How Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai Perfected the Cinematic Action Scene: A New Video Essay

in Film | October 26th, 2016

Jonathan Lethem knows a thing or two about sto­ry­telling as well as about caped com­ic-book char­ac­ters, and on a recent pod­cast appear­ance he accused films about the lat­ter of an inabil­i­ty to do the for­mer: “I think one of the least sat­is­fy­ing film gen­res I’ve ever encoun­tered is the con­tem­po­rary super­hero movie, which just seems to me kind of dead on arrival. I can’t even get into the hair-split­ting about, ‘Oh, but there are three or four good ones.’ I just don’t see any life there.” How can such big pro­duc­tions filled with so much action play out so life­less­ly on the screen? Per­haps the work of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, known in his day as the “Emper­or” of Japan­ese film, can show us the answer.

“Would­n’t scenes that dis­play the pin­na­cle of phys­i­cal­i­ty work bet­ter,” asks video essay­ist Lewis Bond over images of the Avengers bat­tling tow­er­ing mon­sters in the cen­ters of major cities, Spi­der-Man swing­ing huge arcs through some kind of smoke-and-spark fac­to­ry, and Bat­man beat­ing up Super­man, “if they also con­veyed an emo­tion­al inten­si­ty to match this? Action and emo­tion need not be sep­a­rat­ed by a chasm as they so often are, and this is where the great­ness of Sev­en Samu­rai lies.” He shows us in “Dra­ma Through Action,” a study of how Kuro­sawa’s best-known pic­ture deliv­ers its action with impact, which appeared ear­li­er this month on Chan­nel Criswell, pre­vi­ous­ly the source of video essays on such mas­ters of cin­e­ma as Yasu­jirō Ozu and Andrei Tarkovsky.

Bond points to sev­er­al dif­fer­ent fac­tors that make the action in Kuro­sawa’s 1954 epic adven­ture of the Sen­goku era, despite its tech­no­log­i­cal impov­er­ish­ment com­pared to the super­hero block­busters of the 21st cen­tu­ry, feel so much more mean­ing­ful. A focus less on the action itself and the pro­tag­o­nists per­form­ing it than on the con­se­quences of that action mean­ing that “death car­ries sig­nif­i­cance.” A “sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness” and clear por­tray­al of “the char­ac­ters’ short-term objec­tives” means that the audi­ence can fol­low, and thus feel, their suc­cess­es and fail­ures. A clear estab­lish­ment of geog­ra­phy enables view­ers to place the com­bat­ants, and them­selves, on the bat­tle­field. A spar­ing use of cut­ting and slow motion keeps emo­tion­al­ly charged moments charged.

These and oth­er tech­niques skill­ful­ly employed by Kuro­sawa and his col­lab­o­ra­tors ensure that, in Sev­en Samu­rai, “every moment of action com­mu­ni­cates a sense of urgency” — exact­ly the qual­i­ty lacked, in oth­er words, by the expen­sive and furi­ous yet strange­ly dull super­hero spec­ta­cles of today. “To me, Sev­en Samu­rai is still the most for­ward-think­ing piece of cin­e­ma ever cre­at­ed,” says Bond. “What it did for the way action is pho­tographed can still be seen today. And when it isn’t seen, it prob­a­bly should be.” Take heed, young direc­tors slat­ed to take on the next wave of super­hero-fran­chise cin­e­mat­ic reboots: to make your entries stand out, you have only to learn from the Emper­or.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

What Makes Yasu­jirō Ozu a Great Film­mak­er? New Video Essay Explains His Long-Admired Cin­e­mat­ic Style

Watch a Video Essay on the Poet­ic Har­mo­ny of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Film­mak­ing, Then View His Major Films Free Online

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.

Spike Jonze’s Stop Motion Film Hauntingly Animates Paris’ Famed Shakespeare and Company Bookstore

in Animation, Books | October 26th, 2016

Since his break­out ear­ly days direct­ing com­mer­cials and music videos for the likes of Fat­boy Slim, Weez­er, Daft Punk, and the Breed­ers, Spike Jonze has honed a quirky visu­al sen­si­bil­i­ty that trans­lat­ed almost seam­less­ly to fea­ture film. But even at his quirki­est, Jonze hasn’t been about quirk for quirk’s sake. His characters—highly emo­tion­al robots, dog-head­ed men with bro­ken legs, tor­ment­ed pup­peteers, enthu­si­as­tic ama­teur dance troops—are under­dogs, weirdos, fig­ures on the fringes who make us ques­tion what it means to be peo­ple: to be lone­ly, in love, cre­ative­ly obsessed, and emo­tion­al­ly scram­bled.…

There is a para­dox inher­ent in Jonze’s films and videos. Their odd­ball plots and char­ac­ters cut through the cyn­i­cal veneer of cool that keeps us from ask­ing hard ques­tions about our emo­tion­al lives, but they do so in styl­is­tic exer­cis­es that in some cas­es them­selves become emblems of pop-cul­ture cool. Not so the short film “Mourir auprès de toi” (“To Die by Your Side”), which takes its title from one of the most aching­ly heart­break­ing of Smiths’ songs. This is a love sto­ry for the book­ish and the crafty, set in Paris’ famed Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny book­store and fea­tur­ing ani­mat­ed book cov­ers made from embroi­dered felt cutouts.

Co-writ­ten and with a look inspired by design­er Olympia Le-Tan, the short is “an absolute­ly beau­ti­ful stop-motion ani­ma­tion for book-lovers that’s part This Is Where We Live, part Going West, part cre­ative mag­ic only Spike Jonze can bring.” So writes Maria Popo­va at The Atlantic, sum­ma­riz­ing the ups and downs of the plot and allud­ing to a “hap­pi­ly-ever-after end­ing” that “comes only after an appro­pri­ate­ly dark and grim twist.”

Watch “To Die by Your Side” at the top of the post, then, just above, see a short behind-the-scenes teas­er video. “You just start with what the feel­ing is,” Jonze told Now­ness in an inter­view, “Me and Olympia both want­ed to make a love sto­ry.… It evolved nat­u­ral­ly and it all just start­ed with the feel­ing. From there you enter­tain your­self with ideas that excite you.” The quote explains why Jonze’s films and videos—for all their visu­al inven­tive­ness and imag­i­na­tive whimsy—nearly always stay ground­ed in can­did emo­tion­al real­ism. How­ev­er far and wide Jonze’ cin­e­mat­ic and nar­ra­tive  imag­i­na­tion takes us, his films always start with the feel­ing.

“Mourir auprès de toi” (“To Die by Your Side”) first appeared on our site in Octo­ber, 2011.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze and Beast­ie Boys, Togeth­er Again

Spike Jonze’s Imag­i­na­tive TV Ads

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

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

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beauty of Traditional Japan

in Art | October 26th, 2016

We’ve fea­tured the work of Span­ish film­mak­er Cristóbal Vila before: His short film “Inspi­ra­tions” cel­e­brat­ed the math­e­mat­i­cal art of M.C. Esch­er. “Falling­wa­ter” ani­mat­ed one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s finest cre­ations. And “Nature by Num­bers” showed us geo­met­ri­cal and math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las found in nature.

Today, we bring you Vila’s lat­est “Wabi-Sabi: A Hand­ful of Mem­o­ries from Tra­di­tion­al Japan.” As he notes on his site, the ani­ma­tion cap­tures the “aspects that inter­est me the most about tra­di­tion­al Japan,” fea­tur­ing “scenes inspired by nature, gar­dens, archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­or scenes, etc.” And it attempts to “cre­ate a calm and bal­anced atmos­phere through the use of light, com­po­si­tion, mate­ri­als, move­ment… and the choice of the motifs them­selves.”

Above, you can watch “Wabi-Sabi,” a Japan­ese term that refers to “the [aes­thet­ic] beau­ty of the imper­ma­nent, the imper­fect, the rus­tic, and the melan­choly,” as explains The School of Life video below. If you’re entranced by Vila’s short film, also watch the “Mak­ing of” video (mid­dle).

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:

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­ter Ani­mat­ed

Inspi­ra­tions: A Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

Nature by Num­bers: Short Film Cap­tures the Geo­met­ri­cal & Math­e­mat­i­cal For­mu­las That Reveal Them­selves in Nature

Odd Vintage Postcards Document the Propaganda Against Women’s Rights 100 Years Ago

in Gender, History, Politics | October 25th, 2016

The vicious, vit­ri­olic imagery and rhetoric of this elec­tion sea­son can seem over­whelm­ing, but as even casu­al stu­dents of his­to­ry will know, it isn’t any­thing new. Each time his­toric social change occurs, reac­tionary counter-move­ments resort to threats, appeals to fear, and demean­ing caricatures—whether it’s anti-Recon­struc­tion pro­pa­gan­da of the 19th cen­tu­ry, anti-Civ­il Rights cam­paigns 100 years lat­er, or anti-LGBT rights efforts today.

At the turn of the cen­tu­ry, the women’s suf­frage move­ment faced sig­nif­i­cant lev­els of abuse and resis­tance. One pho­to­graph has cir­cu­lat­ed, for exam­ple, of a suf­frage activist lying in the street as police beat her. (The woman in the pho­to is not Susan B. Antho­ny, as many claim, but a British suf­frag­ist named Ada Wright, beat­en on “Black Fri­day” in 1910.) It’s an arrest­ing image that cap­tures just how vio­lent­ly men of the day fought against the move­ment for wom­en’s suf­frage. [It’s also worth not­ing, as many have: the ear­ly suf­frage move­ment cam­paigned only for white women’s right to vote, and some­times active­ly resist­ed civ­il rights for African-Amer­i­cans.]

As you can see from the sam­ple anti-suf­frage post­cards here—dating from the late 19th to ear­ly 20th cen­turies— pro­pa­gan­da against the women’s vote tend­ed to fall into three broad cat­e­gories: Dis­turbing­ly vio­lent wish-ful­fill­ment involv­ing tor­ture and phys­i­cal silenc­ing; char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of suf­frag­ists as angry, bit­ter old maids, hatch­et-wield­ing har­ri­dans, or dom­i­neer­ing, shrewish wives and neglect­ful moth­ers; and, cor­re­spond­ing­ly, depic­tions of neglect­ed chil­dren, and hus­bands por­trayed as saint­ly vic­tims, emas­cu­lat­ed by threats to tra­di­tion­al gen­der roles, and men­aced by the sug­ges­tion that they may have to care for their chil­dren for even one day out of the year!

These post­cards come from the col­lec­tion of Cather­ine Pal­czews­ki, pro­fes­sor of women’s and gen­der stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North­ern Iowa. She has been col­lect­ing these images, from both the U.S. and Britain, for 15 years. On her web­site, Pal­czews­ki quotes George Miller’s com­ment that post­cards like these “offer a vivid chron­i­cle of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal val­ues and tastes.” Pal­czews­ki describes these par­tic­u­lar images as “a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­sec­tion [that] occurred between advo­ca­cy for and against woman suf­frage, images of women (and men), and post­cards. Best esti­mates are that approx­i­mate­ly 4,500 post­cards were pro­duced with a suf­frage theme.”

As she notes in the quote above, the post­cards print­ed dur­ing this peri­od did not all oppose women’s suf­frage. “Suf­frage advo­cates,” writes Pal­czews­ki, “rec­og­nized the util­i­ty of the post­card as a pro­pa­gan­da device” as well. Pro-suf­frage post­cards tend­ed to serve a doc­u­men­tary pur­pose, with “real-pho­to images of the suf­frage parades, ver­bal mes­sages iden­ti­fy­ing the states that had approved suf­frage, or quo­ta­tions in sup­port of extend­ing the vote to women.” For all their attempts at pre­sent­ing a seri­ous, infor­ma­tive coun­ter­weight to incen­di­ary anti-suf­frage images like those you see here, suf­frage activists often found that they could not con­trol the nar­ra­tive.

As Lisa Tick­n­er writes in The Spec­ta­cle of Women: Imagery of the Suf­frage Cam­paign 1907–1914, post­card pro­duc­ers with­out a clear agen­da often used pho­tos and illus­tra­tions of suf­frag­ists to rep­re­sent “top­i­cal or humor­ous types” and “almost inci­den­tal­ly” under­cut advo­cates’ attempts to present their cause in a news­wor­thy light. The image of the suf­fragette as a triv­ial fig­ure of fun per­sist­ed into the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry (as we see in Gly­nis Johns’ com­i­cal­ly neglect­ful Winifred Banks in Walt Disney’s 1964 Mary Pop­pins adap­ta­tion).

Palczewski’s site offers a brief his­to­ry of the “Gold­en Age” (1893–1918) of polit­i­cal post­cards and orga­nizes the col­lec­tion into cat­e­gories. One vari­ety we might find par­tic­u­lar­ly charm­ing for its use of cats and kit­tens actu­al­ly has a pret­ty sin­is­ter ori­gin in the so-called “Cat-and-Mouse Act” in the UK. Jailed suf­frag­ists had begun to stage hunger strikes, and jour­nal­ists pro­voked pub­lic out­cry by por­tray­ing force-feed­ing by the gov­ern­ment as a form of tor­ture. Instead, strik­ing activists were released when they became weak. “If a woman died after being released,” Pal­czews­ki explains, “then the gov­ern­ment could claim it was not to blame.” When a freed activist regained her strength, she would be rear­rest­ed. “On Novem­ber 29, 1917,” Pal­czews­ki writes, “the US gov­ern­ment announced it plans to use Britain’s cat and mouse approach.”

You can see many more his­tor­i­cal pro- and anti-suf­frage post­cards at Palczewski’s web­site, and you are free to use them for non-com­mer­cial pur­pos­es pro­vid­ed you attribute the source. You are also free, of course, to draw your own com­par­isons to today’s hyper­bol­ic and often vio­lent­ly misog­y­nist pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

Down­load Images From Rad Amer­i­can Women A‑Z: A New Pic­ture Book on the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nism

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

“Alexander Hamilton” Performed with American Sign Language

in Theatre | October 25th, 2016

Back in 2011, the Los Ange­les Times ran a pro­file on Sarah Tubert, then a 17-year-old stu­dent who lost her hear­ing as a young child. With the help of her fam­i­ly, Sarah per­se­vered, became a star water polo and vol­ley­ball play­er in high school, and earned a full schol­ar­ship to Gal­laudet Uni­ver­si­ty–all with the hope of one day becom­ing an instruc­tor for deaf and hear­ing-impaired stu­dents.

Five years lat­er, Sarah is mak­ing good on her promise. Above, Sarah per­forms “Alexan­der Hamil­ton,” the open­ing num­ber of the Broad­way show, in Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage (ASL). On Twit­ter, the Hamil­ton star Lin-Manuel Miran­da called it “beau­ti­ful.” And it’s hard not to agree.

You can find ASL lessons in our col­lec­tion, Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Kot­tke

Stephen Fry Narrates 4 Philosophy Animations On the Question: How to Create a Just Society?

in Animation, History, Philosophy | October 25th, 2016

How do we cre­ate a just soci­ety? 50,000 years or so at it and human­i­ty still has a long way to go before fig­ur­ing that out, though not for lack of try­ing. The four ani­mat­ed videos of “What Is Jus­tice?”—a minis­eries with­in BBC Radio 4 and the Open Uni­ver­si­ty’s larg­er project of ani­mat­ing the ideas of philoso­phers through­out his­to­ry and explain­ing them in the voic­es of var­i­ous famous nar­ra­tors—tell us what John Rawls, Hen­ry David Thore­au, and the Bible, among oth­er sources, have to say on the sub­ject of jus­tice. Stephen Fry pro­vides the voice this time as the videos illus­trate the nature of these ideas, as well as their com­pli­ca­tions, before our eyes.

Imag­ine you had to cre­ate a just soci­ety your­self, but “you won’t know what kind of a per­son you’ll be in the soci­ety you design.” This thought exper­i­ment, first described by Rawls in his 1971 book A The­o­ry of Jus­tice as the “veil of igno­rance,” sup­pos­ed­ly encour­ages the cre­ation of “a much fair­er soci­ety than we now have. There would be exten­sive free­dom and equal­i­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty. But there would­n’t be extremes of high pay, unless it could be shown that the poor­est in soci­ety direct­ly ben­e­fit­ed as a result.” An intrigu­ing idea, but one eas­i­er artic­u­lat­ed than agreed upon, let alone real­ized.

Much ear­li­er in his­to­ry, you find the sim­pler prin­ci­ple of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” an “ancient form of pun­ish­ment known as lex tal­io­n­is, or the law of retal­i­a­tion.” Any read­er of the Bible will have a strong sense of this idea’s impor­tance in the ancient world, though we’d do well to remem­ber that back then, it “was a way of encour­ag­ing a sense of pro­por­tion — not wip­ing out a whole com­mu­ni­ty in retal­i­a­tion for the killing of one man, for exam­ple.” While harsh pun­ish­ment could, in the­o­ry, deter poten­tial crim­i­nals, “severe legal vio­lence can cre­ate mar­tyrs and increase soci­ety’s prob­lems.” The rule of law, nat­u­ral­ly, has every­thing to do with the cre­ation and main­te­nance of a just soci­ety, though not every law fur­thers the cause.

But you’ve no doubt heard of one that has: habeas cor­pus, the legal prin­ci­ple man­dat­ing that “no one, not even the pres­i­dent, monarch, or any­one else in pow­er, can detain some­one ille­gal­ly.” Instead, “they need to bring the detainee in ques­tion before a court and allow that court to deter­mine whether or not this per­son can legal­ly be held.” Yet not every author­i­ty has con­sis­tent­ly imple­ment­ed or upheld habeas cor­pus or oth­er jus­tice-ensur­ing laws. At times like those, accord­ing to Thore­au, you must engage in civ­il dis­obe­di­ence: “fol­low your con­science and break the law on moral grounds rather than be a cog in an unjust sys­tem.” It’s a dirty job, cre­at­ing a just soci­ety, and will remain so for the fore­see­able future. And though we may not all have giv­en it as much thought as a Rawls or a Thore­au, we’ve all got a role to play in it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A The­o­ry of Jus­tice, the Musi­cal Imag­ines Philoso­pher John Rawls as a Time-Trav­el­ing Adven­tur­er

Jus­tice: Putting a Price Tag on Life & How to Mea­sure Plea­sure

Free: Lis­ten to John Rawls’ Course on “Mod­ern Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy” (Record­ed at Har­vard, 1984)

47 Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the His­to­ry of Ideas: From Aris­to­tle to Sartre

What is the Self? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry on Sartre, Descartes & More

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.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Term Paper Assignment from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Teaches You to Read Fiction Like a Writer

in Creativity, Education, Letters, Literature, Writing | October 24th, 2016

Image by Daniele Prati, via Flickr Com­mons

I wish I’d had a teacher who framed his or her assign­ments as let­ters…

Which is real­ly just anoth­er way of say­ing I wish I’d been lucky enough to have tak­en a class with writ­ers Kurt Von­negut or Lyn­da Bar­ry.

There’s still hope of a class with Bar­ry, aka Pro­fes­sor Chew­bac­ca, Pro­fes­sor Old Skull, and most recent­ly, Pro­fes­sor Dro­go. Those of us who can’t get a seat at the Wis­con­sin Insti­tute for Dis­cov­ery, the Omega Insti­tute, or the Clar­i­on Sci­ence Fic­tion and Fan­ta­sy Writ­ers’ Work­shop can play along at home, using assign­ments she gen­er­ous­ly makes avail­able in her books and on her Near-Sight­ed Mon­key Tum­blr.

Von­negut fans long for this lev­el of access, which is why we are dou­bly grate­ful to writer Suzanne McConnell, who took Vonnegut’s “Form of Fic­tion” (aka “Sur­face Crit­i­cism” aka “How to Talk out of the Cor­ner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro”) course at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop in the mid-60s.

The goal was to exam­ine fic­tion from a writer’s per­spec­tive and McConnell (who is soon to pub­lish a book about Vonnegut’s advice to writ­ers) pre­served one of her old teacher’s term paper assign­ments—again in let­ter form. She lat­er had an epiphany that his assign­ments were “designed to teach some­thing much more than what­ev­er I thought then…  He was teach­ing us to do our own think­ing, to find out who we were, what we loved, abhorred, what set off our trip­wires, what tripped up our hearts.”

For the term paper, the eighty students—a group that includ­ed John Irv­ing, Gail God­win, and Andre Dubus II—were addressed as “Beloved” and charged with assign­ing a let­ter grade to each of the fif­teen sto­ries in Mas­ters of the Mod­ern Short Sto­ry (Har­court, Brace, 1955, W. Hav­ighurst, edi­tor).

(A decade and a half lat­er, Von­negut would sub­ject his own nov­els to the same treat­ment.)

A not­ed human­ist, Von­negut instruct­ed the class to read these sto­ries not in an over­ly ana­lyt­i­cal mind­set, but rather as if they had just con­sumed “two ounces of very good booze.”

The ensu­ing let­ter grades were meant to be “child­ish­ly self­ish and impu­dent mea­sures” of how much—or little—joy the sto­ries inspired in the read­er.

Next, stu­dents were instruct­ed to choose their three favorite and three least favorite sto­ries, then dis­guise them­selves as “minor but use­ful” lit mag edi­tors in order to advise their “wise, respect­ed, wit­ty and world-weary supe­ri­or” as to whether or not the select­ed sto­ries mer­it­ed pub­li­ca­tion.

Here’s the full assign­ment, which was pub­lished in Kurt Von­negut: Let­ters (Dela­corte Press, 2012). And also again in Slate.

Beloved:

This course began as Form and The­o­ry of Fic­tion, became Form of Fic­tion, then Form and Tex­ture of Fic­tion, then Sur­face Crit­i­cism, or How to Talk out of the Cor­ner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will prob­a­bly be Ani­mal Hus­bandry 108 by the time Black Feb­ru­ary rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”

As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cyn­i­cal and reli­gious. I want you to adore the Uni­verse, to be eas­i­ly delight­ed, but to be prompt as well with impa­tience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Uni­verse is or should be. “This above all …”

I invite you to read the fif­teen tales in Mas­ters of the Mod­ern Short Sto­ry (W. Hav­ighurst, edi­tor, 1955, Har­court, Brace, $14.95 in paper­back). Read them for plea­sure and sat­is­fac­tion, begin­ning each as though, only sev­en min­utes before, you had swal­lowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as lit­tle chil­dren …”

Then repro­duce on a sin­gle sheet of clean, white paper the table of con­tents of the book, omit­ting the page num­bers, and sub­sti­tut­ing for each num­ber a grade from A to F. The grades should be child­ish­ly self­ish and impu­dent mea­sures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some sto­ries bet­ter than oth­ers.

Pro­ceed next to the hal­lu­ci­na­tion that you are a minor but use­ful edi­tor on a good lit­er­ary mag­a­zine not con­nect­ed with a uni­ver­si­ty. Take three sto­ries that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pre­tend that they have been offered for pub­li­ca­tion. Write a report on each to be sub­mit­ted to a wise, respect­ed, wit­ty and world-weary supe­ri­or.

Do not do so as an aca­d­e­m­ic crit­ic, nor as a per­son drunk on art, nor as a bar­bar­ian in the lit­er­ary mar­ket place. Do so as a sen­si­tive per­son who has a few prac­ti­cal hunch­es about how sto­ries can suc­ceed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flat­ly, prag­mat­i­cal­ly, with cun­ning atten­tion to annoy­ing or grat­i­fy­ing details. Be your­self. Be unique. Be a good edi­tor. The Uni­verse needs more good edi­tors, God knows.

Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill some­body, about twen­ty pages from each of you should do neat­ly. Do not bub­ble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.

poloniøus

McConnell sup­plied fur­ther details on the extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ence of being Vonnegut’s stu­dent in an essay for the Brook­lyn Rail:

 Kurt taught a Chekhov sto­ry. I can’t remem­ber the name of it. I didn’t quite under­stand the point, since noth­ing much hap­pened. An ado­les­cent girl is in love with this boy and that boy and anoth­er; she points at a lit­tle dog, as I recall, or maybe some­thing else, and laughs. That’s all. There’s no con­flict, no dra­mat­ic turn­ing point or change. Kurt point­ed out that she has no words for the sheer joy of being young, ripe with life, her own juici­ness, and the promise of romance. Her inar­tic­u­late feel­ings spill into laugh­ter at some­thing innocu­ous. That’s what hap­pened in the sto­ry. His absolute delight in that girl’s joy of feel­ing her­self so alive was so encour­ag­ing of delight. Kurt’s enchant­ment taught me that such moments are noth­ing to sneeze at. They’re worth a sto­ry.             

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

In 1988, Kurt Von­negut Writes a Let­ter to Peo­ple Liv­ing in 2088, Giv­ing 7 Pieces of Advice

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

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

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.

Watch 52,000 Books Getting Reshelved at The New York Public Library in a Short, Timelapse Film

in Books | October 24th, 2016

After being closed for 2+ years for repairs and restora­tion, The New York Pub­lic Library’s his­toric Rose Main Read­ing Room reopened ear­li­er this month. Above, you can watch 52,000 books get­ting reshelved in a quick, two-minute time­lapse film. Books get­ting reshelved. Paint dry­ing. A time lapse film can make every­thing inter­est­ing.

Then watch this very relat­ed item: The New York Pub­lic Library Unveils a Cut­ting-Edge Train That Deliv­ers Books.

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 New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

100,000+ Won­der­ful Pieces of The­ater Ephemera Dig­i­tized by The New York Pub­lic Library

Hear J.G. Ballard Stories Adapted as Surreal Soundscapes That Put You Inside the Heads of His Characters

in Literature, Radio, Sci Fi | October 24th, 2016

Image by Thier­ry Erhmann via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“This enor­mous nov­el we’re liv­ing inside thrives on sen­sa­tion,” J.G. Bal­lard once said. “It needs sen­sa­tion to sus­tain itself.” The author of nov­els like High-Rise, Crash, and Empire of the Sun knew how to deliv­er a cer­tain kind of tex­tu­al sen­sa­tion, and he often under­scored (as first evi­denced by his exper­i­men­tal text col­lages) that he pos­sessed a com­mand of visu­al sen­sa­tion as well. Bal­lard’s use of son­ic sen­sa­tion has tak­en longer to gain a wide appre­ci­a­tion, but the BBC has fur­thered that cause with two new radio dra­mas adapt­ing his sto­ries “Track 12” and “Venus Smiles.”

These pro­duc­tions debuted togeth­er this past week­end on “Between Bal­lard’s Ears,” an episode of the pro­gram Between the Ears, which for twen­ty years has show­cased “inno­v­a­tive and thought-pro­vok­ing fea­tures that make adven­tur­ous use of sound and explore a wide vari­ety of sub­jects.” They both make use of a tech­nol­o­gy called bin­au­r­al audio, sound record­ed just as humans hear it. The process involves an arti­fi­cial head with micro­phones embed­ded in each ear, the indus­try-stan­dard mod­el of which comes from a com­pa­ny called Neu­mann. (You can see a gallery of the cast and crew of “Between Bal­lard’s Ears” using, and hang­ing out with, their own Neu­mann head here.)

All this has the effect of putting you, the head­phone-wear­ing radio-dra­ma lis­ten­er, right into not just the set­ting of the sto­ry but into the very head of the char­ac­ter — in the case of J.G. Bal­lard, as any of his fans know, a trou­bling place indeed. We hear 1958’s “Track 12” from with­in the head of Maxted, a for­mer ath­lete turned com­pa­ny man invit­ed over to the home of Sher­ing­ham, the bio­chem­istry pro­fes­sor he’s been cuck­old­ing. Sher­ing­ham sits Maxted, and us, down to lis­ten to his great­ly slowed and ampli­fied “microson­ic” record­ings of cells divid­ing and pins drop­ping. We won­der, as Maxted won­ders, when the inevitable con­fronta­tion will come, though none of us can fore­see what form Sher­ing­ham’s revenge will take.

“Venus Smiles,” which Bal­lard first wrote in 1957 and rewrote in 1971, takes place in his fic­tion­al desert resort town of Ver­mil­lion Sands. This sto­ry opens with the instal­la­tion of a new piece of pub­lic art, a “musi­cal sculp­ture” that makes me think of the Tri­fo­ri­um in Los Ange­les. But unlike the lone­ly Tri­fo­ri­um, neglect­ed and ignored for most of its his­to­ry, this sculp­ture caus­es pan­de­mo­ni­um from day one, pip­ing out quar­ter-tone com­po­si­tions pleas­ing to the ears of the Mid­dle East, but appar­ent­ly not to those of Ver­mil­lion Sands. When one com­mis­sion­er trans­plants the hat­ed sculp­ture to his back­yard, it reveals its true nature: much more com­pli­cat­ed than that of a big music box, and much more inter­est­ing to hear besides. As much as the bin­au­r­al pro­duc­tion will make you feel like you’re stand­ing right there beside it, Bal­lard makes you feel relieved, as the sto­ry goes on, that you’re actu­al­ly not.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Very First Film of J.G. Ballard’s Crash, Star­ring Bal­lard Him­self (1971)

Sci-Fi Author J.G. Bal­lard Pre­dicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)

J.G. Bal­lard on Sen­sa­tion

J.G. Ballard’s Exper­i­men­tal Text Col­lages: His 1958 For­ay into Avant-Garde Lit­er­a­ture

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.

Sean Penn Narrates Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff: Download It for Free

in Audio Books | October 23rd, 2016

A very quick heads up: Audi­ble has just released a new audio­book, Bob Hon­ey Who Just Do Stuff, writ­ten by an obscure fig­ure who goes by the name “Pap­py Pari­ah.” Who is Pap­py Pari­ah? Some spec­u­late it’s Sean Penn. But no one can say for sure. The only thing we can say is that Sean Penn nar­rates the audio­book. And also that you can down­load the audio­book for free. Click here or here, and go through the $0 pur­chase process.

As a quick aside, I should men­tion that if you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free (addi­tion­al) audio books of your choice. They’re pro­fes­sion­al­ly read, and you can keep them even if you don’t ulti­mate­ly become an Audi­ble sub­scriber. That said, we do hearti­ly rec­om­mend their ser­vice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Down­load Two Free Audio Books From Audible.com

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices