William F. Buckley Explains How He Flogged Himself to Get Through Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged

in Books, Video - Politics/Society | May 10th, 2011

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged sold an esti­mat­ed 25 mil­lion copies between its pub­li­ca­tion in 1957 and 2007. Ear­ly on, the book inspired a young gen­er­a­tion of busi­ness lead­ers, and now, decades lat­er, it holds appeal for a new class of con­ser­v­a­tives. But it was­n’t always that way. Back in the 1950s, William F. Buck­ley, the enfant ter­ri­ble of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, launched the Nation­al Review and pub­lished a review by Whit­tak­er Cham­bers — the Sovi­et spy who famous­ly turned against Com­mu­nism (and Alger Hiss), all while build­ing a remark­able career at TIME Mag­a­zine. About Atlas Shrugged, Cham­bers wrote: ”I find it a remark­ably sil­ly book. It is cer­tain­ly a bump­tious one. Its sto­ry is pre­pos­ter­ous.” And, what’s more, he adds: “Out of a life­time of read­ing, I can recall no oth­er book in which a tone of over­rid­ing arro­gance was so implaca­bly sus­tained. Its shrill­ness is with­out reprieve. Its dog­ma­tism is with­out appeal.”

Rand nev­er for­gave Buck­ley for the review. Per­sona non gra­ta, he was. Years lat­er, in 2003, Buck­ley revis­it­ed the whole affair with Char­lie Rose and made known his per­son­al feel­ings for Rand’s book. “I had to flog myself to read it…”

Note: You can down­load Atlas Shrugged as a free audio­book if you sign up for a free 30-Day Tri­al with Audible.com. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mike Wal­lace Inter­views Ayn Rand (1959)

William F. Buck­ley v. Gore Vidal (1968)

Ayn Rand Talks Athe­ism with Phil Don­ahue

Wealthy Donors Pay­ing Uni­ver­si­ties to Teach Rand

via Roger Ebert

Classical Music: A History According to YouTube

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | May 9th, 2011

Three cheers for cura­tion. Lime­light, an Aus­tralian cul­ture web site, has select­ed “40 of the most infor­ma­tive, rep­re­sen­ta­tive and enter­tain­ing videos” avail­able on YouTube. And they’ve strung them togeth­er in such a way that they offer a “chrono­log­i­cal his­to­ry of west­ern clas­si­cal music from the twelfth cen­tu­ry to the mod­ern age,” tak­ing you from The Mid­dle Ages and The Renais­sance, through the Baroque, Clas­si­cal, and Roman­tic peri­ods, and end­ing with The Birth of Mod­ernism and Post-WWII inno­va­tions. The clip above comes from Anton van Mun­ster’s film on Vival­di, I Musi­ci, which is avail­able on Net­flix. (If you’re not a sub­scriber, a one month free tri­al is avail­able here.) Oth­er clips put a spot­light on Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Ver­di, Wag­n­er and oth­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores (and Free MP3s) on the Web

The Com­plete Organ Works of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach

The Great­est Com­posers: Accord­ing to The New York Times

via Metafil­ter

David Hume in 3 Minutes … For His 300th Birthday

in Philosophy | May 8th, 2011

The Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy calls David Hume (1711–1776) “the most impor­tant philoso­pher ever to write in Eng­lish,” and this week the phi­los­o­phy world cel­e­brates the 300th birth­day of the great Scot­tish empiricist/skeptic. Around the web, you can find more seri­ous com­men­tary on Hume’s phi­los­o­phy. Just head over to The Philoso­pher’s Zone, Phi­los­o­phy Bites, or The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life to lis­ten to their enlight­en­ing pod­casts. And then you have this: Hume’s phi­los­o­phy summed up in three slight­ly rib­ald min­utes. It’s part of a series of YouTube clips that offer idio­syn­crat­ic sum­maries of the phi­los­o­phy of Aris­to­tle, Kant, Descartes and oth­er giants.

Mean­while, let us note that you can down­load free ver­sions of Hume’s major works online. Let us list a few for you:

• An Enquiry Con­cern­ing Human Under­stand­ing Audio — Text
• Dia­logues Con­cern­ing Nat­ur­al Reli­gion Audio — Text
• Trea­tise of Human Nature Audio — Text

Find more great works in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and eBooks

via The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life

Stanley Kubrick’s Filmography Animated

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | May 6th, 2011

French graph­ic artist Mar­tin Woutis­seth has put togeth­er this love­ly fil­mog­ra­phy of Stan­ley Kubrick, based on ani­mat­ed posters of his own design, and set to a won­der­ful score by com­pos­er Romain Trouil­let. Woutis­seth’s visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions of each film, from Killer’s Kiss (1955) to Eyes Wide Shut (1999) are works of art in their own right. We espe­cial­ly loved the details on the mask for Eyes Wide Shut at minute 3:00.

You can watch Killer’s Kiss for free at our online movie archive, plus Kubrick­’s first film, Fear & Desire, on Google Video.

via Curios­i­ty Counts

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

Bubbles Over Stinson Beach

in Art | May 6th, 2011

Ster­ling John­son, oth­er­wise known as the Bub­ble­smith, goes to work at Stin­son Beach, a lit­tle north of San Fran­cis­co. Mark Day cap­tures the artis­tic dis­play with his Canon 550D, and it’s all set to Bach’s Pre­lude in C Major. Like the kid said in Amer­i­can Beau­ty, “Some­times there’s so much beau­ty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in…”

via Sci­ence Dump

RIP Arthur Laurents, Writer of West Side Story

in Film, Theatre | May 5th, 2011

A sad, lov­ing farewell to the great play­wright, libret­tist and direc­tor Arthur Lau­rents, who died in his sleep today at the age of 93. Mr. Lau­rents was best known for writ­ing Gyp­sy (1959), The Way We Were (1973), and of course the incom­pa­ra­ble West Side Sto­ry (1959), about which this author has noth­ing to say, except that with­out West Side Sto­ry the world as she knows and loves it would cease to exist.

He will be missed.

via  @SteveSilberman

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

50 Classic Russian Films (Including Tarkovsky’s Finest) Now Online

in Film | May 5th, 2011

We have pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured films by the great Russ­ian film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky. So we’re over­joyed to report that the Moscow film com­pa­ny Mos­film has just made 5o Russ­ian clas­sics avail­able on YouTube in high def­i­n­i­tion. Accord­ing to Yahoo News, Mos­film has pledged to release five more films each week, all in HD with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, even­tu­al­ly bring­ing the total for the year to 200.

You can look over the whole list of cur­rent­ly avail­able clas­sics at Mos­film’s YouTube chan­nel. (Non-Russ­ian speak­ers might want to hit Google Trans­late.) In yet anoth­er con­ces­sion to the deca­dence of West­ern cap­i­tal­ism, each film is pre­ced­ed by a short com­mer­cial. We hope some bal­ance has been restored to the uni­verse by the inclu­sion of com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor Joseph Stal­in’s favorite movie, the musi­cal com­e­dy Vol­ga Vol­ga.

Don’t miss our big col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Yahoo News

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

The Cinemagraph: A Haunting Photo/Video Hybrid

in Art | May 4th, 2011

As gim­micks go, the mov­ing GIF is almost as old as the inter­net itself. But artists Jamie Beck and Kevin Berg have tak­en their ani­mat­ed pho­tographs, or “cin­ema­graphs,” as Beck calls them, far beyond the orig­i­nal gim­mick. While some of their images tend towards kitsch, fea­tur­ing clich­es like long hair rustling in the breeze, or wine pour­ing from a bot­tle, the duo (see a col­lec­tion of their pho­tos here) has also pro­duced sev­er­al shots of star­tling beau­ty: A sin­gle news­pa­per page rus­tles in a frozen park. The reflec­tion of a taxi­cab glides like a ghost across a win­dow. A beau­ti­ful woman sud­den­ly seems to catch you star­ing at her. The effect is pure para­noia, like ear­ly Polan­s­ki, or a morn­ing walk on no sleep.

So is the cin­ema­graph the future of pho­tog­ra­phy, or just a neat trick? You can join that debate over at flickr.

Thanks to Eric Strenger and @eugenephoto for the tip.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

The Clash Star in Hell W10, a Gangster Parody Film Directed by Joe Strummer (1983)

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | May 4th, 2011

Clash front­man Joe Strum­mer wrote and direct­ed this odd gang­ster par­o­dy in 1983, while the band was on a break from tour­ing. He cast Mick Jones as a well-dressed crime boss, Paul Simonon as his Jim­my Cliff-chan­nel­ing neme­sis, and pret­ty much every­one the band had ever shared a pint with in sup­port­ing roles.

Hell W10 is not exact­ly a mas­ter­piece. The cam­era work is indif­fer­ent, each indi­vid­ual scene lasts longer than it needs to, and we’re not quite sure what the blonde was doing there.  Still, it’s hard not to enjoy any movie with an all-Clash sound­track, and we got a huge kick out of watch­ing Jones scowl in his white tuxe­do like a car­toon Scar­face.

Oth­er high points include the hybrid noir-punk stylings of the titles, and Strum­mer’s own cheeky turn as an aggres­sive cop.

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!

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

“Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash” Nar­rat­ed by Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D: A New 8‑Episode Pod­cast

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Songs by The Clash at the Library

Watch Audio Ammu­ni­tion: A Doc­u­men­tary Series on The Clash and Their Five Clas­sic Albums

Free Courses “Netted” by the Webbys

in Online Courses | May 3rd, 2011

Worth a quick men­tion. Today our con­stant­ly-grow­ing list, 350 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, was fea­tured by Net­ted, a dai­ly newslet­ter writ­ten by the Web­bys, the same peo­ple who give awards for excel­lence on the web. I don’t know if we’re achiev­ing excel­lence on the web. But I do know this: It’s hard to find a col­lec­tion of resources that’s more valu­able than this. The cours­es come from insti­tu­tions like Stan­ford, Yale and MIT. They cov­er most every top­ic — from phi­los­o­phy and his­to­ry to com­put­er sci­ence, physics and math. And they’re all FREE. Find the col­lec­tion here. Hope you enjoy.