ern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal pro­pri­ety. But approach­ing the sub­ject from the stand­point of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hard­ly Christ-cen­tered, it is most cer­tain­ly Christ-haunt­ed. The South­ern­er, who isn’t con­vinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and like­ness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instruc­tive. They cast strange shad­ows, par­tic­u­lar­ly in our lit­er­a­ture. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a fig­ure for our essen­tial dis­place­ment that he attains some depth in lit­er­a­ture.

This pas­sage can be heard, in dif­fer­ent form, begin­ning at the 3:40 mark in the record­ing. Like many of O’Con­nors essays, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion” was writ­ten not for pub­li­ca­tion, but for pub­lic read­ing. She was known to rewrite and rearrange these pieces between read­ings. In this record­ing, O’Con­nor is using the piece as a prepara­to­ry state­ment for a read­ing of her clas­sic sto­ry, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

We don’t know the date of the record­ing, but the text dif­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the posthu­mous­ly pub­lished ver­sion, so per­haps it is an ear­ly ver­sion. The ear­li­est extant record­ing of the essay that we know of was made on Octo­ber 28, 1960 for the Dorothy Lamar Blount Lec­ture Series at Wes­leyan Col­lege in Macon, Geor­gia. There is also known to be a record­ing of O’Con­nor read­ing the piece on Novem­ber 16, 1962 at East Texas State Uni­ver­si­ty.

To com­pare the record­ed ver­sion to the one even­tu­al­ly pub­lished in Mys­tery and Man­ners: Occa­sion­al Prose, you can click here to open the essay in a new win­dow.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Hear Flan­nery O’Connor’s Short Sto­ry, “Rev­e­la­tion,” Read by Leg­endary His­to­ri­an & Radio Host, Studs Terkel

Flan­nery O’Connor’s “Every­thing That Ris­es Must Con­verge” Read by Estelle Par­sons

The Police Sing “Message in a Bottle” for the First Time Live (1979)

in Music | April 15th, 2013

The Police pulled off the most unlike­ly of musi­cal feats. While sev­er­al bands com­bined the rest­less, raw ener­gy of punk with the rhyth­mic, tune­ful urgency of reg­gae, these guys wrapped it all up in the accom­plished musi­cian­ship and off-kil­ter key changes and shift­ing time sig­na­tures of jazzy prog rock. This had nev­er been done before, and any­one who’s tried it since owes a tremen­dous debt to Sting, Andy Sum­mers, and Stew­art Copeland (no one comes to mind, though). The fact that they were able to retain rock cred­i­bil­i­ty while win­ning pop star­dom and a Gram­my for a rock instru­men­tal (1979’s krautrock-influ­enced “Regat­ta de Blanc”) are all fur­ther tes­ta­ments to the phe­nom­e­nal odd­i­ty that was this band. While I’ve nev­er been much of a fan of Sting’s solo work, The Police have always kind of aston­ished me with their brav­ery and vir­tu­os­i­ty.

And so we come to the act of brav­ery above: in a live appear­ance at Hat­field Poly­tech­nic (now the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hert­ford­shire) in Feb­ru­ary of 1979, the band decides to drop a new, untest­ed song on the enthu­si­as­tic crowd. The song? “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” from the ’79 album Regat­ta de Blanc, the same record that pro­duced that Gram­my-win­ning title-track instru­men­tal. What’s so brave about that, you ask? There’s often no bet­ter way to try out new mate­r­i­al than in front of an already appre­cia­tive audi­ence. Well, this gig was record­ed for a BBC series called “Rock Goes to Col­lege.” Although The Police were skirt­ing star­dom with the sin­gle “Rox­anne” from their first album, they hadn’t quite made it yet, and their first TV appear­ance was a risky venue for demo­ing a new tune. But they pull it off. The crowd bounces in time and the three Police, who seem on the edge of a mis­take or dropped note some­where, give the song a flaw­less turn.

You can watch the full “Rock Goes to Col­lege” con­cert below, which also includes ear­ly hits like “Can’t Stand Los­ing You” (the open­er) and “Rox­anne” (at 29:45).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Free: Watch Jackie Robinson Star in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)

in Film, Sports | April 14th, 2013

This week­end, the new Jack­ie Robin­son biopic, 42, opened up well in the box offices, bring­ing in $27.3 mil­lion in tick­et sales. That puts it at the top of the charts, which is a real rar­i­ty for a base­ball film.

This isn’t the first time Jack­ie Robin­son’s sto­ry has been told on film. And today we’re bring­ing you anoth­er note­wor­thy pro­duc­tion, The Jack­ie Robin­son Sto­ry from 1950. As review­ers are quick to note, it’s not a work of art. It’s a sim­ple film with low pro­duc­tion val­ues. But, it has one thing that oth­er Jack­ie Robin­son films do not — Jack­ie Robin­son play­ing him­self, and quite well at that. Run­ning 76 minut­ers, the fast-paced film takes the audi­ence through the life and times of the great base­ball play­er and civ­il rights fig­ure. His youth, col­lege foot­ball days, mil­i­tary ser­vice, minor league career, amaz­ing 1949 sea­son with the Brook­lyn Dodgers — they all get cov­ered here.

The Jack­ie Robin­son Sto­ry (which is now in the pub­lic domain) has been added to our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lou Gehrig, Yan­kee Leg­end, Stars in 1938 West­ern Rawhide

Bill Murray’s Base­ball Hall of Fame Speech (and Hideous Sports Coat)

The Grate­ful Dead Rock the Nation­al Anthem at Can­dle­stick Park: Open­ing Day, 1993

Tom Lehrer’s Mathematically and Scientifically Inclined Singing and Songwriting, Animated

in Math, Music, Physics | April 12th, 2013

I went through child­hood lis­ten­ing to Tom Lehrer’s “New Math”. The 1965 song, per­formed in part like stan­dard spo­ken-word com­e­dy, made me laugh every time. “In the new approach,” the satirist says of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary math­e­mat­ics he pur­ports to teach us, “the impor­tant thing is to under­stand what you’re doing rather than to get the right answer.” Work­ing aloud through a sub­trac­tion prob­lem at the piano, Lehrer sings the oper­a­tions: “And so you’ve got thir­teen tens and you take away sev­en and that leaves five. Well, six, actu­al­ly, but the idea’s the impor­tant thing.” This struck me at the time as noth­ing more than an amus­ing­ly goofy numer­ic riff, and per­haps one with harsh impli­ca­tions for the flaky edu­ca­tion­al fads of the nineties my peers and I then endured. Only years lat­er did I find out that Cold War Amer­i­ca of the ear­ly six­ties actu­al­ly went through a New Math phase, shak­en hard enough by Sput­nik to des­per­ate­ly foist abstract, set the­o­ry-dri­ven math text­books upon its ele­men­tary school­ers.

Lehrer, who turned 85 on Tues­day, knows the sub­ject well: he holds degrees in math­e­mat­ics from Har­vard, has co-authored such papers as “Ran­dom walks with restrain­ing bar­ri­er as applied to the biased bina­ry counter” and “The dis­tri­b­u­tion of the num­ber of local­ly max­i­mal ele­ments in a ran­dom sam­ple”, and, after retir­ing from music in the ear­ly sev­en­ties, taught math class­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz. Leg­end has it that he would incor­po­rate rel­e­vant songs from his cat­a­log into lec­tures. But he nev­er sang only about math­e­mat­ics; he also sang about physics, as you can see in the ani­mat­ed ver­sion of his 1959 song “The Ele­ments” above, a trib­ute simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to the peri­od­ic table and The Pirates of Pen­zance. Nobody can deny the impor­tance of learn­ing how to sub­tract or how to tell one ele­ment from anoth­er, but we’d do well to keep Lehrer’s sharp human insights, present implic­it­ly in all his music and explic­it­ly in some of it, in mind. So put one of his records on the next time you have a birth­day of your own, tak­ing a brac­ing shot of his wit before you con­tin­ue, as he put it in “Bright Col­lege Days”, “slid­ing down the razor blade of life.”

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

History of Rock: New MOOC Presents the Music of Elvis, Dylan, Beatles, Stones, Hendrix & More

in MOOCs, Music | April 8th, 2013

Here’s some­thing I can get pret­ty jazzed about. Er, maybe that’s not quite the right verb. But close enough.…

On May 13, the East­man School of Music at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester will launch the first of two MOOCs that will trace the his­to­ry of rock music. Taught by John Cov­ach, a pro­fes­sor of music the­o­ry, The His­to­ry of Rock, Part One will revis­it the 1950s and 1960s, the hal­cy­on days of rock ’n’ roll, which gave us the music of Elvis Pres­ley, Chuck Berry, Phil Spec­tor, Bob Dylan, the Bea­t­les, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hen­drix, Cream, and oth­er bands. The course will focus on the music itself, the cul­tur­al con­text from which rock emerged, and how changes in the music busi­ness and music tech­nol­o­gy shaped this new musi­cal form. The sec­ond course (sched­uled to start on July 8) will move for­ward to the 1970, 80s and 90s and cov­er the music of Led Zep­pelin, the All­man Broth­ers, Car­ole King, Bob Mar­ley, the Sex Pis­tols, Don­na Sum­mer, Michael Jack­son, Madon­na, Prince, Metal­li­ca, Run-DMC, Nir­vana, and oth­er artists. Stu­dents who suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the course will receive a “State­ment of Accom­plish­ment” signed by the instruc­tor.

Oth­er music cours­es list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 300 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties include Intro­duc­tion to Gui­tar and Intro­duc­tion to Impro­vi­sa­tion. They’re both cre­at­ed by the Berklee Col­lege of Music and start on April 22.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

Carnegie Hall MOOC Will Teach You How to Lis­ten to Orches­tras (Free)

A Young, Clean Cut Jim Morrison Appears in a 1962 Florida State University Promo Film

in Music | April 3rd, 2013

Here’s a weird one: weirdo Doors front­man Jim Mor­ri­son, native of Flori­da, the weird­est state in the Union (well, it is!), stars in a pro­mo film for Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty. Morrison’s char­ac­ter gets a bum­mer of a let­ter inform­ing him that he has been reject­ed from FSU, and lat­er meets with an admin­is­tra­tor who gives him the low­down. Of course, as one YouTube com­menter quips, “when one door clos­es, The Doors open” (heh). So, fine, Mor­ri­son didn’t need Flori­da State—he lived fast, died young, and left the most famous grave in his­to­ry.

But as his fans know, the well-read Mor­ri­son was no intel­lec­tu­al slouch; he start­ed the Doors while study­ing film at UCLA, to which he’d trans­ferred from Flori­da State, where he enrolled in 1962. In addi­tion to get­ting cast in the pro­mo above, while at FSU Mor­ri­son got arrest­ed for a school prank (see his ’63 mugshot at left), made some short films, and did his share of carous­ing. One fel­low stu­dent, Ger­ry McClain, remem­bers Mor­ri­son from his FSU days in an inter­view with the site Amer­i­can Leg­ends:

He hung around with a bohemi­an crowd: peo­ple who liked to wear pants with holes in them. Jim posed as a mod­el for the art depart­ment, and they would all sell blood to the Red Cross to get a few bucks. Once, I saw Jim go around the col­lege cof­fee shop eat­ing scraps off tables. I felt he–and the others–were liv­ing an image–the starv­ing young artist.

But Mor­ri­son was­n’t exact­ly a starv­ing artist. He was, in fact, the son of Rear Admi­ral George Stephen Mor­ri­son, com­man­der of the U.S. Naval forces in the inci­dent that sparked the Viet­nam War. Weird, right? Watch the elder Mor­ri­son and Jim’s sis­ter Anne in inter­view remem­brances of Jim in the video below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Jimi Hendrix’s First TV Appear­ance, and His Last as a Back­ing Musi­cian (1965)

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

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

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Rock and Roll Heart, 1998 Documentary Retraces the Remarkable Career of Lou Reed

in Music | April 1st, 2013

From the album that launched a mil­lion bands to pos­si­bly the worst rap song of all time—from per­fect, career-reviv­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions to abysmal career-killing ones—Lou Reed’s rock and roll run has seen its share of highs and rock-bot­tom lows. Reed war­rants com­par­i­son with Neil Young for his longevi­ty, hit-and-miss pro­lif­ic out­put, and gad­fly abil­i­ty to flit from project to project, sound to sound, while still sound­ing dis­tinc­tive­ly him­self. And like Young, there are too many phas­es, too many albums, great and ter­ri­ble, to real­ly do the life’s work jus­tice in any one ret­ro­spec­tive.

But the 1998 doc­u­men­tary above, from the PBS Amer­i­can Master’s series, makes an admirable attempt. Called Rock and Roll Heart after Reed’s 1976 album and sin­gle of the same name, the film lets Reed tell much of his own sto­ry: his teenage years as a devo­tee of 50s rock and doo wop, his col­lege-days asso­ci­a­tion with poet Del­more Schwartz, episodes in his life that very much came to define his art, which mar­ries a fine­ly-tuned lit­er­ary sen­si­bil­i­ty to the sim­plic­i­ty and tune­ful­ness of clas­sic rock and roll. Reed’s warped, lyri­cal takes on streetlife psy­chodra­ma and his love for drone notes and feed­back, how­ev­er, took rock song­writ­ing places it had nev­er been before. At the open­ing of the film, Reed deliv­ers an epi­gram­mat­ic gem about him­self: “I dis­liked groups, dis­liked author­i­ty. Uh… I was made for rock and roll.”

Reed’s dis­like of groups trans­lates through­out his career into a rep­u­ta­tion for dif­fi­cul­ty that sent col­lab­o­ra­tors run­ning from him, either because he fired them (as he most famous­ly did to the bril­liant John Cale) or because they’d had enough of his ego­tism. Nonethe­less, many of those same people—Cale included—came back to work with Reed again. Cale shows up above, telling sto­ries of the gen­e­sis of The Vel­vet Underground—of him and Reed play­ing “Wait­ing for the Man” and “Hero­in” on a Harlem street­corner on vio­la and acoustic gui­tar. Oth­er con­fr­eres of Reed’s genius also appear in inter­views: Velvet’s drum­mer Mau­reen Tuck­er, David Bowie, Pat­ti Smith, Jim Car­roll, Philip Glass, and of course the man Reed cred­its most for his suc­cess, Andy Warhol, in archival footage from 1966.

The love/hate pair­ing of The Vel­vets and Nico gets an air­ing, and there’s loads of film of Lou per­form­ing, but at 73 min­utes, Rock and Roll Heart feels a lit­tle thin, and its tone is almost entire­ly cel­e­bra­to­ry, elid­ing the musi­cal low points (like the stab at rap) and end­ing with Reed’s for­ays into the­ater with Time Rock­er. But these are for­giv­able flaws. There’s no way to cov­er all the ground Reed’s bro­ken (he’s released an album rough­ly every year since 1972). And at 71 (if he can recov­er from that Metal­li­ca mash-up), he’s still at it—as he says in an inter­view above, until he dies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear New­ly-Released Mate­r­i­al from the Lost Acetate Ver­sion of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Philip Glass & Lou Reed at Occu­py Lin­coln Cen­ter: An Art­ful View

Andy Warhol Quits Paint­ing, Man­ages The Vel­vet Under­ground (1965)

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Rare Audio: Samuel Beckett Reads From His Novel Watt

in Books, Literature, Poetry | March 27th, 2013

Samuel Beck­ett was noto­ri­ous­ly shy around record­ing devices. He would spend hours in a stu­dio work­ing with actors, but when it came to record­ing a piece in his own voice he was elu­sive. Only a hand­ful of record­ings are known to exist. So the audio above of Beck­ett read­ing a pair of his poems is extreme­ly rare.

The record­ings were made in 1965 by Lawrence Har­vey, pro­fes­sor of com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture at Dart­mouth Col­lege, who trav­eled to Paris to meet with Beck­ett a num­ber of times from 1961 to 1965 while research­ing his 1970 book Samuel Beck­ett, Poet and Crit­ic. At one point dur­ing their dis­cus­sions, Beck­ett recit­ed sev­er­al pas­sages from his third but sec­ond-pub­lished nov­el, Watt. The book was writ­ten in Eng­lish in the 1940s, most­ly while Beck­ett was hid­ing from the Nazis in south­ern France. It’s an exper­i­men­tal nov­el (Beck­ett called it an “exer­cise”) about a seek­er named Watt who jour­neys to the house of the enig­mat­ic Mr. Knott and works for a time as his ser­vant. “Watt” and “Knott” are often inter­pret­ed as stand-ins for the ques­tion “what?” and unan­swer­able “not,” or “naught.”

The two poems recit­ed by Beck­ett are from his 37 intrigu­ing Adden­da at the end of Watt. Har­vey also record­ed Beck­ett read­ing a prose pas­sage from the book. The full four-minute tape is now in the col­lec­tion of the Bak­er Library at Dart­mouth. The short clip above is from the 1993 film Wait­ing For Beck­ett. The image qual­i­ty is poor and there are dis­tract­ing Dutch sub­ti­tles, so per­haps the best way to enjoy the read­ing is to scroll down and look instead at Beck­et­t’s words while you lis­ten to his voice. He begins with the 4th Adden­da, lat­er pub­lished as “Tail­piece” in Col­lect­ed Poems, 1930–1978:

who may tell the tale
of the old man?
weigh absence in a scale?
mete want with a span?
the sum assess
of the world’s woes?
noth­ing­ness
in words enclose?

The images in the poem are, accord­ing to schol­ars S.E. Gontars­ki and Chris Ack­er­ley in their essay “Samuel Beck­et­t’s Watt,” a rework­ing by Beck­ett of the bib­li­cal pas­sage Isa­iah 40:12, which says, “Who hath mea­sured the waters in the hol­low of his hand, and met­ed out heav­en with a span, and com­pre­hend­ed the dust of the earth in a mea­sure, and weighed the moun­tains in scales, and the hills in a bal­ance?” The next poem is the 23rd Adden­da. It tells of Wat­t’s long and fruit­less jour­ney through bar­ren lands:

Watt will not
abate one jot
but of what

of the com­ing to
of the being at
of the going from
Knot­t’s habi­tat

of the long way
of the short stay
of the going back home
the way he had come

of the emp­ty heart
of the emp­ty hands
of the dim mind way­far­ing
through bar­ren lands

of a flame with dark winds
hedged about
going out
gone out

of the emp­ty heart
of the emp­ty hands
of the dark mind stum­bling
through bar­ren lands

that is of what
Watt will not
abate one jot

If Beck­ett seems to mis­pro­nounce cer­tain con­so­nant sounds, it may have some­thing to do with a surgery he had in Novem­ber of 1964 to remove a tumor in his jaw. The surgery tem­porar­i­ly left Beck­ett with a hole in the roof of his mouth. Accord­ing to a 1998 arti­cle by Peter Swaab in The Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment, the record­ings were prob­a­bly made in March of 1965, when Beck­ett was await­ing a fol­low-up surgery to fix his palate. Still, many lis­ten­ers have been struck by the beau­ty of the record­ings. As Swaab writes:

Beck­et­t’s voice is unex­pect­ed­ly soft, and seems more suit­ed to the serene­ly com­mis­er­a­tive vein of his writ­ing than the sple­net­ic and cyn­i­cal one. He reads the poems a lot more slow­ly than the prose–with a pro­nounced chant­i­ng mel­liflu­ous­ness.… The over­all effect of these rare and fas­ci­nat­ing record­ings is of a deliv­ery like that which Beck­ett rec­om­mend­ed to the actor David War­rilow for Ohio Impromp­tu, “calm, steady, designed to soothe”–or (to bring in two of the cen­tral words in Watt) a “mur­mur” meant to “assuage.” The tape evi­dent­ly records a sort of rehearsal, and the per­fec­tion­ist Beck­ett would sure­ly not have been sat­is­fied with it, but it is good to know that his voice has not alto­geth­er dis­ap­peared.

via A Piece of Mono­logue

Spe­cial thanks to Dr. Mark Nixon, read­er in Mod­ern Lit­er­a­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing and direc­tor of the Beck­ett Inter­na­tion­al Foun­da­tion, for con­firm­ing the authen­tic­i­ty of the record­ing and point­ing us on the way to more infor­ma­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Samuel Beck­ett Speaks

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Find Works by Beck­ett in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions

Donald Barthelme’s Syllabus Highlights 81 Books Essential for a Literary Education

in Books, Literature | March 14th, 2013

We’ve had a lot of fun—and some debate—lately with read­ing lists from peo­ple like Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and even Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe (via her library). And we’ve fea­tured under­grad­u­ate syl­labi from the teach­ing days of David Fos­ter Wal­lace and W.H. Auden. Now for some­thing more-or-less for­mal than those. This one comes via a 2003 piece by Kevin Mof­fett in McSweeney’s spin-off The Believ­er (10 years old this month—I know, right?). The list (first page above and full list below) has a some­what illus­tri­ous her­itage. Com­piled by post­mod­ernist writer Don­ald Barthelme for his stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, it then made its way to Barthelme’s stu­dent, South­ern writer Pad­gett Pow­ell. The list then came to Mof­fett when he was a stu­dent of Powell’s at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da.

Con­sist­ing of 81 books, most­ly nov­els and short sto­ry col­lec­tions (and the work of Samuel Beckett—“entire”), and most­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry mod­ernist fic­tion, the list came to Pow­ell with Barthelme’s instruc­tion to attack the books, “in no par­tic­u­lar order, just read them.”

This Mof­fett did, and his sto­ry of how he sought the books—in the used book­shops, ware­house sales, and libraries of north Florida—lends to his expe­ri­ence the air of a sub­ur­ban knight’s quest tale, with Mof­fett as under­dog hero. The list spans a range of dif­fi­cul­ty, from the aca­d­e­m­ic obscu­ran­tism of Roland Barthes to the gen­er­al acces­si­bil­i­ty of Updike (Barthelme mod­est­ly exempts him­self). But the text that turns Mof­fett from dif­fi­dent to avid read­er, Flan­nery O’Connor’s “A Late Encounter With the Ene­my,” also turns his “res­o­lu­tion into a vow.” It’s almost as though his engage­ment with Barthelme’s list ini­ti­ates him into a mys­ti­cal order of lan­guage.

The list itself, as you can see from the scans, shows the wear of sev­er­al pairs of hands—hands hold­ing late-night cof­fees in col­lege-town cafes and felt-tip pens with which to make tiny check­marks of accom­plish­ment. We do not know from Moffett’s piece whose hands did the cof­fee-spilling, check­mark­ing, and anno­tat­ing, whether Powell’s, Moffett’s, or some stu­dent or pri­vate read­er unmen­tioned. Some of the books left unchecked are those with which I have had read­er­ly epipha­nies: Borges’ Oth­er Inqui­si­tions, Barthes’ Mytholo­gies, Beck­ett (“entire”), Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. And what strikes me, as with all such lists, are the num­ber of books I haven’t read but have wished to, meant to, promised that I would. Per­haps it’s not too late to turn a res­o­lu­tion to a vow and hit the stacks.

Here is the com­plete list:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Hux­ley and Gide

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness