The Enduring Analog Underworld of Gramercy Typewriter

in Books, History, Technology | October 22nd, 2012

Are type­writ­ers going the way of vinyl?

Note to those cave dwellers who’ve yet to suc­cumb to Mad Men mania, it’s not that same route so trav­eled by the dodo. For a while it looked like the world’s sup­ply of Under­woods and Olivet­tis was being req­ui­si­tioned for hip­ster jew­el­ry, but their recent come­back is root­ed in their intend­ed pur­pose. These days, they’re near fetish objects for roman­tic young writ­ers con­ceived in the shad­ow of the Mac Clas­sic.

Mean­while, the likes of Cor­mac McCarthy and David McCul­lough, author of 1776, have yet to turn their backs on their beloved, quite like­ly lucky ana­log imple­ments.

All due respect to the young Turks seek­ing to dig­i­tize the dinosaur, but the real hero of the type­writer’s post mil­len­ni­al sur­vival is Paul Schweitzer, the ink fin­gered med­i­cine man at the helm of Gramer­cy Type­writer. His once-robust com­pe­ti­tion con­signed to the ash heap, Schweitzer has both the stub­born­ness and exper­tise to tough it out, in an ana­log lair that’s the antithe­sis of sleek.

No one will fault you if your heart lies with your var­i­ous screens. But let’s not for­get where you came from.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mak­ing Paper in L.A., Pianos in Paris: Old Crafts­men Hang­ing on in a Chang­ing World

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of a half dozen some books includ­ing the decid­ed­ly ana­log Zinester’s Guide to NYC.

Ezra Pound’s Fiery 1939 Reading of His Early Poem, ‘Sestina: Altaforte’

in Literature, Poetry | October 22nd, 2012

In this rare record­ing from 1939, Ezra Pound gives a pas­sion­ate read­ing of his ear­ly work about a war­mon­ger­ing 12th cen­tu­ry trou­ba­dour, a poem called “Ses­ti­na: Altaforte.”

The poem was writ­ten in ear­ly 1909, when Pound was an ambi­tious 23-year-old Amer­i­can liv­ing in Lon­don. At that time Pound was in the habit of spend­ing hours every day por­ing over books in the British Muse­um read­ing room.

“I resolved that at thir­ty I would know more about poet­ry than any man liv­ing,” wrote Pound, “that I would know the dynam­ic con­tent from the shell, that I would know what was account­ed poet­ry every­where, what part of poet­ry was ‘inde­struc­tible,’ what part could not be lost by trans­la­tion, and–scarcely less impor­tant what effects were obtain­able in one lan­guage only and were utter­ly inca­pable of being trans­lat­ed.”

In pur­suit of this goal, Pound “learned more or less of nine for­eign lan­guages.” Among those was Occ­i­tan, or Langue d’oc, the lan­guage of the medieval trou­ba­dours. Pound had become fas­ci­nat­ed with the trou­ba­dours while studing romance lit­er­a­ture at Hamil­ton Col­lege and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia. One fig­ure who espe­cial­ly intrigued him was Bertran de Born, the late-12th cen­tu­ry noble­man, war­rior and trou­ba­dour who was immor­tal­ized by Dante Alighieri in Can­to XXVIII of the Infer­no as one of the sow­ers of dis­cord in Cir­cle Eight, con­demned to be hacked to pieces over and over again for his role in foment­ing a quar­rel between King Hen­ry II of Eng­land and his sons Richard II (the “Lion­heart”) and Prince Hen­ry. In John Cia­rdi’s trans­la­tion of the Infer­no, Dante describes the hideous fig­ure of Bertran, his head cut off for the sin of sow­ing dis­cord between kins­men:

I saw it there; I seem to see it still–
a body with­out a head, that moved along
like all the oth­ers in that spew and spill.

It held the sev­ered head by its own hair,
swing­ing it like a lantern in its hand;
and the head looked at us and wept in its despair.

It made itself a lamp of its own head,
and they were two in one and one in two;
how this can be, He knows who so com­mand­ed. 

Pound would even­tu­al­ly trans­late sev­er­al of Bertran’s sur­viv­ing poems, but he found it dif­fi­cult. He decid­ed first to write his own poem in the voice of Bertran, incor­po­rat­ing blood­thirsty images from the medieval poet­’s own verse and set­ting the new poem in the 12th cen­tu­ry Ses­ti­na form, which orig­i­nat­ed with the trou­ba­dours of south­ern France. In his essay “How I Began,” Pound recalls the com­po­si­tion of “Ses­ti­na: Altaforte”:

I had De Born on my mind. I had found him untrans­lat­able. Then it occurred to me that I might present him in this man­ner. I want­ed the curi­ous invo­lu­tion and recur­rence of the Ses­ti­na. I knew more or less of the arrange­ment. I wrote the first stro­phe and then went to the Muse­um to make sure of the right order of per­mu­ta­tions, for I was then liv­ing in Lang­ham Street, next to the “pub,” and had hard­ly any books with me. I did the rest of the poem at a sit­ting. Tech­ni­cal­ly it is one of my best, though a poem of such a theme could nev­er be very impor­tant.

The Ses­ti­na is a com­plex form with 39 lines (six stan­zas of six lines each fol­lowed by an envoi of three lines) all end­ing with one of six words that are grouped togeth­er in each stan­za. For “Ses­ti­na: Altaforte,” Pound chose the words “clash,” “crim­son,” “oppos­ing,” “rejoic­ing,” “music” and “peace.” The images of clash­ing swords and crim­son blood earned Pound’s poem the nick­name “Bloody Ses­ti­na.” It was the first of his poems to make it into Ford Mad­dox Huef­fer­’s pres­ti­gious Eng­lish Review. When Pound recit­ed the poem in 1909 at a gath­er­ing of poets at a Lon­don restau­rant, he report­ed­ly put so much pas­sion into his per­for­mance that “the table shook and cut­lery vibrat­ed in res­o­nance with his voice.”

That same pas­sion can be heard in the record­ing above, made thir­ty years lat­er when Pound was vis­it­ing Amer­i­ca for the first time in 28 years. It was record­ed on May 17, 1939 in the Wood­ber­ry Poet­ry Room at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. For dra­mat­ic effect, Pound accom­pa­nied him­self on a ket­tle­drum. To read the words of “Ses­ti­na: Altaforte” as you lis­ten to Pound’s voice, click here to open the text in a new win­dow. And to hear all of Pound’s 1939 record­ings, go to PennSound, where you can hear those record­ings and many more by Pound.

Hugh Hefner Defends “the Playboy Philosophy” to William F. Buckley (1966)

in Religion, Television | October 22nd, 2012

“Mr. Hefn­er’s mag­a­zine is most wide­ly known for its total expo­sure of the human female,” says William F. Buck­ley, intro­duc­ing the guest on this 1966 broad­cast of his talk show Fir­ing Line. “Though of course oth­er things hap­pen in its pages.” Not long before, pub­lish­er and plea­sure empire-builder Hugh Hefn­er’s Play­boy mag­a­zine ran a series of arti­cles on “the Play­boy phi­los­o­phy,” a set of obser­va­tions of and propo­si­tions about human sex­u­al­i­ty that pro­vid­ed these men fod­der for their tele­vised debate. Hefn­er stands against reli­gious­ly man­dat­ed, chasti­ty-cen­tered codes of sex­u­al moral­i­ty; Buck­ley demands to know how Hefn­er earned the qual­i­fi­ca­tions to issue new codes of his own. Describ­ing the Play­boy phi­los­o­phy as “sort of a hedo­nis­tic util­i­tar­i­an­ism,” Buck­ley tries simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to under­stand and demol­ish these 20th-cen­tu­ry revi­sions of the rules of sex.

“The Play­boy founder is no match for the Catholic who snipes him at will with ‘moral’ bul­lets,” writes the poster of the video. “The acer­bic, dry Buck­ley is on attack mode with a con­ser­v­a­tive audi­ence, in moral pan­ic, behind him. The Catholic had the era of con­ser­vatism behind him. [ … ] In the 21st cen­tu­ry though, Buck­ley (passed 2008) would have a hard­er time defend­ing moral­i­ty with Hefn­er.” One won­ders how, were Buck­ley still alive, he and Hefn­er might approach these issues were they to revis­it this debate today. Times have cer­tain­ly changed, but I sus­pect Buck­ley would raise the same core objec­tion to Hefn­er’s argu­ment that loos­en­ing the old stric­tures on sex leads, per­haps coun­ter­in­tu­itive­ly, to more sat­is­fied, more monog­a­mous pair­ings: “How in the hell do you know?” Though this and cer­tain oth­er of Buck­ley’s ques­tions occa­sion­al­ly wrong-foot Hefn­er, the faith­ful can rest assured that he keeps enough cool to fire up his sig­na­ture pipe on cam­era.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

375+ Episodes of William F. Buckley’s Fir­ing Line Now Online: Fea­tures Talks with Chom­sky, Borges, Ker­ouac, Gins­berg & More

Yeah, Baby! Deep Pur­ple Gets Sha­gadel­ic on Play­boy After Dark

James Bald­win Bests William F. Buck­ley in 1965 Debate at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Jack Ker­ouac Meets William F. Buck­ley (1968)

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

Commuters Play Beethoven’s “Bus Station Sonata” in the UK

in Music | October 20th, 2012

At the Hay­mar­ket Bus Sta­tion in New­cas­tle (UK), com­muters and passers-by were invit­ed to con­tribute a note or two to a Beethoven Sonata. Men and women, young and old, peo­ple from dif­fer­ent walks of life — they all lent a hand and shared in a cen­turies-old musi­cal tra­di­tion. Com­pared to some of the elab­o­rate flash­mob per­for­mances we’ve seen, this pre­sen­ta­tion was rather sim­ple. But, as you know, some­times less is more.

Thanks Anton for send­ing our way.

“Name That Tune” at the Bob Dylan Concert (Echoes of Newport, 1965)

in Music | October 20th, 2012

On Thurs­day night, I final­ly under­stood it — how fans felt back in July 1965, when Bob Dylan strapped on an elec­tric gui­tar and did son­ic vio­lence to the norms and expec­ta­tions of the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. Fans want­ed to hear the Bob Dylan they knew and loved — the folk Dylan who played a sim­ple acoustic gui­tar, har­mon­i­ca and not much more. But the times were-a-changin, and they got some­thing dif­fer­ent, very dif­fer­ent. See here.

Almost 50 years lat­er, Dylan keeps giv­ing his fans a dif­fer­ent Dylan. When the Nev­er End­ing Tour rolled through San Fran­cis­co this week, he played songs the fans came to hear — clas­sics like Love Minus Zero/No Lim­it, Like A Rolling Stone, Tan­gled Up in Blue, and A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall. Except he set them to new melodies, and between his grav­el­ly voice and the grav­el­ly sound sys­tem, it took some fans min­utes to real­ize what they were lis­ten­ing to. I cite one exam­ple above. In how many min­utes can you name that tune?

(Note: The song above was orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in Dres­den in July. It was also played in SF this past week.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

Cartoonist Kate Beaton Plays on Literary Classics — The Great Gatsby, Julius Caesar & More

in Books, Comedy, Literature | October 19th, 2012

Lis­ten, Old Sport, as far as that Leonar­do DiCaprio Gats­by movie goes, I haven’t seen it. But I’ll bet a swim­ming pool of gin it’s nowhere near as  fun­ny as car­toon­ist Kate Beat­on’s 3‑panel takes on F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s clas­sic nov­el.

Of course, F. Scot­t’s orig­i­nal was­n’t exact­ly what one would call a knee slap­per — where­as Beat­on’s com­ic col­lec­tion, Hark! A Vagrant, mer­its a per­ma­nent spot in one’s bath­room library. Beat­on’s take on The Great Gats­by is by no means a lit­er­al adap­ta­tion, but her mean-faced, ven­om-tongued cre­ations get it spir­i­tu­al­ly right. They also do a num­ber on Bronte, Jane Austen, Niet­zsche and Shake­speare’s Julius Cae­sar, to name but a few of the author’s oth­er lit­er­ary tar­gets. (See her archive here.) Not bad for a Cana­di­an with degrees in His­to­ry and Anthro­pol­o­gy. Is it wrong to think Zel­da would approve?

At any rate, it’s high time some­one blew the lid off of what’s behind the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eck­el­berg. Grat­i­fy­ing, too, to see Tom and Daisy’s child get­ting some long past due con­sid­er­a­tion. Now that I think about it, our com­pul­sion to keep beat­ing on boats against the cur­rent is kind of fun­ny. Top draw­er stuff, Old Sport, top draw­er stuff.

Find works by F. Scott Fitzger­ald in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Phi­los­o­phy Made Fun: Read the Free Pre­view Edi­tion of the Action Philoso­phers! Com­ic

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of a half dozen some books includ­ing No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late.

Muhammad Ali Plans to Fight on Mars in Lost 1966 Interview

in Comedy, History, Random | October 19th, 2012

Per­haps you remem­ber the short ani­mat­ed film, I Met the Wal­rus. It revis­its the moment when Jer­ry Lev­i­tan, a 14-year-old kid, slipped into John Lennon’s Toron­to hotel room in 1969 and asked the Bea­t­le for an inter­view. And he got one. The film pro­vides all the proof you need.

Now here’s a nice com­pan­ion sto­ry. It’s the sum­mer of 1966, and 17-year-old Michael Ais­ner approach­es Muham­mad Ali, then the heavy­weight cham­pi­on of the world, and asks him to appear on his high school radio show. The kid per­sists and even­tu­al­ly lands the inter­view. The audio seg­ment, rarely heard until now, reminds us what makes Ali so charis­mat­ic and endear­ing. The champ answers some of Ais­ner’s ques­tions seri­ous­ly. But he also launch­es into a hilar­i­ous riff about how he plans to take a space­ship to Mars, bat­tle the Mar­t­ian champ (named some­thing like Win­nekawana­ka) and there­by win the “Uni­ver­sal Title.” Pret­ty price­less. The com­plete audio seg­ment appears here.

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and share the cul­tur­al good­ness with your friends!

World Shakespeare Festival Presents 37 Plays by the Bard in 37 Languages: Watch Them Online

in Literature, Theatre | October 19th, 2012

I’ve seen Shake­speare per­formed all over the coun­try, from Cen­tral Park to Gold­en Gate Park, and in every kind of adap­ta­tion imag­in­able. By far, the most mem­o­rable per­for­mance for me was a Noh stag­ing of Oth­el­lo, in Japan­ese, with masks and haunt­ing cho­rus. I didn’t under­stand a word of it, but I spent the entire per­for­mance riv­et­ed by the cul­ture shock of watch­ing a play I knew so well trans­formed by a cul­tur­al vocab­u­lary I didn’t. While I’ve some­times bris­tled at best-sell­ing lit­er­ary crit­ic Harold Bloom’s seem­ing­ly banal claims about Shakespeare’s “uni­ver­sal genius,” I can­not deny that the Bard’s work seems to trans­late across time and space with­out a loss of its incred­i­ble pow­er and pathos.

Shake­speare-lovers in Lon­don this past spring were treat­ed to a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence as mine, mag­ni­fied by 37. As part of the mas­sive World Shake­speare Fes­ti­val, the Globe to Globe project pre­sent­ed an unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for the­ater­go­ers to see all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays per­formed in 37 dif­fer­ent lan­guages at the bard’s own the­ater, the Globe. The plays (watch them here) were staged by some of the world’s top the­ater direc­tors, with over six-hun­dred actors from “all nations” and attend­ed by “audi­ences from every cor­ner of our poly­glot com­mu­ni­ty.” In a time when var­i­ous parts of Europe strug­gle to come to terms with increas­ing­ly mul­ti­cul­tur­al demo­graph­ics, this fes­ti­val was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a glob­al the­ater fel­low­ship of actors and audi­ences to come togeth­er in mutu­al appre­ci­a­tion and cama­raderie.

The video above gives us a glimpse of sev­er­al cer­e­mo­ni­al, behind-the-scenes moments; before each per­for­mance, a mem­ber of the com­pa­ny sprin­kled alco­hol around the stage as an offer­ing to the god of the­ater and wine, Diony­sus. In a rapid mon­tage, we see a dozen dif­fer­ent actors from var­i­ous plays sprint, skip, dance, and slide across the front of the stage, joy­ful­ly pour­ing liba­tions. After­ward, anoth­er actor releas­es two bal­loons, one labeled The Globe, the oth­er with the company’s name. The pro­duc­tions, all avail­able to view online, are impres­sive not only for their lin­guis­tic range, but also for the range of cos­tum­ing and stage­craft on dis­play. Watch, for exam­ple, Troilus and Cres­si­da in Maori, with a fierce band of Maori war­riors stomp­ing across the stage. Or see The Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor in Swahili by Nairobi’s Bit­ter Pill Com­pa­ny. To my delight, the Japan­ese pro­duc­tion of Coro­lianus by the Chiten com­pa­ny fea­tures actors in Noh masks. As an added bonus, the Globe to Globe site has audio of actors from the var­i­ous com­pa­nies dis­cussing their expe­ri­ences of the fes­ti­val in both their native lan­guages and in Eng­lish.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

12 Ani­mat­ed Plays by William Shake­speare: Mac­beth, Oth­el­lo and Oth­er Great Tales Brought to Life

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Impres­sion­ist Does Shake­speare in 25 Celebri­ty Voic­es

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beautiful, LSD-Assisted Death: A Letter from His Widow

in Literature, Psychology | October 18th, 2012

Just over a year ago, we fea­tured a clip of an inter­view with Lau­ra Archera Hux­ley, wid­ow of British dystopi­an nov­el­ist and not­ed psy­che­del­ic drug enthu­si­ast Aldous Hux­ley. When he approached death’s door in 1963, he asked her to give him a dose of “LSD, 100 µg, intra­mus­cu­lar.” If you’ve got to check out, this sounds, by Lau­ra’s descrip­tion, like one of the prefer­able ways to do it, or at least a way that aligned close­ly with Hux­ley’s con­vic­tions. “There was absolute­ly no jolt, no agi­ta­tion,” she recalled on cam­era. “Noth­ing except this very qui­et — like a music that becomes less and less audi­ble. Like fad­ing away. [ … ] There was a beau­ti­ful expres­sion in the face. It was a very beau­ti­ful expres­sion in the face.” Let­ters of Note added much detail onto this spare account by post­ing a let­ter sent from Lau­ra to Hux­ley’s broth­er Julian not long after the writer’s death from laryn­geal can­cer. One page appears above, and at Let­ters of Note you can find scans of all of them plus a com­plete tran­script.

“I had the feel­ing actu­al­ly that the last hour of breath­ing was only the con­di­tioned reflex of the body that had been used to doing this for 69 years, mil­lions and mil­lions of times,” wrote Lau­ra. “There was not the feel­ing that with the last breath, the spir­it left. It had just been gen­tly leav­ing for the last four hours. [ … ] [Every­one attend­ing Hux­ley] said that this was the most serene, the most beau­ti­ful death. Both doc­tors and nurse said they had nev­er seen a per­son in sim­i­lar phys­i­cal con­di­tion going off so com­plete­ly with­out pain and with­out strug­gle. [ … ] We will nev­er know if all this is only our wish­ful think­ing, or if it is real, but cer­tain­ly all out­ward signs and the inner feel­ing gave indi­ca­tion that it was beau­ti­ful and peace­ful and easy.” Just above, you’ll find the video we pre­vi­ous­ly post­ed of Lau­ra’s briefer descrip­tion of the same events.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley Warns Against Dic­ta­tor­ship in Amer­i­ca

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

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

Where Your Web Searches, Emails, and Videos Live: A Tour Inside Google’s Data Centers

in Business, Google, Technology, Web/Tech | October 18th, 2012

So much of what we expe­ri­ence as dig­i­tal is intan­gi­ble. The col­or and tex­ture of the Inter­net exists only for the time we have that par­tic­u­lar site loaded. With just a click of the mouse, the lush­ness dis­ap­pears.

Except that it doesn’t, real­ly.

Back­stage, every email, pho­to, YouTube video and doc­u­ment we share lives in a very real place, which is weird when you think about it. These mas­sive data cen­ters are like vaults of ones and zeros, some of which could wreak hav­oc in the wrong hands but, hon­est­ly, most of which will nev­er mean any­thing again to any­body.

Every time any­one uses a Google prod­uct, for exam­ple, like con­duct­ing a search or look­ing up direc­tions, their com­put­er talks to one of the world’s most pow­er­ful serv­er net­works, which are housed in huge data cen­ters. Very few peo­ple actu­al­ly get to see where Google’s servers live. These data cen­ters are high secu­ri­ty, for good rea­son.

The com­pa­ny recent­ly launched Where the Inter­net Lives, part of a mini cam­paign to pull back the cur­tain on how the web works. They hired a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to cap­ture eight of their data cen­ters on, well, not real­ly film, but you get the pic­ture. Oh, and the data cen­ters aren’t brick and mor­tar either. More like glass and dry­wall and pipes. Lots and lots of pipes.

And like Willie Won­ka and his famous fac­to­ry, Google invit­ed Wired mag­a­zine reporter Stephen Levy to vis­it and write a sto­ry about the pre­vi­ous­ly off-lim­its facil­i­ties.

Take a street view tour of the North Car­oli­na data cen­ter (and see their “secu­ri­ty team” at work). Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Con­nie Zhou’s images are love­ly and the facil­i­ties are beau­ti­ful in an eerie, futur­is­tic way. See how water is used to keep the proces­sors cool, where data is backed up, failed dri­ves destroyed to keep data safe and how work­ers get around.

Google employ­ees get a fair amount of play, with shots of them work­ing to build, main­tain and repair the machines.

It’s a peek behind the scenes, but it’s also mar­ket­ing. And what’s inter­est­ing is that it’s a lot like the auto­mo­bile industry’s mar­ket­ing (think of Saturn’s ads in praise of the assem­bly-line work­er) and cam­paigns by the Big Three to attract auto work­ers in the 1940s. Some of the pho­to cap­tions recall the nos­tal­gic, Utopi­an mes­sag­ing of the post-War era, when effi­cient, mod­ern sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties were sprout­ing up around indus­tri­al cen­ters. This lunch room looks pret­ty nice, and the sauna is right out­side.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal cul­ture and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her work online at kater­ixwriter