Seven Tips From Ernest Hemingway on How to Write Fiction

in Books, Literature, Writing | February 19th, 2013

Image by Lloyd Arnold via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Before he was a big game hunter, before he was a deep-sea fish­er­man, Ernest Hem­ing­way was a crafts­man who would rise very ear­ly in the morn­ing and write. His best sto­ries are mas­ter­pieces of the mod­ern era, and his prose style is one of the most influ­en­tial of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Hem­ing­way nev­er wrote a trea­tise on the art of writ­ing fic­tion.  He did, how­ev­er, leave behind a great many pas­sages in let­ters, arti­cles and books with opin­ions and advice on writ­ing. Some of the best of those were assem­bled in 1984 by Lar­ry W. Phillips into a book, Ernest Hem­ing­way on Writ­ing. We’ve select­ed sev­en of our favorite quo­ta­tions from the book and placed them, along with our own com­men­tary, on this page. We hope you will all–writers and read­ers alike–find them fas­ci­nat­ing.

1: To get start­ed, write one true sen­tence.

Hem­ing­way had a sim­ple trick for over­com­ing writer’s block. In a mem­o­rable pas­sage in A Move­able Feast, he writes:

Some­times when I was start­ing a new sto­ry and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the lit­tle oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sput­ter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not wor­ry. You have always writ­ten before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sen­tence. Write the truest sen­tence that you know.” So final­ly I would write one true sen­tence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sen­tence that I knew or had seen or had heard some­one say. If I start­ed to write elab­o­rate­ly, or like some­one intro­duc­ing or pre­sent­ing some­thing, I found that I could cut that scroll­work or orna­ment out and throw it away and start with the first true sim­ple declar­a­tive sen­tence I had writ­ten.

2: Always stop for the day while you still know what will hap­pen next.

There is a dif­fer­ence between stop­ping and founder­ing. To make steady progress, hav­ing a dai­ly word-count quo­ta was far less impor­tant to Hem­ing­way than mak­ing sure he nev­er emp­tied the well of his imag­i­na­tion. In an Octo­ber 1935 arti­cle in Esquire ( “Mono­logue to the Mae­stro: A High Seas Let­ter”) Hem­ing­way offers this advice to a young writer:

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will hap­pen next. If you do that every day when you are writ­ing a nov­el you will nev­er be stuck. That is the most valu­able thing I can tell you so try to remem­ber it.

3: Nev­er think about the sto­ry when you’re not work­ing.

Build­ing on his pre­vi­ous advice, Hem­ing­way says nev­er to think about a sto­ry you are work­ing on before you begin again the next day. “That way your sub­con­scious will work on it all the time,” he writes in the Esquire piece. “But if you think about it con­scious­ly or wor­ry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.” He goes into more detail in A Move­able Feast:

When I was writ­ing, it was nec­es­sary for me to read after I had writ­ten. If you kept think­ing about it, you would lose the thing you were writ­ing before you could go on with it the next day. It was nec­es­sary to get exer­cise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was bet­ter than any­thing. But after­wards, when you were emp­ty, it was nec­es­sary to read in order not to think or wor­ry about your work until you could do it again. I had learned already nev­er to emp­ty the well of my writ­ing, but always to stop when there was still some­thing there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

4: When it’s time to work again, always start by read­ing what you’ve writ­ten so far.

T0 main­tain con­ti­nu­ity, Hem­ing­way made a habit of read­ing over what he had already writ­ten before going fur­ther. In the 1935 Esquire arti­cle, he writes:

The best way is to read it all every day from the start, cor­rect­ing as you go along, then go on from where you stopped the day before. When it gets so long that you can’t do this every day read back two or three chap­ters each day; then each week read it all from the start. That’s how you make it all of one piece.

5: Don’t describe an emotion–make it.

Close obser­va­tion of life is crit­i­cal to good writ­ing, said Hem­ing­way. The key is to not only watch and lis­ten close­ly to exter­nal events, but to also notice any emo­tion stirred in you by the events and then trace back and iden­ti­fy pre­cise­ly what it was that caused the emo­tion. If you can iden­ti­fy the con­crete action or sen­sa­tion that caused the emo­tion and present it accu­rate­ly and ful­ly round­ed in your sto­ry, your read­ers should feel the same emo­tion. In Death in the After­noon, Hem­ing­way writes about his ear­ly strug­gle to mas­ter this:

I was try­ing to write then and I found the great­est dif­fi­cul­ty, aside from know­ing tru­ly what you real­ly felt, rather than what you were sup­posed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what real­ly hap­pened in action; what the actu­al things were which pro­duced the emo­tion that you expe­ri­enced. In writ­ing for a news­pa­per you told what hap­pened and, with one trick and anoth­er, you com­mu­ni­cat­ed the emo­tion aid­ed by the ele­ment of time­li­ness which gives a cer­tain emo­tion to any account of some­thing that has hap­pened on that day; but the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emo­tion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stat­ed it pure­ly enough, always, was beyond me and I was work­ing very hard to get it.

6: Use a pen­cil.

Hem­ing­way often used a type­writer when com­pos­ing let­ters or mag­a­zine pieces, but for seri­ous work he pre­ferred a pen­cil. In the Esquire arti­cle (which shows signs of hav­ing been writ­ten on a type­writer) Hem­ing­way says:

When you start to write you get all the kick and the read­er gets none. So you might as well use a type­writer because it is that much eas­i­er and you enjoy it that much more. After you learn to write your whole object is to con­vey every­thing, every sen­sa­tion, sight, feel­ing, place and emo­tion to the read­er. To do this you have to work over what you write. If you write with a pen­cil you get three dif­fer­ent sights at it to see if the read­er is get­ting what you want him to. First when you read it over; then when it is typed you get anoth­er chance to improve it, and again in the proof. Writ­ing it first in pen­cil gives you one-third more chance to improve it. That is .333 which is a damned good aver­age for a hit­ter. It also keeps it flu­id longer so you can bet­ter it eas­i­er.

7: Be Brief.

Hem­ing­way was con­temp­tu­ous of writ­ers who, as he put it, “nev­er learned how to say no to a type­writer.” In a 1945 let­ter to his edi­tor, Maxwell Perkins, Hem­ing­way writes:

It was­n’t by acci­dent that the Get­tys­burg address was so short. The laws of prose writ­ing are as immutable as those of flight, of math­e­mat­ics, of physics.

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:

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

The Big Ernest Hem­ing­way Pho­to Gallery: The Nov­el­ist in Cuba, Spain, Africa and Beyond

The Span­ish Earth, Writ­ten and Nar­rat­ed by Ernest Hem­ing­way

Archive of Hemingway’s News­pa­per Report­ing Reveals Nov­el­ist in the Mak­ing

Find Cours­es on Hem­ing­way and Oth­er Authors in our big list of Free Online Cours­es

Mark Twain Shirtless in 1883 Photo

in Literature, Photography | February 19th, 2013

Last year, Edwin Turn­er, the mas­ter­mind behind the Bib­liok­lept blog, assem­bled a fine pho­to gallery that cap­tured Ernest Hem­ing­way pos­ing shirt­less. Big, burly and bar­rel-chest­ed, Papa projects the mas­cu­line image that he care­ful­ly cul­ti­vat­ed for him­self and for the world to see.

Hem­ing­way’s pho­tos seem right in keep­ing with his pub­lic per­sona (we’ll have more on him lat­er today). But this 1883 por­trait of Mark Twain will per­haps give you pause. To be sure, Twain cared deeply about his pub­lic image. The writer care­ful­ly craft­ed his pub­lic iden­ti­ty, giv­ing more than 300 inter­views to jour­nal­ists where he rein­forced the traits he want­ed to be known for — his wit, irrev­er­ent sense of humor, and thought­ful­ness. Twain also loved hav­ing his pic­ture tak­en, pos­ing for pho­tog­ra­phers when­ev­er he had a chance. The cam­era offered yet anoth­er way to fash­ion his own per­son­al myth.

Of course, the author is best remem­bered for one set of icon­ic images — the one where he dons a white suit in 1906, upon trav­el­ing to Wash­ing­ton D.C. to lob­by for the pro­tec­tion of authors’ copy­rights. But, as The Rout­ledge Ency­clo­pe­dia of Mark Twain explains, the nov­el­ist also let his image be used in count­less adver­tise­ments — in ads for restau­rants, phar­ma­cies, dry goods and cig­ars too. The ency­clo­pe­dia gives the impres­sion that the shirt­less pho­to was per­haps tak­en with­in this com­mer­cial con­text. It’s not clear what prod­uct the por­trait helped mar­ket (care to take a guess?), or pre­cise­ly how Twain saw it con­tribut­ing to his pub­lic image. The details are murky. But one thing is for cer­tain: The 1880s image is authen­tic. It’s the real shirt­less Mark Twain.

Update: One of our read­ers sug­gests that the shirt­less pho­to was a byprod­uct of a bust that was sculpt­ed by Karl Ger­hardt for the fron­tispiece of Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn. Seems quite plau­si­ble. See it here.

This vin­tage pic comes to us via Wired writer Steve Sil­ber­man. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @stevesilberman.

“Nothing Good Gets Away”: John Steinbeck Offers Love Advice in a Letter to His Son (1958)

in Letters, Life, Literature | February 19th, 2013

Cer­tain read­ers may turn, for gen­er­al solace, to the nov­els of John Stein­beck. But how many, in par­tic­u­lar need of roman­tic advice, open up Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, or The Grapes of Wrath? Yet on mat­ters of the heart, Stein­beck knew of what he spoke, as his son Thom found out after men­tion­ing a new school sweet­heart in a note home. In what must sure­ly count as the most elo­quent, rel­e­vant piece of unso­licit­ed parental love advice ever given—not, admit­ted­ly, a high bar to cross—the for­mi­da­ble man of Amer­i­can let­ters explained how best to nav­i­gate this rich­est of all expe­ri­ences:

First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can hap­pen to any­one. Don’t let any­one make it small or light to you.

Second—There are sev­er­al kinds of love. One is a self­ish, mean, grasp­ing, ego­tis­ti­cal thing which uses love for self-impor­tance. This is the ugly and crip­pling kind. The oth­er is an out­pour­ing of every­thing good in you—of kind­ness and con­sid­er­a­tion and respect—not only the social respect of man­ners but the greater respect which is recog­ni­tion of anoth­er per­son as unique and valu­able. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the sec­ond can release in you strength, and courage and good­ness and even wis­dom you didn’t know you had.

This excerpt comes from a full text avail­able at a favorite site of ours, Let­ters of Note. One of the inter­net’s finest repos­i­to­ries of man’s wis­dom and fol­ly, Let­ters of Note has offered William Faulkn­er’s take-this-job-and-shove-it, a young Kurt Von­negut’s wartime report home after his release from a Dres­den work camp, the first Amer­i­can fan let­ter sent to David Bowie, and Aldous Hux­ley’s death as described by his wid­ow. My per­son­al favorite remains the simul­ta­ne­ous­ly astute and unhinged lament Ted Turn­er received from his father after chang­ing his col­lege major to clas­sics. Turn­er père wrote, in his askew fash­ion, in the same spir­it of father­ly sup­port as Stein­beck. But Ted did­n’t get to read any lines half as reas­sur­ing as those Thom Stein­beck did: “Don’t wor­ry about los­ing,” his father advised. “If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hur­ry. Noth­ing good gets away.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspir­ing Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech

This is Your Brain in Love: Scenes from the Stan­ford Love Com­pe­ti­tion

Face to Face with Bertrand Rus­sell: ‘Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish’

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 BBC Presents a New Dramatization of Orwell’s 1984, with Christopher Eccleston as Winston Smith

in Literature, Politics, Radio | February 15th, 2013

Like the idea of total­i­tar­i­an­ism, per­haps best artic­u­lat­ed by Han­nah Arendt in her post-war Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism, George Orwell’s post-war scruti­ny of repres­sive gov­ern­ments has become a sta­ple, catch-all ref­er­ence for pun­dits on either side of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, par­tic­u­lar­ly the con­cepts of dou­ble­s­peak, dou­ble­think, his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, and the hyper-intru­sive Big Broth­er, all from the 1949 nov­el 1984. In fact, few adjec­tives seem to get deployed with more fre­quen­cy in urgent polit­i­cal dis­course of all kinds than “Orwellian.” But the name George Orwell, pen name of jour­nal­ist Eric Blair, hides an enig­ma: Orwell iden­ti­fied him­self explic­it­ly as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ist of a par­tic­u­lar­ly Eng­lish bent (most notably in his essay “The Lion and the Uni­corn”), but his scathing cri­tiques of near­ly every exist­ing insti­tu­tion some­times make it hard to pin him down as a par­ti­san of any­thing but the kind of free­dom and open­ness that every­one vague­ly wants to advo­cate. That ambi­gu­i­ty is a strength; despite his stead­fast left­ist roots, Orwell would not be a par­ti­san hack—where he saw stu­pid­i­ty, avarice, and bru­tal inhu­man­i­ty, he called it out, no mat­ter the source.

The seem­ing con­tra­dic­tions and ironies that per­me­ate Orwell’s thought and fic­tion are also what keep his work peren­ni­al­ly inter­est­ing and worth reread­ing and revis­it­ing. He was a prob­ing and unsen­ti­men­tal crit­ic of the motives of pro­pa­gan­dists of all stripes, both left and right. Begin­ning in late Jan­u­ary, BBC Radio 4 launched a month-long series on Orwell, with the avowed­ly iron­ic name, “The Real George Orwell.” Part of the irony comes from the fact that Orwell (or Blair) once worked as a pro­pa­gan­dist for the BBC dur­ing WWII, and lat­er based the tor­ture area in 1984, Room 101, on a meet­ing room he recalled from his time there. His expe­ri­ences with the state broad­cast­ing net­work were not pleas­ant in his mem­o­ry. Nonethe­less, his for­mer employ­er hon­ors him this month with an exten­sive ret­ro­spec­tive, includ­ing read­ings and drama­ti­za­tions of his essays and jour­nal­ism, his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal accounts Down and Out in Paris and Lon­don and Homage to Cat­alo­nia, and his nov­els Ani­mal Farm and 1984.

In this lat­est drama­ti­za­tion of Orwell’s most famous nov­el, pro­tag­o­nist Win­ston Smith is voiced by actor Christo­pher Eccle­ston, who has inhab­it­ed anoth­er key post-war char­ac­ter in Eng­lish fic­tion, Dr. Who (Pip­pa Nixon voic­es Julia). In a brief dis­cus­sion of what he takes away from the nov­el, Eccle­ston (above) draws out some of the rea­sons that 1984 appeals to so many peo­ple who might agree on almost noth­ing else. At the heart of the nov­el is the kind of human­ist indi­vid­u­al­ism that Orwell nev­er aban­doned and that he cham­pi­oned against Sovi­et-style state com­mu­nism and hard-right impe­ri­al­ist author­i­tar­i­an­ism both. Win­ston Smith is an embod­i­ment of human dig­ni­ty, cel­e­brat­ed for his strug­gle to “love, remem­ber, and enjoy life,” as Eccle­ston says. “It’s the human sto­ry that means that we keep com­ing back to it and that keeps it rel­e­vant.” Lis­ten to a brief clip of the 1984 drama­ti­za­tion at the top of this post, and vis­it BBC Radio 4’s site to hear parts one and two of the full broad­cast, which is avail­able online for the next year. When Europe and Amer­i­ca both seem rent in two by com­pet­ing and incom­pat­i­ble social and polit­i­cal visions, it’s at least some com­fort to know that no one wants to live in the world Orwell fore­saw. Despite his novel’s deeply pes­simistic end­ing, Orwell’s own career of fierce resis­tance to oppres­sive regimes offers a mod­el for action against the dystopi­an future he imag­ined.

For oth­er free, online read­ings of Orwell’s work, you can vis­it our archives of Free Audio Books, where you’ll find

• 1984 – Free MP3 Zip File – Mul­ti­ple Ver­sions
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Ani­mal Farm – Free MP3 Zip File – Free iTunes
  • Free eBook avail­able here.
• Homage to Cat­alo­nia – Chap­ter 1 here – Remain­ing Chap­ters here

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Also find major works by Orwell in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks

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

“PoemTalk” Podcast, Where Impresario Al Filreis Hosts Lively Chats on Modern Poetry

in Literature, Podcasts, Poetry | February 14th, 2013

Want to know what’s going on the poet­ry world? Ask Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia pro­fes­sor Al Fil­reis. A nation­al trea­sure for mod­ern Amer­i­can poet­ry, Fil­reis serves as Fac­ul­ty Direc­tor of the Kel­ly Writ­ers House, Direc­tor of UPenn’s Cen­ter for Pro­grams in Con­tem­po­rary Writ­ing, and Co-Direc­tor of the excel­lent poet­ry record­ing series and archive PennSound. He also teach­es a Cours­era mas­sive open online course, “Mod­Po,” which has reached over 36,000 stu­dents, bring­ing his thir­ty years of sem­i­nar-style teach­ing expe­ri­ence to the mass­es. On top of all that, Fil­reis is the pub­lish­er of con­tem­po­rary poet­ry webzine Jack­et 2, which hosts a pod­cast called “PoemTalk.”

“PoemTalk” brings togeth­er poets, writ­ers, and teach­ers to infor­mal­ly dis­cuss a sin­gle poem. Like Fil­reis’ classes—in which he prefers live­ly dis­cus­sions over long lectures—these sem­i­nar-like ses­sions involve a lot of friend­ly dis­agree­ment and serendip­i­tous insights, with many pearls of poet­ic wis­dom scat­tered through­out. The first episode of “PoemTalk” (above), from Decem­ber 2007, took on William Car­los Williams’ frag­men­tary mod­ernist provo­ca­tion “Between Walls”:

Between Walls

the back wings
of the

hos­pi­tal where
noth­ing

will grow lie
cin­ders

in which shine
the bro­ken

pieces of a green
bot­tle

If you don’t see much in this lit­tle imag­ist exer­cise, you might just want to read it again, sev­er­al times, after lis­ten­ing to Fil­reis, Saigon-born poet Linh Dinh, teacher and poet Ran­dall Couch, and poet Jes­si­ca Lowen­thal unpack the poem’s many res­o­nances and reflec­tions. (Or you might have had your fill by then). Williams’ approach was com­plete­ly inno­v­a­tive, strip­ping all of the rhetor­i­cal excess­es from Amer­i­can poet­ry, which suf­fered from a kind of Vic­to­ri­an hang­over into the first decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry until those nasty mod­ernists fin­ished rough­ing it up. As the episode’s page points out, “‘Between Walls’ has had a huge influ­ence on poet­ry and pho­tog­ra­phy since its first pub­li­ca­tion in 1934.” Lis­ten to the dis­cus­sion above to find out why such a seem­ing­ly straight­for­ward­ly unsen­ti­men­tal, un-“poetic” piece of writ­ing had such an impact.

Since this inau­gur­al episode, “PoemTalk” has cov­ered sev­er­al dozen con­tem­po­rary, liv­ing poets, as well as such nota­bles as Ezra Pound, John Ash­bery, Adri­enne Rich, Allen Gins­berg, and Wal­lace Stevens. By the way, as an added bonus, all of the poems dis­cussed on “PoemTalk” are avail­able as audio record­ings on PennSound, read by the poets them­selves. Here’s Williams read­ing “Between Walls.”

“PoemTalk”’s most recent episode takes as its text Charles Alexander’s “Near or Ran­dom Acts.” You can lis­ten through the web­site or sub­scribe on iTunes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Car­los Williams Reads His Poet­ry (1954)

Lis­ten­ing to Poet­ry Online

Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work

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

How a Baltimore Hairdresser Became a World-Renowned “Hair Archaeologist” of Ancient Rome

in History, Life | February 13th, 2013

In 2001, Janet Stephens, a Bal­ti­more hair­dress­er, caught sight of a bust of Roman empress Julia Dom­na at the Wal­ters Art Muse­um (the image above is of a bust in the Lou­vre). Cap­ti­vat­ed by the philoso­pher empress’s hair­do, she thought “holy cow, that is so cool… like a loaf of bread sit­ting on her head.” Thus began Stephens’ quest to recre­ate the coif­fures of ladies of antiq­ui­ty.

Stephens first set about try­ing the empress’s hair­style on a man­nequin, with no suc­cess. She under­took some research and found that schol­ars gen­er­al­ly assumed that the elab­o­rate, sculpt­ed hair­styles of Roman ladies could only be wigs. This set off Stephens’ skep­tic detec­tor, and—armed with no more than her free time, some dogged research meth­ods, and a few vol­un­teer models—she ven­tured to dis­prove the schol­ar­ly con­sen­sus. As The Wall Street Jour­nal tells it:

In 2005, she had a break­through. Study­ing trans­la­tions of Roman lit­er­a­ture, Ms. Stephens says, she real­ized the Latin term “acus” was prob­a­bly being mis­un­der­stood in the con­text of hair­dress­ing. Acus has sev­er­al mean­ings includ­ing a “sin­gle-prong hair­pin” or “nee­dle and thread,” she says. Trans­la­tors gen­er­al­ly went with “hair­pin.”

The sin­gle-prong pins could­n’t have held the intri­cate styles in place. But a nee­dle and thread could. It backed up her hair hypoth­e­sis.

Her per­sis­tence paid off. In 2008, she pub­lished an arti­cle in the Jour­nal of Roman Archae­ol­o­gy detail­ing her find­ings on Roman hair. Stephens is now a rec­og­nized author­i­ty on ancient hair­styles and a “hair archae­ol­o­gist.”

See Stephens at work and hear WSJ reporter Abi­gail Pes­ta tell the sto­ry in the video below.

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

Listen to a Brief History of Papal Abdication

in Current Affairs, History, Religion | February 12th, 2013

Pope Bene­dict XVI’s announce­ment of his retire­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing sent the inter­net into a tizzy, not to men­tion the thou­sands of Catholic insti­tu­tions across the world. The first ques­tion on everyone’s lips seemed to be “can he do that?” And since no pope has in 600 years, there doesn’t seem to be much prece­dent for it. Well, in a spe­cial and time­ly edi­tion, the new pod­cast Foot­not­ing His­to­ry presents the “admit­ted­ly very sparse” his­to­ry of papal abdi­ca­tion. It has indeed hap­pened before, but “almost nev­er with­out scan­dal.”

Lis­ten to the brief his­to­ry above and vis­it Foot­not­ing History’s home­page for more fas­ci­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal foot­notes.

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

The Scared Is Scared: A Child’s Wisdom for Starting New Chapters (Creative or Otherwise) in Life

in Film, Life | February 11th, 2013

The future’s uncer­tain­ty has par­a­lyzed many an artist. How to begin?

Were you to take the advice of 6‑year-old Asa Bak­er-Rouse, you might show the word “start” in a box, add an equals sign, frame it with a box, make the word orange, then green, then white in a green box….

Asa is both nar­ra­tor and muse of The Scared is Scared, the final project of recent Mid­dle­bury Col­lege grad, Bian­ca Giaev­er’s inde­pen­dent­ly designed Nar­ra­tive Stud­ies major. Rather than hand the boy a script, she allowed him to deter­mine the course of her film, lit­er­al­ly visu­al­iz­ing his spon­ta­neous mono­logue with the help of sev­er­al game friends, a trick imple­ment­ed ear­li­er in Holy Cow Lisa, which built on an inter­view with her col­lege advi­sor.

The result should appeal to any­one who had a soft spot for Pee­Wee’s Play­house­’s Pen­ny car­toons. It’s cute all right, but  The Scared is Scared also boasts an effort­less-seem­ing pro­fun­di­ty. Asa may be of the age where piano-shaped cook­ies and secret sleep­overs rep­re­sent the pin­na­cle of anar­chy, but he’s got an ancient mas­ter’s take on things com­ing to their inevitable end. By com­mit­ting to roll with what­ev­er unknowns this child might sup­ply, Giaver taps into a rich vein of cre­ativ­i­ty. Along the way, she makes peace with a very famil­iar-feel­ing unknown, the fate of the young artist leav­ing col­lege’s cozy embrace.

It turns out to be a per­fect place to start.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

One of the Biggest Risks is Being Too Cau­tious…

Paulo Coel­ho on The Fear of Fail­ure

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure

How Spike Lee Got His First Big Break: From She’s Gotta Have It to That Iconic Air Jordan Ad

in Film, Sports | February 8th, 2013

“Film found me,” says Spike Lee in the clip above from medi­a­bistro’s “My First Big Break” series. We may now know him as one of his gen­er­a­tion’s most out­spo­ken, con­vic­tion-dri­ven Amer­i­can film­mak­ers, but he says he only got into the game because he could­n’t land a job. Enter­ing the long, hot, unem­ployed sum­mer of 1977, the young Lee spied a Super‑8 movie cam­era in a friend’s house. Bor­row­ing it, he roamed the streets of an unusu­al­ly down-at-heel New York City, shoot­ing the exu­ber­ant emer­gence of dis­co, the anx­i­ety over the Son of Sam killings, the unrest that bub­bled up dur­ing black­outs, and the count­less oth­er facets of urban life he’s con­tin­ued to explore through­out his career. Encour­aged by a film pro­fes­sor at More­house Col­lege, he then put in the hours to edit all this footage he’d sim­ply grabbed for fun into a doc­u­men­tary called Last Hus­tle in Brook­lyn. Near­ly a decade lat­er, he made his first fea­ture, She’s Got­ta Have It, an ear­ly entry in what would become the Amer­i­can indie film boom of the nineties.

Lee not only direct­ed She’s Got­ta Have It, but played one of its most mem­o­rable char­ac­ters, a smooth-talk­ing hus­tler of a b‑boy named Mars Black­mon. Mars cares about hav­ing the fresh­est gear, a trait he shares with the man who cre­at­ed him. This did not escape the notice of famous adver­tis­ing agency Wieden+Kennedy; when a cou­ple of their employ­ees saw Lee’s per­for­mance as Mars, they knew they’d found the ide­al pitch­man for one of their clien­t’s prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny: Nike. The prod­uct: the Air Jor­dan. As sur­prised as any­one that such a major firm and the icon­ic ath­lete Michael Jor­dan would take a chance on a young direc­tor, Lee went ahead and shot the com­mer­cial above, which announced him as a new force in the late-1980s zeit­geist. To learn much more about this peri­od of Lee’s career and its sub­se­quent devel­op­ment, watch his episode of Inside the Actors Stu­dio. Though con­sid­er­ably less of a motor­mouth than Mars Black­mon, Lee tells a com­pelling sto­ry, espe­cial­ly his own.

Relat­ed con­tent:

40 Great Film­mak­ers Go Old School, Shoot Short Films with 100 Year Old Cam­era

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.

Destination Earth: The Greatness of American Civilization Revealed in 1950s Sci-Fi Cartoon

in Animation, Business, History | February 6th, 2013

Many sci-fi tales go some­thing like this: The human race trav­els into the great unknown, deep out­er space, and encoun­ters beings with forces greater than its own. Greater fire pow­er. Greater intel­li­gence. Greater tech­no­log­i­cal abil­i­ty. But, in Des­ti­na­tion Earth, the stan­dard nar­ra­tive gets flipped on its head. Here, Mar­tians come to Earth — the Unit­ed States actu­al­ly — and dis­cov­er a vast­ly supe­ri­or civ­i­liza­tion. A civ­i­liza­tion supe­ri­or because it enjoys an end­less sup­ply of petro­le­um (used to make gas, tires, tooth­brush­es, cos­met­ics and insec­ti­cides) and the cap­i­tal­ist spirt of com­pe­ti­tion. Now, Sher­lock, if you’re think­ing this isn’t your aver­age Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon, I’d say you’re onto some­thing. Des­ti­na­tion Earth was the cre­ation of The Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute, still the biggest lob­by for the U.S. oil and gas indus­try. And the film was shot in 1956, smack dab in the mid­dle of the Cold War. If you think Mars, the red plan­et, might be a proxy for the Sovi­et Union (and Ogg looks like Stal­in), you might be the new James Bond.

Des­ti­na­tion Earth appears in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online. For more vin­tage pro­pa­gan­da car­toons, check out: Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II.