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

in Writing | September 3rd, 2014

Image by wakari­m­a­sita, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve brought you a wealth of Haru­ki Muraka­mi late­ly, and for good rea­son. Not only does the wild­ly pop­u­lar Japan­ese nov­el­ist have a new nov­el out, he also has an upcom­ing novel­la, The Strange Library, a 96-page sto­ry about, well, a “strange trip to the library,” due from Knopf on Decem­ber 2nd. Admirably pro­lif­ic, writ­ing rough­ly 3–4 nov­els per decade since his first in 1979, and a few col­lec­tions of sto­ries and essays, the noto­ri­ous­ly shy Muraka­mi took to writ­ing some­what late in life at age 30, and to run­ning even lat­er at 33. The lat­ter pur­suit gave him a great deal of mate­r­i­al for his essay col­lec­tion What I Talk About When I Talk About Run­ning.

Like oth­er authors who write non­fic­tion pieces on their avocations—Jamaica Kin­caid on gar­den­ing, Hem­ing­way on hunt­ing—in his run­ning book, Muraka­mi can’t help but turn his pas­sion for fit­ness into a metaphor for read­ing and writ­ing. Giv­en his nat­ur­al ret­i­cence, he begins, with a dis­claimer: “a gen­tle­man shouldn’t go on and on about what he does to stay fit.”

Nev­er­the­less, the ultra-marathon­er can’t help but indulge. At one point, the writ­ing on run­ning turns to writ­ing on writ­ing, and a sum­ma­ry of the qual­i­ties the good nov­el­ist must have. Read his thoughts con­densed below.

Tal­ent:

Like Flan­nery O’Connor, whose thoughts on the MFA degree we quot­ed a few days ago, Muraka­mi frames tal­ent as an attribute that can’t be taught or bought. For the writer, tal­ent is “more of a pre­req­ui­site than a nec­es­sary qual­i­ty […] No mat­ter how much enthu­si­asm and effort you put into writ­ing, if you total­ly lack lit­er­ary tal­ent you can for­get about being a nov­el­ist.” One feels this should go with­out say­ing, but for what­ev­er rea­son, it seems that more peo­ple enter­tain the idea of becom­ing a writer longer in life than that of becom­ing, say, a musi­cian or a painter. Maybe this is why Muraka­mi then makes an anal­o­gy to music as a pur­suit in which, ide­al­ly, nat­ur­al apti­tude is indis­pens­able. But in men­tion­ing two of his favorite com­posers, Schu­bert and Mozart, Muraka­mi makes the point that these are exam­ples of artists “whose genius went out in a blaze of glo­ry.” He is quick to point out that “for the vast major­i­ty of us this isn’t the mod­el we fol­low.” The nov­el­ist as run­ner, we might say, should train for a career run­ning marathons.

Focus:

Muraka­mi-as-run­ner, an Econ­o­mist review mus­es, is “if not a mad­man […] a very focused man.” One would have to be to fin­ish 27 marathons, includ­ing a 62-mile mon­ster in Hokkai­do, and sev­er­al triathlons. The qual­i­ties that serve him in his phys­i­cal dis­ci­pline are also those he iden­ti­fies as nec­es­sary in the nov­el­ist. Muraka­mi defines focus as “the abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate all your lim­it­ed tal­ents on whatever’s crit­i­cal at the moment. With­out that you can’t accom­plish any­thing of val­ue.” He “gen­er­al­ly concentrate[s] on work for three or four hours every morn­ing. I sit at my desk and focus total­ly on what I’m writ­ing. I don’t see any­thing else, I don’t think about any­thing else.” Murakami’s run­ning mem­oir may con­tain “long descrip­tions of train­ing sched­ules and diet,” but when it comes to writ­ing, there seems to be one over­whelm­ing­ly sin­gu­lar way to go about things. Just sit down and do it.

Endurance:

Con­sid­er your­self more of a sprint­er? Maybe stick to short sto­ries. “If you con­cen­trate on writ­ing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this,” Muraka­mi chides, “you’re not going to be able to write a long work. What’s need­ed of the writer of fiction—at least one who hopes to write a novel—is the ener­gy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, or two years. For­tu­nate­ly, these two disciplines—focus and endurance—are dif­fer­ent from tal­ent, since they can be acquired and sharp­ened through train­ing.” The act of acqui­si­tion, Muraka­mi writes, “is a lot like the train­ing of mus­cles I wrote of a moment ago. [It] involves the same process as jog­ging every day to strength­en your mus­cles and devel­op a runner’s physique.”

Clear­ly there’s lit­tle room for spac­ing out wait­ing around for inspi­ra­tion. To extend the anal­o­gy, this might be likened to the rare desire one gets to try a new, chal­leng­ing rou­tine, an impulse that wanes pret­ty quick­ly once things get painful and dull. But in writ­ing, Muraka­mi sug­gests, some­times it’s enough just to show up. He refers to the dis­ci­pline of Ray­mond Chan­dler, who “made sure he sat down at his desk every sin­gle day and con­cen­trat­ed” even if he wrote not a word. It’s a fit­ting image for what Muraka­mi describes as the writer’s need to “trans­mit the object of your focus to your entire body.” I won­der if it’s not going too far to claim that this sen­tence betrays the real sub­ject of Murakami’s run­ning book.

via 99u

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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

Drums West: Jim Henson’s Animated Tribute to Jazz Drummer Chico Hamilton (1961)

in Animation, Creativity, Music | September 3rd, 2014

Judg­ing by behind-the-scenes footage of a beard­less Jim Hen­son ani­mat­ing “Drums West,” a 1961 homage to jazz drum­mer Chico Hamil­ton, one good sneeze and the par­ty would’ve been over.

Ani­ma­tion is always a painstak­ing propo­si­tion, but the hun­dreds of tiny paper scraps Hen­son was con­tend­ing with in an extreme­ly cramped work­ing space seem down­right oppres­sive com­pared to the expan­sive visu­als to which they gave rise.

The fin­ished piece’s con­struc­tion paper fire­works are every­thing iTunes Visu­al­iz­er func­tion strives to be. Speak­ing for myself, I can’t envi­sion any com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed abstrac­tion open­ing a mag­ic por­tal that sud­den­ly allowed even a philis­tine like me to appre­ci­ate a brush solo steeped in 50’s‑era West Coast cool.

Sure­ly Dr. Teeth would be down.

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:

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Footage From 1969

Jim Henson’s Ani­mat­ed Film, Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, Pre­sent­ed by John­ny Car­son (1974)

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

Quentin Tarantino Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

in Film, Music | September 3rd, 2014

To some direc­tors, the music heard in their films seems as (or more) impor­tant than the images seen or the dia­logue spo­ken. Maybe you’d make that case about Jim Jar­musch after read­ing — or, more to the point, hear­ing — our post on the music in his movies. And sure­ly many Quentin Taran­ti­no fans would regard a Reser­voir Dogs with­out “Stuck in the Mid­dle with You” or a Pulp Fic­tion with­out “Misir­lou” as not Reser­voir Dogs or Pulp Fic­tion at all. In the book­let that comes with The Taran­ti­no Con­nec­tion, a col­lec­tion of sound­track songs from Taran­ti­no’s movies, Taran­ti­no describes his per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly musi­cal­ly-inspired method of film con­cep­tion as fol­lows: “One of the things I do when I am start­ing a movie, when I’m writ­ing a movie or when I have an idea for a film is, I go through my record col­lec­tion and just start play­ing songs, try­ing to find the per­son­al­i­ty of the movie, find the spir­it of the movie. Then, ‘boom,’ even­tu­al­ly I’ll hit one, two or three songs, or one song in par­tic­u­lar, ‘Oh, this will be a great open­ing cred­it song.’ ” Hence his use of Dick Dale, the “King of Surf Gui­tar,” for the open­ing cred­its of Pulp Fic­tion.

“Hav­ing ‘Misir­lou’ as your open­ing cred­its is just so intense,” writes Taran­ti­no. “It just says, ‘You are watch­ing an epic, you are watch­ing this big old movie just sit back.’ It’s so loud and blear­ing at you, a gaunt­let is thrown down that the movie has to live up to.’ ” He goes on to describe the tak­ing of songs and arrang­ing them in a cer­tain sequence in a movie as “just about as cin­e­mat­ic a thing as you can do. You are real­ly doing what movies do bet­ter than any oth­er art form; it real­ly works in this vis­cer­al, emo­tion­al, cin­e­mat­ic way that’s just real­ly spe­cial.” And did he already know, as he set Reser­voir Dogs’ un-unsee­able ear-slic­ing scene to that mel­low, then twen­ty-year-old hit from Steal­ers Wheel, that “when you do it right and you hit it right then the effect is you can nev­er real­ly hear this song again with­out think­ing about that image from the movie”? Cer­tain­ly his use of Bob­by Wom­ack­’s “Across 110th Street” has fused the song with Jack­ie Brown and not the epony­mous 1972 pic­ture for which Wom­ack orig­i­nal­ly wrote it. And who has Kill Bill and does­n’t asso­ciate it with Nan­cy Sina­tra’s ver­sion of “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”? “I don’t know if Ger­ry Raf­fer­ty [a mem­ber of Steal­ers Wheel] nec­es­sar­i­ly appre­ci­at­ed the con­no­ta­tions that I brought to ‘Stuck in the Mid­dle with You,’ ” Taran­ti­no adds. “There is a good chance he did­n’t.” But when it comes to under­stand­ing a song’s cin­e­mat­ic poten­tial, Taran­ti­no has long since proven he knows what he’s doing.

Across 110th Street

Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Records: Bob Dylan, Fre­da Payne, Phil Ochs and More

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

The Best of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Cel­e­brat­ing the Director’s 50th Birth­day with our Favorite Videos

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

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.

Three Animated Shorts by the Groundbreaking Russian Animator Fyodor Khitruk

in Animation | September 3rd, 2014

There aren’t many ani­ma­tors out there who would make a movie that jus­ti­fies the mur­der of annoy­ing peo­ple, but that’s pre­cise­ly what Russ­ian film­mak­er Fyo­dor Khitruk did with this break­through movie Sto­ry of One Crime (1962), which you can watch above. The film, about an unas­sum­ing clerk who snaps and kills his loud, incon­sid­er­ate neigh­bors with a fry­ing pan, was a land­mark in Rus­sia and not just because of its cri­tique of Sovi­et soci­ety — some­thing utter­ly unthink­able dur­ing Stalin’s reign just nine years pri­or. Unlike pre­vi­ous Russ­ian ani­mat­ed movies – which were large­ly Marx­ism-espous­ing Dis­ney knock­offs – this film pre­sent­ed a clean, mod­ern visu­al style that seemed more influ­enced by the likes of Paul Klee than by Dis­ney. The movie shook up the world of Sovi­et ani­ma­tion and helped start a rebirth of the indus­try.

Over his long career (he died in 2012 at the age of 95) Khitruk made two kinds of movies: car­toons for chil­dren – his most famous being his styl­ized adap­ta­tion of Win­nie the Pooh – and social­ly-aware satires. One in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry is his short The Island (1973), which you can see above.

At first blush, it looks like the premise for a New York­er car­toon – a hairy look­ing cast­away is stuck on a com­i­cal­ly small island with a sin­gle palm tree. As the movie pro­gress­es, a parade of peo­ple pass through but don’t help. As the guy gets embroiled in an art heist, con­vert­ed by mis­sion­ar­ies, col­o­nized by an invad­ing army and mar­ket­ed to by mer­chants hawk­ing use­less goods, it becomes increas­ing­ly clear that the tit­u­lar island is less a sandy spot in the sea than a metaphor for soci­etal iso­la­tion. The Island end­ed up win­ning the Palme d’Or for the best short at the 1974 Cannes film fes­ti­val.

Anoth­er one of Khitruk’s shorts is Man in the Frame (1966), a movie that any­one who has ever endured office pol­i­tics in a large cor­po­ra­tion, or the polit­buro, can relate to. Drawn in a style that recalls Fer­nand Leg­er and Saul Stein­berg, the movie’s name­less pro­tag­o­nist ris­es high­er and high­er with­in a bureau­cra­cy only to lose some­thing in the process. You can watch it below.You can also find these Khitruk cre­ations on our list of Ani­mat­ed Films, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion called 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Win­nie the Pooh, Cre­at­ed by the Inno­v­a­tive Ani­ma­tor Fyo­dor Khitruk

Two Beau­ti­ful­ly-Craft­ed Russ­ian Ani­ma­tions of Chekhov’s Clas­sic Children’s Sto­ry “Kash­tan­ka”

Watch The Amaz­ing 1912 Ani­ma­tion of Stop-Motion Pio­neer Ladis­las Stare­vich, Star­ring Dead Bugs

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Comes Soft Rain’

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 one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

New Albums by Robert Plant, Ryan Adams & Justin Townes Earle Streaming Online for a Limited Time

in Music | September 2nd, 2014

Quick note: If you’re not famil­iar with it, NPR’s First Lis­ten site lets you stream new albums by major artists. And this week’s line­up deserves a spe­cial men­tion. First Lis­ten is fea­tur­ing Robert Plan­t’s new release Lul­la­by And… The Cease­less Roar. The album, writes NPR, is “an expres­sion of many kinds of rich, autum­nal love: of the Eng­lish coun­try­side to which Plant recent­ly returned after sev­er­al years liv­ing and work­ing in Nashville and Texas; of the musi­cal dias­po­ra he’s been explor­ing since Led Zep­pelin first con­nect­ed its Amer­i­can-inspired blues to North Africa in ‘Kash­mir’; of the Celtic and Roman­tic lit­er­ary lines he’s always favored; and of a woman, whom the songs’ nar­ra­tor trea­sures but, for rea­sons upon which at least half of the album dwells, leaves behind.” You can stream it here for a lim­it­ed time.

While at NPR, you might also want to hear Ryan Adams by, yes, Ryan Adams. It’s his 14th album, and, says The New York Dai­ly News, it “goes all in for neo-clas­sic rock. It draws on the kind of ser­rat­ed riffs Kei­th Richards likes to hone — but weight­ed with the heavy bot­tom and burn­ing organ of Tom Pet­ty and the Heart­break­ers.”

Last but not least, NPR is serv­ing up Justin Townes Ear­le’s fifth album, Sin­gle Moth­ers. Many of the songs offer a take on “the mer­cu­r­ial nature of infat­u­a­tion.”

Stream away, but don’t delay. The albums usu­al­ly remain online for a week at most.

Three Outlandish Tracks from Van Morrison’s 1968 “Revenge Album”: “Ring Worm,” “Want a Danish?” & “The Big Royalty Check”

in Music | September 2nd, 2014

In 1968, Van Mor­ri­son cut tracks for what’s been called his “revenge” or “con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion album.” The back­sto­ry, pro­vid­ed by Top Tenz, goes like this:

After a pret­ty unhap­py cou­ple of years with his label Bang Records in the mid-60s, Van Mor­ri­son want­ed out. They demand­ed he deliv­er some more short and pop­py stuff like Brown Eyed Girl, while he want­ed to release 11-minute ren­di­tions of lion imper­son­ations (which he did on the album Saint Dominic’s Pre­view.) The singer became so dis­traught with his label sit­u­a­tion, that he slipped into finan­cial trou­ble and had prob­lems find­ing gigs.

Just when it seemed Mor­ri­son might nev­er deliv­er on his musi­cal poten­tial, Warn­er Music stepped in and bought out his deal with Bang Records. There was still one small con­trac­tu­al detail though. Mor­ri­son was oblig­ed to record exact­ly 36 songs for his old label, who would also con­tin­ue to earn roy­al­ties off any­thing he released for the first year after leav­ing Bang. Not a patient man at the best of times, Van did the only thing he could think of: he record­ed more than 30 songs in a sin­gle record­ing ses­sion, on an out-of-tune gui­tar, about sub­jects as diverse as ring­worm, blow­ing your nose, a dumb guy named George, and whether he want­ed to eat a dan­ish or a sand­wich.

You can hear “Ring Worm” above, and both “Want a Dan­ish?” and “The Big Roy­al­ty Check” below.

Deemed unwor­thy, the songs Mor­ri­son banged out (cheap pun, I know!) weren’t released in the 1960s. They even­tu­al­ly saw the light of day, how­ev­er, on the 1994 album Payin Dues, which hap­pens to be avail­able on Spo­ti­fy for free. Accord­ing to rock crit­ic Richie Unter­berg­er, the album ranks as “the least com­mer­cial music ever record­ed by a major rock artist, and the nas­ti­est spit in the eye of com­mer­cial expec­ta­tions and con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions.” But, there’s cer­tain­ly an enter­tain­ment fac­tor to the col­lec­tion, and it should be not­ed that Payin Dues also includes some worth­while tracks, includ­ing all of Van Mor­rison’s stu­dio mas­ters from the Bang years, plus the demo of “The Smile You Smile” and an alter­nate take of “Brown Eyed Girl”.

via UBUweb/WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

The Won­drous Night When Glen Hansard Met Van Mor­ri­son

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,’ 1998

Roald Dahl, Who Lost His Daughter to Measles, Writes a Heartbreaking Letter about Vaccinations: “It Really Is Almost a Crime to Allow Your Child to Go Unimmunised”

in Health, Literature, Science | September 2nd, 2014

Image by Carl Van Vechten/Library of Con­gress, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Gen­er­a­tions of us know Roald Dahl as, first and fore­most, the author of pop­u­lar chil­dren’s nov­els like The BFG, The Witch­es, Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry (that book of the “sub­ver­sive” lost chap­ter), and James and the Giant Peach. We remem­ber read­ing those with great delight, and some of us even made it into the rumored lit­er­ary ter­ri­to­ry of his “sto­ries for grown-ups.” But few of us, at least if we grew up in the past few decades, will have famil­iar­ized our­selves with all the pur­pos­es to which Dahl put his pen. Like many fine writ­ers, Dahl always drew some­thing from his per­son­al expe­ri­ence, and few per­son­al expe­ri­ences could have had as much impact as the sud­den death of his measles-strick­en sev­en-year-old daugh­ter Olivia in 1962. A chap­ter of Don­ald Stur­rock­’s biog­ra­phy Sto­ry­teller: The Life of Roald Dahl, excerpt­ed at The Tele­graph, tells of both the event itself and Dahl’s sto­ic, writer­ly (accord­ing to some, per­haps too sto­ic and too writer­ly) way of han­dling it.

But good did come out of Dahl’s response to the tragedy. In 1986, he wrote a leaflet for the Sandwell Health Author­i­ty enti­tled Measles: A Dan­ger­ous Ill­ness, which tells Olivi­a’s sto­ry and pro­vides a swift and well-sup­port­ed argu­ment for uni­ver­sal vac­ci­na­tion against the dis­ease:

Olivia, my eldest daugh­ter, caught measles when she was sev­en years old. As the ill­ness took its usu­al course I can remem­ber read­ing to her often in bed and not feel­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly alarmed about it. Then one morn­ing, when she was well on the road to recov­ery, I was sit­ting on her bed show­ing her how to fash­ion lit­tle ani­mals out of coloured pipe-clean­ers, and when it came to her turn to make one her­self, I noticed that her fin­gers and her mind were not work­ing togeth­er and she could­n’t do any­thing.

“Are you feel­ing all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was uncon­scious. In twelve hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a ter­ri­ble thing called measles encephali­tis and there was noth­ing the doc­tors could do to save her. That was twen­ty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles hap­pens to devel­op the same dead­ly reac­tion from measles as Olivia did, there would still be noth­ing the doc­tors could do to help her.

On the oth­er hand, there is today some­thing that par­ents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not hap­pen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immu­nised against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reli­able measles vac­cine had not been dis­cov­ered. Today a good and safe vac­cine is avail­able to every fam­i­ly and all you have to do is to ask your doc­tor to admin­is­ter it.

It is not yet gen­er­al­ly accept­ed that measles can be a dan­ger­ous ill­ness. Believe me, it is. In my opin­ion par­ents who now refuse to have their chil­dren immu­nised are putting the lives of those chil­dren at risk. In Amer­i­ca, where measles immu­ni­sa­tion is com­pul­so­ry, measles like small­pox, has been vir­tu­al­ly wiped out.

Here in Britain, because so many par­ents refuse, either out of obsti­na­cy or igno­rance or fear, to allow their chil­dren to be immu­nised, we still have a hun­dred thou­sand cas­es of measles every year. Out of those, more than 10,000 will suf­fer side effects of one kind or anoth­er. At least 10,000 will devel­op ear or chest infec­tions. About 20 will die.

LET THAT SINK IN.

Every year around 20 chil­dren will die in Britain from measles.

So what about the risks that your chil­dren will run from being immu­nised?

They are almost non-exis­tent. Lis­ten to this. In a dis­trict of around 300,000 peo­ple, there will be only one child every 250 years who will devel­op seri­ous side effects from measles immu­ni­sa­tion! That is about a mil­lion to one chance. I should think there would be more chance of your child chok­ing to death on a choco­late bar than of becom­ing seri­ous­ly ill from a measles immu­ni­sa­tion.

So what on earth are you wor­ry­ing about? It real­ly is almost a crime to allow your child to go unim­mu­nised.

The ide­al time to have it done is at 13 months, but it is nev­er too late. All school-chil­dren who have not yet had a measles immu­ni­sa­tion should beg their par­ents to arrange for them to have one as soon as pos­si­ble.

Inci­den­tal­ly, I ded­i­cat­ed two of my books to Olivia, the first was ‘James and the Giant Peach’. That was when she was still alive. The sec­ond was ‘The BFG’, ded­i­cat­ed to her mem­o­ry after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the begin­ning of each of these books. And I know how hap­py she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of ill­ness and death among oth­er chil­dren.

Alas, this mes­sage has­n’t quite fall­en into irrel­e­vance. What with anti-vac­ci­na­tion move­ments hav­ing some­how picked up a bit of steam in recent years (and with the num­ber of cas­es of measles cas­es now climb­ing again), it might make sense to send Dahl’s leaflet back into print — or, bet­ter yet, to keep it cir­cu­lat­ing far and wide around the inter­net. Not that oth­ers haven’t made cogent pro-vac­ci­na­tion argu­ments of their own, in dif­fer­ent media, with dif­fer­ent illus­tra­tions of the data, and with dif­fer­ent lev­els of pro­fan­i­ty. Take, for instance, Penn and Teller’s seg­ment below, which, find­ing the per­fect tar­get giv­en its man­date against non-evi­dence-based beliefs, takes aim at the propo­si­tion that vac­ci­na­tions cause autism:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read a Nev­er Pub­lished, “Sub­ver­sive” Chap­ter from Roald Dahl’s Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

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.

Conspiracy Theory Rock: The Schoolhouse Rock Parody Saturday Night Live May Have Censored

in Animation, Comedy, Media, Politics, Television | September 2nd, 2014

You’ve prob­a­bly seen “Illu­sion of Choice,” a 2011 info­graph­ic detail­ing how six media con­glom­er­ates “con­trol a stag­ger­ing 90% of what we read, watch, or lis­ten to.” (The enti­ties named are GE, News Corp, Dis­ney, Via­com, Time Warn­er, and CBS.) Anoth­er “Illu­sion of Choice” info­graph­ic from last year doc­u­ments how “ten huge cor­po­ra­tions con­trol the pro­duc­tion of almost every­thing the aver­age per­son buys.” Are these webs of cor­po­rate con­nec­tion kooky con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries or gen­uine cause for alarm? Do the cor­re­la­tions between busi­ness enti­ties cause polit­i­cal cur­rents that under­mine democ­ra­cy and media inde­pen­dence? It’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial to think so giv­en the amount of mon­ey cor­po­ra­tions spend on lob­by­ing and polit­i­cal cam­paigns. It’s not even par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial to say so, at least for those of us who aren’t employed by, say, Via­com, Time Warn­er, GE, etc.

But point­ing fin­gers at the cor­po­ra­toc­ra­cy may have not gone over so well for famed com­e­dy writer Robert Smigel in 1998 when his recur­ring ani­mat­ed “Sat­ur­day TV Fun­house” seg­ment pro­duced the “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock” bit above for Sat­ur­day Night Live. A par­o­dy of the beloved School­house Rock edu­ca­tion­al ‘toons of the 70s, “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock” fea­tures a disheveled gentleman—a stereo­type of the out­sider crackpot—leading a sing-along about the machi­na­tions of the “Media-opoly.” Fig­ured as greedy octopi (rem­i­nis­cent of Matt Taibbi’s “vam­pire squid”), the media giants here, includ­ing GE, West­ing­house, Fox, and Dis­ney, devour the small­er guys—the tra­di­tion­al networks—and “use them to say what­ev­er they please and put down the opin­ions of any­one who dis­agrees.” The seg­ment may have raised the ire of GE, who own NBC. It aired once with the orig­i­nal episode but was sub­se­quent­ly pulled from the show in syn­di­ca­tion, though it’s been includ­ed in sub­se­quent DVD com­pi­la­tions of “Sat­ur­day TV Fun­house.”

Now “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock” is cir­cu­lat­ing online—ampli­fied by a Marc Maron tweet—as a “banned” clip, a mis­lead­ing descrip­tion that feeds right into the sto­ry of con­spir­a­cy. Edit­ing a sketch from a syn­di­cat­ed com­e­dy show, after all, is not tan­ta­mount to ban­ning it. While the short piece makes the usu­al com­pelling case against cor­po­rate rule, it does so in a tongue-in-cheek way that allows for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some of these alle­ga­tions are ten­u­ous exag­ger­a­tions. Our unwashed pre­sen­ter, for exam­ple, ends the seg­ment mum­bling an inco­her­ent non sequitur about Lorne Michaels and Mar­i­on Bar­ry attend­ing the same high school. For his part, Michaels has said the seg­ment was cut because it “wasn’t fun­ny.” He’s got a point—it isn’t—but it’s hard to believe it didn’t raise oth­er objec­tions from net­work exec­u­tives. It wouldn’t be the first time the show has been accused of cen­sor­ing a polit­i­cal sketch.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

5 Musi­cal Guests Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live: From Elvis Costel­lo to Frank Zap­pa

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981: A Quick 100th Birth­day Cel­e­bra­tion

School­house Rock at 40: Revis­it a Col­lec­tion of Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Videos

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

Wonderfully Weird & Ingenious Medieval Books

in Books, History | September 1st, 2014

Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty book his­to­ri­an Erik Kwakkel describes his tum­blr site as fol­lows: “I post images from medieval books.” In the words of Samuel L. Jack­son on the immor­tal Snakes on a Plane, you either want to see that, or you don’t. Pre­sum­ing you do (and giv­en your pre­sum­able sta­tus as an Open Cul­ture read­er, it strikes me as a safe bet) know that Kwakkel does­n’t main­tain just any old images of medieval books; his posts tend to high­light the askew, the obscure, and the inno­v­a­tive, fur­ther demon­strat­ing that we need not find the “dark ages” dull. At the top of the post, you can see one pho­to of the sev­er­al he post­ed of the biggest books in the world, in this case the “famous Klencke Atlas” from the 16th cen­tu­ry. “While they are rare, such large spec­i­mens,” writes Kwakkel, “they do rep­re­sent a tra­di­tion. Choir books, for exam­ple, need­ed to be big because they were used by a half cir­cle of singers gath­ered around it in a church set­ting. If you are impressed with the size of these objects, just imag­ine turn­ing their pages!”

Above, we have an exam­ple of what Kwakkel calls “Siamese twins,” two books bound as one using an odd bind­ing “called ‘dos-à-dos’ (back to back), a type almost exclu­sive­ly pro­duced in the 16th and 17th cen­turies.” You could read one text one way, then turn the thing over and read a whole oth­er text the oth­er way. “You will often find two com­ple­men­tary devo­tion­al works in them, such as a prayer­book and a Psalter, or the Bible’s Old and New Tes­ta­ment. Read­ing the one text you can flip the ‘book’ to con­sult the oth­er” — no doubt a handy item, giv­en the reli­gious pri­or­i­ties of the aver­age read­er in the Europe of that era. The ani­mat­ed image below high­lights a relat­ed and equal­ly unusu­al bind­ing effort, a dos-à-dos from the late 16th cen­tu­ry con­tain­ing “not two but six books, all neat­ly hid­den inside a sin­gle bind­ing (see this motion­less pic to admire it). They are all devo­tion­al texts print­ed in Ger­many dur­ing the 1550s and 1570s (includ­ing Mar­tin Luther, Der kleine Cat­e­chis­mus) and each one is closed with its own tiny clasp.”

If this kind of high­ly vin­tage, labor-inten­sive book­mak­ing gets your blood flow­ing, make sure to see see also Traité des couleurs ser­vant à la pein­ture à l’eau, the 700-page 17th-cen­tu­ry guide to col­ors we fea­tured in July, and which Kwakkel cov­ered on his blog back in April: “Because the man­u­al is writ­ten by hand and there­fore lit­er­al­ly one of a kind, it did not get the ‘reach’ among painters — or atten­tion among mod­ern art his­to­ri­ans — it deserves.” Just one more rea­son to appre­ci­ate the inter­net, even if, as a medi­um, you far pre­fer the medieval book.

Keep tabs on Kwakkel’s tum­blr site for more unusu­al finds, and don’t miss his oth­er blog, Medieval Frag­ments, where he and oth­er schol­ars delve more deeply into the won­der­ful world of medieval books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Dutch Book From 1692 Doc­u­ments Every Col­or Under the Sun: A Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­ors

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

Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Illus­trat­ed in a Remark­able Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­script (c. 1450)

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.

Read a Never Published, “Subversive” Chapter from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

in K-12 | September 1st, 2014

50 years after the pub­li­ca­tion of Roald Dahl’s beloved chil­dren’s book, Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, The Guardian has post­ed online a nev­er-before-pub­lished draft of the book’s fifth chap­ter. It was cut from the first print­ed edi­tions of Dahl’s clas­sic, writes The Guardian, because it was con­sid­ered “too wild, sub­ver­sive and insuf­fi­cient­ly moral for the ten­der minds of British chil­dren.” You, the read­er liv­ing in 2014, will like­ly have a hard time fig­ur­ing out what the fuss was about.

The lost chap­ter, appro­pri­ate­ly illus­trat­ed by Sir Quentin Blake, begins:

The remain­ing eight chil­dren, togeth­er with their moth­ers and fathers, were ush­ered out into the long white cor­ri­dor once again.

“I won­der how Augus­tus Pot­tle and Miran­da Grope are feel­ing now?” Char­lie Buck­et asked his moth­er.

“Not too cocky, I should­n’t think” Mrs Buck­et answered. “Here – hold on to my hand, will you, dar­ling. That’s right. Hold on tight and try not to let go. And don’t you go doing any­thing sil­ly in here, either, you under­stand, or you might get sucked up into one of those dread­ful pipes your­self, or some­thing even worse maybe. Who knows?”

Lit­tle Char­lie took a tighter hold of Mrs Buck­et’s hand as they walked down the long cor­ri­dor. Soon they came to a door on which it said:

THE VANILLA FUDGE ROOM

“Hey, this is where Augus­tus Pot­tle went to, isn’t it?” Char­lie Buck­et said.

“No”, Mr Won­ka told him. “Augus­tus Pot­tle is in Choco­late Fudge. This is Vanil­la. Come inside, every­body, and take a peek.”

The chap­ter con­tin­ues at The Guardian.

Relat­ed Free­bies: If you head over to Quentin Blake’s web site, you can find some items that are “fun & free” — like free e‑cards designed by Blake; free wall­pa­per for your iPhone, iPad and desk­top; and free draw­ings that you can col­or in. Mean­while Audible.com offers The Roald Dahl Audio Col­lec­tion, which fea­tures Dahl him­self read­ing sec­tions from Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry. You can get the col­lec­tion for free by join­ing Audi­ble’s 30-day Free Tri­al pro­gram. Please read the details about the Free Tri­al pro­gram here, and know that we have a part­ner­ship with Audible.com. So, if you make a pur­chase, it will help sup­port Open Cul­ture.

via Men­tal Floss