The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladislas Starevich’s Animation of Goethe’s Great German Folktale (1937)

in Animation, Film | August 27th, 2013

Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe — the very name bespeaks lit­er­ary mas­tery of the widest range. Not only did this best-known of all eigh­teenth- and — nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Ger­man writ­ers reach into poet­ry, the nov­el, the mem­oir, auto­bi­og­ra­phy, crit­i­cism, sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and even pol­i­tics, but he did a bit of inter­pre­ta­tion of clas­sic folk­tales as well. The Faust and Sor­rows of Young Werther author wrote a par­tic­u­lar­ly last­ing ren­di­tion of the adven­tures of Rey­nard the Fox, a trick­ster from medieval Euro­pean myth. Had Goethe him­self lived into the 20th cen­tu­ry to expe­ri­ence the gold­en age of pup­pet ani­ma­tion, I feel cer­tain his artis­tic man­date would have com­pelled him to film a ver­sion of The Tale of the Fox. Alas, the lit­er­ary leg­end passed away in 1832, leav­ing the job, near­ly a cen­tu­ry lat­er, to Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Ladis­las Stare­vich (also spelled Wla­dys­law Starewicz).

Hav­ing pio­neered the form of pup­pet ani­ma­tion with his 1912 film The Beau­ti­ful Lukani­da, Stare­vich remains well-known among ani­ma­tion enthu­si­asts for shoot­ing his pic­tures with ani­mals play­ing the pro­tag­o­nists, or bugs, or seem­ing­ly what­ev­er he hap­pened to have at hand. The Tale of the Fox, by con­trast, pre­sent­ed him with a com­par­a­tive­ly vast set of resources. Pro­duced in Paris over eigh­teen months in 1929 and 1930, the 65-minute ani­mat­ed fea­ture, Stare­vich’s first and only the sixth ever made in the world at the time, tells the sto­ry of Rey­nard the Fox’s attempts to live his life of tom­fool­ery even as the lion king of this ani­mal king­dom strug­gles to bring him to jus­tice. When, sev­en years after com­plet­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, the film still lacked music, Ger­many’s Nation­al Social­ist gov­ern­ment, no doubt swollen with their ver­sion of Teu­ton­ic pride at see­ing an adap­ta­tion of an adap­ta­tion penned by a Ger­man icon, pro­vid­ed a score and arranged for a Berlin pre­miere. But try not to think about that. Con­cen­trate instead on the ani­ma­tion style used here by Stare­vich which, though he shot in stop-motion and used pup­pets, sure­ly resem­bles no stop-motion ani­ma­tion or pup­pet show you’ve ever seen.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Beau­ti­ful­ly-Craft­ed Russ­ian Ani­ma­tions of Chekhov’s Clas­sic Children’s Sto­ry “Kash­tan­ka”

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Gaiman

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, Ani­mat­ed in Two Min­utes

The Mas­cot, Pio­neer­ing Stop Ani­ma­tion from Wla­dys­law Starow­icz

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

10 Essential Tips for Making Great Coffee at Home

in Food & Drink | August 26th, 2013

Michael Haft and Har­ri­son Suarez went to col­lege togeth­er, served in the Marines in Afghanistan, then, after return­ing home, stum­bled upon the world of spe­cial­ty cof­fee and began “an obses­sive quest to brew the per­fect cup.” That quest result­ed in the pub­li­ca­tion of an inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal book designed for the iPad. Per­fect Cof­fee at Home ($4.99) uses illus­tra­tions, inter­ac­tive graph­ics, videos and a sound­track to make the tuto­r­i­al “an immer­sive expe­ri­ence.” But you don’t need to foot the bill or have an iPad to improve your cof­fee mak­ing skills.

Over at The Atlantic, Haft and Suarez gave some free advice last week, pub­lish­ing an arti­cle where they, among oth­er things, enu­mer­at­ed 10 essen­tial tips for mak­ing cof­fee. They boiled things down to this:

1. Buy good cof­fee beans. Prefer­ably whole beans, sus­tain­ably farmed, and roast­ed with­in the past few weeks.
   
2. Grind your cof­fee just before brew­ing. They say, “it’s the num­ber one thing you can do to improve your cof­fee at home.”
3. Store your cof­fee prop­er­ly. Keep the cof­fee in an air­tight con­tain­er, away from sun­light. Try to avoid freez­ing the beans, unless they’re going to linger for more than two weeks.
4. Use a good amount of cof­fee, and the right pro­por­tion of cof­fee to water. The ide­al is what they call “The Gold­en Ratio,” 17.42 units of water to 1 unit of cof­fee.
5. Find the right grind size for your cof­fee beans and aim for a uni­form grind.
6. Con­trol the tem­per­a­ture of your water. Keep it some­where between 195 and 202 degrees. Boil­ing water can sour the cof­fee.
7. If you get real­ly skilled, you can agi­tate the cof­fee dur­ing the brew­ing to con­trol the taste.
8. Focus on tech­nique. And once you learn the right tech­nique, make sure you’re pre­cise and con­sis­tent.
9. Use qual­i­ty tools. Buy the right bean grinder and cof­fee mak­er. Make a good invest­ment in your cof­fee drink­ing future.
10. When exper­i­ment­ing with the brew­ing process, adjust only one vari­able at a time so you can accu­rate­ly track results.

The Atlantic arti­cle offers more detail than what we’ve high­light­ed above. So we’d encour­age you to give “How to Make Per­fect Cof­fee” a read. You can also find short video primers on the Haft & Suarez YouTube Chan­nel. If you have your own great cof­fee mak­ing tips, def­i­nite­ly share them with us in the com­ments sec­tions below. We want to know!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short, Ani­mat­ed Look at What’s Inside Your Aver­age Cup of Cof­fee

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

Fritz Lang’s M (1931)

in Film | August 25th, 2013

When Jean-Luc Godard asked the Aus­tri­an film­mak­er Fritz Lang in 1961 to name his great­est film, the one most like­ly to last, Lang did not hes­i­tate.

“M,” he said.

Made in 1931, near the end of the Weimar Repub­lic, M is Lang’s bril­liant link between silent film and talkies, and between Ger­man Expres­sion­ism and what would even­tu­al­ly be called Film Noir. It tells the sto­ry of a Berlin soci­ety caught up in hys­te­ria over a series of child mur­ders, and of the mas­sive mobi­liza­tion — by police and crim­i­nals alike — to catch the killer.

The Hun­gar­i­an actor Peter Lorre plays Hans Beck­ert, the men­tal­ly dis­turbed mur­der­er. Lorre worked on the film in the day­time while per­form­ing onstage in Bertolt Brecht’s pro­duc­tion of Mann ist Mann in the evenings. His strik­ing per­for­mance in M would cat­a­pult him to inter­na­tion­al star­dom.

The script was writ­ten by Lang and his wife, Thea Von Har­bou. It was inspired by a series of mass mur­ders, cul­mi­nat­ing in a sen­sa­tion­al case of ser­i­al child killings in Düs­sel­dorf. In a 1931 arti­cle, Lang wrote:

The epi­dem­ic series of mass mur­ders of the last decade with their man­i­fold and dark side effects had con­stant­ly absorbed me, as unap­peal­ing as their study may have been. It made me think of demon­strat­ing, with­in the frame­work of a film sto­ry, the typ­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of this immense dan­ger for the dai­ly order and the ways of effec­tive­ly fight­ing them. I found the pro­to­type in the per­son of the Düs­sel­dorf ser­i­al mur­der­er and I also saw how here the side effects exact­ly repeat­ed them­selves, i.e. how they took on a typ­i­cal form. I have dis­tilled all typ­i­cal events from the pletho­ra of mate­ri­als and com­bined them with the help of my wife into a self-con­tained film sto­ry. The film M should be a doc­u­ment and an extract of facts and in that way an authen­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a mass mur­der com­plex.

Although M was not a great box office suc­cess when it was released in Ger­many in 1931, the film grad­u­al­ly grew in stature and is now firm­ly estab­lished as one of the mas­ter­pieces of 20th cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma. The bril­liance of the film’s nar­ra­tive struc­ture, its clas­sic visu­al images (the killer’s shad­ow appear­ing on a poster announc­ing a reward for his cap­ture, a child’s bal­loon caught in a pow­er line, Lor­re’s bulging eyes as he dis­cov­ers a chalk “M” on his shoul­der) and its inven­tive use of sound, for exam­ple in the ser­i­al killer’s omi­nous whistling of Grieg’s Peer Gynt, have made M one of the most stud­ied and imi­tat­ed films ever made.

In 1959 M was re-released in trun­cat­ed form, and for sev­er­al decades after­ward audi­ences were shown a bad­ly altered 89-minute ver­sion. A restora­tion project was mount­ed in the 1990s. The 109-minute ver­sion above, a result of that project, is clos­er to Lang’s orig­i­nal film. It’s now housed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed con­tent:

Fritz Lang’s “Licen­tious, Pro­fane, Obscure” Noir Film, Scar­let Street (1945)

Free Film Noir Movies

MOOC FAQ

in | August 24th, 2013

Where Can I Find a List of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es (MOOCs)?: We main­tain a reg­u­lar­ly-updat­ed list of MOOCs on this page: Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many Offer­ing Cer­tifi­cates). The list aggre­gates cours­es from many dif­fer­ent MOOC providers, both large and small.

Does Open Cul­ture Offer Its Own MOOCs?: No, we sim­ply aggre­gate MOOCs cre­at­ed by oth­er orga­ni­za­tions and insti­tu­tions. We don’t offer any of our own cours­es.

Do These Cours­es Offer Cer­tifi­cates? Many MOOC providers will give stu­dents a “Cer­tifi­cate of Com­ple­tion,” “State­ment of Accom­plish­ment” or some oth­er equiv­a­lent if stu­dents suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete a course. If you sign up for a course, you should check to see what (if any) certificate/statement is offered.

Do the Cer­tifi­cates Cost Mon­ey: Some do. Increas­ing­ly the MOOC providers are switch­ing to a mod­el where they will give away a course for free. But the cer­tifi­cate costs mon­ey. On the page where we offer a list of MOOCS, we include a key that explains what cre­den­tials a course offers. If you need to pay for the cre­den­tial, we include a “$” sign. For exam­ple: VC$ = Ver­i­fied Cer­tifi­cate.

How Do Stu­dents Receive a Cer­tifi­cate? Stu­dents eli­gi­ble for a cer­tifi­cate will usu­al­ly access it in a dig­i­tal for­mat. They are usu­al­ly down­loaded. And they look some­thing like this.

What’s the Dif­fer­ence Between a Cer­tifi­cate of Mas­tery, State­ment of Accom­plish­ment, Cer­tifi­cate of Com­ple­tion etc? In short, not much. Dif­fer­ent schools and course providers have come up with their own ter­mi­nol­o­gy. But they are basi­cal­ly equiv­a­lent.

Can I Get Cred­it at My Uni­ver­si­ty If I Take a MOOC? Gen­er­al­ly the answer is no. If you take a MOOC and get a Certificate/Statement of Accom­plish­ment, you gen­er­al­ly can­not take the cer­tifi­cate to your uni­ver­si­ty and get actu­al cred­it. There area a few rare excep­tions to that rule. If you have any ques­tions, you should check with your uni­ver­si­ty.

Can I Get an Under­grad­u­ate Degree by Tak­ing MOOCs? Giv­en what’s said imme­di­ate­ly above, the answer is gen­er­al­ly no.

Can MOOCs Help Me Get a Job? That remains to be seen right now. There is not a con­sen­sus here, but there are hope­ful signs. A recent arti­cle pub­lished on the Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Edu­ca­tion web site states:

Human resources exec­u­tives and recruiters tell me they aren’t see­ing sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of can­di­dates tout­ing the MOOCs they’ve com­plet­ed. But those who have seen men­tions of MOOCs say it’s an indi­ca­tion of com­mit­ment to upgrad­ing skills and knowl­edge.

At Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, recruit­ment man­ag­er Megan Bradley says, “I see these online cours­es as a form of pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment, like when peo­ple take adult ed cours­es. If a job requires a [spe­cif­ic] edu­ca­tion­al degree, these cours­es would not suf­fice.”

Bruce Allen of the Wake­field recruit­ing firm Point B Search says, “Any ini­tia­tive that can­di­dates take to update their skill set, acquire new skills, or sim­ply extend their knowl­edge base will be viewed as pos­i­tive.”

Are MOOCs Free?: The cours­es are almost always free, as are often the cer­tifi­cates offered to stu­dents who suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the cours­es. In some cas­es, stu­dents will need to pay nom­i­nal fees for texts.

What If I See an Inter­est­ing MOOC That Has Already Start­ed or Has Already Fin­ished?: Often MOOCs get offered sev­er­al times a year. You can fol­low our list of MOOCs to find future offer­ings. There are some “ever­green” MOOCs that you can take any time. Find a list here.

Who Are MOOCs Good For? We think MOOCs are a good thing if you’re a life­long learn­er who lacks easy access to edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties, in what­ev­er form they might come. But if you’re an under­grad­u­ate, and if your school is try­ing to replace real teach­ers with MOOCs, you’re prob­a­bly not get­ting a great deal. Case in point.

Are There Any Ques­tions Not Answered by This FAQ? Feel free to send us a note and let us know.

A Radio Play Based on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. Coming Monday. Watch the Trailer.

in Music, Radio | August 24th, 2013

This year, Pink Floy­d’s mas­ter­ful prog rock album The Dark Side of the Moon turns 40. Yes, 40. Explor­ing themes rang­ing from con­flict and greed, to men­tal ill­ness and the pass­ing of time, The Dark Side of the Moon has “every­thing you’d ever want … : Grand, trans­port­ing melodies, synapse-rip­ping synth exper­i­ments and sound col­lages, intri­cate musi­cian­ship, state-of-the-art stu­dio sound and John Lennon-meets-Thom Yorke lyrics like ‘The lunatic is on the grass/Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs/Got to keep the loonies on the path.’ ” Or, so that’s how Rolling Stone mag­a­zine sums up the album that it now ranks 43rd on its list of “The 500 Great­est Albums of All Time.”

Next Mon­day, BBC Radio 2 will hon­or Pink Floy­d’s mag­num opus with a new radio dra­ma from leg­endary play­wright Sir Tom Stop­pard. Appar­ent­ly Stop­pard (who co-wrote the screen­plays for Brazil and Shake­speare in Love) first con­sid­ered writ­ing a play based on the album back in 1973. Now, some 40 years lat­er, he has “trans­formed the Pink Floyd clas­sic into a psy­che­del­ic mash-up of Kant­ian phi­los­o­phy, epic rock and John Prescott sound­bites,” writes The Inde­pen­dent. To get you ready for Dark­side, as the play will be called, Aard­man Ani­ma­tions has cre­at­ed a three-minute trail­er that evokes themes from the album and play. Says the direc­tor Dar­ren Dubic­ki:

I spent time absorb­ing the rich detail from the Pink Floyd album, their art and the dra­ma script. What was fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant to us was that we retained a con­sis­tent visu­al tone that echoed the imagery cre­at­ed over the years for the band. The insane­ly sur­re­al and pow­er­ful art­work cre­at­ed by Storm Thorg­er­son and Hipg­no­sis has always had a strong dis­tor­tion on real­i­ty. Their sense of space and twist­ed con­text make for some uncom­fort­ably beau­ti­ful art. This tone has been con­sis­tent for decades and we want­ed to hon­our this with our con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal, and ana­logue, slant on the style.

You can watch the trail­er above, and find some won­der­ful Pink Floyd mate­r­i­al in the sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Watch Pink Floyd Plays Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Per­forms The Wall at the Berlin Wall (1990)

The “Most Amazing [Borrowed] College Welcome Speech Ever”

in Uncategorized | August 23rd, 2013

Geor­gia Tech sopho­more and Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing major Nick Sel­by gave a rous­ing wel­come speech at the 2013 Fresh­man Con­vo­ca­tion. It did­n’t take long for the speech to go viral. Or for Gawk­er to real­ize that the speech had been bor­rowed from a 2008 speech giv­en by Andy Stone, once the debate team cham­pi­on at Ari­zona State. (Click here and then skip to the 8:40 mark to see the sim­i­lar part of Stone’s speech.) But here’s per­haps the most straight­for­ward expla­na­tion. It turns out that Sel­by was once coached by Stone, and on his Face­book page, Sel­by writes: “I had an awe­some speech coach in high school by the name of Andy Stone, and was absolute­ly thrilled when he agreed to let me use the end of his award-win­ning speech as the foun­da­tion for my own.”

Dick Cavett’s Wide-Ranging TV Interview with Ingmar Bergman and Lead Actress Bibi Andersson (1971)

in Film, Television | August 21st, 2013

Many film fans wish we could have a direc­tor like Ing­mar Bergman work­ing today. Just as many tele­vi­sion fans sure­ly wish we could have a talk show host like Dick Cavett work­ing today. But both Bergman, who died in 2007, and Cavett, who still writes but seems to have put tele­vi­su­al pur­suits behind him, pro­duced sub­stan­tial bod­ies of work. And, thanks to the inter­net, you can expe­ri­ence their films and broad­casts even more eas­i­ly than when they first appeared. Take, for instance, this 1971 Dick Cavett Show episode fea­tur­ing the curi­ous and dry-wit­ted con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist’s inter­view with the Swedish mak­er of such pic­tures still viewed wide­ly and enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly as The Sev­enth Seal, The Vir­gin Spring, Per­sona, and Fanny and Alexan­der. No enthu­si­ast of seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion about film would want to miss the hour when these two men’s worlds col­lide. But we get an insight into more than these men’s worlds: part­way through the episode, and to the delight of Bergman’s fans, actress Bibi Ander­s­son turns up.

Even­tu­al­ly to star in more than ten Bergman pic­tures, includ­ing Per­sona, The Magi­cian, and The Pas­sion of Anna, Ander­s­son appears osten­si­bly in pro­mo­tion of her and Bergman’s then-most recent col­lab­o­ra­tion, The Touch. “Does he under­stand women?” Cavett sud­den­ly asks Ander­s­son, who replies with every inter­view­er’s bête noire, the one-word answer: “Yes.” Bergman then explains his con­vic­tion that women pos­sess greater nat­ur­al act­ing abil­i­ty and com­fort with the craft than men do. “Act­ing,” he says, “is a very spe­cial wom­an’s pro­fes­sion.” The full con­ver­sa­tion reveals more about the film­mak­er’s sur­pris­ing fem­i­nism, as well as his child­hood fear of movies, his life­long fear of drugs, his views on punc­tu­al­i­ty, his on-set tem­per, his strug­gles with rest­less leg syn­drome, the pride he takes in his soap com­mer­cials, his home­land’s sup­posed pre­pon­der­ance of beau­ti­ful women, and how many more films he intends to make. “Five, maybe six,” the direc­tor guess­es. “Make it six, could you?” asks the host. He end­ed up mak­ing twelve.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

How Woody Allen Dis­cov­ered Ing­mar Bergman, and How You Can Too

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch John Cleese as Sherlock Holmes in The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It

in Comedy | August 20th, 2013

Here’s some­thing to light­en your day a lit­tle: Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese as Sher­lock Holmes in the 1977 British tele­vi­sion film The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It.

As the title sug­gests, it’s a very sil­ly film. Cleese plays Arthur Sher­lock Holmes, grand­son of the famous detec­tive. His side­kick, Dr. Wat­son, is sim­i­lar­ly descend­ed from a famil­iar char­ac­ter in the Arthur Conan Doyle sto­ries. Togeth­er they set out to foil a dia­bol­i­cal plot by their neme­sis, a descen­dent of Pro­fes­sor Mori­ar­ty. The mod­ern-day Holmes has some of the same man­ner­isms as his famous grand­fa­ther, but is decid­ed­ly less clever and likes to keep his cal­abash pipe filled with exot­ic vari­eties of cannabis.

Cleese co-wrote the script with Jack Hobbs and the film’s direc­tor, Joseph McGrath, who is best known for direct­ing the Peter Sell­ers movies Casi­no Royale and The Mag­ic Chris­t­ian. It was pro­duced for Lon­don Week­end Tele­vi­sion by Humphrey Bar­clay, who is gen­er­al­ly cred­it­ed with bring­ing togeth­er much of what even­tu­al­ly became the Mon­ty Python cast, includ­ing Amer­i­can ani­ma­tor Ter­ry Gilliam, in the sub­ver­sive late-1960s chil­dren’s show Do Not Adjust Your Set. Cleese’s wife at the time, Con­nie Booth, who was also col­lab­o­rat­ing with him on the TV series Fawl­ty Tow­ers, plays the detec­tive’s land­la­dy Mrs. Hud­son. And Arthur Lowe is very fun­ny as the dim-wit­ted Dr. Wat­son.

The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It is a low-bud­get affair — extreme­ly goofy — and not for every­one. But if you’re a fan of clas­sic British TV com­e­dy and you love out­landish gags, you should get a kick out of it. The fun­ni­est parts begin after the 13-minute mark, when Cleese arrives onscreen.

You can find The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

John Cleese Plays the Dev­il, Makes a Spe­cial Appeal for Hell, 1966

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

Crime Writer Elmore Leonard Provides 13 Writing Tips for Aspiring Writers

in Books, Literature, Writing | August 20th, 2013

Note: Elmore Leonard, the crime writer who gave us Get Shorty, Freaky Deaky, and Glitz, died at his home in Bloom­field Vil­lage, Michi­gan. He was 87. If you nev­er had a chance to read Leonard, you can start with “Ice Man,” a 2012 sto­ry that appeared in The Atlantic. It’s free online. You can also get a feel for his writ­ing by revis­it­ing a post writ­ten here by Mike Springer last year. It gives an overview of Leonard’s tips for aspir­ing writ­ers. And, in so doing, it pro­vides valu­able insight into how Leonard approached his craft. Elmore Leonard’s Ulti­mate Guide for Would-Be Writ­ers is reprint­ed in full below.

“If it sounds like writ­ing,” says Elmore Leonard, “I rewrite it.”

Leonard’s writ­ing sounds the way peo­ple talk. It rings true. In nov­els like Get Shorty, Rum Punch and Out of Sight, Leonard has estab­lished him­self as a mas­ter styl­ist, and while his char­ac­ters may be lowlifes, his books are received and admired in the high­est cir­cles. In 1998 Mar­tin Amis recalled vis­it­ing Saul Bel­low and see­ing Leonard’s books on the old man’s shelves. “Bel­low and I agreed,” said Amis, “that for an absolute­ly reli­able and unstint­ing infu­sion of nar­ra­tive plea­sure in a prose mirac­u­lous­ly purged of all false qual­i­ties, there was no one quite like Elmore Leonard.”

In 2006 Leonard appeared on BBC Two’s The Cul­ture Show to talk about the craft of writ­ing and give some advice to aspir­ing authors. In the pro­gram, shown above, Leonard talks about his deep appre­ci­a­tion of Ernest Hem­ing­way’s work in gen­er­al, and about his par­tic­u­lar debt to the 1970 crime nov­el The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Hig­gins. While explain­ing his approach, Leonard jots down three tips:

• “You have to lis­ten to your char­ac­ters.”
• “Don’t wor­ry about what your moth­er thinks of your lan­guage.”
• “Try to get a rhythm.”

“I always refer to style as sound,” says Leonard. “The sound of the writ­ing.” Some of Leonard’s sug­ges­tions appeared in a 2001 New York Times arti­cle that became the basis of his 2007 book, Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writ­ing. Here are those rules in out­line form:

You can read more from Leonard on his rules in the 2001 Times arti­cle. And you can read his new short sto­ry, “Ice Man,” in The Atlantic.

“The Lost Paris Tapes” Preserves Jim Morrison’s Final Poetry Recordings from 1971

in Music, Poetry | August 19th, 2013

Billed and sold as the ninth and final stu­dio album by The Doors, An Amer­i­can Prayer tends to divide Jim Mor­ri­son fans. On the one hand, it’s a cap­ti­vat­ing doc­u­ment of the late singer read­ing his free-asso­cia­tive poet­ry: dark, weird­ly beau­ti­ful psy­che­del­ic lyri­cal fugues. On the oth­er hand, it’s only a “Doors album” in that the three remain­ing mem­bers con­vened in 1978 to record orig­i­nal music over the deceased Morrison’s solo read­ings. While the result­ing prod­uct is both a haunt­ing trib­ute and an immer­sive late-night lis­ten, many have felt that the band’s ren­der­ing did vio­lence to the depart­ed singer’s orig­i­nal inten­tions. (Lis­ten to and down­load it here for free.)

An Amer­i­can Prayer’s read­ings were record­ed unac­com­pa­nied in March 1969 and Decem­ber 1970. In 1971, Mor­ri­son joined his long-time lover Pamela Cour­son in Paris. That same year, Jim Mor­ri­son died, under some rather mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances, at the age of 27.

Before his death, how­ev­er, he made what is said to be his final stu­dio record­ing, a poet­ry reading/performance with a cou­ple of unknown Parisian street musi­cians. Although Doors key­boardist Ray Man­zarek alleged­ly dis­missed this record­ing as “drunk­en gib­ber­ish,” Doors fans have cir­cu­lat­ed it since 1994—combined with a 37-minute poet­ry read­ing from 1968—as a boot­leg called The Lost Paris Tapes.

While it’s true that An Amer­i­can Prayer is a pow­er­ful and haunt­ing album, it’s also true that The Lost Paris Tapes rep­re­sents the unadorned, unedit­ed Mor­ri­son, in full con­trol of how his voice sounds, and with­out his famous band. I can­not help you find a copy of The Lost Paris Tapes, but many of the tracks are on Youtube, such as “Orange Coun­ty Suite” (top), an affect­ing piece writ­ten for Pamela Cour­son. Oth­er excerpts from the boot­leg, such as “Hitler Poem” (above) show Mor­ri­son in a very strange mood indeed, and show off his unset­ting sense of humor. While the work on The Lost Paris Tapes ranges in qual­i­ty, all of it pre­serves the seduc­tive voice and cryp­tic imag­i­na­tion that Jim Mor­ri­son nev­er lost, even as he began to slip away into alco­holism.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Doors Key­boardist Ray Man­zarek (1939–2013) Tells the Sto­ry of the Clas­sic Song, ‘Rid­ers on the Storm’

A Young, Clean Cut Jim Mor­ri­son Appears in a 1962 Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­mo Film

Ani­ma­tions Revive Lost Inter­views with David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness