Sign Up for Open Culture’s Free Daily Email

in | December 16th, 2013

What’s the best way to make sure you nev­er miss a post from Open Cul­ture? Easy answer: sign up for our dai­ly email! Each week­day, you will receive an email that tidi­ly wraps up every­thing we’ve fea­tured on the site over a 24 hour peri­od.  Sign up below!

And if you enjoy our email, please con­sid­er return­ing the favor by mak­ing a finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion to our site (small, medi­um or large). It will help sus­tain the Open Cul­ture mis­sion.

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Illustrated Etiquette Guide Explains How to Ride the Paris Metro in a Civilized Way

in e-books, Life | December 16th, 2013

Fel­low rid­ers fail­ing to observe prop­er com­muter eti­quette ranks high on the pet peeves list of habit­u­al sub­way users world­wide. While pas­sen­gers play­ing music loud enough for oth­er com­muters to hear would be incon­ceiv­able in Osa­ka, Japan, most straphang­ers would­n’t bat an eye at iPods blast­ing in New York. Mean­while, New York­ers have their own spin on sub­way eti­quette. Gothamist, a New York City blog, fre­quent­ly posts pho­to­graph­ic vio­la­tions of the unspo­ken rid­ers’ code of con­duct; doc­u­ment­ed gaffes include bring­ing a Christ­mas tree on the sub­way and car­ry­ing a surf­board the wrong way.

To pre­vent such faux pas from ruin­ing the sub­way-rid­ing expe­ri­ences of Parisian com­muters, France’s pub­lic trans­port oper­a­tor (the RATP) has decid­ed to nip such gauche behav­ior in the bud by issu­ing a short illus­trat­ed man­u­al on sub­way man­ners. The Savoir Vivre Guide For The Mod­ern Trav­eller, avail­able here, is a quaint 1950s-style primer that pro­vides much-need­ed point­ers for hap­less for­eign­ers and rur­al French vis­i­tors alike. Its 12 guide­lines, five of which are illus­trat­ed here, are a dis­til­la­tion of some 2000 tips that the RATP received in its crowd­sourced eti­quette cam­paign. For the sake of your read­ing plea­sure and trav­el­ling know-how, we’ve includ­ed a num­ber of the illus­tra­tions and tips below:

“Those No Smok­ing signs aren’t con­tem­po­rary art — they mean no smok­ing”

(C’est com­pren­dre que l’énorme cig­a­rette bar­rée sur le quai n’est pas une œuvre d’art con­tem­po­rain, mais une inter­dic­tion de fumer)

“Be con­sid­er­ate when using your cell­phone”

(French read­ers will enjoy the pun: C’est ne pas faire de son portable un insup­port­able)

 

“Don’t be a creep and stare at peo­ple”

(C’est ne pas fix­er une pas­sagère avec insis­tance, quand bien même elle aurait les yeux revolver)

 

“On hot days, make like the emper­or pen­guin — keep your arms low, and hold on to the bot­tom of the pole.”

(C’est les jours de grosse chaleur, tel le man­chot empereur, bien garder les bras le long du corps et pren­dre sa meilleure prise en bas du poteau, pas tout en haut)

For all 12 tips, head over to Gothamist.

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

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Studs Terkel Interviews Bob Dylan, Shel Silverstein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove

in History, Radio | December 16th, 2013

The recent­ly-launched dig­i­ti­za­tion project Pop­Up Archive hosts a great selec­tion of Studs Terkel audio. The site’s archive of inter­views comes from Terkel’s 1952–1997 radio show, “The Studs Terkel Pro­gram,” on the Chica­go sta­tion WFMT.

While Terkel is famous for inter­view­ing every­day peo­ple for his oral his­to­ries of the Depres­sion, work, and World War II, and his radio show fea­tured its fair share of stu­dents, domes­tic work­ers, and vet­er­ans, this par­tic­u­lar archive is full of big names: Actress and come­di­an Lily Tom­lin. Lit­er­ary the­o­rist Edward Said. Actor and activist Sid­ney Poiti­er.

A short trip into the inter­views reveals Shel Sil­ver­stein telling Terkel the sto­ry of his as-yet-unpub­lished book Laf­ca­dio, The Lion Who Shot Back, in a rapid-fire Chica­go accent. Terkel inter­views the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Diane Arbus about the Depres­sion, try­ing in vain to elic­it any mem­o­ries at all per­tain­ing to finan­cial stress. (Even Terkel couldn’t win them all.) And an inter­view with James Bald­win is punc­tu­at­ed by the unmis­tak­able sound of a Zip­po lighter in use.

Cur­rent­ly, there are about twen­ty audio files avail­able, and the archive promis­es more to come, pend­ing dig­i­ti­za­tion and the clear­ing of rights. (Let’s hope they hur­ry up! Some of the place­hold­er entries for not-yet-avail­able interviews—Buckminster Fuller, Mar­garet Mead, Arthur C. Clarke—are most tan­ta­liz­ing.)

The one down­side to this archive is that you can’t down­load the interviews—a poten­tial draw­back for addict­ed pod­cast fans. How­ev­er, if you have a smart­phone and a good data con­nec­tion, it’s sim­ple enough to lis­ten to the files straight from your phone’s Chrome brows­er.

Above you can lis­ten to Terkel inter­view a young Bob Dylan in 1963. The remain­ing parts of the inter­view can be found here. Note: The Dylan inter­view isn’t actu­al­ly in the Pop Up archive. But it is anoth­er one of Terkel’s leg­endary inter­views. So we want­ed to add it to the mix.

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Studs Terkel Reads Poem “Blessed Be The Nation”

Voic­es from the Depres­sion: Studs Terkel Inter­views

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

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An Interactive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Journey in Homer’s Odyssey

in Literature, Maps | December 16th, 2013

The Odyssey, one of Home­r’s two great epics, nar­rates Odysseus’ long, strange trip home after the Tro­jan war. Dur­ing their ten-year jour­ney, Odysseus and his men had to over­come divine and nat­ur­al forces, from bat­ter­ing storms and winds to dif­fi­cult encoun­ters with the Cyclops Polyphe­mus, the can­ni­bal­is­tic Laestry­gones, the witch-god­dess Circe and the rest. And they took a most cir­cuitous route, bounc­ing all over the Mediter­ranean, mov­ing first down to Crete and Tunisia. Next over to Sici­ly, then off toward Spain, and back to Greece again.

If you’re look­ing for an easy way to visu­al­ize all of the twists and turns in The Odyssey, then we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing some time with the inter­ac­tive map host­ed on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s web­site. The map breaks down Odysseus’ voy­age into 14 key scenes and locates them on a mod­ern map.

Mean­while, if you’re inter­est­ed in the whole con­cept of ancient trav­el, I’d sug­gest revis­it­ing one of our pre­vi­ous posts: Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map. It tells you all about ORBIS, a geospa­tial net­work mod­el, that lets you sim­u­late jour­neys in Ancient Roman. You pick the points of ori­gin and des­ti­na­tion for a trip, and ORBIS will recon­struct the dura­tion and finan­cial cost of mak­ing the ancient jour­ney. Pret­ty cool stuff.

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:

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Dis­cov­er the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Tor­ture Machine That Dou­bled as a Musi­cal Instru­ment

Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free

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Kurt Vonnegut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Disgust with Civilization

in Creativity, Literature | December 15th, 2013

This past week, we referred you back to Neil Gaiman’s essay where he tried to explain the almost unex­plain­able: the source(s) of his great ideas. The sci-fi/­fan­ta­sy writer had always strug­gled to put his fin­ger on those sources, and he could nev­er real­ly find an ori­gin in one par­tic­u­lar spring. But, it turns out that Kurt Von­negut nev­er had that prob­lem. On Twit­ter, one of our fol­low­ers (@Iygia_Maria) flagged for us an illus­trat­ed quote by Von­negut. He writes:

Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goof­ing around in Ger­many like every­body else, and all of a sud­den this stuff came gush­ing out of him. It was music. I was goof­ing around like every­body else in Indi­ana, and all of a sud­den stuff came gush­ing out. It was dis­gust with civ­i­liza­tion. (Back­wards City Review, 2004.)

If you’re won­der­ing where that dis­gust was com­ing from, I prob­a­bly only need to a high­light a pre­vi­ous post of ours: 22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”. There you can read all about how he was tak­en pris­on­er dur­ing the Bat­tle of the Bulge; spent time in a Dres­den work camp known yes, as “Slaugh­ter­house Five;” sur­vived the Dres­den bomb­ing; saw many oth­er atroc­i­ties along the way, reveal­ing civ­i­liza­tion at its worst. You can hear Von­negut read from Slaugh­ter­house-Five here.

H/T @Iygia_Maria)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

Kurt Von­negut Writes an Off­beat Con­tract Out­lin­ing His Chores Around the House, 1947

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The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Reuse & Remix

in Art | December 14th, 2013

Ear­li­er this week, Oxford’s Bodleian Library announced that it had dig­i­tized a 550 year old copy of the Guten­berg Bible along with a num­ber of oth­er ancient bibles, some of them quite beau­ti­ful. Not to be out­done, the British Library came out with its own announce­ment on Thurs­day:

We have released over a mil­lion images onto Flickr Com­mons for any­one to use, remix and repur­pose. These images were tak­en from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry books digi­tised by Microsoft who then gen­er­ous­ly gift­ed the scanned images to us, allow­ing us to release them back into the Pub­lic Domain. The images them­selves cov­er a star­tling mix of sub­jects: There are maps, geo­log­i­cal dia­grams, beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions, com­i­cal satire, illu­mi­nat­ed and dec­o­ra­tive let­ters, colour­ful illus­tra­tions, land­scapes, wall-paint­ings and so much more that even we are not aware of.

The librar­i­ans behind the project freely admit that they don’t exact­ly have a great han­dle on the images in the col­lec­tion. They know what books the images come from. (For exam­ple, the image above comes from His­to­ria de las Indias de Nue­va-España y islas de Tier­ra Firme, 1867.) But they don’t know much about the par­tic­u­lars of each visu­al. And so they’re turn­ing to crowd­sourc­ing for answers. In fair­ly short order, the Library plans to release tools that will let will­ing par­tic­i­pants gath­er infor­ma­tion and deep­en our under­stand­ing of every­thing in the Flickr Com­mons col­lec­tion.

You can jump into the entire col­lec­tion here, or view a set of high­lights here. The lat­ter hap­pens to include a curi­ous image. (See below.) It’s from an 1894 book called The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. A study of the Amer­i­can Com­mon­wealth, its nat­ur­al resources, peo­ple, indus­tries, man­u­fac­tures, com­merce, and its work in lit­er­a­ture, sci­ence, edu­ca­tion and self-gov­ern­ment. And the pic­ture fea­tures, accord­ing to the text, a “Typ­i­cal fig­ure, show­ing ten­den­cy of stu­dent life–stooping head, flat chest, and ema­ci­at­ed limbs.” It’s hard to know what to say about that.

To learn more about this British Library ini­tia­tive, read this oth­er Open Cul­ture post which takes a deep­er dive into the image col­lec­tion.

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

The Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Library of Amer­i­ca Launch­es Today, Open­ing Up Knowl­edge for All

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

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John Waters Makes Handmade Christmas Cards, Says the “Whole Purpose of Life is Christmas”

in Creativity, Film, Life | December 13th, 2013

Awk­ward as it feels to receive Christ­mas cards from peo­ple we don’t real­ly know, who among us would turn one down from the one and only John Waters? Then again, the direc­tor of such land­marks in delib­er­ate­ly taste-free cin­e­ma as Pink Flamin­gos and Female Trou­ble would pre­sum­ably delight in inject­ing a lit­tle aes­thet­ic dis­com­fort into our hol­i­day rou­tines. Waters, accord­ing to a New York Times Q&A about his tak­ing on the road “A John Waters Christ­mas,” his “staged mono­logue about all things mer­ry and dark,” has made and sent out his own inim­itable Christ­mas cards for almost fifty years. “I start­ed doing it in high school in 1964,” he explains. “I send out over 2,000 cards by now. Basi­cal­ly, I’m chan­nel­ing Pia Zado­ra, who used to send out the best pricey hol­i­day-relat­ed object to help spread her name and make it last all year.” His 2006 card above bears a gen­uine mugshot from the police depart­ment of Waters’ beloved Bal­ti­more; oth­er images have includ­ed a dra­mat­ic 1940s scene of Christ­mas ruined by a crim­i­nal San­ta, indie-film act­ing icon Steve Busce­mi made up con­vinc­ing­ly as Waters, and Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor shaven-head­ed after brain surgery. One year, he even attached a tree orna­ment con­tain­ing a dead cock­roach.

“Being a tra­di­tion­al­ist, I’m a rabid suck­er for Christ­mas,” Waters explains in his essay “Why I Love Christ­mas.” “Novem­ber 1 kicks off the jubilee of con­sumerism, and I’m so rid­dled with the hol­i­days sea­son that the mere men­tion of a stock­ing stuffer sex­u­al­ly arous­es me.” Pre­hol­i­day activ­i­ties he con­sid­ers “the fore­play of Christ­mas,” and nat­u­ral­ly, “Christ­mas cards are your first duty and you must send one (with a per­son­al, hand­writ­ten mes­sage) to every sin­gle per­son you ever met, no mat­ter how briefly.” And of course, “you must make your own cards by hand. ‘I don’t have time’ you may whine, but since the whole pur­pose of life is Christ­mas, you’d bet­ter make time, buster.” Waters has also assem­bled his very own Christ­mas album, fea­tur­ing a vari­ety of hol­i­day songs per­formed by Tiny Tim, Stormy Weath­er, and even Alvin and the Chip­munks. The selec­tion below, “First Snow­fall” by the Coc­tails, uses the clas­si­cal­ly kitschy singing saw as a lead:

You may well hear it again if you hap­pen to attend Waters’ own annu­al Christ­mas par­ty in Bal­ti­more, a tra­di­tion he’s kept up for near­ly as long as he’s sent out the cards. “Every­one comes, from the may­or to Pat Sajak to a judge and a well-known crim­i­nal I helped get out of jail,” as he describes it to the Times.” There’s a bar on every floor of the house and a buf­fet table where you’ll see the guy that played the singing anus in Pink Flamin­gos stand­ing next to the gov­er­nor.” For­get the cards; I need an invi­ta­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grow­ing Up John Waters: The Odd­ball Film­mak­er Cat­a­logues His Many For­ma­tive Rebel­lions (1993)

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

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.

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In 1900, Ladies’ Home Journal Publishes 28 Predictions for the Year 2000

in History, Science | December 13th, 2013

At least since that 17th cen­tu­ry archi­tect of the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion, Sir Fran­cis Bacon (who was most­ly right), peo­ple have been mak­ing pre­dic­tions about the tech­nolo­gies and social advance­ments of the future. And since Bacon, sci­en­tists and futur­is­tic writ­ers have been espe­cial­ly in demand dur­ing times of great change and uncer­tain­ty, such as at the turn of the last cen­tu­ry. In 1900, civ­il engi­neer John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. in Ladies’ Home Jour­nal claimed to have sur­veyed “the most learned and con­ser­v­a­tive minds in Amer­i­ca… the wis­est and most care­ful men in our great­est insti­tu­tions of sci­ence and learn­ing.”

Spec­i­fy­ing advances like­ly to occur 100 years thence, “before the dawn of 2001,” Watkins culled 28 pre­dic­tions about such things as trav­el and the trans­mis­sion of infor­ma­tion over great dis­tances, bio­log­i­cal and genet­ic muta­tions, and the domes­tic com­forts of the aver­age con­sumer. Sev­er­al of the pre­dic­tions are very Bacon­ian indeed—as per the strange list at the end of Bacon’s sci­ence fic­tion frag­ment New Atlantis, a text obsessed with alter­ing the appear­ance of the nat­ur­al world for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son oth­er than that it could be done. Watkins’ list includes such pre­dic­tions as “Peas as Large as Beets,” “Black, Blue, and Green Ros­es,” and “Straw­ber­ries as Large as Apples.” Some are Bacon­ian in more sin­is­ter ways, and these are also a bit more accu­rate. Take the below, for exam­ple:

There will be No Wild Ani­mals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exter­mi­nat­ed. The horse will have become prac­ti­cal­ly extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for rac­ing, hunt­ing and exer­cise. The auto­mo­bile will have dri­ven out the horse. Cat­tle and sheep will have no horns. They will be unable to run faster than the fat­tened hog of to-day. A cen­tu­ry ago the wild hog could out­run a horse. Food ani­mals will be bred to expend prac­ti­cal­ly all of their life ener­gy in pro­duc­ing meat, milk, wool and oth­er by-prod­ucts. Horns, bones, mus­cles and lungs will have been neglect­ed.

I would defer to ecol­o­gists and meat indus­try watch­dogs to con­firm my intu­itions, but it does seem that some of this, except­ing the exter­mi­na­tion of ver­min and horns, has come to pass or is very like­ly in regard to sev­er­al species. Anoth­er pre­dic­tion, this one about our own species, is laugh­ably opti­mistic:

Every­body will Walk Ten Miles. Gym­nas­tics will begin in the nurs­ery, where toys and games will be designed to strength­en the mus­cles. Exer­cise will be com­pul­so­ry in the schools. Every school, col­lege and com­mu­ni­ty will have a com­plete gym­na­si­um. All cities will have pub­lic gym­na­si­ums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regard­ed as a weak­ling.

We’re much clos­er to the future of Pixar’s Wall‑E than any­thing resem­bling this sce­nario (unless you live in the world of Cross­fit). Anoth­er pre­dic­tion is both dead on and dead wrong at once. Claim­ing that there will be “from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 peo­ple in the Amer­i­c­as and its pos­ses­sions by the lapse of anoth­er cen­tu­ry” did in fact turn out to be almost uncan­ni­ly accurate—current esti­mates are some­where around 300,000,000. The “pos­ses­sions” allud­ed to, how­ev­er, dis­play the atti­tude of blithe Mon­roe doc­trine expan­sion­ism that held the nation in its sway at the turn of the cen­tu­ry. The pre­dic­tion goes on to say that most of the “South and Cen­tral Amer­i­can republics would be vot­ed into the Union by their own peo­ple.” A few more of Watkins’ pre­dic­tions, some pre­scient, some pre­pos­ter­ous:

Tele­phones Around the World. Wire­less tele­phone and tele­graph cir­cuits will span the world.

Store Pur­chas­es by Tube. Pneu­mat­ic tubes instead of store wag­ons, will deliv­er pack­ages and bun­dles.

Hot and Cold Air from Spig­ots. Ris­ing ear­ly to build the fur­nace fire will be a task of the old­en times.

Ready-Cooked Meals will be Bought from estab­lish­ments sim­i­lar to our bak­eries of to-day [see the above Wall‑E ref­er­ence]

There will be No C, X, or Q in our every-day alpha­bet. They will be aban­doned because unnec­es­sary.

Aeriel War-Ships and Forts on Wheels. Giant guns will shoot twen­ty-five miles or more, and will hurl any­where with­in such a radius shells explod­ing and destroy­ing whole cities.

How Chil­dren will be Taught. A uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion will be free to every man and woman.

Ah, if only that last one had come true! To read all of Watkins pre­dic­tions in detail, click on the image above for a larg­er, read­able, ver­sion of the full arti­cle.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asimov’s 1964 Pre­dic­tions About What the World Will Look 50 Years Lat­er — in 2014

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

1930s Fash­ion Design­ers Imag­ine How Peo­ple Would Dress in the Year 2000

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

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Watch Michel Gondry Animate Philosopher, Linguist & Activist Noam Chomsky

in Animation, Film, Philosophy, Science | December 13th, 2013

As an arts major who doo­dled my way through every required sci­ence course in high school and col­lege, I am deeply grat­i­fied by film­mak­er Michel Gondry’s approach to doc­u­ment­ing the ideas of Noam Chom­sky. Hav­ing filmed about three hours worth of inter­views with the activist, philoso­pher, and father of mod­ern lin­guis­tics in a ster­ile MIT con­fer­ence room, Gondry head­ed back to his charm­ing­ly ana­log Brook­lyn digs to spend three years ani­mat­ing the con­ver­sa­tions. It’s nice to see a film­mak­er of his stature using books to jer­ry-rig his cam­era set up. At one point, he hud­dles on the floor, puz­zling over some sequen­tial draw­ings on 3‑hole punch paper. Seems like the kind of thing most peo­ple in his field would tack­le with an iPad and an assis­tant.

Gondry may have felt intel­lec­tu­al­ly dwarfed by his sub­ject, but there’s a kind of genius afoot in his work too. Describ­ing the stop-motion tech­nique he used for Is the Man Who Is Tall Hap­py?, he told Amy Good­man of Democ­ra­cy Now, “I have a light­box, and I put paper on it, and I ani­mate with Sharpies, col­or Sharpies. And I have a 16-mil­lime­ter cam­era that is set up on a tri­pod and looks down, and I take a pic­ture. I do a draw­ing and take a pic­ture.”

A pret­ty apt summation—watch him in action above—but the curios­i­ty and human­i­ty so evi­dent in such fea­tures as Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind and The Sci­ence of Sleep is a mag­i­cal ingre­di­ent here, too. He attrib­ut­es bio­log­i­cal prop­er­ties to his Sharpie mark­ers, and takes a break from some of Chom­sky’s more com­plex thoughts to ask about his feel­ings when his wife passed away. He does­n’t seem to mind that he might seem a bit of a school­boy in com­par­i­son, one whose tal­ents lie beyond this par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sor’s scope.

As Chom­sky him­self remarks in the trail­er, below, “Learn­ing comes from ask­ing why do things work like that, why not some oth­er way?”

Is the Man Who Is Tall Hap­py? is avail­able on iTunes.

H/T @kirstinbutler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Presents an Ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion with Noam Chom­sky

Noam Chom­sky Schools 9/11 Truther; Explains the Sci­ence of Mak­ing Cred­i­ble Claims

Ayun Hal­l­i­day puts her life­long pen­chant for doo­dling to good use in her award-win­ning, hand­writ­ten, illus­trat­ed zine, The East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Stephen Fry Profiles Six Russian Writers in the New Documentary Russia’s Open Book

in Literature | December 12th, 2013

Pushkin, Dos­to­evsky, Gogol, Tol­stoy, Tur­genev, Chekhov… some­one could design a per­son­al­i­ty test around which great 19th cen­tu­ry Russ­ian writ­ers turned read­ers on to that most brood­ing and intense of nation­al lit­er­a­tures. For me it was first Dos­to­evsky, with an oblig­a­tory high school read­ing of Crime and Pun­ish­ment, whose end­ing I hat­ed so much that I had to go on and read The Idiot, The Pos­sessed, Notes From the Under­ground, and near­ly every­thing else to find out what went wrong. And the mis­chie­vous fan­ta­sist Gogol I pre­ferred even to Kaf­ka as a young read­er, so I’d prob­a­bly score high on exis­ten­tial angst and absur­dist ten­den­cies on what­ev­er we’re call­ing our lit­er­ary Mey­ers-Brig­gs.

But we would have to include the 20th cen­tu­ry suc­ces­sors: Solzhen­it­syn, Bul­gakov, Paster­nak. The dis­senters and exposers of Sovi­et cru­el­ty and cor­rup­tion who took on the tra­di­tions of stark, bru­tal real­ism and dark­ly com­ic alle­go­ry. All of these are tra­di­tions that lit­er­ary gad­about Stephen Fry right­ly points out “changed the lit­er­a­ture, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the lit­er­a­ture of the nov­el, the world over.” Yet some­how, after the fall of the Sovi­et Union, it’s a lit­er­a­ture we seemed to stop hear­ing about. How­ev­er, “just because we stopped read­ing,” says Fry as host of the doc­u­men­tary above, Russia’s Open Book: Writ­ing in the Age of Putin, “doesn’t mean the Rus­sians stopped writ­ing.” Pro­duced by Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion and Wilton films and pre­mier­ing online today (and on PBS on Decem­ber 28), the film pro­files six new Russ­ian writ­ers most of us haven’t read, but should.

Per­haps a par­tic­u­lar­ly icon­ic fig­ure for the Putin age, we first meet the con­tro­ver­sial and some­what macho nov­el­ist Zakhar Prilepin, whose nos­tal­gia for the Sovi­et past has earned him the ire of lib­er­als. Prilepin freely admits that his hap­py, “won­der­ful,” child­hood explains his sym­pa­thy for the Sovi­et state. Despite these warm psy­cho­log­i­cal ori­gins, lit­er­ary crit­ic Alexan­der Gavrilov calls Prilepin’s first nov­el, 2005’s Patholo­gies, “an aggres­sive ter­ror­ist attack of a book,” for its harsh por­tray­al of the war in Chech­nya. The book draws on Prilepin’s expe­ri­ences as a vet­er­an of two Chechen wars. His sec­ond nov­el, Sankya was short­list­ed for the Russ­ian Book­er and Nation­al Book­seller prizes in 2006, and yet aside from a few short sto­ries, Prilepin’s work has yet to be trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish.

What has fas­ci­nat­ed West­ern­ers about Rus­sia in the past is in part its deep ven­er­a­tion for its writ­ers. In every age—Golden, Sil­ver, or blood red—Russian writ­ers held places of cul­tur­al promi­nence, or infamy. Lenin was a great writer of his­to­ry and polemic. Even Putin soft-ped­als his back­ing for the Syr­i­an regime in a gen­teel open let­ter. To be a rec­og­nized writer in Rus­sia means being a celebri­ty, or as Prilepin says, it’s “a kind of show busi­ness.” Russia’s Open Book nar­ra­tor Juli­et Stephen­son quotes poet Yevge­ny Yev­tushenko: “In Rus­sia, a poet is more than a poet.”

And then we meet con­tem­po­rary Russ­ian “activist, jour­nal­ist, teacher, nov­el­ist, crit­ic, and poet” Dmit­ry Bykov, a dead ringer for an ear­li­er vin­tage of Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Hor­a­tio Sanz. His genial appear­ance hides deeply seri­ous intent. A roman­tic inspired by the vibran­cy of Russia’s polit­i­cal fight for “the dig­ni­ty of all its cit­i­zens,” Bykov tells us “Before I went to the first protest, I’d stopped writ­ing. After­wards, I wrote a whole vol­ume of lyric poet­ry. No pol­i­tics, it’s all ros­es and rhymes.” Bykov’s 2006 Liv­ing Souls—which does exist, abridged, in English—takes up the great Russ­ian tra­di­tion of the polit­i­cal fable. Oth­er writ­ers, like the bold­ly out­spo­ken nov­el­ist (and for­mer geneti­cist) Lud­mi­la Ulit­skaya, are much more ambiva­lent about polit­i­cal engage­ment. “But in some sit­u­a­tions,” says Ulit­skaya, “you can’t remain silent….”

It’s dif­fi­cult per­haps for West­ern­ers to appre­ci­ate the con­tem­po­rary sit­u­a­tions of these new Russ­ian writ­ers, giv­en how lit­tle we seem to under­stand Russia’s inter­nal polit­i­cal state (and giv­en the rel­a­tive absence of a viable U.S. for­eign press ser­vice). After all, it’s no longer an exis­ten­tial neces­si­ty that we know our sworn ene­my, as in the Cold War, nor is Rus­sia treat­ed any longer as Europe’s dis­tin­guished first cousin, as in its Impe­r­i­al 19th cen­tu­ry past. But the writ­ers pro­filed in Russia’s Open Book make us keen­ly aware that the country’s lit­er­ary cul­ture is thriv­ing, and deserv­ing of our atten­tion. To learn more about the mak­ers of the film and the six con­tem­po­rary writ­ers pro­filed, vis­it the Russia’s Open Book web­site. And to expand your appre­ci­a­tion for Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture in gen­er­al, spend some time at the Read Rus­sia 2013 site here, a new ini­tia­tive “to cel­e­brate Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture and Russ­ian book cul­ture.” We also have many Russ­ian clas­sics in our Free eBooks and Audio Books col­lec­tions.

Rus­si­a’s Open Book: Writ­ing in the Age of Putin will be per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 600 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­toric Meet­ing Between Dick­ens and Dos­to­evsky Revealed as a Great Lit­er­ary Hoax

George Saun­ders’ Lec­tures on the Russ­ian Greats Brought to Life in Stu­dent Sketch­es

Russ­ian Punk Band, Sen­tenced to Two Years in Prison for Derid­ing Putin, Releas­es New Sin­gle

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

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

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