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Hunter S. Thompson’s Ballsy & Hilarious Job Application Letter (1958)

in Literature | April 1st, 2015

hst

Image by Steve Ander­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 1958, Hunter S. Thomp­son applied for a job with the Van­cou­ver Sun. He was fresh out of the Air Force and strug­gling to make a liv­ing in New York City, though from the tone of the let­ter you wouldn’t know it.

Peo­ple who are experts in such things say that good cov­er let­ters should match the employer’s needs with the appli­can­t’s abil­i­ties, should be tai­lored specif­i­cal­ly to the job in ques­tion and should show some per­son­al­i­ty. By those yard­sticks, Thompson’s let­ter to the Van­cou­ver Sun is a mod­el to be fol­lowed. He lays out his eager­ness to work: “I can work 25 hours a day if nec­es­sary, live on any rea­son­able salary.” Any HR man­ag­er would be tick­led with lines like that. He suc­cinct­ly describes his work expe­ri­ence: “most of my expe­ri­ence has been in sports writ­ing, but I can write every­thing from war­mon­ger­ing pro­pa­gan­da to learned book reviews.” And for any oth­er fault you might find with the let­ter, it def­i­nite­ly does­n’t lack in per­son­al­i­ty.

Yet the let­ter some­how failed to charm his would-be employ­er; Thomp­son nev­er moved to Van­cou­ver.  Per­haps they were giv­en pause by Thomp­son’s steady stream of insults direct­ed towards his for­mer edi­tor — “It was as if the Mar­quis De Sade had sud­den­ly found him­self work­ing for Bil­ly Gra­ham” — and towards jour­nal­ism in gen­er­al: “It’s a damned shame that a field as poten­tial­ly dynam­ic and vital as jour­nal­ism should be over­run with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-rid­den with myopia, apa­thy, and com­pla­cence, and gen­er­al­ly stuck in a bog of stag­nant medi­oc­rity.” Or per­haps it was his inten­tion­al­ly off-putting arro­gance, “I’d rather offend you now than after I start­ed work­ing for you.” In any case, it’s a hoot to read. More peo­ple should write job appli­ca­tion let­ters like this.

Read the full let­ter below.

Van­cou­ver Sun
TO JACK SCOTT, VANCOUVER SUN
Octo­ber 1, 1958 57 Per­ry Street New York City

Sir,
I got a hell of a kick read­ing the piece Time mag­a­zine did this week on The Sun. In addi­tion to wish­ing you the best of luck, I’d also like to offer my ser­vices.

Since I haven’t seen a copy of the “new” Sun yet, I’ll have to make this a ten­ta­tive offer. I stepped into a dung-hole the last time I took a job with a paper I did­n’t know any­thing about (see enclosed clip­pings) and I’m not quite ready to go charg­ing up anoth­er blind alley.

By the time you get this let­ter, I’ll have got­ten hold of some of the recent issues of The Sun. Unless it looks total­ly worth­less, I’ll let my offer stand. And don’t think that my arro­gance is unin­ten­tion­al: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I start­ed work­ing for you.

I did­n’t make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Mar­quis de Sade had sud­den­ly found him­self work­ing for Bil­ly Gra­ham. The man despised me, of course, and I had noth­ing but con­tempt for him and every­thing he stood for. If you asked him, he’d tell you that I’m “not very lik­able, (that I) hate peo­ple, (that I) just want to be left alone, and (that I) feel too supe­ri­or to min­gle with the aver­age per­son.” (That’s a direct quote from a memo he sent to the pub­lish­er.)

Noth­ing beats hav­ing good ref­er­ences.

Of course if you asked some of the oth­er peo­ple I’ve worked for, you’d get a dif­fer­ent set of answers. If you’re inter­est­ed enough to answer this let­ter, I’ll be glad to fur­nish you with a list of ref­er­ences — includ­ing the lad I work for now.

The enclosed clip­pings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It’s a year old, how­ev­er, and I’ve changed a bit since it was writ­ten. I’ve tak­en some writ­ing cours­es from Colum­bia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the news­pa­per busi­ness, and devel­oped a healthy con­tempt for jour­nal­ism as a pro­fes­sion.

As far as I’m con­cerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as poten­tial­ly dynam­ic and vital as jour­nal­ism should be over­run with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-rid­den with myopia, apa­thy, and com­pla­cence, and gen­er­al­ly stuck in a bog of stag­nant medi­oc­rity. If this is what you’re try­ing to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.

Most of my expe­ri­ence has been in sports writ­ing, but I can write every­thing from war­mon­ger­ing pro­pa­gan­da to learned book reviews.

I can work 25 hours a day if nec­es­sary, live on any rea­son­able salary, and don’t give a black damn for job secu­ri­ty, office pol­i­tics, or adverse pub­lic rela­tions.
I would rather be on the dole than work for a paper I was ashamed of.
It’s a long way from here to British Colum­bia, but I think I’d enjoy the trip.

If you think you can use me, drop me a line.

If not, good luck any­way.

Sin­cere­ly,

Hunter S. Thomp­son

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

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 bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Download the Major Works of Jane Austen as Free eBooks & Audio Books

in Audio Books, e-books, Literature | April 1st, 2015

Jane_Austen

Why does Jane Austen feel so much like our con­tem­po­rary? Is it the way she has been appro­pri­at­ed by pop­u­lar cul­ture, turned into a vamp­ish, mod­ern con­sumer icon in adap­ta­tions like From Pra­da to Nada, Clue­less, and Brid­get Jones’ Diary? Do these can­dy-col­ored updates of Austen tru­ly rep­re­sent the spir­it of the late 18th/early 19th cen­tu­ry novelist’s world? Or do we grav­i­tate toward Austen because of nos­tal­gia for a sim­pler, almost pre-indus­tri­al time, when—as in the rather reac­tionary world of Down­ton Abbey—the com­ings and goings in a sin­gle house­hold con­sti­tut­ed an entire human soci­ety?

Why not both? As the writ­ers and artists in the video above from the Mor­gan Library assert, Austen, like Shake­speare, is a writer for every age. “The Divine Jane” as the title dubs her, had an insight into human behav­ior that tran­scends the par­tic­u­lars of her his­tor­i­cal moment. But of course, the con­text of Austen’s fiction—a time of great Eng­lish coun­try hous­es and an emerg­ing class-con­scious­ness based on rapid­ly chang­ing social arrangements—is no mere back­drop. Like Shake­speare, we need to under­stand Austen on her own terms as much as we enjoy her wit trans­posed into our own.

The Mor­gan Library’s “A Woman’s Wit” exhib­it, moved online since its debut in the phys­i­cal space in 2009, offers an excel­lent col­lec­tion of resources for schol­ars and lay read­ers to dis­cov­er Austen’s world through her cor­re­spon­dence and man­u­scripts. You’ll also find there draw­ings by Austen and her con­tem­po­raries and com­men­tary from a num­ber of twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry writ­ers inspired by her work. Much of the Austen-mania of the past sev­er­al years treats the nov­el­ist as a more-or-less post­mod­ern ironist—“hotter,” wrote Mar­tin Amis in 1996, “than Quentin Taran­ti­no.” That she has become such fod­der for films, both good and frankly ter­ri­ble, can obscure her obses­sion with lan­guage, one rep­re­sent­ed by her nov­els, of course, as well as by her let­ters—so live­ly and imme­di­ate so as to have inspired a “Per­fect Love Let­ter” com­pe­ti­tion among Austen enthu­si­asts.

As for the nov­els, well, there real­ly is no sub­sti­tute. Dress­ing Austen up in Pra­da and Guc­ci and recast­ing her bum­bling suit­ors and imp­ish hero­ines as mall-savvy teenage Amer­i­cans has—one hopes—been done enough. Let not Austen’s appeal to our age eclipse the rich, fine-grained obser­va­tions she made of hers. Whether you’re new to Austen or a life­long read­er, her work is always avail­able, as she intend­ed it to be expe­ri­enced, on the page—or, er… the screen… thanks to inter­net pub­lish­ing and orga­ni­za­tions like Project Guten­berg and Lib­rivox. At the links below, you can find all of Austen’s major works in var­i­ous eBook and audio for­mats.

So by all means, enjoy the mod­ern clas­sic Clue­less, that hilar­i­ous ren­di­tion of Austen’s Emma. And by all means, read Emma, and Pride and Prej­u­dice, and Mans­field Park, and… well, you get the idea….

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Aban­doned Man­u­script, The Wat­sons

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

What Did Jane Austen Real­ly Look Like? New Wax Sculp­ture, Cre­at­ed by Foren­sic Spe­cial­ists, Shows Us

15-Year-Old Jane Austen Writes a Satir­i­cal His­to­ry Of Eng­land: Read the Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script Online (1791)

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

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Marshall McLuhan’s Strange Reading Habit: “I Read Only the Right-Hand Page of Serious Books”

in Books | April 1st, 2015

No doubt about it, Mar­shall McLuhan was a cryp­tic thinker and a bit of an odd duck. Ear­li­er this week, Col­in Mar­shall brought you an Intro­duc­tion to Mar­shall McLuhan, pre­sent­ed by Tom Wolfe (best known for The Elec­tric Kool-Aid Acid Test and ‎The Bon­fire of the Van­i­ties). In putting togeth­er that post, we stum­bled upon anoth­er gem of a video, a tes­ta­ment to McLuhan’s quirk­i­ness — and we mean that in the best pos­si­ble way. Above McLuhan, kick­ing back on a couch, reveals his “pecu­liar read­ing habit,” admit­ting: “If it’s a friv­o­lous, relax­ing book, I read every word. But seri­ous books I read on the right-hand side only because I’ve dis­cov­ered enor­mous redun­dan­cy in any well-writ­ten book, and I find that by read­ing only the right-hand page this keeps me very wide awake, fill­ing in the oth­er page out of my own noo­dle.” There’s a bit of hubris in that approach, but also a cer­tain amount of cre­ativ­i­ty too. Per­haps you’ll want to give it a try.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

Has Tech­nol­o­gy Changed Us?: BBC Ani­ma­tions Answer the Ques­tion with the Help of Mar­shall McLuhan

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

Mar­shall McLuhan: The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

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Guernica: Alain Resnais’ Haunting Film on Picasso’s Painting & the Crimes of the Spanish Civil War

in Art, Film | April 1st, 2015

Note: You will hear sound 37 sec­onds into the film.

Human­i­ty has endured a great many wartime atroc­i­ties since 1937, but to this day, if you think of an art­work born of one such event, you’ll more than like­ly still think of Guer­ni­ca. Pablo Picas­so’s large black-and-white can­vas, which he began paint­ing less than a month after the aer­i­al bomb­ing dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War of the small Basque town which gave it its name, ren­ders the hor­ror of sud­den, thor­ough destruc­tion in a way nobody had ever seen before, or has seen again since.

“When I vis­it­ed the town the whole of it was a hor­ri­ble sight, flam­ing from end to end. The reflec­tion of the flames could be seen in the clouds of smoke above the moun­tains from 10 miles away,” wrote The Times’ war cor­re­spon­dent George Steer, in the report that moved Picas­so to take on the sub­ject of Guer­ni­ca for the mur­al the Span­ish Repub­li­can gov­ern­ment had com­mis­sioned for the 1937 World’s Fair. “Through­out the night hous­es were falling until the streets became long heaps of red impen­e­tra­ble debris.”

In 1950, both Guer­ni­ca and Guer­ni­ca inspired an equal­ly haunt­ing short film of the same name [part one, part two] by Alain Resnais and Robert Hes­sens. In black and white just like Picas­so’s paint­ing, the pic­ture uses night­mar­ish cut­ting to com­bine imagery from Guer­ni­ca and oth­er artis­tic sources, a score by Guy Bernard, and the poem “Vic­to­ry of Guer­ni­ca” by Paul Élu­ard. “You hold the flame between your fin­gers and paint like a fire,” said the poet to the painter dur­ing their close friend­ship in the years after the bomb­ing.

Resnais, who would go on to direct such clas­sics of French cin­e­ma as Hiroshi­ma mon amour (anoth­er study of an after­math) and Last Year at Marien­bad, only just end­ed his long and dis­tin­guished film­mak­ing career when he died last year. But in 1950, his career had only just begun, his first for­ays into film hav­ing come in the form of short doc­u­men­taries on work­ing artists in the mid-1940s. Those led to a com­mis­sion to do one on the paint­ings of Van Gogh for a Paris exhi­bi­tion, which led to one on Gau­guin, which led to Guer­ni­ca. Clear­ly, Resnais had the ten­den­cy to unite the arts in his work from the very begin­ning, and many of his fans would say it served him well to the end.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 3D Tour of Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca

Watch Alain Resnais’ Short, Evoca­tive Film Toute la mémoire du monde (1956)

Pho­tos of Hiroshi­ma by Hiroshi­ma mon amour Star Emmanuelle Riva (1958)

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.

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Langston Hughes Presents the History of Jazz in an Illustrated Children’s Book (1955)

in K-12, Music | March 31st, 2015

The_First_Book_Of_Jazz_00

I can imag­ine no bet­ter guide through the his­to­ry and vari­ety of jazz than Langston Hugh­es, voice of the Harlem Renais­sance and poet­ic inter­preter of 20th cen­tu­ry black Amer­i­can cul­ture. Hugh­es’ 1955 First Book of Jazz is just that, a short primer with a sur­pris­ing­ly high degree of sophis­ti­ca­tion for a children’s book. I would, in fact, rec­om­mend it as an intro­duc­tion to jazz for any read­er.

Hugh­es thor­ough­ly cov­ers the musi­cal con­text of jazz in brief chap­ters like “African Drums,” “Old New Orleans,” “Work Songs,” “The Blues,” and “Rag­time.” He then “dis­cuss­es the mechan­ics of jazz,” writes author and blog­ger Ariel S. Win­ter, includ­ing “impro­vi­sa­tion, syn­co­pa­tion, per­cus­sion, rhythm, blue notes, tone col­or, har­mo­ny, break, riff….” Through it all runs the life and career of Louis Arm­strong, whose sto­ry, Hugh­es states “is almost the whole sto­ry of orches­tral jazz in Amer­i­ca.”

Old New Orleans

The book is very patri­ot­ic in tone, a fact dic­tat­ed by Hugh­es’ recent appear­ance before Sen­a­tor McCarthy’s Sub­com­mit­tee, which exon­er­at­ed him on the con­di­tion that he renounce his ear­li­er sym­pa­thies for the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and get with a patri­ot­ic pro­gram. Hav­ing fall­en out of favor with the pub­lic, Hugh­es began the non­fic­tion children’s series to win back read­ers, also writ­ing the quaint­ly named cul­tur­al his­to­ry First Book of Negroes and the Whit­manesque First Book of Rhythms. All of the books were illus­trat­ed by dif­fer­ent artists. The First Book of Jazz received spe­cial treat­ment from pop­u­lar illus­tra­tor Cliff Roberts, who made its pages close­ly resem­ble clas­sic album cov­ers by artists like Jim Flo­ra.

Jazz Pianists

Although Hugh­es may have been some­what con­cil­ia­to­ry in his atti­tude toward inequal­i­ty, he nonethe­less makes the ori­gins and impor­tance of jazz clear:

A part of Amer­i­can music is jazz, born in the South. Woven into it in the Deep South were the rhythms of African drums that today make jazz music dif­fer­ent from any oth­er music in the world. Nobody else ever made jazz before we did. Jazz is Amer­i­can music.

“The par­tic­u­lar Amer­i­cans in ques­tion,” writes Win­ter, “are unde­ni­ably black,” and “when Hugh­es cov­ers the vast array of Amer­i­can styles that went into jazz, they tend to be (as they should be) black inter­pre­ta­tions of each musi­cal form.” But as he had always done, whether under pres­sure from McCarthy­ism or not, he proud­ly declares jazz yet anoth­er invalu­able con­tri­bu­tion African-Amer­i­cans, as well as Euro­pean immi­grants, made to the nation­al cul­ture. How­ev­er far left his polit­i­cal sym­pa­thies, Hugh­es was always a patri­ot, in the best sense, an admir­er of his country’s achieve­ments and gen­uine lover of its peo­ple.

Syncopation

Although it is a children’s book, Hugh­es’ First Book of Jazz is still a schol­ar­ly one, with a host of ref­er­ences in the Acknowl­edge­ments, and a list of famous jazz musi­cians, and their instru­ments, at the end. Also round­ing out the short course on jazz his­to­ry and musi­cian­ship is a two-part list of “Sug­gest­ed Records for Study” and one called “100 of My Favorite Record­ings.” Hugh­es even con­vinced Folk­ways records to release The Sto­ry of Jazz, an LP Hugh­es nar­rat­ed with exam­ples of each style of jazz he dis­cuss­es. You can read the full First Book of Jazz at Winter’s Flickr, where he has post­ed scans of every page. Vin­tage copies can be pur­chased online. See a gallery of Roberts’ full page illus­tra­tions here.

First Book

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz by Can­non­ball Adder­ley (with Louis Arm­strong & Thelo­nious Monk)

Watch Langston Hugh­es Read Poet­ry from His First Col­lec­tion, The Weary Blues (1958)

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s High­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Film on Jazz & Race in Amer­i­ca (With Music by Sun Ra)

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

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President Obama Chats with David Simon About Drugs, The Wire & Omar

in Politics, Television | March 31st, 2015

Back in 2012, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, already on record as being a fan of The Wire, was asked by ESPN to name his favorite char­ac­ter on the show, to which he replied “It’s got to be Omar, right? I mean, that guy is unbe­liev­able, right?” Fast for­ward to 2015, and we find Mr. Oba­ma host­ing David Simon (the cre­ator of The Wire) at the White House, and hav­ing a frank con­ver­sa­tion about the TV show and the war on drugs, and what lessons we’ve learned along the way. Of course, the con­ver­sa­tion does­n’t end with­out Omar get­ting a men­tion … or with­out us get­ting to see Oba­ma as TV host. A sign of what’s to come after 2016?

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.

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The Visionary Thought of Marshall McLuhan, Introduced and Demystified by Tom Wolfe

in Media, Philosophy | March 31st, 2015

Mar­shall McLuhan and Tom Wolfe: both writ­ers, both astute observers of mod­ern human­i­ty, and both pub­lic fig­ures whose work has, over the years, enjoyed high fash­ion­abil­i­ty and endured high unfash­ion­abil­i­ty. You might think the con­nec­tion between them ends there. But when the 100th anniver­sary of McLuhan’s birth and the cen­ten­ni­al-cel­e­brat­ing site Mar­shall McLuhan Speaks came about, whose elo­quent intro­duc­tion to the thinker (who famous­ly declared the world a “glob­al vil­lage” where “the medi­um is the mes­sage”) got used there? Why, the man in white’s.

In the 20-minute video above, Wolfe lays out not just a pré­cis of the insights that made McLuhan “the first seer of cyber­space,” but gets into his biog­ra­phy as well: his humbly respectable ori­gins in Edmon­ton, his back­ground as a lit­er­ary schol­ar, his con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism, the begin­nings of his teach­ing career in Cam­bridge and Wis­con­sin, his “extracur­ric­u­lar gath­er­ings devot­ed to the folk­lore of indus­tri­al man,” his strug­gle to rec­on­cile his inter­est in the writ­ings of philoso­pher-pale­on­tol­o­gist Pierre Teil­hard de Chardin with his own reli­gious con­vic­tions, and the con­sid­er­able fame he accrued mak­ing pro­nounce­ments on the media in the media.

“No doubt the inter­net would have delight­ed him,” says Wolfe. “He would have seen it as a ful­fill­ment of prophe­cies he had made thir­ty years before it was born, as an instru­ment for the real­iza­tion of his dream of the mys­ti­cal uni­ty of all mankind. [Watch him pre­dict the world would be knit­ted into a glob­al vil­lage by dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy in some vin­tage video.] Here, in a spe­cif­ic, phys­i­cal, elec­tron­ic form, was the seam­less web of which he had so often spo­ken. Today thou­sands of young inter­net apos­tles are famil­iar with Mar­shall McLuhan, and are con­vinced his light shines round about them. From the edi­tors of Wired mag­a­zine to the most mis­er­able dot-com lizards of the chat room, they have made him their patron saint.”

To get an even deep­er sense of how much Wolfe has thought about McLuhan, have a look at his first annu­al Mar­shall McLuhan Lec­ture, deliv­ered at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty in 1999. And unlike many intel­lec­tu­als who only turned back to re-exam­ine McLuhan after the age of the inter­net had retroac­tive­ly val­i­dat­ed even some of his wildest-sound­ing spec­u­la­tions, Wolfe has been tuned in to McLuhan’s fre­quen­cy since way back. In 1970, the two even got togeth­er for a tele­vised chat in McLuhan’s back yard (a clip of which you can watch just above), which revealed that, for all the fas­ci­na­tion Wolfe had with McLuhan, the inter­est was mutu­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Has Tech­nol­o­gy Changed Us?: BBC Ani­ma­tions Answer the Ques­tion with the Help of Mar­shall McLuhan

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

Mar­shall McLuhan: The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

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.

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Leo Tolstoy’s 17 “Rules of Life:” Wake at 5am, Help the Poor, & Only Two Brothel Visits Per Month

in Life, Literature, Writing | March 30th, 2015

tolstoy rules 2

Many aspir­ing epic nov­el­ists sure­ly would­n’t mind writ­ing like Leo Tol­stoy. But can you write like the writer you admire with­out liv­ing like the writer you admire? Biogra­phies reveal plen­ty of facts about how the author of such immor­tal vol­umes as War and Peace and Anna Karen­i­na passed his 82 years, none more telling than that even Leo Tol­stoy strug­gled to live like Leo Tol­stoy. “I must get used to the idea, once and for all, that I am an excep­tion­al human being,” he wrote in 1853, at age 25, under­scor­ing that “I have not met one man who is moral­ly as good as I am, or ready to sac­ri­fice every­thing for his ide­al, as I am.”

Clear­ly, exces­sive mod­esty did­n’t count among Tol­stoy’s faults. Sev­en years before mak­ing that dec­la­ra­tion, he had already envi­sioned for him­self a life of virtue and indus­try, lay­ing out what he called his “rules of life,” per­haps a fore­shad­ow­ing of his search for a rig­or­ous­ly reli­gious life with­out belief in a high­er being. The web­site Tol­stoy Ther­a­py has post­ed a selec­tion of these rules, which com­mand­ed him as fol­lows:

  • Wake at five o’clock
  • Go to bed no lat­er than ten o’clock
  • Two hours per­mis­si­ble for sleep­ing dur­ing the day
  • Eat mod­er­ate­ly
  • Avoid sweet foods
  • Walk for an hour every day
  • Vis­it a broth­el only twice a month
  • Love those to whom I could be of ser­vice
  • Dis­re­gard all pub­lic opin­ion not based on rea­son
  • Only do one thing at a time
  • Dis­al­low flights of imag­i­na­tion unless nec­es­sary

To this list of pre­cepts drawn up at the dawn of his adult life, most of which would­n’t seem out of place as any of our 21st-cen­tu­ry new year’s res­o­lu­tions, Tol­stoy lat­er added these:

  • Nev­er to show emo­tion
  • Stop car­ing about oth­er peo­ple’s opin­ion of myself
  • Do good things incon­spic­u­ous­ly
  • Keep away from women
  • Sup­press lust by work­ing hard
  • Help those less for­tu­nate

Even if you haven’t read much about Tol­stoy’s life, you may sense in some of these gen­er­al prin­ci­ples evi­dence of bat­tles with par­tic­u­lar impuls­es: observe, for instance, how his twice-month­ly lim­it on broth­el vis­its becomes the much more strin­gent and much less real­is­tic for­bid­dance of women entire­ly. But per­haps his tech­nique of work­ing hard, how­ev­er well or poor­ly it sup­pressed his lust (the man did father four­teen chil­dren, after all), ben­e­fit­ed him in the end, giv­en the vast and (often lit­er­al­ly) weighty body of work he left behind.

“Between ‘rules of life’ and life itself, what a chasm!” exclaims biog­ra­ph­er Hen­ri Troy­at in Tol­stoy. But as rich with inter­est as we find books like that, we ulti­mate­ly care about writ­ers not because of how they live, but because of how they write. The young Tol­stoy knew that, too; “the pub­li­ca­tion of Child­hood and ‘The Raid’ hav­ing made him, in his own eyes, a gen­uine man of let­ters,” writes Troy­at, “he soon added no less peremp­to­ry ‘Rules of Writ­ing’ to his ‘Rules of Life’:”

  • When you crit­i­cize your work, always put your­self in the posi­tion of the most lim­it­ed read­er, who is look­ing only for enter­tain­ment in a book.
  • The most inter­est­ing books are those in which the author pre­tends to hide his own opin­ion and yet remains faith­ful to it.
  • When reread­ing and revis­ing, do not think about what should be added (no mat­ter how admirable the thoughts that come to mind) … but about how much can be tak­en away with­out dis­tort­ing the over­all mean­ing.

Then again, War and Peace has in the mod­ern day become a byword for sheer length, and few read­ers not already steeped in 19th-cen­tu­ry Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture would turn to Tol­stoy for pure enter­tain­ment. Per­haps the writer’s life implic­it­ly adds one caveat atop all the ever-stricter rules he made for him­self while liv­ing it: nobody’s per­fect.

via Tol­stoy Ther­a­py

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Vin­tage Footage of Leo Tol­stoy: Video Cap­tures the Great Nov­el­ist Dur­ing His Final Days

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Ray Brad­bury Offers 12 Essen­tial Writ­ing Tips and Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture Saves Civ­i­liza­tion

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.

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

in Art, History, K-12, Life | March 30th, 2015

patti smith letter

The next time sto­ry hour rolls around, you can give a mouse a cook­ie or you can awak­en pre-read­ers (and your­self) to some key fig­ures in wom­en’s his­to­ry. 26 of them, to be pre­cise. It’s no acci­dent that that num­ber cor­re­sponds to the exact num­ber of let­ters in the alpha­bet.

Author Kate Schatz and illus­tra­tor Miri­am Klein Stahl active­ly sought to include women of col­or and a vari­ety of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions when choos­ing whom to fea­ture in Rad Amer­i­can Women A To Z, a pro­gres­sive fem­i­nist text cum ABC primer. (Illus­tra­tions from the book, like the ones fea­tured on this page, can be down­loaded here for free.)

odetta letter

Hope­ful­ly Glo­ria Steinem was not too upset to learn that G is for the Grimke sis­ters. Actu­al­ly, I sus­pect that the sec­ond wave’s most rec­og­niz­able super­star would be pleased if read­ers are moved to edu­cate them­selves as to some of the book’s more obscure ref­er­ences.

ursula letter

B is for Bil­lie Jean King who whooped male chau­vin­ist pig Bob­by Rig­gs on the court in 1973’s Bat­tle of the Sex­es. I remem­ber her! A Bil­lie and Bob­by-themed pump­kin took top hon­ors in my school’s Hal­loween carv­ing con­test that year.

It’s fun­ny how when a woman does some­thing they always think we only affect half of the pop­u­la­tion, and peo­ple will come up to me and say thanks for what you did for wom­en’s ten­nis all the time, and I know they’d nev­er say that to a guy.

E is for civ­il rights activist Ella Bak­er, a sec­re­tary who rose through the ranks of the NAACP to become direc­tor of branch­es. She rec­og­nized the press often over­looked her role, as did his­to­ry.

You did­n’t see me on tele­vi­sion, you did­n’t see news sto­ries about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put togeth­er pieces out of which I hoped orga­ni­za­tion might come. My the­o­ry is, strong peo­ple don’t need strong lead­ers.

J is for Jovi­ta Idar, edu­ca­tor and cofounder of the Mex­i­can Fem­i­nist League.

Mex­i­can chil­dren in Texas need an edu­ca­tion…. There is no oth­er means to do it but our­selves, so that we are not deval­ued and humil­i­at­ed by the strangers who sur­round us. 

God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith, author Ursu­la K. La Guin, and Odet­ta, leg­endary blues singer and “Voice of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment,” are among the mar­quee names to be can­on­ized. See their illus­tra­tions above.

To get all 26 illus­tra­tions in a down­load­able for­mat, click here. To order your own copy of the book, go here.

via Good

Relat­ed Con­tent:

74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives

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

Chrissie Hynde’s 10 Pieces of Advice for “Chick Rock­ers” (1994)

Simone de Beau­voir Tells Studs Terkel How She Became an Intel­lec­tu­al and Fem­i­nist (1960)

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

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George Mason Students Create Revolutionary Fire Extinguisher That Uses Sound Waves to Blow Out Fires

in Technology | March 30th, 2015

If you haven’t seen it already: two George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty engi­neer­ing stu­dents — Viet Tran and Seth Robert­son — have cre­at­ed a poten­tial­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary device, a new-fan­gled fire extin­guish­er, that uses low-fre­quen­cy sound waves to snuff out fires. Accord­ing to Tech­Ex­plore, Tran (a com­put­er engi­neer­ing major) and Seth Robert­son (dou­ble e major) “start­ed with the sim­ple idea that sound waves are also mechan­i­cal or  (due to the back and forth motion of the medi­um in which they pass through), which can cause an impact on objects.” Through tri­al and error, the stu­dents fig­ured out that ultra-high fre­quen­cies did­n’t do very much, but low­er fre­quen­cies (in the 30 to 60 Hertz range) can blow a small fire right out. Just watch above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

Free Online Engi­neer­ing Cours­es

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

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