Saul Bass’ Vivid Storyboards for Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960)

in Film | February 6th, 2014

Those who know the work of Stan­ley Kubrick know that the longer he made films, the more insis­tent­ly he demand­ed the best: the most flex­i­ble, var­ied mate­r­i­al to adapt to his cin­e­mat­ic meth­ods; the shots with the great­est impact among hun­dreds of takes each; the col­lab­o­ra­tors with the strongest and most use­ful visions, no mat­ter their depart­ment. That very need for high crafts­man­ship would, you’d think, have lead the direc­tor straight to the door of Saul Bass, the graph­ic design­er who lived and rose to emi­nence in his field dur­ing the same era that Kubrick lived and rose to emi­nence in his. They did work togeth­er on 1960’s Spar­ta­cus and 1980’s The Shin­ing, Kubrick­’s fifth and eleventh fea­tures, but as Empire’s fea­ture on Bass’ ear­ly work explains, “it wasn’t Stan­ley Kubrick who recruit­ed him to piece togeth­er Spartacus’s open­ing sequences.” Still, “Kubrick had been an admir­er of his fel­low New York­er from his ear­ly work with Otto Pre­minger,” pre­sum­ably includ­ing work like his still-strik­ing titles for The Man with the Gold­en Arm. 

When Kubrick took a first look at Bass’ sto­ry­boards for Spar­ta­cus, as visu­al­ly vivid as any of his movies them­selves, he must have liked what he saw. Now you can exam­ine them too, both at Empire and at Fla­vor­wire’s col­lec­tion of “Awe­some Sto­ry­boards from 15 of Your Favorite Films.” Those of you who have watched Spar­ta­cus over and over again will rec­og­nize the look and feel sketched out (not that sketched sounds quite right for images of such a solid­i­ty unusu­al for sto­ry­boards) by Bass. But when the film and the draw­ing part ways, they do so because the plans actu­al­ly came out less elab­o­rate than the final prod­uct, not more. We see in the sto­ry­boards, as Empire says, “an ellip­ti­cal sequence with the cam­era lin­ger­ing on frag­ments of the fight­ing” with “a row of shields here, a skew­ered legionary there,” “but in those long-dis­tant days when bud­gets went up as well as down, it was scrapped in favor of just recre­at­ing the whole thing lock, stock and flam­ing bar­rel” — very much a Kubrick­ian way of doing things.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Impressions of Upper Mongolia : Salvador Dalí’s Last Film About a Search for a Giant Hallucinogenic Mushroom

in Art, Film, Literature | February 6th, 2014

Sal­vador Dalí and his fel­low sur­re­al­ists owed a great debt to the wealthy, dandy­ish French writer Ray­mond Rous­sel, as much as mod­ernist poets owed the Sym­bol­ist Jules Laforgue. But like Laforgue, Rous­sel is much more often ref­er­enced than read, and he isn’t ref­er­enced often. A her­met­ic, insu­lar writer who seems to belong to a pri­vate world almost entire­ly his own, Rous­sel despaired of his lack of suc­cess and com­mit­ted sui­cide in 1933. His aes­thet­ic prog­e­ny, on the oth­er hand— Dalí, Mar­cel Duchamp, André Bre­ton—were show­men, self-pro­mot­ers and media genius­es. So it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant, in the quirki­est of ways, that Dalí chose for his final film project a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jose Montes Baquer in 1976 called Impres­sions of Upper Mon­go­lia (“Impres­sions de la haute Mongolie”—above with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles), an homage to Roussel’s self-pub­lished 1910 nov­el Impres­sions of Africa.

Rous­sel, who trav­eled wide­ly, nev­er trav­eled to Africa, and his “impres­sions” are whol­ly cre­ations of the kind of word­play that Dalí made visu­al in his paint­ing (includ­ing a can­vas with Rous­sel’s title). Like Roussel’s nov­el, Impres­sions of Upper Mon­go­lia is a sur­re­al­ist fan­ta­sy with only the most ten­u­ous con­nec­tion to its osten­si­ble geo­graph­i­cal sub­ject.

The entire 50-minute adven­ture takes place, MUBI tells us, “in [Dalí’s] stu­dio-muse­um in Cadacès (Spain).” The film opens with an epi­taph for Rous­sel in Ger­man, French, and Eng­lish that lion­izes the pro­to-sur­re­al­ist as “the mon­strous mas­ter of mys­ti­cal lan­guage.” “Mys­ti­cal” is indeed the mot juste for this film. Dalí nar­rates a sto­ry about an expe­di­tion he sup­pos­ed­ly sent to the tit­u­lar region in search of a giant hal­lu­cino­genic mush­room. Fla­vor­wire describes the “qua­si-fake doc­u­men­tary” suc­cinct­ly: “…it’s every bit as trip­py as you would expect it to be. Along the way, there’s a lot of mus­tache-wag­gling, yelling at Hitler, dis­cus­sions about Out­er Mon­go­lia and Ray­mond Rous­sel, intense close-ups of insects, and oth­er eccen­tric addi­tions — like Dalí’s over­act­ing.”

For all his ease with film, and his out­sized rep­u­ta­tion in film his­to­ry, Dali only ever col­lab­o­rat­ed with oth­er film­mak­ers, first Luis Buñuel, then Walt Dis­ney, and final­ly Baquer (who called him, approv­ing­ly, “an intel­lec­tu­al vam­pire”). In an inter­view, Baquer reveals that Dali chose the title and the Rous­sel ref­er­ences. He also “com­mis­sioned” the film, in a way, by hand­ing Baquer a pen that he had been uri­nat­ing on for sev­er­al weeks after “observ­ing how the uri­nals in the lux­u­ry restrooms of [the St. Reg­is Hotel] have acquired an entire range of rust colours through the inter­ac­tion of the uric acid on the pre­cious met­als.”

Baquer recounts that Dali cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly told him to “take this mag­i­cal object, work with it, and when you have an inter­est­ing result, come see me. If the result is good, we will make a film togeth­er.” The result is most cer­tain­ly inter­est­ing. A fit­ting trib­ute to Rous­sel, it recalls Trevor Winkfield’s com­ments on the world of the writer, one that “belongs entire­ly to the imag­i­na­tion. Noth­ing real intrudes; it all derives from his head. Like a fairy tale, but a believ­able one.”

Watch Part 1 up top, and the remain­ing parts on YouTube here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

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

William S. Burroughs on Saturday Night Live, 1981

in Literature, Television | February 5th, 2014

Today marks the 100th birth­day of beat writer William S. Bur­roughs (1914–1997). Grab a bot­tle of wine … prefer­ably cheap wine … and let’s trav­el back to Novem­ber 7, 1981. That’s when Bur­roughs made his first appear­ance on Amer­i­can nation­al tele­vi­sion. And quite appro­pri­ate­ly, it was on the irrev­er­ent, late-night com­e­dy show, Sat­ur­day Night Live. As you’ll see, actress Lau­ren Hut­ton made the intro­duc­tion, set­ting up Bur­roughs to read from Naked Lunch (1959) and Nova Express (1964). The clip itself is an out­take from the open­ing scene of Bur­roughs, a 1983 doc­u­men­tary by Howard Brookn­er, which is cur­rent­ly get­ting restored.  We orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured this video back in ear­ly 2012. Since then we’ve brought you many oth­er intrigu­ing posts on Bur­roughs, whose life and art pro­vides so much to talk about. See some of our favorites below:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs’ The Dis­ci­pline of D.E.: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

“The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Read by William S. Bur­roughs and Shot by Gus Van Sant

William S. Bur­roughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Orig­i­nal Bands

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs’ Free Short Course on Cre­ative Read­ing

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Watch the Highly-Anticipated Evolution/Creationism Debate: Bill Nye the Science Guy v. Creationist Ken Ham

in Religion, Science | February 5th, 2014

Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy has spent his career try­ing to “help fos­ter a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate soci­ety, to help peo­ple every­where under­stand and appre­ci­ate the sci­ence that makes our world work.” A grad­u­ate of Cor­nell and a stu­dent of Carl Sagan, Nye has pro­duced edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams for the Sci­ence Chan­nel, the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel, and PBS. Most recent­ly, he has gone on record say­ing that teach­ing cre­ation­ism in Amer­i­ca’s class­rooms is bad for kids, and bad for Amer­i­ca’s future. “If the Unit­ed States pro­duces a gen­er­a­tion of sci­ence stu­dents who don’t believe in sci­ence, that’s trou­ble­some” because the Unit­ed States needs sci­ence to remain com­pet­i­tive,” he warns in this video.

For some weeks, the inter­net has been abuzz about a debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, the pres­i­dent of Answers in Gen­e­sis (AiG) and the Cre­ation Muse­um. The debate — some­thing Richard Dawkins called a point­less endeav­or — took place last night in Peters­burg, Ken­tucky.  It’s now online, all two and a half hours of it. We’re you’re done watch­ing the spec­ta­cle, you can view some oth­er high-pro­file reli­gion-sci­ence debates that we’ve fea­tured in the past.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Rus­sell and F.C. Cople­ston Debate the Exis­tence of God, 1948

Does God Exist? Christo­pher Hitchens Debates Chris­t­ian Philoso­pher William Lane Craig

Has Sci­ence Refut­ed Reli­gion? Sean Car­roll and Michael Sher­mer vs. Dinesh D’Souza and Ian Hutchin­son

Richard Dawkins and Jon Stew­art Debate Whether Sci­ence or Reli­gion Will Destroy Civ­i­liza­tion

Ani­mat­ed: Stephen Fry & Ann Wid­de­combe Debate the Catholic Church

Find the Stan­ford course Dar­win’s Lega­cy in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

The Notecards on Which Vladimir Nabokov Wrote Lolita: A Look Inside the Author’s Creative Process

in Creativity, Literature | February 5th, 2014

If you picked up The Orig­i­nal of Lau­ra, Vladimir Nabokov’s final nov­el, you’ll have seen his dis­tinc­tive index card-based writ­ing method in action. Hav­ing died in 1977, Nabokov nev­er com­plet­ed the book, and so all Pen­guin had to pub­lish decades lat­er came to, as the sub­ti­tle indi­cates, A Nov­el in Frag­ments. These “frag­ments” he wrote on 138 cards, and the book as pub­lished includes full-col­or repro­duc­tions that you can actu­al­ly tear out and orga­nize — and re-orga­nize — for your­self, “com­plete with smudges, cross-outs, words scrawled out in Russ­ian and French (he was trilin­gual) and anno­tat­ed notes to him­self about titles of chap­ters and key points he wants to make about his char­ac­ters.” That comes from a post by Dominic Basul­to at Big Think, who high­lights cards with “a full-on dis­cus­sion of the pre­cise word that Nabokov would like to describe a female char­ac­ter (fille, in French) and how best to ren­der that word in Eng­lish, while keep­ing the con­no­ta­tions and mean­ing of the word in French.” Review­ing The Orig­i­nal of Lau­ra, Alexan­der Ther­oux describes the cards as a “portable strat­e­gy that allowed [Nabokov] to com­pose in the car while his wife drove the devot­ed lep­i­dopter­ist on but­ter­fly expe­di­tions.”

Nabokov could thus, between thoughts of his winged objects of inter­est, use the cards for “insert­ing words, writ­ing mem­os to him­self, scrib­bling after­thoughts: ‘invent trade­name [for a med­i­cine], e.g., cephalop­i­um.’ ” They also served him ear­li­er in his career; at the Library of Con­gress’ site for its Man­u­script Divi­sion’s Nabokov col­lec­tion, you can see a cou­ple of the cards on which he wrote his best-known nov­el, 1955’s Loli­ta. Asked about his work­ing meth­ods by Her­bert Gold in the Paris Review, he described the method forth­right­ly: “The pat­tern of the thing pre­cedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the cross­word at any spot I hap­pen to choose. These bits I write on index cards until the nov­el is done. My sched­ule is flex­i­ble, but I am rather par­tic­u­lar about my instru­ments: lined Bris­tol cards and well sharp­ened, not too hard, pen­cils capped with erasers.” For every craft, the prop­er tool, and Nabokov remains, frag­men­tary last book and all, one of west­ern lit­er­a­ture’s most respect­ed crafts­men of lan­guage — or, rather, lan­guages, plur­al.

Note: You can down­load essen­tial works by Vladimir Nabokov as free audio­books (includ­ing Jere­my Irons read­ing Loli­ta) if you sign up for a free 30 Tri­al with Audi­ble. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent Loli­ta Book Cov­ers

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Alfred Hitch­cock and Vladimir Nabokov Trade Let­ters and Ideas for a Film Col­lab­o­ra­tion (1964)

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

The Greatest Jazz Films Ever Features Classic Performances by Miles, Dizzy, Bird, Billie & More

in Film, Music, Television | February 5th, 2014

Though both have their roots in the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, jazz and cin­e­ma came of age as 20th cen­tu­ry art forms, and they very often did so togeth­er (though not always in the most taste­ful ways). Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer intro­duced the world to talkies. Cabaret, Lady Sings the Blues, The Cot­ton Club are all well-known fic­tion­al films that near­ly any­one might name if asked about the sub­ject. And though Ken Burns’ Jazz may seem like a defin­i­tive state­ment in jazz doc­u­men­tary, for decades, film­mak­ers have made jazz musi­cians their cen­tral sub­ject—for exam­ple, in jazz fan-favorites like Min­gus and Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er. Before these excel­lent, if some­times painful, por­traits, there were short films like Life mag­a­zine pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gjon Mili’s 1944 Jam­min’ the Blues with Lester Young and oth­er bop stal­warts, and 1950’s Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic, a selec­tion of clips fea­tur­ing Cole­man Hawkins, Char­lie Park­er, Lester Young, Bud­dy Rich, Ella Fitzger­ald, and oth­ers per­form­ing at Nor­man Granz’s leg­endary series of con­certs.

You’ll see excerpts from both Jam­min’ the Blues and Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic above in The Great­est Jazz Films Ever, a two-disc DVD set that appears to be out of print. (New copies cur­rent­ly retail on Ama­zon for any­where from $259.00 to almost $4,000, but you can watch it free online.) This great­est hits col­lec­tion also includes high­lights from sev­er­al tele­vi­sion spe­cials like Be Bop’s Nest—a rare Char­lie Park­er appear­ance with Dizzy Gille­spie on the short-lived vari­ety show Stage Entrance—and “The Sound of Miles Davis,” a 1959 episode of tele­vi­sion show The Robert Her­ridge The­ater that show­cased one of Davis’ most cel­e­brat­ed ensem­bles.

You’ll also see excerpts from The Sound of Jazz, which Fresh Sound Records calls “one of the great glo­ri­ous moments on tele­vi­sion,” and which con­tains per­for­mances from Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Lester Young, Thelo­nious Monk, the Count Basie Orches­tra, and more. Final­ly, we get excerpts from a 1959 tele­vi­sion spe­cial called Jazz From Stu­dio 61, fea­tur­ing the orig­i­nal Ahmad Jamal Trio with the Ben Web­ster Quin­tet. The Great­est Jazz Films Ever is an impres­sive and endur­ing col­lec­tion of doc­u­ments from the gold­en age of jazz. While the empha­sis here is gen­er­al­ly on musi­cian­ship, not film­mak­ing, it’s a col­lec­tion that also demon­strates jazz’s close rela­tion­ship to film and tele­vi­sion in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. All­mu­sic has a com­plete track­list of the col­lec­tion. And for a detailed break­down of each clip, you won’t want to pass up a scroll through this help­ful French site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Jam­min’ the Blues,’ by Gjon Mili

‘The Sound of Miles Davis’: Clas­sic 1959 Per­for­mance with John Coltrane

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

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

Ira Glass’ Advice on Achieving Creative Excellence Presented in Two Artful, Typographic Videos

in Creativity, Life, Radio | February 4th, 2014

”All of us who do cre­ative work,” says Ira Glass, cre­ator This Amer­i­can Life, quite pos­si­bly the most respect­ed pro­gram on pub­lic radio, “we get into it because we have good taste.” Yet despite this dis­cern­ment, or indeed because of it, “there’s a gap: for the first cou­ple years that you’re mak­ing stuff, what you’re mak­ing isn’t so good. [ … ] Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re mak­ing is kind of a dis­ap­point­ment to you.” For this rea­son, Glass argues, the taste­ful often fail at their cre­ative endeav­ors entire­ly. “Most every­body I know who does inter­est­ing cre­ative work,” he con­tin­ues, “they went through a phase of years where they had real­ly good taste, and they could tell what they were mak­ing was­n’t as good as they want­ed it to be.” This astute diag­no­sis of a “total­ly nor­mal” syn­drome comes extract­ed from Glass’ talk on the craft of sto­ry­telling, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

For­tu­nate­ly for those of us strug­gling with the very taste-abil­i­ty mis­match Glass describes, a solu­tion exists. If you want a quick fix, though, pre­pare for dis­ap­point­ment. “Do a lot of work,” he flat­ly advis­es. “Do a huge vol­ume of work. Put your­self on a dead­line so that every week or every month you know you’re going to fin­ish one sto­ry. Because it’s only by actu­al­ly going through a vol­ume of work that you’re actu­al­ly going to catch up and close that gap.” These words have proven inspir­ing enough that they’ve sure­ly spurred lis­ten­ers on to plow paths of sheer pro­duc­tion through their cho­sen rocky yet fer­tile cre­ative fields. Two lis­ten­ers in par­tic­u­lar, David Shiyang Liu and Frohlocke, appar­ent­ly found them­selves imme­di­ate­ly gal­va­nized to work with the words them­selves, result­ing in the typo­graph­i­cal­ly focused video inter­pre­ta­tions above. Only one ques­tion remains: how large a vol­ume of typo­graph­i­cal­ly focused video inter­pre­ta­tions of Ira Glass’ words did they have to cre­ate before they could make ones this impres­sive?

via Vimeo Staff Picks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass, the Host of This Amer­i­can Life, Breaks Down the Fine Art of Sto­ry­telling

Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Sto­ries

Hen­ry Rollins Tells Young Peo­ple to Avoid Resent­ment and to Pur­sue Suc­cess with a “Monas­tic Obses­sion”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Teddy Roosevelt’s 10 Rules For Reading: Seek Enjoyment, Spurn Fads, Read What You Like

in Books, History | February 4th, 2014

Ted­dy Roo­sevelt seems to us a para­dox today, and did in his time as well: A man’s man hunter, cow­boy, and war hero, who sup­pos­ed­ly saved the game of foot­ball from extinc­tion (Roo­sevelt wor­ried that ban­ning the game would pro­duce “mol­ly­cod­dles instead of vig­or­ous men”); also, a Har­vard-edu­cat­ed New York pro­gres­sive and tree­hug­ging con­ser­va­tion­ist hero, who re-defined pres­i­den­tial style with Brooks Broth­ers three-piece suits and uni­forms. And for all of his pub­lic hero­ics, Roo­sevelt was also a dot­ing father who gave his nick­name to the most uni­ver­sal­ly cud­dly species of bear. Per­haps some of the best rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Roo­sevelt’s per­son­al ethos are pho­tographs of his com­bi­na­tion library and gun room, hung with hunt­ing tro­phies and skins in the home he built for his fam­i­ly in Oys­ter Bay, New York (below—see more at the appro­pri­ate­ly named “Art of Man­li­ness”).

One sig­nif­i­cant rea­son Roo­sevelt could embody seem­ing­ly wide­ly diver­gent traits was that he was a devour­er of books, read­ing tens of thou­sands in his life­time, absorb­ing thou­sands of points of view from every pos­si­ble source. But Roo­sevelt did not read the way we do today—rapidly tak­ing in infor­ma­tion for its own sake, with auto­mat­ed ser­vices com­pil­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from the meta­da­ta (a phe­nom­e­non Susan Jaco­by has indict­ed as part of our hyper-par­ti­san, group­think cul­ture). He read accord­ing to his whim, putting plea­sure ahead of prof­it and dis­dain­ing fads and rigid cul­tur­al norms. He was, lit­er­ary site Book Riot sup­pos­es, “prob­a­bly the most well-read pres­i­dent, and per­haps one of the most well-read men in all of his­to­ry.”

Book Riot points us toward a few pages of Roosevelt’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, in which—amidst picaresque chap­ters like “In Cow­boy Land” and heavy ones like “The Pres­i­den­cy; Mak­ing an Old Par­ty Progressive”—Roosevelt paus­es to detail his thoughts on read­ing in a par­tic­u­lar­ly prag­mat­ic chap­ter titled “Out­doors and Indoors.” Although Roo­sevelt does not present his con­tem­pla­tion as an eas­i­ly digestible list of rules, as is the fash­ion now, Book Riot has seen fit to con­dense his thought. Below see the first five of their list, “Ted­dy Roosevelt’s 10 Rules for Read­ing.” I’d be will­ing to bet that if every­one fol­lowed Teddy’s advice, we could up the woe­ful nation­al lit­er­a­cy quo­tient with­in a few short years.

1. “The room for choice is so lim­it­less that to my mind it seems absurd to try to make cat­a­logues which shall be sup­posed to appeal to all the best thinkers. This is why I have no sym­pa­thy what­ev­er with writ­ing lists of the One Hun­dred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library [a ref­er­ence to the Har­vard Clas­sics]. It is all right for a man to amuse him­self by com­pos­ing a list of a hun­dred very good books… But there is no such thing as a hun­dred books that are best for all men, or for the major­i­ty of men, or for one man at all times.”

2. “A book must be inter­est­ing to the par­tic­u­lar read­er at that par­tic­u­lar time.”

3. “Per­son­al­ly, the books by which I have prof­it­ed infi­nite­ly more than by any oth­ers have been those in which prof­it was a by-prod­uct of the plea­sure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, because I liked read­ing them, and the prof­it came in as part of the enjoy­ment.”

4. “The read­er, the booklover, must meet his own needs with­out pay­ing too much atten­tion to what his neigh­bors say those needs should be.”

5. “He must not hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly pre­tend to like what he does not like.”

Head over to Book Riot for the remain­ing five of Roo­sevelt’s “rules,” along with some wit­ty com­men­tary.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘The Right of the Peo­ple to Rule’: Lis­ten to Theodore Roo­sevelt Speak­ing 100 Years Ago Today

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

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

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

Neil Gaiman Reads Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham

in K-12, Literature | February 3rd, 2014

This morn­ing, we’re serv­ing up some green eggs and ham. Or rather Neil Gaiman is. When­ev­er I think about some­one read­ing Dr. Seuss’ clas­sic chil­dren’s book, I can’t help but think back to Jesse Jack­son’s clas­sic read­ing on SNL in 1991. But who knows, maybe 20 years from now, anoth­er gen­er­a­tion might call to mind this ver­sion by the unshaven Gaiman. If the read­ing whets your appetite a bit, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries, which includes, among oth­er things, audio & video record­ings of @neilhimself read­ing his own sto­ries. We’ve got some more good Dr. Seuss mate­r­i­al below.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fake Bob Dylan Sings Real Dr. Seuss

The Epis­te­mol­o­gy of Dr. Seuss & More Phi­los­o­phy Lessons from Great Children’s Sto­ries

New Archive Show­cas­es Dr. Seuss’s Ear­ly Work as an Adver­tis­ing Illus­tra­tor and Polit­i­cal Car­toon­ist

550 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

New Carl Sagan Archive Features His Digitized Home Movies, Student Journalism, Draft of His Pale Blue Dot & More

in Archives, Astronomy, History, Science | February 3rd, 2014

Sev­er­al days ago, we brought you a rare Carl Sagan sketch, where the young sci­en­tist depict­ed an imag­ined his­to­ry of inter­stel­lar space flight. In that post, we made brief men­tion of the Seth Mac­Far­lane Col­lec­tion of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, which mer­its to be high­light­ed in its own right: its arrival means that the Inter­net now has access to a vast repos­i­to­ry of the emi­nent sci­ence educator’s orig­i­nal papers and per­son­al arti­facts.

His­to­ri­ans, biog­ra­phers, and die-hard Sagan devo­tees will inevitably want to vis­it the Library of Con­gress in per­son to view the full archive, which con­tains over 1700 box­es of mate­r­i­al. The lay read­er curi­ous about Sagan’s life, how­ev­er, won’t need to make the trek to the U.S. cap­i­tal to sam­ple the archive’s con­tents. That’s because the Library of Con­gress has uploaded a por­tion of the col­lec­tion online, includ­ing sundry fas­ci­nat­ing bio­graph­i­cal pieces. Above, you can view a dig­i­tized set of the Sagan fam­i­ly’s silent home movies, where young Carl shows off his boy­hood box­ing prowess, rides horse­back, and plays piano (pre­cious­ly, we pre­sume).

It was dur­ing high school that Sagan began to fill out intel­lec­tu­al­ly. His senior year­book is tes­ti­mo­ny to both his inter­est in sci­ence and the human­i­ties: not only was Sagan pres­i­dent of both the sci­ence and chem­istry clubs, he also led the French club, served as an edi­tor on his school’s news­pa­per, debat­ed, took part in the­atre pro­duc­tions, and was a mem­ber of the pho­tog­ra­phy club.

Indeed, Sagan dis­played his uncan­ny abil­i­ty to merge sci­ence with the human­i­ties in Wawawhack, his high school news­pa­per, writ­ing a piece enti­tled “Space, Time, and The Poet.” He begins by say­ing, “it is an exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence to read poet­ry and observe its cor­re­la­tion with mod­ern sci­ence. Pro­found sci­en­tif­ic thought is hard­ly a rar­i­ty among the poets.” Through­out the piece, Sagan goes on to draw from vers­es by Alfred Lord Ten­nyson, T. S. Eliot, John Mil­ton, and Robert Frost.

Mix­ing sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture would remain one of Sagan’s spe­cial­ties, and would even­tu­al­ly lead to his writ­ing The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of Human Future In Space (1994). The book dis­cuss­es humankind’s place in the uni­verse, past, present, and future, and a PDF ver­sion of the anno­tat­ed sec­ond draft, pic­tured below, is avail­able in the archive.

For more of the dig­i­tized col­lec­tion, vis­it Seth Mac­Far­lane Col­lec­tion of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive.

via Boing Boing

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Free Mini Course: Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else