Eudora Welty Writes a Quirky Letter Applying for a Job at The New Yorker (1933)

in Letters, Literature | June 3rd, 2014

“Eudo­ra Wel­ty is one of the rea­sons that you thank God you know how to read,” writes an online review­er of her auto­bi­og­ra­phy One Writer’s Begin­nings. It’s a sen­ti­ment with which I could not agree more. Whether in mem­oir, short sto­ry, or nov­el, Wel­ty—win­ner of near­ly every lit­er­ary prize save the Nobel—speaks with the most high­ly indi­vid­ual of voic­es. (Wel­ty once told a Paris Review inter­view­er that she doesn’t read any­one for “kin­dred­ness.”) Her prose, so attuned to its own rhythms, so con­fi­dent­ly ven­tur­ing into new realms of thought, seems to sur­prise even her. Indeed, teach­ers of writ­ing could hard­ly do bet­ter than assign Wel­ty to illus­trate the elu­sive con­cept of “voice”—it’s a writer­ly qual­i­ty she mas­tered ear­ly, or per­haps always pos­sessed.

Take the 1933 let­ter below in which she intro­duces her­self, a young post­grad­u­ate of 23, to The New York­er in hopes of secur­ing a posi­tion doing… well, what­ev­er. She pro­pos­es “drum[ming] up opin­ions” on books and film, but only at the rate of “a lit­tle para­graph each morning—a lit­tle para­graph each night” (though she would “work like a slave” if asked). She also offers to replace car­toon­ist (and author of “The Secret Life of Wal­ter Mit­ty”) James Thurber “in case he goes off the deep end.” The let­ter brims with win­some self-con­fi­dence and breezy opti­mism, as well as the unself­con­scious self-aware­ness she makes look so easy: “That shows you how my mind works,” she writes, “quick, and away from the point.” The mag­a­zine staff, points out Shane Par­rish of Far­nam Street, “ignored her plea […] miss­ing the obvi­ous tal­ent,” though of course they would begin pub­lish­ing her sto­ries just a few years lat­er.

Read the let­ter in full below and mar­vel at how any­one could reject such a delight­ful­ly enthu­si­as­tic can­di­date (she would do just fine as a junior “pub­lic­i­ty agent” for the WPA).

March 15, 1933

Gen­tle­men,

I sup­pose you’d be more inter­est­ed in even a sleight‑o’-hand trick than you’d be in an appli­ca­tion for a posi­tion with your mag­a­zine, but as usu­al you can’t have the thing you want most.

I am 23 years old, six weeks on the loose in N.Y. How­ev­er, I was a New York­er for a whole year in 1930–31 while attend­ing adver­tis­ing class­es in Columbi­a’s School of Busi­ness. Actu­al­ly I am a south­ern­er, from Mis­sis­sip­pi, the nation’s most back­ward state. Ram­i­fi­ca­tions include Wal­ter H. Page, who, unluck­i­ly for me, is no longer con­nect­ed with Dou­ble­day-Page, which is no longer Dou­ble­day-Page, even. I have a B.A. (’29) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, where I majored in Eng­lish with­out a care in the world. For the last eigh­teen months I was lan­guish­ing in my own office in a radio sta­tion in Jack­son, Miss., writ­ing con­ti­nu­ities, dra­mas, mule feed adver­tise­ments, san­ta claus talks, and life insur­ance playlets; now I have giv­en that up.

As to what I might do for you — I have seen an unto­ward amount of pic­ture gal­leries and 15¢ movies late­ly, and could review them with my old pros­per­ous detach­ment, I think; in fact, I recent­ly coined a gen­er­al word for Matis­se’s pic­tures after see­ing his lat­est at the Marie Har­ri­man: con­cu­bineap­ple. That shows you how my mind works — quick, and away from the point. I read sim­ply vora­cious­ly, and can drum up an opin­ion after­wards.

Since I have bought an India print, and a large num­ber of phono­graph records from a Mr. Nuss­baum who picks them up, and a Cezanne Bathers one inch long (that shows you I read e. e. cum­mings I hope), I am anx­ious to have an apart­ment, not to men­tion a small portable phono­graph. How I would like to work for you! A lit­tle para­graph each morn­ing — a lit­tle para­graph each night, if you can’t hire me from day­light to dark, although I would work like a slave. I can also draw like Mr. Thurber, in case he goes off the deep end. I have stud­ied flower paint­ing.

There is no telling where I may apply, if you turn me down; I real­ize this will not phase you, but con­sid­er my oth­er alter­na­tive: the U of N.C. offers for $12.00 to let me dance in Vachel Lind­say’s Con­go. I con­go on. I rest my case, repeat­ing that I am a hard work­er.

Tru­ly yours,

Eudo­ra Wel­ty

Welty’s let­ter appears along­side dozens more remark­able mis­sives in the beau­ti­ful new book, Let­ters of Note: An Eclec­tic Col­lec­tion of Cor­re­spon­dence Deserv­ing of a Wider Audi­ence.

via Far­nam Street/Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ralph Wal­do Emer­son Writes a Job Rec­om­men­da­tion for Walt Whit­man (1863)

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

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

In Basho’s Footsteps: Hiking the Narrow Road to the Deep North Three Centuries Later

in Poetry | May 28th, 2014

Mat­suo Basho (1644–1694) lived his pecu­liar life on the con­vic­tion that art could cre­ate an aware­ness that allowed one to see into and com­mu­ni­cate the essence of expe­ri­ence. Through­out his life he searched for the state of being one with the object of his poems, some­thing he believed a poet need­ed to reach in order to write truth­ful­ly. This life-long search brought Basho to wan­der­ing. He thought that trav­el­ling would lead to a state of karu­mi (light­ness), essen­tial for art. In May 1689, when he was already a renowned poet in Japan, he sold his house and embarked on his great­est trip. Basho trav­elled light, always on foot and always slow­ly, look­ing care­ful­ly and deeply. He sought to leave every­thing behind (even him­self) and have a direct expe­ri­ence with the nature around him, and he saw Zen Bud­dhism and trav­el­ling as the way to achieve this. He walked 2000 kilo­me­ters around the north­ern coast of Hon­shu (Japan’s main island), writ­ing prose and poet­ry along the way, and com­pil­ing it all in a book that changed the course of Japan­ese lit­er­a­ture, The Nar­row Road to the Deep North.

We are Pablo Fer­nán­dez (writer) and Anya Gleiz­er (painter), the adven­tur­ers and artists behind In Basho’s Foot­steps. 325 years have passed since Basho began hik­ing the Nar­row Road.  This sum­mer, we will retrace his trail, in an effort to come in con­tact with Basho’s approach to art and trav­el­ling. We will hike for three months, camp­ing on the way, trav­el­ling as light­ly and aus­tere­ly as pos­si­ble. We will write and paint along the route, and com­pile what we pro­duce in an artist’s book. It will be hard, but art avails no com­pro­mis­es. Of course, apart from the phys­i­cal and men­tal hard­ships, there are finan­cial ones (flights and food for three months, and pub­lish­ing costs). To make the project pos­si­ble, we have used Kick­starter, a crowd­fund­ing plat­form. With Kick­starter peo­ple are able to fund the projects they like, and receive a reward in exchange (we are giv­ing our back­ers copies of our book, silk-screen prints and even paint­ings, depend­ing on the pledge).  This is a great way of cre­at­ing an audi­ence involved in the cre­ation process. We don’t only receive finan­cial sup­port, but also very use­ful feed­back, and we will be able to show our audi­ence how the book is com­ing togeth­er. Because we want our art to reach as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, we are giv­ing a dig­i­tal edi­tion of the book to every­one who backs the project with more than $5, before the book is acces­si­ble to the gen­er­al pub­lic. Our Kick­starter cam­paign ends on June 4th. It has been a great suc­cess so far: We have already cov­ered the trav­el­ling costs and now we are fund­ing the pub­lish­ing costs. For us, crowd-fund­ing has opened up the tra­di­tion­al obsta­cles between cre­ators and read­ers. This sum­mer, with the help of all our sup­port­ers, we will retrace Basho’s Foot­steps.

Edi­tor’s note: This has been a guest post by Pablo Fer­nán­dez and Anya Gleiz­er. Please con­sid­er sup­port­ing their great project here. Also find trans­la­tions of Basho’s poet­ry in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Ray Bradbury on Zen and the Art of Writing (1973)

in Writing | May 27th, 2014

The pro­lif­ic Ray Brad­bury, author of Fahren­heit 451, The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles, and many oth­er works both inside and out­side the realm of sci­ence fic­tion, appar­ent­ly suf­fered no short­age of cre­ativ­i­ty. Pro­lif­ic in his fic­tion writ­ing, he also proved gen­er­ous in his encour­age­ment of younger writ­ers: we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured not just his twelve essen­tial pieces of writ­ing advice but his secret to life and love. He even wrote enough on the sub­ject of writ­ing to con­sti­tute an entire book, the col­lec­tion Zen in the Art of Writ­ing: Essays on Cre­ativ­i­ty. In the 1973 title piece, Brad­bury, hard­ly known as a Bud­dhist, explains his use of the term zen for its “shock val­ue”: “The vari­ety of reac­tions to it should guar­an­tee me some sort of crowd, if only of curi­ous onlook­ers, those who come to pity and stay to shout. The old sideshow Med­i­cine Men who trav­eled about our coun­try used cal­liope, drum, and Black­foot Indi­an, to insure open-mouthed atten­tion. I hope I will be for­giv­en for using ZEN in much the same way, at least here at the start. For, in the end, you may dis­cov­er I’m not jok­ing after all.”

He breaks down his own idea of zen in his writ­ing process by first ask­ing him­self, “Now while I have you here before my plat­form, what words shall I whip forth paint­ed in red let­ters ten feet tall?” He paints the fol­low­ing, and after each we include selec­tions from the essay:

• WORK. “It is, above all, the word about which your career will revolve for a life­time. Begin­ning now you should become not its slave, which is too mean a term, but its part­ner. Once you are real­ly a co-shar­er of exis­tence with your work, that word will lose its repel­lent aspects. [ … ] We often indulge in made work, in false busi­ness, to keep from being bored. Or worse still we con­ceive the idea of work­ing for mon­ey. The mon­ey becomes the object, the tar­get, the end-all and be-all. Thus work, being impor­tant only as a means to that end, degen­er­ates into bore­dom. Can we won­der then that we hate it so?”
• RELAXATION. “Impos­si­ble! you say. How can you work and relax? How can you cre­ate and not be a ner­vous wreck? [ … ] Tense­ness results from not know­ing or giv­ing up try­ing to know. Work, giv­ing us expe­ri­ence, results in new con­fi­dence and even­tu­al­ly in relax­ation. The type of dynam­ic relax­ation again, as in sculpt­ing, where the sculp­tor does not con­scious­ly have to tell his fin­gers what to do. The sur­geon does not tell his scalpel what to do. Nor does the ath­lete advise his body. Sud­den­ly, a nat­ur­al rhythm is achieved. The body thinks for itself.”
• DON’T THINK! “The writer who wants to tap the larg­er truth in him­self must reject the temp­ta­tions of Joyce or Camus or Ten­nessee Williams, as exhib­it­ed in the lit­er­ary reviews. He must for­get the mon­ey wait­ing for him in mass-cir­cu­la­tion. He must ask him­self, ‘What do I real­ly think of the world, what do I love, fear, hate?’ and begin to pour this on paper. Then, through the emo­tions, work­ing steadi­ly, over a long peri­od of time, his writ­ing will clar­i­fy; he will relax because he thinks right and he will think even righter because he relax­es. The two will become inter­change­able. At last he will begin to see him­self.”
• FURTHER RELAXATION. “We should not look down on work nor look down on the forty-five out of fifty-two sto­ries writ­ten in our first year as fail­ures. To fail is to give up. But you are in the midst of a mov­ing process. Noth­ing fails then. All goes on. Work is done. If good, you learn from it. If bad, you learn even more. Work done and behind you is a les­son to be stud­ied. There is no fail­ure unless one stops. Not to work is to cease, tight­en up, become ner­vous and there­fore destruc­tive of the cre­ative process. [ … ] Isn’t it obvi­ous by now that the more we talk of work, the clos­er we come to Relax­ation.”
• “Have I sound­ed like a cultist of some sort? A yogi feed­ing on kumquats, grapenuts and almonds here beneath the banyan tree? Let me assure you I speak of all these things only because they have worked for me for fifty years. And I think they might work for you. The true test is in the doing. Be prag­mat­ic, then. If you’re not hap­py with the way your writ­ing has gone, you might give my method a try. If you do, I think you might eas­i­ly find a new def­i­n­i­tion for Work. And the word is LOVE.”

You can read much more about Brad­bury’s method of work­ing, relax­ing, not think­ing, and relax­ing fur­ther still — and his thoughts on the joy of writ­ing, keep­ing the muse fed, estab­lish­ing a thou­sand-or-two-words-a-day habit, and “how to climb the tree of life, throw rocks at your­self, and get down with­out break­ing your bones or your spir­it” — in the book, Zen in the Art of Writ­ing: Essays on Cre­ativ­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

The Secret of Life and Love, Accord­ing to Ray Brad­bury (1968)

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

Ray Brad­bury: “The Things That You Love Should Be Things That You Do.” “Books Teach Us That”

Ray Brad­bury: Sto­ry of a Writer 1963 Film Cap­tures the Para­dox­i­cal Late Sci-Fi Author

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

The Importance of Kindness: An Animation of George Saunders’ Touching Graduation Speech

in Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | April 25th, 2014

Ever since he was first pub­lished in The New York­er back in 1992, George Saun­ders has been craft­ing a string of bril­liant short sto­ries that have rein­vent­ed the form. His sto­ries are dark, fun­ny, and satir­i­cal that then turn on a dime and become sur­pris­ing­ly mov­ing. And the mad­den­ing thing about him is that he makes such tonal dex­ter­i­ty look easy. Over the course of his career, he has won piles of awards includ­ing a MacArthur “Genius” Fel­low­ship in 2006. In 2013, his col­lec­tion of short sto­ries The Tenth of Decem­ber was select­ed by the New York Times as one of the best books of the year. You can read 10 sto­ries by Saun­ders free online here.

Last year, Saun­ders deliv­ered the con­vo­ca­tion speech for Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty where he teach­es writ­ing. Most such speech­es are dull and for­get­table or, as was the case when Ross Per­ot spoke at my grad­u­a­tion, inco­her­ent and churl­ish. Saunders’s speech, how­ev­er, was some­thing dif­fer­ent — a qui­et, self-effac­ing plea for empa­thy. When it was reprint­ed by the New York Times last July, the speech seem­ing­ly popped up on every third person’s Face­book feed.

Brook­lyn-based group Seri­ous Lunch has cre­at­ed an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Saun­ders’ speech, voiced by the author him­self. You can watch it above and read along below. You’ll prob­a­bly want to call your mom or help an old lady across the street after­ward.

I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than try to be kinder.

In sev­enth grade, this new kid joined our class. In the inter­est of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, her name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s‑eye glass­es that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When ner­vous, which was pret­ty much always, she had a habit of tak­ing a strand of hair into her mouth and chew­ing on it.

So she came to our school and our neigh­bor­hood, and was most­ly ignored, occa­sion­al­ly teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remem­ber the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a lit­tle gut-kicked, as if, hav­ing just been remind­ed of her place in things, she was try­ing, as much as pos­si­ble, to dis­ap­pear. After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth.

Some­times I’d see her hang­ing around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.
And then – they moved. That was it. One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.

End of sto­ry.

Now, why do I regret that? Why, forty-two years lat­er, am I still think­ing about it? Rel­a­tive to most of the oth­er kids, I was actu­al­ly pret­ty nice to her. I nev­er said an unkind word to her. In fact, I some­times even (mild­ly) defend­ed her. But still, it both­ers me.

What I regret most in my life are fail­ures of kind­ness.

Those moments when anoth­er human being was there, in front of me, suf­fer­ing, and I responded…sensibly. Reserved­ly. Mild­ly.

Or, to look at it from the oth­er end of the tele­scope: Who, in your life, do you remem­ber most fond­ly, with the most unde­ni­able feel­ings of warmth?
Those who were kind­est to you, I bet.

But kind­ness, it turns out, is hard — it starts out all rain­bows and pup­py dogs, and expands to include … well, every­thing.

You can read Saunders’s entire speech here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Saun­ders Extols the Virtues of Kind­ness in 2013 Speech to Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Grads

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Oprah Winfrey’s Har­vard Com­mence­ment Speech: Fail­ure is Just Part of Mov­ing Through Life

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

The Origins of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk: Vintage Footage of Cab Calloway, Sammy Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

in Dance, Video - Arts & Culture | April 21st, 2014

Michael Jack­son took one giant leap for pop his­to­ry on March 25, 1983 when he gave an ador­ing pub­lic their first taste of his sig­na­ture moon­walk in hon­or of Motown Records’ 25th birth­day. (See below)

Nov­el­ty-wise, it was­n’t quite a Neil Arm­strong moment. Like many artists, Jack­son had many prece­dents from which he could and did draw. He can be cred­it­ed with bring­ing a cer­tain atti­tude to the pro­ceed­ings. The expert prac­ti­tion­ers in the video above are more ebul­lient, tap­ping, slid­ing and pro­to-moon­walk­ing them­selves into a state of rap­ture that feeds off the audi­ence’s plea­sure.

The line-up includes artists lucky enough to have left last­ing foot­prints—Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire, as well as those we’d do well to redis­cov­er: Rub­ber­neck Holmes, Earl “Snake­hips” Tuck­er, Buck and Bub­bles.…

Lack­ing the Inter­net, how­ev­er, it does seem unlike­ly that Jack­son would’ve spent much time por­ing over the foot­work of these mas­ters. (He may have tak­en a sar­to­r­i­al cue from their socks.)

Instead, he invest­ed a lot of time break­ing down the street moves, what he referred to in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy as “a ‘pop­ping’ type of thing that black kids had cre­at­ed danc­ing on the street cor­ners in the ghet­to.”

Jack­son’s sis­ter, LaToya, iden­ti­fied for­mer Soul Train and Sol­id Gold dancer Jef­frey Daniel, below, as her broth­er’s pri­ma­ry tutor in this endeav­or. (He went on to co-chore­o­graph Jack­son’s videos for “Bad” and “Smooth Crim­i­nal”.) As to the sto­ry behind his moon­walk, or back­slide as he called it before Jack­son’s ver­sion oblit­er­at­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any oth­er name, Daniel gave props to the same kids Jack­son did.

For those of you who men­tioned it on Twit­ter and in our com­ments, we’ve added Char­lie Chap­lin’s scene in Mod­ern Times.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Keep­ing Jacko in Per­spec­tive

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

Yoko Ono, Age 80, Still Has Moves, Dances with The Beast­ie Boys, Ira Glass, Rober­ta Flack & Friends

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Sir Patrick Stewart & Sir Ian McKellen Play The Newlywed Game

in Comedy, Random | April 21st, 2014

I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that this is the first time two knight­ed cul­tur­al fig­ures have played The New­ly­wed Game — a ver­sion of that wince (and nos­tal­gia) ‑induc­ing game show that ran from the 1960s through the 1990s. Although Stew­art and McK­ellen aren’t mar­ried, they know each oth­er plen­ty well. They’ve worked togeth­er on stage (in a pro­duc­tion of Wait­ing for Godot) and in film (they’ll be appear­ing togeth­er in an upcom­ing X‑Men movie.) And suf­fice it to say, they’ve formed a tight friend­ship. When Stew­art mar­ried Sun­ny Ozell last year, McK­ellen offi­ci­at­ed at the wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny.

This lit­tle bit took place at a Buz­zFeed Brews event back in Feb­ru­ary. You can watch their full 48 minute appear­ance here. Also find the two in a deep­er con­ver­sa­tion record­ed at the Screen Actors Guild Foun­da­tion just last month.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sir Patrick Stew­art Demon­strates How Cows Moo in Dif­fer­ent Eng­lish Accents

Sir Ian McK­ellen Reads Man­u­al for Chang­ing Tires in Dra­mat­ic Voice

Patrick Stew­art Talks Can­did­ly About Domes­tic Vio­lence in a Poignant Q&A Ses­sion at Comic­palooza

Take Free Online Courses at Hogwarts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

in Online Courses, Sci Fi | April 15th, 2014

A group of ded­i­cat­ed Har­ry Pot­ter fans have cre­at­ed a new edu­ca­tion­al web­site called Hog­warts is Here. The site is free — you only have to spend fake Galleons on the site — and it lets users enroll at the Hog­warts School of Witch­craft and Wiz­ardry and work through a sev­en-year cur­ricu­lum, tak­ing the same cours­es that Har­ry, Ron and Hermione did in the great Har­ry Pot­ter series. The first year con­sists of cours­es that will sound famil­iar to any Har­ry Pot­ter read­er: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Astron­o­my, Her­bol­o­gy, His­to­ry of Mag­ic, and Trans­fig­u­ra­tion. The 9‑week online cours­es fea­ture home­work assign­ment and quizzes. Stu­dents can also read dig­i­tal text­books, such as A Stan­dard Book of Spells and A Begin­ner’s Guide to Trans­fig­u­ra­tion. We have yet to enroll in a course, so we would be curi­ous get your feed­back.

Fans of fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture will also want to check out the Tolkien cours­es list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 900 Free Online Cours­es. Also see this com­plete read­ing of The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis, found in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Hear Patti Smith Read 12 Poems From Seventh Heaven, Her First Collection (1972)

in Poetry | April 15th, 2014

So it’s Nation­al Poet­ry Month, and the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets rec­om­mends 30 Ways to Cel­e­brate, includ­ing some old stand­bys like mem­o­riz­ing a poem, read­ing a poem a day, and attend­ing a read­ing. All sen­si­ble, if some­what staid, sug­ges­tions (I myself have been re-read­ing all of Wal­lace Stevens’ work—make of that what you will). Here’s a sug­ges­tion that didn’t make the list: spend some time dig­ging the poet­ry of Pat­ti Smith.

A liv­ing breath­ing leg­end, Smith doesn’t appear in many aca­d­e­m­ic antholo­gies, and that’s just fine. What she offers are bridges from the Beats to the six­ties New York art scene to sev­en­ties punk poet­ry and beyond, with span­drels made from French sur­re­al­ist lean­ings and rock and roll obses­sions. A 1977 Oxford Lit­er­ary Review arti­cle apt­ly describes Smith in her hey­day:

In the late six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties Pat­ti Smith was a mem­ber of Warhol’s androg­y­nous beau­ties liv­ing under the flu­o­res­cent lights of New York City’s Chelsea Hotel…Her per­for­mances were sex­u­al bruis­ings with the spasms of Jag­ger and the off-key of Dylan. Her musi­cal poems often came from her poet­i­cal fan­tasies of Rim­baud.

Smith’s work is sen­su­al and wild­ly kinet­ic, as is her process, which she once described as “a real phys­i­cal act.”

When I’m home writ­ing on the type­writer, I go crazy
I move like a mon­key
I’ve wet myself, I’ve come in my pants writ­ing

Emi­ly Dick­en­son she ain’t, but Smith also has an abid­ing love and respect for her lit­er­ary fore­bears, whether now-almost-estab­lish­ment fig­ures like Vir­ginia Woolf or still-some­what-out­ré char­ac­ters like Antonin Artaud and Jean Genet.

Smith’s first pub­lished col­lec­tion of poet­ry, Sev­enth Heav­en, appeared in 1972 and includ­ed trib­utes to Edie Sedg­wick and Mar­i­anne Faith­full. She ded­i­cat­ed the book to gang­ster writer Mick­ey Spillane and Rolling Stones’ muse, and part­ner of both Bri­an Jones and Kei­th Richards, Ani­ta Pal­len­berg.

The book has not been reis­sued, and print copies are rare. Yet, as the afore-quot­ed arti­cle notes, Pat­ti Smith’s is an “oral poet­ics” that “uses much of her voice rhythms.” The line between her work as a punk singer and per­for­mance poet is ephemer­al, per­haps nonex­is­tent—Pat­ti Smith on the page is great, but Pat­ti Smith on stage is greater. Hear for your­self, above, in a 1972 record­ing of Smith read­ing twelve poems from her first col­lec­tion at St. Mark’s Church in New York City. She sounds almost exact­ly like Lin­da Manz from Ter­rence Malick’s Days of Heav­en, a street­wise kid with a roman­tic streak a mile wide.

Over three decades and many more pub­li­ca­tions lat­er, Smith is now a Nation­al Book Award win­ner and a con­sid­er­ably mel­low­er pres­ence, but she has nev­er strayed far from her roots. Above, see her at back at St. Marks in 2011, read­ing her poem “Oath,” first writ­ten in 1966, whose famous first line “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine” became the unfor­get­table open­ing to her equal­ly unfor­get­table “Glo­ria.” For con­trast, hear her read the same poem below, in 1973, over squalling gui­tar feed­back (and with the famous line begin­ning “Christ died…”). Clas­sic, clas­sic stuff.

See and hear many more of her read­ings on Youtube, and see this site for a par­tial Pat­ti Smith bib­li­og­ra­phy, pub­li­ca­tion his­to­ry, and select­ed archive of poems, essays, and reviews.

Smith’s read­ings of Sev­enth Heav­en will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

See Pat­ti Smith Give Two Dra­mat­ic Read­ings of Allen Ginsberg’s “Foot­note to Howl”

Pat­ti Smith Plays Songs by The Ramones, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed & More on CBGB’s Clos­ing Night (2006)

Pat­ti Smith Doc­u­men­tary Dream of Life Beau­ti­ful­ly Cap­tures the Author’s Life and Long Career (2008)

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

Before The Simpsons, Matt Groening Illustrated a “Student’s Guide” for Apple Computers (1989)

in Comics/Cartoons, Technology | April 10th, 2014

A friend once told me of his old­er cousin who, for the freak­ish act of installing a com­put­er in his col­lege dorm room, found him­self imme­di­ate­ly and irrev­o­ca­bly dubbed “com­put­er Jon.” This hap­pened in the ear­ly 1980s, and boy, have times changed. They’d even changed by the late 1980s, by which time Apple’s col­lege mar­ket­ing efforts had become suf­fi­cient­ly advanced to require the tal­ents of Matt Groen­ing, best known as the man who cre­at­ed The Simp­sons. But that prime-time ani­mat­ed sit­com would­n’t begin its record-break­ing run (still with­out an end in sight) until Christ­mas 1989, while the Groen­ing-illus­trat­ed Who Needs a Com­put­er Any­way? (which you can flip through above) appeared ear­li­er that year. Back then, read­ers might well have known him first and fore­most as the cre­ator of the satir­i­cal alter­na­tive-week­ly com­ic strip Life in Hell, which had debuted in 1977. One of its stars, the hap­less but good-heart­ed young one-eared rab­bit Bon­go, even made his way to Apple brochure’s cov­er. Though com­put­ers them­selves had long since come to dom­i­nate Amer­i­ca’s cam­pus­es by the time I entered col­lege, he and Groen­ing’s oth­er now-less­er-known char­ac­ters did do their part to pre­pare me for acad­e­mia.

I refer, of course, to School is Hell, his 1987 Life in Hell book offer­ing sar­don­ic primers on each and every phase of mod­ern edu­ca­tion from kinder­garten to grad school (“when you haven’t had enough pun­ish­ment”). Groen­ing’s pages in Who Needs a Com­put­er Any­way? read like a less sharp-edged ver­sion of those car­toons, fol­low­ing Life in Hel­l’s sig­na­ture “The 9 Types of…” for­mat to present the read­er with their nine types of future col­lege class­mates, from “the stressed” to “the tech­noid” to “the unem­ployed.” Between these, you can read Apple’s pitch for why you’ll find a piece of equip­ment still some­what out­landish and expen­sive so essen­tial to every aspect of your col­lege career. Though dat­ed tech­ni­cal­ly — the text men­tions noth­ing of the inter­net, for instance, which this gen­er­a­tion of col­lege stu­dents would soon­er drop out than do with­out — it nev­er­the­less under­scores the design virtues of Apple com­put­ers — an intu­itive inter­face, appli­ca­tion inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, “every­thing you need in one small, trans­portable case” — that remain design virtues today. It also dis­plays an impres­sive pre­science of the per­son­al com­put­er’s com­ing indis­pens­abil­i­ty, a con­fi­dent pre­dic­tion that, if not for the slack­er’s lev­i­ty lent by Groen­ing’s hand, might, at the time, actu­al­ly have sound­ed implau­si­ble.

via Retro­naut/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Edgy 1990s Com­mer­cial for Apple’s Mac­in­tosh Com­put­er

Every Apple Ad Ever Aired on TV

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984″ Com­mer­cial, Aired 30 Years Ago on Super Bowl Sun­day

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

The Books You Think Every Intelligent Person Should Read: Crime and Punishment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

in Books | April 6th, 2014

While I nor­mal­ly try not to get involved with com­ments on web sites (you know what I mean), I’d rather get involved with the com­ments of some web sites than oth­ers. I doubt that under­neath any Youtube video, for exam­ple,  you’d find dozens and dozens of well-con­sid­ered sug­ges­tions for the canon of books every intel­li­gent per­son should read, as we did here at Open Cul­ture when we put the ques­tion to you on Wednes­day. In the com­ments to that post as well as on our Face­book Page, we received a host of respons­es scat­tered sat­is­fy­ing­ly across the tex­tu­al map: every­thing from Michel Fou­cault to Fou­cault’s Pen­du­lum, Gib­bon’s His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to Bryson’s Short His­to­ry of Near­ly Every­thing, 18th-cen­tu­ry Ger­man philoso­pher Immanuel Kant to rep­til­ian con­spir­a­cy-envi­sion­ing ex-foot­baller David Icke. The top-rank­ing vol­ume? Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment (avail­able, inci­den­tal­ly, in our free eBook col­lec­tion: Kin­dle from Ama­zon – Read Online), fol­lowed by Her­man Melville’s Moby-Dick (avail­able there too: iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats). Let none say that Open Cul­ture read­ers shy away from weighty lit­er­a­ture.

Oth­er, short­er nov­els pop­u­lar­ly sug­gest­ed include Voltaire’s Can­dide (iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats), Joseph Con­rad’s Heart of Dark­ness (iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats), and George Orwell’s 1984 (Read Online). We also received a num­ber of votes for books famous­ly pored over for thou­sands upon thou­sands of hours by their enthu­si­asts, such as the Bible, Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy (iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats), and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. (Giv­en the for­mi­da­ble inter­net pres­ence of Rand’s read­ers, I expect­ed more of an inun­da­tion of her titles, but they must not have turned out in force this time.) Such clas­sic and decep­tive­ly uni­ver­sal guides to strat­e­gy as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats – Read Online) and Nic­colò Machi­avel­li’s The Prince (iPad/iPhone — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats) also placed well, as did books like Pla­to’s Repub­lic (iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online), Hen­ry David Thore­au’s Walden (iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats), and Her­mann Hes­se’s Sid­dartha (Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats) — the ones you prob­a­bly got assigned once, but that you may not then have under­stood why you should actu­al­ly read. 

The rec­om­men­da­tions fas­ci­nate, but so do their jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. (My per­son­al favorite: “It’s a book about shaman­ism, although it’s not what you would expect from a social­ly accept­ed descrip­tion of shaman­ism.”) Jo Stafford calls Crime and Pun­ish­ment and Moby-Dick, the two big win­ners, “per­fect exam­ples of how great fic­tion can pose the ‘big ques­tions’, par­tic­u­lar­ly around what it means to act moral­ly.” Moira pitch­es Robert M. Pir­sig’s Zen and the Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance as a “mod­ern study of the schism between clas­si­cist and roman­ti­cist think­ing.” Nick Williams says Can­dide “still feeds the inner cyn­ic,” and Jason con­sid­ers Walden “a bet­ter les­son on cap­i­tal­ism than The Wealth of Nations.” Arthur McMil­lan rec­om­mends Julian Barnes’ A His­to­ry of the World in 10½ Chap­ters by hold­ing out the promise that it “encap­su­lates the sheer futil­i­ty of everything[ness].” Anoth­er read­er sug­gests William Godwin’s Polit­i­cal Enquiry “to be remind­ed what books inspired us to be: free.” Wise words indeed, Mr. Beer N. Hock­ey.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

575 Free eBooks: Down­load Great Books for Free

What Books Should Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Read?: Tell Us Your Picks; We’ll Tell You Ours

See Nobel Lau­re­ate Joseph Brodsky’s Read­ing List For Hav­ing an Intel­li­gent Con­ver­sa­tion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.