Jack Kerouac’s On the Road Turned Into an Illustrated Scroll: One Drawing for Every Page of the Novel

in Art, Literature | June 30th, 2014

A great deal of mythol­o­gy has built up around the life of Jack Ker­ouac, and espe­cial­ly around the expe­ri­ences that went into his best-known work, the 1957 nov­el On the Road. Even the very act of its com­po­si­tion — per­haps espe­cial­ly the act of its com­po­si­tion — has, in the imag­i­na­tions of many of Ker­ouac’s read­ers, turned into an image of the man “writ­ing the book on a long scroll of tele­type paper in three cof­fee-soaked-ben­zedrine-fueled days.” With this image in mind, illus­tra­tor Paul Rogers of Pasade­na’s Art Cen­ter Col­lege of Design cre­at­ed On the Road, the illus­trat­ed scroll, fea­tur­ing “a draw­ing for every page” of the nov­el, and depict­ing the his­tor­i­cal­ly researched “cars, bus­es, road­side archi­tec­ture, and old signs” from Ker­ouac’s Amer­i­ca of the late 1940s and ear­ly 50s, one that “looked awful­ly dif­fer­ent than it does now.” You can scroll, as it were, through this work in progress at Rogers’ site.

We’ve here includ­ed only four of the over 100 draw­ings Rogers has so far made, but these exam­ples cap­ture the nov­el­’s multi­gen­er­a­tional­ly intox­i­cat­ing mix of Amer­i­cana and pure momen­tum. You’ll also notice that, under­neath each image, Rogers excerpts a pas­sage of Ker­ouac’s. “Adding Ker­ouac’s words as cap­tions to the draw­ings makes the series feel like a jour­nal and not a care­ful­ly planned out illus­trat­ed book,” he writes, “and it seems to cap­ture some of the spir­it of Ker­ouac’s ‘this-hap­pened-then-this-then-this’ writ­ing style.”

You can read the scroll part-by-part on these pages: one through three, four, five, six, sev­en. Though I nev­er took quite the lifestyle inspi­ra­tion from On the Road some have, I can’t wait to see what visu­al inspi­ra­tion Rogers draws from the bit about fab­u­lous yel­low roman can­dles explod­ing like spi­ders across the stars.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitch­hik­ing Trip Nar­rat­ed in On the Road

Jack Kerouac’s On The Road Turned Into Google Dri­ving Direc­tions & Pub­lished as a Free eBook

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

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.

Ernest Hemingway’s Summer Camping Recipes

in Food & Drink, Literature | June 30th, 2014

With regard to writ­ing, Ernest Hem­ing­way was a man of sim­ple tastes. Were I to employ a metaphor, I’d describe Hem as the kind of guy who’d pre­fer an unadorned plum from William Car­los Williams’ ice­box to Maki­ni How­ell’s Pesto Plum Piz­za with Bal­sam­ic Arugu­la.

Don’t mis­take that metaphor for real life, how­ev­er. Judg­ing by his 1920 Toron­to Star how-to on max­i­miz­ing com­fort on camp­ing vaca­tions, he would not have stood for charred wee­nies and marsh­mal­lows on a stick. Rather, a lit­tle cook­ery know-how was some­thing for a man to be proud of:

“…a fry­ing pan is a most nec­es­sary thing to any trip, but you also need the old stew ket­tle and the fold­ing reflec­tor bak­er.”

Clear­ly, the man did not trust read­ers to inde­pen­dent­ly seek out such sources as The Per­ry Ladies’ Cook­book of 1920 for instruc­tions. Instead, he painstak­ing­ly details his method for suc­cess­ful prepa­ra­tion of Trout Wrapped in Bacon, includ­ing his pre­ferred brands of veg­etable short­en­ing.

Would your mouth water less if I tell you that lit­er­ary food blog Paper and Salt has updat­ed Hem’s trout recipe à la Emer­il Lagasse, omit­ting the Crisco and toss­ing in a few fresh herbs? No camp­fire required.  You can get ‘er done in the broil­er:

Bacon-Wrapped Trout: (adapt­ed from Emer­il Lagasse)
2 (10-ounce) whole trout, cleaned and gut­ted
1/2 cup corn­meal
Salt and ground pep­per, to taste
8 sprigs fresh thyme
1 lemon, sliced
6 slices bacon
Fresh pars­ley, for gar­nish

1. Pre­heat broil­er and set oven rack 4 to 6 inch­es from heat. With a paper tow­el, pat trout dry inside and out. Dredge out­side of each fish in corn­meal, then sea­son cav­i­ty with salt and pep­per. Place 4 sprigs of thyme and 2 lemon slices inside each fish.

2. Wrap 3 bacon slices around the mid­dle of each fish, so that the edges over­lap slight­ly. Line a roast­ing pan with alu­minum foil, and place fish on pan. Broil until bacon is crisp, about 5 min­utes. With a spat­u­la, care­ful­ly flip fish over and cook anoth­er 5 min­utes, until flesh is firm.

Like any thought­ful host­ess (sim­i­le!), Hem­ing­way did­n’t leave his guests to starve whilst wait­ing for the main event. His choice of hors d’oeu­vres was lit­tle pan­cakes made from a mix, and again, he leaves noth­ing to chance, or Aunt Jemi­ma’s instruc­tions…

With the pre­pared pan­cake flours you take a cup­ful of pan­cake flour and add a cup of water. Mix the water and flour and as soon as the lumps are out it is ready for cook­ing. Have the skil­let hot and keep it well greased. Drop the bat­ter in and as soon as it is done on one side loosen it in the skil­let and flip it over. Apple but­ter, syrup or cin­na­mon and sug­ar go well with the cakes.

Here, Paper and Salt’s Nicole Vil­leneuve does us all a sol­id by doing away with prepack­aged mix. Bonus points for using ingre­di­ents that would’ve been avail­able in 1920’s Michi­gan, beloved site of Hem­ing­way’s trout and pan­cake cam­pouts.

Corn Cakes:
1 1/2 cups corn ker­nels (either fresh off the cob or thawed)
2 green onions, white parts only, coarse­ly chopped
2/3 cup flour
1/3 cup stone-ground yel­low corn­meal
1 tea­spoon bak­ing pow­der
1/2 tea­spoon red chile flakes
1/2 tea­spoon salt
1 tea­spoon sug­ar
1 egg, light­ly beat­en
2/3 cup but­ter­milk
2 table­spoons but­ter, melt­ed and cooled
Canola oil, for fry­ing

1. In a food proces­sor, add corn and green onions and pulse 4 to 5 times, until fine­ly chopped. In a large bowl, stir togeth­er corn mix­ture, flour, corn­meal, bak­ing pow­der, red chile flakes, salt, and sug­ar.

2. In a small bowl, com­bine egg, but­ter­milk, and but­ter. Add to corn mix­ture, stir­ring until just com­bined.

3. Coat a large skil­let or pan­cake grid­dle with oil. Over medi­um heat, spoon bat­ter onto pan in 1/4 cups and fry until cakes are gold­en on both sides, 1 to 2 min­utes per side.

Vil­leneuve opts out of recre­at­ing Hem­ing­way’s dessert, an al fres­co fruit pie so good “your pals … will kiss you” (pro­vid­ed, of course, that they’re French­men). Because I, too, aim high­er than wee­nies and marsh­mal­lows, here are his lengthy, rather self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry  instruc­tions:

In the bak­er, mere man comes into his own, for he can make a pie that to his bush appetite will have it all over the prod­uct that moth­er used to make, like a tent. Men have always believed that there was some­thing mys­te­ri­ous and dif­fi­cult about mak­ing a pie. Here is a great secret. There is noth­ing to it. We’ve been kid­ded for years. Any man of aver­age office intel­li­gence can make at least as good a pie as his wife.

All there is to a pie is a cup and a half of flour, one-half tea­spoon­ful of salt, one-half cup of lard and cold water. That will make pie crust that will bring tears of joy into your camp­ing partner’s eyes.

Mix the salt with the flour, work the lard into the flour, make it up into a good work­man­like dough with cold water. Spread some flour on the back of a box or some­thing flat, and pat the dough around a while. Then roll it out with what­ev­er kind of round bot­tle you pre­fer. Put a lit­tle more lard on the sur­face of the sheet of dough and then slosh a lit­tle flour on and roll it up and then roll it out again with the bot­tle.

Cut out a piece of the rolled out dough big enough to line a pie tin. I like the kind with holes in the bot­tom. Then put in your dried apples that have soaked all night and been sweet­ened, or your apri­cots, or your blue­ber­ries, and then take anoth­er sheet of the dough and drape it grace­ful­ly over the top, sol­der­ing it down at the edges with your fin­gers. Cut a cou­ple of slits in the top dough sheet and prick it a few times with a fork in an artis­tic man­ner.

Put it in the bak­er with a good slow fire for forty-five min­utes and then take it out.

Remem­ber, campers:  The real woods­man is the man who can be real­ly com­fort­able in the bush. — Ernest Hem­ing­way

 via Paper and Salt

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author who once designed a course on out­door cook­ing, just so she could order pie irons online. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Sonny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Practicing Yoga Made Him a Better Musician

in Creativity, Health, Music, Religion | June 30th, 2014

Indi­an mys­tic and philoso­pher Patan­jali sup­pos­ed­ly cre­at­ed mod­ern yoga by trans­mit­ting his doc­trine and dis­ci­plines to sev­en sages. In the mid-1950s, those teach­ings came down through the cen­turies to anoth­er sage, Son­ny Rollins, who, like his good friend John Coltrane, incor­po­rat­ed his exper­i­ments with East­ern spir­i­tu­al­i­ty into his jazz impro­vi­sa­tions. In Rollins’ case, yoga has giv­en him, as he recounts in the short video above, “spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing” and “direc­tion.” Set­ting out for India in 1967 to find “uplift­ment,” Rollins checked him­self into an Ashram, with noth­ing but a bag and his horn, “and it worked out well,” he says. Rollins and his jazz “com­pa­tri­ots” like Coltrane “were try­ing to find a way to express life through our impro­vi­sa­tions,” he tells NPR. “The music has got to mean some­thing,” he says, “Jazz impro­vi­sa­tion is sup­posed to be the high­est form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and get­ting that to the peo­ple is our job as musi­cians.”

In his new set of live record­ings, Road Shows, Vol. 3, Rollins plays a “mantra-like” song called “Patan­jali,” a trib­ute to the dis­ci­pline that keeps him phys­i­cal­ly and musi­cal­ly vital. In his “Morn­ing Edi­tion” inter­view above, Rollins describes his yoga prac­tice as help­ing his “con­cen­tra­tion lev­el.” “The thing is this,” he says, “When I play, what I try to do is to reach my sub­con­scious lev­el. I don’t want to overt­ly think about any­thing, because you can’t think and play at the same time—believe me, I’ve tried.” At age 83, and still sound­ing as fresh as he does, one imag­ines he’s tried it all and learned some valu­able lessons. In 1963, Rollins met the Oki Yoga group in Japan, who com­bine yoga, Zen, and mar­tial arts prin­ci­ples, and he’s also stud­ied Rosi­cru­cian­ism, Bud­dhism, and “Kab­bal­ah, even—I was real­ly into those philoso­phies of life.”

As for whether Son­ny Rollins con­sid­ers him­self a mem­ber of any par­tic­u­lar sect, hear his thoughts on orga­nized reli­gion in answer to a recent Google Hang­out ques­tion (above). While he may not sub­scribe to a spe­cif­ic belief sys­tem, he’s cer­tain­ly found spir­i­tu­al tech­niques that give him—as he puts it in an inter­view with Yoga Jour­nal—“a cen­ter.” Rollins “still prac­tices asana [pos­es] every day, includ­ing Halasana (Plow Pose) and Urd­h­va Dha­nurasana (Upward Bow Pose).” Want to learn more about yoga? You could always read Patanjali’s famous sutras. For more prac­ti­cal instruc­tion in this peace­ful phys­i­cal dis­ci­pline, per­haps take a look at the rather iron­i­cal­ly named Les­ley Fightmaster’s Youtube chan­nel, with free lessons for vir­tu­al­ly every­one.

Of course, no one teacher should be con­sid­ered the author­i­ty on yoga. Like every spir­i­tu­al prac­tice, yoga has its many schisms and divi­sions, even so-called “Yoga Wars”: among Hin­dus and Chris­tians, between cor­po­rate giants like Lul­ule­mon (and West­ern teach­ers like Fight­mas­ter) and tra­di­tion­al Indi­an prac­ti­tion­ers, between “Hot Yoga” (and its con­tro­ver­sial founder) and every­one else…. I doubt Son­ny Rollins has time to get enmeshed in these squab­bles, and maybe nei­ther do you. For a much less uptight fusion of East­ern prac­tice and West­ern spir­it, per­haps try some Star Wars Yoga. In this video, instruc­tor Eri­ca Vetra offers a free beginner’s class for those who “A. love Star Wars, B. have nev­er seen Star Wars, C. love yoga, or D. have nev­er done yoga.” The ecu­meni­cal Son­ny Rollins might approve, though the ven­er­a­ble Patan­jali, indif­fer­ent to “fan­cy” and “illu­sion,” may not have been amused.

via A Piece of Mono­logue

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Son­ny Rollins’ New York City Bridge Sab­bat­i­cal Recre­at­ed in 1977 Pio­neer Elec­tron­ics Ad

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

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

The Internet’s Own Boy: New Documentary About Aaron Swartz Now Free Online

in Current Affairs, Film, Life, Web/Tech | June 29th, 2014

On Boing­Bo­ing today, Cory Doc­torow writes: “The Cre­ative Com­mons-licensed ver­sion of The Inter­net’s Own Boy, Bri­an Knap­pen­berg­er’s doc­u­men­tary about Aaron Swartz, is now avail­able on the Inter­net Archive, which is espe­cial­ly use­ful for peo­ple out­side of the US, who aren’t able to pay to see it online.… The Inter­net Archive makes the movie avail­able to down­load or stream, in MPEG 4 and Ogg. There’s also a tor­rentable ver­sion.”

Accord­ing to the film sum­ma­ry, the new doc­u­men­tary “depicts the life of Amer­i­can com­put­er pro­gram­mer, writer, polit­i­cal orga­niz­er and Inter­net activist Aaron Swartz. It fea­tures inter­views with his fam­i­ly and friends as well as the inter­net lumi­nar­ies who worked with him. The film tells his sto­ry up to his even­tu­al sui­cide after a legal bat­tle, and explores the ques­tions of access to infor­ma­tion and civ­il lib­er­ties that drove his work.”

The Inter­net’s Own Boy will be added to our col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Steve Buscemi’s Top 10 Film Picks (from The Criterion Collection)

in Film | June 28th, 2014

Ah, sum­mer sun­shine. It’s love­ly, but so is the idea of draw­ing the drapes while Steve Busce­mi schools me in some of the dark­er cor­ners of cin­e­ma and the human psy­che.

The man who’s met his onscreen end so fre­quent­ly (and hor­ri­bly) as to mer­it a Youtube trib­ute titled The Many Deaths of Steve Busce­mi is one of dozens of lumi­nar­ies who’ve com­piled top 10 lists from the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion’s film cat­a­log.

What do Buscemi’s 10 picks reveal?

A fond­ness for black-and-white, a doc­u­men­tary sen­si­bil­i­ty, and an appre­ci­a­tion for any­thing deft­ly strad­dling the divide between hor­ror and humor…

If, like me, you’re unfa­mil­iar with some of his picks, take a look at the trail­ers. I would­n’t be sur­prised to find him crop­ping up in any one of them.

Bil­ly Liar

This shin­ing exam­ple of the British New Wave can be referred to as a kitchen sink dra­ma, but Busce­mi calls it a com­e­dy, with “one of the sad­dest end­ings” he’s ever seen.

Brute Force

Pic­ture a remake with Busce­mi fill­ing the shoes of sadis­tic prison guard Hume Cronyn.

The Hon­ey­moon Killers 

Buscemi’s home­town gets the nod in one of his favorite-ever film lines: ‘Val­ley Stream. Val­ley Stream. What a joke!’”

Man Bites Dog 

Not hard to imag­ine the Coen Broth­ers enlist­ing Busce­mi to hold forth on the bal­last ratio for corpses. Those with the stom­ach for it can watch the whole dis­turb­ing thing here, though as Busce­mi him­self warns, it’s not for every­body.

My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho

Buscemi’s favorite Riv­er Phoenix flick.

Sales­man 

Won­der­ing how Albert Maysles will feel when he reads that fel­low direc­tor Richard Lin­klater fixed Busce­mi up with a boot­leg of his doc about door-to-door Bible ped­dlers.

Short Cuts 

Looks like there’s an Alt­man fan in the house of Busce­mi.

Sym­biopsy­chotax­i­plasm (whole film)

This unscript­ed, nev­er the­atri­cal­ly released faux-doc­u­men­tary from the sum­mer of ’68 was res­ur­rect­ed by Buscemi’s neigh­bor, the Brook­lyn Muse­um.

The Van­ish­ing 

If some­thing gives Steve Busce­mi night­mares, it’s like­ly to do a num­ber on you too. Watch the whole film here if you dare.

A Woman Under the Influ­ence  

Buscemi’s appre­ci­a­tion is so ardent, I’m hop­ing he’ll con­sid­er hip­ping us to his Top 10 Cas­savetes films!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no & Steve Busce­mi Rehearse Scenes for Reser­voir Dogs in 1991 (NSFW)

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

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

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

The Speech Accent Archive: The English Accents of People Who Speak 341 Different Languages

in Archives, English Language | June 27th, 2014

Over the years, I’ve met with sev­er­al for­eign speak­ing part­ners. Through con­ver­sa­tion, I learn their lan­guage — Span­ish, Kore­an, Japan­ese — and they learn mine — Eng­lish. Many of them first got seri­ous about their study of that more-or-less-inter­na­tion­al tongue with the goal of com­plete­ly elim­i­nat­ing their native accent which, while demon­stra­bly pos­si­ble, takes so much addi­tion­al effort as an adult that I’ve always advised them to just spend that time learn­ing anoth­er lan­guage (or two) instead. Many, of course, come to that con­clu­sion them­selves, real­iz­ing that Eng­lish speak­ers all over the world have cre­at­ed a legit­i­mate cul­ture of speak­ing Eng­lish in all kinds of dif­fer­ent ways, with all kinds of dif­fer­ent accents, whether or not they learned the lan­guage from child­hood. But it still makes one won­der: how many dif­fer­ent accents do peo­ple speak it in? And what do they all sound like? Won­der no longer, for we have The Speech Accent Archive, cre­at­ed by Steven H. Wein­berg­er of George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty’s Lin­guis­tics depart­ment, who intro­duces it in the video above.

The site, “estab­lished to uni­form­ly exhib­it a large set of speech accents from a vari­ety of lan­guage back­grounds,” col­lects audio sam­ples of native and non-Native Eng­lish speak­ers all read­ing the same para­graph. This lets the user “com­pare the demo­graph­ic and lin­guis­tic back­grounds of the speak­ers in order to deter­mine which vari­ables are key pre­dic­tors of each accent,” demon­strat­ing that “accents are sys­tem­at­ic rather than mere­ly mis­tak­en speech.” You can browse by the speak­er’s native lan­guage, by their region, or (pre­sum­ably excit­ing for the lin­guists) by their “native pho­net­ic inven­to­ry.” You’ll find Eng­lish as spo­ken by native speak­ers of every­thing from French and Chi­nese to Urdu and Chaldean Neo Ara­ma­ic. Here in Seoul, South Korea, where I write this post, I cer­tain­ly do meet peo­ple who sound just like this sam­ple speak­er, a 19-year-old woman from the city who began learn­ing Eng­lish at 17 and spent a few months study­ing in Amer­i­ca. The page describes her accent as char­ac­ter­ized by, among oth­er things, “final obstru­ent devoic­ing,” “vow­el short­en­ing,” and “obstru­ent dele­tion.” But don’t let the site’s lin­guis­tics jar­gon deter you; the salute to the Speech Accent Archive just above will give you an idea of just how much fun you can have there. You can enter the The Speech Accent Archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief Tour of British Accents: 14 Ways to Speak Eng­lish in 84 Sec­onds

Peter Sell­ers Presents The Com­plete Guide To Accents of The British Isles

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Dif­fer­ent Accents

Free Eng­lish Lessons

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.

Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us

in Food & Drink | June 27th, 2014

Jour­nal­ist Mur­ray Car­pen­ter has writ­ten a new book about the world’s most pop­u­lar drug — caf­feine. And it answers ques­tions that many cof­fee drinkers sure­ly won­der about: Is caf­feine addic­tive? What exact­ly does it do to our bio­chem­istry? How does it gives us a jolt? And what health con­se­quences does it have (or not have)? These ques­tions all get answered in the book, Caf­feinat­ed: How Our Dai­ly Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us. And much of them were dis­cussed when Car­pen­ter recent­ly vis­it­ed my favorite radio pro­gram in San Fran­cis­co, KQED’s Forum. You can lis­ten to the inter­view below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

A Short, Ani­mat­ed Look at What’s Inside Your Aver­age Cup of Cof­fee

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

Digital Dubliners: Free, 21st Century Ways to Read Joyce’s Great Story Collection on its 100th Anniversary

in Literature | June 26th, 2014

Read near­ly any crit­i­cal com­men­tary on James Joyce’s Dublin­ers, his 1914 col­lec­tion of short sto­ries that chron­i­cle the lives of ordi­nary Irish res­i­dents of the title city, and you’re sure to come across the word “epiphany.” This is not some aca­d­e­m­ic jar­gon, but the word Joyce him­self used to describe the way that each sto­ry builds to a shock of recognition—often in the form of painful self-awareness—for key char­ac­ters. Short-cir­cuit­ing the typ­i­cal cli­max-res­o­lu­tion-dénoue­ment of con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive, Joyce’s epipha­nies give his sto­ries a verisimil­i­tude that can still feel very unset­tling, giv­en our typ­i­cal expec­ta­tions that real­ist fic­tion still obey the rules of fic­tion. Dra­mat­ic moments in our lives rarely have neat and tidy end­ings. But in sto­ries like “Eve­line,” “Ara­by,” “A Lit­tle Cloud,” and the collection’s cap­stone piece, “The Dead,” the often feck­less char­ac­ters find them­selves par­a­lyzed in states of exis­ten­tial dread by sud­den flash­es of self-knowl­edge, unable to assim­i­late new and painful insights into their lim­it­ed per­spec­tives.

That final sto­ry (adapt­ed into John Huston’s final film) “ele­vates the book to the lev­el of the supreme art­works of the 20th cen­tu­ry,” writes Mark O’Connell in Slate. O’Connell’s essay com­mem­o­rates the cen­te­nary of Dublin­er’s pub­li­ca­tion this month. Dublin­ers remains, he writes, a book that “writ­ers of the short sto­ry form seem basi­cal­ly resigned to nev­er sur­pass­ing.” Writ­ten in the author’s ear­ly 20s, the sto­ries, as Ulysses would eight years lat­er, “reveal some­thing pro­found and essen­tial and unre­al­ized about the city and its peo­ple”: “Dublin can feel less like a place that James Joyce wrote about than a place that is about James Joyce’s writ­ing.” All of us non-Dublin­ers can enter the city through Joyce’s exquis­ite sto­ries, and in an increas­ing vari­ety of ways, thanks to dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. At the top of the post, find a dig­i­tized first edi­tion of Dublin­ers. Just above, we have a read­ing of “Eve­line” by “vel­vet-voiced” Dublin­er Tad­hg Hynes, and below, hear Irish actor Jim Nor­ton read “The Sis­ters.”

You’ll find many more read­ings of Dublin­ers’ sto­ries online, such as this dead­pan read­ing of “Ara­by” from one of our favorites, Tom O’Bedlam, a Blooms­day read­ing of “Eve­line” by award-win­ning Irish play­wright Miri­am Gal­lagher, and this Lib­rivox col­lec­tion of read­ings from var­i­ous voic­es. I think Joyce would have very much appre­ci­at­ed the use of tech­nol­o­gy to keep his work alive into the 21st cen­tu­ry. Part of his lit­er­ary mission—certainly in many of Dublin­ers’ stories—was to illus­trate the stul­ti­fy­ing effects of cling­ing to the past. An eager adopter of new tech­nolo­gies, Joyce in fact brought the first cin­e­ma, The Vol­ta, to Dublin in 1909. So it seems fit­ting that 100 years after the pub­li­ca­tion of Dublin­ers, his book receive the mul­ti­me­dia app treat­ment in the form of Dig­i­tal Dublin­ers, a free, “engag­ing and author­i­ta­tive edi­tion” of the book designed by Boston Col­lege stu­dents and fea­tur­ing “three hun­dred-odd images, sev­en hun­dred or so notes and expla­na­tions, two dozen videos, crit­i­cal essays and hyper­links, inter­ac­tive maps sourced from con­tem­po­rary news­pa­per, sound, film and pho­to­graph­ic archives, with essays, film, record­ings, back­ground and expert dis­cus­sion.” Watch a short pro­mo video for Dig­i­tal Dublin­ers below, and down­load the book on iTunes here.

Final­ly, you may wish to read the text in a more late-20th-cen­tu­ry, and more open, for­mat with this ful­ly search­able “hyper­tex­tu­al, self-ref­er­en­tial edi­tion” pre­pared for Project Guten­berg. Whichev­er way you read Joyce’s Dublin­ers, you should, I pre­sume to sug­gest, read Joyce’s Dublin­ers. And if you have read these sto­ries before, even “some­where in the dou­ble fig­ures,” as Mark O’Connell has, then you’ll know how rich­ly they reward re-read­ing, or hear­ing, or study­ing along with oth­er read­ers and lovers of Joyce and a well-worn map of Dublin, or its shim­mer­ing touch-screen dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent.

Dublin­ers also appears in our two col­lec­tions, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free and 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

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

A Free Playlist of Music From The Works Of James Joyce (Plus Songs Inspired by the Mod­ernist Author)

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

Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones & The Beatles Played on a 3‑String Electric Mountain Dulcimer

in Music | June 26th, 2014

My par­ents always seemed to me to rep­re­sent two very dif­fer­ent strains of six­ties coun­ter­cul­ture. My mom loved Peter, Paul and Mary, Appalachi­an folk and blue­grass, and played the dul­cimer and auto­harp. My dad loved psy­che­del­ic rock, and had an exten­sive col­lec­tion of Zep­pelin, Bea­t­les, Floyd, and Hen­drix records. It wasn’t a Dylan-goes-elec­tric-lev­el dis­agree­ment, but their fond rem­i­nisces of the glo­ry days could some­times get a lit­tle tense. But as we’ve seen in decades since, folkies, hip­pies, and psych-rock­ers can come togeth­er, and not only in 70s folk-rock bands from Cal­i­for­nia. Take Robert Plant and Alli­son Krauss’s fruit­ful and unlike­ly col­lab­o­ra­tion, for instance, or the dozens of Led Zep­pelin and Rolling Stones cov­ers by dozens of flan­nel-clad indie folk­ers.

In the past decade or so, it almost came to seem like psy­che­del­ic blues-rock and moun­tain folk music had always made com­fort­able bed­fel­lows, and maybe they had. (After all, Zep­pelin includ­ed folk instru­ments on sev­er­al of their clas­sic songs, like John Paul Jones’ man­dolin on “Going to Cal­i­for­nia.”) As fur­ther evi­dence we have 3‑string elec­tric moun­tain dul­cimer play­er Sam Edel­stein, who cov­ers clas­sic rock songs on an instru­ment usu­al­ly thought of as par­tic­u­lar­ly gen­tle, del­i­cate, and sweet, as its name implies. At the top, see Edel­stein rip through a sear­ing ver­sion of Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love.” Just above, he does a killer take on the Rolling Stones’ “19th Ner­vous Break­down,” and below, Edel­stein plays an increas­ing­ly rock­ing cov­er of The Bea­t­les’ “Come Togeth­er” at the Nation­al Moun­tain Dul­cimer Com­pe­ti­tion. As uploader Con­tem­po­rary Dul­cimer states on Youtube, “the dulcimer’s roots may be in folk music, but it’s a nat­ur­al rock & roll instru­ment.” Indeed. Who knew?

via Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Musi­cians Re-Imag­ine the Com­plete Song­book of the Bea­t­les on the Ukulele

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

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

Free Archive of Audio Interviews with Rock, Jazz & Folk Legends Now on iTunes

in Archives, Music | June 26th, 2014

Back in 2012, we told you about how the Library of Con­gress launched the Joe Smith Col­lec­tion, an audio archive fea­tur­ing 200+ inter­views with leg­endary music artists, all record­ed dur­ing the 1980s by Joe Smith while research­ing and writ­ing his book Off the Record. The audio col­lec­tion, still avail­able on the web, has now been brought to iTune­sU. And the iTunes col­lec­tion has a virtue that the web archive does­n’t — it lets you down­load instead of stream the audio files.

If you’re a music junkie, you won’t want to miss the long­form inter­views with leg­endary fig­ures like Dave Brubeck, Lou Reed, Paul McCart­ney, Joan Baez, Her­bie Han­cock, David Bowie, George Har­ri­son, Yoko Ono, James Brown, Bo Did­dley, Jer­ry Gar­cia, Chris­tine McVie, Mick Jag­ger, Lin­da Ron­stadt and more. Each inter­view runs 30–60 good min­utes. You can enter the archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Library of Con­gress Releas­es Audio Archive of Inter­views with Rock ‘n’ Roll Icons

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Watch John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72