Albert Camus Talks About Nihilism & Adapting Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed for the Theatre, 1959

in Books, Literature, Theatre | October 5th, 2012

If there is no God, said Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky, life is mean­ing­less. And with­out mean­ing, men and women will “go stark, rav­ing mad.” For the deeply skep­ti­cal and agnos­tic Albert Camus, Dos­toyevsky’s books were a rev­e­la­tion. While he could­n’t agree with the Russ­ian nov­el­ist’s pre­scrip­tion of faith in an unseen deity, Camus felt Dos­toyevsky had con­vinc­ing­ly described the tragedy of man’s exis­tence in an indif­fer­ent uni­verse.

Camus first read Dos­toyevsky when he was 20 years old, and lat­er called it a “soul-shak­ing expe­ri­ence.” He was moved by the moral weight of Dos­toyevsky’s words. When the hor­rors of Stal­in’s purges came to light, Camus refused to look away. As he lat­er said, “The real 19th cen­tu­ry prophet was Dos­toyevsky, not Karl Marx.”

One of Dos­toyevsky’s works that affect­ed Camus the most was the apoc­a­lyp­tic 1872 nov­el The Pos­sessed, which in recent years has been trans­lat­ed as Demons or The Dev­ils. It’s a com­plex sto­ry of a con­flict­ed Russ­ian soci­ety as it descends into anar­chy and chaos with the spread of nihilism. The themes explored in The Pos­sessed were so absorb­ing to Camus that in 1959 he pub­lished a three-act stage adap­ta­tion, Les Pos­sédés. The play pre­miered on Jan­u­ary 28, 1959 at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris, and on that day he gave an inter­est­ing inter­view with Pierre Dumayet for French tele­vi­sion, which you can watch in the video above. In the pro­gram hand­ed out at the the­ater that night, Camus described the nov­el­’s impor­tance: “Les Pos­sédés is one of the four or five works that I rank above all oth­ers. In more ways than one, I can say that it has enriched and shaped me.”

You can down­load a copy of The Pos­sessed and oth­er works by Dos­to­evsky from our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks. Major works by the great Russ­ian author can also be found in our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion.

The Scotch Pronunciation Guide: Brian Cox Teaches You How To Ask Authentically for 40 Scotches

in Random | October 5th, 2012

Some Scotch names are fair­ly straight­for­ward — Glen­livet, Glen­fid­dich, Laphroaig. Oth­ers not so much. I mean, give Bun­na­hab­hain and Caol Ila a try. Well, if you’re a con­nois­seur strug­gling to get the pro­nun­ci­a­tion right, this will serve you well. Esquire has cre­at­ed “The Amer­i­can Man’s Scotch Pro­nun­ci­a­tion Guide” (though you hard­ly need to be male to prof­it from it), which fea­tures “esteemed actor and proud Scot” Bri­an Cox sipping/talking his way through more than 40 brand names. Catch them all here.

via @PartiallyExLife

Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye, a Revealing Look at “The Father of Modern Photography”

in Art, Photography | October 4th, 2012

More than any­one else, Alfred Stieglitz helped raise the sta­tus of pho­tog­ra­phy to the lev­el of art. As a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, pub­lish­er and gallery own­er, Stieglitz was a key fig­ure in the birth of Amer­i­can mod­ernism. His own sta­tus as an arbiter of taste in pho­tog­ra­phy was bol­stered by his uncan­ny knack for quick­ly rec­og­niz­ing the great­ness of artists work­ing in oth­er media. He was the first gallery own­er in Amer­i­ca to exhib­it Picas­so, Matisse, Bran­cusi and oth­er great fig­ures in mod­ern art. As the nar­ra­tor of this fas­ci­nat­ing 1999 doc­u­men­tary puts it, Stieglitz opened the eyes of Amer­i­ca to the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye was direct­ed by Per­ry Miller Ada­to for the PBS Amer­i­can Mas­ters series, and builds on his ear­li­er doc­u­men­tary work on Stieglitz’s wid­ow, the painter Geor­gia O’Keefe.

Hav­ing shot many reels of film show­ing O’Keefe talk­ing about Stieglitz, Ada­to was a nat­ur­al choice to direct a full-length doc­u­men­tary on Stieglitz. As he told PBS in an inter­view:

We knew we had an ace up our sleeve–unique, invalu­able, nev­er-seen film footage of Geor­gia O’Ke­effe speak­ing about Alfred Stieglitz. In 1980, at the request of O’Ke­effe her­self, I had flown to New Mex­i­co with a small film crew and inter­viewed the artist at great length about Stieglitz.. On cam­era in her home, her gar­den and her stu­dio, she speaks frankly and inti­mate­ly, her rem­i­nis­cences salt­ed with her dry humor. O’Ke­effe talks about Alfred Stieglitz–the stu­dent, the man, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, the pio­neer in the intro­duc­tion of avant-garde Euro­pean art to Amer­i­ca, the defend­er of strug­gling young Amer­i­can mod­ern artists; her own views on the artists of the famed “Stieglitz cir­cle” and of their life togeth­er. This film, rare dur­ing her life­time, became unique after her death in 1986. The 1980 project for a film about Stieglitz using this footage was nev­er real­ized. For 19 long years, eight large flat reels of 16mm film (work-print and synced mag track) lay buried in the stor­age room of my house in West­port, CT. Buried, but not entire­ly for­got­ten.

The doc­u­men­tary is round­ed out by inter­views with lead­ing Stieglitz schol­ars and muse­um cura­tors. Ada­to told PBS he was con­fi­dent the film would help reawak­en inter­est in Stieglitz, whose fame in recent decades has been over­shad­owed by that of O’Keefe. “It will help to restore his right­ful place in the his­to­ry of 20th cen­tu­ry art and cul­ture,” he said. “We hope that the pro­gram will also reveal Stieglitz as a charis­mat­ic, com­plex and fas­ci­nat­ing indi­vid­ual ‘whose ide­al­ism wres­tled with his human frail­ties.’ ”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Geor­gia O’Keeffe at 92

The History of Byzantium Podcast Picks Up Where The History of Rome Left Off

in History, Podcasts | October 4th, 2012

In May we post­ed about Mike Dun­can’s The His­to­ry of Rome pod­cast, which, upon reach­ing episode 179, had con­clud­ed the tale of the Roman Empire’s hey­day. Over its five-year run, Dun­can’s show amassed a large, enthu­si­as­tic audi­ence, most of whom have no doubt con­tin­ued their explo­ration of Roman his­to­ry else­where. It has even inspired some to launch his­to­ry pod­casts of their own, one of which presents itself as The His­to­ry of Rome’s direct suc­ces­sor in sub­ject, style, and tone. The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium (RSS — iTunes), which debuted in May, aims to recount the sto­ry of Roman Empire of Late Antiq­ui­ty and the Mid­dle Ages, now bet­ter known as the Byzan­tine Empire, from the years 476 through 1453. Though per­haps less often dis­cussed by the aver­age his­to­ry buff, the Byzan­tine Empire nonethe­less offers a wealth of his­tor­i­cal inter­est, espe­cial­ly, it seems, to pod­cast­ers; you may already have heard Lars Brown­worth’s show 12 Byzan­tine Rulers, which even­tu­al­ly land­ed him a book deal. And many more Byzan­tine sto­ries remain to tell.

Pier­son, by day a tele­vi­son crit­ic, explic­it­ly describes his project as both an unof­fi­cial sequel and an homage to The His­to­ry of Rome. “I liked the sim­pli­fi­ca­tion and expla­na­tion of the Roman sto­ry,” he writes in his intro­duc­to­ry post. “I liked the half an hour length. I liked Mike’s sense of humour and tim­ing. I liked his neu­tral tone which nev­er felt like it was pro­vid­ing an over­bear­ing opin­ion on the nar­ra­tive. When Mike announced he would be stop­ping with the fall of the West in 476 I con­sid­ered whether I could pos­si­bly take on the task of con­tin­u­ing the sto­ry. [ … ] Ini­tial­ly at least I hope to emu­late Mike’s style. I want to keep the rough struc­ture and neu­tral tone estab­lished on The His­to­ry of Rome because I think so high­ly of it. I hope you won’t see it as sim­ply an imi­ta­tion and doubt­less over time my own style will emerge.” This seems as hon­est an account as any of the way cre­ators work off of their inspi­ra­tions, and His­to­ry of Rome fans will no doubt lis­ten with inter­est to The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium for both the devel­op­ments in the tale and in Pier­son­’s way of telling it.

You can sub­scribe to The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium via RSS or iTunes.

And, all of you his­to­ry buffs, remem­ber that you can find free cours­es in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

The Dig­i­tal Tip­ping Point: The Wild Ride from Pod­cast to Book Deal

The Decline and Fall of the Roman (and Amer­i­can?) Empire: A Free Audio­book

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

Higgs Boson, the Musical: CERN Data Turned into Melody

in Music, Science, Technology | October 4th, 2012

When researchers at CERN announced the dis­cov­ery of the Hig­gs Boson this sum­mer, Domeni­co Vic­i­nan­za, a pro­fes­sion­al com­pos­er and par­ti­cle physi­cist at DANTE (Deliv­ery of Advanced Net­work Tech­nol­o­gy to Europe) took the Hig­gs research data and turned it into a melody. He explained how he did it to PRI’s The World:

In order to take a sub­atom­ic par­ti­cle like the Hig­gs Boson and con­vert it into a melody, to notes, what we do is basi­cal­ly take the data and asso­ciate with each one of the numer­ic val­ues a sin­gle note on a score. Melody is fol­low­ing basi­cal­ly exact­ly the same behav­ior the sci­en­tif­ic data is show­ing. So when the piano starts play­ing, you can hear some real­ly real­ly high pitched notes.… They are the sig­na­ture of the Hig­gs Boson melody and they are cor­re­spond­ing to a peak in the sci­en­tif­ic draft research has shown at CERN. The actu­al data points are only the one played by the piano at the begin­ning and then played by piano and marim­ba in the sec­ond rep­e­ti­tion. So the marim­ba was play­ing the low­er notes and the piano was play­ing the high­er notes. So it sounds like a Cuban Habanera but this is clas­si­cal insi­d­ence.… I thor­ough­ly believe that sci­ence can offer musi­cians a won­der­ful way to look for inter­est­ing melodies, inter­est­ing har­monies, inter­est­ing son­ic phe­nom­e­na. They can be tak­en and be used by com­posers to cre­ate some real enter­tain­ment.

Back in 2009, Vic­i­nan­za orig­i­nal­ly caught our atten­tion when he and the ‘Lost Sounds Orches­tra’ gave a unique per­for­mance, play­ing ancient instru­ments live in Stock­holm while the audi­ence watched dancers per­form some 7,000 miles away in Kuala Lumpur on an ultra-fast dis­play screen. You can catch scenes from that per­for­mance right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hig­gs Boson and Its Dis­cov­ery Explained with Ani­ma­tion

Demys­ti­fy­ing the Hig­gs Boson with Leonard Susskind, the Father of String The­o­ry

Listen: Beck Reworks 20 Philip Glass Compositions Into a 20 Minute Song, ‘NYC: 73–78’

in Music | October 4th, 2012

Lat­er this month — Octo­ber 23rd to be pre­cise — the singer-song­writer Beck and fel­low musi­cians will cel­e­brate Philip Glass’ 75th birth­day with the release of Rework: Philip Glass Remixed. The album will be streamed online in its entire­ty on NPR’s First Lis­tens site start­ing next Mon­day.

But you can already catch Beck­’s con­tri­bu­tion to the release. It’s noth­ing oth­er than 20 Philip Glass com­po­si­tions remixed into a 20 minute track, and it’s called ‘NYC: 73–78’. Catch it on NPR’s site or lis­ten below.

If the whole idea of Glass turn­ing 75 makes you feel nos­tal­gic, and if you want to revis­it some vin­tage mate­r­i­al, don’t miss two old chest­nuts: Philip Glass Com­pos­es for Sesame Street (1979) and Philip Glass, Seen and Heard Through the Cin­e­mat­ic Mind of Peter Green­away (1983).

1972 Diane Arbus Documentary Interviews Those Who Knew the American Photographer Best

in Film, Photography | October 4th, 2012

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Diane (pro­nounced Dee-Ann) Arbus received much new press a few years ago with the release of the high­ly fic­tion­al­ized and mis­guid­ed biopic Fur, star­ring Nicole Kid­man. The movie did not do well, and its crit­i­cal fail­ure may have eclipsed some re-eval­u­a­tion of her work in favor of pruri­ent spec­u­la­tion about the woman behind it. Anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty arrived last year on the 40^th anniver­sary of Arbus’s death by sui­cide at age 48, and with the pub­li­ca­tion of William Todd Schultz’s Arbus biog­ra­phy An Emer­gency in Slow Motion. But long before all of this renewed inter­est in Arbus, there was the short doc­u­men­tary Mas­ters of Pho­tog­ra­phy: Diane Arbus (above). Pro­duced in 1972, one year after Arbus’s death, the film is built on inter­views with the peo­ple who knew her best: her daugh­ter Doon, her teacher at the New School, Lisette Mod­el, col­league Mar­vin Israel, and the direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy at the time for the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, John Szarkows­ki. That same year, Arbus became the first Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er to be fea­tured, posthu­mous­ly, at the Venice Bien­nale.

Born Diane Nemerov to wealthy par­ents in New York City, Arbus once con­fid­ed to Studs Terkel that she “grew up feel­ing immune and exempt from cir­cum­stance.” “One of the things I suf­fered from,” said Arbus, “was that I nev­er felt adver­si­ty. I was con­firmed in a sense of unre­al­i­ty.” Arbus gained a rep­u­ta­tion for pur­su­ing the seem­ing­ly “unre­al” in the midst of real­i­ty; her pho­to­graph­ic sub­jects were cir­cus “freaks,” social out­siders, eccen­tric per­form­ers, the phys­i­cal­ly dis­abled (whom she called “aris­to­crats”) and just ordi­nary, not very attrac­tive, peo­ple.

Some­times her sub­jects seem unre­al because their warts-and-all ordi­nar­i­ness con­trasts so stark­ly with the glossy denizens of slick, full-col­or magazines–those who can seem more real to us than we do to our­selves. She may have been dri­ven to the mar­gins because of her hatred for the fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy she and her hus­band, Allan Arbus, did for Vogue, Sev­en­teen, and Glam­our.

Arbus had a unique abil­i­ty to coax pow­er­ful por­traits from her sub­jects, most of whom stare direct­ly at her cam­era, and the view­er, and do not shrink from con­fronta­tion. As with most artists who com­mit sui­cide, a “cult of Arbus” has sprung up to defend her from crit­i­cal scruti­ny, but there are legit­i­mate ques­tions about whether her por­trai­ture human­izes or exploits her sub­jects. Susan Son­tag believed the lat­ter and described her work as “based on dis­tance, on priv­i­lege.” React­ing to her por­trait of him, Nor­man Mail­er found her work dan­ger­ous enough to quip, “Giv­ing a cam­era to Diane Arbus is like giv­ing a hand grenade to a baby.” But Arbus was not naïve: she describes her­self in an audio inter­view above as “kind of two-faced, very ingra­ti­at­ing,” and “a lit­tle too nice” to her sub­jects while she cap­tures their flaws. I’ll admit, it’s a lit­tle hard to make up one’s mind about her moti­va­tions, but the pho­tographs are always deeply com­pelling.

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.

The Long, Violent History of Israel and Palestine Musically Animated by Nina Paley

in Animation, History | October 3rd, 2012

You may remem­ber Nina Paley, about whose movie Sita Sings the Blues we post­ed back in 2009. If you fol­low ani­ma­tion, you cer­tain­ly remem­ber her, since she put togeth­er that fea­ture-length, jazz vocal-scored, auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal adap­ta­tion of the Indi­an myth the Ramayana almost entire­ly with her own set of self-taught skills. For some time now, Paley’s fans have known that her next major project, Seder-Masochism, will retell the sto­ry of Exo­dus using nar­ra­tion assem­bled from gen­uine Passover Seder record­ings. This we learned when Paley chose to fund the first phase of the project on Kick­starter. We can now watch, embed­ded above, the very first scene she has com­plet­ed: “This Land is Mine,” a brief and bloody musi­cal his­to­ry of the ter­ri­to­ry called, depend­ing upon your per­spec­tive, Israel, Pales­tine, Canaan, or Lev­ant.

Help­ful­ly, Paley has writ­ten up a guide to this sequence’s many play­ers: you’ve got the Canaan­ites, who kill Ear­ly Man; the Egpy­tians, who kill the Canaan­ites; the Assyr­i­ans, who kill the Egyp­tians; and so on for­ward through the annals until we arrive at the mod­ern-day bat­tles between “PLO/Hamas/Hezbollah,” the State of Israel, and “guerrillas/freedom fighters/terrorists.” Any­one who even occa­sion­al­ly glances toward the news knows full well how large con­flict and death loom today over this par­tic­u­lar slice of the world, but through Paley’s high-body-count ani­mat­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of the place’s his­to­ry, we can see that it was ever thus. She flinch­es not from her sub­ject mat­ter’s over­whelm­ing vio­lence, nor from her own ten­den­cy to inject it with humor. This bodes well for what she’ll do with the rest of the sto­ry, col­lect it as she will from as many Seders as she can attend. The mak­ings, tru­ly, of an Exo­dus dif­fer­ent from all oth­er Exo­dus­es.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mid­dle East­ern His­to­ry: Free Cours­es

Dra­ma­tiz­ing the Mid­dle East

Rev­o­lu­tions in the Mid­dle East: Head of Al Jazeera Speaks at TED

Sita Sings the Blues Now on YouTube

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

Final Episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Features a Manic Michael Richards

in Comedy | October 3rd, 2012

Come­di­an Daniel Tosh, who isn’t known for his sen­si­tiv­i­ty, to say the least, has a seg­ment on his show Tosh.0 called “Web Redemp­tion” in which he allows peo­ple who became the butt of inter­net jokes to reclaim their dig­ni­ty. One might refer to the sea­son finale of Jer­ry Seinfeld’s free web series Come­di­ans in Cars Get­ting Cof­fee as some­thing of a “web redemp­tion” for his guest, Michael Richards, Sein­feld’s Kramer. Like Tosh, Richards had a high­ly-pub­li­cized and very ugly moment onstage at the Laugh Fac­to­ry in response to some heck­lers. I can’t say that I’ve felt a lot of sym­pa­thy for either of these guys, both raked over the inter­net’s coals. But does this final episode of Seinfeld’s breezy series redeem Michael Richards? Maybe a lit­tle? Well, it’s def­i­nite­ly fun to watch these two rem­i­nisce about their Sein­feld days, espe­cial­ly my per­son­al favorite episode, “Ken­ny Rogers’ Roast­ers.”

And it’s also very touch­ing. Seinfeld’s loy­al­ty and con­cern for his friend after that infa­mous melt­down always seemed gen­uine, and here Jer­ry’s gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it ele­vates him to some­thing of a per­son­al cheer­leader for the ram­shackle Richards—represented in this episode by the car Jer­ry choos­es: a rusty, beat-up 1962 VW van that dou­bles as a pick­up. My favorite exchange, hands-down, gives us a glimpse into the two come­di­ans’ souls: Jer­ry, sage of the every­day, and Richards, the man­ic absur­dist. Richards, a lit­tle shy or just clown­ing around, puts on a wig and dark glass­es:

Richards: “you should put on a hat and some sun­glass­es”
Sein­feld: “Oh, Michael, free your­self. We’re just rain­drops on a wind­shield.”
Richards: “I wan­na know who’s wip­ing me off!”

It’s got­ta be the kind of ban­ter you can’t script. Or maybe I choose to believe that. Once they sit down for cof­fee, Richards real­ly turns it on. He’s a bril­liant raconteur—tells the great­est chess sto­ry I’ve ever heard. No spoil­ers; you’ve got to see it.  Maybe it redeems him just a little–you decide.

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.

The Real Alice in Wonderland Circa 1862, and Our Favorite Culture Links on the Web

in Books, Literature | October 2nd, 2012

Over at The Retro­naut they’re fea­tur­ing a gallery of images of Alice Lid­dell cir­ca 1862. Who is that you may ask? Well, it’s only the young girl who inspired Lewis Car­rol­l’s clas­sic sto­ry Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (a text that you can down­load from our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books). If the men­tion of the great children’s tale warms your heart, we’d encour­age you to re-vis­it Maria Popo­va’s guest-authored post, Alice in Open­land, which has all kinds of great relat­ed mate­r­i­al — read­ings of Alice by Cory Doc­torow, film adap­ta­tions of the sto­ry from 1903 and 1915, and much more.