Thomas Pynchon Novels Coming to eBook, at Long Last

in Books, e-books, Literature | June 14th, 2012

Thomas Pyn­chon has nev­er made things par­tic­u­lar­ly easy for his pub­lish­ers. He has famous­ly shunned any kind of media atten­tion for decades. (Book tours? No thanks.) And, dur­ing recent years, he resist­ed the idea of repub­lish­ing his books in elec­tron­ic for­mat. But that has all offi­cial­ly changed with Pen­guin’s announce­ment that you can now pur­chase eight of Pyn­chon’s works in elec­tron­ic for­mat, with prices rang­ing from $9.99 to $12.99. The books (list­ed below) can be found on Ama­zon right here.

Against the Day
Grav­i­ty’s Rain­bow
Inher­ent Vice
Mason & Dixon
Slow Learn­er
The Cry­ing of Lot 49
V.
Vineland

Find a great num­ber of clas­sics in our col­lec­tion of 300 Free eBooks.

via Media Decoder

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Beginning of Modern Art

in Art, Television | June 13th, 2012

We like to think of Vin­cent van Gogh as the arche­typ­al tor­tured artist. While per­haps he fits the bill, there’s more to the sto­ry, and this episode of Pow­er of Art (above) takes pains to fill out the Dutch painter’s char­ac­ter. He did­n’t slice off his entire ear, we learn — just part of it. And while he did indeed enjoy his peaks of cre­ativ­i­ty between ago­niz­ing “spasms of crazi­ness,” he expe­ri­enced both as an “insa­tiable book­worm” fueled by a deep-seat­ed reli­gious dri­ve. All this infor­ma­tion comes from the mouth of his­to­ri­an Simon Schama, author of pop­u­lar books and host of tele­vi­sion pro­grams includ­ing Land­scape and Mem­o­ry, Rem­brandt’s Eyes, and this par­tic­u­lar video’s source, Pow­er of Art. The series enters the world of eight artists through eight paint­ings. Van Gogh’s 1890 Wheat­field with Crows, accord­ing to Schama, marks the start of mod­ern art.

Two per­son­al­i­ties take us through the sto­ry of paint­ing and painter: Schama and van Gogh him­self, por­trayed in dra­mat­ic scenes that come between sec­tions of Schama’s nar­ra­tion. The pro­gram does­n’t keep these two time frames strict­ly sep­a­rate: while we hear Schama describe van Gogh’s pecu­liar­ly ener­getic use of the brush, we also hear the brush itself, loud­ly and clear­ly, as we watch van Gogh wield it. (Pow­er of Art’s sound design shows an uncom­mon atten­tion to detail.) Lat­er, we see van Gogh lament the episodes of insan­i­ty that have him eat­ing dirt off the floor. Cut to Schama: “It’s worse, actu­al­ly.” A har­row­ing extend­ed shot fol­lows of the painter eat­ing his paint. Nev­er has tele­vi­sion taught art his­to­ry quite so dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

All episodes of The Pow­er of Art are avail­able on YouTube. It’s also avail­able in one tidy col­lec­tion on Ama­zon:

• Van Gogh’s Wheat­field with Crows
• Car­avag­gio’s David with the Head of Goliath
• Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca
• Rem­brandt’s Con­spir­a­cy of Claudius Civilis
• Jacques-Louis David’s The Death Of Marat
• Bernini’s Ecsta­sy of St. There­sa
• Turn­er’s The Slave Ship
• Rothko’s Sea­gram Murals: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art His­to­ry Web Book

Robert Hugh­es, Famed Art Crit­ic, Demys­ti­fies Mod­ern Art: From Cézanne to Andy Warhol

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Classic 1956 Oscar-Winning Children’s Film, The Red Balloon

in Film | June 12th, 2012

The best chil­dren’s sto­ries can be a delight for adults, too. That’s cer­tain­ly the case with Albert Lam­or­is­se’s 1956 short film, The Red Bal­loon. The sto­ry is set in the run-down Ménil­montant neigh­bor­hood of Paris. A lit­tle boy, played by the direc­tor’s son Pas­cal, is walk­ing to school one morn­ing when he dis­cov­ers a red bal­loon tan­gled around a lamp post. He “res­cues” it and takes it to school with him. Along the way, the boy dis­cov­ers that the bal­loon has a mind of its own. It fol­lows him like a stray dog, and togeth­er they face the ter­rors, and tedi­um, of child­hood.

The film, shown above in its entire­ty, earned Lam­or­isse an Acad­e­my Award for Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play and a Palme d’Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, along with near-uni­ver­sal praise from crit­ics. “The Red Bal­loon is a won­der­ful movie for chil­dren,” says New York Times film crit­ic A.O. Scott in the “Crit­ics’ Picks” video below. “It’s also a unique­ly insight­ful movie about child­hood.” In a 2008 essay, “The Red Bal­loon: Writ­ten on the Wind,” the chil­dren’s author Bri­an Selznick writes of his life-long appre­ci­a­tion for the film:

As a child, I longed for two spe­cif­ic things that I now real­ize Lam­or­is­se’s movie embod­ies: the pres­ence of a lov­ing friend and the knowl­edge that real mag­ic exists in the world. Child­hood, in so many ways, is about learn­ing to nav­i­gate the world around us, to make sense of what seems over­whelm­ing and gigan­tic. Hav­ing a spe­cial com­pan­ion makes that expe­ri­ence more man­age­able and less ter­ri­fy­ing. To kids, the world of grown-ups is often alien and untrans­lat­able, and so mag­ic becomes a lens through which the incom­pre­hen­si­ble uni­verse (as Ein­stein once called it) becomes com­pre­hen­si­ble.

Many Amer­i­cans remem­ber see­ing The Red Bal­loon for the first time as a 16mm film pro­ject­ed in ele­men­tary school class­rooms and cafe­te­rias. With the 2008 release of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion DVD, many are redis­cov­er­ing the movie–and per­haps over-ana­lyz­ing it–from the per­spec­tive of adult­hood. “An adult watch­ing The Red Bal­loon will not find it dif­fi­cult to see the title char­ac­ter as a sym­bol of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, friend­ship, love, tran­scen­dence, the tri­umph of good over evil, or any of the count­less oth­er things that a sim­ple, round red bal­loon can rep­re­sent,” writes Selznick. “But per­haps we’re bet­ter off enjoy­ing some things the way a child under­stands them: not as metaphors but as sto­ries. In the end, I think there’s some­thing nice about allow­ing the bal­loon to just be. I guess that’s what you do with good friends–you let them be them­selves.”

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!

What Is a Flame?: The First Prize-Winner at Alan Alda’s Science Video Competition

in Animation, Education, K-12, Video - Science | June 8th, 2012

If an eleven year old child asked you to explain what a flame was, what would you say? When Alan Alda was 11 and posed the ques­tion, his teacher replied, “Oxy­da­tion.”

Unsat­is­fied and still curi­ous, Alda went on to help cre­ate the Cen­ter for Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Sci­ence at Stony Brook Uni­ver­si­ty. This year the Cen­ter issued the Flame Chal­lenge, invit­ing all com­ers to take a stab at explain­ing what a flame is. The only require­ment: Make your expla­na­tion clear, and inter­est­ing, to an 11-year-old.

Sci­en­tists from all over the world sent in entries – some were just one sen­tence (one actu­al­ly stat­ed, “A flame is oxi­da­tion.” Come on!). Anoth­er was a 37-page writ­ten expla­na­tion. After judg­ing the entries (all of which were pre-screened by sci­en­tists for accu­ra­cy), class­rooms of 11-year-olds declared a win­ner: an ani­mat­ed video by Ben Ames, a doc­tor­al stu­dent in quan­tum optics.

In the sev­en-and-a-half minute video, the con­ge­nial voice of a sci­en­tist (Ames) explains a flame to a beard­ed man chained in hell.

“See that fire over there?” Ames asks. “Have you ever real­ly won­dered what the flames are from that fire? I mean look at all those col­ors!”

He goes on charm­ing­ly to describe the process, with­out avoid­ing big words that kids actu­al­ly seem to love: when atoms (car­bon and hydro­gen) react to heat and change form, that’s pyrol­y­sis. That chem­i­cal reac­tion radi­ates light: chemi­lu­mi­nes­cence. Then the changed car­bon and hydro­gen inter­act with oxy­gen and that’s—you guessed it—oxi­da­tion.

But 11-year-olds love music too, right? Ames wraps it up with a song:

The fuel los­es mass, it turns to gas

Before the next change through, some atoms shine blue

When the process is com­plete, it gives off heat

Extra car­bon will glow—red, orange, yel­low.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based edu­ca­tion writer.

Watch Hendrix, The Who, and Others Play 1967’s Monterey Pop, the “First Real Rock Festival”

in Music | June 8th, 2012

Even a mild inter­est in the cul­ture of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can rock will lead you to learn about the Wood­stock Music & Art Fair, those oft-com­mem­o­rat­ed “three days of peace and music” in August 1969. But roll the clock back two years, turn from the east coast to the west, and you’ll find the tem­plate for that icon­ic “Aquar­i­an Expo­si­tion”: the Mon­terey Inter­na­tion­al Pop Music Fes­ti­val. Held from June 16 to June 18, 1967 in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Mon­terey Coun­ty Fair­grounds, Mon­terey Pop fea­tured a who’s-who of the com­ing momen­t’s musi­cal pan­theon: Jef­fer­son Air­plane, Janis Joplin, Simon and Gar­funkel, Ravi Shankar (play­ing for an entire after­noon), and the Grate­ful Dead. In the intense­ly era-dis­till­ing clip above, watch a cer­tain Jimi Hen­drix fire off his inim­itable ver­sion of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Not bad at all for what Rusty DeS­o­to called “the first real rock fes­ti­val.”

Mon­terey Pop, orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as a rock-legit­imiz­ing com­pan­ion to the exist­ing Mon­terey Jazz and Folk Fes­ti­vals, brought many of its host­ed artists a kind of pop­u­lar­i­ty they’d nev­er had before. Otis Red­ding, just six months before his untime­ly death, enjoyed his first pre­dom­i­nant­ly non-black live audi­ence in Mon­terey — and they, by all accounts, enjoyed him. Colum­bia Records gave Joplin and her band, Big Broth­er and the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, a con­tract on the strength of their Mon­terey show (right above). A great deal of high-qual­i­ty film and audio tape of these per­for­mances sur­vives, thanks in large part to doc­u­men­tar­i­an D.A. Pen­nebak­er, whose film Mon­terey Pop remains the defin­i­tive record of the fes­ti­val. Watch any of the footage, such as the clip below of a ram­bunc­tious out­fit by the name of The Who, and you’ll under­stand just how force­ful­ly Mon­terey Pop launched these artists into the zeit­geist.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Wakes Up New York; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Wood­stock Revis­it­ed in Three Min­utes

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Rembrandt’s Facebook Timeline

in Art, Technology | June 7th, 2012

The Rijksmu­se­um, locat­ed in Ams­ter­dam, hous­es famous paint­ings by Rem­brandt, Ver­meer, and oth­er Dutch mas­ters. Recent­ly, the 212-year-old muse­um decid­ed to get a lit­tle mod­ern when it imag­ined what Rem­brandt’s Face­book Time­line might look like. “I made a self-por­trait. Let me know what you think!,” Rem­brandt announces (in Eng­lish!) 384 years ago — to which Peter Paul Rubens, a con­tem­po­rary, responds, “Nice one!” And lat­er Rem­brandt announces, “Look what Johannes [Ver­meer] made!,” point­ing to the The Milk Maid, which already has over 5,000 “Likes.” And so the video goes.

You can find The Rijksmu­se­um on Face­book here, and our stim­u­lat­ing Face­book Page here, where we share our posts every day.

via Sci­ence Dump

Patti Smith Reads Her Final Words to Her Dear Friend Robert Mapplethorpe

in Music, Photography | June 6th, 2012

Per­haps you’ve lis­tened to Pat­ti Smith’s albums. Per­haps you’ve also seen Robert Map­plethor­pe’s pho­tog­ra­phy. If you keep up with mem­oirs, you’ll sure­ly know that Smith’s Just Kids, a remem­brance of her time with Map­plethor­pe in the late six­ties, won all man­ner of acclaim, includ­ing the Nation­al Book Award, when it came out in 2010. But you might still have no idea of the close­ness and impor­tance of each artist to the oth­er, as many of their fans did­n’t before read­ing Smith’s book. While those 278 pages will tell you every­thing you need to know about it, the 178 words of Smith’s let­ter to the dying Map­plethor­pe fea­tured last week on Let­ters of Note say near­ly as much.

But don’t take it from me; in the video above, you can hear the let­ter as read by Smith her­self. She brought it out, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, at the open­ing of her exhi­bi­tion, Cam­era Solo, at Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum Muse­um of Art, the first show of her own ven­tures into Mapplethorpe’s craft. Alas, Map­plethor­pe did­n’t live long enough to get around to try­ing his hand at rock music — he did­n’t even live long enough to actu­al­ly read this let­ter — but his artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty per­sists in Smith’s own work. “I learned to see through you,” she reads, “and nev­er com­pose a line or draw a curve that does not come from the knowl­edge I derived in our pre­cious time togeth­er.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Remem­bers Robert Map­plethor­pe

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Rare Color Footage of the 1939 World Series: Yankees v. Reds

in History | June 5th, 2012

The 1939 World Series was­n’t much of a con­test. The Yan­kees, led by Joltin’ Joe DiMag­gio in cen­ter field, had won the last three cham­pi­onships. And they won this con­test rather eas­i­ly too, sweep­ing the Cincin­nati Reds in four straight games. Yes­ter­day, mem­bers of the Red­dit com­mu­ni­ty unearthed some rare col­or footage of the ’39 Series. In it, we catch glimpses of the Old Yan­kee Sta­di­um, the actu­al House That Ruth Built; pitch­ers doing a dif­fer­ent kind of windup; and a reminder that you could once buy five razors for 25 cents. Find more infor­ma­tion on those at the Inter­net Muse­um of Safe­ty Razors.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prince­ton v. Yale, 1903: The Old­est Col­lege Foot­ball Game on Film

Lou Gehrig, Yan­kee Leg­end, Stars in 1938 West­ern Rawhide

Robert Penn Warren Archive Brings Early Civil Rights to Life

in Education, History, Law, Politics | June 5th, 2012

While an under­grad­u­ate at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty in Ten­nessee, writer Robert Penn War­ren began writ­ing about the south and its tur­bu­lent racial his­to­ry. He trav­eled through­out the Unit­ed States and inter­viewed men and women involved with the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, record­ing each con­ver­sa­tion on a reel-to-reel tape recorder—a project that result­ed in the 1965 book Who Speaks for the Negro? This month, Van­der­bilt University’s Robert Penn War­ren Cen­ter for the Human­i­ties makes a full dig­i­tal record avail­able of Warren’s research for the book—an impres­sive and well-con­struct­ed col­lec­tion of inter­views with his­tor­i­cal fig­ures includ­ing Ralph Elli­son, James Bald­win and Mal­colm X. The rich­ness of the site is its con­nec­tive design. Each inter­view is tagged by top­ic, includ­ing a subject’s link to broad­er issues or to oth­er inter­vie­wees, mak­ing evi­dent through user expe­ri­ence the com­plex nature of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. A search for the NAACP, for exam­ple, yields mul­ti­ple inter­views fea­tur­ing dif­fer­ent points of view on the organization’s for­ma­tion along with PDFs of orig­i­nal let­ters and the search­able text of news­pa­per arti­cles about ear­ly NAACP demon­stra­tions. But the site’s audio offer­ings are its most pow­er­ful assets.

• The sonorous voice of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. as he talks about his father and fam­i­ly 
• The world­ly James Bald­win mus­ing on the con­cept of rev­o­lu­tion in the Unit­ed States 
• Mal­colm X. dis­cuss­es his analy­sis of Islam accom­pa­nied by the back­ground noise of New York City traf­fic

The mate­r­i­al offers a potent por­trait of a his­tor­i­cal moment and is rich with ref­er­ences to pol­i­tics, art and spe­cif­ic con­flicts over inte­gra­tion. The group inter­views with uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and pro­test­ers are worth a lis­ten, both for the con­tent and for the ear­ly 1960s group dynam­ics. When War­ren inter­views men and women togeth­er, men tend to speak first and at most length. But the views expressed are fas­ci­nat­ing, as in one case when a female sit-in par­tic­i­pant gives her opin­ion about assim­i­la­tion.

“My first reac­tion of course would be, think­ing of Socrates: Know thy­self. We do face the prob­lem of amal­ga­ma­tion into the whole of Amer­i­can life, being Amer­i­cans first, say, or being what I would like to term Negro Amer­i­cans or Black Amer­i­cans. I think that we as black men have an oblig­a­tion to know our­selves as black men and be proud of what we are, and con­tribute to Amer­i­ca what we could actu­al­ly offer to this cul­ture.”

Kate Rix is an Oak­land based writer. See more of her work at .

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mal­colm X at Oxford, 1964

Great Cul­tur­al Icons Talk Civ­il Rights (1963)

MLK’s Omi­nous Final Speech

A Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dali, Narrated by the Great Orson Welles

in Art, Film | June 4th, 2012

The sur­re­al­ism of Sal­vador Dali knew no bound­aries. It went straight from his paint­ings and into his per­son­al life. Every­thing was a spec­ta­cle. The pub­lic loved Dali for it, but jour­nal­ists always wres­tled with his show­man­ship, won­der­ing how to extract seri­ous answers from the man. (Watch Dali toy with Mike Wal­lace here.) And, of course, some­one like Dali posed chal­lenges for biog­ra­phers. Could you make Dali con­form to the con­ven­tion­al bio­graph­i­cal form? In 1970, the French direc­tor Jean-Christophe Aver­ty trav­eled to Spain, to the lit­tle sea­side vil­lage of Portl­li­gat, where he shot a 52 minute doc­u­men­tary called A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali. Orson Welles nar­rates the film and lay­ers in some tra­di­tion­al bio­graph­i­cal ele­ments. But, oth­er­wise, the film does­n’t both­er try­ing to fit a round peg into a square hole. It embraces Dal­i’s schtick and goes along for the sur­re­al­ist ride. In this sep­a­rate video you can take a tour of Sal­vador Dal­i’s sea­side home.

You can find A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali per­ma­nent­ly housed in our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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!