Truman Capote Narrates “A Christmas Memory,” a 1966 TV Adaptation of His Autobiographical Story

in Books, Life, Literature, Television | December 9th, 2016

It’s fruit­cake weath­er, so bust out your han­kies.

You’ll need them by the end of this 1966 tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion of Tru­man Capote’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal 1956 sto­ry, “A Christ­mas Mem­o­ry,” above.

As hol­i­day spe­cials go, it’s bless­ed­ly free of raz­zle daz­zle. Capote’s Depres­sion-era Christ­mases in rur­al Alaba­ma were short on tin­sel and long on wind­fall pecans.

Com­bined with flour, sug­ar, dried fruit, and some hard-pur­chased whiskey, these gifts of nature yield­ed deli­cious cakes the main char­ac­ters send to a long list of recip­i­ents rang­ing from FDR to a young man whose car broke down in front of their house, who snapped the only pho­to­graph of the two of them togeth­er.

The nos­tal­gia may feel a bit thick at times. Both the sto­ry and the hour-long adap­ta­tion are a love let­ter to an eccen­tric, much old­er cousin, Nan­ny Rum­b­ley Faulk, known as Sook. She was part of the house­hold of dis­tant rela­tions where Capote’s moth­er, Lil­lie Mae, spent a por­tion of her child­hood, and on whom she lat­er dumped the 3‑year-old Tru­man.

Sook was “the only sta­ble per­son” in his life, Capote told Peo­ple mag­a­zine thir­ty years after her death.

And accord­ing to Capote’s aunt, Marie Rud­is­ill, “the only per­son that Sook ever cared any­thing about was Tru­man.”

Her inter­ests, while not in keep­ing with those of a lady of her time, place, race, and class, held enor­mous appeal for a lone­ly lit­tle boy with few play­mates his own age. Believ­ing in ghosts, tam­ing hum­ming­birds and cur­ing warts with an “old-time Indi­an cure” are just a few of Sook’s hob­bies he men­tions in the sto­ry, where­in her only name is “my friend.” She is:

small and spright­ly, like a ban­tam hen; but due to a long youth­ful ill­ness, her shoul­ders are piti­ful­ly hunched. Her face is remarkable–not unlike Lin­col­n’s, crag­gy like that, and tint­ed by sun and wind; but it is del­i­cate too, fine­ly boned, and her eyes are sher­ry-col­ored and timid.

Actress Geral­dine Page, then 43 and a favorite of Capote’s con­tem­po­rary, play­wright Ten­nessee Williams, imbued the “six­ty-some­thing” Sook with wide eyes and wild hair.

But the real star of the show is Capote him­self as nar­ra­tor. That famous nasal whine sets his “Christ­mas Mem­o­ry” apart from more gold­en-throat­ed hol­i­day voiceover work by Burl Ives, Greer Gar­son, and Fred Astaire. It also cuts through the trea­cle, as Bart Simp­son would say.

You can find “A Christ­mas Mem­o­ry” in this col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters Makes Hand­made Christ­mas Cards, Says the “Whole Pur­pose of Life is Christ­mas”

Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas” On His Hol­i­day Radio Show (2006)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Noam Chomsky & Harry Belafonte Speak on Stage for the First Time Together: Talk Trump, Klan & Having a Rebellious Heart

in Current Affairs, Life | December 9th, 2016

Noam Chom­sky, now 88 years old, made his career study­ing lin­guis­tics at MIT. Har­ry Bela­fonte, 89, became the “King of Calyp­so,” pop­u­lar­iz­ing Caribbean music in the 1950s. Yes, the two men come from dif­fer­ent worlds, but they share some­thing impor­tant in common–a long com­mit­ment to social jus­tice and activism. Bela­fonte used his fame to cham­pi­on the Civ­il Rights move­ment and Mar­tin Luther King Jr., and also helped orga­nize the March on Wash­ing­ton in 1963. Chom­sky protest­ed against the Viet­nam War, putting his career on the line, and has since become one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing voic­es of polit­i­cal dis­sent.

On Mon­day, these two fig­ures appeared onstage for the first time togeth­er. Speak­ing at River­side Church in NYC, before a crowd of 2,000 peo­ple, Chom­sky and Bela­fonte took stock of where Amer­i­ca stands after the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump. Nat­u­ral­ly, nei­ther man looks for­ward to what Trump has to bring. But they’re not as glum about the future as many oth­er vot­ers on the left. Chom­sky espe­cial­ly reminds us that Amer­i­ca has made great strides since 1960. The Unit­ed States is a far more civ­i­lized coun­try over­all. And it’s much easier–not to men­tion less dangerous–to effect change today than a half cen­tu­ry ago. It’s just a mat­ter of get­ting out there and putting in the hard work. Mean­while, Bela­fonte urges us to have a “rebel­lious heart” and leaves with this spir­it­ed reminder, “there’s still some ass kick­ing to be done!”

via @JohnCusack

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Cul­tur­al Icons Talk Civ­il Rights: James Bald­win, Mar­lon Bran­do, Har­ry Bela­fonte & Sid­ney Poiti­er (1963)

Noam Chom­sky vs. William F. Buck­ley, 1969

Noam Chomsky’s Wide-Rang­ing Inter­view on a Don­ald Trump Pres­i­den­cy: “The Most Pre­dictable Aspect of Trump Is Unpre­dictabil­i­ty”

Horror Legend Boris Karloff Reads Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)

in Audio Books, K-12 | December 8th, 2016

Pre­mier­ing in 1966, the How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas TV spe­cial is a per­fect (snow?) storm of cre­ative folks work­ing at the top of their game, with Theodor Geisel aka Dr. Seuss pro­vid­ing the orig­i­nal 1956 book on which it’s based, Chuck Jones bril­liant­ly inter­pret­ing Geisel’s own draw­ings in his own ani­mat­ed style, and mak­ing the Grinch’s long-suf­fer­ing dog com­pan­ion Max much more of a moral side­kick. It also gave us sev­er­al musi­cal num­bers writ­ten by Albert Hague using Geisel’s lyrics.

And then there’s Boris Karloff, who nar­rates the spe­cial from begin­ning to end and sup­plies the Grinch’s voice. The Eng­lish actor was best known in his ear­ly career for por­tray­ing Frankenstein’s mon­ster and The Mum­my in the orig­i­nal Uni­ver­sal hor­ror movies of the same names (and numer­ous sequels), and was a go-to char­ac­ter actor to play all sorts of nefar­i­ous crim­i­nals.

Lat­er he would have a sec­ond career cap­i­tal­iz­ing on his hor­ror pedi­gree, host­ing anthol­o­gy shows on tele­vi­sion, and read­ing not just tales of Edgar Allan Poe on vinyl, but oth­er not-so-scary children’s lit, like Rud­yard Kipling’s Just So Sto­ries and the fairy tales of Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen. Unlike Bela Lugosi, who suf­fered from being type­cast his entire career post-Drac­u­la, Karloff was able to make a good career from that break­through per­for­mance with good humor.

Karlof­f’s read­ing of How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas is pret­ty much tak­en straight from the ani­mat­ed TV spe­cial with some judi­cious edit­ing and no com­mer­cials to get in the way. Side note: It is not Karloff but Thurl Raven­scroft singing “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” He was not cred­it­ed in the orig­i­nal car­toon and Dr. Seuss pro­found­ly apol­o­gized after the fact. The record would go on to earn Karloff a Spo­ken Word Gram­my Award, the only such enter­tain­ment award he ever won. You can also lis­ten to it on Spo­ti­fy below:

If you have been feel­ing Grinchy in any way as we approach the hol­i­day sea­son, pre­pare to get your heart melt­ed. This read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Epis­te­mol­o­gy of Dr. Seuss & More Phi­los­o­phy Lessons from Great Children’s Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman Reads Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham

New Archive Show­cas­es Dr. Seuss’s Ear­ly Work as an Adver­tis­ing Illus­tra­tor and Polit­i­cal Car­toon­ist

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

The Birth Control Handbook: The Underground Student Publication That Let Women Take Control of Their Bodies (1968)

in Biology, Politics | December 8th, 2016

Cen­tral to Michel Foucault’s the­o­ry of “gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty” is what he calls “biopow­er,” an “explo­sion of numer­ous and diverse tech­niques for achiev­ing the sub­ju­ga­tions of bod­ies and the con­trol of pop­u­la­tions.” Where debates over abor­tion and con­tra­cep­tion gen­er­al­ly coa­lesce around ques­tions of reli­gion and rights, the French the­o­rist of pow­er saw these issues as part of the bio-polit­i­cal strug­gle between “gov­ern­ing the self” and “gov­ern­ing oth­ers.”

Those who resist repres­sive biopow­er seize on the for­mer def­i­n­i­tion of gov­ern­ment. Take a very point­ed exam­ple of both restric­tive gov­ern­ment biopow­er and cre­ative resis­tance to the same: the 1968 Birth Con­trol Hand­book you see here, print­ed ille­gal­ly by under­grad­u­ate stu­dents at Montreal’s McGill Uni­ver­si­ty. At the time of this text’s cre­ation, notes Atlas Obscu­ra, “under Canada’s Crim­i­nal Code, the dis­sem­i­na­tion, sale, and adver­tise­ment of birth con­trol meth­ods were all ille­gal, and abor­tion was pun­ish­able by life impris­on­ment.”

Despite fac­ing the pos­si­ble con­se­quences of up to two years in prison, the McGill Stu­dent Soci­ety “sold mil­lions of copies” of The Birth Con­trol Hand­book, writes Aman­da Edg­ley, “in Cana­da and inter­na­tion­al­ly.” Maya Koropat­nit­sky describes the tremen­dous social impact of the hand­book:

Stu­dents at McGill as well as oth­er Que­bec cam­pus­es snapped up the first run of 17,000 copies. Due to its major suc­cess, the com­mit­tee came out with a sec­ond issue of the hand­book in 1969. This hand­book is seen to be a major play­er in women’s lib­er­a­tion because it gave young women the knowl­edge and the abil­i­ty to con­trol repro­duc­tive func­tions.  

The hand­book fur­ther­more “mobi­lized women into form­ing meet­ings and groups to talk about con­scious­ness-rais­ing issues.” This infor­mal edu­ca­tion was invalu­able for mil­lions of women, who were “des­per­ate for this infor­ma­tion,” writes author Lau­ra Kaplan, “so starved for infor­ma­tion. You want­ed it, in as much detail as you could get it, as graph­ic as it could be made.”

What the Cana­di­an, and U.S., gov­ern­ments saw as sex­u­al­ly explic­it will look to us like stan­dard biol­o­gy text­book illus­tra­tions, mun­dane charts and graphs, ordi­nary pic­tures of the birth expe­ri­ence, and taste­ful, rather tame nude pho­tos. Orig­i­nal authors Allan Fein­gold and Don­na Cher­ni­ak “pored through books in the med­ical library,” Atlas Obscu­ra writes, “and con­sult­ed med­ical advi­sors, com­pil­ing detailed infor­ma­tion on top­ics like sex­u­al inter­course, men­stru­al cycles, sur­gi­cal abor­tion tech­niques (accom­pa­nied by prices and sta­tis­tics), and how, exact­ly, to con­tact abor­tion providers.”

Illus­trat­ing anoth­er Fou­cauldian insight into the rela­tion­ship between knowl­edge and pow­er, not only were birth con­trol meth­ods under the strict con­trol of most­ly male doc­tors (and only avail­able with per­mis­sion from a hus­band), but even basic infor­ma­tion on repro­duc­tion and birth con­trol was dif­fi­cult for most women to access. “To have all the infor­ma­tion on the var­i­ous meth­ods of birth con­trol in one place,” says Kaplan, “with pros and cons and what you need­ed to know about them, was a rev­e­la­tion.” Cher­ni­ak lat­er remem­bered, “We joked that after the Bible, we were prob­a­bly one of the most wide­ly dis­trib­uted pub­li­ca­tions in Cana­da.”

Both edi­tions of the hand­book addressed the con­tro­ver­sial top­ic of abor­tion, cit­ing the Cana­di­an crim­i­nal code along the way. “Con­cerned with the prob­lem of ille­gal abor­tion,” writes Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottowa pro­fes­sor Christa­belle Seth­na, “the coun­cil man­dat­ed the pub­li­ca­tion” of the hand­book, which also “con­tained edi­to­r­i­al com­men­tary that took West­ern pop­u­la­tion-con­trol experts to task for their racism and that sup­port­ed women’s repro­duc­tive rights as a func­tion of women’s lib­er­a­tion.” Seth­na sit­u­ates The Birth Con­trol Hand­book with­in a much larg­er Cana­di­an move­ment, just “one of the ways,” writes Edge­ley, “Cana­di­ans took con­trol over their own bod­ies.” Its cre­ators saw it as a means of chang­ing the world. “Those were the years,” Cher­ni­ak says, “in which you thought you could do any­thing.”

Two years after the first print run of The Birth Con­trol Hand­book, the ur-text of fem­i­nist bio-pol­i­tics, Our Bod­ies, Our­selves, was pub­lished by the Boston Women’s Health Book Col­lec­tive. This book “became its own wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed women’s health text,” Atlas Obscu­ra writes, “trans­lat­ed into 29 lan­guages.” But while Our Bod­ies, Our­selves remains famous for its key role in spread­ing much-need­ed infor­ma­tion about repro­duc­tive health, “its Cana­di­an coun­ter­part has been most­ly for­got­ten.” The Birth Con­trol Hand­book gave mil­lions of women the infor­ma­tion they need­ed to gov­ern their own lives. Redis­cov­er the com­plete text of the first, 1968 edi­tion and sec­ond, 1969 edi­tion at the Inter­net Archive, where you can see a scan, read tran­scribed full text, and down­load PDF, Kin­dle, and oth­er for­mats.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load All 239 Issues of Land­mark UK Fem­i­nist Mag­a­zine Spare Rib Free Online

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975)

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

Watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck

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

Infinity Minus Infinity Equals Pi: This Video Proves It

in Math | December 8th, 2016

It sounds impos­si­ble. But it turns out that infin­i­ty minus infin­i­ty does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly equal zero. It can equal Pi, or 3.14159265359. Or so demon­strates the “Math­ologer” in the video fea­tured above.

In real life the Math­ologer goes by the name of Burkard Pol­ster, and he’s a math pro­fes­sor at Monash Uni­ver­si­ty in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia. You can check out more of his videos on YouTube 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:

Free Online Math Cours­es 

Free Math Text­books

Cit­i­zen Maths: A Free Online Course That Teach­es Adults the Math They Missed in High School

The Math in Good Will Hunt­ing is Easy: How Do You Like Them Apples?

The Velvet Underground & Andy Warhol Stage Proto-Punk Performance Art: Discover the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966)

in Art, Music | December 7th, 2016

Punk rock, an art­less pro­le­tar­i­an sneer, a work­ing-class revolt against bour­geois tastes, good man­ners, and cor­rupt sys­tems of con­sump­tion. Right? Sure… and also pure per­for­mance art. Or do we for­get that its fore­bears were avant-garde fringe artists: whether Iggy Pop onstage fight­ing a vac­u­um clean­er and blender and smear­ing peanut but­ter on him­self, or Pat­ti Smith read­ing her Rim­baud-inspired poet­ry at CBGB’s. And before rock crit­ic Dave Marsh first used the word “Punk” (to describe Ques­tion Mark and the Mysterians)—before even Sgt. Pepper’s and the death of Jimi Hendrix—there came the Vel­vet Under­ground, pro­tégés of Andy Warhol and dark psy­che­del­ic pio­neers whose ear­ly songs were as punk rock as it gets.

Some evi­dence: a dog-eared copy of Please Kill Me, the “uncen­sored oral his­to­ry of punk,” which begins with the Vel­vets and, specif­i­cal­ly John Cale remem­ber­ing 1965: “I couldn’t give a shit about folk music… The first time Lou Played ‘Hero­in’ for me it total­ly knocked me out. The words and music were so raunchy and dev­as­tat­ing.… Lou had these songs where there was an ele­ment of char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion going on.” Now these days, every­one from the may­or of Lon­don to Shake­speare has been asso­ci­at­ed with punk, but maybe Lou Reed first defined its raunch­i­ness and dev­as­ta­tion back in the mid-six­ties. And the per­for­mances of those songs were sheer art-rock spec­ta­cle, thanks to Andy Warhol’s Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable, or EPI.

Crit­ic Wayne McGuire described these Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable per­for­mances, orga­nized in 1966 and 1967, as “elec­tron­ic: inter­me­dia: total scale.” The Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable enveloped the Vel­vets in a dark, hazy, strobe-lit cir­cus. Writer Bran­den Joseph describes it in detail:

… the Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable includ­ed three to five film pro­jec­tors, often show­ing dif­fer­ent reels of the same film simul­ta­ne­ous­ly: a sim­i­lar num­ber of slide pro­jec­tors, mov­able by hand so that their images swept the audi­to­ri­um; four vari­able-speed strobe lights; three mov­ing spots with an assort­ment of coloured gels; sev­er­al pis­tol lights; a mir­ror ball hung from the ceil­ing and anoth­er on the floor; as many as three loud­speak­ers blar­ing dif­fer­ent pop records at once; one or two sets by the Vel­vet Under­ground and Nico…

… and so on. “It doesn’t go togeth­er,” wrote Lar­ry McCombs in a 1966 review, “But some­times it does.” Warhol had attempt­ed to stage sim­i­lar events since 1963, with a short-lived band called the Druids, which includ­ed New York avant-garde com­pos­er La Monte Young (“the best drug con­nec­tion in New York,” remem­bered Bil­ly Name). Then Warhol met the Vel­vet Under­ground at the Café Bizarre, forced the broody Nico on them, and it sud­den­ly came togeth­er. The new, Warhol-man­aged band first launched at film­mak­er Jonas Mekas’ Ciné­math­èque the­ater. “Andy would show his movies on us,” remem­bers Reed, “We wore black so you could see the movie. But we were all wear­ing black any­way.”

As you can see in the 1966 film at the top of an EPI/Velvets per­for­mance, Reed’s pro­to-punk odes to intra­venous drugs and sado­masochism pro­vid­ed the ide­al sound­track to Warhol’s cel­e­bra­tions of the trag­i­cal­ly hip and pret­ty. The expe­ri­ence (at least as recre­at­ed by the Warhol Muse­um) put art stu­dent Karen Lue in mind of “Wagner’s gesamtkunst­werk, or a total work of art.” The film we expe­ri­ence here was shot by direc­tor Ronald Nameth at an EPI hap­pen­ing at Poor Richards in Chica­go.

The over­dubbed sound­track blends record­ings of “I’ll Be Your Mir­ror” and “Euro­pean Son,” “It Was a Plea­sure” from Nico’s Chelsea Girl, and live ver­sions of “Hero­in” and “Venus in Furs,” with John Cale on vocals. This par­tic­u­lar hap­pen­ing fea­tured nei­ther Reed nor Nico, so Cale took the lead. Nonethe­less, as Ubuweb writes, Nameth’s film “is an expe­ri­ence” ful­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of “Warhol’s hell­ish sen­so­ri­um… the most unique and effec­tive dis­cotheque envi­ron­ment pri­or to the Fillmore/Electric Cir­cus era.” The short “ris­es above a mere graph­ic exer­cise,” mak­ing “kinet­ic empa­thy a new kind of poet­ry” and a visu­al record of how punk arose as much from art-house the­aters and gal­leries as it did from dive bars and garages.

Relat­ed Con­tent:    

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

Nico, Lou Reed & John Cale Sing the Clas­sic Vel­vet Under­ground Song ‘Femme Fatale’ (Paris, 1972)

Pat­ti Smith Plays at CBGB In One of Her First Record­ed Con­certs, Joined by Sem­i­nal Punk Band Tele­vi­sion (1975)

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

500+William S. Burroughs Book Covers from Across the Globe: 1950s Through the 2010s

in Art, Books, Literature | December 7th, 2016

William S. Bur­roughs has shown gen­er­a­tions of read­ers that the writ­ten word can pro­vide expe­ri­ences they’d nev­er before imag­ined. But to get to Bur­roughs’ writ­ten words, most of those read­ers have entered through his covers—or rather, through the cov­ers that a host of pub­lish­ers, all over the world and for over six­ty years now—have con­sid­ered suf­fi­cient­ly appeal­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Bur­roughs’ dar­ing, exper­i­men­tal, and not-espe­cial­ly-rep­re­sentable lit­er­ary work. You can see over 500 of these efforts at the Bur­roughs page of beatbookcovers.com.

As mild-man­nered as he could seem in per­son, Bur­roughs’ life and work, what with the drugs, the acquain­tance with the homo­sex­u­al under­world, and the reck­less gun­play, has always attract­ed an air of the sor­did and sen­sa­tion­al. Pub­lish­ers did­n’t hes­i­tate to exploit that, as we can see in the first edi­tion of Bur­roughs’ first pub­lished work Junkie just above. Not only did it come out as a 35-cent mass-mar­ket two-in-one paper­back, it promised the “con­fes­sions of an unre­deemed drug addict,” and with that lurid illus­tra­tion implied so much more besides. No mat­ter how much read­er­ly curios­i­ty it piqued, how much of an artis­tic future could some­one impulse-buy­ing it at the drug­store have imag­ined for this “William Lee” fel­low?

More curi­ous read­ers have prob­a­bly become Bur­roughs fans by pick­ing up The Naked Lunch, his best-known nov­el but a more con­tro­ver­sial and much less con­ven­tion­al­ly com­posed one than Junkie. This sto­ry of William Lee (now just the name of the pro­tag­o­nist, not an autho­r­i­al pseu­do­nym) and his sub­stance-fueled odyssey through Amer­i­ca, Mex­i­co, Moroc­co, the fic­tion­al Annex­ia and far beyond has had many and var­ied visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions, all of which try to con­vey how stren­u­ous­ly the text strug­gles against the stric­tures of tra­di­tion­al forms of writ­ing. Some­times, as in the 1986 U.K. edi­tion from Pal­adin above, they resort to telling rather than just show­ing you that you hold in your hands “the book that blew ‘lit­er­a­ture’ apart.”

Those of us who get deep into Bur­roughs’ work often do so because it tran­scends genre. Still, that has­n’t stopped mar­ket­ing depart­ments from try­ing to place him in one genre or anoth­er, or at least to sell cer­tain of his books as if they belonged in one genre or anoth­er. The “Nova tril­o­gy” with which Bur­roughs fol­lowed up Naked Lunch, has tend­ed to appear on the sci­ence-fic­tion shelves of book­stores around the world, not com­plete­ly with­out rea­son. Still, the sen­si­bil­i­ties of the sci-fi world and Bur­roughs’ mind do clash some­what, pro­duc­ing such intrigu­ing results as the 1978 Japan­ese edi­tion of Nova Express above.

Ulti­mate­ly, the only image that reli­ably con­veys the work of William S. Bur­roughs is the image of William S. Bur­roughs, which appears on the cov­er of this 1982 Pic­a­dor William Bur­roughs Read­er as well as many oth­er books besides. As any­one who’s gone deep into his bib­li­og­ra­phy knows, the work and the man don’t come sep­a­rate­ly, but they’ll sure­ly always remem­ber the cov­er that led them into his world in the first place, whether it bore images sub­dued or sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic, a design grim­ly real or for­bid­ding­ly abstract, or a prop­er warn­ing about just what it was they were get­ting into.

Vis­it all 500+ William S. Bur­roughs books cov­ers here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Visu­al Art of William S. Bur­roughs: Book Cov­ers, Por­traits, Col­lage, Shot­gun Art & More

Loli­ta Book Cov­ers: 100+ Designs From 37 Coun­tries (Plus Nabokov’s Favorite Design)

Hear a Great Radio Doc­u­men­tary on William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rat­ed by Iggy Pop

83 Years of Great Gats­by Book Cov­er Designs: A Pho­to Gallery

600+ Cov­ers of Philip K. Dick Nov­els from Around the World: Greece, Japan, Poland & Beyond

Down­load 650 Sovi­et Book Cov­ers, Many Sport­ing Won­der­ful Avant-Garde Designs (1917–1942)

The Art of the Book Cov­er Explained at TED

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

George Orwell Tries to Identify Who Is Really a “Fascist” and Define the Meaning of This “Much-Abused Word” (1944)

in History, Politics | December 7th, 2016

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Two neol­o­gisms, “Post-truth” and “Alt-right,” have entered polit­i­cal dis­course in this year of tur­moil and upheaval, words so noto­ri­ous they were cho­sen as the win­ner and run­ner-up, respec­tive­ly, for Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies’ word of the year. These “Orwellian euphemisms,” argues Noah Berlatsky “con­ceal old evils” and “white­wash fas­cism,” recall­ing “in form and con­tent… Orwell’s old words—specifically some of the newspeak from 1984. ‘Crime­think,’ ‘thought­crime,’ and ‘unper­son’.… They even sound the same, with their sim­ple, thunk-thunk con­struc­tion of sin­gle syl­la­bles mashed togeth­er.”

“The sheer ugly clum­si­ness is sup­posed to make the lan­guage seem futur­is­tic and cut­ting edge,” Berlatsky writes, “The world to come will be util­i­tar­i­an, slangy, and up-to-the-minute in its inel­e­gance. So the future was in Orwell’s day; so it is in 2016.” As in Orwell’s day, our cur­rent jar­gon gets mobi­lized in “defense of the indefensible”—as the nov­el­ist, jour­nal­ist, and rev­o­lu­tion­ary fight­er wrote in his 1946 essay “Pol­i­tics and the Eng­lish Lan­guage.” And just as in his day, the euphemisms pret­ty up con­stant, bla­tant lying and racist ide­olo­gies. We can also draw anoth­er lin­guis­tic com­par­i­son to Orwell’s time: the wide­spread use of the word “fas­cism.”

Berlatsky uses the word with­out defin­ing it (when he talks about “white­wash­ing fas­cism”), except to say that “fas­cism thrives on false­hoods.” That may well be the case, but is it enough of a cri­te­ri­on for an entire polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem? The word begs for a cogent analy­sis. Even Umber­to Eco, who grew up under Mussolini’s rule, felt the need for clar­i­ty, giv­en that “Amer­i­can rad­i­cals,” he wrote in 1995, abused the phrase “fas­cist pig” as a pejo­ra­tive for any author­i­ty, such that the word hard­ly meant any­thing thir­ty years after World War II.

But sure­ly Orwell—who fought fas­cism in Spain in 1936, and whose omi­nous post­war dystopi­an nov­els have done more than any lit­er­ary work to illus­trate its menace—could define the word with con­fi­dence? Alas, when we look to his work, even before the war had end­ed, we find him writ­ing, “‘Fas­cism,’ is almost entire­ly mean­ing­less.” His short 1944 essay, “What is Fas­cism?” does not, how­ev­er, push to abol­ish the word. He calls instead for “a clear and gen­er­al­ly accept­ed def­i­n­i­tion of it” against the ten­den­cy to “degrade it to the lev­el of a swear­word.”

But Orwell (being Orwell) is not opti­mistic. One rea­son a def­i­n­i­tion had been so dif­fi­cult to come by, he writes, is that any group to whom it is applied would have to make “admis­sions” most of them are not “will­ing to make”—admissions as to the real nature of their ide­ol­o­gy and objec­tives, behind the euphemisms, lies, and dou­ble-speak. If no one is a fas­cist, then every­one poten­tial­ly is. Even in the 40s, Orwell wrote, “if you exam­ine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people—certainly no polit­i­cal par­ty or orga­nized body of any kind—which has not been denounced as Fas­cist.”

He enu­mer­ates those so accused: “Con­ser­v­a­tives, Social­ists, Com­mu­nists, Trot­sky­ists, Catholics, War Resisters, Sup­port­ers of the war, Nation­al­ists.…” What of the text­book exam­ples just on the oth­er side of the front lines? “When we apply the term ‘Fas­cism’ to Ger­many or Japan or Mussolini’s Italy,” Orwell con­cedes, “we know broad­ly what we mean.” But appeal­ing to these extreme gov­ern­ments does lit­tle good, “because even the major Fas­cist states dif­fer from one anoth­er a good deal in struc­ture and ide­ol­o­gy.” Umber­to Eco is con­tent to say that fas­cism adopts the cul­tur­al trap­pings of the nations in which it aris­es, yet still shares sev­er­al con­stant, if con­tra­dic­to­ry, ide­o­log­i­cal traits. Orwell isn’t so sure he knows what those are.

So what can Orwell say about the word, one he is eager to hold on to but at a loss to pin down? Though he believes it must name a “polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic” sys­tem as well, Orwell final­ly opts for an ordi­nary lan­guage def­i­n­i­tion, to which we “attach at any rate an emo­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance.” Whether we “reck­less­ly fling” the word “in every direc­tion” or use it in more pre­cise ways, we always mean “rough­ly speak­ing, some­thing cru­el, unscrupu­lous, arro­gant, obscu­ran­tist, anti-lib­er­al, and anti-work­ing class. Except for the rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of Fas­cist sym­pa­thiz­ers, almost any Eng­lish per­son would accept ‘bul­ly’ as a syn­onym for ‘Fas­cist.’” Those today who are not bullies—or unapolo­getic fas­cist sympathizers—and who don’t need euphemisms for these words, would like­ly agree.

You can read “What is Fas­cism?” here. You can find the short essay pub­lished in this vol­ume, The Col­lect­ed Essays, Jour­nal­ism and Let­ters of George Orwell.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

George Orwell Reviews Mein Kampf: “He Envis­ages a Hor­ri­ble Brain­less Empire” (1940)

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

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

Bruce Springsteen Narrates Audiobook Version of His New Memoir (and How to Download It for Free)

in Audio Books, Music | December 6th, 2016

In Sep­tem­ber, Bruce Spring­steen pub­lished his new auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Born to Run. Patient­ly I’ve been await­ing the audio­book ver­sion, which came out today. And, to my sur­prise, I dis­cov­ered that it’s nar­rat­ed by Spring­steen him­self. All 18 hours of it.

You can hear him read Chap­ter 41 (called “Hitsville”) above. Plus Chap­ter 53 below. And if you want to hear the whole she­bang, you can pur­chase it online. Or down­load the audio­book for free by sign­ing up for Audi­ble’s 30-day free tri­al. As I’ve men­tioned before, if you reg­is­ter for Audi­ble’s free tri­al pro­gram, they let you down­load two free audio­books. At the end of 30 days, you can decide whether you want to become an Audi­ble sub­scriber (as I have) or not. No mat­ter what you decide, you get to keep the two free audio­books. Spring­steen’s mem­oir can be one of them.

Learn more about Audi­ble’s free tri­al pro­gram here.

NB: Audi­ble is an Amazon.com sub­sidiary, and we’re a mem­ber of their affil­i­ate pro­gram.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Down­load a Free Course from “The Great Cours­es” Through Audible.com’s Free Tri­al Pro­gram

Bruce Spring­steen Lists 20 of His Favorite Books: The Books That Have Inspired the Song­writer & Now Mem­oirist

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

Heat Map­ping the Rise of Bruce Spring­steen: How the Boss Went Viral in a Pre-Inter­net Era

Bruce Spring­steen Picks His Top 5 Favorite Spring­steen Songs

The Science of Why We Laugh

in Biology, Comedy | December 6th, 2016

Laugh­ter is uni­ver­sal. And yet strange when you think about it. One moment we’re doing noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy. The next moment we’re con­vuls­ing and mak­ing these loud stac­ca­to guf­faws. Odd that.

So why do we laugh? It’s a ques­tion that Robert Provine, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, Bal­ti­more, has been study­ing for 20+ years, try­ing to under­stand laugh­ter’s social, neu­ro­log­i­cal, and evo­lu­tion­ary roots. In the video above, he gives you a sense of the “side­walk” research he con­ducts, and some of the con­clu­sions he has drawn–e.g., laugh­ter is often not a reac­tion to some­thing fun­ny per se; it’s some­thing that helps build social rela­tion­ships with oth­ers. And it’s a reac­tion that’s hard­wired in the brain.

At the video’s end, Provine tells us that the study of laugh­ter has just begun. But, if you’re inter­est­ed in what we know so far, see his two books: Laugh­ter: A Sci­en­tif­ic Inves­ti­ga­tion and Behav­ior: Yawn­ing, Laugh­ing, Hic­cup­ping, and Beyond, an explo­ration of neglect­ed human instincts.

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 Explores the Health Ben­e­fits of Laugh­ter

Char­lie Chap­lin Finds Com­e­dy Even in the Bru­tal­i­ty of WWI: A Scene from Shoul­der Arms (1918)

Chris Rock Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Standup Com­e­dy Spe­cials

How to Cope with Trump. Laugh