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

in Audio Books, Literature, Poetry | July 23rd, 2012

Did you know T.S. Eliot’s por­ten­tous and heav­i­ly allu­sive 1922 mas­ter­piece “The Waste Land” was orig­i­nal­ly titled “He Do the Police in Dif­fer­ent Voic­es,” a quote from Charles Dick­ens’ Our Mutu­al Friend? Filled with ref­er­ences to Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Dark­ness, and James Frazier’s The Gold­en Bough, this most famous of high mod­ernist poems—scourge of mil­lions of col­lege fresh­man each year—was a very dif­fer­ent ani­mal before noto­ri­ous mod­ernist impre­sario Ezra Pound got his hands on it. Pound’s heavy rework­ing is respon­si­ble for the poem you hear above, read by Eliot him­self. The first image in the video shows Pound’s mar­gin­al anno­ta­tions.

In the video above lis­ten to Eliot read his sec­ond-most famous work, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with the text of the poem chore­o­graphed by Wor­dook­ie, an open-source ver­sion of Wor­dle.  “Prufrock,” first pub­lished in 1915, is as dense with lit­er­ary allu­sions as “The Waste Land” (and thus as painful for the aver­age under­grad­u­ate). And if Eliot’s reedy alto doesn’t deliv­er “Prufrock“ ‘s grav­i­tas for you, lis­ten to Antho­ny Hop­kins read it here.

You can find these poems cat­a­logued in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Audio Books and 800 Free eBooks.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

The Rolling Stones First Played 50 Years Ago; Watch Them Explode Into Fame Shortly Thereafter

in History, Music | July 16th, 2012

Just four days ago, the Rolling Stones cel­e­brat­ed the fifti­eth anniver­sary of their first con­cert, which hap­pened on July 12, 1962 at Lon­don’s Mar­quee club. Arti­cles have quot­ed lead singer Mick Jag­ger as describ­ing the crowd that evening as the kind of audi­ence they’d expect­ed as a band: “col­lege stu­dents hav­ing a night out,” an “art-school kind of crowd” who “weren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly demon­stra­tive, but they appre­ci­at­ed and enjoyed the set.” But the Stones’ demo­graph­ic would soon both shift and expand dra­mat­i­cal­ly: “A few months lat­er we were play­ing in front of 11 year olds who were scream­ing at us.” You can wit­ness this very phe­nom­e­non in the 1964 news­reel above; per­haps all of the kids lined up out­side the the­ater aren’t quite that young, but we’re def­i­nite­ly not look­ing at a col­le­giate crowd. Still, what this full house (“in fact,” the nar­ra­tor says, “it could have been filled ten times over”) lacks in matu­ri­ty, they make up for in raw enthu­si­asm.

This short film comes from British Pathé, then known as Pathé News, a pro­duc­er of news­reels from the very ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry right up to the sev­en­ties. They cap­tured the Stones per­form­ing in 1964, after they had already racked up a con­sid­er­able degree of fame, espe­cial­ly in their own coun­try. The show itself takes place in Kingston upon Hull, a medi­um-sided city in the north­east of Eng­land. Sum­mon­ing the sur­pris­ing sense of fun that mid-six­ties Eng­lish media some­times could when cov­er­ing pop­u­lar cul­ture, this news­reel, called Rolling Stones Gath­er Moss, opens with Jag­ger, Kei­th Richards, Bri­an Jones, Char­lie Watts, and Bill Wyman try­ing to hitch a ride along­side the grassy road to the venue. “Lit­tle do they know, they’re hav­ing their legs pulled,” the announc­er says of the unhesi­tat­ing motorists, “because these appar­ent hitch­hik­ers, so bland­ly ignored, are five of the most famous young men in show busi­ness, the Rolling Stones. Some of these motorists will be kick­ing them­selves when they learn they missed the chance of a life­time of get­ting to know them.” But the his­tor­i­cal moment remains cap­tured on film, as do count­less oth­ers, among the 90,000 clips in Pathé’s online archive.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)

Jean-Luc Godard Films The Rolling Stones Record­ing “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” (1968)

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Bud­dy Hol­ly

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Henry Rollins Remembers the Life-Changing Decision That Brought Him From Häagen-Dazs to Black Flag

in Life, Music | July 13th, 2012

Metafil­ter recent­ly fea­tured this Big Think clip of Hen­ry Rollins telling the sto­ry of his most life-chang­ing deci­sion. This choice, of course, was the one that brought him to the front of punk rock band Black Flag. Before he made it, he could call him­self only a col­lege dropout assis­tant-man­ag­ing a Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Häa­gen-Dazs. In 1981, after catch­ing one of Black Flag’s New York shows — dur­ing which he hap­pened to climb onstage and sing a song with them — he decid­ed to try out to become the group’s actu­al singer. When Rollins ditched the ice cream game for the day (a for­feit, he recalls, of no more than $21) to audi­tion, Black Flag went from his favorite band to his band. Think­ing back, he real­izes he had lit­tle to lose: if he did­n’t give it a shot, he’d find him­self look­ing down the bar­rel of a long, hard exis­tence on his feet, answer­ing to cus­tomers all day, every day. If he gave it a shot and did­n’t make it, he’d at worst feel humil­i­at­ed, but, as he puts it, “humil­i­a­tion and young peo­ple kind of go togeth­er.”

“I don’t have tal­ent,” Rollins insists. “I have tenac­i­ty. I have dis­ci­pline. There was no choice for me but to work real­ly hard.” You may recall him mak­ing a sim­i­lar point in his pre­vi­ous Big Think video we fea­tured, in which he rec­om­mend­ed going at one’s pur­suits with a “monas­tic obses­sion.” But this time, he adds a note of fear. He talks about com­ing to under­stand that, with­out rely­ing on his four pil­lars of “appli­ca­tion, dis­ci­pline, focus, rep­e­ti­tion,” an enti­ty he calls “the Amer­i­ca” would have got­ten the bet­ter of him. This term seems to refer to the con­stant threat of crush­ing medi­oc­rity he feels in the Unit­ed States. “Every moment I am alive is because I have not been mur­dered by the Amer­i­ca,” he says in anoth­er inter­view. “The tasks I set out for myself are what I do to beat the per­fect point­less­ness of life.” Even if you don’t con­ceive of your own sit­u­a­tion quite so grim­ly, Rollins offers a per­spec­tive worth con­sid­er­ing. Per­haps his recruit­ment into Black Flag strikes you as a lucky break; he cer­tain­ly con­sid­ers it one. But as Bri­an Eno, anoth­er cul­tur­al fig­ure as well known for his point of view as his music, once said, “Luck is being ready.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hen­ry Rollins Tells Young Peo­ple to Avoid Resent­ment and to Pur­sue Suc­cess with a “Monas­tic Obses­sion”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Does God Exist? Christopher Hitchens Debates Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig (2009)

in Philosophy, Religion | July 12th, 2012

When we talk about reli­gion around here, we often end up talk­ing about some­thing that falls between agnos­ti­cism and athe­ism. That’s because pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als who com­ment on reli­gion fre­quent­ly fall into those camps. Here and there, the­ists polite­ly call us on it. They ask us to con­sid­er show­ing The Four Horse­men (Hitchens/Dawkins/Dennett/Harris) in mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with reli­gious thinkers. It would be a step toward cre­at­ing some bal­ance, they say. We’ve done some of that before. But it has been a while. So we’re bring­ing you today the 2009 debate between Hitchens and William Lane Craig, a Chris­t­ian philoso­pher. It was held at Bio­la Col­lege, a school that offers a “Bib­li­cal­ly Cen­tered Edu­ca­tion,” which puts Craig on the home court.

The basic ques­tion fram­ing the debate is “Does God Exist?,” and the answers are all ground­ed in phi­los­o­phy, though that did­n’t stop the con­ver­sa­tion from veer­ing into biol­o­gy, physics, cos­mol­o­gy, and moral the­o­ry. You might be sur­prised that Hitchens does­n’t take the stri­dent athe­ist posi­tion that would have let more sparks fly. No, he ends up in a more agnos­tic place, and there’s a kind of a humil­i­ty to his posi­tion, an accep­tance that we just can’t know the answers to the big ques­tions, at least not yet. That speaks to me intel­lec­tu­al­ly. But I’m sure oth­ers will see things dif­fer­ent­ly.

If you’re hun­ger­ing for more, you can watch Craig debate Sam Har­ris here. We thank Tay­lor for send­ing these videos along.

Jon Stewart’s William & Mary Commencement Address: The Entire World is an Elective

in Comedy, Graduation Speech, Life, Television | July 4th, 2012

In 1984, Jon Stew­art grad­u­at­ed from The Col­lege of William & Mary. In 1999, he began host­ing Com­e­dy Cen­tral’s news pro­gram The Dai­ly Show. In 2004, he returned to his alma mater, immea­sur­ably more influ­en­tial than he’d left it, to give its com­mence­ment address. Despite a dat­ed crack or two — this was the hey­day of George W. Bush, the Pres­i­dent who arguably gave Stew­art’s Dai­ly Show per­sona both its foil and rai­son d’être — the speech’s core remains sound. You, Stew­art tells the massed grad­u­ates, have the pow­er to become the next “great­est gen­er­a­tion,” though the chance appears espe­cial­ly clear and present because of how the last gen­er­a­tion “broke” the world. “It just kind of  got away from us,” he half-jokes, his grin com­pressed by seri­ous­ness. That admis­sion fol­lows a stream of self-dep­re­ca­tion hit­ting every­thing from his ten­den­cy toward pro­fan­i­ty to his unusu­al­ly large head as an under­grad­u­ate to how his pres­ence onstage deval­ues William & Mary’s very rep­u­ta­tion.

Whether or not you find the world bro­ken, or whether or not you believe that a gen­er­a­tion could break or fix it, Stew­art still packs a num­ber of worth­while obser­va­tions about the place into fif­teen min­utes. He per­haps deliv­ers his most valu­able words to these excit­ed, anx­ious school-leavers when he con­trasts the world to the aca­d­e­m­ic envi­ron­ment they’ve just left: “There is no core cur­ricu­lum. The entire place is an elec­tive.” Stew­art com­mu­ni­cates, as many com­mence­ment speak­ers try to but few do so clear­ly, that you can’t plan your way direct­ly to suc­cess in life, what­ev­er “suc­cess” might mean to you. He cer­tain­ly did­n’t. “If you had been to William and Mary while I was here and found out that I would be the com­mence­ment speak­er 20 years lat­er, you would be some­what sur­prised,” he admits. “And prob­a­bly some­what angry.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

Jon Stew­art: Teach­ers Have it Too Good (Wink)

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Rare Color Footage of the 1939 World Series: Yankees v. Reds

in History | June 5th, 2012

The 1939 World Series was­n’t much of a con­test. The Yan­kees, led by Joltin’ Joe DiMag­gio in cen­ter field, had won the last three cham­pi­onships. And they won this con­test rather eas­i­ly too, sweep­ing the Cincin­nati Reds in four straight games. Yes­ter­day, mem­bers of the Red­dit com­mu­ni­ty unearthed some rare col­or footage of the ’39 Series. In it, we catch glimpses of the Old Yan­kee Sta­di­um, the actu­al House That Ruth Built; pitch­ers doing a dif­fer­ent kind of windup; and a reminder that you could once buy five razors for 25 cents. Find more infor­ma­tion on those at the Inter­net Muse­um of Safe­ty Razors.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prince­ton v. Yale, 1903: The Old­est Col­lege Foot­ball Game on Film

Lou Gehrig, Yan­kee Leg­end, Stars in 1938 West­ern Rawhide

The First Films of Great Directors: Kubrick, Coppola, Scorsese, Tarantino & Truffaut

in Film | May 23rd, 2012

Great direc­tors — unless they’re Orson Welles — rarely start off mak­ing mas­ter­pieces. Their craft evolves, remind­ing us that great film­mak­ing (like every­thing else) takes tal­ent, but also hard work. In case you’re doubt­ful, we’re pre­sent­ing the first films by five icon­ic direc­tors, all fea­tured here before, but nev­er brought togeth­er into one place. Some first films are down­right chop­py; some are work­man­like; some are more refined. But none exact­ly soar to cin­e­mat­ic heights. Above, we start you off with Quentin Taran­ti­no’s 1987 debut film My Best Friend’s Birth­day, a chop­py pro­duc­tion that has some­thing unmis­tak­ably Taran­ti­noesque about it, accord­ing to Col­in Mar­shall.

In some sense, [My Best Friend’s Birth­day] bears an even deep­er imprint of Tarantino’s per­son­al­i­ty than his sub­se­quent films [Pulp Fic­tion, Reser­voir Dogs], since he stars in it as well. To behold the ear­ly-twen­tysome­thing Taran­ti­no por­tray­ing the good-heart­ed and aggres­sive­ly enthu­si­as­tic but jit­tery and dis­tractible rock­a­bil­ly DJ Clarence Poole is to behold the Quentin Taran­ti­no pub­lic per­sona in an embry­on­ic form, a dis­tilled form — or both.

Long before Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la shot Apoc­alpyse Now and The God­fa­ther in the 1970s, he made his real direc­to­r­i­al debut with a 75-minute, black-and-white psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror film called Demen­tia 13 (1963). He had made a cou­ple of small-time nudie films before that. But this was his first main­stream, legit effort.

As Col­in, our res­i­dent film crit­ic has not­ed here, “To watch Demen­tia 13 now is to wit­ness Coppola’s con­trol of ten­sion and dark­ness in its embry­on­ic — but still impres­sive — form. Nobody involved in the pro­duc­tion could have delud­ed them­selves about its goal of shoot­ing a few max­i­mal­ly grue­some axe mur­ders as quick­ly and cheap­ly as pos­si­ble, but even such strait­ened cir­cum­stances allow for pock­ets of artistry to bub­ble through.”

When you think Cop­po­la, you think Scors­ese too, anoth­er direc­tor who put his stamp on 1970s and 1980s cin­e­ma with Mean Streets, Taxi Dri­ver, Rag­ing Bull, and Good­fel­las. We recent­ly revis­it­ed Scors­ese’s NYU film school days dur­ing the ear­ly 1960s, when he first cut his teeth as a direc­tor. We showed you sev­er­al of his ear­ly shorts (find them all here), but high­light­ed one of his ear­li­est works, What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This (1963). Scors­ese would lat­er describe the film as “nine min­utes of visu­al non­sense,” while also say­ing “it had no depth at all, but it was a lot of fun. And it won me a schol­ar­ship, so my father was able to use it for the tuition for the next year.”

Where­as Mar­tin Scors­ese went to NYU and leisure­ly stud­ied the his­to­ry and aes­thet­ics of cin­e­ma, Stan­ley Kubrick, a poor stu­dent, skipped col­lege, start­ed work­ing as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for Look mag­a­zine, and even­tu­al­ly began mak­ing movies to eke out a liv­ing. In the ear­ly 1950s, Kubrick start­ed shoot­ing news­reel doc­u­men­taries, hop­ing to turn a tidy prof­it. And here you’ll find his first effort, Day of the Fight, a 1951 noirish doc­u­men­tary on mid­dleweight box­er Wal­ter Carti­er and his match with Bob­by James. It’s a work­man­like film, yes. But not exact­ly an obvi­ous pre­lude to 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clock­work Orange. Mike Springer has more on Kubrick­’s ear­ly doc­u­men­taries here.

The 1957 film, Les Mis­tons (The Brats), was tech­ni­cal­ly François Truf­faut’s sec­ond film but the first that ever sat­is­fied him. Sens­es of Cin­e­ma has else­where called it “the director’s first short film of any real con­se­quence.” Rel­a­tive to the ear­ly efforts of oth­er direc­tors, this short demon­strates a more mature set of film­mak­ing skills, the kind that would be on dis­play two years lat­er when Truf­faut released Les qua­tre cents coups (The 400 Blows), one of the defin­ing films of French New Wave cin­e­ma. Col­in Mar­shall takes a clos­er look at Les Mis­tons right here.

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

Neil Gaiman Gives Graduates 10 Essential Tips for Working in the Arts

in Books, Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | May 21st, 2012

Neil Gaiman, con­sid­ered one of the top ten liv­ing post-mod­ern writ­ers, nev­er went to col­lege. He nei­ther start­ed nor fin­ished his advanced stud­ies, but rather put him­self into the world and start­ed writ­ing. And write he did. He’s now the New York Times best­selling author of the nov­els Nev­er­where, Star­dust, and Amer­i­can Gods, among oth­ers, and he’s also the win­ner of the 2009 New­bery Medal and 2010 Carnegie Medal in Lit­er­a­ture. (We have gath­ered free ver­sions of Gaiman’s writ­ing in audio & text here.) This week­end, Gaiman spoke at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts in Philadel­phia and told the grad­u­at­ing class all the things he wish he knew at their age. The talk runs 19 min­utes. The dis­tilled ver­sion appears below.

1. Embrace the fact that you’re young. Accept that you don’t know what you’re doing. And don’t lis­ten to any­one who says there are rules and lim­its.
2. If you know your call­ing, go there. Stay on track. Keep mov­ing towards it, even if the process takes time and requires sac­ri­fice.
3. Learn to accept fail­ure. Know that things will go wrong. Then, when things go right, you’ll prob­a­bly feel like a fraud. It’s nor­mal.
4. Make mis­takes, glo­ri­ous and fan­tas­tic ones. It means that you’re out there doing and try­ing things.
5. When life gets hard, as it inevitably will, make good art. Just make good art.
6. Make your own art, mean­ing the art that reflects your indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and per­son­al vision.
7. Now a prac­ti­cal tip. You get free­lance work if your work is good, if you’re easy to get along with, and if you’re on dead­line. Actu­al­ly you don’t need all three. Just two.
8. Enjoy the ride, don’t fret the whole way. Stephen King gave that piece of advice to Neil years ago.
9. Be wise and accom­plish things in your career. If you have prob­lems get­ting start­ed, pre­tend you’re some­one who is wise, who can get things done. It will help you along.
10. Leave the world more inter­est­ing than it was before.

via Metafil­ter

Adam Savage (Host of Mythbusters) Tells Sarah Lawrence Grads to Think Broadly … and Don’t Work for Fools

in Education, Life | May 20th, 2012

Adam Sav­age was born in New York City, not far from Sarah Lawrence Col­lege, the lib­er­al arts school where he deliv­ered the com­mence­ment speech this past week­end. Sav­age nev­er went to Sarah Lawrence. Nor did he fin­ish his own degree at NYU. But he had plen­ty to tell the grad­u­at­ing class. On his own web site, Sav­age calls him­self “a mak­er of things.” As a kid, he made his own toys. As a young adult, he began exper­i­ment­ing with spe­cial effects for films, then served stints as an “ani­ma­tor, graph­ic design­er, rig­ger, stage and inte­ri­or design­er, car­pen­ter, scenic painter, welder, actor, writer, and tele­vi­sion host.” (Per­haps you have seen his pop­u­lar Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel show, Myth­busters.) In short, Sav­age is a “col­lec­tor of skills, a poly­math. How did he get this way? By cast­ing his intel­lec­tu­al net wide­ly and by con­tin­u­ing to learn through­out life — which is pret­ty much what we’re all about here. There’s a lot of good advice in this short, feel-good speech. Some of my favorite bits include:

“Don’t work for fools. It’s not worth it. Get­ting paid less to work for peo­ple you like and believe in is much bet­ter for you (and your career) in the long run.”

“Stay obsessed. That thing you can’t stop think­ing about? Keep indulging it. Obses­sion is the bet­ter part of suc­cess. You will be great at the things that you can’t not do.”

“F. Scott Fitzger­ald wrote The Great Gats­by and is one of our nation­al trea­sures. A true giant of writing.The sil­li­est thing he ever wrote is the quote, “There are no sec­ond acts in Amer­i­can lives.” This is insane. If there’s one thing that typ­i­fies the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence it is that rein­ven­tion and rebirth are intrin­sic to it. Ray­mond Chan­dler did­n’t write a sin­gle word of any con­se­quence until his 40s. Julia Child learned to cook at 40! Clint East­wood direct­ed his first film at 41. Don’t be afraid to be a late bloomer. Repeat­ed­ly.”

Good thoughts, all of them. You can find the full tran­script here. H/T @opedr

More Com­mence­ment Speech­es: 

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

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

Archive of Hemingway’s Newspaper Reporting Reveals Novelist in the Making

in Literature | May 16th, 2012

After return­ing from World War I, Ernest Hem­ing­way moved to Toron­to and began writ­ing for the Toron­to Star. He worked there from 1920 to 1924 and some 70 of his arti­cles have been archived online in an attrac­tive new web­site, the Hem­ing­way Papers. At first Hem­ing­way was a stringer and lat­er he wrote as a staff writer, under the byline Ernest M. Hem­ing­way. His first arti­cle bore the head­line, “Tak­ing a Chance for a Free Shave” and chron­i­cled the young author’s vis­it to a bar­ber col­lege where straight-edge razors were wield­ed for free by stu­dents. He went on to write for the Star about box­ing and trout fish­ing and orga­nized crime in Chica­go. By 1922 Hem­ing­way had moved to Paris with his wife and sent dis­patch­es that antic­i­pat­ed the themes of the nov­els that would make him famous. He wrote about the effects of war, bull­fight­ing and the life of an impov­er­ished artist in Paris. His asso­ci­a­tion with the Star gave him access to post-war Europe that he wouldn’t have had oth­er­wise and work­ing as a reporter taught him how to get up close and per­son­al with his sub­ject mat­ter.

The archive gives vis­i­tors plen­ty to explore, includ­ing com­men­tary about the novelist’s ear­ly assign­ments and embed­ded anno­ta­tions to help put the work in con­text.  Hem­ing­way devel­oped his famous­ly terse, hard-boiled style at the Star and reworked much of his reportage into his fic­tion. Read­ers of his short sto­ries and nov­els will see seeds of Hemingway’s fic­tion in arti­cles like “Tan­cre­do is Dead,” about the death of a man whose job was to tease the bull by stand­ing as still as a stat­ue in the ring:

“No. He was nei­ther an opera singer nor a five-cent cig­ar. He was once known as the bravest man in the world. And he died in a dingy, sor­did room in Madrid, the city where he had enjoyed his great­est tri­umphs.”

Read­ing through Hem­ing­way’s jour­nal­ism is to wit­ness a fic­tion writer in the mak­ing.

Kate Rix writes about k‑12 instruc­tion and high­er ed.