Ten Rules for Writing Fiction

in Literature, Writing | February 25th, 2010

The Guardian asked twen­ty nine writ­ers to give their 10 Rules for Writ­ing Fic­tion. Those giv­en by Jonathan Franzen (The Cor­rec­tions) were arguably the pithi­est, and we list them below. The full line­up of writ­ers (includ­ing Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, and Richard Ford) can be found here. (The New York­er has since fol­lowed up with some com­men­tary on the Guardian list.)

• The read­er is a friend, not an adver­sary, not a spec­ta­tor.
• Fic­tion that isn’t an author’s per­son­al adven­ture into the fright­en­ing or the unknown isn’t worth writ­ing for any­thing but mon­ey.
• Nev­er use the word “then” as a con­junc­tion – we have “and” for this pur­pose. Sub­sti­tut­ing “then” is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solu­tion to the prob­lem of too many “ands” on the page.
• Write in the third per­son unless a real­ly dis­tinc­tive first-per­son voice ­offers itself irre­sistibly.
• When infor­ma­tion becomes free and uni­ver­sal­ly acces­si­ble, volu­mi­nous research for a nov­el is deval­ued along with it.
• The most pure­ly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal fic­tion requires pure inven­tion. Nobody ever wrote a more auto bio­graph­i­cal sto­ry than “The Meta­morphosis”.
• You see more sit­ting still than chas­ing after.
• It’s doubt­ful that any­one with an inter­net con­nec­tion at his work­place is writ­ing good fic­tion.
• Inter­est­ing verbs are sel­dom very inter­est­ing.
• You have to love before you can be relent­less.

via @kirstinbutler

Stanford Online Writing Courses – The Spring Lineup

in Education | February 22nd, 2010

Loudon Wainwright III Sings “The Krugman Blues”

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | February 22nd, 2010

Loudon Wain­wright III has released a new album, Songs for the New Depres­sion, that fit­ting­ly fea­tures “The Krug­man Blues,” an homage to the Prince­ton, Nobel Prize-win­ning econ­o­mist, Paul Krug­man, who has doc­u­ment­ed Amer­i­ca’s eco­nom­ic spi­ral in The New York Times. You can watch the Krug­man Blues above, and get the full album at Wain­wright’s web site.

via The New York­er

When the Dalai Lama Meets the Neuroscientists

in Psychology, Religion, Science | February 21st, 2010

More and more, the Dalai Lama has been devel­op­ing an inter­est in what mod­ern sci­ence has to say about human emo­tion — or, more par­tic­u­lar­ly, how neu­ro­science makes sense of med­i­ta­tion and com­pas­sion. Part­ly as a result, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty has launched The Cen­ter for Com­pas­sion and Altru­ism Research and Edu­ca­tion, which is delv­ing deep­er into these ques­tions. The clip above fea­tures Daniel Gole­man, the best­selling sci­ence jour­nal­ist (Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence and Destruc­tive Emo­tions), talk­ing about the Dalai Lama’s work on this front. You can find the full con­ver­sa­tion with Gole­man at Bigthink.com, a good resource for thought-pro­vok­ing video.

Tweets of the Week — February 20

in Twitter | February 20th, 2010

A quick wrap up of the cul­tur­al items we tweet­ed and re-tweet­ed this week via our Twit­ter stream. You can start fol­low­ing us here: @openculture

• RT @jonathanlandman: Insuf­fer­ably bril­liant: Bern­stein on the Blues — Video Library — The New York Times -https://nyti.ms/dCkoqH
• Deep Think­ing Alive and Well on the Web https://bit.ly/dfAJtL
• RT @TEDchris: Clever BBC video: #TED atten­dees on what the world needs in 18-sec­onds https://bit.ly/dCUdvq
• Dig­i­tal Books and Your Rights: A Check­list for Read­ershttps://bit.ly/bfFCnc (via Boing­Bo­ing)
• RT @GuardianBooks: Har­ry Pot­ter author JK Rowl­ing faces pla­gia­rism alle­ga­tions https://bit.ly/b3gI2v
• RT @artsbeat: Rowl­ing Denies Pla­gia­rism Charge https://nyti.ms/daPewI
• Hunter S. Thomp­son calls cus­tomer ser­vice. (Con­tains, as expect­ed, some NSFW lan­guage): https://bit.ly/cSeNcG via Metafil­ter
• RT @Richard_Florida: “Orders of mag­ni­tude greater” than the print­ing press — the future of dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing @nybooks  https://bit.ly/cWtWBo
• How can you trav­el through nov­els with Google Earth? Google Lit Trips! Details here: https://bit.ly/9dHXSf
• Kin­dle for Black­ber­ry, any­one? New app is out …https://bit.ly/9dCv3b
• RT @nybooks: David Levine: An Audio Por­trait. The late artist talks about his car­i­ca­tures in a nar­rat­ed slide show.https://bit.ly/cLcAKU
• RT @creativecommons: Peer 2 Peer Uni­ver­si­ty launch­es sec­ond round of cours­es and new site via BY-SA. Apply by Feb 28 https://is.gd/8EO9D
• Descartes was appar­ent­ly ‘poi­soned by Catholic priest’https://bit.ly/9Cw1jt
• RT @guardianculture: JD Salinger let­ters reveal he was writ­ing reg­u­lar­ly long after 1965 https://bit.ly/aqDyQM

Werner Herzog Reads Curious George

in Comedy, Film | February 18th, 2010

Ok, it’s not real­ly Wern­er Her­zog. Just a lit­tle play­ful satire. A guess at how the Ger­man direc­tor might reinterpret/read the chil­dren’s clas­sic Curi­ous George. This ver­sion is dark and exis­ten­tial.

via Abe Books

The Science/Liberty Nexus

in History, Politics, Science | February 18th, 2010

You can’t get good democ­ra­cy with­out sci­ence, and you can’t get good sci­ence with­out democ­ra­cy. That’s why great polit­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tions have his­tor­i­cal­ly gone hand-in-hand. It’s an intrigu­ing argu­ment that Tim­o­thy Fer­ris (UC Berke­ley) makes in his new book, The Sci­ence of Lib­er­ty, and debates in an inter­view with Michael Kras­ny, aired last week on KQED in San Fran­cis­co. You can stream the inter­view below, or access it via mp3 or iTunes.

Carl Sandburg on “What’s My Line?”

in Literature, Poetry, Television | February 17th, 2010

What’s My Line? aired on CBS from 1950 to 1967, mak­ing it the longest-run­ning game show in Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. Dur­ing its eigh­teen sea­sons, the show fea­tured hun­dreds of celebri­ties, includ­ing some of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing cul­tur­al fig­ures. The clip above dusts off the 1960 appear­ance made by Carl Sand­burg, the poet, writer, and three time win­ner of the Pulitzer Prize. And now for a video that’s not all fun and games: here’s audio of Sand­burg read­ing his anti­war poem Grass. (You can also get more free audio record­ings of Sand­burg’s poet­ry over at the Inter­net Archive.)

A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything

in Art, Comedy, History | February 11th, 2010

This imag­i­na­tive bit was a stu­den­t’s final project for an art course. The flip­book, made entire­ly out of biro pens, was cre­at­ed with 2100 pages of draw­ings and took about 3 weeks to devel­op. Need­less to say, the stu­dent got an A.

Thanks to @kirstinbutler for flag­ging this one.

Why You Share

in Life, Media, Psychology | February 10th, 2010

A team of researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia spent a good six months study­ing The New York Times list of most-e-mailed arti­cles, hop­ing to fig­ure out what arti­cles get shared, and why. And here’s what they essen­tial­ly found:

Peo­ple pre­ferred e‑mailing arti­cles with pos­i­tive rather than neg­a­tive themes, and they liked to send long arti­cles on intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­leng­ing top­ics… Per­haps most of all, read­ers want­ed to share arti­cles that inspired awe, an emo­tion that the researchers inves­ti­gat­ed after notic­ing how many sci­ence arti­cles made the list.

This goes a long way toward explain­ing why 3.4 mil­lion peo­ple have watched The Known Uni­verse since mid Decem­ber. And, as Bill Rankin right­ly sug­gest­ed to me, it says some­thing good about online cul­ture, and what makes Open Cul­ture work as a site. Each day, we try to give you a lit­tle awe and chal­lenge. And for our next post: 10,000 Galax­ies in 3D.