David Foster Wallace Breaks Down Five Common Word Usage Mistakes in English

in Education, English Language, Writing | March 7th, 2013

What advan­tage, I recent­ly asked a trilin­gual writer, could you pos­si­bly find in using such an impro­vised, con­fus­ing, irreg­u­lar patch­work of a lan­guage as Eng­lish? She replied that this very impro­vi­sa­tion, irreg­u­lar­i­ty, and even con­fu­sion comes from the vast free­dom of expres­sion (and of inven­tion of new expres­sions) that Eng­lish offers over oth­er Euro­pean tongues. This goes even more so for Amer­i­can Eng­lish, the vari­ant with whose com­bi­na­tion of care­ful­ly shad­ed nuances and smash­ing col­lo­qui­alisms David Fos­ter Wal­lace so daz­zled his read­ers. Like many writ­ers, Wal­lace also taught writ­ing, but those of us not lucky enough to receive his direct instruc­tion can still behold his teach­ing mate­ri­als, archived online at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

See, for instance, Wal­lace’s hand­out on five com­mon usage mis­takes, from his Fall 2002 sec­tion of Eng­lish 183A at Pomona Col­lege (an advanced fic­tion writ­ing class, taught last Spring by Jonathan Lethem). “The prepo­si­tion towards is British usage; the US spelling is toward.” Fair enough. “And is a con­junc­tion; so is so,” he con­tin­ues. “Except in dia­logue between par­tic­u­lar kinds of char­ac­ters, you nev­er need both con­junc­tions.” Handy to know! Then, things get more tech­ni­cal: “For a com­pound sen­tence to require a com­ma plus a con­junc­tion, both its con­stituent claus­es must be inde­pen­dent.” As Wal­lace goes deep­er, I feel even more sym­pa­thy for those who learn Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage, as I did when I read “Tense Present,” his Harper’s review of Bryan A. Gar­ner’s A Dic­tio­nary of Mod­ern Amer­i­can Usage. If the hard­core gram­mar talk tires you, feel free to peruse the Ran­som Cen­ter’s oth­er arti­facts of Wal­lace’s time in the class­room—which we cov­ered in a post last week—such as his syl­labus for Eng­lish 102: Lit­er­ary Analy­sis, his guide­lines for papers, and the mar­gin­a­lia in his copy of Car­rie.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s 1994 Syl­labus

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.

The Only Known Footage of George Orwell (Circa 1921)

in Literature | March 1st, 2013

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Although he died in 1950, George Orwell seem­ing­ly escaped the reach of mod­ern media. Orwell’s voice was nev­er cap­tured on audio. And his image nev­er appeared on film. His­to­ri­ans and lit­er­a­ture schol­ars lament­ed this for decades.

But then, in 2003, on the hun­dredth anniver­sary of Orwell’s birth, two researchers stum­bled upon a tan­ta­liz­ing piece of footage in the The Pathay Film Library in Lon­don. The very brief footage — watch in full here, or at the 50 sec­ond mark in the video above — shows an 18-year-old Orwell, then named Eric Blair, march­ing across a sports field at Eton Col­lege, where he spent his for­ma­tive years and stud­ied French with Aldous Hux­ley. In the line of march­ing stu­dents, Orwell is the fourth stu­dent from the left.

Note: the video above comes from a British Pathe clip that fea­tures celebri­ties before they became famous. If you’re curi­ous who appears in the film, see the list below the jump.

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Seven Tips From F. Scott Fitzgerald on How to Write Fiction

in Books, Literature, Writing | February 26th, 2013

F. Scott Fitzger­ald is often por­trayed as a nat­ur­al-born writer. “His tal­ent,” says Ernest Hem­ing­way in A Move­able Feast, “was as nat­ur­al as the pat­tern that was made by the dust on a but­ter­fly­’s wings.” But Fitzger­ald saw him­self in a dif­fer­ent light. “What lit­tle I’ve accom­plished,” he said, “has been by the most labo­ri­ous and uphill work.”

Last week we brought you Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion. Today we’re back with a sim­i­lar list of advice from Hem­ing­way’s friend and rival Fitzger­ald. We’ve select­ed sev­en quo­ta­tions from F. Scott Fitzger­ald on Writ­ing, which was edit­ed by Lar­ry W. Phillips and pub­lished in 1985 as a com­pan­ion to the Hem­ing­way book. As in the pre­vi­ous post, we’ve orga­nized the advice under our own head­ings and added some brief com­men­tary.

1: Start by tak­ing notes.

Fitzger­ald made a habit of record­ing his stray thoughts and obser­va­tions in note­books. He orga­nized the entries into cat­e­gories like “Feel­ings and emo­tions,” “Con­ver­sa­tions and things over­heard” and “Descrip­tions of girls.” When Fitzger­ald was giv­ing writ­ing advice to his mis­tress Sheilah Gra­ham in the late 1930s, he advised her to do the same. In her 1940 mem­oir, Beloved Infi­del, Gra­ham quotes Fitzger­ald as say­ing:

You must begin by mak­ing notes. You may have to make notes for years.… When you think of some­thing, when you recall some­thing, put it where it belongs. Put it down when you think of it. You may nev­er recap­ture it quite as vivid­ly the sec­ond time.

2: Make a detailed out­line of your sto­ry.

When Fitzger­ald was work­ing on a nov­el, he would sur­round him­self with charts out­lin­ing the var­i­ous move­ments and his­to­ries of his char­ac­ters. In a 1936 let­ter to nov­el­ist John O’Hara, he advis­es the younger nov­el­ist to start with a big out­line:

Invent a sys­tem Zolaesque…but buy a file. On the first page of the file put down an out­line of a nov­el of your times enor­mous in scale (don’t wor­ry, it will con­tract by itself) and work on the plan for two months. Take the cen­tral point of the file as your big cli­max and fol­low your plan back­ward and for­ward from that for anoth­er three months. Then draw up some­thing as com­pli­cat­ed as a con­ti­nu­ity from what you have and set your­self a sched­ule.

3: Don’t describe your work-in-progress to any­one.

Fitzger­ald’s pol­i­cy was nev­er to talk with oth­er peo­ple about the book he was work­ing on. In a 1940 let­ter to his daugh­ter Scot­tie, he says:

I think it’s a pret­ty good rule not to tell what a thing is about until it’s fin­ished. If you do you always seem to lose some of it. It nev­er quite belongs to you so much again.

4: Cre­ate peo­ple, not types.

Fitzger­ald was known for cre­at­ing emblem­at­ic char­ac­ters, but he said it was acci­den­tal. “I had no idea of orig­i­nat­ing an Amer­i­can flap­per when I first began to write,” he said in a 1923 inter­view for Met­ro­pol­i­tan mag­a­zine. “I sim­ply took girls who I knew very well and, because they inter­est­ed me as unique human beings, I used them for my hero­ines.” In the open­ing sen­tence of his 1926 short sto­ry, “The Rich Boy,” Fitzger­ald explains the prin­ci­ple:

Begin with an indi­vid­ual, and before you know it you find that you have cre­at­ed a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created–nothing.

5: Use famil­iar words.

In a 1929 let­ter to his col­lege friend and fel­low writer John Peale Bish­op, Fitzger­ald says:

You ought nev­er to use an unfa­mil­iar word unless you’ve had to search for it to express a del­i­cate shade–where in effect you have recre­at­ed it. This is a damn good prose rule I think.… Excep­tions: (a) need to avoid rep­e­ti­tion (b) need of rhythm © etc.

6: Use verbs, not adjec­tives, to keep your sen­tences mov­ing.

In a 1938 let­ter to his daugh­ter, Fitzger­ald writes:

About adjec­tives: all fine prose is based on the verbs car­ry­ing the sen­tences. They make sen­tences move. Prob­a­bly the finest tech­ni­cal poem in Eng­lish is Keats’ “Eve of Saint Agnes.” A line like “The hare limped trem­bling through the frozen grass,” is so alive that you race through it, scarce­ly notic­ing it, yet it has col­ored the whole poem with its movement–the limp­ing, trem­bling and freez­ing is going on before your own eyes.

7: Be ruth­less.

A writer has to make some hard choic­es. Fitzger­ald warns about the dan­ger of becom­ing too attached to some­thing you’ve writ­ten. Keep an objec­tive eye on the whole piece, he says, and if some­thing isn’t work­ing get rid of it. In a 1933 Sat­ur­day Evening Post arti­cle titled “One Hun­dred False Starts,” he writes:

I am alone in the pri­va­cy of my fad­ed blue room with my sick cat, the bare Feb­ru­ary branch­es wav­ing at the win­dow, an iron­ic paper weight that says Busi­ness is Good, a New Eng­land conscience–developed in Minnesota–and my great­est prob­lem:

“Shall I run it out? Or shall I turn back?”

Shall I say:

“I know I had some­thing to prove, and it may devel­op far­ther along in the sto­ry?”

Or:

“This is just bull­head­ed­ness. Bet­ter throw it away and start over.”

The lat­ter is one of the most dif­fi­cult deci­sions that an author must make. To make it philo­soph­i­cal­ly, before he has exhaust­ed him­self in a hun­dred-hour effort to resus­ci­tate a corpse or dis­en­tan­gle innu­mer­able wet snarls, is a test of whether or not he is real­ly a pro­fes­sion­al. There are often occa­sions when such a deci­sion is dou­bly dif­fi­cult. In the last stages of a nov­el, for instance, where there is no ques­tion of junk­ing the whole, but when an entire favorite char­ac­ter has to be hauled out by the heels, screech­ing, and drag­ging half a dozen good scenes with him.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s

Win­ter Dreams: F.Scott Fitzger­ald’s Life Remem­bered in a Fine Film

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Reads From Shake­speare’s Oth­el­lo and John Mase­field­’s ‘On Grow­ing Old’ (c.1940)

The BBC’s Horrible Histories Videos Will Crack You Up and Teach You About WWI (and More)

in Comedy, History, K-12 | February 26th, 2013

My 12-year-old, home-schooled son recent­ly expressed an inter­est in study­ing World War I. This was encour­ag­ing, but also nerve-wrack­ing, giv­en the dis­dain that led me to spend most of World His­to­ry pass­ing notes and doo­dling (not in the Lyn­da Bar­ry col­lege course / this will help you absorb the infor­ma­tion bet­ter way). I retained noth­ing of what I’d been for­mal­ly taught. My most sol­id knowl­edge of the peri­od was gleaned from the sec­ond sea­son of Down­ton Abbey and an Audrey Tautou movie that was rat­ed R for sex and vio­lence. (There’s also a fam­i­ly pho­to­graph of us pos­ing on the Sara­je­vo street cor­ner where Franz Fer­di­nand was assas­si­nat­ed, but the sig­nif­i­cance of the spot had to be explained to me first.)

Some online scrab­bling led me to the BBC’s Hor­ri­ble His­to­ries’ brief overview of the “caus­es of World War I” (above). Wow. If only this series—and, ahem, the Internet—had exist­ed when I was the boy’s age! I think it’s safe to say my atten­tion would have been cap­tured. It’s sil­ly, yes, but that’s the whole point. The play­ers’ over-the-top comedic style ensures that even the dri­est of his­tor­i­cal facts will stick, as any­one who’s watched Michael Cera bring Alexan­der Hamil­ton to life in Drunk His­to­ry can attest. It’s the per­fect gate­way for fur­ther study.

Hor­ri­ble His­to­ries’ take on World War I proved  such a hit, the boy imme­di­ate­ly delved into oth­er peri­ods, often when he was sup­posed to be doing oth­er things, like play­ing Minecraft or watch­ing YouTube (tech­ni­cal­ly, I guess this sort of counts). Still it’s grat­i­fy­ing to hear him stud­ding his con­ver­sa­tion with casu­al ref­er­ences to the Bor­gias, the Tudors, and Mar­tin Luther. It makes me want to learn more, or at least bring myself up-to-speed on the videos. In the words of School­house Rock, knowl­edge is pow­er.

A WWI cen­ten­ni­al’s loom­ing, folks. Don’t get caught with your draw­ers down.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Drunk His­to­ry: An Intox­i­cat­ed Look at the Famous Alexan­der Hamil­ton – Aaron Burr Duel

The Dead Authors Pod­cast: H.G. Wells Com­i­cal­ly Revives Lit­er­ary Greats with His Time Machine

School­house Rock at 40: Revis­it a Col­lec­tion of Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Videos

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day  grad­u­at­ed from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty with a degree in the­ater and has been mak­ing up for it ever since. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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

in Literature | February 25th, 2013

Note: click here to see the full syl­labus and oth­er relat­ed teach­ing mate­ri­als.

As any­one who’s ever done it knows, the art of syl­labussing is a fine one. (Yes, it’s a word; don’t look it up, take my word for it—Syl­labussing: cre­at­ing the per­fect syl­labus for a col­lege-lev­el course). It requires pre­ci­sion plan­ning, stel­lar for­mat­ting and copy-edit­ing skills, and near-per­fect knowl­edge of the col­lege-stu­dent psy­che. For one, the syl­labus must explain in clear terms what stu­dents can expect from the class and what the class expects from them. And it must do this with­out sound­ing so dry and pedan­tic that half the class drops in the first week. For anoth­er, the per­fect syl­labus (there’s no such thing, but one must strive) should func­tion as both an FAQ and a con­tract: need to know how to for­mat your papers? See the syl­labus. For­got when the paper was due? Too bad—see the syl­labus. And so on. Most teach­ers learn over time that a class can stand or fall on the strength of this doc­u­ment.

Which brings us to the syl­labussing skills of one David Fos­ter Wal­lace, ency­clo­pe­dic lit­er­ary obses­sive, mod­ern-day moral­ist, Eng­lish pro­fes­sor. Love his work or hate it, it may be safe to say that Wal­lace was per­haps one of the most care­ful (or care-full) writ­ers of his gen­er­a­tion. And giv­en the cri­te­ria above, you might just have to admire the fine art of his syl­labi. Well, so you can, thanks to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, which has scans avail­able online of the syl­labus for Wal­lace’s intro course “Eng­lish 102-Lit­er­ary Analy­sis: Prose Fic­tion” (first page above), along with oth­er course doc­u­ments. These documents—From the Fall ’94 semes­ter at Illi­nois State Uni­ver­si­ty, where Wal­lace taught from 1993 to 2002—reveal the pro­fes­sion­al­ly ped­a­gog­i­cal side of the lit­er­ary wun­derkind, a side every teacher will con­nect with right away.

The text in the image above is admit­ted­ly tiny (you can request high­er res­o­lu­tion scans on the UT Austin site), but if you squint hard, you’ll see under “Aims of Course” that Wal­lace quotes the offi­cial ISU descrip­tion of his class, then trans­lates it into his own words:

In less nar­co­tiz­ing words, Eng­lish 102 aims to show you some ways to read fic­tion more deeply, to come up with more inter­est­ing insights on how pieces of fic­tion work, to have informed intel­li­gent rea­sons for lik­ing or dis­lik­ing a piece of fic­tion, and to write—clearly, per­sua­sive­ly, and above all interestingly—about stuff you’ve read.

Hav­ing taught my own ver­sions of such a class, I’m a lit­tle jeal­ous of his (unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly?) infor­mal con­ci­sion.

Wallace’s choice of texts is of inter­est as well—surprising for a writer most detrac­tors call “pre­ten­tious.” For his class, Wal­lace pre­scribed air­port-book­store standards—what he calls “pop­u­lar or com­mer­cial fiction”—such as Jack­ie Collins’ Rock Star, Stephen King’s Car­rie, Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs, and James Elroy’s The Big Nowhere. The UT Austin site also has scans of some well-worn paper­back teacher’s copies, with the red-ink mar­gin­al notes, dis­cus­sion ques­tions, and under­lines one finds behind every podi­um. In the image above, Wal­lace has under­lined a line of dia­logue in Car­rie, anno­tat­ing it with the word “vic­tim” in all-caps. Of the books Wal­lace requires, he writes in a sec­tion of the syl­labus above called “Warn­ing”:

Don’t let any poten­tial light­weight­ish-look­ing qual­i­ties of the texts delude you into think­ing that this will be a blow-off-type class. These “pop­u­lar” texts will end up being hard­er than more con­ven­tion­al­ly “lit­er­ary” works to unpack and read crit­i­cal­ly. You’ll end up doing more work in here than in oth­er sec­tions of 102, prob­a­bly.

Some­thing about that “prob­a­bly” at the end grabs me (again: the pre­ci­sion… the col­lege-stu­dent psy­che). I admire this brave approach. Hav­ing taught con­ven­tion­al­ly “lit­er­ary” stuff for years, I can say that some so-called lit­er­ary fic­tion is for­mu­la­ic in the extreme, all but con­tain­ing check­box­es for the stan­dard lit-crit cat­e­gories. The com­mer­cial stuff isn’t always so care­ful (which is why it’s so often more fun).

UT Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter hous­es David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s library and papers, but you’ll have to make a trip to Texas (and present some aca­d­e­m­ic cre­den­tials) to access most of the archive. They have scanned a few oth­er choice pieces, how­ev­er, such as the hand­writ­ten first page from a draft of his lit­er­ary mas­ter­piece/­dorm-room doorstop, Infi­nite Jest.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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

What Books Do Writ­ers Teach?: Zadie Smith and Gary Shteyngart’s Syl­labi from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

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

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, musi­cian, and often­time Eng­lish teacher to eas­i­ly-dis­tract­ed under­grad­u­ates. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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

in Letters, Life, Literature | February 19th, 2013

Cer­tain read­ers may turn, for gen­er­al solace, to the nov­els of John Stein­beck. But how many, in par­tic­u­lar need of roman­tic advice, open up Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, or The Grapes of Wrath? Yet on mat­ters of the heart, Stein­beck knew of what he spoke, as his son Thom found out after men­tion­ing a new school sweet­heart in a note home. In what must sure­ly count as the most elo­quent, rel­e­vant piece of unso­licit­ed parental love advice ever given—not, admit­ted­ly, a high bar to cross—the for­mi­da­ble man of Amer­i­can let­ters explained how best to nav­i­gate this rich­est of all expe­ri­ences:

First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can hap­pen to any­one. Don’t let any­one make it small or light to you.

Second—There are sev­er­al kinds of love. One is a self­ish, mean, grasp­ing, ego­tis­ti­cal thing which uses love for self-impor­tance. This is the ugly and crip­pling kind. The oth­er is an out­pour­ing of every­thing good in you—of kind­ness and con­sid­er­a­tion and respect—not only the social respect of man­ners but the greater respect which is recog­ni­tion of anoth­er per­son as unique and valu­able. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the sec­ond can release in you strength, and courage and good­ness and even wis­dom you didn’t know you had.

This excerpt comes from a full text avail­able at a favorite site of ours, Let­ters of Note. One of the inter­net’s finest repos­i­to­ries of man’s wis­dom and fol­ly, Let­ters of Note has offered William Faulkn­er’s take-this-job-and-shove-it, a young Kurt Von­negut’s wartime report home after his release from a Dres­den work camp, the first Amer­i­can fan let­ter sent to David Bowie, and Aldous Hux­ley’s death as described by his wid­ow. My per­son­al favorite remains the simul­ta­ne­ous­ly astute and unhinged lament Ted Turn­er received from his father after chang­ing his col­lege major to clas­sics. Turn­er père wrote, in his askew fash­ion, in the same spir­it of father­ly sup­port as Stein­beck. But Ted did­n’t get to read any lines half as reas­sur­ing as those Thom Stein­beck did: “Don’t wor­ry about los­ing,” his father advised. “If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hur­ry. Noth­ing good gets away.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspir­ing Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech

This is Your Brain in Love: Scenes from the Stan­ford Love Com­pe­ti­tion

Face to Face with Bertrand Rus­sell: ‘Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish’

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.

Simulate the Damage Caused by Comet and Asteroid Collisions with Impact: Earth!

in Astronomy, Technology | February 18th, 2013

On Fri­day, the world had its eyes focused on the big aster­oid fly­by. For weeks, we knew it was com­ing, and we watched it buzz by with mild curios­i­ty. But, that same day, we were all caught off guard by a ten-ton mete­orite that blast­ed into the Siber­ian town of Chelyabin­sk, injur­ing 1,200 peo­ple and caus­ing con­sid­er­able struc­tur­al dam­age. (Watch footage here.) This abrupt and unex­pect­ed event has giv­en gov­ern­ments a rea­son to start tak­ing the risk of aster­oid impacts a bit more seri­ous­ly. And it might renew inter­est in a tool cre­at­ed by sci­en­tists at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty and Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don in 2010.

In a nut­shell, Impact: Earth! is an inter­ac­tive tool that lets any­one cal­cu­late the dam­age a comet or aster­oid would cause if it hap­pened to col­lide with our plan­et. You can cus­tomize the size and speed of the incom­ing object, and then find out if mankind sur­vives. (Usu­al­ly it does.) A grainy primer appears below. You can enter the web­site and start run­ning your own sce­nar­ios right here.

via @moseshawk

Download Eight Free Lectures on The Hobbit by “The Tolkien Professor,” Corey Olsen

in Education, Literature, Online Courses | February 13th, 2013

The name Corey Olsen may already be famil­iar to some readers—or at least those read­ers who ven­er­ate the lit­er­ary accom­plish­ments of one J.R.R. Tolkien. And if you don’t know Olsen by his real name, you may know him as “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” his inter­net moniker since 2009, when Olsen, an Eng­lish Pro­fes­sor at Wash­ing­ton Col­lege and life­long stu­dent of Tolkien’s writ­ing, decid­ed to share his own schol­ar­ly work with a pub­lic “eager to be includ­ed in thought­ful, lit­er­ary con­ver­sa­tion” about The Hob­bit and The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy.

For the past four years, Olsen has pub­lished specif­i­cal­ly online lec­tures about Tolkien’s work, as well as record­ings of his Wash­ing­ton Col­lege sem­i­nars on Tolkien’s fic­tion and aca­d­e­m­ic work. He has most recent­ly found­ed Signum Uni­ver­si­ty, an online, non-prof­it Lib­er­al Arts col­lege that aims to open the expe­ri­ence of high-qual­i­ty high­er ed to every­one, regard­less of their means or their loca­tion. Signum has, in turn, spawned the Myth­gard Insti­tute, which seems (as the name implies) more exclu­sive­ly focused on the fan­ta­sy and sci­ence fic­tion gen­res that are Olsen’s méti­er. (There are also col­lege prep options in Signum and Myth­gard Acad­e­mies).

So, Pro­fes­sor Olsen is busy, and he’s hap­py to be shar­ing his wealth of Tolkien knowl­edge with a very recep­tive pub­lic. His most recent course, an eight-part lec­ture series on The Hob­bit, is now avail­able on his site. (iTunes U also has it as of Jan­u­ary 31st. Watch the pro­mo for the course above. We also have the class list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 650 Free Cours­es Online.) The course comes via the Myth­gard Insti­tute and begins at the begin­ning in a lec­ture enti­tled “Took & Bag­gins” focused on The Hob­bit’s first chap­ter, “An Unex­pect­ed Par­ty.” Record­ed before the release of Peter Jackson’s first install­ment of his tril­o­gy of Hob­bit films, the lec­ture starts with Olsen’s spec­u­la­tions about what those films might look like. He says:

From the begin­ning, I have thought this was a mis­take… a big mis­take to go back­wards. It seems to me that an audi­ence famil­iar with the epic grandeur of Peter Jackson’s tril­o­gy is going to bring expec­ta­tions to a new Tolkien movie that’s going to set a Hob­bit film up for one of two very like­ly fail­ures. Either the movie is going to try tell Bilbo’s sto­ry in the mode and reg­is­ter of the Lord of the Rings, and there­fore strip the sto­ry of the light-heart­ed­ness and whim­si­cal­i­ty that makes it so delight­ful, or it’s going to try to be true to the tone and spir­it of the book, and will there­fore seem kind of sil­ly and child­ish to an audi­ence hop­ing for a suc­ces­sor to Peter Jackson’s films.

This is a very can­ny pre­dic­tion, and such can­ni­ness dis­tin­guish­es Olsen’s approach to every­thing Tolkien. He is attuned not only to all of the schol­ar­ly minu­ti­ae that dis­tin­guish­es aca­d­e­m­ic Tolkien stud­ies, but he is also well-aware of issues of audi­ence recep­tion and the ever-evolv­ing role of Tolkien’s work in pop­u­lar cul­ture. As his first lec­ture con­tin­ues, Pro­fes­sor Olsen makes it quite clear that The Hob­bit was delib­er­ate­ly writ­ten as a children’s sto­ry, and the suc­ces­sive books were meant to be as well. The Lord of the Rings books became more adult, dark­er and more fraught with heavy the­o­log­i­cal and myth­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance, as Tolkien com­posed them. This hap­pened in part because Tolkien was writ­ing with his own chil­dren in mind as his read­ers, and as he wrote, his kids grew up.

Tolkien, Olsen points out, was by train­ing a philologist—a schol­ar who spe­cial­izes in the study of languages—so he thought about not only what words mean, but where they come from and when. As such, he intend­ed The Hob­bit to pos­sess a “lin­guis­tic play­ful­ness,” mix­ing ancient and mod­ern words and usages, mak­ing up words a la Lewis Car­roll, to cre­ate a light­heart­ed and com­ic atmos­phere from the begin­ning of the nov­el. Olsen pro­vides us with sev­er­al exam­ples of this method in his first lec­ture. Over­all, his analy­sis is a thor­ough eval­u­a­tion of the nov­el in the terms of its lan­guage, its com­po­si­tion, its many lay­ers of genre and style—drawing from Tolkien’s explic­it­ly artic­u­lat­ed the­o­ries of narrative—and its his­tor­i­cal and lit­er­ary allu­sions. All pre­sent­ed in a very enthu­si­as­tic and acces­si­ble style that is aimed at every adult read­er and lover of Tolkien, not just fel­low schol­ars, who tend to speak a spe­cial­ized lan­guage that excludes near­ly every­one out­side their nar­row coterie.

In the video above—a TED talk Olsen deliv­ered at TEDx Chester Riv­er—he dis­cuss­es how the world of acad­eme, that spe­cial­ized world that excludes almost every­one, had become a sti­fling and rather mean­ing­less place for him when he decid­ed to become the online Tolkien Pro­fes­sor.  Olsen had what he calls an exis­ten­tial cri­sis about acad­e­mia and schol­ar­ly publishing—What’s the point?, he thought. Who’s going to read it? Since most peo­ple can’t access schol­ar­ly pub­li­ca­tions even if they want­ed to, and since he was writ­ing on Tolkien, one of the world’s most pop­u­lar authors, he felt dou­bly irrel­e­vant as a clois­tered aca­d­e­m­ic, since Tolkien fans are every­where. Then he dis­cov­ered some­thing every­body else already knew about the internet—it’s an ide­al medi­um for pub­lish­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing any kind of infor­ma­tion, and it’s crowd­ed with peo­ple des­per­ate to learn about and dis­cuss the lib­er­al arts. As more and more aca­d­e­mics dis­cov­er this as well, more also cure their exis­ten­tial malaise by open­ing up their work to every­one online, becom­ing resources, not gate­keep­ers, for knowl­edge.

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

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

Alain de Botton Presents Ten Virtues for the Modern Day

in Life, Philosophy | February 12th, 2013

At the end of my col­lege years, I found I need­ed to take one final polit­i­cal sci­ence course to com­plete my major. I chose a small sum­mer ses­sion on the sub­ject of virtue. Hav­ing enrolled with no idea what to expect, I fin­ished the quar­ter less changed by the assigned read­ings and class­room dis­cus­sions than by the very — and very unusu­al — task of hav­ing to think about virtue at all. Jokes about the dis­tance of virtue from mod­ern col­lege stu­dents’ minds write them­selves, but Alain de Bot­ton, a man giv­en to much thought and writ­ing about such lost top­ics, sus­pects that the same con­di­tion afflicts all of us. Hence his intro­duc­ing, under the ban­ner of his insti­tu­tion The School of Life, the Virtues Project. It emerges into an unre­cep­tive envi­ron­ment. As de Bot­ton puts it in this intro­duc­to­ry post, “In the mod­ern world, the idea of try­ing to be a ‘good per­son’ con­jures up all sorts of neg­a­tive asso­ci­a­tions: of piety, solem­ni­ty, blood­less­ness and sex­u­al renun­ci­a­tion, as if good­ness were some­thing one would try to embrace only when oth­er more dif­fi­cult but more ful­fill­ing avenues had been exhaust­ed.”

“Through­out his­to­ry,” he con­tin­ues, “soci­eties have been inter­est­ed in fos­ter­ing virtues, in train­ing us to be more vir­tu­ous, but we’re one of the first gen­er­a­tions to have zero pub­lic inter­est in this.” In order to bring that num­ber up, de Bot­ton and The School of Life have enu­mer­at­ed ten sim­ple but uni­ver­sal virtues — resilience, empa­thy, patience, sac­ri­fice, polite­ness, humor, self-aware­ness, for­give­ness, hope, and con­fi­dence — and embed­ded them in a man­i­festo, of which you can down­load a hand­some PDF ver­sion. This pro­vides the foun­da­tion­al text of the Virtues Project, a com­po­nent of de Bot­ton’s larg­er mis­sion, laid out in his recent book Reli­gion for Athe­ists, to repur­pose for mod­ern soci­ety the ele­ments of faith that have demon­strat­ed prac­ti­cal val­ue through­out his­to­ry. Since my adult life, which effec­tive­ly began as that last poli-sci course end­ed, has chiefly pre­sent­ed the chal­lenge of win­ning and main­tain­ing my own self-respect, I’ll be com­mit­ting these ten virtues to mem­o­ry, and no doubt watch­ing for the Virtues Pro­jec­t’s lec­tures and pub­lic events to come.

via Andrew Sul­li­van

Relat­ed con­tent:

Alain de Bot­ton Wants a Reli­gion for Athe­ists: Intro­duc­ing Athe­ism 2.0

Socrates on TV, Cour­tesy of Alain de Bot­ton (2000)

Alain de Bot­ton Pro­pos­es a Kinder, Gen­tler Phi­los­o­phy of Suc­cess

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.

The Scared Is Scared: A Child’s Wisdom for Starting New Chapters (Creative or Otherwise) in Life

in Film, Life | February 11th, 2013

The future’s uncer­tain­ty has par­a­lyzed many an artist. How to begin?

Were you to take the advice of 6‑year-old Asa Bak­er-Rouse, you might show the word “start” in a box, add an equals sign, frame it with a box, make the word orange, then green, then white in a green box….

Asa is both nar­ra­tor and muse of The Scared is Scared, the final project of recent Mid­dle­bury Col­lege grad, Bian­ca Giaev­er’s inde­pen­dent­ly designed Nar­ra­tive Stud­ies major. Rather than hand the boy a script, she allowed him to deter­mine the course of her film, lit­er­al­ly visu­al­iz­ing his spon­ta­neous mono­logue with the help of sev­er­al game friends, a trick imple­ment­ed ear­li­er in Holy Cow Lisa, which built on an inter­view with her col­lege advi­sor.

The result should appeal to any­one who had a soft spot for Pee­Wee’s Play­house­’s Pen­ny car­toons. It’s cute all right, but  The Scared is Scared also boasts an effort­less-seem­ing pro­fun­di­ty. Asa may be of the age where piano-shaped cook­ies and secret sleep­overs rep­re­sent the pin­na­cle of anar­chy, but he’s got an ancient mas­ter’s take on things com­ing to their inevitable end. By com­mit­ting to roll with what­ev­er unknowns this child might sup­ply, Giaver taps into a rich vein of cre­ativ­i­ty. Along the way, she makes peace with a very famil­iar-feel­ing unknown, the fate of the young artist leav­ing col­lege’s cozy embrace.

It turns out to be a per­fect place to start.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

One of the Biggest Risks is Being Too Cau­tious…

Paulo Coel­ho on The Fear of Fail­ure

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure