Eudora Welty Writes a Quirky Letter Applying for a Job at The New Yorker (1933)

in Letters, Literature | June 3rd, 2014

“Eudo­ra Wel­ty is one of the rea­sons that you thank God you know how to read,” writes an online review­er of her auto­bi­og­ra­phy One Writer’s Begin­nings. It’s a sen­ti­ment with which I could not agree more. Whether in mem­oir, short sto­ry, or nov­el, Wel­ty—win­ner of near­ly every lit­er­ary prize save the Nobel—speaks with the most high­ly indi­vid­ual of voic­es. (Wel­ty once told a Paris Review inter­view­er that she doesn’t read any­one for “kin­dred­ness.”) Her prose, so attuned to its own rhythms, so con­fi­dent­ly ven­tur­ing into new realms of thought, seems to sur­prise even her. Indeed, teach­ers of writ­ing could hard­ly do bet­ter than assign Wel­ty to illus­trate the elu­sive con­cept of “voice”—it’s a writer­ly qual­i­ty she mas­tered ear­ly, or per­haps always pos­sessed.

Take the 1933 let­ter below in which she intro­duces her­self, a young post­grad­u­ate of 23, to The New York­er in hopes of secur­ing a posi­tion doing… well, what­ev­er. She pro­pos­es “drum[ming] up opin­ions” on books and film, but only at the rate of “a lit­tle para­graph each morning—a lit­tle para­graph each night” (though she would “work like a slave” if asked). She also offers to replace car­toon­ist (and author of “The Secret Life of Wal­ter Mit­ty”) James Thurber “in case he goes off the deep end.” The let­ter brims with win­some self-con­fi­dence and breezy opti­mism, as well as the unself­con­scious self-aware­ness she makes look so easy: “That shows you how my mind works,” she writes, “quick, and away from the point.” The mag­a­zine staff, points out Shane Par­rish of Far­nam Street, “ignored her plea […] miss­ing the obvi­ous tal­ent,” though of course they would begin pub­lish­ing her sto­ries just a few years lat­er.

Read the let­ter in full below and mar­vel at how any­one could reject such a delight­ful­ly enthu­si­as­tic can­di­date (she would do just fine as a junior “pub­lic­i­ty agent” for the WPA).

March 15, 1933

Gen­tle­men,

I sup­pose you’d be more inter­est­ed in even a sleight‑o’-hand trick than you’d be in an appli­ca­tion for a posi­tion with your mag­a­zine, but as usu­al you can’t have the thing you want most.

I am 23 years old, six weeks on the loose in N.Y. How­ev­er, I was a New York­er for a whole year in 1930–31 while attend­ing adver­tis­ing class­es in Columbi­a’s School of Busi­ness. Actu­al­ly I am a south­ern­er, from Mis­sis­sip­pi, the nation’s most back­ward state. Ram­i­fi­ca­tions include Wal­ter H. Page, who, unluck­i­ly for me, is no longer con­nect­ed with Dou­ble­day-Page, which is no longer Dou­ble­day-Page, even. I have a B.A. (’29) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, where I majored in Eng­lish with­out a care in the world. For the last eigh­teen months I was lan­guish­ing in my own office in a radio sta­tion in Jack­son, Miss., writ­ing con­ti­nu­ities, dra­mas, mule feed adver­tise­ments, san­ta claus talks, and life insur­ance playlets; now I have giv­en that up.

As to what I might do for you — I have seen an unto­ward amount of pic­ture gal­leries and 15¢ movies late­ly, and could review them with my old pros­per­ous detach­ment, I think; in fact, I recent­ly coined a gen­er­al word for Matis­se’s pic­tures after see­ing his lat­est at the Marie Har­ri­man: con­cu­bineap­ple. That shows you how my mind works — quick, and away from the point. I read sim­ply vora­cious­ly, and can drum up an opin­ion after­wards.

Since I have bought an India print, and a large num­ber of phono­graph records from a Mr. Nuss­baum who picks them up, and a Cezanne Bathers one inch long (that shows you I read e. e. cum­mings I hope), I am anx­ious to have an apart­ment, not to men­tion a small portable phono­graph. How I would like to work for you! A lit­tle para­graph each morn­ing — a lit­tle para­graph each night, if you can’t hire me from day­light to dark, although I would work like a slave. I can also draw like Mr. Thurber, in case he goes off the deep end. I have stud­ied flower paint­ing.

There is no telling where I may apply, if you turn me down; I real­ize this will not phase you, but con­sid­er my oth­er alter­na­tive: the U of N.C. offers for $12.00 to let me dance in Vachel Lind­say’s Con­go. I con­go on. I rest my case, repeat­ing that I am a hard work­er.

Tru­ly yours,

Eudo­ra Wel­ty

Welty’s let­ter appears along­side dozens more remark­able mis­sives in the beau­ti­ful new book, Let­ters of Note: An Eclec­tic Col­lec­tion of Cor­re­spon­dence Deserv­ing of a Wider Audi­ence.

via Far­nam Street/Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ralph Wal­do Emer­son Writes a Job Rec­om­men­da­tion for Walt Whit­man (1863)

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

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

John Cheever Reads “The Swimmer,” His Famous Short Story, in Its Entirety (1977)

in Audio Books, Literature | June 3rd, 2014

The Sto­ries of John Cheev­er, a col­lec­tion of 61 sto­ries chron­i­cling the lives of “the great­est gen­er­a­tion,” was first pub­lished in 1978 with much fan­fare. The crit­ics liked it. The weighty, 700-page book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion in 1979. The peo­ple liked it too. The Sto­ries of John Cheev­er, Michiko Kaku­tani wrote in Cheev­er’s 1982 obit, was “one of the few col­lec­tions of short fic­tion ever to make The New York Times best-sell­er list.”

The col­lec­tion fea­tures some of Cheev­er’s best-known sto­ries: “The Enor­mous Radio,” “Good­bye, My Broth­er,” “The Five-Forty-Eight,” and “The Coun­try Hus­band.” And also per­haps his most famous short piece of fic­tion, “The Swim­mer.”

First pub­lished in The New York­er in July, 1964, “The Swim­mer” was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as a nov­el and ran over some 150 pages, before the author pared it down to a taut eleven pages. Those eleven pages appar­ent­ly take some 25 min­utes to read. Above, you can hear Cheev­er read­ing “The Swim­mer,” in its entire­ty, at New York’s 92nd St. Y. The audio was record­ed on Decem­ber 19, 1977, and it’s oth­er­wise housed in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Bonus: you can also hear author Anne Enright read “The Swim­mer” over at The New York­er. This ver­sion was record­ed in 2011.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

92nd Street Y Launch­es a New Online Archive with 1,000 Record­ings of Lit­er­ary Read­ings, Musi­cal Per­for­mances & More

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

Famous Authors Read Oth­er Famous Authors

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

2 Hour Annotated Star Wars Film Reveals the Cinematic Influences Behind George Lucas’ Classic Film

in Film | June 2nd, 2014

Last week we brought to your atten­tion a short video detail­ing the ways George Lucas’ clas­sic Star Wars draws from the samu­rai films of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, bor­row­ing cos­tum­ing and direc­to­r­i­al nods. But like any great artist, Lucas stole from more than one source. His ground­break­ing space epic incor­po­rates influ­ences as diverse as John Ford’s clas­sic west­ern The Searchers and the com­par­a­tive mythol­o­gy of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thou­sand Faces, among many, many oth­ers. How on earth did Lucas syn­the­size such a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent gen­res into the uni­fied whole that is Star Wars? To begin to answer that ques­tion, Michael Heile­mann has put togeth­er the anno­tat­ed Star Wars you see above, “a work-in-progress mashup of Star Wars with many of its sources of inspi­ra­tion, play­ing as a fea­ture-length pre­sen­ta­tion.” As The Onion’s A.V. Club describes it, “the video illu­mi­nates the astound­ing breadth of mate­r­i­al that was bang­ing around in Lucas’ head as he assem­bled Star Wars. It’s the kind of thing that ought to be on a spe­cial-edi­tion Blu-Ray release but nev­er will be because of copy­right issues.”

Heile­mann, Inter­face Direc­tor at Square­space, edit­ed the film as part of his research process for an ebook called Kit­bashed, an exhaus­tive study of “how George Lucas and his artists per­fect­ed the process of trans­form­ing exist­ing books, comics, movies and ideas into the fan­ta­sy spec­tac­u­lar that is Star Wars.” The title of Heilemann’s project comes from a word that means “using exist­ing mod­el-kits to detail space­ship mod­els for films,” with some con­no­ta­tions of both the “mashup” and the “hack.” Lucas’ achieve­ment, how­ev­er, is much more than either of those words sug­gest, accord­ing to Heile­mann, whose jour­ney into the films revealed to him their “under­ly­ing com­plex­i­ty and seem­ing­ly infi­nite depth.” Far from attempt­ing to “reveal how Star Wars is in real­i­ty com­plete­ly uno­rig­i­nal,” Heile­mann hopes to show read­ers, and view­ers, that “the cre­ative process that brought forth Star Wars is noth­ing short of amaz­ing.”

Read more about Kit­bashed at its offi­cial site.

Via AV Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Star Wars is a Remix

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

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

James Joyce’s Dirty Love Letters Read Aloud by Martin Starr, Paget Brewster & Other TV Comedy Actors (NSFW)

in Comedy, History, Letters, Literature | June 2nd, 2014

(Be warned, these videos are Not Safe for Work. And unless you can deal with strong lan­guage, you should skip watch­ing these clips.)

Last year we fea­tured James Joyce’s “dirty let­ters” to his wife, orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in 1909 but not dis­cov­ered in all their cere­bral­ly erot­ic glo­ry until this cen­tu­ry. For Valen­tine’s Day, the sketch com­e­dy video site Fun­ny or Die cap­i­tal­ized on the avail­abil­i­ty of these high­ly detailed, fan­ta­sy-sat­u­rat­ed Joycean mash notes by hav­ing them read dra­mat­i­cal­ly. For this task the pro­duc­ers round­ed up five well-known actors, such as Mar­tin Starr from such comed­ical­ly respect­ed tele­vi­sion shows as Freaks and Geeks and Par­ty Down. You can watch his read­ing above. “I would like you to wear draw­ers with three or four frills, one over the oth­er at the knees and up the thighs, and great crim­son bows in them, so that when I bend down over you to open them and” — but you don’t just want to read it. You want to hear such a mas­ter­piece per­formed.

Off rais­ing the chil­dren in Tri­este, Joyce’s wife Nora wrote replies of a pre­sum­ably sim­i­lar ardor-sat­u­rat­ed nature. Alas, these remain undis­cov­ered, but that unfor­tu­nate fact does­n’t stop actress­es as well as actors from pro­vid­ing oral ren­di­tions of their own. Just above, we have Paget Brew­ster from Friends and Crim­i­nal Minds read­ing aloud anoth­er of Joyce’s love let­ters, one which moves with sur­pris­ing swift­ness from evok­ing “the spir­it of eter­nal beau­ty” to evok­ing “a hog rid­ing a sow.” This series of read­ings also includes con­tri­bu­tions from The Mid­dle­man’s Natal­ie Morales, The Kids in the Hall’s Dave Foley, and Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Michaela Watkins. They all reveal that, with his tex­tu­al cre­ativ­i­ty as well as his close acquain­tance with those places where the roman­tic meets the repul­sive, James Joyce would have made quite a sex­ter today. You can have that idea for free, lit­er­ate sketch com­e­dy video pro­duc­ers of the inter­net.

PS Apolo­gies for the lengthy ads that pre­cede the videos. They come from Fun­ny or Die and we have no con­trol over them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s “Dirty Let­ters” to His Wife (1909)

James Joyce Plays the Gui­tar, 1915

On Blooms­day, Hear James Joyce Read From his Epic Ulysses, 1924

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

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

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.

Free NASA eBook Theorizes How We Will Communicate with Aliens

in Astronomy, e-books | May 31st, 2014

Dur­ing the past few years, NASA has released a series of free ebooks, includ­ing NASA Earth As Art and var­i­ous inter­ac­tive texts focus­ing on the Webb and Hub­ble space tele­scopes. Last week, they added a new, curi­ous book to the col­lec­tion, Archae­ol­o­gy, Anthro­pol­o­gy, and Inter­stel­lar Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Edit­ed by Dou­glas A. Vakoch (the Direc­tor of Inter­stel­lar Mes­sage Com­po­si­tion at the SETI Insti­tute), the text con­tem­plates how we’ll go about “estab­lish­ing mean­ing­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion with an extrater­res­tri­al intel­li­gence.” The schol­ars con­tribut­ing to the vol­ume “grappl[e] with some of the enor­mous chal­lenges that will face human­i­ty if an infor­ma­tion-rich sig­nal ema­nat­ing from anoth­er world is detect­ed.” And to make sure that we’re “pre­pared for con­tact with an extrater­res­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion, should that day ever come,” they draw on “issues at the core of con­tem­po­rary archae­ol­o­gy and anthro­pol­o­gy.” Why archae­ol­o­gy and anthro­pol­o­gy? Because, says Vack­och, com­mu­ni­ca­tion with intel­li­gent life prob­a­bly won’t be through sound, but through images. We will need to read/understand the civ­i­liza­tion we encounter based on what we observe. Vakoch says:

[D]on’t think of “sound worlds” or music or speech as the domains, vehi­cles, or con­tents of ETI [extra ter­res­tri­al intel­li­gence] mes­sages. Regard­less of semi­otic con­cerns, the acces­si­bil­i­ty of acoustic mes­sag­ing must remain doubt­ful. Fur­ther­more, there will be intend­ed and unin­tend­ed aspects of per­for­mance, which elab­o­rate the dif­fi­cul­ties of using sound. In my view avoid­ance of the sound world need not be con­tro­ver­sial.

On the oth­er hand, vision and the use of images would appear to be at least plau­si­ble. Although spec­tral details can­not be con­sid­ered uni­ver­sal, the phys­i­cal arrange­ment of objects on a hab­it­able plan­et’s sur­face will be shaped in part by grav­i­ty (the notion of a hori­zon might well be uni­ver­sal) and thus mul­ti­spec­tral images might plau­si­bly be con­sid­ered worth­while for mes­sages. More gen­er­al­ly, the impli­ca­tions for con­sid­er­ing SETI/CETI as some sort of anthro­po­log­i­cal chal­lenge need teas­ing out.

The 300-page book, Archae­ol­o­gy, Anthro­pol­o­gy, and Inter­stel­lar Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, has been made avail­able in three for­mats, and added to our own col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices:

› Kin­dle read­ers: MOBI [2.8 MB]

› All oth­er eBook read­ers: EPUB [3.8 MB]

› Fixed lay­out: PDF [1.7 MB]

Below you can watch Vakoch give a TEDX talk called,“What Would You Say to an Extrater­res­tri­al?”

via Giz­mo­do/Kim Komand0

Thank You, Mask Man: Lenny Bruce’s Lone Ranger Comedy Routine Becomes a NSFW Animated Film (1968)

in Animation, Comedy | May 30th, 2014

If you ever real­ly want­ed to know what was the deal between The Lone Ranger and Ton­to, the above video of Thank You, Mask Man might answer a few ques­tions. Warn­ing: it’s seri­ous­ly NSFW.

The audio for Thank You, Mask Man is tak­en from a stand up rou­tine from Lenny Bruce, who ruth­less­ly, hilar­i­ous­ly takes apart the leg­endary crime fight­er. After years of get­ting saved by a masked hero on a white steed, the denizens of a small West­ern town cor­ner him into accept­ing some­thing, any­thing as a token of their grat­i­tude. The hero points to a near­by Native Amer­i­can and says that he wants him. He pro­claims that he wants “to per­form an unnat­ur­al act.” The towns­peo­ple are hor­ri­fied. “I’ve read a lot of expos­es on how bad it is,” the Masked Man explains, “and I want to try it, just once.”

Jeff Hale, who lat­er went on to ani­mate that groovy Pin­ball Num­ber Count­down bit on Sesame Street, made the short in 1968, two years after Bruce’s death. The movie had a hard time get­ting booked into the­aters report­ed­ly, in part, because Bruce ruf­fled more than a few feath­ers in the film indus­try. Ulti­mate­ly though Thank You, Mask Man became a sta­ple at gay and cult film fes­ti­vals.

Bruce was, of course, the orig­i­nal bad boy com­ic. He laced his free form, light­ning quick per­for­mances with frank dis­cus­sions of sex, social issues and lots of swear­ing. Nowa­days, F‑bombs are par for the course in a come­di­an club but, back dur­ing the Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion, they were shock­ing. And they got him thrown in jail on sev­er­al occa­sions. You can lis­ten to anoth­er (unan­i­mat­ed) Bruce rou­tine below. It’s com­plete­ly NSFW.

You can find Thank You, Mask Man in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lenny Bruce Riffs and Rants on Injus­tice and Hypocrisy in One of His Final Per­for­mances (NSFW)

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

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.

19th Century Caricatures of Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, H.M. Stanley & Other Famous Victorians (1873)

in Art, History, Literature | May 30th, 2014

Stu­dents and lovers of Vic­to­ri­ana, we have a treat for you. The 1873 book above, Car­toon Por­traits and Bio­graph­i­cal Sketch­es of Men of the Day, offers car­i­ca­tures of forty-nine promi­nent men, and one woman, of the 19th cen­tu­ry, some of them less-than-famous now and some still ver­i­ta­ble giants of their respec­tive fields.

Accom­pa­nied by live­ly biogra­phies, the por­traits were all drawn by illus­tra­tor Fred­er­ick Wad­dy, who is per­haps best known for the draw­ing on page six of a white-beard­ed Charles Dar­win (above) enti­tled “Nat­ur­al Selection”—often repro­duced in col­or and found hang­ing on the office walls of biol­o­gy teach­ers. Dar­win appears sec­ond in Car­toon Por­traits, pre­ced­ed only by Sir Edward Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton of “It was a dark and stormy night” fame.

In addi­tion to professor’s offices, you may also encounter some of Waddy’s work at the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery in Lon­don. In his time, Wad­dy was one of the fore­most car­i­ca­tur­ists of the day—an impor­tant posi­tion in peri­od­i­cal pub­lish­ing before the advent of cheap­ly mass-repro­ducible pho­tog­ra­phy. All of the por­traits orig­i­nal­ly appeared in a mag­a­zine called Once a Week, found­ed in a split between Charles Dick­ens and his pub­lish­er Brad­bury and Evans, who start­ed the jour­nal with edi­tor Samuel Lucas in 1859 to com­pete with Dick­ens’ All the Year Round. Once a Week ran until 1880, pub­lish­ing pieces on his­to­ry and cur­rent affairs and occa­sion­al poems by Ten­nyson, Swin­burne, Dante Ros­set­ti and oth­ers. Its pop­u­lar­i­ty was buoyed by Waddy’s draw­ings and the detailed illus­tra­tions of sev­er­al oth­er graph­ic artists. Above, see Mark Twain rid­ing his cel­e­brat­ed jump­ing frog, and just below, poet and crit­ic Matthew Arnold does a high-wire act between two trapezes labelled “Poet­ry” and “Phi­los­o­phy.” Twain’s por­trait is titled “Amer­i­can Humour”— and he is the only Amer­i­can in the series—and Arnold’s is called “Sweet­ness and Light.”

Though the book’s title promis­es only “Men of the Day,” it does include one woman, Dr. Eliz­a­beth Gar­rett Ander­son (below, sim­ply titled “M.D.”), the first Eng­lish­woman to offi­cial­ly work as a physi­cian. Her bio­graph­i­cal sketch begins with a long and some­what tor­tu­ous his­tor­i­cal defense for female doc­tors, stat­ing that “social prej­u­dices are almost as hard to erad­i­cate as those of reli­gion. It was not till quite late­ly that the feel­ing against woman’s rights as regard edu­ca­tion was suc­cess­ful­ly com­bat­ed.” Once a Week was a pro­gres­sive-lean­ing mag­a­zine, its edi­tor a not­ed abo­li­tion­ist, and it reg­u­lar­ly pub­lished the work of women writ­ers like Har­ri­et Mar­tineau, Isabel­la Blag­den, and Mary Eliz­a­beth Brad­don, though one won­ders why they didn’t war­rant car­i­ca­tures as well.

Below, see Wad­dy’s por­trait of cen­tral African explor­er Hen­ry Mor­ton Stan­ley, stand­ing twice the height of the native African next to him. It’s a fit­ting image of colo­nial ego, though the scene may be drawn after a pho­to of Stan­ley with his adopt­ed son Kalu­lu. The title refers to his search for—and famous excla­ma­tion upon discovering—Scottish mis­sion­ary David Liv­ing­stone. All in all, Car­toon Por­traits gives us a fas­ci­nat­ing look at Vic­to­ri­an visu­al media and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of the most pop­u­lar lit­er­ary, sci­en­tif­ic, and polit­i­cal fig­ures in Eng­land dur­ing the mid­dle of the cen­tu­ry. While the names of Wad­dy and his fel­low com­ic artists are hard­ly remem­bered now, the authors of The Smil­ing Muse: Vic­to­ri­ana in the Com­ic Press assert that in their day, “they were the ones who had their fin­gers on the pulse of what we now call the ‘pop­u­lar cul­ture’ of the time.” See The Pub­lic Domain Review for more high­lights from the book.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts Online 1,200 Lit­er­ary Trea­sures From Great Roman­tic & Vic­to­ri­an Writ­ers

Explor­er David Livingstone’s Diary (Writ­ten in Berry Juice) Now Dig­i­tized with New Imag­ing Tech­nol­o­gy

Mark Twain Writes a Rap­tur­ous Let­ter to Walt Whit­man on the Poet’s 70th Birth­day (1889)

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

Protect and Survive: 1970s British Instructional Films on How to Live Through a Nuclear Attack

in History, Television | May 30th, 2014

In Walk­ing in Ruins, nov­el­ist and adven­tur­ous pedes­tri­an Geoff Nichol­son’s book about the on-foot explo­ration of Eng­land and Amer­i­ca’s dis­used places, the author devotes a fas­ci­nat­ing sec­tion to an Essex “secret nuclear bunker.” Ren­dered un-secret, and indeed unnec­es­sary, by the end of the Cold War, the whole under­ground com­plex under­went con­ver­sion into a for­lorn tourist attrac­tion. “In some of the bunker’s small­er, emp­ti­er rooms, videos were being shown on chunky old TV sets, doc­u­men­taries relat­ed to nuclear war and its sur­vival,” Nichol­son writes. “They includ­ed the noto­ri­ous pub­lic infor­ma­tion series Pro­tect and Sur­vive, twen­ty short episodes, basic ani­ma­tion, strange­ly ahead-of-its-time elec­tron­ic music, and a voice-over by Patrick Allen, deeply unsym­pa­thet­ic and unre­as­sur­ing, though you imag­ine he was sup­posed to be both. The titles in the series includ­ed ‘What to Put in Your Fall­out Room’ and ‘San­i­ta­tion Care and Casu­al­ties.’ ”

“ ‘Stay at Home,’ ” Nichol­son tells us, “remind­ed us that fall­out ‘can set­tle any­where, so no place in the Unit­ed King­dom is safer than any oth­er,’ and my favorite sin­gle sen­tence comes from the episode ‘Refuges’: ‘If you live in a car­a­van or oth­er build­ing of light­weight con­struc­tion with very lit­tle pro­tec­tion against fall­out, your local author­i­ty will be able to advise you on what to do’ — and there was a car­toon image of a tiny car­a­van that looked like it might be blown away by a good sneeze, nev­er mind a nuclear explo­sion.” The com­pi­la­tion above col­lects 51 min­utes of these and oth­er episodes of Pro­tect and Sur­vive, orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned by the British gov­ern­ment in the 1970s and meant for trans­mis­sion only in the case of an immi­nent nuclear attack on the coun­try. But episodes leaked, and the BBC pro­ceed­ed to broad­cast them absent that imme­di­ate threat, there­by ensur­ing the lega­cy of this Cold War media arti­fact beloved of irony-lov­ing Britons — that is to say, Britons — across the coun­try.

These vin­tage films will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Duck and Cov­er, or: How I Learned to Elude the Bomb

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

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.

Fear and Desire: Stanley Kubrick’s First and Least-Seen Feature Film (1953)

in Film | May 29th, 2014

Ask film­go­ers to name their favorite Stan­ley Kubrick pic­tures, and you’ll hear many of the same titles over and over again: Spar­ta­cus, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clock­work Orange. These and the five oth­er fea­ture films Kubrick direct­ed between 1960 and his death in 1999 hold per­ma­nent pride of place as some of the most endur­ing and influ­en­tial works in the his­to­ry of the form. His fourth pic­ture, 1957’s Kirk Dou­glas-star­ring, World War I‑set Paths of Glo­ry, has drawn a good share of crit­i­cal acclaim, but noth­ing before it in his body of work has yet com­mand­ed the lev­el of respect asso­ci­at­ed with Kubrick and his cin­e­mat­ic lega­cy.

In 1956, he’d made the noir The Killing on the cheap; the pre­vi­ous year, he’d made the noir Killer’s Kiss on the cheap­er. But before even those came Fear and Desire, Kubrick­’s very first fea­ture, an exis­ten­tial war movie pro­duced in 1953 with mon­ey raised from his wealthy drug­store-own­ing uncle and pro­ceeds from a job shoot­ing sec­ond-unit on a doc­u­men­tary about the life of Abra­ham Lin­coln. You can watch the whole film, which has fall­en into the pub­lic domain, at the top of the post, or in a restored ver­sion, pre­ced­ed by a brief 1966 inter­view with Kubrick, right here.

By the time of Fear and Desire, Kubrick had already logged a cer­tain amount of film­mak­ing prac­tice direct­ing shorts. Still, he could nev­er quite get over his own per­cep­tion of the movie, which he made at age 24 fresh from his job as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er at Look mag­a­zine. He con­sid­ered the film “a bum­bling ama­teur film exer­cise” and “com­plete­ly inept odd­i­ty.” He lat­er, hav­ing burned the neg­a­tive, sought to pre­vent its screen­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion when­ev­er pos­si­ble. Yet it had its high-pro­file appre­ci­a­tors even at the time of release: “Its over­all effect is entire­ly wor­thy of the sin­cere effort put into it,” said the New York Times; “Worth watch­ing for those who want to dis­cov­er high tal­ent at the moment it appears,” said crit­ic-schol­ar Mark Van Doren. Though far rougher than every film Kubrick would go on to make, Fear and Desire offers sev­er­al moments that reveal him as the direc­tor we now know he would go on to become. Grant­land’s Steven Hyden, in an arti­cle on the movie, quotes an attendee at one of its par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­as­trous pre­view screen­ings who remem­bers that “there were gig­gles in the wrong places, and it all seemed over­done and over­wrought.” He also quotes Kubrick­’s full reflec­tion on the expe­ri­ence in a New York Times Mag­a­zine pro­file: “Pain is a good teacher.”

Find Fear and Desire list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Killer’s Kiss: Where Stan­ley Kubrick’s Film­mak­ing Career Real­ly Begins

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er

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.

Designer Massimo Vignelli Revisits and Defends His Iconic 1972 New York City Subway Map

in Design | May 29th, 2014

Most every dweller of a city with a robust pub­lic tran­sit sys­tem comes to iden­ti­fy their bound­aries with the lines, angles, and col­ors of its sub­way map. This is true of my home­town, Wash­ing­ton, DC, at least since the pop­u­lar adop­tion of its Metro sys­tem in the 80s. It’s many times truer of my adopt­ed city for ten years, New York, whose more than 100-year-old sub­way sys­tem has giv­en urban his­to­ri­ans enough mate­r­i­al for life­long study. The his­to­ry of the NYC sub­way maps offers a spe­cial­ized area for stu­dents of design, who must sure­ly know the name Mas­si­mo Vignel­li, the mod­ernist design­er who named the DC Metro and cre­at­ed the noto­ri­ous 1972 NYC Tran­sit map that, writes the MTA (Metro Tran­sit Author­i­ty), “reimag­ined the MTA New York City Tran­sit sub­way sys­tem as a neat grid of col­ored lines sur­round­ed by a beige ocean.” The map will be famil­iar, and per­haps even a token of nos­tal­gia, to New York­ers from the era, who may also recall the com­plaints the MTA received for the map’s “geo­graph­ic inac­cu­ra­cies” and “aes­thet­ic con­fu­sion.” Nonethe­less, “design fans […] cel­e­brat­ed the map and made it a cov­et­ed sou­venir of trips to New York. It lat­er became part of the post­war design col­lec­tion at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art.” In the video above, excerpt­ed from the 2007 design doc­u­men­tary Hel­veti­ca, Vignel­li revis­its his tran­sit map design (below), which he adopt­ed from the Lon­don Under­ground map.

Click here to view in a larg­er for­mat.

Vignel­li, who passed away Tues­day at the age of 83, worked close­ly with his wife Leila on a wide range of design projects—his mot­to, “if you can design one thing, you can design every­thing.” A great many of those sub­way rid­ers in 1972 may have dis­agreed. While pre­vi­ous and sub­se­quent maps, includ­ing the cur­rent design, pro­vide a geo­graph­i­cal­ly pre­cise ren­der­ing of the five bor­oughs, with details of major avenues and parks and water­ways in sim­ple greens and blues, Vignelli’s map is for­mal and abstract, more art object than guide­post. As a new­com­er to the city, I used my pock­et-sized MTA map to guide me around on foot as well as by train (this was before smart­phones, mind you), but this would be quite dif­fi­cult if not impos­si­ble with the ’72 ver­sion. Yet in his reassess­ment of the design, Vignel­li says that he should have stripped away even the few geo­graph­i­cal ref­er­ences he did include because “the peo­ple couldn’t relate the geog­ra­phy with the sta­tions.” For Vignel­li, “there is no rea­son why this geog­ra­phy has to be lit­er­al, it could be com­plete­ly abstract.” How this would bet­ter help rid­ers nav­i­gate the huge­ly exten­sive sys­tem isn’t at all clear, but what is appar­ent is Vignelli’s com­mit­ment to form over util­i­tar­i­an func­tion. It’s a com­mit­ment that served him very well as a design­er, though not, it seems, as a car­tog­ra­ph­er. For more on Vignelli’s design phi­los­o­phy, see his 2012 inter­view with Big Think.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Under­ci­ty: Explor­ing the Under­bel­ly of New York City

Vin­tage Video: A New York City Sub­way Train Trav­els From 14th St. to 42nd Street (1905)

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

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