The Writing Life of Joyce Carol Oates

in Books, Literature, Writing | July 15th, 2013

Joyce Car­ol Oates is often described as Amer­i­ca’s fore­most woman of let­ters. Since 1963 she has pub­lished more than 50 nov­els and a great many short sto­ries, plays, essays, poems and chil­dren’s sto­ries — all of unusu­al­ly high qual­i­ty. Her pro­duc­tiv­i­ty has been leg­endary, almost from the start. When her for­mer Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty class­mate Robert Phillips inter­viewed Oates for the Paris Review in 1978, he recount­ed a rumor that cir­cu­lat­ed cam­pus about how she would fin­ish a nov­el, turn it over, and begin com­pos­ing anoth­er one on the oth­er side–only to throw the man­u­script away when both sides were cov­ered and begin again. Oates did­n’t deny the rumor. “I began writ­ing in high school,” she said, “con­scious­ly train­ing myself by writ­ing nov­el after nov­el and always throw­ing them out when I com­plet­ed them.” But sheer vol­ume was nev­er the point, as Oates told Phillips:

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is a rel­a­tive mat­ter. And it’s real­ly insignif­i­cant: What is ulti­mate­ly impor­tant is a writer’s strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few last­ing ones — just as a young writer or poet might have to write hun­dreds of poems before writ­ing his first sig­nif­i­cant one. Each book as it is writ­ten, how­ev­er, is a com­plete­ly absorb­ing expe­ri­ence, and feels always as if it were the work I was born to write.

Oates has won many hon­ors for her work, includ­ing the Nation­al Book Award, the Pen/Malamud Award, the Nation­al Medal of the Human­i­ties, and a life­time achieve­ment award from the Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle. Her lat­est nov­el, The Accursed, is a Goth­ic tale of a super­nat­ur­al curse vis­it­ed upon Prince­ton, New Jer­sey, the town where she lives and teach­es. Last month the New York­er vis­it­ed Oates at her home in Prince­ton. The short film above offers a rare look inside the writer’s pri­vate world. Oates talks about her work rou­tine, her inter­est in lan­guage and struc­ture, and her sense of her own per­son­al­i­ty. “I can basi­cal­ly write almost all day long with inter­rup­tions,” she says in the film. “It’s not real­ly that I sit down to write as if it were some extra­or­di­nary act. It’s basi­cal­ly what I do.”

You can read online Oates’ ear­ly short sto­ry, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”. It was writ­ten for Bob Dylan in 1966.

via Page-Turn­er

Mr. Rogers Takes Breakdancing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

in K-12, Television | July 12th, 2013

Feb­ru­ary 13th, 1985 shall be remem­bered as a tru­ly beau­ti­ful day in the neigh­bor­hood, for that is the date on which Fred Rogers learned to break­dance (sort of).

In no time at all, 12-year-old instruc­tor Jer­maine Vaughn had Mr. Rogers wav­ing, moon­walk­ing and learn­ing how to press play on a boom box so he could demon­strate some “very fan­cy things” regard­ing the first pil­lar of hip hop. (“I’d nev­er be able to do that,” his pupil says admir­ing­ly, and pre­sum­ably truth­ful­ly.)

The tele­vi­sion icon’s leg­endary sin­cer­i­ty is on dis­play through­out, even in this pirat­ed ver­sion, which swaps out the wimpy orig­i­nal track in favor of NWA’s 1989 “Fuck Tha Police,” a move that would’ve pleased Eddie Mur­phy’s Mr. Robin­son.

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:

Mr. Rogers Goes to Wash­ing­ton

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will always be Fred Rogers’ tele­vi­sion neigh­bor. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

David Bowie Narrates Sergei Prokofiev’s Children’s Symphony Peter and the Wolf

in K-12, Music | July 3rd, 2013

Some of the 20th century’s great­est actors have nar­rat­ed Sergei Prokofiev’s sym­phon­ic sto­ry Peter and the Wolf, includ­ing Peter Usti­nov, Alec Guin­ness, Ralph Richard­son, John Giel­gud, Basil Rath­bone, Edna Ever­age, and one of my favorites, Boris Karloff. In 1978, David Bowie joined this illus­tri­ous com­pa­ny with his record­ing of the clas­sic for RCA Vic­tor with the Philadel­phia Orches­tra. Find it above.

Bowie begins, as do all of the nar­ra­tors, with a brief sum­ma­ry of how this sym­pho­ny works, with dif­fer­ent instru­men­ta­tion rep­re­sent­ing the var­i­ous char­ac­ters (see here for full text of the sto­ry and descrip­tion of themes):

Each char­ac­ter in the tale is going to be rep­re­sent­ed by a dif­fer­ent instru­ment of the orches­tra. For instance, the bird will be played by the flute. (Like this.) Here’s the duck, played by the oboe. The cat by the clar­inet. The bas­soon will rep­re­sent grand­fa­ther. The wolf by the French horns. And Peter by the strings. The blast of the hunters’ shot­guns played by the ket­tle drums.

Bowie has said he that he made the record­ing as a present for his son, Dun­can, then 7. Prokofiev, com­mis­sioned by the Cen­tral Children’s The­atre in Moscow in 1936 to help cul­ti­vate the musi­cal tastes of young chil­dren, wrote the sym­pho­ny in four days. As Tim Smith points out in an essay for PBS, Peter and the Wolf has “helped intro­duce gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren to the instru­ments of the orches­tra and the con­cept of telling a sto­ry through music.” I know it will be a part of my daughter’s musi­cal edu­ca­tion. I’m pret­ty sure we’ll start with Bowie’s ver­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

Rare 1946 Film: The Great Russ­ian Com­pos­er Sergei Prokofiev Plays Piano, Dis­cuss­es His Music

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

Blondie Plays CBGB in the Mid-70s in Two Vintage Clips

in Music | July 1st, 2013

In hon­or of Deb­bie Harry’s 68^th birth­day today, we bring you some very ear­ly clips of Blondie at CBGB. Above, the band plays “A Girl Should Know Bet­ter” in 1975, an unre­leased track that’s got all the garage rock, girl-group sound the band rode in on before going new wave in the 80s. Gui­tarist Chris Stein looks and sounds like John­ny Thun­ders and Har­ry per­forms the almost-whole­some, semi-vacant sex­u­al­i­ty of her Play­boy bun­ny past. While this track didn’t make it onto their first album, 1976’s Blondie, it’s a fun lit­tle num­ber all the same.

Down below watch the band play “Rip Her to Shreds” in 1977, look­ing a lit­tle less trash-rock but still sound­ing hard­er than they would in lat­er, slick­er years. For more vin­tage Har­ry moments, pop on over to Dan­ger­ous Minds to see her arm wres­tle Andy Kauf­man, recount a run-in with Ted Bundy, and intro­duce Amer­i­cans to the pogo dance on Glenn O’Brien’s local New York show TV Par­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

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

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Story “The Happy Prince”

in Audio Books, Literature | July 1st, 2013

I first encoun­tered Oscar Wilde’s sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince” while work­ing part-time as a tutor on New York’s Upper East Side. Look­ing for suit­able read­ing mate­r­i­al, I came across Wilde’s children’s sto­ries, which I had not known exist­ed. They were perfect—vivid, charm­ing, lit­er­ary fairy tales with some­thing more besides. Some­thing best described by avid Wilde read­er Stephen Fry.

In the pro­mo­tion of a recent Kick­starter project to fund a 20-minute ani­ma­tion of “The Hap­py Prince” around Fry’s read­ing of the sto­ry, the actor talks of com­ing to know Wilde’s fairy tales as a child, before he knew any­thing else about the 19th cen­tu­ry Irish writer. He loved the lan­guage, he says, of all of the sto­ries, and “the beau­ty of thought, the nobil­i­ty of thought.” But “The Hap­py Prince” affect­ed him espe­cial­ly, as it affect­ed my young stu­dents and me. It is a sto­ry, he says, “about the cost of beau­ty. It is hard for me to read The Hap­py Prince with­out cry­ing. I guess because it is also some­how a love sto­ry between the swal­low and the Prince.”

Fry alludes to the two cen­tral char­ac­ters in the sto­ry, but I won’t sum­ma­rize the plot here. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured a 1974 ani­mat­ed film of “The Hap­py Prince.” In the video at the top, hear Fry read the entire­ty of the sto­ry, and direct­ly above, watch the video pre­view for the b good Pic­ture Company’s Kick­starter to bring his read­ing, and Wilde’s sto­ry, to new life. The project has met its min­i­mum goal and now seeks more fund­ing for an orig­i­nal score and a self-pub­lished sto­ry­book, among oth­er things.

Fry’s rela­tion­ship to Wilde, whom he calls “Oscar,” has been, accord­ing to him, life­long, capped by his por­tray­al of the writer in the 1997 biopic Wilde. He has dis­cussed how his read­ing of Wilde helped him come to terms with his own sex­u­al­i­ty. But his love for Wilde’s work exceeds the per­son­al. As he says in the video above, from 2008, he “fell in love with the writ­ing of Oscar Wilde” at the age of 11; after see­ing a film ver­sion of The Impor­tance of Being Earnest,” he found his “idea of what lan­guage could be… com­plete­ly trans­formed.” Fry also says above that he was not exposed to Wilde’s fairy tales as a child, in seem­ing con­tra­dic­tion to his more recent state­ments. Did he read Oscar as a child or did­n’t he?  Only Stephen Fry can say for sure. In any case, as an adult, he’s tak­en on the man­tle of Wilde’s pop­u­lar inter­preter, and I think he wears it pret­ty well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

Oscar Wilde Offers Prac­ti­cal Advice on the Writ­ing Life in a New­ly-Dis­cov­ered Let­ter from 1890

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

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

The Do’s and Don’ts of Improv Comedy with Liam Neeson, Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey, and Del Close

in Comedy, Film, Television | June 29th, 2013

Atten­tion, all strug­gling come­di­ans! There’s big mon­ey in teach­ing cor­po­rate exec­u­tives the rules of impro­vi­sa­tion. Not to pre­pare them for a high­ly lucra­tive sec­ond career on some late night, black box stage, but rather to hone their lis­ten­ing skills, teach them how to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly, and give them prac­tice com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a flexible—and there­fore effective—manner.

The above clip from Ricky Ger­vais and Stephen Mer­chan­t’s Life’s Too Short, sug­gests that actor Liam Nee­son might ben­e­fit from sim­i­lar train­ing.

Or are Ger­vais and Mer­chant guilty of fail­ing to embrace the Rules of Improv, when Nee­son, hav­ing solicit­ed a sug­ges­tion of “hypochon­dri­ac at the doc­tor’s office” from series star War­wick Davis, announces that he’s con­tract­ed full blown AIDS from a starv­ing African pros­ti­tute?

Even though it’s obvi­ous that the supreme­ly gift­ed Nee­son is hav­ing a laugh, let’s see if we can deter­mine who’s break­ing the car­di­nal rules of improv in this scene.

Come­di­an Tina Fey has Four Rules of Improv that res­onate with both busi­ness and fun­ny peo­ple:

1. The first rule of impro­vi­sa­tion is to AGREE. 
2. The sec­ond rule of improv is to not only say YES, say YES, AND.
3. The next rule is MAKE STATEMENTS. (Nee­son does great in this depart­ment)
4. THERE ARE NO MISTAKES only OPPORTUNITIES. 

Hmm. One thing’s clear. A bad impro­vis­er can drag the most gift­ed prac­ti­tion­ers of the form down with him.

The bril­liance of the script­ed scene recalls late improv guru Del Close’s Eleven Com­mand­ments:

1. You are all sup­port­ing actors.
2. Always check your impuls­es.
3. Nev­er enter a scene unless you are NEEDED.
4. Save your fel­low actor, don’t wor­ry about the piece.
5. Your prime respon­si­bil­i­ty is to sup­port.
6. Work at the top of your brains at all times.
7. Nev­er under­es­ti­mate or con­de­scend to your audi­ence.
8. No jokes (unless it is tipped in front that it is a joke.)
9. Trust… trust your fel­low actors to sup­port you; trust them to come through if you lay some­thing heavy on them; trust your­self.
10. Avoid judg­ing what is going down except in terms of whether it needs help (either by enter­ing or cut­ting), what can best fol­low, or how you can sup­port it imag­i­na­tive­ly if your sup­port is called for.
11. LISTEN

That’s like­ly ample rules, though it’s tempt­ing to add:

Nev­er (or per­haps always) pre­tend to knock on a door by say­ing “knock knock.”

Nev­er (or per­haps always) pre­tend to open a shop door by say­ing “tring.”

Nev­er (or per­haps always) iden­ti­fy a “well known homo­sex­u­al actor” by name.

And if any cor­po­rate clients—or Ricky Ger­vais—need lessons in how to keep from “corps­ing” while deliv­er­ing fun­ny mate­r­i­al, Liam Nee­son is for sure the man for the job.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ricky Ger­vais Presents “Learn Gui­tar with David Brent”

“Learn Eng­lish With Ricky Ger­vais,” A New Pod­cast Debuts (NSFW)

Tina Fey Brings Bossy­pants Tour to Google

Ayun Hal­l­i­day was a found­ing mem­ber of The No Fun Mud Pira­nhas, North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty’s Improv Olympic Team. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bottle Rocket (1992)

in Film | June 27th, 2013

“The only Wes Ander­son movie I like is Bot­tle Rock­et,” declares the char­ac­ter Beat­nik Vam­pire in Dorothy Gam­brel­l’s com­ic strip Cat and Girl. He does so in a bid for suprema­cy dur­ing a cul­tur­al “slap fight” con­sist­ing of a vol­ley of claims like “I saw Mod­est Mouse in Berlin in 1999” and “Cuban food made by Mex­i­cans is bet­ter than Ital­ian food made by Alba­ni­ans.” Even if we’ve avoid­ed par­tic­i­pat­ing in such one-ups­man­ship ses­sions dis­guised as con­ver­sa­tions, we’ve all wit­nessed them. But should you one day need your own trump card, I give you Wes Ander­son­’s first short film above. Watch it, and you can then cred­i­bly insist the fol­low­ing: “The only Wes Ander­son movie I like is Bot­tle Rock­et. No, the orig­i­nal.”

In the late nineties, Ander­son and his col­lab­o­ra­tors found them­selves in a posi­tion to make their beloved break­through Rush­more on the strength of its pre­de­ces­sor Bot­tle Rocket, their 1996 fea­ture debut. But even that film, a now-appre­ci­at­ed but then lit­tle-seen sto­ry of three deeply ama­teur crim­i­nals on the run through the green open spaces of Texas star­ring now-famous act­ing broth­ers Owen and Luke Wil­son, fol­lowed anoth­er. Four years ear­li­er, Ander­son and Owen Wil­son, who’d met in a play­writ­ing class at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin, put togeth­er the thir­teen-minute short you see here. It tries out the con­cept of thieves in train­ing, albeit in a very dif­fer­ent style from the one we’ve come to regard, over twen­ty years lat­er, as Ander­son­ian. Wes, if you read this, know that I’d like to see you do some­thing in black-and-white again. With a jazz score.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Ander­son from Above. Quentin Taran­ti­no From Below

Bill Mur­ray Intro­duces Wes Anderson’s Moon­rise King­dom (And Plays FDR)

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.

The World’s Best Commercials from 2012–2013 Named at Cannes

in Television | June 26th, 2013

Grow­ing up, I used to watch those com­pi­la­tions of com­mer­cials tele­vi­sion net­works would throw togeth­er to cheap­ly fill air­time: Amer­i­ca’s Fun­ni­est Com­mer­cials, Coolest Com­mer­cials of the Year, The Most Inex­plic­a­ble For­eign Com­mer­cials You’ve Ever Seen. This speaks not only to how bor­ing a child­hood I must oth­er­wise have had, but to how many adver­tise­ments real­ly do, if looked at from the right angle, con­tain a ker­nel of cre­ative val­ue. The Cannes Lions Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val of Cre­ativ­i­ty, the world adver­tis­ing indus­try’s biggest gath­er­ing, recent­ly anoint­ed a few of 2012–13’s com­mer­cials as worth watch­ing on pur­pose. You can watch 21 of them on Adweek’s web­site (though be warned that they unfor­giv­ably put each video on a sep­a­rate page). At the top you’ll find the first, Mel­bourne Metro’s train-safe­ty spot “Dumb Ways to Die.”

You may have encoun­tered it before, when it went mild­ly viral due to not only its sheer macabre cute­ness, but pre­sum­ably pub­lic shock at see­ing a tran­sit agency com­mis­sion some­thing enter­tain­ing. I’ve cer­tain­ly seen many a tin-eared pitch by the Metro in my own city, Los Ange­les. I’ve also seen stub­by Smart Fort­wos sprout up like mobile mush­rooms here, and the ad just above by Big­fish Film­pro­duc­tion tells me why by label­ing it “the ulti­mate city car” — and under­scor­ing the point by show­ing just how poor­ly it fares out in the wilder­ness. Below, you’ll find a com­mer­cial for a brand that hard­ly needs adver­tise­ment: Leica. It trades on the rich his­to­ry of the Leica cam­era, but tells it from the point of view of the cam­era itself, shoot­ing in the style of a clas­sic World War II film. (If it stirs you to learn more, con­sid­er read­ing “Can­did Cam­era,” Antho­ny Lane’s med­i­ta­tion on the Leica for the New York­er.)

H/T Kim L.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Sal­vador Dalí Goes Com­mer­cial: Three Strange Tele­vi­sion Ads

Dig­i­tal Archive of Vin­tage Tele­vi­sion Com­mer­cials

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.

Amazing Aerial Photographs of Great American Cities Circa 1906

in Photography | June 25th, 2013

In the late 19th cen­tu­ry, an enter­pris­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er named George R. Lawrence devel­oped a keen inter­est in aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy. He first began tak­ing pic­tures with the help of high lad­ders, tow­ers, and air­borne bal­loons. Lat­er he switched to using unmanned kites, which did the trick. Deploy­ing 17 Conyne kites strung togeth­er by piano wire, Lawrence hoist­ed a hulk­ing, 50 pound cam­era some 400 to 2,000 feet above the ground and then began cap­tur­ing views of Amer­i­can cities. Most of these urban cen­ters were grow­ing at a steady clip. But, in his most famous pho­to­graph, Lawrence cap­tured San Fran­cis­co reel­ing after the dev­as­ta­tion of the 1906 earth­quake. (Click the image above to see the lev­eled city in a larg­er for­mat.)

A col­lec­tion of Lawrence’s panoram­ic pho­tographs can be viewed over at the Library of Con­gress web site. The col­lec­tion includes bird’s-eye views of Man­hat­tan (above) and a more sleepy Brook­lyn, not to men­tion some great Mid­west­ern cities and towns. Below you can see a vin­tage shot of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go cam­pus cir­ca 1904. Or here Evanston’s North­west­ern cam­pus in 1907. And let’s not for­get this 1908 pho­to of Madi­son, WI, where I spent my most for­ma­tive years some eight decades lat­er.…

via @MatthiasRascher and Dai­ly Mail

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 1906 San Fran­cis­co Earth­quake: Before and After

Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film (1900–1914)

1927 Lon­don Shown in Mov­ing Col­or

Japanese Movie Posters of 10 David Lynch Films

in Film | June 24th, 2013

If a Japan­ese cinephile likes Amer­i­can movies, they prob­a­bly love David Lynch. I don’t mean to present this as an iron­clad rule, but it cer­tain­ly holds true among my friends. Just as many Amer­i­cans find some­thing inter­est­ing­ly askew in the fruits of mod­ern Japan­ese cul­ture, pre­sum­ably Lynch’s Japan­ese fans expe­ri­ence his brand of off-kil­ter Amer­i­cana — some­times far off-kil­ter Amer­i­cana — just as rich­ly. Observers not par­tic­u­lar­ly famil­iar with David Lynch have dis­missed him as “weird,” just as those not par­tic­u­lar­ly famil­iar with Japan have dis­missed it as “weird.” But those of us famil­iar with both the film­mak­er and the coun­try know that they sim­ply oper­ate on dif­fer­ent, and fas­ci­nat­ing, sets of sen­si­bil­i­ties.

You can see these worlds col­lide in Bib­liok­lep­t’s post on Japan­ese posters adver­tis­ing David Lynch films. At the top of the post, we have the omi­nous­ly intrigu­ing one-sheet for Mul­hol­land Dri­ve (or, ren­dered here in katakana script, “Maruho­ran­do Doraibu”), Lynch’s crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed 2001 pic­ture that, con­cep­tu­al­ly, began as a tele­vi­sion series to fol­low up Twin Peaks. “Watashi no ata­ma wa dou­ka shiteiru,” reads the text between the faces of stars Lau­ra Har­ring and Nao­mi Watts, which I trans­late to “Some­thing is the mat­ter with my head” — a viable tagline, come to think of it, for most of Lynch’s works. Just above you’ll find the poster for a per­son­al Lynch favorite, Lost High­way (“Rosu­to Haiuei”), clear­ly also pitched across the Pacif­ic as the direc­tor’s mid-nineties come­back. And the chill­ing near­ly abstract image below rep­re­sents the chill­ing, abstract movie that start­ed it all, 1977’s Eraser­head — or, Ireiza­a­hed­do:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eraser­head Sto­ries: David Lynch on the Mak­ing of His Famous­ly Night­mar­ish Movie

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

David Lynch in Four Move­ments: A Video Trib­ute

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.