Henry Miller Makes a List of “The 100 Books That Influenced Me Most”

in Books, Literature | April 20th, 2015

Image licensed under Pub­lic Domain via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Take a sur­vey of a hun­dred writ­ers from the mid- to late-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry about the books that influ­enced them most and you’re bound to find plen­ty of Hen­ry Miller tucked in with the Vic­to­ri­ans, the Rus­sians, and the Beats. The Brook­lyn-raised author of such noto­ri­ous­ly banned nov­els as Trop­ic of Capri­corn and Trop­ic of Can­cer has long appealed to con­tem­po­rary writ­ers not only because of his frank explo­rations of sex­u­al­i­ty and oth­er taboo sub­jects but also because—like so many avant-garde and not so avant-garde writ­ers after him—he had the audac­i­ty to present his own life and loves as lit­er­ary mate­r­i­al. Long before the mem­oir became the dom­i­nant force in Amer­i­can let­ters, with all of the atten­dant con­tro­ver­sies about truth-telling in the form, Miller blend­ed fact and fic­tion in ways that made it hard to tell where one end­ed and the oth­er began.

Miller’s rep­u­ta­tion for liv­ing his fiction—or fic­tion­al­iz­ing his life—may have led many read­ers with only a pass­ing famil­iar­i­ty with his books to regard him as a kind of shame­less self-mythol­o­giz­er. The char­ac­ter­i­za­tion isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly wrong, but it only cap­tures part of the sto­ry. Like every seri­ous writer, Miller was also a seri­ous read­er, and his work is as much informed by the books he loved as by the women he loved.

Miller freely acknowl­edged the lit­er­ary rela­tion­ships in his life, the authors who exert­ed influ­ence on his work and whose styles and ideas he bor­rowed and made his own. He wrote an entire book on the sub­ject, The Books in My Life, which Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings describes as “a sin­gu­lar lens on his approach to read­ing.” In the book, Miller’s “cen­tral con­cern is a kind of anato­my of influ­ence,” Popo­va writes, tak­ing a phrase from lit­er­ary crit­ic Harold Bloom.

In his med­i­ta­tion on “his sources of cre­ative spark,” Miller dis­cuss­es at length his ideas about edu­ca­tion, and its many fail­ings. And in the book’s appendix—as if antic­i­pat­ing our cur­rent mania for lists—he makes a com­pre­hen­sive record of “The 100 Books that Influ­enced Me Most.” See Miller’s com­plete list below, and read The Books in My Life free at the Open Library. A fair num­ber of the books on Miller’s list can be found in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

1 Ancient Greek Drama­tists
2 Ara­bi­an Nights (for chil­dren)
3 Eliz­a­bethan Play­wrights (except­ing Shake­speare)
4 Euro­pean Play­wrights of 19th Cen­tu­ry
5 Greek Myths and Leg­ends
6 Knights of King Arthur’s Court
7 Abèlard, Pierre, The Sto­ry of My Mis­for­tunes
8 Alain-Fournier, The Wan­der­er
9 Ander­sen, Hans Chris­t­ian, Fairy Tales
10 Anony­mous, Diary of a Lost One
11 Balzac, Hon­oré de, Seraphi­ta
12 Balzac, Hon­oré de, Louis Lam­bert
13 Bel­lamy, Edward, Look­ing Back­ward
14 Bel­loc, Hilaire, The Path to Rome
15 Blavatsky, Mme. H. P., The Secret Doc­trine
16 Boc­cac­cio, Gio­van­ni, The Decameron
17 Bre­ton, André, Nad­ja
18 Bronte, Emi­ly, Wuther­ing Heights
19 Bul­wyer-Lyt­ton, Edward, Last Days of Pom­peii
20 Car­roll, Lewis, Alice in Won­der­land
21 Céline, Louis-Fer­di­nand, Jour­ney to the End of the Night
22 Celli­ni, Ben­venu­to, Auto­bi­og­ra­phy
23 Cen­drars, Blaise, Vir­tu­al­ly the com­plete works
24 Chester­ton, G.K., Saint Fran­cis of Assisi
25 Con­rad, Joseph, His works in gen­er­al
26 Coop­er James Fen­i­more, Leather­stock­ing Tales
27 Defoe, Daniel, Robin­son Cru­soe
28 De Ner­val, Gérard, His works in gen­er­al
29 Dos­toievsky, Feodor, His works in gen­er­al
30 Dreis­er, Theodore, His works in gen­er­al
31 Duhamel, Geoges, Salavin Series
32 Du Mau­ri­er, George, Tril­by
33 Dumas, Alexan­der, The Three Mus­ke­teers
34 Eck­er­mann, Johann, Con­ver­sa­tions with Goethe
35 Eltzbach­er, Paul, Anar­chism
36 Emer­son, Ralph Wal­do, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Men
37 Fab­re, Hen­ri, His works in gen­er­al
38 Fau­re, Elie, The His­to­ry of Art
39 Fenol­losa, Ernest, The Chi­nese Writ­ten Char­ac­ter as a Medi­um for Poet­ry
40 Gide, André, Dos­toievs­ki
41 Giono, Jean, Refus d’Obéis­sance
42 Giono, Jean, Que ma joie domeure
43 Giono, Jean, Jean le Bleu
44 Grimm Broth­ers, Fairy Tales
45 Gutkind, Erich, The Absolute Col­lec­tive
46 Hag­gard, Rid­er, She
47 Ham­sun, Knut, His works in gen­er­al
48 Hen­ty, G. A., His works in gen­er­al
49 Hesse, Her­mann, Sid­dhartha
50 Hud­son, W. H., His works in gen­er­al
51 Hugo, Vic­tor, Les Mis­érables
52 Huys­mans, Joris Karl, Against the Grain
53 Joyce, James, Ulysses
54 Key­ser­ling, Her­mann, South Amer­i­can Med­i­ta­tions
55 Kropotkin, Peter, Mutu­al Aid
56 Lao-tse, Tao Teh Ch’ing
57 Latzko, Andreas, Men in War
58 Long, Haniel, Inter­lin­ear to Cabeza de Vaca
59 M, Gospel of Ramakr­ish­na
60 Machen, Arthur, The Hill of Dreams
61 Maeter­linck, Mau­rice, His works in gen­er­al
62 Mann, Thomas, The Mag­ic Moun­tain
63 Menck­en, H. L., Prej­u­dices
64 Niet­zsche, His works in gen­er­al
65 Nijin­sky, Diary
66 Nord­hoff & Hall, Pit­cairn Island
67 Nos­tradamus, The Cen­turies
68 Peck, George Wilbur, Peck­’s Bad Boy
69 Per­ci­val, W. O., William Blake’s Cir­cle of Des­tiny
70 Petro­n­ius, The Satyri­con
71 Plutarch, Lives
72 Powys, John Cow­per, Visions and Revi­sions
73 Prescott, William H., Con­quest of Mex­i­co
74 Prescott, William H., Con­quest of Peru
75 Proust, Mar­cel, Remem­brance of Things Past
76 Rabelais, Gar­gan­tua and Pan­ta­gru­el
77 Rim­baud, Jean-Arthur, His works in gen­er­al
78 Rol­land, Romain, Jean-Christophe
79 Rol­land, Romain, Prophets of the New India
80 Rud­h­yar, Dane, Astrol­o­gy of Per­son­al­i­ty
81 Saltus, Edgar, The Impe­r­i­al Pur­ple
82 Scott, Sir Wal­ter, Ivan­hoe
83 Sienkiewicz, Hen­ry, Quo Vadis
84 Sike­lianos, Angh­e­los, Proanakrous­ma
85 Sin­nett, A. P., Eso­teric Bud­dhism
86 Spencer, Her­bert, Auto­bi­og­ra­phy
87 Spen­gler, Oswald, The Decline of the West
88 Strind­berg, August, The Infer­no
89 Suarès, Car­lo, Krish­na­mur­ti
90 Suzu­ki, Daisetz Teitaro, Zen Bud­dhism
91 Swift, Jonathan, Guil­liv­er’s Trav­els
92 Ten­nyson, Alfred, Idylls of the King
93 Thore­au, Hen­ry David, Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence & Oth­er Essays
94 Twain, Mark, Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn
95 Van Gogh, Vin­cent, Let­ters to Theo
96 Wasser­mann, Jacob, The Mau­r­iz­ius Case (Tril­o­gy)
97 Weigall, Arthur, Akhna­ton
98 Welch, Gal­braith, The Unveil­ing of Tim­buc­too
99 Wer­fel, Franz, Star of the Unborn
100 Whit­man, Walt, Leaves of Grass

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:

Leo Tol­stoy Cre­ates a List of the 50+ Books That Influ­enced Him Most (1891)

28 Impor­tant Philoso­phers List the Books That Influ­enced Them Most Dur­ing Their Col­lege Days

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

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

Yoda’s Long Lost Twin Found in a 14th Century Illuminated Manuscript

in Art, History, Sci Fi | April 18th, 2015

In a new pic­ture book called Medieval Mon­sters, pub­lished by the British Library, his­to­ri­an Damien Kempf and art his­to­ri­an Maria L. Gilbert have gath­ered togeth­er illus­tra­tions that high­light the great mon­sters of the medieval world. Mon­sters were every­where, includ­ing “on the edges of man­u­script pages” and on “the fringes of maps.” The suc­ces­sor to Medieval Cats and Medieval Dogs, Medieval Mon­sters con­tains no short­age of fas­ci­nat­ing illus­tra­tions, includ­ing the one above. It looks remark­ably like Yoda, does­n’t it?

A British Library cura­tor told NPR, “The Yoda image comes from a 14th-cen­tu­ry man­u­script known as the Smith­field Dec­re­tals.”  “I’d love to say that it real­ly was Yoda, or was drawn by a medieval time trav­el­er.” But “it’s actu­al­ly an illus­tra­tion to the bib­li­cal sto­ry of Sam­son — the artist clear­ly had a vivid imag­i­na­tion!”

See more mon­sters at the British Library’s Medieval Man­u­scripts blog.

via NPR

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

Wear­able Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Man­u­scripts & Turned Them into Clothes

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

The Making of Star Wars As Told by C‑3PO & R2-D2: The First-Ever Documentary on the Film (1977)

in Film, Sci Fi | April 18th, 2015

The Earth, it seems, has only one tru­ly unlim­it­ed resource: enthu­si­asm for Star Wars. Not even The Phan­tom Men­ace, the deri­sion mag­net that opened the film series’ new­er tril­o­gy, made a seri­ous dent in our reserves. But did every­one who got togeth­er in the 1970s to make the very first Star Wars movie, from George Lucas on down the chain of com­mand, under­stand how deep a vein of fan­dom they had drilled into? The Mak­ing of Star Wars, a 1977 doc­u­men­tary on that beloved space opera-turned-cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, will give you some idea.

Now that Star Wars has gen­er­at­ed such a uni­verse, if you like, of sup­ple­men­tary con­tent, one more 50-minute behind-the-scenes spe­cial might strike you as no great shakes. But when The Mak­ing of Star Wars appeared in ’77, it appeared as the first doc­u­men­tary about Star Wars ever. And it has much high­er ambi­tions than the aver­age pro­mo­tion­al short of the day, fea­tur­ing not only cast and crew inter­views but seg­ments on the (decid­ed­ly pre-CGI) effects tech­nol­o­gy employed in the pro­duc­tion.

Even the most ded­i­cat­ed Star Wars buffs will still find mate­r­i­al of inter­est here, includ­ing footage that nev­er made it into the picture’s the­atri­cal cut, and footage rein­tro­duced into 1997’s revamped “Spe­cial Edi­tion” of the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy but altered with CGI (anoth­er drain on sev­er­al generation’s Star Wars love). But many of us will watch The Mak­ing of Star Wars on one of its strengths alone: C‑3PO and R2-D2 host the whole thing. Could even those pre­ci­sion-engi­neered droids have fore­seen the thun­der­ous recep­tion that has met this year’s brand new teasers for Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens?

The Mak­ing of Star Wars is a can­di­date for our list of Free Online Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

Fans Recon­struct Authen­tic Ver­sion of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in The­aters in 1977

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.

Interactive Music Video Lets You Explore the Apartments on the Cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti

in Animation, Creativity, Music | April 17th, 2015

Dig that heavy met­al / Under­neath your hood / Baby I can work all night / Believe I got the per­fect tools / Talkin’ bout love

Last Feb­ru­ary, Led Zep­pelin released a deluxe, re-mas­tered ver­sion of their sprawl­ing 1975 dou­ble album Phys­i­cal Graf­fi­ti, a record per­haps best known for the epic, orches­tral grandeur of the 8 1/2 minute “Kash­mir” (not to be out­done by the 11-minute “In My Time of Dying”). In an album full of styl­is­tic depar­tures and sol­id returns to form, one track, “Tram­pled Under Foot,” man­ages to be both, dri­ven by down-and-dirty blues and uptown 70s funk, cour­tesy of John Paul Jones’ Ste­vie Won­der-inspired organ groove. With lyrics Robert Plant him­self described as “raunchy,” the song—one of Plant’s favorites—may be the band’s most 70s-sound­ing. That’s not to say it’s dat­ed, only that it most per­fect­ly cap­tures the sound of the Amer­i­can street rep­re­sent­ed on the album cov­er, a shot of two adja­cent ten­e­ments on New York City’s St. Mark’s Place.

Now, lis­ten­ers can enter those build­ings and tool around the apart­ments, cour­tesy of the inter­ac­tive video at the top of the post (view it in a larg­er for­mat here), which fea­tures a pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased rough mix of the track called “Brandy & Coke.” Con­ceived and direct­ed by Hal Kirk­land, the video pulls togeth­er some of my favorite things—the peri­od design and styling of That ‘70s Show, the most inven­tive tricks of the music video age, a la Tom Pet­ty or Peter Gabriel, and of course, Zep—with the added 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy of online inter­ac­tiv­i­ty. Click the arrow keys while the video plays and you’re trans­port­ed from one vivid tableaux to anoth­er, some rep­re­sent­ing funky apart­ment scenes, oth­ers some­thing else entire­ly. The video also inte­grates footage from Zeppelin’s per­for­mance of the song at Earl’s Court in ’75.

Clever ref­er­ences abound, like the nod to god­fa­ther of fan­ta­sy cin­e­ma Georges Méliès (above) and an allu­sion to the clas­sic MTV moon land­ing intro (below). Over­all, it’s an aston­ish­ing visu­al feast that hear­kens back to the very best in music video tech­nol­o­gy, a seem­ing­ly lost art that Kirk­land and com­pa­ny may sin­gle­hand­ed­ly res­ur­rect. See Kirkland’s site for more of his inter­net age music video cre­ations, includ­ing “Sour—Hibi No Neiro,” shot entire­ly on web­cams.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

Jim­my Page Describes the Cre­ation of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”

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

Watch Björk’s 6 Favorite TED Talks, From the Mushroom Death Suit to the Virtual Choir

in Architecture, Art, Biology, Design, Food & Drink, Music, Photography, TED Talks | April 17th, 2015

Image by Zach Klein

Singer-song­writer Björk, cur­rent­ly enjoy­ing a career ret­ro­spec­tive at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, cel­e­brat­ed TED’s bil­lionth video view with a playlist of six trea­sured TED Talks. What do her choic­es say about her?

In this talk, artist Jae Rhim Lee mod­els her Mush­room Death Suit, a kicky lit­tle snug­gy designed to decom­pose and reme­di­ate tox­ins from corpses before they leech back into the soil or sky. Despite Björk’s fond­ness for out­ré fash­ion, I’m pret­ty sure this choice goes beyond the mere­ly sar­to­r­i­al.

For more infor­ma­tion, or to get in line for a mush­room suit of your own, see the Infin­i­ty Bur­ial Project.

Con­tin­u­ing with the mush­room / fash­ion theme, Björk next turns to design­er Suzanne Lee, who demon­strates how she grows sus­tain­able tex­tiles from kom­bucha mush­rooms. The result­ing mate­r­i­al may var­i­ous­ly resem­ble paper or flex­i­ble veg­etable leather. It is extreme­ly recep­tive to nat­ur­al dyes, but not water repel­lent, so bring a non-kom­bucha-based change of clothes in case you get caught in the rain.

For more infor­ma­tion on Lee’s home­grown, super green fab­ric, vis­it Bio­Cou­ture.

Björk’s clear­ly got a soft spot for things that grow: mush­rooms, mush­room-based fab­ric, and now…building mate­ri­als? Pro­fes­sor of Exper­i­men­tal Archi­tec­ture Rachel Arm­strong’s plan for self-regen­er­at­ing build­ings involves pro­to­cols, or “lit­tle fat­ty bags” that behave like liv­ing things despite an absence of DNA. I’m still not sure how it works, but as long as the lit­tle fat­ty bags are not added to my own ever-grow­ing edi­fice, I’m down.

For more infor­ma­tion on what Dr. Arm­strong refers to as bot­tom up con­struc­tion (includ­ing a scheme to keep Venice from sink­ing) see Black Sky Think­ing.

Björk’s next choice takes a turn for the seri­ous… with games. Game Design­er Bren­da Romero began explor­ing the heavy duty emo­tion­al pos­si­bil­i­ties of the medi­um when her 9‑year-old daugh­ter returned from school with a less than nuanced under­stand­ing of the Mid­dle Pas­sage. The suc­cess of that exper­i­ment inspired her to cre­ate games that spur play­ers to engage on a deep­er lev­el with thorny his­tor­i­cal sub­jects. (The Trail of Tears required 50,000 indi­vid­ual red­dish-brown pieces).

Learn more about Romero’s ana­log games at The Mechan­ic is the Mes­sage.

Remem­ber those 50,000 indi­vid­ual pieces? As pho­tog­ra­ph­er Aaron Huey doc­u­ment­ed life on Pine Ridge Reser­va­tion, he was hum­bled by hear­ing him­self referred to as “wasichu,” a Lako­ta word that can be trans­lat­ed as “non-Indi­an.” Huey decid­ed not to shy away from its more point­ed trans­la­tion: “the one who takes the best meat for him­self.” His TED Talk is an impas­sioned his­to­ry les­son that begins in 1824 with the cre­ation of the Bureau of Indi­an Affairs and ends in an activist chal­lenge.

Proof that Björk is not entire­ly about the quirk.

See Huey’s pho­tos from the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic cov­er sto­ry, “In the Spir­it of Crazy Horse.”

Björk opts to close things on a musi­cal note with excerpts from com­pos­er Eric Whitacre’s “Lux Aurumque” and “Sleep” per­formed by a crowd­sourced vir­tu­al choir. Its members—they swell to 1999 for “Sleep”—record their parts alone at home, then upload them to be mixed into some­thing son­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly greater than the sum of its parts.

Lis­ten to “Sleep” in its entire­ty here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Album Björk Record­ed as an 11-Year-Old: Fea­tures Cov­er Art Pro­vid­ed By Her Mom (1977)

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

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

Enter the Church of the SubGenius, the Parody Religion Backed by R. Crumb, David Byrne & Other Alt-Icons

in Comedy, Religion | April 16th, 2015

You may not know much about the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius, but you’ve def­i­nite­ly seen its prophet. The inten­sive­ly groomed, Ward Cleaveresque J. R. “Bob” Dobbs (below) began as a hum­ble piece of 1950s clip art and went on to become “a way of life to mil­lions… yet half of them don’t even know it.” Or so claims the sweep­ing, absur­di­ty-laced, son­i­cal­ly (and per­haps intel­lec­tu­al­ly) twist­ed nar­ra­tion of Arise! The Sub­Ge­nius, an “instruc­tion­al bar­rage video” put out by the Church in 1992 as the most potent dis­til­la­tion of its reli­gion-sat­i­riz­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty.

The obses­sion with world­wide con­spir­a­cies, the impor­tance grant­ed to vora­cious con­sump­tion and “remix­ing” of pop cul­ture (vis­i­ble every­where in Arise!), the hard­line oppo­si­tion to work, the all-impor­tant and nev­er-defined qual­i­ty of “Slack,” the askew escha­tol­ogy: how much of the Church of the Sub­ge­nius’ doc­trine has remained mere par­o­dy reli­gion, and how much, since its found­ing in the late 1970s, have its “followers”—a group that includes such alt-icons as David Byrne, Robert Crumb, and Mark Mothersbaugh—come to con­sid­er as good as the real thing?

But what­ev­er legit­i­ma­cy this sur­pris­ing­ly long-run­ning post­mod­ern joke has attained, we can also view it, like all reli­gions, as a cul­tur­al move­ment. This approach rais­es its own ques­tions: how, exact­ly, did Dobbs’ pipe-clench­ing, father­ly yet sin­is­ter vis­age become one of the most rec­og­niz­able sub­cul­tur­al emblems of the 1980s and 1990s? You may nev­er learn the answer, just as you may nev­er get a han­dle on the entire­ty of the Church’s ever more labyrinthine and aggres­sive­ly pre­pos­ter­ous mythol­o­gy, but you’ll cer­tain­ly find it all strange­ly com­pelling in the attempt.

And even if Arise! The Sub­Ge­nius does­n’t recruit you into the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius’ ranks, you’ve got to respect what they’ve pre­dict­ed: not the end of the world, as much as they talk about it, but our cur­rent­ly thriv­ing 21st-cen­tu­ry cul­ture of media appro­pri­a­tion, recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion, and absur­di­fi­ca­tion. If ever there were a reli­gion for the Youtube era, here it is. And if you find noth­ing nov­el in its char­ac­ter­is­tic ambiva­lence about what counts as seri­ous and what does­n’t, maybe the Church of the Sub­Ge­nius’ teach­ings have pen­e­trat­ed even deep­er into the zeit­geist than all those “Bob” stick­ers made us sus­pect.

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 8 Clas­sic Cult Films for Free: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Plan 9 from Out­er Space & More

When William S. Bur­roughs Joined Sci­en­tol­ogy (and His 1971 Book Denounc­ing It)

Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an: Reli­gious Satire, Polit­i­cal Satire, or Blas­phe­my?

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

Hear Ursula K. Le Guin’s Pioneering Sci-Fi Novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, as a BBC Radio Play

in Radio, Sci Fi | April 16th, 2015

Whether they con­sid­er it one of her most or least impor­tant works, fans of sci­ence-fic­tion writer Ursu­la K. Le Guin usu­al­ly have a great deal to say about her best-known nov­el, 1969’s The Left Hand of Dark­ness. But it does­n’t mat­ter to me whether a book has won a Hugo or a Neb­u­la — and The Left Hand of Dark­ness has won both — or how many read­ers — and The Left Hand of Dark­ness has many — have slapped on it the label of “mas­ter­piece.” No, I only get intrigued by descrip­tions like the one Wikipedia puts in its open­ing para­graph on the nov­el, which calls it “the most famous exam­i­na­tion of sex­less androg­y­ny in sci­ence fic­tion.”

Among its many oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing qual­i­ties, The Left Hand of Dark­ness takes place on an alien world with no fixed sex­es, per­form­ing a nar­ra­tive “thought exper­i­ment” about what kind of soci­ety you might get when, depend­ing on the cir­cum­stances, any­one might repro­duce with any­one else. This unusu­al con­cept has drawn the atten­tion of not only gen­er­a­tions of read­ers but sev­er­al dif­fer­ent adap­tors, most recent­ly the BBC. They’ve always done a redoubtable job con­vert­ing imag­i­na­tive lit­er­a­ture into radio dra­ma — take their recent ver­sion of Neil Gaiman’s Nev­er­where, or their clas­sic one of Dou­glas Adams’ The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy, con­sid­ered by many fans bet­ter than the book. Now they’ve set their sights on Le Guin’s award-win­ner.

The first episode of the BBC’s Left Hand of Dark­ness has already aired, and you can hear it free online for about a month at the show’s site. (It runs almost an hour.) Episode two is now online here. You can get a taste of the pro­duc­tion from the pro­mo­tion­al video at the top of the post; the one just above gives a scrap of insight as to how Le Guin came to envi­sion the nov­el­’s world. Per­son­al­ly, I need no fur­ther incen­tive to tune in than that the series fea­tures Toby Jones, whose pres­ence (usu­al­ly in film) reli­ably indi­cates a just-askew-enough cul­tur­al expe­ri­ence. And if you still feel wary about engag­ing with any kind of sci­ence fic­tion, know that even Harold Bloom real­ly, real­ly liked the book.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Inven­tive Sto­ries from Ursu­la Le Guin & J.G. Bal­lard Turned Into CBC Radio Dra­mas

Hear Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and 84 Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas from CBS Radio Work­shop (1956–57)

BBC Radio Adap­ta­tion of Neil Gaiman’s Nev­er­where Begins Sat­ur­day: A Pre­view

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

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

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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald Has a Strange Dinner with James Joyce & Draws a Cute Sketch of It (1928)

in Literature | April 16th, 2015

The char­ac­ters in many of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stories—rakish, drunk­en under­grad­u­ates and overe­d­u­cat­ed gadabouts—so resem­ble their cre­ator that it’s tempt­ing to read into all of his work some auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal intent. One episode in the writer’s life that didn’t make it into his fic­tion, Fitzgerald’s meet­ing with James Joyce in Paris, nev­er­the­less makes a fas­ci­nat­ing anec­dote all its own, and seems so per­fect­ly in char­ac­ter that it could have inspired an amus­ing short sto­ry for The Sat­ur­day Evening Post.

Accord­ing to Sylvia Beach, doyenne of the expat Amer­i­can lit­er­ary scene in Paris, founder of Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny Books, and pub­lish­er of Ulysses, Fitzger­ald “wor­shipped James Joyce, but was afraid to approach him.” In her mem­oir, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, Beach relates how in 1928 she and her friend, lover, and fel­low book­seller Adri­enne Mon­nier, “cooked a nice din­ner and invit­ed the Joyces, the Fitzger­alds, and André Cham­son and his wife Lucie.”

Scott drew a pic­ture in my copy of The Great Gats­by of the guests—with Joyce seat­ed at the table wear­ing a halo, Scott kneel­ing beside him, and Adri­enne and myself, at the head and foot, depict­ed as mer­maids (or sirens).

You can see Fitzgerald’s quirky lit­tle sketch above. Beach’s telling, it seems, omits many of the col­or­ful details of the meet­ing. Accord­ing to Her­bert Gor­man, anoth­er guest at the din­ner and Joyce’s first biog­ra­ph­er, Fitzgerald—so over­awed by the Irish author that he referred to the evening as the “Fes­ti­val of St. James”—“sank down on one knee before Joyce”—as in his drawing—“kissed his hand, and declared: ‘How does it feel to be a great genius, Sir? I am so excit­ed at see­ing you, Sir, that I could weep.’”

Most like­ly very drunk on cham­pagne, Fitzgerald’s antics appar­ent­ly quite alarmed Joyce. In her lit­er­ary his­to­ry, Noel Riley Fitch tells us that the Amer­i­can “offered to show his esteem for the Irish writer… by jump­ing out of the win­dow. An amazed Joyce is sup­posed to have pro­hib­it­ed the dis­play and exclaimed, ‘That young man must be mad—I’m afraid he’ll do him­self some injury.’” The bizarre inci­dent did not pre­vent Fitzger­ald from obtain­ing Joyce’s auto­graph in his copy of Ulysses. Nor did it pre­vent him, on a lat­er occa­sion, from threat­en­ing to jump from his apart­ment bal­cony onto the street, “drunk and depressed by his fail­ing mar­riage.” This time, he was stopped by French nov­el­ist André Cham­son, with whom he had struck up a friend­ship at the Joyce din­ner.

Beach’s mem­oir con­tains many oth­er charm­ing, and some­what dis­may­ing, sto­ries about the Fitzger­alds, most involv­ing prof­li­gate spend­ing and drink­ing of cham­pagne. We may not have the plea­sure of hear­ing these tales from the Gats­by author himself—save through his essays, let­ters, and many fic­tion­al­iza­tions of his life. But the genial Beach, who out­lived Joyce, Fitzger­ald, Hem­ing­way, and most every oth­er author of the “Lost Gen­er­a­tion,” appeared in sev­er­al filmed inter­views, in French and Eng­lish, and told sto­ries of 1920s Paris. In one such inter­view, above, hear her describe the found­ing of Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, that Parisian lit­er­ary hub with­out which some of the great­est lit­er­a­ture of the 20th cen­tu­ry may nev­er have reached the read­ing pub­lic.

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­scripts for The Great Gats­by, This Side of Par­adise & More

F. Scott Fitzger­ald in Drag (1916)

Ernest Hem­ing­way to F. Scott Fitzger­ald: “Kiss My Ass”

Begin­nings Pro­files Shake­speare and Company’s Sylvia Beach Whit­man

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

Take a Virtual Tour of Abbey Road Studios, Courtesy of the New Google Site “Inside Abbey Road”

in Google, Music | April 16th, 2015

Once again, Google qui­et­ly drops a nifty piece of inter­ac­tive web­bery and acts like it ain’t no big deal.

Google’s new web site, Inside Abbey Road, lets view­ers walk inside Abbey Road Stu­dios, check out the famous record­ing stu­dio (home to most of the Bea­t­les’ songs, birth­place of Dark Side of the Moon, Radiohead’s The Bends, Kanye West­’s Late Reg­is­tra­tion, the list goes on) inspect the rooms, and watch inter­views and mini-docs. It also match­es up icon­ic pho­tos (includ­ing the one shot out­side of the famous cross­walk) with the stu­dio today. The site is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Google and the stu­dio to cel­e­brate over 80 years of music his­to­ry.

Abbey Road exist­ed before the Fab Four and Cliff Richard, of course, and the new site includes footage of com­pos­er Sir Edward Elgar open­ing the stu­dio in 1931 and con­duct­ing a record­ing of “Land of Hope and Glo­ry.”

There’s plen­ty of mod­ern footage too, from Kylie Minogue and Rob­bie Williams to Take That and Sig­ur Rós. You have to poke around a lit­tle bit to find every­thing, but the site includes a map in case you get lost.

You can also have a go at mix­ing a four-track record­ing in the con­trol booth, fool around on the J37 tape deck that was the height of tech dur­ing the time of Sgt. Pep­per, and try to find the rumored echo cham­ber. (Trust me, it’s there.)

If you want to take a break out­side and watch a real-time ver­sion of this dig­i­tal loca­tion, there’s always the Abbey Road traf­fic cam, where you watch a whole bunch of tourists try to get their Bea­t­les on with­out get­ting hit by an irate lor­ry dri­ver.

Take your vir­tu­al tour of Abbey Road here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul McCartney’s Con­cep­tu­al Draw­ings For the Abbey Road Cov­er and Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour Film

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.

Günter Grass Takes On Facebook: “Someone Who Has 500 Friends, Has No Friends.”

in Current Affairs, Literature, Politics | April 15th, 2015

Inci­sive social crit­ic, nov­el­ist, poet, sculp­tor, and inspi­ra­tion to such tren­chant fab­u­lists as John Irv­ing and Salman Rushdie, Ger­man writer Gün­ter Grass passed away this week with a well-defined lega­cy as “his country’s moral con­science.” Win­ner of the Nobel Prize in 1999, the author did not shy away from con­tro­ver­sial polit­i­cal stances—despite his own once-hid­den past as a teenage mem­ber of the Hitler Youth and Waf­fen-SS. In 2012, Grass caused an inter­na­tion­al stir with the pub­li­ca­tion of his poem “What Must Be Said,” a fierce cri­tique of Israel’s mil­i­tarism. The poem drew some rather pre­dictable charges, and its pub­li­ca­tion, wrote Der Spiegel, broached what many con­sid­ered a taboo sub­ject. The inci­dent rep­re­sents only one of Grass’s many pub­lic state­ments, woven through­out his art and life, against nation­al­ism and war.

Which brings us to the video inter­view above from 2013. While not exact­ly address­ing a mat­ter of dire geopo­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance, Grass nonethe­less levies his char­ac­ter­is­tic crit­i­cal wit against a cor­po­rate enti­ty that threat­ens to swal­low the globe, vir­tu­al­ly—Face­book. Remark­ing on his chil­dren and grandchildren’s expe­ri­ence with the social net­work, Grass says he told one of them, “Some­one who has 500 friends, has no friends.” It’s some­thing of a famil­iar sen­ti­ment by now—we’ve all read numer­ous think-pieces more or less say­ing the same thing. But Grass goes on to define the val­ue of what he calls “direct expe­ri­ences” in spe­cif­ic terms—with the admis­sion that he feels like “a dinosaur” for writ­ing his man­u­scripts by hand and typ­ing them on an old Olivet­ti type­writer.

The idea of own­ing a mobile phone and being acces­si­ble at all times—and as I know now, under sur­veil­lance, is abhor­rent to me. With the lat­est find­ings in mind, it sur­pris­es me—that mil­lions of peo­ple do not dis­tance them­selves from Face­book and all that—and say “I want no part of it.”

Grass’ aver­sion to Facebook—and the online world in general—isn’t strict­ly polit­i­cal, but lit­er­ary as well. He acknowl­edges the ease and speed of the inter­net as a research tool, and yet… “lit­er­a­ture… You can’t speed it up when you work with it. If you do, you do so at the expense of qual­i­ty.” To hear more from Grass about the writ­ing process and his atti­tudes toward lit­er­a­ture and activism, read his inter­view in the Paris Review.

via Bib­liokept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Prob­lem with Face­book: “It’s Keep­ing Things From You”

Stephen Hawk­ing Starts Post­ing on Face­book: Join His Quest to Explain What Makes the Uni­verse Exist

Wittgen­stein Day-by-Day: Face­book Page Tracks the Philosopher’s Wartime Expe­ri­ence 100 Years Ago

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