How Famous Writers Deal With Writer’s Block: Their Tips & Tricks

in Creativity, Writing | January 6th, 2015

Near­ly everyone—from the most min­i­mal­ly edu­cat­ed to the most aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly accomplished—has expe­ri­enced at least once that pan­icked loss for words col­lo­qui­al­ly known as “writer’s block.” Faced with the glacial expanse of a blank page, or screen, the fin­gers fum­ble, heart races, and the brain seizes up. And, for those who write for a liv­ing, for whom writ­ing is a defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of their very exis­tence, it can seem like one’s very soul becomes imper­iled, aban­doned by the mus­es or what­ev­er fick­le per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of cre­ative inspi­ra­tion.

The mal­a­dy is seem­ing­ly uni­ver­sal, even, writes The Inde­pen­dent, among “some of history’s most famous, and prodi­gious­ly flu­ent, authors,” like Leo Tol­stoy, Vir­ginia Woolf, Ernest Hem­ing­way, and Joseph Con­rad. One par­tic­u­lar­ly per­fec­tion­is­tic strain of writer’s block—the search for le mot juste—is for­ev­er asso­ci­at­ed with Madame Bovary author Gus­tave Flaubert, who described the sick­ness to a friend as “stay[ing] a whole day with your head in your hands, try­ing to squeeze your unfor­tu­nate brain so as to find a word.” Clear­ly, such illus­tri­ous names as the above found some sort of cure for the block, or we may not know their names at all.

Some writ­ers deny the very exis­tence of writer’s block. Nov­el­ist Kathy Lette belit­tles the notion as sound­ing like a “prison wing for authors who make too many puns—a puni­ten­tiary,” and she claims that “women writ­ers don’t have time for writer’s block.” Jef­frey Archer says he has nev­er had writer’s block, even though he named his Major­ca home “Writer’s Block.” I diag­nose these authors with a severe form of psy­cho­log­i­cal repres­sion, per­haps brought on by extreme and trau­mat­ic bouts of writer’s block.

From even a cur­so­ry sur­vey of those who open­ly admit to the pain of run­ning out of things to say from time to time, it seems there are as many ways to get going again as there are writ­ers. The Inde­pen­dent quotes nov­el­ists like Philip Hen­sh­er, who takes “the Tube to the end of the line,” then walks back into cen­tral London—a very geo­graph­i­cal­ly exclu­sive fix, to be sure. A Fla­vor­wire list brings us reme­dies from Maya Angelou, who would “write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat’” until the muse returned to save her from insan­i­ty. Neil Gaiman takes an entire­ly dif­fer­ent approach—he gets up and walks away to “do oth­er things.” Though it may seem in moments of severe writer’s block that noth­ing else could pos­si­bly mat­ter, his tac­tic—research sug­gests—may be just the thing to get the cre­ative uncon­scious going again.

Speak­ing of the uncon­scious, Anne Lam­ott rec­om­mends to her stu­dents that they com­mit to writ­ing three hun­dred words on how much they hate writ­ing, then “on bad days and weeks, let things go at that… Your uncon­scious can’t work when you are breath­ing down its neck. You’ll sit there going, ‘Are you done in there yet, are you done in there yet?’” Not help­ful. In the videos above, see how pop­u­lar best-sell­ing nov­el­ist Dan Brown deals with a lag­gard­ly uncon­scious. Love, hate, or be indif­fer­ent to his work, but you must admit, his is a very nov­el method: Every hour, Brown gets up and does some pushups and sit-ups to “get the blood mov­ing,” since it’s very hard to write the kind of “fast-paced plots” he does “if your blood pressure’s dropped too far.” Brown also gives his brain a dai­ly sup­ply of fresh blood by hang­ing upside down each day, either in grav­i­ty boots or, as The Tele­graph video direct­ly above details, an “inver­sion table.”

Strange, but no more so than many oth­er writ­ers’ rit­u­als. Lau­rence Sterne, the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry author of Tris­tram Shandy, had what may be my favorite design for con­quer­ing writer’s block: he would shave his beard, change his shirt and coat, send for a “bet­ter wig,” put on a topaz ring, and dress “after his best fash­ion.” Mock if you must, but it seems to me that no method of com­bat­ing writer’s block is too out­landish for those whose lives and liveli­hoods depend upon turn­ing out the words. We may not always like what we write—some days we may pos­i­tive­ly hate it—but there may be no worse, more use­less, feel­ing for a writer than being unable to write any­thing at all.

If you have your own sug­ges­tions for get­ting over writer’s block, please let us know in the com­ments below. We’d love to try them out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

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

Hear James Joyce’s Great Short Story “The Dead,” Performed by Cynthia Nixon & Colum McCann

in Audio Books, Literature | January 6th, 2015

“The Dead” is the last – and most mem­o­rable – short sto­ry in James Joyce’s first book, Dublin­ers. Set dur­ing a New Year’s feast in 1904, the sto­ry focus­es on Gabriel Con­roy, a plump, bespec­ta­cled young man who is painful­ly aware of his own social inep­ti­tude. As he nav­i­gates one minor faux pas after the next – mak­ing a poor­ly received joke here, clum­si­ly par­ry­ing a barbed joke there – he comes to real­ize over the course of the par­ty that his beau­ti­ful, dis­tant wife has a past he nev­er knew.

James’s sto­ry is filled with such humor, atten­tion to char­ac­ter and musi­cal­i­ty of lan­guage that it seems to cry out to be read aloud. The NPR series Select­ed Shorts heed­ed that call and presents the entire sto­ry per­formed live by Cyn­thia Nixon, of Sex and the City fame, who reads the first half, and by Irish author Colum McCann, who reads part of the sec­ond.

The read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. Also find the text of James’ great sto­ry in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. To learn about the long and dif­fi­cult pub­li­ca­tion of Dublin­ers, check out Sean Hutchin­son’s post over at Men­tal Floss.

Note: you can down­load the audio as MP3s by click­ing the down­load arrow at the top of each audio clip above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s Dublin Cap­tured in Vin­tage Pho­tos from 1897 to 1904

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Hear All of Finnegans Wake Read Aloud: A 35 Hour Read­ing

See our list of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

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.

Posters Promoting the 1970s L.A. Punk Scene: Black Flag, The Plimsouls, The Runaways & More

in Art, Creativity, Media, Music | January 6th, 2015

Fred Pat­ter­son, aka Phast Phred­die, Senior Archivist of the ARChive of Con­tem­po­rary Music, DJ, music jour­nal­ist and for­mer punk rock zinester has unde­ni­able street cred.

He also has a hand­ful of fly­ers doc­u­ment­ing the late ‘70s LA punk scene.

Talk about ephemera!

Man, psy­che­del­ic con­cert posters of the peri­od were suit­able for fram­ing, and the util­i­tar­i­an box­ing style win­dow cards’ cool quo­tient ensured their longevi­ty. Ama­teur whip outs (such as those Pat­ter­son man­aged to pre­serve) rarely sur­vived beyond a sea­son or two on a fan’s fridge door.

His rag­tag col­lec­tion is what self-pro­mo­tion looked like in the predig­i­tal age. The Plim­souls, the Run­aways, and Black Flag except­ing, few of these bands achieved the sort of sta­tus that would have allowed them to move away from the realm of the murky pho­to­copy.

The ama­teur­ish aes­thet­ic of these home­made efforts was anchored with a spiky humor that went nice­ly with the out­ra­geous band names. Sketchy loca­tions were her­ald­ed as the sorts of places where the pop­u­lar teen set gath­ered. Word bub­bles abound­ed.

Cut and paste col­lage, Letraset, and scratchy hand let­ter­ing were the hall­mark of neces­si­ty. Nowa­days, these obso­lete ele­ments are co-opt­ed for their implied authen­tic­i­ty, even if the final prod­uct is like­ly assem­bled in Pho­to­shop.

See more of Phast Preddie’s col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Punk, MOCA’s Series of Punk Doc­u­men­taries, Begins with Black Flag

CBGB’s: The Roots of Punk Lets You Watch Vin­tage Footage from the Hey­day of NYC’s Great Music Scene

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

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

Existential Philosophy of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games

in Animation, Philosophy, Video Games | January 5th, 2015

By this point in his­to­ry, many of us grown-ups did our grow­ing up while play­ing video games. Most mem­o­rably, we did it while play­ing the col­or­ful, pix­e­lat­ed video games of the mid 1980s through the ear­ly 1990s, the hey­day of the “eight-bit” con­soles. These titles and their char­ac­ters — the Mar­ios, the Zel­das, the Mega Men — remain cul­tur­al touch­stones not just for those of us who have land­ed solid­ly in adult­hood, but also for those of us too young to have played them while they were new. Many of us have put away these child­ish things, but many more of us have kept them out, keep­ing them right along­side our grown-up pur­suits, result­ing in projects like the video series 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy, which we fea­tured in Novem­ber.

These grown-up pur­suits include not just the study of phi­los­o­phy, but reflec­tion upon the seri­ous exis­ten­tial ques­tions that the sub­ject reveals: Does ratio­nal­i­ty give life mean­ing? Do we enjoy being free? Why should­n’t we com­mit sui­cide? Luck­i­ly, 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy has come up with episodes deal­ing with exact­ly these top­ics. For the first ques­tion they turn to the ideas of Søren Kierkegaard, the 19th cen­tu­ry thinker con­sid­ered the father of exis­ten­tial­ism, as illus­trat­ed by Shat­ter­hand, a slight­ly obscure plat­former I great­ly enjoyed in my own youth. For the sec­ond, we see how two for­mi­da­ble bod­ies of work — that of Jean-Paul Sartre, and that of the Final Fan­ta­sy role-play­ing games — come to bear on the issue. For the third, they bring out none oth­er than Albert Camus (who died 55 years ago yes­ter­day), plac­ing his trench­coat­ed, Gauloise-smok­ing avatar into the suit­ably Sisyphean Don­key Kong.

If you’ve put in the hours play­ing both eight-bit video games and read­ing the rel­e­vant philo­soph­i­cal texts, you’ll sure­ly find these videos’ Nin­ten­don­ian aes­thet­ics as impec­ca­ble as their encap­su­la­tions of Kierkegar­rd, Sartre, and Camus’ posi­tions are con­cise. You can find more from 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy on Youtube, includ­ing their vin­tage gamer-friend­ly ren­di­tions of Friedrich Niet­zsche on time as a flat cir­cle and what sci­ence has to do with truth.  They cov­er oth­er areas of phi­los­o­phy, too, but some­thing about old video games them­selves — with their end­less cycles of death, regen­er­a­tion, and not inher­ent­ly mean­ing­ful chal­lenges — leads my mind straight into exis­ten­tial­ism every time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 130 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es: Tools for Think­ing About Life, Death & Every­thing Between

8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy: Pla­to, Sartre, Der­ri­da & Oth­er Thinkers Explained With Vin­tage Video Games

Exis­ten­tial­ism with Hubert Drey­fus: Four Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Friedrich Niet­zsche & Exis­ten­tial­ism Explained to Five-Year-Olds (in Com­i­cal Video by Red­dit)

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

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.

Bound by Law?: Free Comic Book Explains How Copyright Complicates Art

in Comics/Cartoons, Law | January 5th, 2015

Let’s say you’re a film­mak­er shoot­ing a doc­u­men­tary in New York City. You wan­der through Times Square, through muse­ums, through oth­er des­ti­na­tions, let­ting your cam­era roll along the way. Only lat­er do you won­der: Do I need to clear the copy­right on the Andy Warhol and Jack­son Pol­lock paint­ings that came into my cam­er­a’s field of view when I was shoot­ing at the MoMA? Or do I need to get clear­ance on a Miles Davis song that a busker, caught on film, hap­pened to be play­ing?

Those are the dif­fi­cult kinds of ques­tions that film­mak­ers face, and they get sort­ed out in a pret­ty unique com­ic book writ­ten by Kei­th Aoki, James Boyle and, Jen­nifer Jenk­ins. Spon­sored by Duke’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain, the com­ic is called Bound By Law? (Tales from the Pub­lic Domain). And it’s avail­able as a free PDF file (8mb — 16mb), in html for­mat, and also as a flash ani­ma­tion. There are also trans­la­tions in Por­tuguese, French, and Ital­ian. And wait, there’s more: the com­ic comes with a Fore­word by Oscar-win­ning film­mak­er Davis Guggen­heim, and an Intro­duc­tion by Boing­Bo­ing blog­ger Cory Doc­torow, who calls Bound by Law? not just “a trea­tise on copy­right,” but also “a lov­ing trib­ute to the form of comics.”

Bound By Law? — which has been released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license — will be added to our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. Har­vard also has a MOOC on Copy­right — one of 260 MOOCS get­ting start­ed in Jan­u­ary 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kandin­sky, Mon­dri­an, Munch & Flem­ing Entered Pub­lic Domain in 2015 — But Welles, Achebe, and “Pur­ple Peo­ple Eater” Didn’t

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from the Com­ic Book Plus Archive

Kurt Cobain’s Home Demos: Early Versions of Nirvana Hits, and Never-Released Songs

in Music | January 5th, 2015

When our favorite musi­cians leave us, whether they die young or live to ripe old age, we’re guar­an­teed to keep dis­cov­er­ing new mate­r­i­al from them. Some­times this hap­pens through the ques­tion­able remix­ing of their unfin­ished work, and the results can be dis­ap­point­ing, if not down­right dis­re­spect­ful. More often, we’re treat­ed to hours of rough demos, home and con­cert record­ings, and alter­nate takes. And while these may not always live up to the pol­ished stu­dio ver­sions, they nonethe­less open intrigu­ing win­dows into the cre­ative process of artists we love and admire.

In the case of Kurt Cobain, we’ve heard for a cou­ple of years about unre­leased demos for a solo album the Nir­vana front­man sup­pos­ed­ly had in the works before his sui­cide in 1994. What might it have sound­ed like?

Well, it might have sound­ed some­thing like Cobain’s wife’s band, Hole—or at least like their song “Old Age,” released that same year with the sin­gle “Vio­let.” Cobain wrote the song and record­ed his own acoustic demo, which you can hear at the top. Dis­sat­is­fied, he gave it away to Court­ney Love. Just above, hear anoth­er acoustic home demo, “Do Re Mi,” that Hole co-founder Eric Erland­son told Fuse offers a hint of what might have been.

Until, if ever, the actu­al record­ings of Cobain’s planned solo album come out, we can only spec­u­late. But whether or not the noto­ri­ous­ly intro­vert­ed singer would approve, we do have many more acoustic demos and home record­ings of songs we know and songs we prob­a­bly don’t. Many of these appear on the Nir­vana box set With the Lights Out, which, in addi­tion to con­tain­ing “Old Age” and “Do Re Mi,” has acoustic ver­sions of In Utero’s “Rape Me,” “Pen­ny­roy­al Tea,” and “All Apolo­gies” (above).

What you won’t hear on the box set is the song above, “Cre­ation,” a home demo Cobain made in the late eight­ies, using a 4‑track recorder to mix his vocals with a bassline and drum­ming on suit­cas­es. This track appears on an unof­fi­cial 4 CD boot­leg set called Nir­vana: The Cho­sen Rejects along­side a good many demo tracks from Cobain’s first band, the obnox­ious­ly-named Fecal Mat­ter, which he formed with future Melvins drum­mer Dale Crover in Aberdeen, Wash­ing­ton.

“Cre­ation” presages the dron­ing, rhyth­mic melod­i­cism that became the hall­mark of Cobain’s Nir­vana song­writ­ing. But as for that sad­ly abort­ed solo album, it seems the singer may have been mov­ing into some very eclec­tic ter­ri­to­ry indeed. Cobain, says Erland­son, “was head­ed in a direc­tion that was real­ly cool. It would have been his White Album.” Alas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nir­vana Plays in a Radio Shack, the Day After Record­ing its First Demo Tape (1988)

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

Hear Dave Grohl’s First Foo Fight­ers Demo Record­ings, As Kurt Cobain Did in 1992

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

The Ramones’ First Press Release: We’re Part Musicians, Dentists & Degenerates (1975)

in Music | January 5th, 2015

We have a thing for the ear­ly days of The Ramones.

Exhib­it A: We’ve fea­tured footage of one of their ear­li­est live shows per­formed at CBGB in 1974. And then comes anoth­er from 1977.

Exhib­it B: We’ve also dug up raw demo record­ings from their debut album (1975).

Now Exhib­it C: It’s a no-bs press release that announced the arrival of the band, and what it’s all about. Writ­ten by Tom­my Ramone (the drum­mer who died last sum­mer, but only after out­liv­ing all of the oth­er orig­i­nal band mem­bers), the one-pager describes The Ramones suc­cinct­ly: “The Ramones are an orig­i­nal Rock and Roll group of 1975, and their songs are brief, to the point and every one a poten­tial hit sin­gle.” And with a lit­tle bit of humor. “The Ramones all orig­i­nate from For­est Hills and kids who grew up there either became musi­cians, degen­er­ates or den­tists. The Ramones are a lit­tle of each. Their sound is not unlike a fast drill on a rear molar.”

You can click the press release above to read it in a larg­er for­mat. Or read the tran­script below.

The Ramones are not an oldies group, they are not a glit­ter group, they don’t play boo­gie music and they don’t play the blues. The Ramones are an orig­i­nal Rock and Roll group of 1975, and their songs are brief, to the point and every one a poten­tial hit sin­gle.

The quar­tette con­sists of John­ny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tom­my Ramone, John­ny, the gui­tarist, plays with such force that his sound has been com­pared to a hun­dred how­itzers going off. Joey, the lead singer, is an arch vil­lain whose lanky frame stands threat­en­ing cen­ter stage. Dee Dee is Bass gui­tar and the acknowl­edged hand­some one of the group, and Tom­my is the drum­mer whose pul­sat­ing play­ing launch­es the throb­bing sound of the band.

The Ramones all orig­i­nate from For­est Hills and kids who grew up there either became musi­cians, degen­er­ates or den­tists. The Ramones are a lit­tle of each. Their sound is not unlike a fast drill on a rear molar.

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

Hear The Ramones’ Raw Demo Record­ings For Their Debut Album (1975)

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Pat­ti Smith Plays Songs by The Ramones, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed & More on CBGB’s Clos­ing Night (2006)

Rare Footage of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac & Other Beats Hanging Out in the East Village (1959)

in Film, Literature, Photography, Poetry | January 2nd, 2015

We don’t often think of the Beats as fam­i­ly men, and that’s because the most promi­nent of them weren’t, except William Bur­roughs for a time (a trag­ic sto­ry or two for anoth­er day). But friends of Gins­berg and Ker­ouac like Lucien and Francesca Carr and Robert and Mary Frank brought chil­dren into the poets’ lives, and you can see them all above, relax­ing at the Har­mo­ny Bar & Restau­rant in New York’s East Vil­lage in 1959.

This rare silent footage unites the three Carr and two Frank chil­dren in a rare appear­ance of the Beats togeth­er on film. The mus­ta­chioed Lucien Carr —a char­ac­ter with his own dark sto­ry—can be seen seat­ed next to Ker­ouac.  The Franks, père and mère, were both artists in their own right—London-born Mary a trained dancer, sculp­tor, and painter, and Robert an impor­tant Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er.

Dan­ger­ous Minds spec­u­lates that it’s Robert Frank behind the cam­era, both because we don’t see him in front of it and because Frank would that same year direct the short film Pull My Daisy (above), fea­tur­ing both Gins­berg and Ker­ouac and adapt­ed from Kerouac’s play Beat Gen­er­a­tion. (Frank appar­ent­ly denies he shot the footage at the top). Pull My Daisy also includes famous Beats like Gre­go­ry Cor­so, musi­cian David Amram, and Ginsberg’s part­ner, poet Peter Orlovsky. In a pre­vi­ous post on that film, Open Culture’s Col­in Mar­shall described it as craft­ed with “great delib­er­ate­ness, albeit the kind of delib­er­ate­ness meant to cre­ate the impres­sion of thrown-togeth­er, ram­shackle spon­tane­ity.”

To learn more about the Beats’ appear­ances on film—as them­selves, in char­ac­ter, and through their adapt­ed work, see this excel­lent fil­mog­ra­phy. And just above, watch a mash-up of most of those var­i­ous cin­e­mat­ic appear­ances in a trail­er pro­duced by Cine­fam­i­ly for the IFC and Sun­dance series “Beats on Film.”

via The Wall Break­ers/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg, Shot by Robert Frank

William S. Burrough’s Avant-Garde Movie ‘The Cut Ups’ (1966)

Bob Dylan and Allen Gins­berg Vis­it the Grave of Jack Ker­ouac (1975)

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

Kandinsky, Mondrian, Munch & Fleming Entered Public Domain in 2015 — But Welles, Achebe, and “Purple People Eater” Didn’t

in Art, Law | January 2nd, 2015

As you faith­ful read­ers of Open Cul­ture know, we love noth­ing more than when impor­tant works of humankind fall into the pub­lic domain. Accord­ing to cur­rent Unit­ed States copy­right law, a work stays out of the pub­lic domain for 70 years after its author’s death; for cor­po­rate “works-for-hire,” 95 years after its pub­li­ca­tion. This means that, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, new things arrive in the pub­lic domain each and every year. Since we’ve just start­ed a new one, what has the pub­lic domain gained?

On Jan­u­ary 1, 2015, accord­ing to Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain, pub­lic-domain read­ers received “the writ­ings of Rachel Carl­son, Ian Flem­ing, and Flan­nery O’Con­nor” — in Cana­da, that is. As for Euro­peans, they can now freely enjoy “the works of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Piet Mon­dri­an, Edvard Munch, and hun­dreds of oth­ers.” But what of the Amer­i­cans? Alas, “no pub­lished works will enter our pub­lic domain until 2019,” owing to an exten­sion of U.S. copy­right law leg­is­la­tion that pushed up retroac­tive copy­right by 95 years for any­thing cre­at­ed between 1923 and 1977 — a legal event that may, some whis­per, have had the endorse­ment of a cer­tain cor­po­ra­tion in pos­ses­sion of a cer­tain high­ly lucra­tive car­toon mouse.

For a sense of what this has cost us, the CSPD has put togeth­er a tan­ta­liz­ing list of still-vital works of lit­er­a­ture, film, music, and sci­ence that could have gone pub­lic domain this year, if not for that med­dling exten­sion. It includes Chin­ua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Simone de Beau­voir’ Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée, Gra­ham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle, Nathan H. Juran’s Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, Chuck Berry’s “John­ny B. Goode,” Sheb Woo­ley’s “Pur­ple Peo­ple Eater.”

To learn more about the art that some parts of the world have new­ly wel­comed into the pub­lic domain, see also Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Pub­lic Domain Day post by Alli­son Meier. Though we could eas­i­ly feel frus­trat­ed by the rich­ness of the mate­r­i­al that Amer­i­ca has refused, in the words of Jus­tice Louis Bran­deis, to let “free as the air to com­mon use,” do remem­ber the exis­tence of a lit­tle some­thing we cit­i­zens of 2015 like to call the inter­net. The increas­ing­ly few bound­aries and lit­tle fric­tion with which it has enabled us to con­nect and com­mu­ni­cate will cer­tain­ly con­tin­ue to alle­vi­ate the cramp reg­u­la­tions like these have put in our style. So even if Amer­i­cans won’t enjoy a mean­ing­ful Pub­lic Domain Day for four years yet, I’d say we still have rea­son to cel­e­brate.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sher­lock Holmes Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain, Declares US Judge

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

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

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

We Are Wired to Be Kind: How Evolution Gave Us Empathy, Compassion & Gratitude

in Psychology | January 1st, 2015

Empa­thy, com­pas­sion and grat­i­tude — these traits don’t usu­al­ly spring to mind when you think about Dar­win­ism and nat­ur­al selec­tion. No, your mind more imme­di­ate­ly drifts toward anti-social char­ac­ter­is­tics like com­pe­ti­tion, sur­vival of the fittest, and self­ish­ness (as in the “self­ish gene”). But above, on the first day of 2015, UC Berke­ley psy­chol­o­gist Dacher Kelt­ner reminds us that evo­lu­tion can bring out the best in us, and Dar­win rec­og­nized that. As Dar­win wrote in The Descent of Man, the strength­en­ing of our capac­i­ty for “sym­pa­thy” played a cen­tral role in human evo­lu­tion:

With mankind, self­ish­ness, expe­ri­ence, and imi­ta­tion, prob­a­bly add .… to the pow­er of sym­pa­thy; for we are led by the hope of receiv­ing good in return to per­form acts of sym­pa­thet­ic kind­ness to oth­ers; and sym­pa­thy is much strength­ened by habit. In how­ev­er com­plex a man­ner this feel­ing may have orig­i­nat­ed, as it is one of high impor­tance to all those ani­mals which aid and defend one anoth­er, it will have been increased through nat­ur­al selec­tion; for those com­mu­ni­ties, which includ­ed the great­est num­ber of the most sym­pa­thet­ic mem­bers, would flour­ish best, and rear the great­est num­ber of off­spring.

That’s not to say that we don’t have a dual nature — a capac­i­ty for being unsym­pa­thet­ic, self­ish, pow­er hun­gry. That’s some­thing Kelt­ner stud­ies too, and, indeed a while back, we told you about his stud­ies show­ing that the wealthy tend to be less sym­pa­thet­ic and giv­ing than the poor. You can find cours­es taught by Kelt­ner on Human Emo­tion and Human Hap­pi­ness in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Devour

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