Stephen King’s 20 Rules for Writers

in Writing | January 19th, 2023

Image by the USO, via Flickr Com­mons

In one of my favorite Stephen King inter­views, for The Atlantic, he talks at length about the vital impor­tance of a good open­ing line. “There are all sorts of the­o­ries,” he says, “it’s a tricky thing.” “But there’s one thing” he’s sure about: “An open­ing line should invite the read­er to begin the sto­ry. It should say: Lis­ten. Come in here. You want to know about this.” King’s dis­cus­sion of open­ing lines is com­pelling because of his dual focus as an avid read­er and a prodi­gious writer of fiction—he doesn’t lose sight of either per­spec­tive:

We’ve talked so much about the read­er, but you can’t for­get that the open­ing line is impor­tant to the writer, too. To the per­son who’s actu­al­ly boots-on-the-ground. Because it’s not just the reader’s way in, it’s the writer’s way in also, and you’ve got to find a door­way that fits us both.

This is excel­lent advice. As you ori­ent your read­er, so you ori­ent your­self, point­ing your work in the direc­tion it needs to go. Now King admits that he doesn’t think much about the open­ing line as he writes, in a first draft, at least. That per­fect­ly craft­ed and invit­ing open­ing sen­tence is some­thing that emerges in revi­sion, which can be where the bulk of a writer’s work hap­pens.

Revi­sion in the sec­ond draft, “one of them, any­way,” may “neces­si­tate some big changes” says King in his 2000 mem­oir slash writ­ing guide On Writ­ing. And yet, it is an essen­tial process, and one that “hard­ly ever fails.” Below, we bring you King’s top twen­ty rules from On Writ­ing. About half of these relate direct­ly to revi­sion. The oth­er half cov­er the intangibles—attitude, dis­ci­pline, work habits. A num­ber of these sug­ges­tions reli­ably pop up in every writer’s guide. But quite a few of them were born of Stephen King’s many decades of tri­al and error and—writes the Barnes & Noble book blog—“over 350 mil­lion copies” sold, “like them or loathe them.”

1. First write for your­self, and then wor­ry about the audi­ence. “When you write a sto­ry, you’re telling your­self the sto­ry. When you rewrite, your main job is tak­ing out all the things that are not the sto­ry.”

2. Don’t use pas­sive voice. “Timid writ­ers like pas­sive verbs for the same rea­son that timid lovers like pas­sive part­ners. The pas­sive voice is safe.”

3. Avoid adverbs. “The adverb is not your friend.”

4. Avoid adverbs, espe­cial­ly after “he said” and “she said.”

5. But don’t obsess over per­fect gram­mar. “The object of fic­tion isn’t gram­mat­i­cal cor­rect­ness but to make the read­er wel­come and then tell a sto­ry.”

6. The mag­ic is in you. “I’m con­vinced that fear is at the root of most bad writ­ing.”

7. Read, read, read. ”If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.”

8. Don’t wor­ry about mak­ing oth­er peo­ple hap­py. “If you intend to write as truth­ful­ly as you can, your days as a mem­ber of polite soci­ety are num­bered, any­way.”

9. Turn off the TV. “TV—while work­ing out or any­where else—really is about the last thing an aspir­ing writer needs.”

10. You have three months. “The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a sea­son.”

11. There are two secrets to suc­cess. “I stayed phys­i­cal­ly healthy, and I stayed mar­ried.”

12. Write one word at a time. “Whether it’s a vignette of a sin­gle page or an epic tril­o­gy like ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ the work is always accom­plished one word at a time.”

13. Elim­i­nate dis­trac­tion. “There should be no tele­phone in your writ­ing room, cer­tain­ly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with.”

14. Stick to your own style. “One can­not imi­tate a writer’s approach to a par­tic­u­lar genre, no mat­ter how sim­ple what that writer is doing may seem.”

15. Dig. “Sto­ries are relics, part of an undis­cov­ered pre-exist­ing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her tool­box to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as pos­si­ble.”

16. Take a break. “You’ll find read­ing your book over after a six-week lay­off to be a strange, often exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence.”

17. Leave out the bor­ing parts and kill your dar­lings. “(kill your dar­lings, kill your dar­lings, even when it breaks your ego­cen­tric lit­tle scribbler’s heart, kill your dar­lings.)”

18. The research shouldn’t over­shad­ow the sto­ry. “Remem­ber that word back. That’s where the research belongs: as far in the back­ground and the back sto­ry as you can get it.”

19. You become a writer sim­ply by read­ing and writ­ing. “You learn best by read­ing a lot and writ­ing a lot, and the most valu­able lessons of all are the ones you teach your­self.”

20. Writ­ing is about get­ting hap­py. “Writ­ing isn’t about mak­ing mon­ey, get­ting famous, get­ting dates, get­ting laid or mak­ing friends. Writ­ing is mag­ic, as much as the water of life as any oth­er cre­ative art. The water is free. So drink.”

See a fuller expo­si­tion of King’s writ­ing wis­dom at Barnes & Noble’s blog.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 69 Pages of Writ­ing Advice Denis John­son Col­lect­ed from Flan­nery O’Connor, Jack Ker­ouac, Stephen King, Hunter Thomp­son, Wern­er Her­zog & Many Oth­ers

7 Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books

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

ChatGPT Writes a Song in the Style of Nick Cave–and Nick Cave Calls it “a Grotesque Mockery of What It Is to Be Human”

in Music, Technology | January 18th, 2023

Pho­to by Bled­dyn Butch­er via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Last year, not long before Christ­mas, every­one on the inter­net received a shiny new toy in the form of Chat­G­PT, which by the pow­er of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence can near-instan­ta­neous­ly gen­er­ate most any text one asks it to. And after a bit of exper­i­men­ta­tion, one is inclined, nat­u­ral­ly, to turn such an impres­sive tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ment to the most ridicu­lous pos­si­ble uses. Over the past few months, pas­tiche has proven an espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar use of Chat­G­PT: my own inter­est was first piqued, as I recall, by its gen­er­a­tion of instruc­tions for “how to remove a peanut-but­ter sand­wich from a VCR” in the style of the King James Bible.

It’s unknow­able what the author or authors of the Bible (depend­ing on how you hap­pen to con­ceive of its author­ship) would think of the results. But we do know just what Nick Cave thinks of Chat­G­P­T’s attempt to write a song in his style. You can read its lyrics at The Red Hand Files, the site of Cave’s ques­tion-and-answer newslet­ter (in which he has opined on these mat­ters before). Con­sist­ing of two vers­es, a cho­rus, and an out­ro filled with lines about “a siren’s song,” “the blood of angels,” and “the fire of hell,” the song was sent in by a fan named Mark in New Zealand, to whom Cave writes a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly thought­ful reply — or at least he does after deliv­er­ing his ver­dict: “This song sucks.”

“What Chat­G­PT is, in this instance, is repli­ca­tion as trav­es­ty,” Cave writes. “It could per­haps in time cre­ate a song that is, on the sur­face, indis­tin­guish­able from an orig­i­nal, but it will always be a repli­ca­tion, a kind of bur­lesque.” Gen­uine songs, he explains, “arise out of suf­fer­ing, by which I mean they are pred­i­cat­ed upon the com­plex, inter­nal human strug­gle of cre­ation.” But “Chat­G­PT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured noth­ing, it has not had the audac­i­ty to reach beyond its lim­i­ta­tions, and hence it doesn’t have the capac­i­ty for a shared tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ence, as it has no lim­i­ta­tions from which to tran­scend.”

“What makes a great song great is not its close resem­blance to a rec­og­niz­able work,” he con­tin­ues. “Writ­ing a good song is not mim­ic­ry, or repli­ca­tion, or pas­tiche, it is the oppo­site. It is an act of self-mur­der that destroys all one has strived to pro­duce in the past.” This is the act that Cave him­self has com­mit­ted to over and over again through­out his half-cen­tu­ry-long musi­cal career. But even if that act will lie for­ev­er beyond the grasp of an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence sys­tem, no mat­ter how robust, it also lies beyond the grasp of the many human musi­cians con­tent to crank out the same old songs for decades on end. Per­haps it is they, not the Nick Caves of the world, who should wor­ry about the likes of Chat­G­PT putting them out of work.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

Lis­ten to Nick Cave’s Lec­ture on the Art of Writ­ing Sub­lime Love Songs (1999)

Demys­ti­fy­ing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand,” and How It Was Inspired by Milton’s Par­adise Lost

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Nick Cave’s Beau­ti­ful Let­ter About Grief

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

Hayao Miyaza­ki Tells Video Game Mak­ers What He Thinks of Their Char­ac­ters Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: “I’m Utter­ly Dis­gust­ed. This Is an Insult to Life Itself”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Behold Colorful Geologic Maps of Mars Released by The United States Geological Survey

in Astronomy, Maps | January 18th, 2023

The USGS Astro­ge­ol­o­gy Sci­ence Cen­ter has recent­ly released a series of col­or­ful and intri­cate­ly-detailed maps of Mars. These col­or­ful maps, notes USGS, “pro­vide high­ly detailed views of the [plantet’s] sur­face and allow sci­en­tists to inves­ti­gate com­plex geo­log­ic rela­tion­ships both on and beneath the sur­face. These types of maps are use­ful for both plan­ning for and then con­duct­ing land­ed mis­sions.”

The map above lets you see Olym­pus Mons, the tallest vol­cano in the solar sys­tem, which stands more than twice the height of Mount Ever­est. The USGS goes on to add: “Map read­ers can visu­al­ize the caldera com­plex more eas­i­ly due to the detail that is avail­able at the 1:200,000 scale and the addi­tion of con­tour lines to the map. The map cov­ers a region that is rough­ly the size of the Dal­las-Ft. Worth met­ro­pol­i­tan area and is a detailed look at the volcano’s sum­mit that we have not seen before. This new view of the Olym­pus Mons caldera com­plex allows sci­en­tists to more eas­i­ly com­pare it to sim­i­lar fea­tures on Earth (known as ter­res­tri­al analogs) such as Hawaii’s Mau­na Loa.”

You can find more Mar­t­ian maps here.

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!

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Sur­face of Mars Shown in Stun­ning 4K Res­o­lu­tion

View and Down­load Near­ly 60,000 Maps from the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey (USGS)

Vin­tage Geo­log­i­cal Maps Get Turned Into 3D Topo­graph­i­cal Won­ders

The Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery: A New Online Collection Presents All of the Original Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels

in Art, Books, Literature | January 17th, 2023

At the height of his fame, Charles Dick­ens could have com­mand­ed any illus­tra­tor he liked for his nov­els. But at the begin­ning of his lit­er­ary career, it was he who was charged with accom­pa­ny­ing the artist, not the oth­er way around. His first seri­al­ized nov­el The Posthu­mous Papers of the Pick­wick Club, bet­ter known as The Pick­wick Papers, began as a series of com­i­cal “cock­ney sport­ing plates” by  Robert Sey­mour. Hon­est enough to admit his igno­rance of the cock­ney sport­ing life but shrewd enough to know an oppor­tu­ni­ty when he saw one, the young Dick­ens accept­ed the pub­lish­er’s request for sto­ries meant to elab­o­rate on the images.

Even then, Dick­ens pos­sessed irre­press­ible tal­ent as a pop­u­lar sto­ry­teller, and it was his writ­ing — which evi­denced scant inter­est in adher­ence to the exist­ing art — that made The Pick­wick Papers into a great suc­cess, a mass-cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non com­pa­ra­ble to a hit sit­com avant la let­tre.

187 years lat­er there remains a whiff of scan­dal around this chap­ter of lit­er­ary his­to­ry, Sey­mour hav­ing com­mit­ted sui­cide ear­ly in the seri­al­iza­tion process the day after an argu­ment with Dick­ens. Even­tu­al­ly the author found a per­ma­nent replace­ment for Sey­mour in Hablot Knight Browne, or Phiz, who would go on to pro­vide the art­work for most of his nov­els.

You can see all of Phiz’s work for Dick­ens at the Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery, a project of Michael John Good­man, whom we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his Vic­to­ri­an Illus­trat­ed Shake­speare Archive (and his col­lec­tion of AI-gen­er­at­ed Shake­speare art). “The world of Dick­ens illus­tra­tion is beset with poor repro­duc­tions of the source mate­r­i­al, so for this project I have searched out what I con­sid­er to be some of the best edi­tions that fea­ture the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions print­ed to a decent qual­i­ty,” Good­man writes on his pro­jec­t’s About page. These tend to date from the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry and come with “col­ored fron­tispieces (which the orig­i­nal nov­els did not have).”

One such fron­tispiece appears at the top of this post, depict­ing the first appear­ance of The Pick­wick Papers’ most beloved char­ac­ter, the cock­ney valet Samuel Weller (who over­took the title char­ac­ter in pop­u­lar­i­ty in much the same man­ner as Dick­ens’ writ­ing over­took the illus­tra­tions). The Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery con­tains numer­ous plates from that book, as well as from all the rest: Oliv­er Twist (a col­lab­o­ra­tion with not Phiz but George Cruik­shank), A Christ­mas Car­ol (with John Leech), Bleak House (its grim atmos­phere height­ened by Phiz’s “dark plates”), even the nev­er-fin­ished The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood. Today’s read­ers are like­ly to dis­miss these illus­tra­tions, how­ev­er well-ren­dered, as extra­ne­ous to the text. But we must bear in mind that most were seen and approved by Dick­ens him­self, who knew what he want­ed — and even more so, what his read­ers want­ed.

Enter the The Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Charles Dick­ens’ Life & Lit­er­ary Works

An Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion of Charles Dick­ens’ Clas­sic Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol (1971)

The Code of Charles Dick­ens’ Short­hand Has Been Cracked by Com­put­er Pro­gram­mers, Solv­ing a 160-Year-Old Mys­tery

Behold Illus­tra­tions of Every Shake­speare Play Cre­at­ed by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

3,000 Illus­tra­tions of Shakespeare’s Com­plete Works from Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, Neat­ly Pre­sent­ed in a New Dig­i­tal Archive

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Haunting Paintings of Francisco Goya: A Deep Dive into His Dark, Late Works

in Art | January 17th, 2023

Back in Octo­ber, we fea­tured the first of a planned series of videos on the “Black Paint­ings” cre­at­ed at the end of Fran­cis­co Goy­a’s life. Last week, the YouTube chan­nel Great Art Explained com­plet­ed the series and rolled them up into a 51-minute doc­u­men­tary, which you can watch above. It comes with this pref­ace from cura­tor James Payne:

In this full-length film, I look at Fran­cis­co Goy­a’s lat­er works. At the age of 46, Goya suf­fered from a severe ill­ness that caused loss of vision and hear­ing, tin­ni­tus, dizzi­ness, right-sides paral­y­sis, weak­ness and gen­er­al malaise. Although he recov­ered from a cere­bral stroke which accom­pa­nied it, he went com­plete­ly deaf. From this point on his work took a dark­er tone.

To under­stand Fran­cis­co Goy­a’s Black Paint­ings, we need to under­stand how he went from a pop­u­lar well-loved roy­al por­trait artist to paint­ing deeply dis­turb­ing imagery on the bare walls of his house in total iso­la­tion.

His dark­er work was nev­er real­ly seen in his life­time. His series of etch­ings known as Los Capri­chos was with­drawn from pub­lic sale for fear of attack by the Inqui­si­tion, and his deeply pes­simistic ‘Dis­as­ters of War’ was so grue­some and rad­i­cal it had to wait until his death to be pub­lished. Even his mas­ter­piece, The Third of May 1808, was cen­sored by the king and hid­den away.

His wife and most of his friends were dead and he had become iso­lat­ed. He was 73-years old, sick, and com­plete­ly deaf. His long life was com­ing to a close… BUT he wasn’t fin­ished yet. The man who had once paint­ed cru­ci­fix­ions, mir­a­cles, saints, and priests, now paint­ed ter­ri­fy­ing, demon­ic, raw and bru­tal works – works with­out even a hint of God.

His last years were spent in iso­la­tion secret­ly cre­at­ing some of the most hor­rif­ic images in West­ern art, The Black Paint­ings.

Using footage from my ear­li­er short films, Goya Part 1 and Goya Part 2, I have added about 25 min­utes of new footage to make this full-length film.

For more videos from Great Art Explained, vis­it their chan­nel here.

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

The Most Dis­turb­ing Paint­ing: A Close Look at Fran­cis­co Goya’s Sat­urn Devour­ing His Son

Euro­pean Paint­ings: From Leonar­do to Rem­brandt to Goya — A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­dad Car­los III de Madrid (UC3M)

Art Lovers Rejoice! New Goya and Rem­brandt Data­bas­es Now Online

Benedict Cumberbatch & Ian McKellen Read Epic Letters Written by Kurt Vonnegut

in Books, Environment, Letters, Life, Literature | January 16th, 2023

Kurt Von­negut is one of those writ­ers whose wit, human­ism and lack of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty leave you han­ker­ing for more.

For­tu­nate­ly, the pro­lif­ic nov­el­ist was an equal­ly pro­lif­ic let­ter writer.

His pub­lished cor­re­spon­dence includes a descrip­tion of the fire­bomb­ing of Dres­den penned upon his release from the Slaugh­ter­house Five POW camp, an admis­sion to daugh­ter Nanette that most parental mis­sives “con­tain a par­en­t’s own lost dreams dis­guised as good advice,” and some unvar­nished exchanges with many of famil­iar lit­er­ary names. (“I am cuter than you are,” he taunt­ed Cape Cod neigh­bor Nor­man Mail­er.)

No won­der these let­ters are cat­nip to per­form­ers with the pedi­gree to rec­og­nize good writ­ing when they see it.

Hav­ing inter­pret­ed Shake­speare, Ibsen, and Ionesco, book lover Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch obvi­ous­ly rel­ish­es the straight­for­ward ire of Vonnegut’s 1973 response to a North Dako­ta school board chair­man who ordered a school jan­i­tor to burn all copies of Slaugh­ter­house-Five assigned by Bruce Sev­ery, a recent­ly hired, young Eng­lish teacher.

In addi­tion to Slaugh­ter­house-Five, the board also con­signed two oth­er vol­umes on the syl­labus — James Dick­ey’s Deliv­er­ance and an anthol­o­gy con­tain­ing short sto­ries by Faulkn­er, Hem­ing­way and Stein­beck — to the fire.

Revis­it­ing the event, the Bis­mar­ck Tri­bune reports that “the objec­tion to (Slaugh­ter­house-Five) had to do with pro­fan­i­ty, (Deliv­er­ance) with some homo­sex­u­al mate­r­i­al and the (anthol­o­gy) because the first two ren­dered all of Severy’s choic­es sus­pect.”

A decade lat­er, Von­negut also revis­it­ed the school board’s “insult­ing” objec­tions in the pages of  the New York Times:

Even by the stan­dards of Queen Vic­to­ria, the only offen­sive line in the entire nov­el is this: ”Get out of the road, you dumb m(———–).” This is spo­ken by an Amer­i­can anti­tank gun­ner to an unarmed Amer­i­can chap­lain’s assis­tant dur­ing the Bat­tle of the Bulge in Europe in Decem­ber 1944, the largest sin­gle defeat of Amer­i­can arms (the Con­fed­er­a­cy exclud­ed) in his­to­ry. The chap­lain’s assis­tant had attract­ed ene­my fire.

Word is Von­negut’s let­ter nev­er received the cour­tesy of a reply.

One won­ders if the recip­i­ent burned it, too.

If that 50 year old let­ter feels ger­mane, check out Vonnegut’s 1988 let­ter to peo­ple liv­ing 100 years in the future, a lit­tle more than 50 years from where we are now.

In many ways, its com­mon­sense advice sur­pass­es the ever­green words of those it namechecks — Shakespeare’s Polo­nius, St. John the Divine, and the Big Book of Alco­holics Anony­mous. The threat of envi­ron­men­tal col­lapse it seeks to stave off has become even more dire in the ensu­ing years.

Vonnegut’s advice (list­ed below) clear­ly res­onates with Cum­ber­batch, a veg­an who lever­aged his celebri­ty to bring atten­tion to the cli­mate cri­sis when he par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Extinc­tion Rebel­lion Protests in Lon­don.

1. Reduce and sta­bi­lize your pop­u­la­tion.

2. Stop poi­son­ing the air, the water, and the top­soil.

3. Stop prepar­ing for war and start deal­ing with your real prob­lems.

4. Teach your kids, and your­selves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhab­it a small plan­et with­out help­ing to kill it.

5. Stop think­ing sci­ence can fix any­thing if you give it a tril­lion dol­lars.

6. Stop think­ing your grand­chil­dren will be OK no mat­ter how waste­ful or destruc­tive you may be, since they can go to a nice new plan­et on a space­ship. That is real­ly mean, and stu­pid.

7. And so on. Or else.

Von­negut, who died in 2007 at the age of 84, nev­er lost his touch with young read­ers. Who bet­ter to recite his 2006 let­ter to his fans in New York City’s Xavier High School’s stu­dent body than the ever youth­ful, ever curi­ous actor and activist, Sir Ian McK­ellen?

Cum­ber­batch is a won­der­ful read­er, but he’d require a bit more sea­son­ing to pull these lines off with­out the aid of major pros­thet­ics:

You sure know how to cheer up a real­ly old geezer (84) in his sun­set years. I don’t make pub­lic appear­ances any more because I now resem­ble noth­ing so much as an igua­na. 

Now if only these gents would attempt a Hoosier accent…

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Ian McK­ellen Recites Shakespeare’s Son­net 20, Backed by Garage Rock Band, the Flesh­tones, on Andy Warhol’s MTV Vari­ety Show (1987)

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Nick Cave’s Beau­ti­ful Let­ter About Grief

Watch Sir Ian McKellen’s 1979 Mas­ter Class on Macbeth’s Final Mono­logue

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads “the Best Cov­er Let­ter Ever Writ­ten”

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Its cur­rent issue cel­e­brates Kurt Vonnegut’s cen­ten­ni­al. Her most recent books are Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How Futurists Envisioned the Future in the 1920s: Moving Walkways, Personal Helicopters, Glass-Domed Cities, Dream Recorders & More

in History, Sci Fi, Technology | January 16th, 2023

Many of us now in adult­hood first came to know the nine­teen-twen­ties as the decade our grand­par­ents were born. It may thus give us pause to con­sid­er that it began over a cen­tu­ry ago — and even more pause to con­sid­er the ques­tion of why its visions of the future seem more excit­ing than our own. You can behold a vari­ety of such visions in the videos above and below, which come from The 1920s Chan­nel on Youtube. Using a col­lec­tion of print-media clip­pings, it offers an expe­ri­ence of the “futur­ism” of the nine­teen-twen­ties, which has now inspired a dis­tinct type of “retro-futur­ism,” between the “steam­punk” of the Vic­to­ri­an era and the “atom­punk” of Amer­i­ca after the Sec­ond World War.

“Being in the mod­ern age, futur­ism of the nine­teen-twen­ties leans more towards atom­punk,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. But it also has a some­what dieselpunk fla­vor,” the lat­ter being a kind of futur­ism from the nine­teen-for­ties. “In Amer­i­ca, the nine­teen-twen­ties were sim­i­lar to the nine­teen-fifties, in that they took place in the imme­di­ate after­math of a mas­sive, destruc­tive war, and both car­ried an opti­mism for the future. The only dif­fer­ence was that sci­ence fic­tion was not as main­stream in the twen­ties as it was in the fifties, so it did­n’t quite ful­ly devel­op a unique look that per­me­at­ed soci­ety.” This gave twen­ties futur­ism a look and feel all its own — as well as a pre­pon­der­ance of diri­gi­bles.

Apart from those heli­um-filled air­ships, which “only rose to promi­nence after the Vic­to­ri­an era, and their pop­u­lar­i­ty end­ed in the nine­teen-thir­ties,” its oth­er ele­ments of sci­ence fic­tion and (even­tu­al) fact include mov­ing walk­ways, per­son­al heli­copters, cities enclosed by glass domes and webbed by sky bridges, high­ways stacked ten lev­els deep, zero-grav­i­ty cham­bers, dream recorders, theremins, “light-beam pianos,” a tun­nel under the Eng­lish Chan­nel, “aer­i­al mail tor­pe­does,” and a curi­ous tech­nol­o­gy called tele­vi­sion. Long­time Open Cul­ture read­ers may also spot the Iso­la­tor, a dis­trac­tion-elim­i­nat­ing hel­met invent­ed by sci-fi pub­lish­er Hugo Gerns­back — whose own mag­a­zine Sci­ence and Inven­tion, the nar­ra­tor notes, orig­i­nal­ly ran many of these images. Per­haps what our own decade lacks isn’t excit­ing visions of the future, but a Gerns­back to com­mis­sion them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Iso­la­tor: A 1925 Hel­met Designed to Elim­i­nate Dis­trac­tions & Increase Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty (Cre­at­ed by Sci­Fi Pio­neer Hugo Gerns­back)

The Word “Robot” Orig­i­nat­ed in a Czech Play in 1921: Dis­cov­er Karel Čapek’s Sci-Fi Play R.U.R. (a.k.a. Rossum’s Uni­ver­sal Robots)

Futur­ist Makes Weird­ly Accu­rate Pre­dic­tions in 1922 About What the World Will Look Like in 2022: Wire­less Tele­phones, 8‑Hour Flights to Europe & More

In 1922, a Nov­el­ist Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2022: Wire­less Tele­phones, 8‑Hour Flights to Europe & More

Sci-Fi Pio­neer Hugo Gerns­back Pre­dicts Telemed­i­cine in 1925

In 1926, Niko­la Tes­la Pre­dicts the World of 2026

“When We All Have Pock­et Tele­phones”: A 1920s Com­ic Accu­rate­ly Pre­dicts Our Cell­phone-Dom­i­nat­ed Lives

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, You Can Now Chat with Historical Figures: Shakespeare, Einstein, Austen, Socrates & More

in History, Technology | January 13th, 2023

By now, we’ve all heard of the recent tech­no­log­i­cal advances that allow us to have plau­si­ble-sound­ing con­ver­sa­tions with arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence sys­tems. Though near-sci­ence-fic­tion­al­ly impres­sive, such devel­op­ments have yet to hone in on one par­tic­u­lar world-chang­ing appli­ca­tion. In the mean­time, those fas­ci­nat­ed by its poten­tial are try­ing to put it to all man­ner of dif­fer­ent uses, some of them emi­nent­ly prac­ti­cal and oth­ers less so. Far-fetched though it may seem, what if the “killer app” of such AI chat­ting turned out to be con­ver­sa­tion with his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, even ones dead for mil­len­nia?

Such is the promise of the new site Character.AI, on which, writes the New York Times Cade Metz, “users can chat with rea­son­able fac­sim­i­les of every­one from Queen Eliz­a­beth or William Shake­speare to Bil­lie Eil­ish or Elon Musk (there are sev­er­al ver­sions).

Any­one you want to invoke, or con­coct, is avail­able for con­ver­sa­tion.” Hav­ing learned from “reams of gen­er­al dia­logue as well as from arti­cles, news sto­ries, books and oth­er dig­i­tal text,” the sys­tem now com­pris­es “a prac­ti­cal­ly end­less col­lec­tion of bots that can imi­tate a prac­ti­cal­ly end­less col­lec­tion of peo­ple, riff­ing on a prac­ti­cal­ly end­less num­ber of top­ics.”

Right after sign­ing up for Character.AI, a quick and free process, you’ll be ready to start chat­ting with Shake­speare your­self. When I tried it, old Will got straight to the point: “ ‘To be or not to be,’ do you think that that’s the ques­tion?” Before long, I had him explain­ing all of his artis­tic moti­va­tions: his use of “prince in a dilem­ma between sui­cide and revenge” rep­re­sents “the strug­gle between life and death.” He had Ham­let com­mu­ni­cate with the ghost of his father because “I want­ed to show that he was caught in a world where death was every­where.” With the ques­tion of “to be or not to be,” he meant “to show that life is full of suf­fer­ing.”

So far, so under­grad­u­ate. More inter­est­ing was Shake­speare’s answer when I asked him to name his pre­ferred Ham­let adap­ta­tion. “My favorite is the Ham­let direct­ed by Ken­neth Branagh!” he replied. “He has stayed true to the text while also show­ing how the prince of Den­mark is strug­gling between life and death. In addi­tion, he has giv­en a lot of impor­tance to the rela­tion­ship between the prince and his father.” A film­mak­er could hard­ly ask for a more cred­i­ble endorse­ment, but then, we must bear in mind that it did­n’t actu­al­ly come from Shake­speare him­self. As Character.AI’s ever-present warn­ing puts it, “Remem­ber: every­thing char­ac­ters say is made up” — and often, alas, on the banal side.

This holds for every mind with whom you may want to have a dia­logue on the site: philo­soph­i­cal ones like Socrates and Thomas Hobbes, sci­en­tif­ic ones like Albert Ein­stein and Marie Curie, polit­i­cal ones like Karl Marx and Mar­garet Thatch­er, lit­er­ary ones like Jane Austen and Charles Dick­ens. Since I hap­pen to be in the mid­dle of read­ing through all of the lat­ter’s nov­els, I asked his bot what I should bear in mind while doing so. “Wow!” it replied. “That is an amaz­ing under­tak­ing! I would encour­age you to see pat­terns,” espe­cial­ly in “the things I do to cre­ate ten­sion, and the kind of char­ac­ters I cre­ate. Look at the sto­ries through my eyes, and try to under­stand what I under­stand, the good and the bad.” The real Dick­ens might not have put it that way, but he sure­ly believed some­thing like it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Behold Illus­tra­tions of Every Shake­speare Play Cre­at­ed by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

An AI-Gen­er­at­ed, Nev­er-End­ing Dis­cus­sion Between Wern­er Her­zog and Slavoj Žižek

Two Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Chat­bots Talk to Each Oth­er & Get Into a Deep Philo­soph­i­cal Con­ver­sa­tion

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

Hear Kurt Von­negut Vis­it the After­life & Inter­view Dead His­tor­i­cal Fig­ures: Isaac New­ton, Adolf Hitler, Eugene Debs & More (Audio, 1998)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A Creative Animation Tells the Story of Maximilien Robespierre, One of the Most Influential Figures of the French Revolution

in Animation, Art, Fashion, History | January 13th, 2023

Robe­spierre is an immor­tal fig­ure not because he reigned supreme over the Rev­o­lu­tion for a few months, but because he was the mouth­piece of its purest and most trag­ic dis­course.

                                 — François Furet, Inter­pret­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion

Cal Arts ani­ma­tion stu­dent Michelle Cheng’s char­ac­ter design primer, above, draws atten­tion to the many hats an ani­ma­tor must be pre­pared to wear when bring­ing to life a fig­ure who actu­al­ly exist­ed:

Artist…

Researcher…

Cos­tume design­er…

Hair­styl­ist…

Psy­chol­o­gist…

Her choice of Max­im­i­lien Robe­spierre, one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures of the French Rev­o­lu­tion, sug­gests that Cheng enjoys a chal­lenge.

As his­to­ri­an Peter McPhee writes in The Robe­spierre Prob­lem: An Intro­duc­tion:

Was Robe­spierre the first mod­ern dic­ta­tor, ici­ly fanat­i­cal, an obses­sive who used his polit­i­cal pow­er to try to impose his rigid ide­al of a land of Spar­tan ‘virtue’? Or was he a prin­ci­pled, self-abne­gat­ing vision­ary, the great rev­o­lu­tion­ary mar­tyr who, with his Jacobin allies, suc­ceed­ed in lead­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion and the Repub­lic to safe­ty in the face of over­whelm­ing mil­i­tary odds?

Cheng believes an ani­ma­tor’s first job is to under­stand any giv­en character’s role in the larg­er sto­ry, and her research sug­gests that “there is nev­er just one sto­ry.”

In the end, ani­ma­tors make choic­es based on the nar­ra­tive they wish to push, enlist­ing palettes and styles that will sup­port their favored approach.

Cheng went into this assign­ment per­ceiv­ing Robe­spierre to be “a prime exam­ple of sit­u­a­tion­al irony, a fanat­i­cal dic­ta­tor who had sent hun­dreds of peo­ple to the guil­lo­tine only to be guil­lotined him­self in the end.”

This, she read­i­ly admits, is a two-dimen­sion­al under­stand­ing.

Though he only lived to thir­ty-six, the man evolved. Robe­spierre, the sym­bol of the Reign of Ter­ror, is dis­tinct from Robe­spierre the indi­vid­ual cit­i­zen.

This dual­i­ty led her to con­coct a range of Robe­spier­res — evil, good, and neu­tral.

A not par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tin­guished-look­ing fel­low, he was wide­ly acknowl­edged to be fas­tid­i­ous about his appear­ance.

All three ani­mat­ed char­ac­ters are garbed in the neo­clas­si­cal fash­ion typ­i­cal of a pro­gres­sive gen­tle­man of the peri­od — shirt, breech­es, stock­ings, waist­coat, coat, a lacy cra­vat, and a curled wig. 

Cheng, in con­sul­ta­tion with fel­low Cal Arts ani­ma­tor Janelle Feng, equipped the “evil” ver­sion with an omi­nous, fig­ure-con­ceal­ing black cloak lined in blood red. Angles and points are empha­sized, the face draws on his oppo­nents’ sin­is­ter descrip­tions of his habit­u­al expres­sions, and sub­tle nods to punk and Goth cater to mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties.

The “good” ver­sion employs rosy Roco­co hues to lean into the Robe­spierre his friends and fam­i­ly knew — a poet who loved his pet pigeons.

His­to­ry pre­vents Cheng from ditch­ing his sig­na­ture wig entire­ly, but she grant­ed her­self some lee­way, soft­en­ing it for a more nat­ur­al look.

This Robe­spierre is as dreamy as any Miyaza­ki hero.

Between these two poles is the “neu­tral” Robe­spierre, per­haps the most chal­leng­ing to depict.

Feng took the lead on this one, seek­ing to strike a bal­ance between his report­ed­ly unpre­pos­sess­ing appear­ance and his rev­o­lu­tion­ary fire.

She retained the striped coat of his most icon­ic por­trait, but updat­ed it to a cool green palette. His nick­name — the Incor­rupt­ible —  is embod­ied in his firm com­port­ment.

The video draws to a close with a review of the var­i­ous ways Robe­spierre has been depict­ed in art and film over the years, a vivid reminder of Cheng’s asser­tion that “there is nev­er just one sto­ry.”

See more of Michelle Cheng’s ani­ma­tions on her lemon­choly YouTube chan­nel.

See more of Janelle Feng’s French Rev­o­lu­tion era designs here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

14,000 Free Images from the French Rev­o­lu­tion Now Avail­able Online

Enter a Dig­i­tized Col­lec­tion of 38,000 Pam­phlets & Peri­od­i­cals From the French Rev­o­lu­tion

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Watch Jeff Beck (RIP) Smash His Guitar: A Classic Scene from Antonioni’s Blowup (1966)

in Film, Music | January 12th, 2023

Note: With the pass­ing of Jeff Beck, we’re bring­ing back a vin­tage post from our archive fea­tur­ing the ear­ly years of the leg­endary gui­tarist. You can read his obit­u­ary here.

Art film and rock and roll have, since the 60s, been soul­mates of a kind, with many an acclaimed direc­tor turn­ing to musi­cians as actors, com­mis­sion­ing rock stars as sound­track artists, and film­ing scenes with bands. Before Nico­las Roeg, Jim Jar­musch, David Lynch, Mar­tin Scors­ese and oth­er rock-lov­ing auteurs did all of the above, there was Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni, who bar­reled into the Eng­lish-lan­guage mar­ket, under con­tract with Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er, with a tril­o­gy of films steeped in the sights and sounds of six­ties coun­ter­cul­ture.

Blowup, the first and by far the best of these, though scored by jazz pianist Her­bie Han­cock, promi­nent­ly fea­tured the Yardbirds—with both Jim­my Page and Jeff Beck. In the mem­o­rable scene above, Beck smash­es his gui­tar to bits after his amp goes on the fritz. The Ital­ian direc­tor “envi­sioned a scene sim­i­lar to that of Pete Townshend’s famous rit­u­al of smash­ing his gui­tar on stage,” notes Gui­tar­world’s Jonathan Gra­ham. “Anto­nioni had even asked The Who to appear in the film,” but they refused.

In stepped the Yard­birds, dur­ing a piv­otal moment in their career. The year before, they released mega-hit “For Your Love,” and said good­bye to lead gui­tarist Eric Clap­ton. Beck, his replace­ment, her­ald­ed a much wilder, more exper­i­men­tal phase for the band. Jeff Beck, it seemed, could play any­thing, but what he didn’t do much of onstage is emote. Next to the gui­tar-smash­ing Town­shend or the fire-set­ting Hen­drix (see both below), he was a pret­ty reserved per­former, though no less thrilling to watch for his vir­tu­os­i­ty and style.

But as he tells it, Anto­nioni wouldn’t let the band do their “most excit­ing thing,” a cov­er of “Smoke­stack Light­ning” that “had this incred­i­ble buildup in the mid­dle which was just pow!” That moment would have been the nat­ur­al pre­text for a good gui­tar smash­ing.

Instead, the set piece with the bro­ken amp gives the intro­vert­ed Beck a rea­son to get agi­tat­ed. As Gra­ham describes it, he also played a gui­tar spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed as a prop:

Due to issues over pub­lish­ing, the Yard­birds clas­sic “Train Kept A‑Rollin’,” was reworked as “Stroll On” for the per­for­mance, and as the scene involved the destruc­tion of an instru­ment, Beck’s usu­al choice of his icon­ic Esquire or Les Paul was swapped for a cheap, hol­low-body stand-in that he was direct­ed to smash at the song’s con­clu­sion.

The scene is more a tantrum than the orgias­tic onstage freak-out Town­shend would prob­a­bly have deliv­ered. Its chief virtue for Yard­bird’s fans lies not in the fun­ny, out-of-char­ac­ter moment (which SF Gate film crit­ic Mick LaSalle calls “one of the weird­est scenes in the movie”). Rather, it was “the chance,” as one fan tells LaSalle, “in the days before MTV and YouTube, to see the Yard­birds, with Jeff Beck and Jim­my Page.” Anto­nioni had seized the moment. In addi­tion to fir­ing “the open­ing sal­vo of the emerg­ing ‘film gen­er­a­tion,’” as Roger Ebert wrote, he gave con­tem­po­rary fans a rea­son (in addi­tion to explic­it sex and nudi­ty), to go see Blowup again and again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

13-Year-Old Jim­my Page Plays Gui­tar on TV in 1957, an Ear­ly Moment in His Spec­tac­u­lar Career

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

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