The Cult of the Amateur: A Short Review (and a Free Book)

in Books, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | July 14th, 2007

New rule: Books that are short on good ideas should only get short reviews. And so that’s what we’re serv­ing up today — a short review of Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Ama­teur: How the Democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the Dig­i­tal World is Assault­ing Our Cul­ture.

Keen’s argu­ment can essen­tial­ly be boiled down to this: Web 2.0 has brought us blogs, Youtube-style video, Wikipedia and oth­er plat­forms that pro­mote user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, and it’s all killing our Cul­ture. Hacks are now crank­ing out “an end­less dig­i­tal for­est of medi­oc­rity;” “the pro­fes­sion­al is being replaced by the ama­teur… the Har­vard pro­fes­sor by the unschooled pop­u­lace;” “kids can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between cred­i­ble news by objec­tive pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists and what they read on joeshmoe.blogspot.com;” “every post­ing is just anoth­er per­son­’s ver­sion of the truth;” with the net result being that in “today’s cul­ture of the ama­teur, the mon­keys are run­ning the show.” Using his own words, that’s the gist of Keen’s argu­ment.

You’d think that by posi­tion­ing him­self as the defend­er of high cul­ture and cul­tur­al author­i­ty, Keen would uphold his end of the bar­gain. That is, you’d expect him to offer us a nuanced, care­ful­ly-craft­ed look at the uses and abus­es of Web 2.0. But that is not what you get here. Miss­ing the mark, The Cult of the Ama­teur is long on hyper­bol­ic rhetoric (see above) and short on sub­tle think­ing and bal­ance. It stretch­es out argu­ments that ought to fill a 15 page arti­cle to 215 pages, and reit­er­ates the same points again and again. (Although tar­get­ed to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the book places no pre­mi­um on effi­cien­cy.) And then you have sprin­kled in var­i­ous dilet­tan­tish ref­er­ences to philoso­phers (Marx, Rousseau, Haber­mas, etc.), cou­pled with slop­py read­ings of oth­er con­tem­po­rary media observers.

The ulti­mate irony is that Keen’s polemic against ama­teur con­tent comes off as strange­ly ama­teur­ish. It’s most­ly oper­at­ing at the same lev­el as the very blo­gos­phere he’s attack­ing. And this impres­sion only gets con­firmed by his admis­sion in the acknowl­edg­ments: “I con­fess that, as a writer, I remain a bit of an ama­teur. This is my first book, and I’m still learn­ing the craft of this com­plex busi­ness.” Appar­ent­ly, the divide between tra­di­tion­al media and dig­i­tal media, between high cul­ture and low cul­ture, is not as real and imper­me­able as Keen would have us believe.

If any­one wants my copy of Keen’s book, just let me know. I will send it any­where in the US at book rate. But be warned that it has some illeg­i­ble mar­gin­a­lia, and my kid doo­dled on one page (page 40), unbe­knownst to me. But think of it this way: You get what you don’t pay for. Our email address is in the ban­ner above. First come, first served.

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

in Audio Books, Books, Current Affairs, History, Literature | July 13th, 2007

Edward Gib­bon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – It’s a major work of the Enlight­en­ment, a book that shaped how we mod­erns write his­to­ry (and, for that mat­ter, how we aspire to write in the Eng­lish lan­guage), and it’s now avail­able as a free pod­cast thanks to Lib­rivox. Or at least Vol­ume 1 is. With a run­time of almost 20 hours, this audio­book — click to access indi­vid­ual files or the full zip file — will make it so that you’re not look­ing for the remain­ing vol­umes any time soon. But don’t wor­ry they’re even­tu­al­ly com­ing.

Pub­lished first in 1776, just as the US declared its inde­pen­dence from Eng­land, Gib­bon’s Decline and Fall looked to offer an empir­i­cal expla­na­tion for why Ancient Rome fell as a pow­er, and he gen­er­al­ly point­ed to a decline in civic virtue among its cit­i­zen­ry (why both­er fight­ing the Empire’s wars when you can get mer­ce­nar­ies to do it?) and to the rise of Chris­tian­i­ty (why wor­ry about Rome when a bet­ter life, an eter­nal after­life, awaits you?).

In part, Gib­bon’s work has endured because it speaks to ques­tions that mod­ern pow­ers have on their minds. What brings Empires down, and what (implic­it­ly) allows them to endure? These ques­tions have a cer­tain amount of rel­e­vance these days in an anx­ious US. And indeed Gib­bon’s name was imme­di­ate­ly invoked in a recent pod­cast that asked whether Amer­i­ca, today’s empire, is on the brink. (Click to lis­ten.) The par­al­lels between Gib­bon’s Rome and the con­tem­po­rary Unit­ed States have also been direct­ly explored by the pro­lif­ic, young Har­vard his­to­ri­an, Niall Fer­gu­son. You may want to check out his Octo­ber 2006 piece in Van­i­ty Fair, Empire Falls. And depend­ing on what you think, you can give time to his two books on Empire — the first (and bet­ter) one focus­es on the British Empire, and a sec­ond one devotes itself to the US.

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Ten Podcasts to Build Your Vocabulary

in English Language, Podcasts | July 12th, 2007

Recent­ly Mer­ri­am-Web­ster announced that they’re adding “ginor­mous,” “speed dat­ing” and a few oth­er gems to the lat­est edi­tion of their dic­tio­nary. In their hon­or, we present ten pod­casts to help you expand your vocab­u­lary. Enjoy!

• Mer­ri­am-Web­ster’s Word of the Day (Feed, Site)
• Pod­ic­tionary (Feed, iTunes, Site)
• The Word Nerds (iTunes, Site)
• NPR: On Words with John Cia­r­di (iTunes, Site)
• KPBS: A Way With Words (Feed, iTunes, Site)
• Just Vocab­u­lary (iTunes, Site)
• WordS­mart Word­Cast (Feed, iTunes, Site)
• Learn Eng­lish: Very Vocab­u­lary (iTunes, Site)
• Test Prep Vocab­u­lary (Feed, Site)
• The Prince­ton Review Vocab­u­lary Minute (iTunes, Feed, Site)

How Open Culture Can Enrich Your Summer Travels

in Uncategorized | July 12th, 2007

We’re now in prime vaca­tion sea­son, and so we fig­ured that we’d high­light sev­er­al ways in which Open Cul­ture can enrich your sum­mer trav­els — all for free.

• First and fore­most, if you’re trav­el­ing to anoth­er coun­try, and if you want to speak the moth­er tongue, then spend some time with our col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts. The col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly cov­ers over 25 lan­guages, so there is a very good chance that we can meet your trav­el needs.

• Next, if you plan to do a good long road trip, you should sort through our col­lec­tion of audio­book pod­casts. Our list, which gives you access to 90 mas­ter­pieces in lit­er­a­ture and clas­sics, can help the long trav­el hours effort­less­ly slide by.

• A vaca­tion is always a good time to learn some­thing new and worth­while. Here are five cours­es from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, avail­able as free pod­casts, that were cre­at­ed with the life­long learn­er in mind. So they were essen­tial­ly cus­tom-made for you. (You can also find here a long list of free cours­es from oth­er major uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing MIT, Berke­ley, Har­vard, Oxford, and Johns Hop­kins.)

• Look­ing for some free Mozart, Beethoven, or Miles Davis to enrich your expe­ri­ence? Find free pod­casts in our Music sec­tion. See our com­plete col­lec­tion of pod­casts here.

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Interview with Susanne Dunlap, the Author of Liszt’s Kiss

in Books, Literature | July 10th, 2007

Today, we’re speak­ing with Susanne Dun­lap, author of Liszt’s Kiss, a recent­ly pub­lished nov­el that brings you back to 1832 Paris and the musi­cal worlds of Franz Liszt and anoth­er cen­tral char­ac­ter, the Count­ess Anne de Bar­bi­er-Chouant.

DC: Before we begin, please tell us a lit­tle bit about who you are as a per­son, and who you are as a writer. What is your writ­ing process like, and what about you as a per­son gets car­ried into your writ­ing?

SD: First, thanks for invit­ing me to inter­view with you. As to who I am as a per­son and a writer—I guess I’d start by say­ing I’m very dis­ci­plined. It comes of being a late bloomer, writ­ing-wise. So many sto­ries, so lit­tle time. I’ve become a lit­tle absent to my long-suf­fer­ing friends and fam­i­ly, but they’ve been fab­u­lous and encour­ag­ing.

I have the incred­i­ble lux­u­ry of hav­ing had over ten years of time to do research—but I didn’t know it was for nov­els. I was a music his­to­ri­an, work­ing on my PhD, and hap­pi­ly ensconced in libraries and read­ing sources about the com­posers and works I delved into in great detail. Along the way, I began to store up things that made me start to won­der what it was like to live in that musi­cal world, espe­cial­ly to be a woman mak­ing music in that world. Real­ly being able to see and hear my char­ac­ter through the music and the words is what gets me total­ly car­ried away in my writ­ing. There’s noth­ing more exhil­a­rat­ing. I wish I could spend all day every day writ­ing, but because I can’t, I set my alarm at 5:15 and get up to work ear­ly.

I sup­pose it’s an abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate and focus that has helped me suc­ceed so far. I didn’t know how to write a nov­el when I start­ed my first one (Emilie’s Voice) about five years ago. Since then I’ve read, writ­ten, prac­ticed, thought, read some more, writ­ten and written—and been for­tu­nate to have met with peo­ple who encour­aged me.

DC: In your view, what makes Franz Liszt such a strong pro­tag­o­nist around which to build a sto­ry? And how much of the real Liszt are we get­ting here ver­sus the imag­ined one?

SD: Liszt was an icon. He cre­at­ed him­self, in a way. He tru­ly was hand­some, incred­i­bly bril­liant, and very gen­er­ous. The leg­ends about him play­ing to crowds of swoon­ing ladies? True.

But the Liszt in Liszt’s Kiss pre­dates the famous­ly self-con­scious Liszt of leg­end. He was not the ear­ly starter, the lumi­nous child­hood genius that Mozart or even Chopin was. It took him a while to find his voice, as it were. Most of what is known about him his­tor­i­cal­ly took place after he offi­cial­ly met Marie d’Agoult—which was actu­al­ly in Decem­ber of 1832, after the time of my book.

What I like to do is explore the might-have-beens. To start from what was, and broad­en it out. After all, espe­cial­ly with some­one like Liszt, what is deemed “his­to­ry” has gone through many fil­ters of inter­pre­ta­tion, includ­ing his own.

Most of all, I want­ed to cre­ate a young Liszt who was believ­ably not there yet, believ­ably gor­geous but a lit­tle inept. I guess it was an icon­o­clas­tic instinct in me.

DC: This is your sec­ond work of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion and, more specif­i­cal­ly, your sec­ond work set in France. What are the chal­lenges of writ­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, and what kind of research did you have to con­duct to write Liszt’s Kiss?

SD: I’m inspired by the his­to­ry, there­fore many of the chal­lenges are less daunt­ing than they might be. But my schol­ar­ly train­ing forces me to real­i­ty-check my sto­ry against the record­ed facts all the time, to make sure I know what kind of car­riage they drove in, what the gloves were made of, whether they would wear gloves indoors, etc. I already had the back­ground knowl­edge of the music, but it’s been fas­ci­nat­ing plac­ing it all against a broad­er socio-polit­i­cal back­drop, too.

That’s the biggest area of research for me: just straight, what-hap­pened-when his­to­ry. Every­thing is always inter­re­lat­ed.

But of course, I real­ly need to have a sense of place. I’ve been for­tu­nate to trav­el in France, and have spent two all-too-brief peri­ods in Paris as well. I’d go back there in a heart­beat, although I didn’t plan my books specif­i­cal­ly to take place there. It just hap­pened.

DC: Liszt’s Kiss is also a work that fits with­in the romance genre. Is there some­thing about the genre (vis-a-vis oth­ers) that you find cre­ative­ly lib­er­at­ing?

SD: Ah, I beg to dif­fer. Liszt’s Kiss is NOT a romance. It cer­tain­ly has roman­tic ele­ments, but it does not obey most of the rules of the genre. Aside from hav­ing the epony­mous kiss as a turn­ing point, there are many oth­er con­ven­tions of romance that I do not adhere to. (Roman­tic encounter with even­tu­al “right” male with­in first 20 pages; accel­er­a­tion of phys­i­cal inti­ma­cy etc. etc.) The kiss is actu­al­ly with the wrong guy—you can’t do that in Romance!

I’m tru­ly not in the least inspired by adher­ing to such con­ven­tions, although all lit­er­a­ture has its con­ven­tion­al ele­ments. Those who write Romances well (and there are many) are pas­sion­ate about them, and com­mit­ted to the genre.

Might I counter with a ques­tion? If this book had been writ­ten by a man, would you have called it a Romance? I pre­fer to think of it as a com­ing-of-age sto­ry with a love sto­ry and a mys­tery woven in.

DC: Thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Now for the next ques­tion. Styl­is­ti­cal­ly, what authors (whether con­tem­po­rary or not) are your influ­ences, and whose work do you see shap­ing your own?

SD: This is always such a hard ques­tion to answer. I don’t con­scious­ly emu­late any­one, but I read wide­ly in many dif­fer­ent gen­res and styles, both clas­sics and con­tem­po­rary lit­er­a­ture. As far as his­tor­i­cal fic­tion goes, I’m a huge admir­er of the late Anya Seton. Her style is a lit­tle dat­ed for now, but she brings her char­ac­ters to life with an imme­di­a­cy that is uncan­ny, and keeps you turn­ing the pages through her long nov­els.

I also admire Philip­pa Gre­go­ry, Tra­cy Cheva­lier, Sarah Dunant, and San­dra Gul­land. They have all man­aged to trans­port me to their time peri­ods and involve me in their char­ac­ters so that I didn’t want to let them go. That’s tru­ly a tal­ent.

On the oth­er hand, I think Ian McE­wan is incred­i­ble, as well as Kazuo Ishig­uro, Lynn Freed, Sigrid Nunez and many, many oth­ers. But I know my writ­ing is very dif­fer­ent from theirs and prob­a­bly won’t ever be like it.

DC: Now to ask a ques­tion often posed by the famous French inter­view­er Bernard Piv­ot: What turns you on cre­ative­ly? And what turns you off?

SD: I’m turned on by see­ing con­nec­tions, by being able to link some­thing I imag­ine with some­thing his­tor­i­cal, by that “aha!” moment of real­iz­ing some­thing you felt was true can be sub­stan­ti­at­ed with some­thing that is true. But oh, how hard it can be to fix that moment to the page!

I’m also turned on by the beau­ty of lan­guage, by read­ing authors who sur­prise me at every turn with a nuance of expres­sion. I’m read­ing Kiran Desai’s The Inher­i­tance of Loss now and am com­plete­ly in love with the book for that very rea­son.

What turns me off is inel­e­gant prose, and lack of respect for the expres­sive­ness of lan­guage. Tak­ing the easy way out with cliché and for­mu­las. That doesn’t just go for writ­ing, it’s true of life. Some peo­ple live clichés. Oth­ers bring a breath of orig­i­nal­i­ty and sur­prise to every­thing they do. Those are the peo­ple I’d invite to my hypo­thet­i­cal din­ner par­ty.

DC: Susanne, many thanks for your time. For read­ers who want to give Liszt’s Kiss a clos­er look, just click here.

How To Write About Your Friends: Irving Reviews Grass

in Books, Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | July 9th, 2007

John Irv­ing pub­lished a long defense of Ger­man author Gün­ter Grass’s new mem­oir, Peel­ing the Onion in the New York Times Book Review yes­ter­day. The book cre­at­ed a storm of when it came out in Ger­man last year. Grass, who received the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 1999, revealed that he spent the last months of World War II as a mem­ber of an SS tank divi­sion. While he was only 17 at the time and claimed nev­er to have fired a weapon in bat­tle, the rev­e­la­tion was clear­ly upset­ting to many not only for the nature of Grass’s involve­ment (the Waf­fen-SS hav­ing exe­cut­ed many of Nazi Germany’s most hor­rif­ic war crimes) but for the fifty-year delay in his con­fes­sion.

Irv­ing’s “review” is a fas­ci­nat­ing read because of the way an old friend­ship and a tricky eth­i­cal ques­tion are man­aged in prose. Not­ing that one of his most famous char­ac­ters, Owen Meany, shares the ini­tials of Grass’s Oskar Matzerath from The Tin Drum (it’s “homage”), Irv­ing made a point of declar­ing that he will be attend­ing at least one par­ty for Grass’s 80^th birth­day, pos­si­bly more. And his defense of Grass’s long silence about the Waf­fen-SS? “But good writ­ers write about the impor­tant stuff before they blab about it; good writ­ers don’t tell sto­ries before they’ve writ­ten them!”

To decide for your­self, you can read the first chap­ter of the book online here. If you get cable, Gün­ter Grass and Nor­man Mail­er will be appear­ing on Book­TV this Sun­day, July 15 at noon. Or you can watch Grass being inter­viewed by Char­lie Rose right here:

Death by Amateurs?

in Books, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | July 8th, 2007

Last weekend’s New York Times Sun­day Mag­a­zine has declared this the Amateur’s Hour, an era when unpaid hob­by­ists can edit break­ing news, design space tech­nol­o­gy for NASA, and pre­dict the end of the world. That last arti­cle is clear­ly an out­lier, but the first two raise an inter­est­ing point—are we get­ting bet­ter ser­vice from process­es like Wikipedia than we did from tra­di­tion­al, top-down hier­ar­chies?

This is a debate that’s been going on for the past cou­ple of years under the guise of Web 2.0, cul­mi­nat­ing in the “You” econ­o­my announced with much fan­fare by Time Mag­a­zine last Decem­ber. In that debate, the bat­tle lines are clear­ly drawn between the YouTube-using, Google Map-mash­ing enthu­si­asts and the skep­tics, like aJaron Lanier, who pre­dicts a form of Dig­i­tal Mao­ism. In that ver­sion of the argu­ment, blog­gers are either cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists or incom­pe­tent muck­rak­ers clog­ging the pores of the body politic.

Now the debate seems to have moved into a wider circle—the realm of the ama­teur ver­sus the pro­fes­sion­al, with or with­out the inter­net. Major out­fits from Net­flix to NASA have been try­ing to out­source some of their trick­i­est prob­lems to the gen­er­al pub­lic, which is as bizarre as it is excit­ing. Andrew Keen, arguably the most Web 2.0‑enabled crit­ic of Web 2.0, is well-placed to com­bat the Times cov­er­age with his new book, The Cult of the Ama­teur: How Today’s Inter­net is Killing our Cul­ture, which he describes as a polemic against all of the mon­keys with type­writ­ers and web­cams (that is, us) the Inter­net has now unleashed upon civ­i­liza­tion.

Per­son­al­ly, I find it hard to believe that “real cul­ture” is drown­ing in a sea of YouTube. If there’s one thing we’re try­ing to do at Open Cul­ture, it’s to har­ness Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies to bring you the best stuff there is: top-notch con­tent from uni­ver­si­ties, cul­tur­al pro­grams and online media around the world. The fact that it might be cre­at­ed by any­one, for any­one doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make it bad or good—our job as a Web 2.0 fil­ter is to sort that out for you and offer our best sug­ges­tions.

Keen’s self-pro­mo­tion­al ener­gy is an excel­lent exam­ple of how tech­nol­o­gy can enhance the great con­ver­sa­tion. He’s argu­ing his case every­where from Google’s HQ (watch here on YouTube) to the Strand Book­store in Man­hat­tan. A mul­ti­plic­i­ty of view­points cre­ates debate, and debate is gen­er­al­ly a good thing. If there’s one les­son to be learned from “real cul­ture” it’s that life’s great ques­tions don’t have neat or sat­is­fy­ing answers. Inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion is about the best we can hope for, so why not invite more peo­ple to join in?

Radio Open Source Goes Radio Silent

in Uncategorized | July 5th, 2007

As we cov­er the world of enlight­ened pod­casts, we inevitably uncov­er ones that become our per­son­al favorites, and this was the case with Radio Open Source (iTunes Feed Web Site). Host­ed by Christo­pher Lydon, the show had a great knack for mak­ing heady issues engag­ing and acces­si­ble to a wider audi­ence, and that was main­ly because the show took its lead from the Radio Open Source blog and its active online com­mu­ni­ty. Rather unique­ly, Lydon and his crew let the online com­mu­ni­ty help pro­duce the show, which meant let­ting the audi­ence sug­gest top­ics and guests for future pro­grams. It was a nov­el con­cept that yield­ed some very good results.

Any­way, as you can tell, we’re talk­ing about things in the past tense, and that’s because the show announced last week that they’ve run out of fund­ing and gone on a sum­mer hia­tus. They’re sort­ing things out and hop­ing to return this fall with new mon­ey and per­haps a new broadcasting/podcasting approach. We hope to see them back in action soon. In mean­time, we’d encour­age you look back through their media archive — iTunes Feed Web Site — to get a feel for what the fall may bring.

Weekly Wrap — June 30

in Uncategorized | June 30th, 2007

It’s a wrap for the week:

• Steven Col­bert Gives iPhone Zero Stars
• Phi­los­o­phy Bites
• Miles and Coltrane on YouTube: The Jazz Greats
• The Online Span­ish Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram
• 20 Pod­casts That Will Teach You Span­ish, French, Ital­ian and Ger­man (A Reprise)
• What Feed Read­ers Don’t See on Open Cul­ture

What Feed Readers Don’t See on Open Culture

in Uncategorized | June 28th, 2007 Read More...