Predict Which 21st Century Novels Will Enter the Literary Canon? And Which Overrated Ones Won’t?

in Books, Literature | February 13th, 2015

Last year, we fea­tured a 1936 poll where read­ers pre­dict­ed what writ­ers would make it into the lit­er­ary canon of the year 2000. But what results would the same inquiry yield today? What 21st-cen­tu­ry nov­els (ear­ly in the game, I know, but still) will remain wide­ly read over half a cen­tu­ry from now? How much more pre­science have we evolved com­pared to that of our equiv­a­lents almost 80 years ago? How many mod­ern Sin­clair Lewis­es and Willa Cathers would we pick — ver­sus how many mod­ern James Truslow Adamses and James Branch Cabells?

Writ­ing for Arts.Mic, Claire Luchette gives one pos­si­ble set of answers to this ques­tion with her list of “11 Twen­ty-First Cen­tu­ry Books Our Kids Will Be Taught in School,” which runs as fol­lows:

1. White Teeth (Zadie Smith, 2000)
2. Life of Pi (Yann Mar­tel, 2001)
3. Mid­dle­sex (Jef­frey Eugenides, 2002)
4. The Kite Run­ner (Khaled Hos­sei­ni, 2003)
5. The Name­sake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)
6. Gilead by Mar­i­lynne Robin­son (2004)
7. The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz, 2008)
8. A Vis­it From the Goon Squad (Jen­nifer Egan, 2010)
9. Free­dom (Jonathan Franzen, 2010)
10. Dear Life (Alice Munro, 2012)
11. Tenth of Decem­ber (George Saun­ders, 2013)

The future already looks bright for sev­er­al of Luchet­te’s picks. Junot Diaz’s “habit-form­ing­ly col­or­ful and bright” (not to men­tion Pulitzer-win­ning) The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao recent­ly topped BBC Cul­ture’s crit­ics poll for the best nov­el of the 21st cen­tu­ry so far. Oth­ers face longer odds. As high a point in the zeit­geist as Yann Martel’s Life of Pi reached — and no less an opin­ion leader than Barack Oba­ma called it “an ele­gant proof of God” — I per­son­al­ly tend to agree with the assess­ment of James Wood, who likens its cen­tral rev­e­la­tion to “an edi­to­r­i­al meet­ing of Social Text.”

And so we hand it over to you, Open Cul­ture read­ers. What does the future’s canon look like from where you stand? In the com­ments, name the books you think will remain wide­ly read (or grow more so) at the end of the cen­tu­ry, or indeed, the ones wide­ly read now that will have, by that point, col­lect­ed the bet­ter part of a cen­tu­ry’s dust. Bonus points for telling us why.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read­ers Pre­dict in 1936 Which Nov­el­ists Would Still Be Wide­ly Read in the Year 2000

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

The 25 Best Non-Fic­tion Books Ever: Read­ers’ Picks

The Books You Think Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read: Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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.

The Marvelous Health Benefits of Chocolate: A Curious Medical Essay from 1631

in Food & Drink, Health | February 13th, 2015

When cof­fee first came to the west­ern world dur­ing the 17th cen­tu­ry, it did­n’t taste par­tic­u­lar­ly good. So the peo­ple import­ing and ped­dling the new com­mod­i­ty talked up the health ben­e­fits of the new drink. The first known Eng­lish adver­tise­ment for cof­fee, dat­ing back to 1652, made these claims: Cof­fee is “very good to help diges­tion.” It also “quick­ens the Spir­its, and makes the Heart Light­some.” And it “is good against sore Eys, and the bet­ter if you hold your Head o’er it, and take in the Steem that way.”

It turns out that choco­late had a sim­i­lar intro­duc­tion to the West. Writ­ing at the always inter­est­ing Pub­lic Domain Review, Chris­tine A. Jones recounts how when choco­late “first arrived from the Amer­i­c­as into Europe in the 17th cen­tu­ry it was a rare and mys­te­ri­ous sub­stance, thought more of as a drug than as a food.” The Span­ish, who con­quered the Aztecs in 1521, first doc­u­ment­ed the choco­late they encoun­tered there in 1552. And then, in 1631, they placed choco­late in the annals of med­ical his­to­ry when Anto­nio Colmen­ero de Ledes­ma, a Span­ish physi­cian and sur­geon, wrote a med­ical essay called Curioso Trata­do de la nat­u­raleza y cal­i­dad del choco­late. The essay made the case that choco­late, if tak­en cor­rect­ly, could help bal­ance the body’s humors (Blood, Yel­low Bile, Black Bile & Phlegm) and ward off dis­ease. (You can bone up on the ancient sci­ence of Humorism here.) When trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish in 1651, the trea­tise now called Choco­late; or, an Indi­an Drinke came pref­aced by an intro­duc­tion that tout­ed choco­late’s health ben­e­fits:

It is an excel­lent help to Diges­tion, it cures Con­sump­tions, and the Cough of the Lungs, the New Dis­ease, or Plague of the Guts, and oth­er Flux­es, the Green Sick­nesse, Jaun­dise, and all man­ner of Infla­ma­tions, Opi­la­tions, and Obstruc­tions. It quite takes away the Mor­phew, Cleanseth the Teeth, and sweet­neth the Breath, Pro­vokes Urine, Cures the Stone, and stran­gury, Expells Poi­son, and pre­serves from all infec­tious Dis­eases.

And it fea­tured one of the first recipes for hot choco­late:

To every 100. Cacaos, you must put two cods of the*Chiles long red Pep­per, of which I have spo­ken before, and are called in the Indi­an Tongue, Chilpar­lagua; and in stead of those of the Indies, you may take those of Spaine which are broad­est, & least hot. One hand­full of Annis-seed Ore­jue­las, which are oth­er­wise called Pinacaxli­dos: and two of the flow­ers, called Mecha­suchil, if the Bel­ly be bound. But in stead of this, in Spaine, we put in six Ros­es of Alexan­dria beat to Pow­der: One Cod of Campeche, or Log­wood: Two Drams of Cina­mon; Almons, and Hasle-Nuts, of each one Dozen: Of white Sug­ar, halfe a pound: of Achio­tee­nough to give it the colour.

You can read more about the curi­ous med­ical his­to­ry of choco­late at The Pub­lic Domain Review. And while you’re there, you should check out their new book of essays, which we fea­tured on Open Cul­ture in Decem­ber.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Harvard’s Free Course on Mak­ing Cakes, Pael­la & Oth­er Deli­cious Food

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Cui­sine All at Once (Free Online Course)

A Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties: Dis­cov­er The Pub­lic Domain Review’s New Book of Essays

In Animated Cartoon, Alison Bechdel Sees Her Life Go From Pulitizer Prize Winning Comic to Broadway Musical

in Comics/Cartoons, Life, Literature, Music, Theatre | February 13th, 2015

No one is sur­prised when authors mine their per­son­al expe­ri­ences. If they’re lucky enough to strike gold, oth­er min­ers may be brought on to bring the sto­ries to the sil­ver screen. Here’s where things get tricky (if lucra­tive). No one wants to see his or her impor­tant life details get­ting roy­al­ly botched, espe­cial­ly when the results are blown up 70 feet across.

Car­toon­ist Ali­son Bechdel’s path to let­ting oth­ers take the reins as her sto­ry is immor­tal­ized in front of a live audi­ence is not the usu­al mod­el. The fam­i­ly his­to­ry she shared in the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning Fun Home: A Fam­i­ly Tragi­com­ic has been turned into a Broad­way musi­cal.

Now that would be a nail biter, espe­cial­ly if the non-fic­tion­al source mate­r­i­al includes a graph­i­cal­ly awk­ward first sex­u­al encounter and your clos­et­ed father’s sui­cide.

In the ani­mat­ed com­ic above, Bechdel recounts the sur­re­al expe­ri­ence of see­ing her most per­son­al expe­ri­ences musi­cal­ized dur­ing Fun Home’s recent Off-Broad­way run at the Pub­lic The­ater.

In the wrong hands, it could have been an excru­ci­at­ing evening, but Fun Home, the musi­cal, has had excel­lent pedi­gree from the get go.

It’s also worth not­ing that this show pass­es the infa­mous Bechdel Test (below) both onstage and off, with a book and lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jea­nine Tesori.

Pre­views begin next month in New York City.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Car­toon­ist Kate Beat­on Plays on Lit­er­ary Clas­sics — The Great Gats­by, Julius Cae­sar & More

Lyn­da Bar­ry, Car­toon­ist Turned Pro­fes­sor, Gives Her Old Fash­ioned Take on the Future of Edu­ca­tion

Under­ground Car­toon­ist R. Crumb Intro­duces Us to His Rol­lick­ing Album Cov­er Designs

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

Illustrations for a Chinese Lord of the Rings in a Stunning “Glass Painting Style”

in Art, Literature | February 13th, 2015

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy has had an enor­mous­ly wide, cross-cul­tur­al appeal. This despite the fact that its cre­ator was a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of a long-dead lan­guage, Anglo-Sax­on, who set his sto­ry in a world of cus­toms and mores—supernatural ele­ments aside—that bear a fair­ly close resem­blance to ancient and medieval Eng­land. But such sim­i­lar­ly provin­cial set­tings have raised no bar­ri­ers to the glob­al reach of the Ili­ad, say, or Shake­speare. West­ern epics, ancient and mod­ern, may on the one hand have trav­eled the globe on waves of cul­tur­al impe­ri­al­ism (and Hol­ly­wood film), and, on the oth­er, they have their own built-in glob­al reach because they tap into arche­typ­al sto­ry-types and human characteristics—because their use of myth and folk­lore reads as uni­ver­sal, though the par­tic­u­lars change from place to place and age to age.

The mul­ti­lin­gual among us have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see how well, or not, great sto­ries trans­late into dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al con­texts. Read­ers, for exam­ple, of both Chi­nese and Eng­lish will be able to com­pare Tolkien’s orig­i­nals with forth­com­ing edi­tions of the books from Wen­Jing Pub­lish­ing. The rest of us provin­cial mono­lin­guals can still make com­par­isons of visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the text, like these pos­si­ble book cov­ers drawn by artist Jian Guo. Part of a com­pe­ti­tion held by the pub­lish­er of the new Chi­nese text, the beau­ti­ful, mono­chro­mat­ic illus­tra­tions draw on many of the design ele­ments of Tolkien’s orig­i­nal paint­ings for the trilogy’s cov­ers, elab­o­rat­ing on the icon­ic ring and tow­ers with intri­cate Asian lines and flour­ish­es. At the top, see The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, above The Two Tow­ers, and below, The Return of the King.

The artist, an archi­tec­tur­al stu­dent, describes his style as “glass paint­ing style,” which he uses for its “sense of reli­gious mag­nif­i­cence.” Inter­est­ing­ly, before see­ing Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adap­ta­tion in 2002, he had nev­er heard of the books. (Pre­vi­ous Chi­nese trans­la­tions of the books fea­ture rather unimag­i­na­tive cov­ers with images from Jackson’s movies.) The films con­vert­ed him into an avid read­er of Tolkien—see a Hob­bit illus­tra­tion at the bot­tom of the post. Jian is also a lover of J.K. Rowling’s pop­u­lar fan­ta­sy series and has designed some won­der­ful­ly styl­ized illus­tra­tions for Har­ry Pot­ter and the Cham­ber of Secrets and Har­ry Pot­ter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

via Tor

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Illus­tra­tions of The Lord of the Rings in Russ­ian Iconog­ra­phy Style (1993)

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

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

Gun Nut William S. Burroughs & Gonzo Illustrator Ralph Steadman Make Polaroid Portraits Together

in Art, Literature | February 12th, 2015

Ralph Stead­man is best known as the artist who real­ized the gonzo vision of Hunter S. Thomp­son in illus­tra­tions for the latter’s books and arti­cles (and more recent­ly, per­haps, for the labels on Colorado’s Fly­ing Dog brew). His work has famous­ly appeared over the past sev­er­al decades in Punch, Pri­vate Eye, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, and he pro­duced a bril­liant­ly illus­trat­ed edi­tion of Alice in Won­der­land. Like his friend Ger­ald Scarfe, anoth­er wicked­ly satir­i­cal car­toon­ist who cre­at­ed the look of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Stead­man has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the look of the coun­ter­cul­ture.

But while Steadman’s work with Hunter Thomp­son may large­ly define his career, anoth­er notable col­lab­o­ra­tion with a lit­er­ary fig­ure, William S. Bur­roughs, also proved fruit­ful many years lat­er. In 1995, Stead­man brought togeth­er his own illus­tra­tions with Bur­roughs love of guns, ask­ing the octo­ge­nar­i­an writer to blast holes in orig­i­nal Stead­man cre­ations.

Some of these paint­ings fea­ture the Polaroid por­traits of Bur­roughs above and at the top of the post (see a result­ing Steadman/Burroughs silkscreen print, with gun­shot holes, here). Just above, you can see Stead­man tak­ing the pho­tos. First, he makes some test shots with an assis­tant, then, at 2:50, we see him with Bur­roughs and an entourage. As The Inde­pen­dent described the meet­ing at Bur­roughs’ house in Lawrence, Kansas, it was some­thing of a “con­trived event,” with “swarms of assis­tants” and “acolytes” in atten­dance, “tap­ing the whole thing on video.”

Luck­i­ly for us, I’d say. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we don’t seem to have video from lat­er in the day, when the group drove “out to Burrough’s friends place out­side town, where he does his shoot­ing.” Once there, “Bur­roughs, Stead­man and his wife Anna and Bur­roughs’ entourage take turns blaz­ing away with .33s, .45s, pump-action shot­guns and Sat­ur­day-night spe­cials at a vari­ety of tar­gets,” includ­ing Steadman’s art. That would be some­thing to see. We’ll have to set­tle for the art itself, and Steadman’s fas­ci­nat­ing demon­stra­tion below of his approach to por­trai­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Hunter S. Thomp­son — and Psilo­cy­bin — Influ­enced the Art of Ralph Stead­man, Cre­at­ing the “Gonzo” Style

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

William S. Bur­roughs Shows You How to Make “Shot­gun Art”

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

William Faulkner Outlines on His Office Wall the Plot of His Pulitzer Prize Winning Novel, A Fable (1954)

in Literature | February 12th, 2015

Image cour­tesy of enotes

This past sum­mer I had occa­sion to vis­it Oxford Mis­sis­sip­pi for a con­fer­ence on William Faulkn­er, host­ed by the uni­ver­si­ty he briefly attend­ed, Ole Miss. Own­er of Faulkner’s estate, Rowan Oak, since 1972, the uni­ver­si­ty often stages events on the novelist’s for­mer grounds—particularly to cel­e­brate meet­ings devot­ed to his work. While I had wan­dered around the prop­er­ty a few times dur­ing my stay on cam­pus, I thought I’d wait until the cap­stone bar­be­cue at the conference’s close to enter the house itself. More fool me. A rain­storm forced the fes­tiv­i­ties into a col­lege hall, and I had to depart ear­ly the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

And so, sad­ly, I missed out on walk­ing Faulkner’s floor­boards, peer­ing out through his win­dows, and, espe­cial­ly, see­ing first­hand the notes he scrawled on the walls of his study to out­line the plot of his 1954 nov­el A Fable. The Pulitzer Prize and Nation­al Book Award-win­ning book, which—depending on your tol­er­ance for Faulkner’s excess­es is either a “crown­ing achieve­ment or self-indul­gent mess”—occu­pied the author for over a decade. He began A Fable—set in France dur­ing World War 1—just after the end of the Sec­ond World War, and did much of the writ­ing in the small office he added to the house in 1950, the year after he won the Nobel Prize. (Hear him read his Nobel Prize Speech here.)

Pho­to by Nick Rus­sell

Plot­ting the chronol­o­gy on the walls helped him become ful­ly immersed in the novel’s den­si­ty, but, writes edu­ca­tion blog Enotes, “not every­body was so pleased with the method”: “Faulkner’s wife, dis­ap­point­ed with the deci­sion, had the walls repaint­ed. In return, Faulkn­er rewrote the out­line and then shel­lacked the wall to ensure a per­ma­nent record.”

There are much worse ways to antag­o­nize one’s spouse, I sup­pose, but I’m sure that wasn’t his pri­ma­ry intent. Faulkn­er con­sid­ered the nov­el his masterpiece—Pulitzer and Nation­al Book Award com­mit­tees agreed—but crit­ics have not been so kind. It’s now one of his less­er-known works, one of the few not set in the fic­tion­al Yoknopataw­pha, a stand-in for his own Lafayette coun­ty, which he mined for sto­ries all of his mature career after some brief adven­tur­ing abroad.

Per­haps his defi­ant preser­va­tion of the plan for A Fable rep­re­sents his deep desire to leave behind the “postage stamp” of Oxford and its surrounds—to ven­ture into oth­er imag­i­na­tive ter­ri­to­ries. If so, his plan failed. Faulkn­er will be for­ev­er asso­ci­at­ed with the South—with Mis­sis­sip­pi, and with Rowan Oak. And like so many devo­tees, I’ll like­ly make my pil­grim­age to his well-pre­served home a year­ly event. The next time I’m down there, how­ev­er, I’ll actu­al­ly make it inside to see the writ­ing on the walls.

Pho­to by John Lawrence, from Faulkner’s Rowan Oak , by John Lawrence and Dan Hise

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Audio: William Faulkn­er Names His Best Nov­el, And the First Faulkn­er Nov­el You Should Read

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

How Famous Writ­ers — From J.K. Rowl­ing to William Faulkn­er — Visu­al­ly Out­lined Their Nov­els

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

See Penguins Wearing Tiny “Penguin Books” Sweaters, Knitted by the Oldest Man in Australia

in Books, Random | February 12th, 2015

How does 109-year-old Alfred “Alfie” Date keep him­self busy? Appar­ent­ly by knit­ting sweaters for endan­gered pen­guins. The old­est man in Aus­tralia, Alfie began knit­ting these lit­tle sweaters at the request of The Pen­guin Foun­da­tion in 2013, after hun­dreds of Lit­tle Pen­guins were injured by a big oil spill. He makes the sweaters in dif­fer­ent styles. But you can’t beat a pen­guin wear­ing a Pen­guin Books logo. We dare you to try.

File under Meta.

via Bored Pan­da

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Harper Lee on the Joy of Reading Real Books: “Some Things Should Happen On Soft Pages, Not Cold Metal”

in Books, Letters, Literature | February 12th, 2015

News of the new, long-await­ed but hard­ly expect­ed Harp­er Lee nov­el, Go Set a Watch­man—a sequel to the 1960’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird—has been met with vary­ing degrees of skep­ti­cism, sure­ly war­rant­ed giv­en her late sis­ter Alice and oth­ers’ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Lee’s phys­i­cal and men­tal decline. On the oth­er hand, the nov­el­ist, it’s been report­ed, is “extreme­ly hurt” by alle­ga­tions that she has been pres­sured to pub­lish. It would be a shame if the con­tro­ver­sy over the pub­li­ca­tion of the nov­el eclipsed the nov­el itself. While it had become some­thing of a tru­ism that Harp­er Lee would only pub­lish the one, great nov­el and nev­er anoth­er, I for one greet this lat­est news with joy.

For one thing, cir­cum­stances aside, the new Harp­er Lee nov­el has the mass media doing some­thing it rarely does anymore—talking about lit­er­ary fic­tion. And for the thou­sands of school kids required to read To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and won­der­ing why they should both­er, the con­ver­sa­tion hope­ful­ly com­mu­ni­cates that books still mat­ter, and not just dystopi­an YA sci-fi and mass-mar­ket trade books about BDSM fan­tasies, but books about ordi­nary peo­ple in ordi­nary times and places. It’s a les­son Lee learned ear­ly. In a 2006 let­ter to Oprah Win­frey, pub­lished in O mag­a­zine, Lee wrote about her child­hood expe­ri­ences with read­ing, and being read to. She recalls arriv­ing “in the first grade, lit­er­ate,” because of her upbring­ing. She also acknowl­edges that “books were scarce”; her and her sib­lings ear­ly lit­er­a­cy meant they were “priv­i­leged” com­pared to oth­er chil­dren, “most­ly from rur­al areas,” and the “chil­dren of our African-Amer­i­can ser­vants.”

While we may dis­miss Lee’s con­tention that in “an abun­dant soci­ety where peo­ple have lap­tops, cell phones” and “iPods” they also have “minds like emp­ty rooms” as the kvetch­ing of a senior cit­i­zen, I doubt most peo­ple who respect Lee’s wis­dom and good humor would do so light­ly. Her poet­ic evo­ca­tion of the tac­tile dif­fer­ences between books and gad­gets alone should give us pause: “some things should only hap­pen on soft pages, not cold met­al.”

Read the full let­ter below.

May 7, 2006

Dear Oprah,

Do you remem­ber when you learned to read, or like me, can you not even remem­ber a time when you did­n’t know how? I must have learned from hav­ing been read to by my fam­i­ly. My sis­ters and broth­er, much old­er, read aloud to keep me from pes­ter­ing them; my moth­er read me a sto­ry every day, usu­al­ly a chil­dren’s clas­sic, and my father read from the four news­pa­pers he got through every evening. Then, of course, it was Uncle Wig­gi­ly at bed­time.

So I arrived in the first grade, lit­er­ate, with a curi­ous cul­tur­al assim­i­la­tion of Amer­i­can his­to­ry, romance, the Rover Boys, Rapun­zel, and The Mobile Press. Ear­ly signs of genius? Far from it. Read­ing was an accom­plish­ment I shared with sev­er­al local con­tem­po­raries. Why this endem­ic pre­coc­i­ty? Because in my home­town, a remote vil­lage in the ear­ly 1930s, young­sters had lit­tle to do but read. A movie? Not often — movies weren’t for small chil­dren. A park for games? Not a hope. We’re talk­ing unpaved streets here, and the Depres­sion.

Books were scarce. There was noth­ing you could call a pub­lic library, we were a hun­dred miles away from a depart­ment store’s books sec­tion, so we chil­dren began to cir­cu­late read­ing mate­r­i­al among our­selves until each child had read anoth­er’s entire stock. There were long dry spells bro­ken by the new Christ­mas books, which start­ed the rounds again.

As we grew old­er, we began to real­ize what our books were worth: Anne of Green Gables was worth two Bobb­sey Twins; two Rover Boys were an even swap for two Tom Swifts. Aes­thet­ic fris­sons ran a poor sec­ond to the thrills of acqui­si­tion. The goal, a full set of a series, was attained only once by an indi­vid­ual of excep­tion­al greed — he swapped his sis­ter’s doll bug­gy.

We were priv­i­leged. There were chil­dren, most­ly from rur­al areas, who had nev­er looked into a book until they went to school. They had to be taught to read in the first grade, and we were impa­tient with them for hav­ing to catch up. We ignored them.

And it was­n’t until we were grown, some of us, that we dis­cov­ered what had befall­en the chil­dren of our African-Amer­i­can ser­vants. In some of their schools, pupils learned to read three-to-one — three chil­dren to one book, which was more than like­ly a cast-off primer from a white gram­mar school. We sel­dom saw them until, old­er, they came to work for us.

Now, 75 years lat­er in an abun­dant soci­ety where peo­ple have lap­tops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like emp­ty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant infor­ma­tion is not for me. I pre­fer to search library stacks because when I work to learn some­thing, I remem­ber it. 

And, Oprah, can you imag­ine curl­ing up in bed to read a com­put­er? Weep­ing for Anna Karen­i­na and being ter­ri­fied by Han­ni­bal Lecter, enter­ing the heart of dark­ness with Mis­tah Kurtz, hav­ing Hold­en Caulfield ring you up — some things should hap­pen on soft pages, not cold met­al.

The vil­lage of my child­hood is gone, with it most of the book col­lec­tors, includ­ing the dodgy one who swapped his com­plete set of Seck­atary Hawkins­es for a shot­gun and kept it until it was retrieved by an irate par­ent.

Now we are three in num­ber and live hun­dreds of miles away from each oth­er. We still keep in touch by tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions of recur­rent theme: “What is your name again?” fol­lowed by “What are you read­ing?” We don’t always remem­ber. 

Much love, 

Harp­er

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

The Books You Think Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read: Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

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

Watch Agnès Varda’s Les Fiancés Du Pont Macdonald: A Silent Comic Short Starring Jean-Luc Godard & Anna Karina

in Film | February 11th, 2015

Agnès Var­da claimed to have seen few­er than ten movies before she made her first film at age 25. At the time, she had some pret­ty naïve ideas about film. “I thought if I added sound to pho­tographs, that would be cin­e­ma,” she recalled. She learned the essence of film­mak­ing and, by all accounts, learned it well. The result­ing film, La Pointe-Courte (1954), a self-financed doc­u­men­tary-fic­tion hybrid, is con­sid­ered one of the fore­run­ners of the French New Wave.

Fast for­ward a few years. Var­da is shoot­ing her fol­low up fea­ture Cleo from 5 to 7. The film would prove to be her break­out hit and a clas­sic of the New Wave along­side the likes of 400 Blows and Breath­less.

The film, which unspools almost in real time, is about a beau­ti­ful young singer who waits anx­ious­ly for the results of a med­ical test. We watch her as she talks with well-mean­ing friends, finds com­fort with a stranger, and even takes some time to watch a movie. In the wrong hands, the sto­ry has the poten­tial for being an unleav­ened exer­cise in exis­ten­tial angst. But, as she lat­er proved in sub­se­quent movies, she was nev­er one to let things get too dark. The movie that the hero­ine watch­es is a silent com­e­dy – one that Var­da shot her­self.

Les Fiancés Du Pont Mac­don­ald cen­ters on a Buster Keaton­sque dandy in a flat straw hat who waves good-bye to his doll-like girl­friend. Yet when he dons a pair of sun­glass­es, every­thing goes wrong. He wit­ness­es his beloved get­ting injured in an acci­dent only to be hauled off by a hearse. When he takes off the glass­es to wipe away the tears, he real­izes that he saw it all wrong. The glass­es make every­thing seem metaphor­i­cal­ly dark. No won­der the movie’s sub­ti­tle is “Beware of Dark Glass­es.” You can watch it above.

Les Fiancés is inter­est­ing not just because of Varda’s spot on pas­tiche of silent movies but also because of its cast. None oth­er than Jean-Luc Godard plays the dandy. His wife Anna Kari­na plays the girl, of course. Gen­er­al­ly, Godard’s onscreen appear­ances run the gamut from being sober and aloof to being hec­tor­ing and indig­nant. It’s fun to watch him ham it up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ambi­tious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Film­mak­ers

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Han­nah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

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.

Haruki Murakami Reads in English from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in a Rare Public Reading (1998)

in Books, Literature | February 11th, 2015

Note: It looks like the 92nd St Y took the read­ing off of its Youtube chan­nel for unknown rea­sons. How­ev­er you can stream it here.

Haru­ki Muraka­mi does­n’t make many pub­lic appear­ances, but when he does, his fans savor them. This record­ing of a read­ing he gave at New York’s 92nd Street Y back in 1998 (stream it here) counts as a trea­sured piece of mate­r­i­al among Eng­lish-speak­ing Murakamists, espe­cial­ly those who love his eighth nov­el, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle. When asked to read from that book, the author explains here, he usu­al­ly reads from chap­ter one, “but I’m tired of read­ing the same thing over and over, so I’m going to read chap­ter three today.” And that’s what he does after giv­ing some back­ground on the book, its 29-year-old pro­tag­o­nist Toru Oka­da, and his own thoughts on how it feels to be 29.

The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, pub­lished in three parts in Japan in 1994 and 1995 and in its entire­ty in Eng­lish in 1997, began a new chap­ter in the writer’s career. You could tell by its size alone: the page count rose to 600 in the Eng­lish-lan­guage edi­tion, where­as none of his pre­vi­ous nov­els had clocked in above 400. The­mat­i­cal­ly, too, Murakami’s mis­sion had clear­ly broad­ened: where its pre­de­ces­sors con­cern them­selves pri­mar­i­ly with West­ern pop cul­ture, dis­ap­pear­ing girls, twen­tysome­thing lan­guor, and mys­te­ri­ous ani­mal-men, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle takes on Japan­ese his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly the coun­try’s ill-advised wartime colo­nial ven­ture in Manchuria.

As a result, the book final­ly earned Muraka­mi some respect — albeit respect he’d nev­er direct­ly sought — from his home­land’s long-dis­dain­ful lit­er­ary estab­lish­ment. Despite hav­ing held its place since the time of this read­ing as Murakami’s “impor­tant” book, and one many read­ers name as their favorite, it might not offer the eas­i­est point of entry into his work. When I asked Wang Chung lead singer Jack Hues about a Muraka­mi ref­er­ence in the band’s song “City of Light,” he told me he put it there after read­ing The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle on his daugh­ter’s rec­om­men­da­tion and not lik­ing it very much. I sug­gest­ed he try Nor­we­gian Wood instead.

Note: You can down­load a com­plete audio ver­sion of The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle if you take part in one of the free tri­als offered by our part­ners Audible.com and/or Audiobooks.com. Click on the respec­tive links to get more infor­ma­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

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 Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

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.