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

in Literature | May 16th, 2012

After return­ing from World War I, Ernest Hem­ing­way moved to Toron­to and began writ­ing for the Toron­to Star. He worked there from 1920 to 1924 and some 70 of his arti­cles have been archived online in an attrac­tive new web­site, the Hem­ing­way Papers. At first Hem­ing­way was a stringer and lat­er he wrote as a staff writer, under the byline Ernest M. Hem­ing­way. His first arti­cle bore the head­line, “Tak­ing a Chance for a Free Shave” and chron­i­cled the young author’s vis­it to a bar­ber col­lege where straight-edge razors were wield­ed for free by stu­dents. He went on to write for the Star about box­ing and trout fish­ing and orga­nized crime in Chica­go. By 1922 Hem­ing­way had moved to Paris with his wife and sent dis­patch­es that antic­i­pat­ed the themes of the nov­els that would make him famous. He wrote about the effects of war, bull­fight­ing and the life of an impov­er­ished artist in Paris. His asso­ci­a­tion with the Star gave him access to post-war Europe that he wouldn’t have had oth­er­wise and work­ing as a reporter taught him how to get up close and per­son­al with his sub­ject mat­ter.

The archive gives vis­i­tors plen­ty to explore, includ­ing com­men­tary about the novelist’s ear­ly assign­ments and embed­ded anno­ta­tions to help put the work in con­text.  Hem­ing­way devel­oped his famous­ly terse, hard-boiled style at the Star and reworked much of his reportage into his fic­tion. Read­ers of his short sto­ries and nov­els will see seeds of Hemingway’s fic­tion in arti­cles like “Tan­cre­do is Dead,” about the death of a man whose job was to tease the bull by stand­ing as still as a stat­ue in the ring:

“No. He was nei­ther an opera singer nor a five-cent cig­ar. He was once known as the bravest man in the world. And he died in a dingy, sor­did room in Madrid, the city where he had enjoyed his great­est tri­umphs.”

Read­ing through Hem­ing­way’s jour­nal­ism is to wit­ness a fic­tion writer in the mak­ing.

Kate Rix writes about k‑12 instruc­tion and high­er ed. 

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

in Comedy, Television | May 13th, 2012

Hell. We tend to take it for grant­ed. Have you ever stopped to think about the heat­ing bills, or the stu­pen­dous over­head?

John Cleese plays a cash-strapped Prince of Dark­ness in this clas­sic sketch from The Frost Report, the show that launched Cleese as a tele­vi­sion star in Britain. He was 26 years old at the time. The pro­gram was host­ed by David Frost, who is per­haps best known for his 1977 inter­views of Richard Nixon. There were four oth­er future Mon­ty Python come­di­ans on the writ­ing staff of The Frost Report–Gra­ham Chap­man, Ter­ry Jones, Michael Palin and Eric Idle–but only Cleese was a cast mem­ber. The show was broad­cast in 1966 and 1967, with each week­ly episode cen­tered around a par­tic­u­lar theme, like love, leisure, class and author­i­ty. The “Souls in Tor­ment Appeal” is from a March 24, 1966 pro­gram about sin. It’s a fun­ny sketch.

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: 

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python’s Away From it All: A Twist­ed Trav­el­ogue with John Cleese

What Happens When a Terry Gross/Fresh Air Interview Ends: A Comic Look

in Comedy, Radio | May 12th, 2012

If you’re a reg­u­lar read­er of Open Cul­ture, and if you live in the Unit­ed States, then chances are you lis­ten to Ter­ry Gross’ Fresh Air inter­views on NPR, at least occa­sion­al­ly. There’s also a good chance that you’ve won­dered, at some point dur­ing the past 30 years, what the host looks like and what goes on behind the scenes. Now you can find out … sort of.

Above, we’re fea­tur­ing a new video by come­di­an Mike Bir­biglia, which gives you a fun­ny and entire­ly fic­tion­al look at what hap­pens when a Fresh Air inter­view draws to a close. The video was orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced for the “This Amer­i­can Life” live show, which was broad­cast to 500 movie the­aters on Thurs­day night. If you’re a casu­al or ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­er to Fresh Air, it’s good for a laugh. And if you’ve nev­er lis­tened to the show before, you can get acquaint­ed by lis­ten­ing to Ter­ry’s actu­al inter­view of Bir­biglia in Octo­ber 2010. Catch it right here, or lis­ten below.

via AllTh­ingsD

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on the Art of Sto­ry­telling

The History of Rome in 179 Podcasts

in History, Podcasts | May 10th, 2012

What with so many open-end­ed inter­net media projects out there, I admire any that come to a close. Peo­ple start plen­ty of things on the net that wind up peter­ing out, but few dis­play the con­vic­tion to work toward a deci­sive end. Then again, this goes for all forms of human endeav­or; even the builders of the Roman Empire must have oper­at­ed on the assump­tion that it might go on for­ev­er. We now know, of course, that it would­n’t, and this knowl­edge pro­vides for­mal and intel­lec­tu­al premis­es for Mike Dun­can’s pod­cast, The His­to­ry of Rome (iTunes — RSS). The Roman Empire end­ed by the year 476. The his­to­ry of the Roman Empire in pod­cast form end­ed last Sun­day, after almost five years, 179 episodes, and 1654 near-uni­ver­sal­ly lauda­to­ry iTunes reviews.

I reviewed The His­to­ry of Rome myself back in 2009, for the Podthoughts col­umn I write for MaximumFun.org. Pod­think­ing has taught me that his­to­ry as a sub­ject suits this ver­bal, episod­ic, straight-into-your-mind type of medi­um almost ide­al­ly. Though Dun­can choos­es to get straight to the point and tell the Roman Empire’s sto­ry in a clear, asceti­cal­ly unadorned man­ner, dif­fer­ent pod­casts deliv­er their slices of his­to­ry with styles and sen­si­bil­i­ties all their own. If you his­tor­i­cal­ly inclined pod­cast-lis­ten­ers have already been keep­ing up with this show, oth­ers await you: Dan Car­lin’s Hard­core His­to­ry, Twelve Byzan­tine Rulers, A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects, and (my own cur­rent lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence of choice) Top­ics in Kore­an His­to­ry, to name but a few. But if you haven’t been, sit down and let Mike Dun­can tell you about a cer­tain Romu­lus and Remus, with whom the his­to­ry of Rome myth­i­cal­ly began.

More cours­es on the Ancient world, includ­ing the his­to­ry of Rome, can be found in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1150 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

How Many U.S. Marines Could Bring Down the Roman Empire?

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

The Making of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” The Beatles’ Song That Aired on an Historic Episode of Mad Men

in Music, Television | May 10th, 2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkirE9uH5SE

On Sun­day night, The Bea­t­les made his­to­ry again when Don Drap­er slipped a copy of Revolver onto his turntable and start­ed lis­ten­ing to “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows.” Accord­ing to Matthew Wein­er, the cre­ator of Mad Men, this marked the first time a Bea­t­les song appeared on a tele­vi­sion show (exclud­ing the band’s live TV per­for­mances dur­ing the 1960s). And the priv­i­lege of play­ing a Bea­t­les tune came at a cost — a report­ed $250,000.

If you’re not famil­iar with “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” (lis­ten below), we’ll tell you a few sim­ple things about it. Accord­ing to Steve Turn­er, author of A Hard Day’s Write, this was John Lennon’s “attempt to cre­ate in words and sounds a suit­able track for the LSD expe­ri­ence” (John dis­cuss­es his first encounter with the drug here), and it was also the “weird­est and most exper­i­men­tal piece of music to appear under the Bea­t­les’ name at the time.” With­out a doubt, this psy­che­del­ic tune would have fit hand-in-glove with Mad Men’s fifth episode of the sea­son, when Roger and Jane drop acid at a psy­chi­a­trist’s din­ner par­ty. But it sits com­fort­ably too in Episode 8. Just as the song marked a tun­ing point in the band’s sound, so too does it presage a turn­ing point in Mad Men’s nar­ra­tive. We begin to see indi­vid­ual char­ac­ters mov­ing in new per­son­al direc­tions and the show itself enter­ing the lat­er rad­i­cal 60s.

Above, we’ve includ­ed a clip where Paul McCart­ney, George Har­ri­son and George Mar­tin talk about the mak­ing of “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows.” Wikipedia actu­al­ly offers some more good details on the song’s struc­ture and record­ing. Below you’ll also find the orig­i­nal track.

See What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Camera and 52 Seconds of Film

in Film | May 9th, 2012

In 1995, 41 respect­ed film­mak­ers got a shot at using the first motion pic­ture cam­era, the Lumière broth­ers’ ciné­matographe. Rather, they got more than a shot, but often not much more: each of these icons of world cin­e­ma had to make do with a sin­gle, 52-sec­ond roll of film. Whether you were Spike Lee, Cos­ta-Gavras, Wim Wen­ders, Mer­chant & Ivory, or Peter Green­away, the rules remained the same: no addi­tion­al film, no syn­chro­nized sound, and no more than three takes. This large, indi­rect col­lab­o­ra­tion pro­duced the film Lumière and Com­pa­ny, an anthol­o­gy of all these very short pieces, each of which show­cas­es the kind of cre­ativ­i­ty only strict lim­i­ta­tions can release. (Bri­an Eno would, I imag­ine, approve.) David Lynch’s fans, a ded­i­cat­ed aes­thet­ic fac­tion indeed, will sure­ly fast-for­ward to their man’s con­tri­bu­tion, Lumière, which you can watch on YouTube.

Even in these 52 sec­onds, Lynch enthu­si­asts can spot many of the direc­tor’s sig­na­ture aes­thet­ic and emo­tion­al pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. David Fos­ter Wal­lace elo­quent­ly defined the term “Lynchi­an” as refer­ring to “a par­tic­u­lar kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mun­dane com­bine in such a way as to reveal the for­mer’s per­pet­u­al con­tain­ment with­in the lat­ter,” and you might take Lumière as a bite of unadul­ter­at­ed Lynchi­an­ism. Tak­ing place in vague­ly but sin­is­ter­ly askew small-town mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca — a realm now more close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Lynch than any­body — the film drops into and out of a brief fugue of pure bio­me­chan­i­cal grotes­querie. Some of the eerie dream-state qual­i­ty comes from the incon­gru­ous­ly ancient look and feel of ciné­matographe footage. Much more comes from the sound design, which lays the music of a warped clas­sic film score on top of the noise of aging machin­ery. Crit­ics note Lynch’s way with strik­ing images you could­n’t for­get if you want­ed to, but I sus­pect his use of sound does just as much to lodge his movies per­ma­nent­ly into our cin­e­mat­ic con­scious­ness.

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:

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psy­chot­ic Back­yard Crazi­ness (NSFW)

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

David Lynch and Inter­pol Team Up on Short Film

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

TED-Ed Brings the Edginess of TED to Learning

in TED Talks | May 9th, 2012

Since it began post­ing videos six years ago of its now-famous talks, TED has estab­lished itself and its “ideas worth spread­ing” as a forum for cut­ting-edge think­ing about every­thing under the sun. Pio­neers in social net­work­ing, neu­rol­o­gy, art—you name it, the pithi­est speak­ers of our day find an audi­ence at TED’s two annu­al con­fer­ences. But the real audi­ence is online. TED’s most e‑mailed talk so far fea­tured edu­ca­tor Sir Ken Robin­son, whose 2006 talk argued that schools kill cre­ativ­i­ty. The E in TED may not stand for edu­ca­tion (it stands for enter­tain­ment) but the New York-based non­prof­it is respond­ing to inter­est in edu­ca­tion­al top­ics.

This month saw the launch of TED-Ed, a dynam­ic new YouTube chan­nel that fea­tures the work of con­tent experts and pro­fes­sion­al ani­ma­tors in five-minute videos. Each TED-Ed video comes with sup­ple­men­tary quizzes, ques­tions, quizzes and activ­i­ties ide­al for home instruc­tion. (Click on “Quick Quiz,” “Think” or “Dig Deep­er” here for exam­ples.) In the spir­it of “flip” teach­ing, a method that revers­es home­work and instruc­tion time, videos on TED-Ed can be assigned for home review, free­ing up class­room time for dis­cus­sion, appli­ca­tion and projects. In a flipped class­room, stu­dents would view a video about sex deter­mi­na­tion, for exam­ple, and hear edu­ca­tor Aaron Reedy explain how gen­der chro­mo­somes vary from one species to anoth­er. The next day in class might fea­ture a dis­cus­sion about how glob­al warm­ing effects tem­per­a­ture-depen­dent sex deter­mi­na­tion. After watch­ing How Fold­ing Paper Can Get You to the Moon (above), which explores the prin­ci­ples revealed by  fold­ing one piece of paper, stu­dents and their teacher could dis­cuss expo­nen­tial growth pat­terns in micro­bi­ol­o­gy and eco­nom­ics. All of the quizzes and resources are editable, so teach­ers can cus­tomize their lessons and cre­ate their own instruc­tion­al archives using TED-Ed videos or any oth­er YouTube video. All in all, a lot more fun than film strips. And, to be sure, we’ll add TED Ed to our emerg­ing col­lec­tion of Free K‑12 Resources.

Kate Rix writes about k‑12 instruc­tion and high­er ed. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT & Khan Acad­e­my Team Up to Devel­op Sci­ence Videos for Kids. Includes The Physics of Uni­cy­cling

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Free Online Cours­es World­wide

Every TED Talk in a Neat Spread­sheet

Steve Jobs Plays FDR in Apple’s Rally-the-Troops Film, 1944

in Apple, Technology | May 7th, 2012

Short­ly after Apple aired its famous Rid­ley Scott Super Bowl com­mer­cial in 1984, the upstart com­pa­ny knocked off a cheap World War II-themed inter­nal video — a ral­ly-the-troops film — dubbed 1944.  The cause is free­dom and the mis­sion, to save the world from bad com­put­ing. The ene­my isn’t the Axis (Ger­many, Japan, Italy.) It’s IBM and its “big blue mono-blob.” And the com­man­der in chief? It’s Steve Jobs, of course, chan­nel­ing F.D.R. at rough­ly the 5:30 mark (find the iso­lat­ed cameo below).

To be sure, there’s an his­tor­i­cal qual­i­ty to this film. It offers a visu­al reminder of how Apple posi­tioned itself against IBM before Microsoft came along. (Wal­ter Isaac­son dri­ves home that point in his recent biog­ra­phy of Steve Jobs, which you can down­load from Audi­ble if you sign up for a free tri­al.) But there’s also some­thing more time­less about the film. It just goes to show that every com­pa­ny, no mat­ter how much they think dif­fer­ent, can rev­el in the same cor­po­rate gim­micks — the schwag, the fawn­ing inside jokes and the rest. Poof, there goes my chance to work at Apple one day.

via Apple Insid­er

WWII Britain Revisited in 120 Short Films, Now Free on the Web

in Film, History | May 4th, 2012

How do you fight pro­pa­gan­da? With pro­pa­gan­da, or so held the British wartime school of thought. “Over 120 films were pro­duced as ‘cul­tur­al pro­pa­gan­da’ to coun­ter­act any­thing the Nazis might throw out and to refute the idea that ours was a coun­try stuck in the past. These films were designed to show­case Britain to the rest of the world, at a time when Britain itself was under attack.” These words come from the about page of the British Coun­cil Film Col­lec­tion, a new­ly opened inter­net archive of over 120 such pieces of cul­tur­al pro­pa­gan­da, free for the view­ing. Above, you’ll find 1941’s City Bound, as direct an illus­tra­tion of the leg­endary stiff upper lip as you’ll find in this dig­i­tal vault. The reel trum­pets, in its sober man­ner, the unblink­ing effi­cien­cy of Lon­don Trans­port as it fer­ries work­ers into the city cen­ter each morn­ing and dis­gorges them back into the sub­urbs each night, even amid the falling bombs of the Blitz. And if you find these stern­ly proud shots of com­muter trains and bus­es rolling bang on time from their sta­tions a bit arti­fi­cial, remem­ber that the Coun­cil still had to pro­duce the film itself under the very real threat from above.

These pro­duc­tions “pro­vide us with a unique insight,” says the Coun­cil today, “not nec­es­sar­i­ly into how Britain actu­al­ly was, but more into how Britain once want­ed to be per­ceived by the rest of the world.” Any­one inter­est­ed in nation­al brand­ing, vin­tage boos­t­er­ism, and sub­jec­tive his­to­ry can have a field day indulging their fas­ci­na­tions in these meta-qual­i­ties, but many of these short doc­u­men­taries offer legit­i­mate­ly worth­while first-order infor­ma­tion as well. Con­sid­er the above, Archi­tects of Eng­land. Yes, it came into being to show­case the splen­did inge­nu­ity of Eng­lish build­ing from Stone­henge mon­u­men­tal to indus­tri­al mod­ernist, but for a spir­it­ed twelve-minute ground­ing in British archi­tec­tur­al tra­di­tions, you could do worse. If you remain uncon­vinced of the val­ue of any of this, bear in mind that you can eas­i­ly down­load any­thing in the British Coun­cil Film Col­lec­tion. If you need the mak­ings of, say, an iron­ic music video, look no fur­ther.

Relat­ed con­tent:

‘Keep Calm and Car­ry On’: The Sto­ry of the Icon­ic World War II Poster

Great Movie Direc­tors Dur­ing Wartime: Hitch­cock, Capra, Hus­ton & Their WWII Films

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

The Anatomical Drawings of Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci

in Art, History, Science | May 3rd, 2012

Leonar­do da Vin­ci, the arche­type of the Renais­sance Man, received some for­mal train­ing in the anato­my of the human body. He reg­u­lar­ly dis­sect­ed human corpses and made very detailed draw­ings of mus­cles, ten­dons, the heart and vas­cu­lar sys­tem, inter­nal organs and the human skele­ton. A great num­ber of these draw­ings can now be seen in the largest exhi­bi­tion of Leonar­do da Vinci’s stud­ies of the human body, “Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Anatomist,” at The Queen’s Gallery in Buck­ing­ham Palace, Lon­don. In this video, Senior Cura­tor Mar­tin Clay­ton explores three of these draw­ings and shows that Leonar­do’s med­ical dis­cov­er­ies could have trans­formed the study of anato­my in Europe, had they not lan­guished unpub­lished for cen­turies. Clay­ton has also pub­lished his find­ings in “Nature”. And the BBC has looked into the ques­tion of just how accu­rate Leonar­do’s anatom­i­cal draw­ings real­ly were.

Bonus links:

• The Guardian has a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry about Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s note­book, includ­ing his ‘to-do’ list.
• Here’s a won­der­ful 360° panoram­ic view of San­ta Maria delle Grazia in Milan with Leonar­do’s “Last Sup­per”.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.