The 321 Books in David Foster Wallace’s Personal Library: From Blood Meridian to Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder

in Books | July 10th, 2015

Not long after David Fos­ter Wal­lace died, his fans found them­selves with a new place of pil­grim­age: not his tomb­stone, in the man­ner of a Jim Mor­ri­son or a Kurt Cobain, but his lit­er­ary archives. You’ll find them at the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin. From their col­lec­tion, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Wal­lace’s fall 1994 Eng­lish 102 syl­labus from when he taught at Illi­nois State Uni­ver­si­ty, his Eng­lish 183A hand­out break­ing down (in the way that only he could) five com­mon usage mis­takes, and the lan­guage books con­tained in his per­son­al library.

Any read­er even casu­al­ly acquaint­ed with Wal­lace’s nov­els and essays will imme­di­ate­ly sense his deep inter­est in lan­guage. But if you browse through the Ran­som Cen­ter’s col­lec­tion of 321 books from the author of Infi­nite Jest and A Sup­pos­ed­ly Fun Thing I’ll Nev­er Do Again’s own shelves (most of them seem­ing­ly well-anno­tat­ed), you’ll find a good deal of evi­dence about what else inter­est­ed him. The Awl’s Maria Bustil­los did a post on the sur­pris­ing vari­ety of self-help books found there­in. Oth­er rep­re­sent­ed types of books include:

• Mass-mar­ket thrillers like Thomas Har­ris’ The Silence of the Lambs, Han­ni­bal and Han­ni­bal Ris­ing, and Stephen King’s Car­rie
• The nov­els of his peers like Rick Moody’s The Divin­ers, Richard Pow­ers’ Gain, Galatea 2.2, and Oper­a­tion Wan­der­ing Soul, Mark Leyn­er’s Et Tu, Babe and My Cousin, My Gas­troen­terol­o­gist, Jonathan Franzen’s Strong Motion, Cor­mac McCarthy’s Blood Merid­i­an and Nichol­son Bak­er’s Room Tem­per­a­ture
• Books he wrote about like Bryan Gar­ner’s A Dic­tio­nary of Mod­ern Amer­i­can Usage, Edwin Williamson’s Borges: A Life, John Updike’s Toward the End of Time
• Books on his own work like William C. Dowl­ing’s A Read­er’s Com­pan­ion to Infi­nite Jest
• Books on the mid­west from which he came like A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Mid­west
• Books clear­ly used as research mate­ri­als for his final, incom­plete, IRS-cen­tric nov­el The Pale King like Michael J. Graet­z’s The U.S. Income Tax: What It Is, How It Got That Way, and Where We Go from Here, William L. Raby’s The Reluc­tant Tax­pay­er, and Mar­ty Kaplan’s What the IRS Does­n’t Want You to Know: A CPA Reveals the Tricks of the Trade
• My own favorite nov­els like Joseph Heller’s Some­thing Hap­pened, Richard Yates’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Road, and Alexan­der Ther­oux’s Dar­conville’s Cat

Have a look, and maybe you too can find a few of your own cur­rent or future favorite books. We could all do worse, after all, than to read like David Fos­ter Wal­lace did, even if it leads us to the occa­sion­al vol­ume like Mus­cle: Con­fes­sions of an Unlike­ly Body­builder; Barbed Wire: A Polit­i­cal His­to­ry; or Jack B. Nim­ble’s The Con­struc­tion and Oper­a­tion of Clan­des­tine Drug Lab­o­ra­to­ries. And for a week­end activ­i­ty, we could do worse than com­par­ing Wal­lace’s per­son­al library to that of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, which we fea­tured last year.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Breaks Down Five Com­mon Word Usage Mis­takes in Eng­lish

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

CERN’s Cosmic Piano and Jazz Pianist Jam Together at The Montreux Jazz Festival

in Music, Physics | July 10th, 2015

The Mon­treux Jazz Fes­ti­val — the sec­ond largest jazz fes­ti­val in the world — has seen many acts come and go since it kicked off in 1967. Miles Davis, Kei­th Jar­rett, Nina Simone, Bill Evans and Ella Fitzger­ald have all played there. And now we have the first con­cert per­formed by a jazz pianist (Al Blat­ter) and The Cos­mic Piano, an instru­ment cre­at­ed by par­ti­cle physi­cists at CERN, the home of the Large Hadron Col­lid­er, in Switzer­land. The Cos­mic Piano works some­thing like this: “When a cos­mic ray pass­es through one of four sep­a­rate detec­tor pads of the Cos­mic Piano, it trig­gers a musi­cal note and a colour­ful flash of light.” The rays arrive in ran­dom inter­vals, and once they’re com­bined with Blat­ter’s notes, you get some inter­est­ing polyrhyth­mic jazz. Catch a few high­lights above, and get more back­ground infor­ma­tion and video clips on CERN’s web site.

via @matthiasrascher

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA & Grate­ful Dead Drum­mer Mick­ey Hart Record Cos­mic Sounds of the Uni­verse on New Album

The Sound­track of the Uni­verse

CERN Physi­cist Explains the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse for Begin­ners with a Short Ani­mat­ed Video

Hig­gs Boson, the Musi­cal: CERN Data Turned into Melody

Free Stan­ford Course Explains Par­ti­cle Physics & the Large Hadron Col­lid­er

Free Online Physics Cours­es

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

Neil Gaiman & Famous Friends Read Aloud the Entirety of Coraline (and The Graveyard Book Too)

in Audio Books, Books, K-12, Literature | July 10th, 2015

One of the many plea­sures of hear­ing a children’s author read­ing his or her own work is their over­whelm­ing lack of vocal sen­ti­ment. When my chil­dren were young, I always opt­ed for the horse’s mouth, over the more histri­on­ic char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of a hired nar­ra­tor, regard­less of what sit­com or Broad­way play he or she may have starred in. It might have tak­en author E.B. White 17 takes to lay down a track for Charlotte’s Web’s tit­u­lar character’s death scene, but he even­tu­al­ly achieved the healthy remove that lets the listener—not the reader—wallow in the val­ley of deep emo­tions.

Neil Gaiman’s Cora­line is not a weepie, like White’s best loved work. Instead, it rev­els in a sort of under­stat­ed creepi­ness en route to the hor­rif­i­cal­ly bizarre. It’s a tone his fel­low lit­er­ary celebs are bliss­ful­ly well equipped to deliv­er, read­ing chap­ters aloud in hon­or of the book’s 10th anniver­sary. You can see them read all of the chap­ters here and also above and below.

Gaiman him­self book­ends the pro­ceed­ings by claim­ing the first (above) and final chap­ter. Lucky that. One shud­ders to think of the myr­i­ad ways in which a nar­ra­tor of cute­si­er sen­si­bil­i­ties could have screwed up phras­es like “oom­pah oom­pah” and “squidy brown toad­stools” (thus blight­ing the entire book).

I con­ceive of these read­ings as a mul­ti­ple nar­ra­tor audio­book because the per­form­ers are read­ing, rather than attempt­ing to act out the text in their hands, but real­ly it’s more of a video sto­ry­time. Gaiman is def­i­nite­ly on point in front of the camera—his large brown eyes, promi­nent pro­boscis and stringy ster­n­oclei­do­mas­toid mus­cles adding to the pro­ceed­ings.

Sand­wiched in between the master’s per­for­mances, you will find such lumi­nar­ies as authors R.L. Stine, John Hodg­man, and Daniel “Lemo­ny Snick­et” Han­dler, framed so that he has no head. For­mer child star Fairuza Balk would’ve made a gim­crack Cora­line back in the day, but her ren­di­tion of the book’s penul­ti­mate chap­ter sug­gests that she’s even bet­ter suit­ed to the role of Coraline’s “Oth­er Moth­er,” or rather her dis­em­bod­ied hand. Bed­lam, indeed.

Lis­ten to the 10th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion of the book in its entire­ty here.

Should that leave you want­i­ng more, Harp­er Collins has com­piled a stem to stern playlist of Gaiman read­ing 2008’s The Grave­yard Book, culled from var­i­ous videos of the author on tour. You can watch it above, or find it in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman Reads “The Man Who For­got Ray Brad­bury”

Where Do Great Ideas Come From? Neil Gaiman Explains

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

How to Make Sure You Get Open Culture in Your Facebook Newsfeed: Now You Can Take Control

in Media, Technology | July 9th, 2015

For the longest time, Face­book gave you no abil­i­ty to con­trol what con­tent you see in your Face­book news­feed. Some 378,000 peo­ple have “liked” our Face­book page. But only a frac­tion actu­al­ly see Open Cul­ture posts in their news­feed. That’s because a Face­book algo­rithm start­ed mak­ing the deci­sions for you, show­ing you mate­r­i­al from some people/publishers, and not oth­ers.

Now, Face­book has final­ly intro­duced a new fea­ture that will let you con­trol what you see. Please check out the instruc­tions below. When you’re done read­ing them, con­sid­er giv­ing us a Like on Face­book, and then set your news­feed accord­ing­ly. (You get bonus points if you Fol­low us on Twit­ter too!)

• If you’re using a mobile phone, open the Face­book app, click the “More” icon along the bot­tom of the app, then scroll down and click “News­feed pref­er­ences,” then click “Pri­or­i­tize who to see first,” and make your picks. (You can select more than one item.)
• If you’re using Face­book on a com­put­er, click on the down­ward fac­ing arrow on the top nav bar, then click “News­feed pref­er­ences,” locate one of the peo­ple or pub­lish­ers you fol­low, and change the set­ting from “Fol­low­ing” to “See First.”

Hope all of that makes sense.

A Dreamily Animated Introduction to Haruki Murakami, Japan’s Jazz and Baseball-Loving Postmodern Novelist

in Animation, Literature | July 9th, 2015

If the impres­sion­is­tic ani­ma­tion style of psy­chol­o­gist, writer, and film­mak­er Ilana Simons’ “About Haru­ki Murakami”—a short video intro­duc­tion to the jazz bar own­ing, marathon run­ning, Japan­ese novelist—puts you in mind of Richard Lin­klater’s Wak­ing Life, then the ellip­ti­cal, lucid dream nar­ra­tion may do so even more. “He did­n’t use too many words,” Simons tells us. “Too many words is kin­da… too many words. Some­one’s always los­ing their voice. Some­one’s hear­ing is acute. Haru­ki Muraka­mi.” Like Roger Ebert said of Lin­klater’s film, Simons’ ode to Murakami—and the nov­el­ist’s work itself—is “philo­soph­i­cal and play­ful at the same time.”

Simons reads us Murakami’s exis­ten­tial­ist account of how he became a nov­el­ist, at age 29, after hav­ing an epiphany at a base­ball game: “The idea struck me,” he says, “I could write a nov­el…. I could do it.” And he did, sit­ting down every night after work­ing the bar he owned with his wife, writ­ing by hand and drink­ing beer. “Before that,” he has said in an inter­view with singer/songwriter John Wes­ley Hard­ing, “I did­n’t write any­thing. I was just one of those ordi­nary peo­ple. I was run­ning a jazz club, and I did­n’t cre­ate any­thing at all.” And it’s true. Besides sud­den­ly decid­ing to become a nov­el­ist, “out of the blue” at almost 30, then sud­den­ly becom­ing an avid marathon run­ner at age 33, Murakami’s life was pret­ty unre­mark­able.

It’s not entire­ly sur­pris­ing that he became a nov­el­ist. Both of Murakami’s par­ents taught Japan­ese lit­er­a­ture, though he him­self was not a par­tic­u­lar­ly good stu­dent. But the author of such beloved books as Nor­we­gian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, Kaf­ka on the Shore and dozens of short sto­ries (read six free here), has most­ly drawn his inspi­ra­tion from out­side his nation­al tradition—from Amer­i­can base­ball and jazz, from British inva­sion rock and roll, from Fitzger­ald, Kaf­ka, and Hol­ly­wood films. As Col­in Mar­shall wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on the BBC Muraka­mi doc­u­men­tary below, “he remained an author shaped by his favorite for­eign cultures—especially Amer­i­ca’s. This, com­bined with his yearn­ing to break from estab­lished norms, has gen­er­at­ed enough inter­na­tion­al demand for his work to sell briskly in almost every lan­guage.”

Murakami’s desire to break with norms, Simons tells us in her charm­ing, visu­al­ly accom­plished ani­mat­ed short, is symp­to­matic of his “detach­ment” and “intro­spec­tion.” Muraka­mi “liked escape, or he just does­n’t like join­ing groups and invest­ing too many words in places where words have been too often.” The thought of “orga­nized activ­i­ties,” Muraka­mi has said, like “hold­ing hands at a demon­stra­tion… gives me the creeps.” Murakami’s love of soli­tude makes him seem mys­te­ri­ous, “elu­sive,” says pre­sen­ter Alan Yen­tob in the film above. But one of the extra­or­di­nary things about Murakami—in addi­tion to his run­ning a 62-mile “ultra­ma­rathon” and con­quer­ing the lit­er­ary world on a whim—is just how ordi­nary he is in many ways. Both Simons’ increas­ing­ly sur­re­al­ist, bebop-scored short and the BBC’s cool jazz-backed explo­ration make this con­trast seem all the more remark­able. It’s Murakami’s abil­i­ty to stretch and bend the ordi­nary world, Simons sug­gests near the end of her lyri­cal trib­ute, that makes his read­ers feel that “some­how, mag­i­cal­ly… he does some­thing very pri­vate and inti­mate with their brains”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 6 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

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

178 Beautifully-Illustrated Letters from Artists: Kahlo, Calder, Man Ray & More

in Art, Letters | July 9th, 2015

Eight years ago—that’s some­thing like five decades in Inter­net time—the Smith­son­ian held an exhi­bi­tion, “More than Words: Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of Amer­i­can Art,” which fea­tured a curat­ed selec­tion of 178 hand-illus­trat­ed let­ters, love notes, dri­ving direc­tions, and jot­tings of cur­rent events, from var­i­ous artists. The selec­tions can still be found online, even though Liza Kirwin’s selec­tions for the exhib­it can now also be found in an accom­pa­ny­ing book.

The illus­trat­ed let­ters make for human­iz­ing insights into the pri­vate world of artists that we usu­al­ly only expe­ri­ence through their work.

The 1945 let­ter from George Grosz to Erich S. Her­rmann (above) is to invite his friend (and art deal­er) to his birth­day par­ty, promis­ing not just one glass of Hen­nessy, but six (and more). “Lis­ten: boy!” he declares. “You are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to attend the birth­day par­ty of ME.” This was when Grosz was in his 50s and liv­ing in Hunt­ing­ton, New York. It should be not­ed that Grosz met his end falling down a flight of stairs while drunk, but the man knew how to par­ty.

Joseph Lin­don Smith was an Amer­i­can illus­tra­tor best known for being the artist who trav­eled to Egypt and doc­u­ment­ed the exca­va­tions at Giza and the Val­ley of the Kings, very faith­ful in their rep­re­sen­ta­tion. But in 1894, this let­ter finds Smith, 31 years old, liv­ing in Paris, try­ing to make a go of it as an artist, and hav­ing enough suc­cess to tell his par­ents: “Behold your son paint­ing under a show­er of gold,” he writes. Check out that hand­writ­ing: it’s beau­ti­ful.

Sculp­tor Alexan­der Calder wrote this note to Vas­sar col­league and friend Agnes Rindge Claflin in 1936, con­tin­u­ing some con­ver­sa­tion they were hav­ing about col­or, and not­ing her choic­es mark her as a “Parcheesi hound,” and adding that he’s a fan of the game too. The lit­tle illus­tra­tion, which is straight Calder, is cute too. Claflin would lat­er go on to nar­rate one of MOMA’s first films to accom­pa­ny an exhib­it, Her­bert Matter’s 1944 film on Calder, Sculp­ture and Con­struc­tions.

This Man Ray let­ter to painter Julian E. Levi looks like it has been wor­ried over or recycled—-“Dear Julian” appears sev­er­al times on the sta­tionery from Le Select Amer­i­can Bar in Mont­par­nasse. It’s a bit dif­fi­cult to make out all his writ­ing: he starts men­tion­ing “Last year’s 1928 wine har­vest is sup­posed to be the very finest in the last fifty years” at the begin­ning, but I’m more fas­ci­nat­ed with the bot­tom right: “I have sev­en tall blondes with 14 big tits and one with sap­phire garters.”

Final­ly, we close out with a let­ter Fri­da Kahlo sent to her friend Emmy Lou Packard in 1940, where she thanked Packard for tak­ing care of Diego dur­ing an ill­ness. The let­ter gets sealed, Priscil­la Frank notes at Huff­Po, with three lip­stick kiss­es — “one for Diego, one for Emmy Lou, and one for her son.”

There’s plen­ty more illus­trat­ed let­ters to explore at the Smith­son­ian site and in Kir­win’s hand­some book, fea­tur­ing artists well known and obscure, but all who knew how to com­pose a good let­ter.

via Huff­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Six Post­cards From Famous Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Kaf­ka, Ker­ouac & More

James Joyce’s “Dirty Let­ters” to His Wife (1909)

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the 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.

Meditation 101: A Short, Animated Beginner’s Guide

in Health, Psychology | July 9th, 2015

Katy Davis (AKA Gob­blynne) cre­at­ed an immense­ly pop­u­lar video ani­mat­ing Dr. Brené Brown’s insights on The Pow­er of Empa­thy. Now, she returns with anoth­er ani­mal-filled ani­ma­tion that could also put you on the right men­tal track. Nar­rat­ed by Dan Har­ris, this one lays out the basics of med­i­ta­tion and deals with some com­mon mis­con­cep­tions and points of frus­tra­tion. Give it a quick watch, and if you want to give med­i­ta­tion a first, sec­ond or third try, check out these Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA. If you know of oth­er help­ful med­i­ta­tion resources, feel free to let us know in the com­ments.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

Pico Iyer on “the Art of Stillness”: How to Enrich Your Busy, Distracted Life by Unplugging and Staying Put

in Life, TED Talks, Travel | July 8th, 2015

Hav­ing known Pico Iyer for quite some time, on paper and in per­son, as a per­pet­u­al exam­ple and occa­sion­al men­tor in the writ­ing of place, it delights me to watch him attract more lis­ten­ers than ever with the talks he’s giv­en in recent years, the most pop­u­lar of which advo­cate some­thing called “still­ness.” But at first I won­dered: did this shift in sub­ject mean that Iyer—a Cal­i­for­nia-grown Brit from an Indi­an fam­i­ly who most­ly lives in Japan (“a glob­al vil­lage on two legs,” as he once called him­self), known for books like Video Night in Kath­man­du, Falling off the Map, and The Glob­al Soul—had put his sig­na­ture hard-trav­el­ing ways behind him?

Hard­ly. But he did start telling the world more about his long-stand­ing habit of rou­tine­ly seek­ing out the most qui­et, least “con­nect­ed” places he can—the sea­side no-speech-allowed Catholic her­mitage, the rur­al vil­lage out­side Kyoto—in order to reflect upon the time he has spent cir­cling the globe, trans­pos­ing him­self from cul­ture to alien cul­ture. “24 years ago, I took the most mind-bend­ing trip across North Korea,” he tells us, “but the trip last­ed a few days. What I’ve done with it sit­ting still—going back to it in my head, try­ing to under­stand it, find­ing a place for it in my thinking—that’s last­ed 24 years already, and will prob­a­bly last a life­time.”

If we want to fol­low Pico’s exam­ple, we must strike a bal­ance: we must process the time we spend doing some­thing intensely—traveling, writ­ing, pro­gram­ming, lift­ing weights, what have you—with time spent not doing that some­thing, a pur­suit in its own way as intense. He con­nects all this with the 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy cul­ture in which we find our­selves, cit­ing the exam­ple of folks like Wired co-founder Kevin Kel­ly and even cer­tain enlight­en­ment-mind­ed Googlers who reg­u­lar­ly and rig­or­ous­ly detach them­selves from cer­tain kinds of mod­ern devices, going “com­plete­ly offline in order to gath­er the sense of direc­tion and pro­por­tion they’ll need when they go online again.”

Achiev­ing such a prop­er intel­lec­tu­al, psy­cho­log­i­cal, social, and tech­no­log­i­cal com­part­men­tal­iza­tion in life may seem like a rare trick to pull off. But if you ever doubt its pos­si­bil­i­ty, just revis­it the last talk from Pico we fea­tured, in which he describes his encounter with Leonard Cohen, the only man alive who has suc­cess­ful­ly com­bined the lifestyles of rock star and Zen monk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best Writ­ing Advice Pico Iyer Ever Received

Pico Iyer on “The Joy of Less”

How Leonard Cohen’s Stint As a Bud­dhist Monk Can Help You Live an Enlight­ened Life

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Behind-the-Scenes Footage of Jerry Lewis’ Ill-Conceived Holocaust Movie The Day The Clown Cried

in Film | July 8th, 2015

The auteur respon­si­ble for The Dis­or­der­ly Order­lies might not be the obvi­ous choice to make a movie about the Holo­caust but that’s appar­ent­ly what hap­pened. For the hand­ful of peo­ple who have seen Jer­ry Lewis’s The Day the Clown Cried – his unre­leased 1972 film about a washed-up clown named Hel­mut Doork who amus­es a box­car of Jew­ish chil­dren all the way to an Auschwitz gas cham­ber — say that the movie is far, far worse than you might imag­ine.

“This film was real­ly awe-inspir­ing, in that you are rarely in the pres­ence of a per­fect object,” said Har­ry Shear­er in a 1992 Spy Mag­a­zine arti­cle about the movie. “This was a per­fect object. This movie is so dras­ti­cal­ly wrong, its pathos and its com­e­dy are so wild­ly mis­placed, that you could not, in your fan­ta­sy of what it might be like, improve on what it real­ly is. “Oh My God!” — that’s all you can say.” (Below you can hear Shear­er tell Howard Stern more about the film.)

There is report­ed­ly only one copy of the movie and that print is under lock and key. Lewis is adamant that the movie is nev­er going to be seen by the pub­lic while he still has a say in the mat­ter. “It was all bad and it was bad because I lost the mag­ic,” Lewis told an audi­ence at the 2013 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. “You will nev­er see it, no-one will ever see it, because I am embar­rassed at the poor work.”

Its mind-bog­gling awful­ness and its inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty has placed The Day the Clown Cried into that rar­i­fied pan­theon of leg­endary lost films like the orig­i­nal cut of Erich von Stroheim’s Greed. Only the film is pur­pose­ful­ly kept in obscu­ri­ty. Every once in a while, a new frag­ment of the movie will pop up on the inter­net only to be quick­ly quashed.

The lat­est glimpse of this famous­ly wrong-head­ed pro­duc­tion comes in the form of a sev­en-minute clip of a mak­ing-of doc­u­men­tary on the film that aired on Flem­ish TV. You can watch it above. There’s a longer sec­tion here.

The clip opens with Lewis in clown face doing his rub­ber-faced slap­stick shtick. It’s not espe­cial­ly fun­ny out of con­text. In con­text one can only imag­ine that the rou­tine would be about as hilar­i­ous as a whoop­ie cush­ion dur­ing the My Lai mas­sacre.

Lat­er, the doc­u­men­tary shows Lewis behind the cam­era and he seems every bit the auteur. The voice over notes that Lewis is work­ing “as a clown, actor, direc­tor, con­duc­tor and pro­duc­er.” Lewis is even seen telling his French sound engi­neer how to use his Nagra tape recorder.

But per­haps the most sur­pris­ing moment in the clip is when that 1960s pow­er cou­ple Jane Birkin and Serge Gains­bourg are seen hang­ing around the set. There real­ly does seem to be some­thing with the French and Jer­ry Lewis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Auschwitz Cap­tured in Haunt­ing Drone Footage (and a New Short Film by Steven Spiel­berg & Meryl Streep)

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

Anne Frank: The Only Exist­ing Video Now Online

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Watch Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and 2001: A Space Odyssey Get Run Through Google’s Trippy Deep Dream Software

in Film, Technology | July 7th, 2015

Last week, The Guardian report­ed:

Google has made its “incep­tion­ism” algo­rithm avail­able to all, allow­ing coders around the world to repli­cate the process the com­pa­ny used to cre­ate mes­meris­ing dream­scapes with its image pro­cess­ing neur­al-net­work.

The sys­tem, which works by repeat­ed­ly feed­ing an image through an AI which enhances fea­tures it recog­nis­es, was first demon­strat­ed by Google two weeks ago. It can alter an exist­ing image to the extent that it looks like an acid trip, or begin with ran­dom noise to gen­er­ate an entire­ly orig­i­nal dream­scape.

Since then a coder, Roelof Pieters, began mess­ing around with the pub­licly-avail­able soft­ware, and decid­ed to take the “Great San Fran­cis­co Acid Wave” scene from Ter­ry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and run it through “Deep Dream,” as the soft­ware is known. The results (below), now going viral across the inter­net, are pret­ty trip­py and intense. Just when you thought Hunter S. Thomp­son could­n’t get more “out there,” this comes along.

We noticed that Pieters ran a sim­i­lar exper­i­ment with pieces of Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and we could­n’t help but put them on dis­play. Watch above.

via Giz­mo­do

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online: Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Read 18 Lost Sto­ries From Hunter S. Thompson’s For­got­ten Stint As a For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)