Hear 90+ Episodes of Suspense, the Iconic Golden Age Radio Show Launched by Alfred Hitchcock

in Radio | May 10th, 2016

Amer­i­ca’s “Gold­en Age of Radio” last­ed from the wide house­hold adop­tion of wire­less sets in the 1920s until the onset of the tele­vi­sion era in the 1950s, pro­duc­ing a host of long-run­ning dra­mas, come­dies, and sci­ence-fic­tion shows still beloved by radio enthu­si­asts today. But few had a pres­ence in the zeit­geist like Sus­pense, which from 1942 to 1962 offered not just guar­an­teed thrills but high pro­duc­tion val­ues as well. In the show’s hey­day, that also meant hir­ing straight from Hol­ly­wood, for not just char­ac­ter voic­es but also high direc­to­r­i­al tal­ent.

Sus­pense’s very first episode came steered by the hand of no less a mas­ter of unease than Alfred Hitch­cock. “The con­di­tion agreed upon for Hitch­cock­’s appear­ance,” writes Mar­tin Grams, Jr. in Sus­pense: Twen­ty Years of Thrills and Chills, “was that CBS make a pitch to the lis­ten­ing audi­ence about his and [pro­duc­er Wal­ter] Wanger’s lat­est film, For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent. To add fla­vor to the deal, Wanger threw in Edmund Gwenn and Her­bert Mar­shall as part of the pack­age. All three men (includ­ing Hitch) would be seen in the upcom­ing film, which was due for a the­atri­cal release the next month.” Hitch­cock want­ed to adapt for Sus­pense’s pre­miere Marie Bel­loc Lown­des’ The Lodger, a sto­ry he’d pre­vi­ous­ly filmed silent in 1926.

Even if they’ve nev­er heard a sin­gle old-time radio broad­cast, most peo­ple who know of Orson Welles know that the man who made Cit­i­zen Kane also made a sig­nif­i­cant mark on the air­waves. He defined the tit­u­lar role of the mind-cloud­ing crime-fight­er The Shad­ow when that series pre­miered in 1937, and the very next year he aired his infa­mous­ly to0-believ­able Hal­loween adap­ta­tion of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. But Welles’ radio work con­tin­ued even after he launched the film career through which we’ve come to know him today, with pro­duc­tions such as a Sus­pense ver­sion of the play The Hitch-Hik­er in 1942.

Welles did­n’t just direct the adap­ta­tion but also starred in it, which he would do four times on the radio in total. “The Hitch-Hik­er was writ­ten for Orson Welles in the days when he was one of the mas­ter pro­duc­ers and actors in radio,” writes its author Lucille Fletch­er. “It was designed to pro­vide a vehi­cle not only for his famous voice, but for the orig­i­nal tech­niques of sound which became asso­ci­at­ed with his radio pre­sen­ta­tions.” Welles and his Mer­cury Play­ers “made of this script a haunt­ing study of the super­nat­ur­al, which can still raise hack­les along my own spine.” Both The Hitch-Hik­er and The Lodger count as high points in the two-decade run of Sus­pense, but if you lis­ten to the 90 oth­er episodes free at the Inter­net Archive (or by stream­ing the thin playlist above), you’ll feel hack­les raised along your own spine in plen­ty of oth­er ways as well.

Sus­pense will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 22-Year-Old Orson Welles Star in The Shad­ow, the Icon­ic 1930s Super Crime­fight­er Radio Show

Stream 61 Hours of Orson Welles’ Clas­sic 1930s Radio Plays: War of the Worlds,Heart of Dark­ness & More

The War of the Worlds: Orson Welles’ 1938 Radio Dra­ma That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

Hear Aldous Hux­ley Read Brave New World. Plus 84 Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas from CBS Radio Work­shop (1956–57)

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

X Minus One: More Clas­sic 1950s Sci-Fi Radio from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

4 Hours of Charles Bukowski’s Riotous Readings and Rants

in Audio Books, Poetry | May 10th, 2016

Draw­ing by Graziano Ori­ga, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

An old man sits alone, rant­i­ng in a nasal­ly monot­o­nous drone. He breaks into rue­ful laugh­ter, threats of vio­lence, mock­ery, maudlin lament…. An angry drunk­en uncle cry­ing out into the wilder­ness of a Tues­day night ben­der? A tough guy left behind in the world, unable to stom­ach its restric­tions and blithe hypocrisies? A mad poet on his way to the grave? An every­man ram­bler whose seen-it-all can­dor and hardass sense of humor com­mand the com­mon people’s ear?

All of the above was beloved nov­el­ist, racon­teur, poet, and tren­chant essay­ist Charles Bukows­ki. It’s easy to car­i­ca­ture Bukows­ki for his life­long romance with booze, a dom­i­nant theme in near­ly all of his auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal­ly-inspired poems and sto­ries. But in writ­ing of the life an alco­holic artist, him­self, he also uncov­ered in extrem­is gen­er­al truths about human exis­tence that many peo­ple spend their lives try­ing to avoid. The pain, and solace, of lone­li­ness, rejec­tion, and self-doubt, the des­per­ate need for for­ti­tude in the face of seem­ing hope­less­ness.

Bukows­ki is not only a hero to so many would-be writ­ers because of his epic bar­room tales and rock-star-cal­iber drink­ing bouts. If that were so, his sto­ries might quick­ly grow tedious. What Bukows­ki had over the run-of-the-mill pub reg­u­lars was a sur­pris­ing amount of emo­tion­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and self-aware­ness, and a desire to com­mu­ni­cate his expe­ri­ences with the same raw hon­esty as his lit­er­ary hero, Dos­to­evsky. Put sim­ply, Bukows­ki pos­sessed an abun­dance of what Keats called “neg­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty.”

He also had a good deal of luck. If even a hand­ful of the sto­ries he tells about his life are true, it’s a won­der he didn’t die sev­er­al times over. Take his recount­ing below of a live 1979 Van­cou­ver per­for­mance, footage of which became the doc­u­men­tary film There’s Gonna Be a God Damn Riot in Here. In a let­ter that year to a friend, he wrote:

Back from Cana­di­an read­ing. Took Lin­da. Have video tapes of the thing in col­or, runs about two hours. Saw it a cou­ple nights back. Not bad. Much fight­ing with the audi­ence. New poems. Dirty stuff and the oth­er kind. Drank before the read­ing and 3 bot­tles of red wine dur­ing but read the poems out. Dumb par­ty after­wards. I fell down sev­er­al times while danc­ing. They got me back on the ele­va­tor back at the hotel and I kept hol­ler­ing for anoth­er bot­tle. Poor Lin­da. After­wards in hotel room, kept falling. Final­ly fell against the radi­a­tor and cracked a 6 inch gash in skull. Blood every­where. Hell of a trip…Nice Cana­di­an peo­ple who set up read­ing, though. Not poet types at all. All in all, a good show…

The video tapes were Bukowski’s idea—he insist­ed on the record­ing as a con­di­tion for mak­ing the trip. And you can hear audio of the entire per­for­mance at the top on Spo­ti­fy (get Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware here; or lis­ten on Youtube here). Also on the playlist are two oth­er Bukows­ki spo­ken-word albums, Charles Bukows­ki Mas­ter Col­lec­tion, and Hostage. The lat­ter, writes Ama­zon, “has to be one of the row­di­est poet­ry records ever released, which makes sense con­sid­er­ing how drunk Bukows­ki plain­ly is.” But “the drink nev­er gets in the way of his deliv­ery,” and his tough-but-ten­der verse comes through plain­ly, even if it seems like there might be a riot any minute. Only Bukows­ki could have pulled this off and lived to tell the tale.

Find these Bukows­ki read­ings added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Charles Bukows­ki Poems Being Read by Bukows­ki Him­self & the Great Tom Waits

Watch “Beer,” a Mind-Warp­ing Ani­ma­tion of Charles Bukowski’s 1971 Poem Hon­or­ing His Favorite Drink

Four Charles Bukows­ki Poems Ani­mat­ed

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

The Thomas Pynchon Crossword Puzzle

in Literature | May 9th, 2016

Fun. For Thomas Pyn­chon’s birth­day, the New York Pub­lic Library cre­at­ed a Pyn­chon cross­word puz­zle. You can fill out the cross­word online, or down­load the PDF to print.  Look for the answers on the NYPL web site today.

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!

Learn Calligraphy from Lloyd Reynolds, the Teacher of Steve Jobs’ Own Famously Inspiring Calligraphy Teacher

in Art, How to Learn for Free, Television | May 9th, 2016

The sto­ry has, over time, solid­i­fied into one of the columns of Steve Jobs lore: in the ear­ly 1970s, the man who would found Apple left for Reed Col­lege. But before long, not want­i­ng to spend any more of his par­ents’ mon­ey on tuition (and per­haps not tem­pera­men­tal­ly com­pat­i­ble with the struc­ture of high­er edu­ca­tion any­way), he offi­cial­ly dropped out, couch-surfed through friends’ pads, lived on free meals ladled out by Hare Krish­nas, con­tin­ued to audit a vari­ety of class­es, and gen­er­al­ly lived the pro­to­type tech­no-neo-hip­pie lifestyle Sil­i­con Val­ley has con­tin­ued relent­less­ly to refine.

Per­haps the least like­ly of those class­es was one on cal­lig­ra­phy, taught by Trap­pist monk and cal­lig­ra­ph­er Robert Pal­ladi­no. More than thir­ty years lat­er, deliv­er­ing a now-famous Stan­ford com­mence­ment speech, Jobs recalled his time in the cal­lig­ra­phy class: “None of this had even a hope of any prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion in my life. But 10 years lat­er, when we were design­ing the first Mac­in­tosh com­put­er, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first com­put­er with beau­ti­ful typog­ra­phy.”

And what of the cal­lig­ra­phy teacher who made that pos­si­ble? “Pal­ladi­no, who died in late Feb­ru­ary at 83, joined the Trap­pist order of monks in New Mex­i­co in 1950, accord­ing to a 2003 pro­file in Reed Mag­a­zine,” writes the Wash­ing­ton Post’s Niraj Chok­shi. “Just 17 at the time, his hand­writ­ing attract­ed the atten­tion of the monastery scribe, who worked with him on his art. Five years lat­er, Pal­ladi­no moved to Lafayette, Ore., where local artists brought news of a skilled ama­teur to Lloyd Reynolds, an icon in the field and the cre­ator of Reed’s cal­lig­ra­phy pro­gram.”

Now you, too, can receive instruc­tion from Reynolds, who in 1968 starred in a series on the Ore­gon Edu­ca­tion Tele­vi­sion Ser­vice’s pro­gram Men Who Teach, shoot­ing twen­ty half-hour broad­casts on ital­ic cal­lig­ra­phy and hand­writ­ing. Eight years lat­er — about the time Jobs co-found­ed Apple with Steve Woz­ni­ak — he re-shot the series in col­or, and you can watch that ver­sion almost in its entire­ty with the playlist at the top of the post. (Reed has also made some relat­ed instruc­tion­al mate­ri­als avail­able.) You may feel the temp­ta­tion to turn all of Reynolds’ lessons on the art of writ­ing toward your goal of becom­ing the next Steve Jobs. But try to resist that impulse and appre­ci­ate it for its own nature, which Jobs him­self described as “beau­ti­ful, his­tor­i­cal, artis­ti­cal­ly sub­tle in a way that sci­ence can’t cap­ture.”

We’ll add these vin­tage lessons to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Jobs on Life: “Stay Hun­gry, Stay Fool­ish”

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

Steve Jobs Mus­es on What’s Wrong with Amer­i­can Edu­ca­tion, 1995

The Art of Hand­writ­ing as Prac­ticed by Famous Artists: Geor­gia O’Keeffe, Jack­son Pol­lock, Mar­cel Duchamp, Willem de Koon­ing & More

Font Based on Sig­mund Freud’s Hand­writ­ing Com­ing Cour­tesy of Suc­cess­ful Kick­starter Cam­paign

One of World’s Old­est Books Print­ed in Mul­ti-Col­or Now Opened & Dig­i­tized for the First Time

Dis­cov­er What Shakespeare’s Hand­writ­ing Looked Like, and How It Solved a Mys­tery of Author­ship

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

Hear Dante’s Inferno Read Aloud by Influential Poet & Translator John Ciardi (1954)

in Poetry | May 9th, 2016

On the 750th birth­day of Dante Alighieri—com­pos­er of the dizzy­ing­ly epic medieval poem the Divine Com­e­dy—Eng­lish pro­fes­sor John Klein­er point­ed to one way of help­ing under­grad­u­ate stu­dents under­stand the Ital­ian poet’s impor­tance: an “obvi­ous com­par­i­son” with Shake­speare. They both occu­py sin­gu­lar­ly defin­i­tive places in their respec­tive lan­guages and lit­er­a­tures as well as in world lit­er­a­ture, Klein­er sug­gest­ed, and indeed no less a crit­i­cal per­son­age than T.S. Eliot once wrote, “Dante and Shake­speare divide the world between them. There is no third.”

And yet, those who know the epic Eng­lish poems Par­adise Lost and Par­adise Regained—heav­i­ly influ­enced by Dante’s work—may find John Mil­ton a more apt com­par­i­son. Mil­ton also made com­plex uses of the­ol­o­gy as polit­i­cal alle­go­ry, and wrote polit­i­cal tracts as pas­sion­ate and res­olute as his poet­ry. Both Mil­ton and Dante were intense­ly par­ti­san writ­ers who expand­ed their world­ly con­flicts into the eter­nal realms of heav­en and hell.

Like Mil­ton, Dante’s for­ma­tive polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence involved a civ­il war—in his case between two fac­tions known as the Guelphs and the Ghi­bellines (then fur­ther between the “White Guelphs” and the “Black Guelphs.”) And like Mil­ton, Dante had spe­cial access to the pow­er­ful of his day. Unlike the Eng­lish poet and defend­er of regi­cide, how­ev­er, Dante was a strict monar­chist who even went so far as to pro­pose a glob­al monar­chy under Holy Roman Emper­or Hen­ry VII. And while Mil­ton veiled his polit­i­cal ref­er­ences in alle­gor­i­cal sym­bol­ism, Dante bold­ly named his adver­saries in his poem, and sub­ject­ed them to gris­ly, inven­tive tor­tures in his vivid depic­tion of hell.

Indeed, Dante’s lit­er­ary per­se­cu­tion of his oppo­nents presents one of the fore­most dif­fi­cul­ties for mod­ern read­ers of the Infer­no. In addi­tion to cat­a­logu­ing the num­ber of clas­si­cal and mytho­log­i­cal char­ac­ters Dante encoun­ters in his infer­nal sojourn, we must wade through pages of con­tex­tu­al notes to find out who var­i­ous con­tem­po­rary char­ac­ters were, and why they have been con­demned to their respec­tive lev­els and tor­ments. Most of his named his­tor­i­cal sufferers—including Pope Boni­face VII—had died by the time of his writ­ing, but some still lived. Of two such cas­es, one online guide notes humor­ous­ly, “Dante explains their pres­ence in Hell by say­ing that they were so sin­ful that the dev­il did not wait for them to die before snatch­ing their souls…. Obvi­ous­ly libel laws were not that strict in Medieval Italy.”

The Infer­no treats the exis­tence of hell and the griev­ous sins that con­sign its inhab­i­tants there with the utmost seri­ous­ness. And yet, the pres­ence of Dante’s many per­son­al and polit­i­cal ene­mies injects no small amount of dark humor into the poem, such that one can read it as polit­i­cal satire as well as an inge­nious mar­riage of medieval Catholic the­ol­o­gy and phi­los­o­phy with the poet­ry of court­ly love. The rich­ness of the Divine Com­e­dy’s rhetor­i­cal world invites a great many inter­pre­ta­tions, but it also demands much of its read­er. To meet its chal­lenge, we might lean on excel­lent ref­er­ence guides like the online World of Dante, which offers a ful­ly anno­tat­ed text in Eng­lish and Ital­ian, as well as maps, charts, and dia­grams of the hell­ish world, and visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions like Gus­tave Doré’s illus­tra­tion from Can­to 6 at the top.

And we might lis­ten to the poem read aloud. Here, we have one read­ing of Can­tos I‑VIII of the Infer­no by poet John Cia­r­di, from his trans­la­tion of the poem for a Signet Clas­sics Edi­tion. Cia­r­di (known as “Mr. Poet” dur­ing his day) made his record­ing in 1954 for Smith­son­ian Folk­ways records, and the lin­er notes of the LP, which you can down­load here, con­tain the excerpt­ed “verse ren­der­ing for the mod­ern read­er.” The trans­la­tion pre­serves Dante’s terza rima in very elo­quent, yet acces­si­ble lan­guage, fit­ting giv­en Dan­te’s own use and defense of the ver­nac­u­lar. You can hear the com­plete read­ing on Spo­ti­fy (down­load the soft­ware here) or on Youtube just above.

Cia­rdi’s read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

You can also find a course on Dante (from Yale) in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Mœbius Illus­trates Dante’s Par­adiso

Artists Illus­trate Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Through the Ages: Doré, Blake, Bot­ti­cel­li, Mœbius & More

William Blake’s Last Work: Illus­tra­tions for Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1827)

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

Stream Billy Collins’ Album, The Best Cigarette, Free Online

in | May 8th, 2016

Image by Marce­lo Noah, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“In the near­ly three dozen poems [Bil­ly Collins] reads on this disc, the imme­di­ate genius of a stand-up com­ic is joined to the slow intelligence–the lay­er­ing of life and learning–of an accom­plished poet. He’s been my com­pan­ion on the best car rides of the past few weeks, and I’ll be lis­ten­ing to him again tonight. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.”

That’s how one read­er and fan describes The Best Cig­a­rette, the 1997 album by Bil­ly Collins, which you can stream for free on Spo­ti­fy. If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it 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!

The New Radiohead Album is Out; Watch a Paul Thomas Anderson-Directed Music Video for One of the New Singles

in Music | May 8th, 2016

Since 1997, Paul Thomas Ander­son (There Will Be Blood, Boo­gie Nights, and Mag­no­lia) has direct­ed 11 music videos (watch them here)–five alone for Fiona Apple, and now the first of hope­ful­ly many for Radio­head. Above, watch the cin­e­mat­ic touch Ander­son puts on the new Radio­head sin­gle “Day­dream­ing.” And, if you want, down­load Radio­head­’s new album, A Moon Shaped Pool, which just became avail­able min­utes ago on dig­i­tal plat­forms (Ama­zon, iTunes, the band’s web­site, etc). A release in vinyl/CD is sched­uled for June 17th.

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:

Delight in Prince’s Extra­or­di­nar­i­ly Poignant Cov­er of Radiohead’s “Creep” & His Com­plete 2008 Coachel­la Set

How Paul Thomas Ander­son Dropped Out of NYU Film School in 2 Days; Stud­ied Lit­er­a­ture with David Fos­ter Wal­lace

Radiohead’s “Creep” Per­formed in a Vin­tage Jazz-Age Style

Radio­head-Approved, Fan-Made Film of the Band at Rose­land for 2011’s The King of Limbs Tour

Download Sigmund Freud’s Great Works as Free eBooks & Free Audio Books: A Digital Celebration on His 160th Birthday

in Psychology | May 6th, 2016

Image by Max Hal­ber­stadt via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Any­one with a pass­ing famil­iar­i­ty with the work of Sig­mund Freud—which is just about everyone—knows at least a hand­ful of things about his famous psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic the­o­ry: Ego, Super-ego, and Id, sex and death dri­ves, Oedi­pal com­plex, “Freudi­an slip,” “some­times a cig­ar is just a cig­ar”… (a quote that didn’t come from Freud). Most of these terms, except that cig­ar thing, orig­i­nate from Freud’s lat­er period—from about 1920 to his death in 1939—perhaps his most pro­duc­tive from a lit­er­ary stand­point, start­ing with Beyond the Plea­sure Prin­ci­ple, in which he began to devel­op his well-known struc­tur­al mod­el of the mind.

Dur­ing these lat­er years Freud built on ideas from 1913’s Totem and Taboo and ful­ly expand­ed his psy­cho­log­i­cal analy­sis into a philo­soph­i­cal and cul­tur­al the­o­ry in books like The Future of an Illu­sion, Civ­i­liza­tion and its Dis­con­tents, and Moses and Monothe­ism. For those who have pri­mar­i­ly encoun­tered Freud in intro to psych class­es, these works can seem strange indeed, giv­en the sweep­ing spec­u­la­tive claims the Vien­nese doc­tor makes about reli­gion, war, ancient his­to­ry, and even pre­his­to­ry. Though pep­pered with ter­mi­nol­o­gy from psy­cho­analy­sis, Freud’s more philo­soph­i­cal works roam far afield of his med­ical spe­cial­iza­tions and direct obser­va­tions.

When and how did Freud’s psy­chi­a­try become phi­los­o­phy, and what pos­sessed him to apply his psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ries to analy­ses of broad social and his­tor­i­cal dynam­ics? We see hints of Freud the philoso­pher through­out his career, but it’s dur­ing his mid­dle period—when his tri­par­tite mod­el of the psy­che still con­sist­ed of the con­scious, pre­con­scious, and unconscious—that he began to move more ful­ly from case stud­ies of indi­vid­ual psy­cho­sex­u­al devel­op­ment and inter­pre­ta­tions of dreams to stud­ies of human devel­op­ment writ large. These books are almost Dar­win­ian expan­sions of what Freud called “metapsychology”—which includ­ed his the­o­ries of Oedi­pal neu­roses, nar­cis­sism, and sado­masochism.

From 1914 to 1915, after his break with Jung, Freud worked on a series of papers on “metapsy­chol­o­gy,” intend­ed, he wrote “to clar­i­fy and car­ry deep­er the the­o­ret­i­cal assump­tions on which a psy­cho-ana­lyt­ic sys­tem could be found­ed.” Sev­en of the man­u­scripts from this peri­od van­ished, seem­ing­ly lost for­ev­er. In 1983, psy­cho­an­a­lyst Ilse Gru­bich-Simi­tis dis­cov­ered one of these essays in an old trunk belong­ing to a friend and col­league of Freud. Pub­lished as A Phy­lo­ge­net­ic Fan­ta­sy, this fas­ci­nat­ing, unfin­ished work points the way for­ward for Freud, pro­vid­ing some con­nec­tive tis­sue between his “ontoge­ny,” the devel­op­ment of the indi­vid­ual, and “phy­loge­ny,” the devel­op­ment of the species.

It is here, his trans­la­tors write in their intro­duc­tion to this rare work, that Freud “con­cludes that each indi­vid­ual con­tains some­where with­in him­self or her­self the his­to­ry of all mankind; fur­ther, that men­tal ill­ness can use­ful­ly be under­stood as a ves­tige of respons­es once nec­es­sary and high­ly adap­tive to the exi­gen­cies of each era. Accord­ing­ly, men­tal ill­ness can be under­stood as a set of for­mer­ly adap­tive respons­es that have become mal­adap­tive as the cli­mat­ic and soci­o­log­i­cal threats to the sur­vival of mankind have changed.”

These basic, yet rad­i­cal, ideas may be said to form a back­drop against which we might read so much of Freud’s mature work as a means for decod­ing what seems puz­zling, irra­tional, and down­right mad­den­ing about human behav­ior. Freud’s sci­en­tif­ic work has long been super­seded, and many of the specifics of his psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic the­o­ry deemed unwork­able, irrel­e­vant, or even dam­ag­ing. But there are very good rea­sons why his work has thrived in lit­er­ary the­o­ry and phi­los­o­phy. There is even a case to be made the Freud was the first evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist, rough­ly bring­ing Dar­win­ian con­cepts of adap­ta­tion to bear on the devel­op­ment of the human psy­che from pre­his­to­ry to moder­ni­ty.

For all the neg­a­tive crit­i­cism his work has endured, Freud dared to explain us to our­selves, draw­ing on every resource at his disposal—including our most foun­da­tion­al nar­ra­tives in mythol­o­gy and ancient poet­ry. For that rea­son, his rel­e­vance, writes Jane Cia­bat­tari, as a “the­o­ret­i­cal cat­a­lyst” in the 21^st cen­tu­ry remains potent, and his work remains well worth read­ing and pon­der­ing, for any stu­dent of human behav­ior.

Today, on the 160^th birth­day of the father of psy­cho­analy­sis, we bring you a col­lec­tion of Freud’s major works avail­able free to read online or down­load as ebooks in the links below. Fur­ther down, find a list of Freud audio­books to down­load as mp3s or stream.

Whether root­ed in clin­i­cal study and research, detec­tive-like case stud­ies, philo­soph­i­cal spec­u­la­tions, or poet­ic flights of fan­cy, Freud’s writ­ing draws us deep­er into strange, obses­sive, pro­found, and dis­turb­ing ways of think­ing about our uneasy rela­tion­ships with our­selves, our fam­i­lies, and our unsta­ble social order.

eBooks

• A Gen­er­al Intro­duc­tion to Psy­cho­analy­sis
  • Read Online
• Beyond the Plea­sure Prin­ci­ple
  • Read Online
• Delu­sion and Dream
  • Read Online
• Dream Psy­chol­o­gy: Psy­cho­analy­sis for Begin­ners
  • Read Online
• Group Psy­chol­o­gy and the Analy­sis of the Ego
  • Read Online
• Inter­pre­ta­tion of Dreams
  • Read Online
• Leonar­do da Vin­ci
  • Read Online
• Moses And Monothe­ism
  • Read Online
• Ori­gin and Devel­op­ment of Psy­cho­analy­sis
  • Read Online
• Psy­chopathol­o­gy of Every­day Life
  • Read Online
• Reflec­tions on War and Death
  • Read Online
• Select­ed Papers on Hys­te­ria and Oth­er Psy­choneu­roses
  • Read Online
• The His­to­ry of the Psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic Move­ment
  • Read Online
• Three Con­tri­bu­tions to the Sex­u­al The­o­ry
  • Read Online
• Totem and Taboo
  • Read Online
• Wit and Its Rela­tion to the Uncon­scious
  • Read Online

Audio Books

• A Gen­er­al Intro­duc­tion to Psy­cho­analy­sis
  • Free Stream
• Dream Psy­chol­o­gy
  • Free Stream
• Psy­chopathol­o­gy of Every­day Life
  • Free Stream
• Reflec­tions on War and Death
  • Free Stream
• The Inter­pre­ta­tion of Dreams
  • Free Stream
• Totem and Taboo
  • Free Stream

Relat­ed Con­tents:

Sig­mund Freud’s Psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic Draw­ings Show How He First Visu­al­ized the Ego, Super­ego, Id & More

The Famous Let­ter Where Freud Breaks His Rela­tion­ship with Jung (1913)

Sig­mund Freud Appears in Rare, Sur­viv­ing Video & Audio Record­ed Dur­ing the 1930s

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

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

Watch “Beer,” a Mind-Warping Animation of Charles Bukowski’s 1971 Poem Honoring His Favorite Drink

in Animation, Poetry | May 6th, 2016

Charles Bukows­ki could real­ly write. Charles Bukows­ki could real­ly drink. These two facts, sure­ly the best-known ones about the “lowlife lau­re­ate” of a poet and author of such nov­els as Post Office and Ham on Rye (as well as what we might call his lifestyle col­umn, “Notes of a Dirty Old Man”), go togeth­er. Drink­ing pro­vid­ed enough of the sub­ject mat­ter of his prose and verse — and, in life, enough of the fuel for the exis­tence he observed on the page with such rough-edged evoca­tive artistry — that we can hard­ly imag­ine Bukowski’s writ­ing with­out his drink­ing, or his drink­ing with­out his writ­ing.

We would nat­u­ral­ly expect him, then, to have writ­ten an ode to beer, one of his drinks of choice. “Beer,” which appeared in Bukowski’s 1971 poet­ry col­lec­tion Love Is a Dog from Hell, pays trib­ute to the count­less bot­tles the man drank “while wait­ing for things to get bet­ter,” “after splits with women,” “wait­ing for the phone to ring,” “wait­ing for the sounds of foot­steps.”

The female, he writes, knows not to con­sume beer to excess in the male man­ner, as “she knows its bad for the fig­ure.” But Bukows­ki, fig­ure be damned, finds in this most work­ing-class of all drinks a kind of solace.

“Beer” comes to life in the ani­ma­tion above by NERDO. “The com­po­si­tion is a man­i­festo of the author’s way of life, this is why we decid­ed to go inside the author’s mind, and it is not a safe jour­ney,” say the accom­pa­ny­ing notes. “A brain solo with­out fil­ter, a tale of ordi­nary mad­ness, show­ing how much lone­li­ness and deca­dence can be hid­den inside a genius mind.” This wild ride pass­es what we now rec­og­nize as many visu­al sig­ni­fiers of the Bukowskian expe­ri­ence: neon signs, cig­a­rettes, decay­ing city blocks, tawdry Polaroids — and, of course, beer, lit­er­al­ly “rivers and seas of beer,” which no less a fel­low ani­mat­ed enthu­si­ast of the bev­er­age than Homer Simp­son once, just as elo­quent­ly, pro­nounced “the cause of, and solu­tion to, all of life’s prob­lems.”

“Beer” will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four Charles Bukows­ki Poems Ani­mat­ed

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”

Hear 130 Min­utes of Charles Bukowski’s First-Ever Record­ed Read­ings (1968)

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

“Notes from a Dirty Old Man”: Charles Bukowski’s Lost Car­toons from the 60s and 70s

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

Watch Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue: The PBS American Masters Documentary That’s Streaming Free for a Limited Time

in Film, Music | May 4th, 2016

A very quick heads up: Until the end of the month, you can stream free online Janis Joplin: Lit­tle Girl Blue, a new doc­u­men­tary from PBS’ Amer­i­can Mas­ters series. Writes PBS:

The broad­cast fea­tures Amy Berg’s nev­er-before-seen extend­ed film cut with addi­tion­al archival per­for­mance footage and new inter­views with Jan­ice Joplin’s sis­ter Lau­ra Joplin and musi­cians influ­enced by Janis: Ale­cia Moore (a.k.a. Pink), Juli­ette Lewis, Melis­sa Etheridge and the film’s nar­ra­tor, Chan Mar­shall, who is best known as indie rock star Cat Pow­er.

The doc runs 102 min­utes, and just start­ed air­ing on tele­vi­sion on PBS this week. Enjoy.

h/t goes to Elana and Robin.

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:

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

Remem­ber­ing Janis Joplin: Some Clas­sic Live Per­for­mances and Pre­views of a New Joplin Musi­cal

Dick Cavett’s Epic Wood­stock Fes­ti­val Show (August, 1969)