Teacher Calls Jacques Derrida’s College Admission Essay on Shakespeare “Quite Incomprehensible” (1951)

in Philosophy | April 13th, 2015

Click here for larg­er image, then click again to zoom in.

Back­sto­ries of famous­ly accom­plished peo­ple seem incom­plete with­out some past dif­fi­cul­ty or fail­ure to be over­come. In nar­ra­tive terms, these inci­dents pro­vide biogra­phies with their dra­mat­ic ten­sion. We see Abra­ham Lin­coln rise to the high­est office in the land despite the hum­blest of ori­gins; Albert Ein­stein rewrites the­o­ret­i­cal physics against all aca­d­e­m­ic odds, giv­en his sup­posed ear­ly child­hood hand­i­caps. In many cas­es, these sto­ries are apoc­ryphal, or exag­ger­at­ed for effect. But what­ev­er their accu­ra­cy, they always seem to reflect unde­ni­able char­ac­ter traits of the per­son in ques­tion.

In the case of influ­en­tial philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da, prog­en­i­tor of the both beloved and reviled crit­i­cal the­o­ry known as “Decon­struc­tion,” the sto­ries of aca­d­e­m­ic strug­gle and great men­tal suf­fer­ing are well-doc­u­ment­ed. Fur­ther­more, their details accord per­fect­ly well with the mature thinker who, remarks the site Crit­i­cal The­o­ry, “can’t answer a sim­ple god-damned ques­tion.” The good-natured snark on dis­play in this descrip­tion more or less sums up the feed­back Der­ri­da received dur­ing some for­ma­tive years of school­ing while he pre­pared for his entrance exams to France’s uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem in 1951 at the age of 20.

Der­ri­da may have “left as big a mark on human­i­ties depart­ments as any sin­gle thinker of the past forty years,” writes The New York Review of Books, but dur­ing this peri­od of his life, he failed his exams twice before final­ly gain­ing admit­tance. Once, he “choked and turned in a blank sheet of paper. The same month, he was award­ed a dis­mal 5 out of 20 on his qual­i­fy­ing exam for a license in phi­los­o­phy.” One essay he sub­mit­ted on Shake­speare, writ­ten in Eng­lish (above), received a 10 out of 20. The feed­back from Derrida’s instruc­tor will sound very famil­iar to per­plexed read­ers of his work. “Quite unin­tel­li­gi­ble,” writes the eval­u­a­tor in one mar­gin­al com­ment. The main com­ment at the top of the paper reads in part:

In this essay you seem to be con­stant­ly on the verge of some­thing inter­est­ing but, some­what, you always fail to explain it clear­ly. A few para­graphs are indeed total­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble.

Anoth­er exam­in­er—points out the NYRB—left a com­ment on his work “that has since become a com­mon­place”:

An exer­cise in vir­tu­os­i­ty, with unde­ni­able intel­li­gence, but with no par­tic­u­lar rela­tion to the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy… Can come back when he is pre­pared to accept the rules and not invent where he needs to be bet­ter informed.

As it turns out, Der­ri­da was not par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the rules, but in invent­ing a new method. Even if his “apos­ta­sy” caused him great men­tal anguish—“nausea, insom­nia, exhaus­tion, and despair” (all nor­mal fea­tures of any high­er edu­ca­tion­al experience)—it’s prob­a­bly fair to say he could not do oth­er­wise. Although his intel­lec­tu­al biog­ra­phy, like the his­to­ry of any revered fig­ure, is unlike­ly to offer a blue­print for suc­cess, there is per­haps at least one les­son we may draw: What­ev­er the dif­fi­cul­ties, you’re prob­a­bly bet­ter off just being your­self.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

130+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy: Pla­to, Sartre, Der­ri­da & Oth­er Thinkers Explained With Vin­tage Video Games

Jacques Der­ri­da Decon­structs Amer­i­can Atti­tudes

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

Edvard Munch’s Famous Painting The Scream Animated to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Primal Music

in Animation, Art, Music | April 9th, 2015

In this short video, Roman­ian ani­ma­tor Sebas­t­ian Cosor brings togeth­er two haunt­ing works from dif­fer­ent times and dif­fer­ent media: The Scream, by Nor­we­gian Expres­sion­ist painter Edvard Munch, and “The Great Gig in the Sky,” by the British rock band Pink Floyd.

Munch paint­ed the first of four ver­sions of The Scream in 1893. He lat­er wrote a poem describ­ing the apoc­a­lyp­tic vision behind it:

I was walk­ing along the road with two Friends
the Sun was set­ting — the Sky turned a bloody red
And I felt a whiff of Melan­choly — I stood
Still, death­ly tired — over the blue-black
Fjord and City hung Blood and Tongues of Fire
My Friends walked on — I remained behind
– shiv­er­ing with anx­i­ety — I felt the Great Scream in Nature

Munch’s hor­rif­ic Great Scream in Nature is com­bined in the video with Floy­d’s oth­er­world­ly “The Great Gig in the Sky,” one of the sig­na­ture pieces from the band’s 1973 mas­ter­piece, Dark Side of the Moon. The vocals on “The Great Gig” were per­formed by an unknown young song­writer and ses­sion singer named Clare Tor­ry.

Tor­ry had been invit­ed by pro­duc­er Alan Par­sons to come to Abbey Road Stu­dios and impro­vise over a haunt­ing piano chord pro­gres­sion by Richard Wright, on a track that was ten­ta­tive­ly called “The Mor­tal­i­ty Sequence.”  The 25-year-old singer was giv­en very lit­tle direc­tion from the band. “Clare came into the stu­dio one day,” said bassist Roger Waters in a 2003 Rolling Stone inter­view, “and we said, ‘There’s no lyrics. It’s about dying — have a bit of a sing on that, girl.’ ”

Forty-two years lat­er, that “bit of a sing” can still send a shiv­er down any­one’s spine. For more on the mak­ing of “The Great Gig in the Sky,” and Tor­ry’s amaz­ing con­tri­bu­tion, see the clip below to hear Tor­ry’s sto­ry in her own words.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969) 

Hear Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth Rocker, Read From Her New Memoir, Girl in a Band

in Audio Books, Music | March 2nd, 2015

I’ll admit it. I have a thing for lis­ten­ing to rock biogra­phies and auto­bi­ogra­phies on Audi­ble, par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­oirs nar­rat­ed by the author him or her­self. Look in my per­son­al Audi­ble library and you’ll find Pat­ti Smith read­ing Just Kids. Kei­th Richards read­ing sec­tions of his best­seller Life. And Pete Town­shend nar­rat­ing his 18-hour tome Who Am I. That’s just nam­ing a few.

Right now, I’m get­ting start­ed with Girl in a Band, the new mem­oir released by Kim Gor­don, the co-founder of the influ­en­tial indie rock band, Son­ic Youth. And it looks like you can do the same with me. Rough Trade has made avail­able online five audio clips, start­ing with Gor­don read­ing from Chap­ter 1. Togeth­er, they amount to almost an hour of free audio. Find them all below.

Mean­while, if you want to down­load the entire mem­oir for free, you can go here, and then click on the “Try Audi­ble Free” but­ton in the upper right cor­ner. Just real­ize that you’re sign­ing up for Audi­ble’s 30-Day Free Tri­al pro­gram, which lets you down­load two free audio­books and try out the ser­vice for 30 days. If you so choose, you can can­cel before a fee kicks in. Please make sure you read all of the fine print before you sign up.

Chap­ter 1:

Writ­ing About New York Is Hard

The Way The Band Com­posed Songs

First Time See­ing Nir­vana

Fash­ion in New York

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Son­ic Youth Gui­tarist Thurston Moore Teach­es a Poet­ry Work­shop at Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty: See His Class Notes (2011)

Fear of a Female Plan­et: Kim Gor­don (Son­ic Youth) on Why Rus­sia and the US Need a Pussy Riot

Advertisements from Japan’s Golden Age of Art Deco

in Art | February 16th, 2015

Get talk­ing with graph­ic design peo­ple, and Japan will come up soon­er or lat­er. That coun­try, always a world leader in aes­thet­ics, has put the time and ener­gy of gen­er­a­tions into per­fect­ing the dis­ci­pline. You can see this progress chart­ed out on the Tokyo-based Ian Lynam Design’s “Misruptions/Disruptions: A Japan­ese Graph­ic Design His­to­ry Time­line.” It labels the busy peri­od of 1910–1941 as the time of an “adop­tion of West­ern Avant Garde aes­thet­ics in Graph­ic Design & Typog­ra­phy, coin­cid­ing with Left-lean­ing exper­i­men­ta­tion and increased state sup­pres­sion of the Left” — and the time that gave rise to Japan­ese Art Deco.

Last year, I attend­ed Deco Japan, a show at the Seat­tle Art Muse­um, which show­cased a great many arti­facts from that pre­war move­ment of such com­bined artis­tic and com­mer­cial abun­dance. It put on dis­play all man­ner of paint­ings, vas­es, pieces of fur­ni­ture, house­hold items, and pack­ages, but some­how, the peri­od adver­tise­ments struck me as still the most vital of all. The Japan­ese graph­ic design­ers who made them drew, in the words of Cap­i­tal’s Grace-Yvette Gem­mell, “on sta­ples of pro­gres­sive Euro­pean and Amer­i­can high and pop­u­lar art, incor­po­rat­ing styl­ized ver­sions of gears and clocks that bring to mind Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis and Char­lie Chaplin’s Mod­ern Times.”

This makes more sense than it sounds like it would: “the Deco use of for­eign imagery and design ele­ments was a vir­tu­al­ly seam­less process giv­en exist­ing prac­tices of both abstrac­tion and cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion at work in the dec­o­ra­tive arts at the time in Japan. Many tra­di­tion­al designs already pos­sessed a sort of visu­al affin­i­ty with the Art Deco aes­thet­ic; the syn­the­sis of con­ven­tion­al design ele­ments with con­tem­po­rary, pared-down forms appealed to the culture’s col­lec­tive knowl­edge of tra­di­tion­al motifs and sym­bols while feed­ing their desire for mod­ern con­sumer prod­ucts that reflect­ed a keen sense of cos­mopoli­tanism per­fect­ly com­bin­ing the old with the ultra­mod­ern.”

Many of the adver­tise­ments, or oth­er works of graph­ic design like leaflets and mag­a­zine cov­ers, to come out of Japan’s Art Deco gold­en age fea­ture the image of the “moga,” or, in Japanized Eng­lish, “mod­ern girl.” Hav­ing appeared in Japan as a new kind of jazz-lov­ing, bob-haired, rel­a­tive­ly lib­er­at­ed woman, the moga quick­ly became an attrac­tive com­mer­cial propo­si­tion. The Asian Art Muse­um print­ed up a leaflet of their own, list­ing off the “ten qual­i­fi­ca­tions for being a moga” as orig­i­nal­ly enu­mer­at­ed in 1929 by illus­tra­tor Tak­a­batake Kashō in the mag­a­zine Fujin sekai (Ladies’ World):

1. Strength, the “ene­my” of con­ven­tion­al fem­i­nin­i­ty
2. Con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of West­ern food and drink
3. Devo­tion to jazz records, danc­ing, and smok­ing Gold­en Bat cig­a­rettes from a met­al cig­a­rette hold­er
4. Knowl­edge of the types of West­ern liquor and a will­ing­ness to flirt to get them for free
5. Devo­tion to fash­ion from Paris and Hol­ly­wood as seen in for­eign fash­ion mag­a­zines
6. Devo­tion to cin­e­ma
7. Real or feigned inter­est in dance halls as a way to show off one’s osten­si­ble deca­dence to mobo (mod­ern boys)
8. Strolling in the Gin­za every Sat­ur­day and Sun­day night
9. Pawn­ing things to get mon­ey to buy new clothes for each sea­son
10. Offer­ing one’s lips to any man who is use­ful, even if he is bald or ugly, but keep­ing one’s chasti­ty because “infringe­ment of chasti­ty” law­suits are out of style

Sound a fair bit more inter­est­ing than the women demand­ed for today’s ads in the West, don’t they?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gaze at Glob­al Movie Posters for Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go: U.S., Japan, Italy, Poland & Beyond

René Magritte’s Ear­ly Art Deco Adver­tis­ing Posters, 1924–1927

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

David Carr Gives 10 Pieces of Work & Life Advice to UC Berkeley Graduates

in Graduation Speech, Life, Media | February 14th, 2015

David Carr took sev­en years to get through col­lege. He did­n’t have a Mas­ter’s degree or a PhD. Before he made it big writ­ing for The New York Times, he spent time in rehab and on wel­fare. David Carr did­n’t fit the pro­file of your aver­age com­mence­ment speak­er.

And yet Carr, who died in the Times news­room on Thurs­day night, earned his spot speak­ing before the 2014 grad­u­at­ing class at UC Berke­ley’s Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism. Known for his insight­ful report­ing on changes in pub­lish­ing, tele­vi­sion and social media, Carr under­stood the world these young jour­nal­ists were enter­ing. And when he offered 10 pieces of grad­u­a­tion advice, you know the stu­dents took note. You should too:

1.) Some­one who is under­es­ti­mat­ed will be the one who changes the world. It’s not the per­son every­one expects. It might be you.

2.) “Do what is front of you.” Focus on the small steps ahead of you.

3.) Don’t wor­ry about achiev­ing a mas­ter plan, about the plot to take over the world.

4.) Be a work­er among work­ers. It’s more impor­tant that you fit in before you stick out.

5.) Fol­low the “Mom Rule.” Don’t do any­thing you couldn’t explain or jus­ti­fy to your mom.

6.) Don’t just do what you’re good at. Get out­side of your com­fort zone. Being a jour­nal­ist is per­mis­sion for life­time learn­ing.

7.) Be present. Don’t wor­ry about doc­u­ment­ing the moment with your smart­phone. Expe­ri­ence it your­self.

8.) Take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the good and the bad. Learn to own your fail­ures.

9.) Be hon­est, and be will­ing to have the dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion.

10.) Don’t be afraid to be ambi­tious. It’s not a crime.

He says it’s a lis­ti­cle that won’t appear on Buz­zfeed. But it fits per­fect­ly on OC. David, we’re so sor­ry to see you go.

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:

Michael Pol­lan Presents an Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion, A Free Online Course From UC Berke­ley

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 2005 Com­mence­ment Speech “This is Water” Visu­al­ized in Short Film

NPR Launch­es Data­base of Best Com­mence­ment Speech­es Ever

Rare Interview: Tim Curry Discusses The Rocky Horror Picture Show, During the Week of Its Release (1975)

in Film, Television | February 9th, 2015

A defin­ing role can be both bless­ing and curse. In August of 1975, the week the The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show opened, its 29-year-old star, Tim Cur­ry gave an inter­view to STOIC, the Stu­dent Tele­vi­sion Of Impe­r­i­al Col­lege.

In between clips of Curry’s Frank-n-Furter sashay­ing through such des­tined-to-become cult favorites as “Sweet Trans­ves­tite” and “The Time Warp,” in fish­nets, mer­ry wid­ow, and maquil­lage designed by David Bowie’s per­son­al make­up artist, the actor enter­tained questions…in lus­cious black and white!

Kudos to the young inter­view­er, Mark Cald­well, for nev­er inter­rupt­ing or try­ing to elbow his way into the spot­light with jokey asides or dou­ble enten­dres. The reward is a seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the film­mak­ing process and the actor’s craft.

(Bear in mind that it would be at least a year until mid­night audi­ences at New York’s Waver­ly The­ater start­ed throw­ing toast, rice, and toi­let paper at the screen, thus ini­ti­at­ing an entire script’s worth of audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion.)

Hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed the role on the Lon­don stage (he audi­tioned with Lit­tle Richard’s “Tut­ti Frut­ti”) and reprised it in L.A., Cur­ry was clear­ly ready to put some space between him­self and his icon­ic cre­ation, announcing—correctly, as it turns out—that any sequels would have to pro­ceed with­out him.

Then he clammed up for three decades, refus­ing to dis­cuss his most icon­ic role until 2005, when he broke the silence dur­ing an inter­view on NPR’s Fresh Air .

It’s clear that Cur­ry saw the mak­ing of the film as a seri­ous busi­ness, but Rocky Hor­ror fans will find plen­ty of juicy morsels to feed their obses­sion. Even vir­gins will enjoy the sto­ry of Frank’s evolv­ing accent —from mid­dle Euro­pean to “Bel­gravia Host­ess with the Mostest.”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

An Illustration of Every Page of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

in Art, Literature | January 29th, 2015

Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick, the work he is most known for in death, had the effect in life of ruin­ing his lit­er­ary rep­u­ta­tion and dri­ving him into obscu­ri­ty. This is but one of many ironies attend­ing the mas­sive nov­el, first pub­lished in Britain in three vol­umes on Octo­ber 18, 1851. At that time, it was sim­ply called The Whale, and as Melville.org informs us, was “expur­gat­ed to avoid offend­ing del­i­cate polit­i­cal and moral sen­si­bil­i­ties.” One month lat­er, the first Amer­i­can edi­tion appeared, now titled Moby Dick; Or, The Whale, com­piled into one huge vol­ume, and with its cen­sored pas­sages, includ­ing the Epi­logue, restored. In both print­ings, the book sold poor­ly, and the reviews—save those from a hand­ful of Amer­i­can crit­ics, includ­ing Melville’s fel­low Great Amer­i­can nov­el­ist Nathaniel Hawthorne—were large­ly neg­a­tive.

Anoth­er irony sur­round­ing the nov­el is one near­ly every­one who’s read it, or tried to read it, will know well. We’re social­ized through visu­al media to approach the sto­ry as great, trag­ic action/adventure. As Melville’s friend, pub­lish­er Evert Augus­tus Duy­ck­inck, described it, the nov­el is osten­si­bly “a roman­tic, fan­ci­ful & lit­er­al & most enjoy­able pre­sent­ment of the Whale Fish­ery,” dri­ven by the revenge plot of mad old Cap­tain Ahab. And yet, it is not that at all, or not sim­ply that. Despite the fact that it lends itself so well to adven­tur­ous retelling, the nov­el itself can seem very obscure, pon­der­ous, and digres­sive to a mad­den­ing degree. The so-called “whal­ing chap­ters,” notably “Cetol­ogy,” delve deeply into the lore and tech­nique of whal­ing, the anato­my and phys­i­ol­o­gy of var­i­ous whale species, and the his­to­ry and pol­i­tics of the ven­ture.

Through­out the nov­el, ordi­nary objects and events—especially, of course, the whale itself—acquire such sym­bol­ic weight that they become almost car­toon­ish tal­is­mans and leap bewil­der­ing­ly out of the nar­ra­tive, forc­ing the read­er to con­tem­plate their significance—no easy task. Depend­ing on your sen­si­bil­i­ties and tol­er­ance for Melville’s labyrinthine prose, these very strange fea­tures of the nov­el are either indis­pens­ably fas­ci­nat­ing or just plain excess bag­gage. Since many edi­tions are pub­lished with the whal­ing chap­ters excised, many read­ers clear­ly feel they are the lat­ter. That is unfor­tu­nate, I think. It’s one of my favorite nov­els, in all its baroque over­stuffed­ness and philo­soph­i­cal den­si­ty. But there’s no deny­ing that it works, as they say, “on many lev­els.” Depend­ing on how you expe­ri­ence the book—it’s either an incred­i­bly grip­ping adven­ture tale, or a very dense and puz­zling work of his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy, pol­i­tics, and zool­o­gy… or both, and more besides….

Rec­og­niz­ing the pow­er of Melville’s arrest­ing imagery, artist and librar­i­an Matt Kish decid­ed that he would illus­trate all 552 pages of the Signet Clas­sic paper­back edi­tion of Moby Dick, a book he con­sid­ers “to be the great­est nov­el ever writ­ten.” He began the project in August of 2009 with the first page, illus­trat­ing those famous first words—“Call me Ishmael”—above. (At the top, see page 489, below it page 158, and direct­ly below, page 116). Kish com­plet­ed his epic project at the end of 2010. He used a vari­ety of media—ink, water­col­or, acrylic paint—and incor­po­rat­ed a num­ber of dif­fer­ent graph­ic art styles. As he explains in the com­ments under the first illus­tra­tion, he chose “draw­ing and paint­ing over pages from old books and dia­grams because the pres­ence of visu­al infor­ma­tion on those pages would in some ways inter­fere with, and clut­ter up, my own obses­sive con­trol over my marks.” All in all, it’s a very admirable under­tak­ing, and you can see each indi­vid­ual illus­tra­tion, and many of the stages of draft­ing and com­po­si­tion, at Kish’s blog or on this list we’ve com­piled. (You can also find links to the first 25 pages at bot­tom of this post.) The entire project has also been pub­lished as a book, Moby-Dick in Pic­tures: One Draw­ing for Every Page, a fur­ther irony giv­en the obses­sive lit­er­ari­ness of Melville’s nov­el, a work as obsessed with lan­guage as Cap­tain Ahab is with his great white neme­sis.

Nonethe­less, what Kish’s project fur­ther demon­strates is the seem­ing­ly inex­haustible trea­sure house that is Moby Dick, a book that so rich­ly appeals to all the sens­es as it also cease­less­ly engages the intel­lect. Kish has gone on to apply his won­der­ful inter­pre­tive tech­nique to oth­er clas­sic lit­er­ary works, includ­ing Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Dark­ness and Ita­lo Calvino’s Invis­i­ble Cities. These projects are equal­ly strik­ing, but it’s Moby Dick, “the great unread Amer­i­can nov­el,” that most inspired Kish, as it has so many oth­er artists and read­ers.

• MOBY-DICK, Page 025
• MOBY-DICK, Page 024
• MOBY-DICK, Page 023
• MOBY-DICK, Page 022
• MOBY-DICK, Page 021
• MOBY-DICK, Page 020
• MOBY-DICK, Page 019
• MOBY-DICK, Page 018
• MOBY-DICK, Page 017
• MOBY-DICK, Page 016
• MOBY-DICK, Page 015
• MOBY-DICK, Page 014
• MOBY-DICK, Page 013
• MOBY-DICK, Page 012
• MOBY-DICK, Page 011
• MOBY-DICK, Page 010
• MOBY-DICK, Page 009
• MOBY-DICK, Page 008
• MOBY-DICK, Page 007
• MOBY-DICK, Page 006
• MOBY-DICK, Page 005
• MOBY-DICK, Page 004
• MOBY-DICK, Page 003
• MOBY-DICK, Page 002
• MOBY-DICK, Page 001

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Moby Dick Big Read: Celebri­ties and Every­day Folk Read a Chap­ter a Day from the Great Amer­i­can Nov­el

A View From the Room Where Melville Wrote Moby Dick (Plus a Free Celebri­ty Read­ing of the Nov­el)

How Ray Brad­bury Wrote the Script for John Huston’s Moby Dick (1956)

Orson Welles Reads Moby Dick

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

How the “Paul McCartney is Dead” Hoax Started at an American College Newspaper and Went Viral (1969)

in Music | December 26th, 2014

Next time you see the still-youth­ful and musi­cal­ly pro­lif­ic Paul McCart­ney, take a good hard look and ask your­self, “is it real­ly him?” Can you be sure? Because maybe, just maybe, the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists are right—maybe Paul did die in a car acci­dent in 1966 and was replaced by a dou­ble who looks, sounds, acts, and writes almost exact­ly like him. Almost. It’s pos­si­ble. Entire­ly implau­si­ble, whol­ly improb­a­ble, but with­in the realm of phys­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ty.

In fact, the rumor of Paul’s death and replace­ment by some kind of pod per­son imposter cropped up not once, but twice dur­ing the six­ties. First, in Jan­u­ary, 1967, imme­di­ate­ly after an acci­dent involv­ing McCartney’s Mini Coop­er that month. The car, dri­ven by Moroc­can stu­dent Moham­mad Had­jij, crashed on the M1 after leav­ing McCartney’s house en route to Kei­th Richard’s Sus­sex Man­sion. Had­jij was hos­pi­tal­ized, but not killed, and Paul, rid­ing in Mick Jagger’s car, arrived at the des­ti­na­tion safe­ly.

The fol­low­ing month, the Bea­t­les Book Month­ly mag­a­zine quashed rumors that Paul had been dri­ving the Mini and had died, writ­ing, “there was absolute­ly no truth in it at all, as the Bea­t­les’ Press Offi­cer found out when he tele­phoned Paul’s St. John’s Wood home and was answered by Paul him­self who had been at home all day with his black Mini Coop­er Safe­ly locked up in the garage.” “The mag­a­zine,” writes the Bea­t­les Bible, “down­played the inci­dent, and claimed the car was in McCartney’s pos­ses­sion.”

In 1969, rumors of Paul’s death and a con­spir­a­cy to cov­er it up began cir­cu­lat­ing again, this time with an impres­sive appa­ra­tus that includ­ed pub­li­ca­tions in col­lege and local news­pa­pers, dis­cus­sions on sev­er­al radio shows, a uni­ver­si­ty research team, and enough eso­teric clues to keep high­ly sus­pi­cious, stoned, and/or para­noid, minds guess­ing for decades after­ward. The form­less gos­sip first offi­cial­ly took shape in print in the arti­cle “Is Bea­t­le Paul McCart­ney Dead?” in Iowa’s Drake Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent news­pa­per, the Times-Del­ph­ic. Cat­a­logu­ing “an amaz­ing series of pho­tos and lyrics on the group’s albums” that point­ed to “a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that McCart­ney may indeed be insane, freaked out, even dead,” the piece dives head­first into the kind of bizarre analy­sis of dis­parate sym­bols and ten­u­ous coin­ci­dences wor­thy of the most dogged of today’s con­spir­a­cy-mon­gers.

Invoked are ephemera like “a mys­te­ri­ous hand” raised over Paul’s head on the Sgt. Pepper’s cover—“an ancient death sym­bol of either the Greeks or the Amer­i­can Indians”—and Paul’s bass, lying “on the grave at the group’s feet.” The lyric “blew his mind out in a car” from “A Day in the Life” comes up, and more pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence from the album’s back cov­er and cen­ter­fold pho­to. Evi­dence is pro­duced from Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour and The White Album. Of the lat­ter, you’ve sure­ly heard, or heard of, the voice seem­ing to intone, “Turn me on, dead man,” and “Cher­ish the dead,” when “Rev­o­lu­tion No. 9” is played back­wards. Only a col­lege dorm room could have nur­tured such a dis­cov­ery.

The arti­cle reads like a parody—similar to the sub­ver­sive, half-seri­ous satir­i­cal weird­ness com­mon to the mid-six­ties hip­pie scene. But whether or not its author, Tim Harp­er, meant to pull off a hoax, the Paul is dead meme went viral when it hit the air­waves the fol­low­ing month. First, a caller to Detroit radio sta­tion WKNR trans­mit­ted the the­o­ry to DJ Russ Gibb. Their hour-long con­ver­sa­tion lead to a review of Abbey Road in The Michi­gan Dai­ly titled “McCart­ney Dead; New Evi­dence Brought to Light.” With tongue in cheek, writer Fred LaBour called the death and replace­ment of Paul “the great­est hoax of our time and the sub­se­quent found­ing of a new reli­gion based upon Paul as Mes­si­ah.” In the mode of para­noid con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry so com­mon to the time—a genre mas­tered by Thomas Pyn­chon as a lit­er­ary art—LaBour invent­ed even more clues, inad­ver­tent­ly feed­ing a pub­lic hun­gry for this kind of thing. “Although clear­ly intend­ed as a joke,” writes the Bea­t­les Bible, “it had an impact far wider than the writer and his edi­tor expect­ed.”

Part of the after­math came in two more radio shows that Octo­ber of 1969. First, in two parts at the top, New York City DJ Roby Yonge makes the case for McCartney’s death on radio sta­tion WABC-AM. Recy­cling many of the “clues” from the pre­vi­ous sources, he also con­tends that a research team of 30 stu­dents at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty has been put on the case. Yonge plain­ly states that some of the clues only emerge “if you real­ly get real­ly, real­ly high… on some, you know, like, mind-bend­ing drug,” but this pro­vi­so doesn’t seem to under­mine his con­fi­dence in the shaky web of con­nec­tions.

Was Yonge’s broad­cast just an atten­tion grab­bing act? Maybe. The next Paul is Dead radio show, just above, is most cer­tain­ly an Orson Welles-like pub­lic­i­ty stunt. Broad­cast on Hal­loween night, 1969, on Buf­fa­lo, NY’s WKBW, the show employs sev­er­al of the station’s DJs, who con­struct a detailed and dra­mat­ic nar­ra­tive of Paul’s death. The broad­cast indulges the same album-cov­er and lyric div­ina­tion of the ear­li­er Paul is Dead media, but by this time, it’s grown pret­ty hoary. But for a small con­tin­gent of die-hards, the rumor was most­ly put to rest just a few days lat­er when Life mag­a­zine pub­lished a cov­er pho­to­graph of Paul—who had been out of the pub­lic eye after the Bea­t­les’ breakup—with his wife Lin­da and their kids. Para­phras­ing Mark Twain, McCart­ney famous­ly remarked in the inter­view inside, “Rumors of my death have been great­ly exag­ger­at­ed,” and added, “If I was dead, I’m sure I’d be the last to know.”

In lat­er inter­views, the Bea­t­les denied hav­ing any­thing to do with the hoax. Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970 that the idea of them inten­tion­al­ly plant­i­ng obscure clues in their albums “was bull­shit, the whole thing was made up.” The hoax did make for some inter­est­ing publicity—even fea­tur­ing in the sto­ry­line of a Bat­man comics issue—but the band most­ly found it baf­fling and annoy­ing. Cer­tain fans, how­ev­er, refused to let it die, and there are those who still swear that Paul’s imposter, alleged­ly named Bil­ly Shears and some­times called “Faul,” still walks the earth. Paul is Dead web­sites pro­lif­er­ate on the internet—some more, some less con­vinc­ing; all of them out­landish, and all offer­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing descent into the seem­ing­ly bot­tom­less rab­bit hole of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. If that’s your kind of trip, you can eas­i­ly get lost—as did pop cul­ture briefly in 1969—in end­less “Paul is Dead” spec­u­la­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul McCartney’s Con­cep­tu­al Draw­ings For the Abbey Road Cov­er and Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour Film

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

Hear Iso­lat­ed Tracks From Five Great Rock Bassists: McCart­ney, Sting, Dea­con, Jones & Lee

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

Kurt Vonnegut Gives Advice to Aspiring Writers in a 1991 TV Interview

in Education, Literature, Television, Writing | December 22nd, 2014

Remem­ber when tele­vi­sion was the big goril­la poised to put an end to all read­ing?

Then along came the mir­a­cle of the Inter­net. Blogs begat blogs, and thus­ly did the peo­ple start to read again!

Of course, many a great news­pa­per and mag­a­zine fell before its mighty engine. So it goes.

So did tele­vi­sion in the old fash­ioned sense. So it goes.

Fun­ny to think that these fast-mov­ing devel­op­ments weren’t even part of the land­scape in 1991, when author Kurt Von­negut swung by his home­town of Indi­anapo­lis to appear on the local pro­gram, Across Indi­ana.

Host Michael Atwood point­ed out the irony of a tele­vi­sion inter­view­er ask­ing a writer if tele­vi­sion was to blame for the decline in read­ing and writ­ing. After which he lis­tened polite­ly while his guest answered at length, com­par­ing read­ing to an acquired skill on par with “ice skat­ing or play­ing the French horn.”

Gee… irony elic­its a more fre­net­ic approach in the age of Buz­zFeed, Twit­ter, and YouTube. (Nailed it!)

Irony and human­i­ty run neck and neck in Vonnegut’s work, but his appre­ci­a­tion for his Hoosier upbring­ing was nev­er less than sin­cere:

When I was born in 1922, bare­ly a hun­dred years after Indi­ana became the 19th state in the Union, the Mid­dle West already boast­ed a con­stel­la­tion of cities with sym­pho­ny orches­tras and muse­ums and libraries, and insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing, and schools of music and art, rem­i­nis­cent of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire before the First World War. One could almost say that Chica­go was our Vien­na, Indi­anapo­lis our Prague, Cincin­nati our Budapest and Cleve­land our Bucharest.

To grow up in such a city, as I did, was to find cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions as ordi­nary as police sta­tions or fire hous­es. So it was rea­son­able for a young per­son to day­dream of becom­ing some sort of artist or intel­lec­tu­al, if not a police­man or fire­man. So I did. So did many like me.

Such provin­cial cap­i­tals, which is what they would have been called in Europe, were charm­ing­ly self-suf­fi­cient with respect to the fine arts. We some­times had the direc­tor of the Indi­anapo­lis Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra to sup­per, or writ­ers and painters, and archi­tects like my father, of local renown.

I stud­ied clar­inet under the first chair clar­inetist of our orches­tra. I remem­ber the orchestra’s per­for­mance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Over­ture, in which the can­nons’ roars were sup­plied by a police­man fir­ing blank car­tridges into an emp­ty garbage can. I knew the police­man. He some­times guard­ed street cross­ings used by stu­dents on their way to or from School 43, my school, the James Whit­comb Riley School.  

Vonnegut’s views were shaped at Short­ridge High School, where he num­bered among the many not-yet-renowned writ­ers hon­ing their craft on The Dai­ly Echo. Thought he did­n’t bring it up in the video above, the Echo also yield­ed his nick­name: Snarf.

Von­negut agreed with inter­view­er Atwood that the dai­ly prac­tice of keep­ing a jour­nal is an excel­lent dis­ci­pline for begin­ning writ­ers. He also con­sid­ered jour­nal­is­tic assign­ments a great train­ing ground. He made a point of men­tion­ing that Mark Twain and Ring Lard­ner got their starts as news­pa­per reporters. It may be hard­er for aspir­ing writ­ers to find pay­ing work these days, but the Inter­net is replete with oppor­tu­ni­ties for those who crave a dai­ly assign­ment.

It’s also over­flow­ing with bul­let point­ed lists on how to become a writer, but if you’re like me, you’ll pre­fer to receive this advice from Von­negut, him­self, on a set fes­tooned with farm­ing imple­ments, quilts, and dipped can­dles.

The inter­view con­tin­ues in the remain­ing parts:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Reads Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Like Von­negut, she’s a native of Indi­anapo­lis, and her moth­er was the edi­tor of the Short Ridge Dai­ly Echo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Lou Reed Sings “Blue Christmas” with Laurie Anderson, Rufus Wainwright & Friends (2008)

in Music | December 19th, 2014

Elvis Pres­ley record­ed “Blue Christ­mas” for his Christ­mas album in 1957 and made the song some­thing of a hol­i­day clas­sic. In the years to come, “Blue Christ­mas” would be cov­ered by John­ny Math­is, John­ny Cash, The Mis­fits, Spring­steen, Ringo Starr, Bon Jovi and even­tu­al­ly Lou Reed too. Above, we have Lou per­form­ing the song at the Knit­ting Fac­to­ry in Decem­ber 2008. He’s joined on stage by Rufus Wain­wright, Martha Wain­wright, the McGar­rigle sis­ters, his wife Lau­rie Ander­son, Chaim Tan­nebaum, and Joel Zifkin. Below, find Lou pro­vid­ing the musi­cal back­ground for Sean Lennon and a host of musi­cians, who play a stir­ring ver­sion of John Lennon’s “Hap­py Xmas (War Is Over).” Both clips appear on the DVD A Not So Silent Night.

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