Christopher Hitchens Dismisses the Cult of Ayn Rand: There’s No “Need to Have Essays Advocating Selfishness Among Human Beings; It Requires No Reinforcement”

in Economics, Politics | November 13th, 2017

Charges of hypocrisy, con­tra­dic­tion, “flip-flop­ping,” etc. in pol­i­tics are so much mud thrown at the cas­tle walls. Unless the peas­ants gath­er in large enough num­bers to storm the palace and depose their lords, their right­eous­ness avails them noth­ing. What does it mat­ter to the cur­rent par­ty in pow­er, for example—who wears the nation­al flag like a cape and has decid­ed the civ­il reli­gion and its Evan­gel­i­cal vari­ety are one in the same—that its most-admired role mod­el and (alleged) fix­er is a cor­rupt Russ­ian auto­crat who mur­ders jour­nal­ists (or a Con­fed­er­ate gen­er­al who led the armies of a trea­so­nous slave state)?

So it is, on and on, with the polit­i­cal class.

Take Alan Greenspan, chair­man of the Fed­er­al Reserve from 1987 to 2006. Dur­ing these years, he was wide­ly hailed as a major pow­er behind the throne, no mat­ter the poli­cies of those who occu­pied it. He was “oblig­ed to report,” Christo­pher Hitchens wrote in Van­i­ty Fair in 2000, “to Con­gress only twice a year, at for­mal occa­sions where he is received with the def­er­ence that was once accord­ed the Emper­or of Japan.” I well remem­ber the dowdy fris­son accom­pa­ny­ing those appear­ances in the 90s, the Bill Clin­ton bub­ble years. Hitchens only slight­ly exag­ger­ates. But some­how, Greenspan retained this guru-like aura despite the fact that his posi­tion vio­lat­ed his sin­cere­ly-held beliefs as a mem­ber, he him­self told Hitchens, of Ayn Rand’s “inner cir­cle”

As Hitchens notes in the grainy video clip above, “a state Fed­er­al Reserve Bank is not part of the Lib­er­tar­i­an pro­gram, though Mr. Greenspan seems a bit iffy about this self-evi­dent propo­si­tion.” In addi­tion to cham­pi­oning athe­ism and abor­tion rights, Rand, Greenspan’s “intel­lec­tu­al guru,” defined the rigid ide­o­log­i­cal dis­dain for gov­ern­ment med­dling in mar­kets and social spend­ing of any kind. Yet she end­ed her days on the gov­ern­ment dime. But there are no con­tra­dic­tions for pur­vey­ors of theod­i­cies. Ran­di­ans, or “Objec­tivists,” if they pre­fer, must know that to every­one out­side the cir­cle, the phi­los­o­phy looks like eth­i­cal­ly-bank­rupt cult log­ic, wish­ful think­ing eas­i­ly dis­card­ed when incon­ve­nient. Still, adepts will write to tell us that if we only grasped the gnos­tic rea­son­ing of such-and-such argu­ment, then we too could pierce the veil.

Hitchens dis­pens­es with this pre­tense, not as an anar­cho-com­mu­nist rad­i­cal but as a some­time neo­con­ser­v­a­tive hawk and some­time admir­er of Rand (or at least a knowl­edge­able read­er of her work). “I have some respect for the ‘Virtue of Self­ish­ness,’” he goes on to say in his aside on Rand above—which occurred dur­ing a lec­ture called “The Moral Neces­si­ty of Athe­ism” at Sewa­nee Uni­ver­si­ty in 2004. (In his Van­i­ty Fair essay, Hitchens pro­nounced him­self a “Rand buff.”) And yet, the title of Rand’s col­lec­tion of essays pro­vides him with the rhetor­i­cal essence of his cri­tique, one drawn from a dif­fer­ent strain of virtue—of a reli­gious vari­ety, even. After dis­miss­ing Rand on lit­er­ary grounds, he says:

I don’t think there’s any need to have essays advo­cat­ing self­ish­ness among human beings; I don’t know what your impres­sion has been, but some things require no fur­ther rein­force­ment.

The urbane Hitchens goes on to tell an off-col­or anec­dote about Lil­lian Hell­man with a moral­is­tic under­tone, gets a laugh, and piv­ots to a much old­er the­o­log­i­cal con­flict to bring his point home.

So to have a book stren­u­ous­ly rec­om­mend­ing that peo­ple be more self-cen­tered seems to me, as the Angli­can Church used to say in its cri­tique of Catholi­cism, a work of super-arro­ga­tion. It’s too stren­u­ous.

It’s try­ing too hard, that is, to con­vince us, and itself, per­haps, that its super­sti­tions, self-defens­es, and desires are nat­ur­al law. Rand’s belief sys­tem has so lit­tle intel­lec­tu­al cur­ren­cy among thinkers on the left that few peo­ple spend any time both­er­ing to refute it. But Hitchens did the polit­i­cal cen­ter a ser­vice when he took on defend­ers of Ran­di­an­ism in the media, such as he does in the debate below with David Frum, the now infa­mous neo­con­ser­v­a­tive Cana­di­an speech­writer for George W. Bush. Those who think the health­care debate began with the elec­tion of Barack Oba­ma may be sur­prised to see it con­duct­ed in almost the very same terms in 1996.

Frum defends a ver­sion of the lib­er­tar­i­an view, Hitchens a social demo­c­ra­t­ic per­spec­tive. When Rand’s name inevitably comes up near the end of the dis­cus­sion (4:40), Hitchens artic­u­lates the same views: “I always thought it quaint, and rather touch­ing,” he says with dry irony, “that there is in Amer­i­ca a move­ment that thinks peo­ple are not yet self­ish enough…. It’s some­what refresh­ing to meet peo­ple who man­age to get through their day actu­al­ly believ­ing that.” Like many oth­ers, Hitchens embod­ied a num­ber of con­tra­dic­tions. Among them, per­haps, was his staunch, almost Catholic belief—despite his stren­u­ous objec­tion to religion—that self­ish­ness… too much self­ish­ness, a val­oriza­tion of self­ish­ness, a cult of self­ish­ness… is self-evi­dent­ly a rather sin­ful thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Ayn Rand Col­lect­ed Social Secu­ri­ty & Medicare, After Years of Oppos­ing Ben­e­fit Pro­grams

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Revised List of The 10 Com­mand­ments for the 21st Cen­tu­ry

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

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

What Do Aliens Look Like? Oxford Astrobiologists Draw a Picture, Based on Darwinian Theories of Evolution

in Biology | November 13th, 2017

When Charles Dar­win laid out his the­o­ry of nat­ur­al selec­tion in 1859, lit­tle could he have imag­ined that, a good 150 years lat­er, this cor­ner­stone of evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry might help us form a men­tal pic­ture of what alien life looks like. But that’s pre­cise­ly how a group of researchers from Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty have done: In a research paper called “Dar­win’s Aliens,” they’ve applied Dar­win’s the­o­ry to alien life, posit­ing that aliens–like humans–adapt to their envi­ron­ment, under­go nat­ur­al selec­tion, and move from sim­ple to com­plex life forms. And, by the end, they could plau­si­bly look some­thing like a “colony of Ewoks from Star Wars or the Octomite” pic­tured above.

You can read “Dar­win’s Aliens” in the Inter­na­tion­al Jour­nal of Astro­bi­ol­o­gy. It’s pub­lished on the Cam­bridge Core web­site.

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 The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Sent Music & Pho­tos Into Space So That Aliens Could Under­stand Human Civ­i­liza­tion (Even After We’re Gone)

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

The CIA Puts Hun­dreds of Declas­si­fied Doc­u­ments About UFO Sight­ings Online, Plus 10 Tips for Inves­ti­gat­ing Fly­ing Saucers

Carl Jung’s Fas­ci­nat­ing 1957 Let­ter on UFOs

Hear the Highest Note Sung in the 137-Year History of the Metropolitan Opera

in Music, Opera | November 13th, 2017

You may have heard an A above high C the last time you acci­den­tal­ly stepped on your cat’s tail, but it takes a com­bi­na­tion of rig­or­ous train­ing, genet­ic luck, and sheer grit for a human to pro­duce this note on cue.

Accord­ing to all known records, the col­oratu­ra sopra­no, Audrey Luna, is the first such being in the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera’s 137-year his­to­ry to do so on its stage, an achieve­ment that has all the opera dogs bark­ing. Hear it in the NPR clip below.

Some purists view the rare note as a dis­taste­ful stunt on the part of com­pos­er Thomas Adès. The score of his new opera, The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel, based on the Luis Buñuel film, also calls for minia­ture 1/32-size vio­lins, a pair of rocks, a wood­en sal­ad bowl, a door, and an ondes Martenot—an elec­tron­ic instru­ment from 1928.

Oth­ers are bedaz­zled by Luna’s his­to­ry-mak­ing pipes. She makes her entrance on that high A, and hits it again short­ly there­after, as Leti­cia, a diva who rolls up to a din­ner par­ty fol­low­ing a per­for­mance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lam­mer­moor. (The title role of that one—a part Luna has played, natch—is anoth­er that demands stratos­pher­ic notes of its per­form­ers, set­ting records at opera hous­es around the world.)

See below for more of Luna’s dizzy­ing highs, includ­ing her some­what NSFW per­for­mance as Olympia, the mechan­i­cal doll in Offenbach’s Les Con­tes d’Hoffmann

If you’re mad enough to try it your­self, please let us know how high you get in the com­ments below.

via NYTimes

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Enchant­i­ng Opera Per­for­mances of Klaus Nomi

How to Sing Two Notes At Once (aka Poly­phon­ic Over­tone Singing): Lessons from Singer Anna-Maria Hefele

Alan Tur­ing Gets Chan­neled in a New Opera: Hear Audio from The Life And Death(S) Of Alan Tur­ing

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Why Did Leonardo da Vinci Write Backwards? A Look Into the Ultimate Renaissance Man’s “Mirror Writing”

in Art, History, Writing | November 13th, 2017

As the stand­out exam­ple of the “Renais­sance Man” ide­al, Leonar­do da Vin­ci racked up no small num­ber of accom­plish­ments in his life. He also had his eccen­tric­i­ties, and tried his hand at a num­ber of exper­i­ments that might look a bit odd even to his admir­ers today. In the case of one prac­tice he even­tu­al­ly mas­tered and with which he stuck, he tried his hand in a more lit­er­al sense than usu­al: Leonar­do, the evi­dence clear­ly shows, had a habit of writ­ing back­wards, start­ing at the right side of the page and mov­ing to the left.

“Only when he was writ­ing some­thing intend­ed for oth­er peo­ple did he write in the nor­mal direc­tion,” says the Muse­um of Sci­ence. Why did he write back­wards? That remains one of the host of so far unan­swer­able ques­tions about Leonar­do’s remark­able life, but “one idea is that it may have kept his hands clean. Peo­ple who were con­tem­po­raries of Leonar­do left records that they saw him write and paint left hand­ed. He also made sketch­es show­ing his own left hand at work. As a lefty, this mir­rored writ­ing style would have pre­vent­ed him from smudg­ing his ink as he wrote.”

Or Leonar­do could have devel­oped his “mir­ror writ­ing” out of fear, a hypoth­e­sis acknowl­edged even by books for young read­ers: “Through­out his life, he was wor­ried about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of oth­ers steal­ing his ideas,” writes Rachel A. Koestler-Grack in Leonar­do Da Vin­ci: Artist, Inven­tor, and Renais­sance Man. “The obser­va­tions in his note­books were writ­ten in such a way that they could be read only by hold­ing the books up to a mir­ror.” The blog Walk­er’s Chap­ters makes a rep­re­sen­ta­tive coun­ter­ar­gu­ment: “Do you real­ly think that a man as clever as Leonar­do thought it was a good way to pre­vent peo­ple from read­ing his notes? This man, this genius, if he tru­ly want­ed to make his notes read­able only to him­self, he would’ve invent­ed an entire­ly new lan­guage for this pur­pose. We’re talk­ing about a dude who con­cep­tu­al­ized para­chutes even before heli­copters were a thing.”

Per­haps the most wide­ly seen piece of Leonar­do’s mir­ror writ­ing is his notes on Vit­ru­vian Man (a piece of which appears at the top of the post), his enor­mous­ly famous draw­ing that fits the pro­por­tions of the human body into the geom­e­try of both a cir­cle and a square (and whose ele­gant math­e­mat­ics we fea­tured last week). Many exam­ples of mir­ror writ­ing exist after Leonar­do, from his coun­try­man Mat­teo Zac­col­in­i’s 17th-cen­tu­ry trea­tise on col­or to the 18th- and 19th-cen­tu­ry cal­lig­ra­phy of the Ottoman Empire to the front of ambu­lances today. Each of those has its func­tion, but one won­ders whether as curi­ous a mind as Leonar­do’s would want to write back­wards sim­ply for the joy of mas­ter­ing and using a skill, any skill, how­ev­er much it might baf­fle oth­ers — or indeed, because it might baf­fle them.

If you’re inter­est­ed in all things da Vin­ci, make sure you check out the new best­selling biog­ra­phy, Leonar­do da Vin­ci, by Wal­ter Isaac­son.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ele­gant Math­e­mat­ics of Vit­ru­vian Man, Leonar­do da Vinci’s Most Famous Draw­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (1482)

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490) Is Much Cool­er Than Yours

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

Filmmaker Creates a Luxury-Style Car Commercial to Sell a 21-Year-Old Used Honda Accord

in Random | November 11th, 2017

This is not your aver­age car com­mer­cial. It has the look and feel of the lux­u­ry car com­mer­cials you’ve seen so many times. And yet it fea­tures a car with 141,095 miles on it. Film­mak­er Max Lan­man cre­at­ed the ad to help his girl­friend sell her used 1996 Hon­da Accord. For rea­sons you’ll quick­ly under­stand, the video went viral, clocked more than 5 mil­lion views this past week, and when the car was list­ed on eBay, bids soared to $150,000–before eBay appar­ent­ly pulled the plug “due to con­cerns around ille­git­i­mate bid­ding.” Enjoy the ad. And remem­ber, “Lux­u­ry is a state of mind.”

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:

178,000 Images Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of the Car Now Avail­able on a New Stan­ford Web Site

Hunter S. Thompson’s Edgy 1990s Com­mer­cial for Apple’s Mac­in­tosh Com­put­er: A Med­i­ta­tion on Pow­er

Jim Henson’s Com­mer­cials for Wilkins Cof­fee: 15 Twist­ed Min­utes of Mup­pet Cof­fee Ads (1957–1961)

What the Future Sounded Like: Documentary Tells the Forgotten 1960s History of Britain’s Avant-Garde Electronic Musicians

in Music | November 10th, 2017

It real­ly is impos­si­ble to over­state the fact that most of the music around us sounds the way it does today because of an elec­tron­ic rev­o­lu­tion that hap­pened pri­mar­i­ly in the 1960s and 70s (with roots stretch­ing back to the turn of the cen­tu­ry). While folk and rock and roll solid­i­fied the sound of the present on home hi-fis and cof­fee shop and fes­ti­val stages, the sound of the future was craft­ed behind stu­dio doors and in sci­en­tif­ic lab­o­ra­to­ries. What the Future Sound­ed Like, the short doc­u­men­tary above, trans­ports us back to that time, specif­i­cal­ly in Britain, where some of the finest record­ing tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped to meet the increas­ing demands of bands like the Bea­t­les and Pink Floyd.

Much less well-known are enti­ties like the BBC’s Radio­phon­ic Work­shop, whose crew of engi­neers and audio sci­en­tists made what sound­ed like mag­ic to the ears of radio and tele­vi­sion audi­ences. “Think of a sound, now make it,” says Peter Zinovi­eff “any sound is now pos­si­ble, any com­bi­na­tion of sounds is now pos­si­ble.” Zinovi­eff, Lon­don-born son of an émi­gré Russ­ian princess and inven­tor of the huge­ly influ­en­tial VCS3 syn­the­siz­er in 1969, opens the documentary—fittingly, since his tech­nol­o­gy helped pow­er the futur­is­tic sound of pro­gres­sive rock, and since, togeth­er with the Radio­phon­ic Workshop’s Delia Der­byshire and Bri­an Hodg­son, he ran Unit Delta Plus, a stu­dio group that cre­at­ed and pro­mot­ed elec­tron­ic music.

Also appear­ing in the doc­u­men­tary is Tris­tram Cary, who, with Zinovi­eff, found­ed Elec­tron­ic Music Stu­dios, one of four mak­ers of com­mer­cial syn­the­siz­ers in the late six­ties, along with ARP, Buch­la, and Moog. Zinovi­eff and Carey are not house­hold names in part because they didn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly strive to be, pre­fer­ring to work behind the scenes on exper­i­men­tal forms and eschew­ing pop­u­lar music even as their tech­nol­o­gy gave birth to so much of it. The aris­to­crat­ic Zinovi­eff and pipe-smok­ing, pro­fes­so­r­i­al Carey hard­ly fit in with the crowd of rock and pop stars they inspired.

In hind­sight, how­ev­er, Zinovi­eff desires more recog­ni­tion for their work. “One thing which is odd, is that there’s a miss­ing chap­ter, which is EMS, in all the books about elec­tron­ic music. Peo­ple do not know what incred­i­ble mechan­i­cal adven­tures we were up to.” Those adven­tures includ­ed not only cre­at­ing new tech­nol­o­gy, but com­pos­ing nev­er-before-heard music. Both Zinovi­eff and Carey con­tin­ue to cre­ate elec­tron­ic scores, and Carey hap­pens to be one of the first adopters in Britain of musique con­crète, the pro­to-elec­tron­ic music pio­neered in the 1940s using tape machines, micro­phones, fil­ters, and oth­er record­ing devices, along with found sounds, field record­ings, and ad hoc instru­ments made from non-instru­ment objects. (See exam­ples of these tech­niques in the clip above from the 1979 BBC doc­u­men­tary The New Sound of Music.)

Many of the sounds that emerged from Britain’s elec­tron­ic music founders came out of the detri­tus of World War II. Carey’s first seri­ous stu­dio design, he says, “coin­cid­ed with the post-war appear­ance of an enor­mous amount of junk from the army, navy, and air force. For some­one who knew what to do, and could han­dle a sol­der­ing iron, and could design audio equip­ment, even if you only had 30 shillings in your pock­et, you could get some­thing.” With their knowl­edge of elec­tron­ics and hodge-podge of tech­nol­o­gy, Carey and his com­pa­tri­ots were design­ing an avant-garde elec­tron­ic “high moder­ni­ty,” author Trevor Pinch declares. “I think you can think of peo­ple like Tris­tan Carey as dream­ing of a future sound­scape of Lon­don.” Nowa­days, those sounds are as famil­iar to us as the music piped over the speak­ers in restau­rants and shops. One won­ders what the future after the future these pio­neers designed will sound like?

What the Future Sound­ed Like will be added to our col­lec­tion of Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music Visu­al­ized on a Cir­cuit Dia­gram of a 1950s Theremin: 200 Inven­tors, Com­posers & Musi­cians

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

Bob Woodward Is Now Teaching an Online Course on Investigative Journalism–a Course for Our Time

in Media, Online Courses | November 10th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Bob Wood­ward made his bones as an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist when he and fel­low Wash­ing­ton Post reporter Carl Bern­stein blew open the Water­gate scan­dal in 1972. Their report­ing exposed the “dirty tricks” of Richard Nixon’s re-elec­tion com­mit­tee. Gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions fol­lowed and the pres­i­dent even­tu­al­ly resigned.

Today we’re liv­ing in anoth­er age when inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism is of para­mount impor­tance. Only now it’s under attack. But, take heart, Bob Wood­ward is now teach­ing an online course on inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism. In 24 video lessons, he’ll teach you the impor­tance of human sources, how to gath­er infor­ma­tion, how to inter­view peo­ple, estab­lish facts, and build a sto­ry. He reminds us, “This is the time when we’re being test­ed. Let’s tell the truth, let’s not be chick­en­shit.” Amen to that.

You can now enroll in his course, which costs $90. But, for $180, you can get an annu­al pass to every course in the Mas­ter­Class cat­a­logue. Oth­er cours­es in the Mas­ter­class cat­a­logue include:

• Her­bie Han­cock on Jazz
• Gar­ry Kas­parov on Chess
• Dr. Jane Goodall on the Envi­ron­ment
• David Mamet on Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing
• Judy Blume on Writ­ing
• Steve Mar­tin on Com­e­dy
• Aaron Sorkin on Screen­writ­ing
• Helen Mir­ren on Act­ing
• Gor­don Ram­say on Cook­ing
• Wern­er Her­zog on Film­mak­ing

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:

How to Down­load Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House as a Free Audio­book

Bob Wood­ward: How Inves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ism Gets Done

Interactive Map Lets You Take a Literary Journey Through the Historic Monuments of Rome

in History, Life, Literature, Maps, Museums, Travel | November 9th, 2017

Arch­es on arch­es! as it were that Rome,

Col­lect­ing the chief tro­phies of her line,

Would build up all her tri­umphs in one dome,

Her Col­i­se­um stands; the moon­beams shine

As ’twere its nat­ur­al torch­es, for divine

Should be the light which streams here, to illume

This long-explored but still exhaust­less mine

Of con­tem­pla­tion; and the azure gloom

Of an Ital­ian night, where the deep skies assume

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heav­en,

Floats o’er this vast and won­drous mon­u­ment,

And shad­ows forth its glo­ry.

—Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pil­grim­age (1818)

A mod­ern vis­i­tor to Rome, drawn to the Col­i­se­um on a moon­lit night, is unlike­ly to be so bewitched, sand­wiched between his or her fel­low tourists and an army of ven­dors aggres­sive­ly ped­dling light-up whirligigs, knock off design­er scarves, and acrylic columns etched with the Eter­nal City’s must-see attrac­tions.

These days, your best bet for tour­ing Rome’s best known land­marks in peace may be an inter­ac­tive map, com­pli­ments of the Mor­gan Library and Muse­um. Based on Paul-Marie Letarouil­ly’s pic­turesque 1841 city plan, each dig­i­tal pin can be expand­ed to reveal descrip­tions by nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry authors and side-by-side, then-and-now com­par­isons of the fea­tured mon­u­ments.

The endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the film Three Coins in the Foun­tain, cou­pled with the inven­tion of the self­ie stick has turned the area around the Tre­vi Foun­tain into a pickpocket’s dream and a claustrophobe’s worst night­mare.

Not so in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s day, though unlike Lord Byron, he cul­ti­vat­ed a cool remove, at least at first:

They and the rest of the par­ty descend­ed some steps to the water’s brim, and, after a sip or two, stood gaz­ing at the absurd design of the foun­tain, where some sculp­tor of Bernini’s school had gone absolute­ly mad in mar­ble. It was a great palace-front, with nich­es and many bas-reliefs, out of which looked Agrippa’s leg­endary vir­gin, and sev­er­al of the alle­goric sis­ter­hood; while, at the base, appeared Nep­tune, with his floun­der­ing steeds and Tri­tons blow­ing their horns about him, and twen­ty oth­er arti­fi­cial fan­tasies, which the calm moon­light soothed into bet­ter taste than was native to them. And, after all, it was as mag­nif­i­cent a piece of work as ever human skill con­trived. At the foot of the pala­tial façade was strown, with care­ful art and ordered irreg­u­lar­i­ty, a broad and bro­ken heap of mas­sive rock, look­ing as if it might have lain there since the del­uge. Over a cen­tral precipice fell the water, in a semi­cir­cu­lar cas­cade; and from a hun­dred crevices, on all sides, snowy jets gushed up, and streams spout­ed out of the mouths and nos­trils of stone mon­sters, and fell in glis­ten­ing drops; while oth­er rivulets, that had run wild, came leap­ing from one rude step to anoth­er, over stones that were mossy, slimy, and green with sedge, because in a cen­tu­ry of their wild play, Nature had adopt­ed the Foun­tain of Tre­vi, with all its elab­o­rate devices, for her own.

The human stat­ues garbed as glad­i­a­tors and char­i­o­teers spend hours in the blaz­ing sun at the foot of the Span­ish Steps—the heirs to the artists and mod­els who pop­u­lat­ed William Wet­more Sto­ry’s Roba di Roma:

All day long, these steps are flood­ed with sun­shine in which, stretched at length, or gath­ered in pic­turesque groups, mod­els of every age and both sex­es bask away the hours when they are free from employ­ment in the stu­dios. … Some­times a group of artists, pass­ing by, will pause and steadi­ly exam­ine one of these mod­els, turn him about, pose him, point out his defects and excel­lences, give him a baioc­co, and pass on. It is, in fact, a mod­els’ exchange.

The Medici Vil­la hous­es the Académie de France, and its gar­dens remain a pleas­ant respite, even in 2017. Vis­i­tors who aren’t whol­ly con­sumed with find­ing a wifi sig­nal may find them­selves fan­ta­siz­ing about a dif­fer­ent life, much as Hen­ry James did in his Ital­ian Hours:

Such a dim light as of a fabled, haunt­ed place, such a soft suf­fu­sion of ten­der grey-green tones, such a com­pa­ny of gnarled and twist­ed lit­tle minia­ture trunks—dwarfs play­ing with each oth­er at being giants—and such a show­er of gold­en sparkles drift­ing in from the vivid West! … I should name for my own first wish that one didn’t have to be a French­man to come and live and dream and work at the Académie de France. Can there be for a while a hap­pi­er des­tiny than that of a young artist con­scious of tal­ent and of no errand but to edu­cate, pol­ish and per­fect it, trans­plant­ed to these sacred shades?…What morn­ings and after­noons one might spend there, brush in hand, unpre­oc­cu­pied, untor­ment­ed, pen­sioned, satisfied—either per­suad­ing one’s self that one would be “doing some­thing” in con­se­quence or not car­ing if one shouldn’t be.

The inter­ac­tive map was cre­at­ed to accom­pa­ny the Morgan’s 2016 exhi­bi­tion City of the Soul: Rome and the Roman­tics. Oth­er pit­stops include St. Peter’s, the Roman Forum, and The Eques­tri­an Mon­u­ment of Mar­cus Aure­lius on the Capi­tol. Begin your explo­rations here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Dig­i­tal Archive Puts Online 4,000 His­toric Images of Rome: The Eter­nal City from the 16th to 20th Cen­turies

Ancient Rome’s Sys­tem of Roads Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Bryan Cranston Gives Advice to the Young: Find Yourself by Traveling and Getting Lost

in Creativity, Life | November 9th, 2017

I don’t know what time you’re read­ing this post but “What do you real­ly want to do in life?” is a ques­tion that can wake you up right fast, or make you want to pack it in and sleep on it.

It’s also a ques­tion asked maybe a bit too ear­ly of our young peo­ple, which starts with fan­ta­sy (“What do you want to be when you grow up?” “A space­man!”) and by our teens it turns into a more seri­ous, fate-decid­ing inquiry by peo­ple who may not be hap­py with their sta­tion in life.

Actor Bryan Cranston takes on this ques­tion in this Big Think video, and extolls the virtues of trav­el and wan­der­ing.

“Trav­el­ing forces you to be social,” Cranston says. “You have to get directions.You have to learn where things are. You’re attuned to your envi­ron­ment.”

Cranston thought he was going to be a police­man when he entered col­lege. Then he took an act­ing class. So, at 19, Cranston explored Amer­i­ca for two years by motor­cy­cle with his broth­er, in essence to find them­selves by get­ting lost. He says he’s passed on this direc­tion­less wan­der­ing to his now 24 year-old daugh­ter.

That idea of let­ting go and just wan­der­ing also dove­tails nice­ly into his oth­er advice about audi­tions. You don’t go there to get a job, you go to cre­ate a char­ac­ter and present it. The rest is out of your con­trol.

Now, Cranston says that the peri­od between high school/college and the “real world” is the best time to do it, but there’s real­ly no time like right now. To quote Niger­ian author Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie, “I think you trav­el to search and you come back home to find your­self there,” and the boats are always leav­ing. Just jump on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Any­thing You Think Is Real­ly Good”

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers: Write, Write, Write and Read

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Yale Presents a Free Online Course on Miguel de Cervantes’ Masterpiece Don Quixote

in Literature, Online Courses | November 9th, 2017

Among the lit­er­ary works that emerged in the so-called Gold­en Age of Span­ish cul­ture in the 16th and 17th cen­turies, one shines so bright­ly that it seems to eclipse all oth­ers, and indeed is said to not only be the foun­da­tion of mod­ern Span­ish writ­ing, but of the mod­ern nov­el itself. Miguel de Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote syn­the­sized the Medieval and Renais­sance lit­er­a­ture that had come before it in a bril­liant­ly satir­i­cal work, writes pop­u­lar aca­d­e­m­ic Harold Bloom, with “cos­mo­log­i­cal scope and rever­ber­a­tion.” But in such high praise of a great work, we can lose sight of the work itself. Don Quixote is hard­ly an excep­tion.

“The notion of ‘lit­er­ary clas­sic,’” Simon Leys writes at the New York Review of Books, “has a solemn ring about it. But Don Quixote, which is the clas­sic par excel­lence, was writ­ten for a flat­ly prac­ti­cal pur­pose: to amuse the largest pos­si­ble num­ber of read­ers, in order to make a lot of mon­ey for the author (who need­ed it bad­ly).” To men­tion these inten­tions is not to dimin­ish the work, but per­haps even to bur­nish it fur­ther. To have cre­at­ed, as Yale’s Rober­to González Echevar­ría says in his intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture above, “one of the unques­tioned mas­ter­pieces of world lit­er­a­ture, let alone the West­ern Canon,” while seek­ing pri­mar­i­ly to enter­tain and make a buck says quite a lot about Cer­vantes’ con­sid­er­able tal­ents, and, per­haps, about his mod­ernism.

Rather than write for a feu­dal patron, monarch, or deity, he wrote for what he hoped would be a prof­itable mass-mar­ket. In so doing, says Pro­fes­sor González, quot­ing Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez, Cer­vantes wrote “a nov­el in which there is already every­thing that nov­el­ists would attempt to do in the future until today.” González’s course, “Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote,” is now avail­able online in a series of 24 lec­tures, avail­able on YouTube and iTunes. (Stream all 24 lec­tures below.) You can down­load all of the course mate­ri­als, includ­ing the syl­labus and overview of each class, here. There is a good deal of read­ing involved, and you’ll need to get your hands on a few extra books. In addi­tion to the weighty Quixote, “stu­dents are also expect­ed to read four of Cer­vantes’ Exem­plary Sto­ries, Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote: A Case­book, and J.H. Elliott’s Impe­r­i­al Spain.” It would seem well worth the effort.

Pro­fes­sor González goes on in his intro­duc­tion to dis­cuss the novel’s impor­tance to such fig­ures as Sig­mund Freud, Jorge Luis Borges, and British schol­ar Ian Watt, who called Don Quixote “one of four myths of mod­ern indi­vid­u­al­ism, the oth­ers being Faust, Don Juan, and Robin­son Cru­soe.” The novel’s his­tor­i­cal resume is tremen­dous­ly impres­sive, but the most impor­tant thing about it, says González, is that it has been read and enjoyed by mil­lions of peo­ple around the world for hun­dreds of years. Just why is that?

The pro­fes­sor quotes from his own intro­duc­tion to the Pen­guin Clas­sics edi­tion he asks stu­dents to read in pro­vid­ing his answer: “Miguel de Cer­vantes Saavedra’s mas­ter­piece has endured because it focus­es on literature’s fore­most appeal: to become anoth­er, to leave a typ­i­cal­ly embat­tled self for anoth­er clos­er to one’s desires and aspi­ra­tions. This is why Don Quixote has often been read as a children’s book, and con­tin­ues to be read by and to chil­dren.” Crit­ics might be prone to dis­miss such enjoy­able wish ful­fil­ment as triv­ial, but the cen­turies-long suc­cess of Don Quixote shows it may be the foun­da­tion of all mod­ern lit­er­ary writ­ing.

Don Quixote will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Exquis­ite Engrav­ings of Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote

Sal­vador Dalí Sketch­es Five Span­ish Immor­tals: Cer­vantes, Don Quixote, El Cid, El Gre­co & Velázquez

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es 

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