Italo Calvino Offers 14 Reasons We Should Read the Classics

in Literature | August 12th, 2014

Image by Marie Maye, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In a pre­vi­ous post, we brought you the voice of Ital­ian fan­ta­sist Ita­lo Calvi­no, read­ing from his Invis­i­ble Cities and Mr. Palo­mar. Both of those works, as with all of Calvino’s fic­tion, make oblique ref­er­ences to wide swaths of clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture, but Calvi­no is no show-off, drop­ping in allu­sions for their own sake, nor is it real­ly nec­es­sary to have read as wide­ly as the author to tru­ly appre­ci­ate his work, as in the case of cer­tain mod­ernist mas­ters. Instead, Calvino’s fic­tion tends to cast a spell on read­ers, inspir­ing them to seek out far-flung ancient romances and strange folk­tales, to immerse them­selves in oth­er worlds con­tained with­in the cov­ers of oth­er books. Not the least bit pedan­tic, Calvi­no pos­sess­es that rare gift of the best of teach­ers: the abil­i­ty to make Lit­er­a­ture cap­i­tal “L”—an intim­i­dat­ing domain for many—become won­drous and approach­able all over again, as in our ear­ly years when books were mag­i­cal por­tals to be entered, not oner­ous tasks to be checked off a list.

Calvino’s short essay, “Why Read the Clas­sics?” (pub­lished in The New York Review of Books in 1986), resounds with this sense of won­der, as well as with the author’s friend­ly, unpre­ten­tious atti­tude.

He lays out his rea­son­ing in 14 points—slightly abridged below—beginning with the frank admis­sion that all of us feel some sense of shame for the gaps in our read­ing, and thus often claim to be “re-read­ing” when in fact we’re read­ing, for exam­ple, Moby Dick, Anna Karen­i­na, or King Lear, for the first time. Calvi­no states plain­ly the nature of the case;

The reit­er­a­tive pre­fix before the verb “read” may be a small hypocrisy on the part of peo­ple ashamed to admit they have not read a famous book. To reas­sure them, we need only observe that, how­ev­er vast any person’s basic read­ing may be, there still remain an enor­mous num­ber of fun­da­men­tal works that he has not read.

Point one, then, goes on to argue for reading—for the first time—classic works of lit­er­a­ture we may have only pre­tend­ed to in the past. The remain­der of Calvino’s case fol­lows log­i­cal­ly:

1)  ….to read a great book for the first time in one’s matu­ri­ty is an extra­or­di­nary plea­sure, dif­fer­ent from (though one can­not say greater or less­er than) the plea­sure of hav­ing read it in one’s youth.

2) We use the word “clas­sics” for those books that are trea­sured by those who have read and loved them; but they are trea­sured no less by those who have the luck to read them for the first time in the best con­di­tions to enjoy them.

3) There should there­fore be a time in adult life devot­ed to revis­it­ing the most impor­tant books of our youth.

4) Every reread­ing of a clas­sic is as much a voy­age of dis­cov­ery as the first read­ing.

5) Every read­ing of a clas­sic is in fact a reread­ing.

6) A clas­sic is a book that has nev­er fin­ished say­ing what it has to say.

7) The clas­sics are the books that come down to us bear­ing upon them the traces of read­ings pre­vi­ous to ours, and bring­ing in their wake the traces they them­selves have left on the cul­ture or cul­tures they have passed through.

Calvi­no intro­duces his last 7 points with the obser­va­tion that any for­mal lit­er­ary edu­ca­tion we receive often does more to obscure our appre­ci­a­tion of clas­sic works than to enhance it. “Schools and uni­ver­si­ties,” he writes, “ought to help us to under­stand that no book that talks about a book says more than the book in ques­tion, but instead they do their lev­el best to make us think the oppo­site.”

Part of the rea­son many peo­ple come to lit­er­ary works with trep­i­da­tion has as much to do with their per­ceived dif­fi­cul­ty as with the schol­ar­ly voice of author­i­ty that speaks from on high through “crit­i­cal biogra­phies, com­men­taries, and inter­pre­ta­tions” as well as “the intro­duc­tion, crit­i­cal appa­ra­tus, and bib­li­og­ra­phy.” Though use­ful tools for schol­ars, these can serve as means of com­mu­ni­cat­ing that cer­tain pro­fes­sion­al read­ers will always know more than you do. Calvi­no rec­om­mends leav­ing such things aside, since they “are used as a smoke screen to hide what the text has to say.” He then con­cludes:

8) A clas­sic does not nec­es­sar­i­ly teach us any­thing we did not know before.

9) The clas­sics are books that we find all the more new, fresh, and unex­pect­ed upon read­ing, the more we thought we knew them from hear­ing them talked about.

10) We use the word “clas­sic” of a book that takes the form of an equiv­a­lent to the uni­verse, on a lev­el with the ancient tal­is­mans.

11) Your clas­sic author is the one you can­not feel indif­fer­ent to, who helps you to define your­self in rela­tion to him, even in dis­pute with him.

12) A clas­sic is a book that comes before oth­er clas­sics; but any­one who has read the oth­ers first, and then reads this one, instant­ly rec­og­nizes its place in the fam­i­ly tree.

Final­ly, Calvi­no adds two points to explain why he thinks we should read old books, when we are so con­stant­ly over­whelmed “by the avalanche of cur­rent events.” To this ques­tion he says:

13) A clas­sic is some­thing that tends to rel­e­gate the con­cerns of the moment to the sta­tus of back­ground noise […]

14) A clas­sic is some­thing that per­sists as a back­ground noise even when the most incom­pat­i­ble momen­tary con­cerns are in con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion.

In oth­er words, clas­sic lit­er­a­ture can have the salu­tary effect of tem­per­ing our high sen­si­tiv­i­ty to every break­ing piece of news and dis­tract­ing piece of triv­ia, giv­ing us the bal­last of his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive. In our cur­rent cul­ture, in which we live per­pet­u­al­ly plugged into infor­ma­tion machines that ampli­fy every sig­nal and every bit of noise, such a rem­e­dy seems indis­pens­able.

via The New York Review of Books

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Ita­lo Calvi­no Read Selec­tions From Invis­i­ble Cities, Mr. Palo­mar & Oth­er Enchant­i­ng Fic­tions

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

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

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

Patti Smith Reviews Haruki Murakami’s New Novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

in Books, Literature | August 11th, 2014

Haru­ki Murakami’s 13th nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age: A Nov­el, was first pub­lished last April in Japan, and, with­in the first month, it sold one mil­lion copies. This week, the nov­el (trans­lat­ed by Philip Gabriel) final­ly arrives in book­stores in the U.S. If you’re won­der­ing where this nov­el will take read­ers, you can read an excerpt of Murakami’s nov­el recent­ly pub­lished in Slate, and then Pat­ti Smith’s book review in The New York Times. Smith, the “God­moth­er of Punk,” won the Nation­al Book Award for her 2010 mem­oir Just Kids. She knows some­thing about writ­ing, and she’s clear­ly no stranger to Murakami’s body of work. While plan­ning to go on tour, Smith once won­dered what books to take along, and wrote on her per­son­al web site:

The worse part, besides say­ing good­bye to my daugh­ter Jesse, is pick­ing out what books to take. I decide this will be essen­tial­ly a Haru­ki Muraka­mi tour. So I will take sev­er­al of his books includ­ing the three vol­ume IQ84 to reread. He is a good writer to reread as he sets your mind to day­dream­ing while you are read­ing him. thus i always miss stuff.

Smith’s review of Murakami’s lat­est begins here. The book itself can be pur­chased online at Ama­zon, iTunes, or at your favorite book­store.

h/t @holdengraber

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Trans­lates The Great Gats­by, the Nov­el That Influ­enced Him Most

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Guerilla Filmmaking & Lock-Picking

in Film | August 11th, 2014

Image by Erinç Salor

No Eli Roth gorefest or low-bud­get video nasty, no Hubert Sel­by or Thomas Hardy adap­ta­tion, no Michael Hanecke gut­punch nor the bleak­est noir can com­pare with the work of Wern­er Her­zog when it comes to exis­ten­tial dread. His doc­u­men­taries and absur­dist tragi­come­dies reach into the heart of human dark­ness and doomed obses­sive weird­ness. Even his turns as an actor and pro­duc­er take him into shad­owy, amoral places where grim, sure death awaits. Do you, dear read­er, dare fol­low him there?

If so, you must first brave the appli­ca­tion for Herzog’s Rogue Film School. Lessons include “the art of lock-pick­ing, trav­el­ing on foot, the exhil­a­ra­tion of being shot at unsuc­cess­ful­ly, the ath­let­ic side of film­mak­ing, the cre­ation of one’s own shoot­ing per­mits, the neu­tral­iza­tion of bureau­cra­cy, and gueril­la film­mak­ing.” Have tech­ni­cal ques­tions? “For this pur­pose,” Her­zog writes in his 12-point descrip­tion of Rogue, “please enroll at your local film school.” This is no beginner’s work­shop; it is “about a way of life. It is about a cli­mate, the excite­ment that makes film pos­si­ble.” This being Her­zog, “excite­ment” like­ly involves death-defy­ing dan­ger. Pre­pare for the worst.

But you who are apply­ing for the Rogue Film School know this already. You are up for the chal­lenge. You also know that Her­zog doesn’t put him­self bod­i­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly close to—and over—the edge of civ­i­liza­tion just for the sake of a thrill. This is art—raw, con­fronta­tion­al, and utter­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing. And so, Rogue Film School will also “be about poet­ry, films, music, images, lit­er­a­ture.” There is a required, eclec­tic read­ing list: J.A. Baker’s doc­u­ment of hawk life, The Pere­grine, Hemingway’s The Short Hap­py Life of Fran­cis Macomber & Oth­er Sto­ries, Virgil’s Geor­gics. Sug­gest­ed read­ings include The Poet­ic Edda, The Con­quest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castil­lo, and—somewhat unexpectedly—The War­ren Report.

And of course, there is film, “which could include your sub­mit­ted films,” but will also include a required view­ing list: John Huston’s The Trea­sure of the Sier­ra Madre, Elia Kazan’s Viva Zap­a­ta, Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Bat­tle of Algiers, Satya­jit Ray’s The Apu Tril­o­gy, and Abbas Kiarostami’s Where is the Friend’s Home? (if avail­able, he writes—watch it here)—an Iran­ian com­ing-of-age movie on BFI’s “Top fifty films for chil­dren up the age of 14” list. You will dis­cov­er ways to “cre­ate illu­mi­na­tion and an ecsta­sy of truth.” But do not for a moment think this will involve some mid­dle­brow New Age brand of self-dis­cov­ery. “Cen­sor­ship will be enforced,” Her­zog warns, “There will be no talk of shamans, of yoga class­es, nutri­tion­al val­ues, herbal teas, dis­cov­er­ing your Bound­aries, and Inner Growth.” You will prob­a­bly eat meat raw from a preda­to­ry beast you’ve killed with your bare hands.

Alter­nate­ly, you may have canapés and drinks at a seclud­ed bar in the UK while Her­zog chats you up about your lat­est project and his. So began the ori­en­ta­tion to Rogue Film School for film­mak­er and sound design­er Marce­lo de Oliveira, who chron­i­cled his expe­ri­ence as a Her­zog appren­tice in a two-part write up on the Scot­tish Doc­u­men­tary Institute’s Blog. On day one, Her­zog advised his pupils to “be pre­pared to step across the bor­ders.” De Oliveira quotes the mas­ter say­ing “Film school will not teach you that we have a nat­ur­al right as film­mak­ers to steal a cam­era or steal cer­tain doc­u­ments.” And though Her­zog does not explic­it­ly advo­cate such activ­i­ties, he strong­ly implies they may be jus­ti­fied, refer­ring to his own act of steal­ing a cam­era from the Munich Film School—the same cam­era with which he shot the crazed and vision­ary Fitz­car­ral­do. The theft, Her­zog has said, was no crime, but “a neces­si­ty.”

Her­zog is not a guru, trans­mit­ting instruc­tions for enlight­en­ment to cross-legged dis­ci­ples. He is a cat­a­lyst, encour­ag­ing his stu­dents to “go absolute­ly and com­plete­ly wild” for the sake of their indi­vid­ual vision. His film school sounds like the kind of oppor­tu­ni­ty no dar­ing film­mak­er should pass up, but should you apply and get reject­ed, you can still learn a thing or two from the great Ger­man direc­tor. Just watch the video above, “Wern­er Herzog’s Mas­ter­class.” Her­zog shared his wis­dom and expe­ri­ence with a rapt audi­ence at last year’s Locarno Film Fes­ti­val. Among the many pieces of advice were the fol­low­ing, com­piled by Indiewire. See their post for more essen­tial high­lights from this fas­ci­nat­ing ses­sion.

• It’s a very dan­ger­ous thing to have a video vil­lage, a video out­put. Avoid it. Shut it down. Throw it into the next riv­er. You have an actor, and peo­ple that close all star­ing at the mon­i­tor gives a false feel­ing; that ‘feel good’ feel­ing of secu­ri­ty. It’s always mis­lead­ing. You have to avoid it.
• I always do the slate board; I want to be the last one from the actors on one side and the tech­ni­cal appa­ra­tus on the oth­er side. I’m the last one and then things roll. You don’t have to be a dic­ta­tor.
• Nev­er show any­one in a doc­u­men­tary, rush­es. They’ll become self-con­scious. Nev­er ever do that.
• Some­times it’s good to leave your char­ac­ter alone so no one can pre­dict what is going to hap­pen next. Some­times these moments are very telling and mov­ing.
• Dis­miss the cul­ture of com­plaint you hear every­where.
• You should always try to find a way deep into some­one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Favorite Films

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Wern­er Her­zog Gets Shot Dur­ing Inter­view, Doesn’t Miss a Beat

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

Klaus Nomi’s Ad for Jägermeister (Circa 1980)

in Food & Drink | August 11th, 2014

If the gen­der-defy­ing Ger­man per­former Klaus Nomi (above) was an acquired taste, so is Jäger­meis­ter, the hang­over-defy­ing (some say induc­ing) Ger­man 70-proof herbal liqueur.

Syn­er­gies aside, it’s still sur­pris­ing that any com­pa­ny big enough to have share­hold­ers would elect to have as bizarre a scene­mak­er as Nomi to endorse their prod­uct.

Appar­ent­ly they knew their audi­ence. The ad was part of a series that ran in New York mag­a­zine in the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s. (Nomi died of AIDS in 1983. You can see his last per­for­mance here.)

The oth­er spokes­peo­ple are unknown to me, but I wouldn’t be sur­prised if they all knew each oth­er.

And pledg­ing their alle­giance to the bit­ter bev­er­age may well have cov­ered a cou­ple months rent on an East Vil­lage walk up.

As one Tum­blr wag com­ment­ed: “Klaus Nomi drink­ing Jäger­meis­ter is like Lau­rie Ander­son drink­ing Bud Light.”

If you can iden­ti­fy any of Nomi’s fel­low Jäger­meis­ter fans, please let us know in the com­ments. Not every won­der­ful crea­ture gets the doc­u­men­tary he or she deserves, but Andrew Horn’s 2004 The Nomi Song can hip you to the crea­ture who came from out­er space to save the human race. Watch it for free here.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Klaus Nomi: The Bril­liant Per­for­mance of a Dying Man

Sal­vador Dalí Goes Com­mer­cial: Three Strange Tele­vi­sion Ads

Andy Warhol and Sal­vador Dalí in Clas­sic 1968 Bran­iff Com­mer­cials: ‘When You Got It, Flaunt It!’

Beat Writer William S. Bur­roughs Spreads Coun­ter­cul­ture Cool on Nike Sneak­ers, 1994

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

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

Finnish Musicians Play Bluegrass Versions of AC/DC, Iron Maiden & Ronnie James Dio

in Music | August 8th, 2014

Euro­peans do weird things with Amer­i­can folk music. Some­times they do hor­ri­ble things, like the 1994 tech­no ren­di­tion of tra­di­tion­al coun­try song “Cot­ton-Eyed Joe” by a Swedish act who called them­selves “Red­nex” and who dressed up like car­toon­ish hill­bil­lies in a par­o­dy only slight­ly less offen­sive than their music. In the video above, we have three con­ti­nents col­lid­ing for anoth­er Scan­di­na­vian appro­pri­a­tion of Appalachi­an tropes, by way of a cov­er of “Thun­der­struck” by Aussies AC/DC. The Finnish blue­grass band Steve ‘N’ Seag­ulls has achieved viral noto­ri­ety with their most recent release, which fea­tures ban­jo, man­dolin, upright bass, accor­dion, a drum­mer who plays the spoons, and an anvil. Oh, and of course a wardrobe of over­alls and sus­penders with­out shirts. And the accor­dion play­er arrives on the scene on a rid­ing mow­er.

Offen­sive? I don’t know—where Red­nex was clear­ly min­strel­sy, this has the feel of a fond trib­ute to a cul­ture whose musi­cal tra­di­tions Steve ‘N’ Seag­ulls clear­ly adores, though their wear­ing of Native head­dress (below) would not sit well with cer­tain music fes­ti­val orga­niz­ers.

As for their take on AC/DC; I almost pre­fer it to the orig­i­nal, though one Metafil­ter user point­ed out that being able to hear the lyrics with such clar­i­ty does con­firm one’s sus­pi­cion that they’re com­plete­ly inane. And lest you think Steve ‘N’ Seag­ulls is some one-cov­er-hit won­der, check out their cov­ers of Iron Maiden’s “The Troop­er” above and Dio’s “Holy Div­er” below.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

Robert Plant and Ali­son Krauss Sing Coun­try Ver­sions of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” & “When the Lev­ee Breaks”

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

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

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

in Radio, Sci Fi | August 8th, 2014

If you read the nov­els and sto­ries of Ursu­la K. LeGuin and J.G. Bal­lard, you drop your­self into invent­ed real­i­ties both over­whelm­ing­ly alien and unset­tling­ly famil­iar. And if you heard them on the radio — That Most Inti­mate of All Media, so they say — would­n’t those qual­i­ties take on a new inten­si­ty? Thanks to CBC Radio’s Van­ish­ing Point, a sci­ence-fic­tion anthol­o­gy series which ran from the mid-1980s to the ear­ly 90s, you can do just that and find out for your­self what it feels like to have them piped more or less direct­ly into your mind’s eye. Fans of both LeGuin and Bal­lard may take excep­tion to the straight label­ing of them as “sci­ence fic­tion” authors, and right­ly so. The for­mer’s work belongs as much to the tra­di­tion of fan­ta­sy as to that of sci-fi, and in both modes does a lot of detailed soci­o­log­i­cal world-build­ing; the lat­ter’s dark psy­cho­log­i­cal dimen­sion and near-non­fic­tion­al use of the mod­ern world always pre­vent­ed easy cat­e­go­riza­tion. Still, I sus­pect that the mak­ers of Van­ish­ing Point not just knew all this, but under­stood its appeal.

They must also have real­ized that nei­ther LeGuin nor Bal­lard had grown famous for their adapt­abil­i­ty. LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heav­en got made twice for tele­vi­sion, to vary­ing opin­ions; opin­ions var­ied even more when her Earth­sea books more recent­ly became a Sci Fi Chan­nel minis­eries and a film from Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s ani­ma­tion stu­dio. Bal­lard’s nov­el of auto-wreck-eroti­cism Crash became a cult favorite in the hands of David Cro­nen­berg, but usu­al­ly his work cross­es into oth­er media in a more bizarre fash­ion (such as the tele­vi­sion short of Crash we fea­tured last year). But radio can han­dle pret­ty much any­thing such imag­i­na­tive writ­ers can throw at it, as you’ll hear in Van­ish­ing Point’s six-part adap­ta­tion of LeGuin’s The Dis­pos­sessed at the top of the post, or in the Inter­net Archive playlist of its six adapt­ed Bal­lard sto­ries just above. His­to­ry, alas, has­n’t record­ed the reac­tion that LeGuin, always out­spo­ken about oth­ers’ treat­ments of her worlds, had to these CBC dra­mas. When Rick McGrath of jgballard.ca sent Bal­lard him­self CDs of all the pro­duc­tions in 2004, he received “a great note from him explain­ing he’d love to lis­ten to them, but he has yet to buy a CD play­er.” And if I had to make a guess, I’d say that vision­ary of our alien­at­ed, frag­ment­ed tech­no­log­i­cal future nev­er got around to pick­ing one up.

Find more sci-fi radio drama­ti­za­tions in the relat­eds below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

X Minus One: More Clas­sic 1950s Sci-Fi Radio from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

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

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

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

The Very First Film of J.G. Ballard’s Crash, Star­ring Bal­lard Him­self (1971)

J.G. Bal­lard on Sen­sa­tion

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.

A Serious Stephen Colbert Gives Advice on Love & Life to Teenage Girls

in Comedy, Life | August 8th, 2014

Rookie’s nev­er less than wor­thy “Ask a Grown Man” series pro­vides a forum for mature males like actor Jon Hamm and radio per­son­al­i­ty Ira Glass to offer thought­ful, straight­for­ward advice and expla­na­tions, born of per­son­al expe­ri­ence, to teenage girls (and oth­er inter­est­ed par­ties).

The most recent edi­tion adds depth, and could just as accu­rate­ly be titled “Ask a Lev­el-Head­ed 50-Year-Old Father of Three, Who’s Been Hap­pi­ly Mar­ried to His Children’s Moth­er for Years.”

Lurk­ing just beneath Stephen Colbert’s hawk­ish Col­bert Report per­sona is a fair-mind­ed, seri­ous fel­low, who’s unem­bar­rassed to weigh in in favor of parental author­i­ty when a 19-year-old fan com­plains of her dad’s oppo­si­tion to sleep­overs at her boyfriend’s place while she’s still liv­ing at home. Per­haps she should’ve asked a grown man whom expe­ri­ence hadn’t equipped to see things from the oth­er side of the fence, as Col­bert fore­sees that his answer won’t “go over great with every­one.”

Sure­ly, though, his late moth­er would approve.

Per­haps this seg­ment should be called “Ask a Grown Man Whose Unequiv­o­cat­ing Moral Com­pass Is Incon­ve­nient­ly Close to Your Dad’s, But Whose Posi­tion Allows Him to Offer Insights With­out Los­ing His Tem­per or Going Off Mes­sage.”

Colbert’s children’s extreme­ly low pro­file in the media’s line up of celebri­ty off­spring reflects well on those charged with their upbring­ing. Were his 18-year-old daugh­ter to take issue with the old man’s mus­ings on Twit­ter or Snapchat, she’d have the lux­u­ry of doing so in the way of the aver­age Rook­ie read­er, rather than some obses­sive­ly observed near­ly-grown baby bump.

As to how to tell whether a boy—or anyone—likes you, Col­bert says “they want to hear your sto­ries.”

As one view­er not­ed, “ask a grown-up, get grown-up answers.” Word.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

Stu­dent Asks Noam Chom­sky for Dat­ing Advice

Niet­zsche Dis­pens­es Dat­ing Advice in a Short Screw­ball Film, My Friend Friedrich

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, zine pub­lish­er, and moth­er of a teenage Rook­ie read­er. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The Story of Oedipus Retold with Vegetables in Starring Roles

in Animation, Literature | August 7th, 2014

Sopho­cles and Aeschy­lus may be spin­ning in their graves. Or, who knows, they may be tak­ing some delight in this bizarre twist on the Oedi­pus myth. Run­ning 8 min­utes, Jason Wish­now’s 2004 film puts veg­eta­bles in the star­ring roles. One of the first stop-motion films shot with a dig­i­tal still cam­era, Oedi­pus took two years to make with a vol­un­teer staff of 100. But the hard work paid off.

The film has since been screened at 70+ film fes­ti­vals and was even­tu­al­ly acquired by the Sun­dance Chan­nel. Sep­a­rate videos show you the behind-the-scenes mak­ing of the film (mid­dle), plus the sto­ry­boards used dur­ing pro­duc­tion (bot­tom). This video first appeared on our site in 2011, and, stel­lar as it is, we’re delight­ed to bring it back for read­ers who have joined us since. Hope you enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Alle­go­ry of the Cave: One Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, Anoth­er Made with Clay

The Har­vard Clas­sics: A Free, Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

Ancient Greek clas­sics can be found in our twin col­lec­tions: 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices and 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

John Lennon Writes Eric Clapton an 8‑Page Letter Asking Him to Join the Plastic Ono Band for a World Tour on a Cruise Ship

in Music | August 7th, 2014

Most every­one who com­ments on the phe­nom­e­non of the super­group will feel the need to point out that such bands rarely tran­scend the sum of their parts, and this is most­ly true. But it does seem that for a cer­tain peri­od of time in the late six­ties, many of the best bands were super­groups, or had at least two or more “super” mem­bers. Take the Yard­birds, for exam­ple, which con­tained, though not all at once, Jim­my Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clap­ton. Or Cream, with Clap­ton, Jack Bruce, and Gin­ger Bak­er. Or Blind Faith—with Clap­ton, Bak­er, and Steve Win­wood…. Maybe it’s fair to say that every band Clap­ton played in was “super,” includ­ing, for a brief time, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Plas­tic Ono Band.

It start­ed with the one-off per­for­mance above in Toron­to, which led to an undat­ed eight-page let­ter Lennon wrote Clap­ton, either in 1969, accord­ing to Book­tryst, or 1971, accord­ing to Michael Schumacher’s Clap­ton bio Cross­roads. The let­ter we have–well over a thou­sand words–is a draft. Lennon’s revised copy has not sur­faced, and, writes Book­tryst, “the con­tent of the final ver­sion is unknown.” In this copy (first page at top), Lennon prais­es Clapton’s work and details his and Yoko’s plans for a “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” project quite unlike Lennon’s for­mer band. As he puts it, “we began to feel more and more like going on the road, but not the way I used to with the Beatles—night after night of tor­ture. We mean to enjoy our­selves, take it easy, and maybe even see some of the places we go to!”

Lennon explic­it­ly states that he does not want the band to be a super­group, even as he recruits super mem­bers like Clap­ton and Phil Spec­tor: “We have many ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ary’ ideas for pre­sent­ing shows that com­plete­ly involve the audience—not just as ‘Super­stars’ up there—blessing the peo­ple.” While Lennon and Ono don’t expect their recruits to “rat­i­fy every­thing we believe polit­i­cal­ly,” they do state their inten­tion for “’rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing’ the world thru music.” “We’d love to ‘do’ Rus­sia, Chi­na, Hun­gary, Poland, etc.,” writes Lennon. Lat­er in the mis­sive, he explains his detailed plan for the Plas­tic Ono Band tour he had in mind—involving a cruise ship, film crew, and the band’s “fam­i­lies, chil­dren what­ev­er”:

How about a kind of ‘Easy Rid­er’ at sea. I mean we get EMI or some film co., to finance a big ship with 30 peo­ple aboard (includ­ing crew)—we take 8 track record­ing equip­ment with us (mine prob­a­bly) movie equipment—and we rehearse on the way over—record if we want, play any­where we fancy—say we film from L.A. to Tahi­ti […] The whole trip could take 3–4‑5–6 months, depend­ing how we all felt.

It sounds like an out­landish pro­pos­al, but if you’re John Lennon, I imag­ine noth­ing of this sort seems beyond reach—though how he expect­ed to get to East­ern Europe from the Pacif­ic Rim on his ship isn’t quite clear. The prob­lem for Clap­ton, biog­ra­ph­er Michael Schu­mach­er spec­u­lates, would have had noth­ing to do with the music and every­thing to do with his addic­tion: “after all his prob­lems with secur­ing drugs in the biggest city in the Unit­ed States, Clap­ton couldn’t begin to enter­tain the notion of spend­ing lengthy peri­ods at sea and try­ing to obtain hero­in in for­eign coun­tries.” In any case, “in the end, Lennon’s pro­pos­al, like so many of his improb­a­ble but com­pelling ideas, fell through.” This may have had some rela­tion to the fact that Lennon had a hero­in prob­lem of his own at the time.

The clip of Clap­ton per­form­ing with the band comes from Sweet Toron­to, a 1971 film made by D.A. Pen­nebak­er of the band’s per­for­mance at the 1969 Toron­to Rock and Roll Revival Fes­ti­val (see the full film above). That event had a whol­ly improb­a­ble line­up of ‘50s stars like Chuck Berry, Lit­tle Richard, Jer­ry Lee Lewis, and Bo Did­dley along­side bands like Alice Coop­er, Chica­go, and The Doors. As the title open­ing of the film states, “John could at last intro­duce Yoko to the heroes of his child­hood.” Pen­nebak­er gives us snip­pets of the per­for­mance from each of Lennon’s heroes—opening with Did­dley, then Lewis, Berry, and Lit­tle Richard—before the Plas­tic Ono Band with Clap­ton appear at 16:43. (This per­for­mance also pro­duced their first album.) The Bea­t­les Bible has a full run­down of the fes­ti­val and the band’s some­what sham­bol­ic, bluesy—and with Yoko, screechy—show.

Read the full tran­script and see more scans of Lennon’s draft let­ter to Clap­ton over at Book­tryst, who also explain the cryp­tic ref­er­ences to “Eric and,” “you both,” and “you and yours”—part of the “soap opera” affair involv­ing Clap­ton, George Harrison’s (and lat­er Clap­ton’s) wife Pat­tie Boyd, and her 17-year-old sis­ter Paula.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

Eric Clap­ton and Steve Win­wood Join Forces at the His­toric Blind Faith Con­cert in Hyde Park, 1969

John Lennon Plays Bas­ket­ball with Miles Davis and Hangs Out with Allen Gins­berg & Friends

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

Hear Michel Foucault’s Lecture “The Culture of the Self,” Presented in English at UC Berkeley (1983)

in Philosophy, UC Berkeley | August 6th, 2014

Michel Foucault’s time in the Unit­ed States in the last years of his life, par­tic­u­lar­ly his time as a lec­tur­er at UC Berke­ley, proved to be extra­or­di­nar­i­ly pro­duc­tive in the devel­op­ment of his the­o­ret­i­cal under­stand­ing of what he saw as the cen­tral ques­tion fac­ing the con­tem­po­rary West: the ques­tion of the self. In his 1983 Berke­ley lec­tures in Eng­lish on “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Fou­cault stat­ed and restat­ed the ques­tion in a vari­ety of ways—“What are we in our actu­al­i­ty?,” “What are we today?”—and his inves­ti­ga­tions amount to “an alter­na­tive to the tra­di­tion­al philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions: What is the world? What is man? What is truth? What is knowl­edge? How can we know some­thing? And so on.” So write the edi­tors of the posthu­mous­ly pub­lished 1988 essay col­lec­tion Tech­nolo­gies of the Self, titled after a lec­ture Fou­cault deliv­ered at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont in 1982.

In that talk, Fou­cault notes that “the hermeneu­tics of the self has been con­fused with the­olo­gies of the soul—concupiscence, sin, and the fall from grace.” The tech­nique of con­fes­sion, cen­tral even to sec­u­lar psy­cho­analy­sis, informs a sub­jec­tiv­i­ty that, for Fou­cault, always devel­ops under the ever-watch­ful eyes of nor­mal­iz­ing insti­tu­tions. But in “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Fou­cault reach­es back to ancient Greek con­cep­tions of “care of the self” (epimelieia beautou) to locate a sub­jec­tiv­i­ty derived from a dif­fer­ent tradition—a coun­ter­point to reli­gious con­fes­sion­al and Freudi­an sub­jec­tiv­i­ties and one he has dis­cussed in terms of the tech­nique of “self writ­ing.” (The Care of the Self also hap­pens to be the sub­ti­tle of the third vol­ume of Foucault’s His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, and “The Cul­ture of the Self” the title of its sec­ond chap­ter.)

The notion that one is grant­ed self­hood through the min­is­tra­tions of oth­ers comes in for ridicule in the first few min­utes of his “Cul­ture of the Self” lec­ture above. Fou­cault relates a sto­ry by sec­ond cen­tu­ry Greek satirist Lucian to illus­trate a humor­ous point about “those guys who nowa­days reg­u­lar­ly vis­it a kind of mas­ter who takes their mon­ey from them in order to teach them how to take care of them­selves.” He iden­ti­fies the ancient ver­sion of this dubi­ous author­i­ty as the philoso­pher, but it seems that he intends in mod­ern times to refer more broad­ly to psy­chi­a­trists, psy­chol­o­gists, and all man­ner of reli­gious fig­ures and self-help gurus.

Fou­cault sets up the joke to intro­duce his first entrée into the pur­suit of “the his­tor­i­cal ontol­ogy of our­selves,” a con­sid­er­a­tion of Kant’s essay “What is Enlight­en­ment?” In that work, the most promi­nent Ger­man Enlight­en­ment philoso­pher describes “man’s emer­gence from his self-imposed nonage,” a term he defines as “the inabil­i­ty to use one’s own under­stand­ing with­out another’s guid­ance.” From there, Fou­cault opens up his inves­ti­ga­tion to an analy­sis of “three sets of rela­tions: our rela­tions to truth, our rela­tions to oblig­a­tion, our rela­tions to our­selves and to the oth­ers.” You’ll have to lis­ten to the full set of lec­tures, above in all five parts, to fol­low Foucault’s inquiry through its many pas­sages and diver­gences and learn how he arrives at this con­clu­sion: “The self is not so much some­thing hid­den and there­fore some­thing to be exca­vat­ed but as a cor­re­late of the tech­nolo­gies of self that it co-evolves with over mil­len­ni­um.”

The Q&A ses­sion, above, was held on a dif­fer­ent day and is also well worth a lis­ten. Fou­cault address­es sev­er­al queries about his own method­ol­o­gy, issues of dis­ci­pli­nary bound­aries, and oth­er clar­i­fy­ing (or not) con­cerns relat­ed to his main lec­ture. See this site for a tran­script of the ques­tions from the audi­ences and Foucault’s insight­ful, and some­times quite fun­ny, answers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Michel Fou­cault Deliv­er His Lec­ture on “Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty” at UC Berke­ley, In Eng­lish (1980)

Michel Fou­cault and Alain Badiou Dis­cuss “Phi­los­o­phy and Psy­chol­o­gy” on French TV (1965)

Watch a “Lost Inter­view” With Michel Fou­cault: Miss­ing for 30 Years But Now Recov­ered

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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