A Journey into the Mind of P: A Cinematic Look at Thomas Pynchon

in Books | September 10th, 2013

Nov­el­ist Thomas Pyn­chon does not, as his read­ers well know, do pub­lic­i­ty. But does he need to? When a man has writ­ten books like V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Grav­i­ty’s Rain­bow, does­n’t the appear­ance of a new one pub­li­cize itself, in some sense? Pyn­chon’s eighth nov­el Bleed­ing Edge, a seem­ing­ly hard-boiled yet char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly askew and para­noia-fla­vored tale of post-tech-bub­ble but pre‑9/11 New York, comes out on Sep­tem­ber 17th, and a cer­tain class of fan has no doubt spent hours scru­ti­niz­ing the excerpt its pub­lish­er Pen­guin has already released. A cer­tain oth­er class of fan, the sort who spent long dorm-room hours with the ear­ly books but who some­how nev­er sum­moned the will for the more recent ones, will at least have felt their curios­i­ty piqued. To anoth­er class of fan entire­ly, those who feel like they could get into Pyn­chon but can’t quite deter­mine why or how, we offer the doc­u­men­tary above, Fos­co and Donatel­lo Dubini’s A Jour­ney into the Mind of P.

“I think of Pyn­chon as a cryp­togram,” says one read­er inter­viewed in the film. “We are almost, in a sense, code­break­ers. He presents a puz­zle that we are try­ing to crack.” That, as well as any­thing, sums up my own find­ings from talk­ing to Pyn­chon die-hards about their enthu­si­asm for their author of choice. A Jour­ney into the Mind of P actu­al­ly exam­ines two minds at once: the mind of Pyn­chon the writer, and the mind of the Pyn­chon fan, which seeks not only to grasp the cul­tur­al­ly sweep­ing, infor­ma­tion-dense height­ened real­i­ty of the nov­els, but also to con­struct a coher­ent image of the man who cre­ates that real­i­ty. Thus far, these read­ers have had to draw this image from only the nov­els them­selves (though, in sev­er­al cas­es, large and labyrinthine ones), and for the fore­see­able future they must con­tin­ue to do so. At least Bleed­ing Edge, what­ev­er its recep­tion, will add almost 500 more pages to their body of avail­able evi­dence. Best of luck, Pyn­chon exegetes with copies on pre-order. Per­haps the rest of you would rather start with the book trail­er just above. A new Pyn­chon nov­el may always make a splash, but Pen­guin’s pub­lic­i­ty depart­ment isn’t tak­ing any chances.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the First Page of Thomas Pynchon’s New Nov­el, Bleed­ing Edge

New Pyn­chon Book [Inher­ent Vice] Out Today: Watch the Trail­er

Thomas Pyn­chon Nov­els Com­ing to eBook, at Long Last

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

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Set Chopin Free: A Kickstarter to Campaign to Put 245 Chopin Pieces Into the Public Domain

in Music | September 9th, 2013

“It is 164 years after Chopin’s death. His music is well into the pub­lic domain, yet most peo­ple con­sume it as if it were still copy­right­ed: from CDs, iTunes, or Youtube videos (many of which are copy­right­ed). We think Chopin deserves bet­ter.” That’s how Musopen.org frames its new Kick­starter cam­paign called Set Chopin Free. If the cam­paign reach­es its goal of rais­ing $75,000 (it’s already at $34,748), Musopen will work with tal­ent­ed musi­cians to “pre­serve indef­i­nite­ly and with­out ques­tion every­thing Chopin cre­at­ed.” They will record per­for­mances of 245 Chopin pieces in both 1080p video and 24 bit 192kHz audio, and then release them all into the pub­lic domain. Sounds like some­thing our read­ers can get behind. If you con­tribute to this cam­paign, you can get some pret­ty nice-look­ing gifts, while mak­ing your own gift to the cul­tur­al com­mons. Learn more about the Set Chopin Free cam­paign here. And, of course, we’ll let you know when this project is com­plete and the pub­lic domain record­ings are online.

Note: If you want to savor the fruits of anoth­er Kick­starter cam­paign, please vis­it our pre­vi­ous post: The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

 

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Nico, Lou Reed & John Cale Sing the Classic Velvet Underground Song ‘Femme Fatale’ (Paris, 1972)

in Music | September 9th, 2013

On Jan­u­ary 29, 1972 Lou Reed and John Cale, found­ing mem­bers of the Vel­vet Under­ground, reunit­ed with Nico, the Ger­man actress, mod­el and musi­cian who sang sev­er­al songs on the band’s debut album, for a spe­cial con­cert at le Bat­a­clan night­club in Paris.

In this scene Nico (in her “deep nar­cot­ic monot­o­ne voice,” as one writer apt­ly described it) sings one of three songs she sang on 1967’s The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico. The song, “Femme Fatale,” was writ­ten by Reed at the request of the band’s man­ag­er, Andy Warhol. “Andy said I should write a song about Edie Sedg­wick,” Reed lat­er explained. “I said, Like what?’ and he said, ‘Oh, don’t you think she’s a femme fatale, Lou?’ So I wrote ‘Femme Fatale’ and we gave it to Nico.”

The Bat­a­clan con­cert was staged four years after Cale left the Vel­vet Under­ground and almost two years after Reed left. The show was record­ed for French tele­vi­sion and has been wide­ly boot­legged. Nico’s per­for­mance of “Femme Fatale” came mid­way through a 16-song set, but was placed at the end of the orig­i­nal 23-minute TV spe­cial. You can watch the com­plete spe­cial on YouTube.

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Quits Paint­ing, Man­ages The Vel­vet Under­ground (1965)

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

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A Planetary Perspective: Trillions of Pictures of the Earth Available Through Google Earth Engine

in Education, Environment, Google, Science, Technology | September 9th, 2013

In 1972 the Earth Resources Tech­nol­o­gy Satel­lite, or Land­sat, launched into space with a mis­sion to cir­cle the plan­et every 16 days and take pic­tures of the Earth. For more than forty years, the Land­sat pro­gram has cre­at­ed the longest ever con­tin­u­ous record of Earth’s sur­face.

Now those images are avail­able to every­one. And thanks to Google Earth Engine, it’s pos­si­ble to down­load and ana­lyze them.

Five years ago NASA and the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey rewrote their pro­to­cols and made the images avail­able for free, tril­lions of them, a ridicu­lous­ly mas­sive col­lec­tion of pic­tures tak­en from more than 400 miles away, some of them unrec­og­niz­able.

Is that green patch in the Ama­zon basin a for­est or a pas­ture?

But with a lit­tle help from Google’s cloud, this data has amaz­ing pow­er. It used to be that only a big insti­tu­tion, like a uni­ver­si­ty or a coun­try, had the pro­cess­ing pow­er to down­load the data. With a sin­gle CPU it would take months to suck down the images. Now, it only takes a few hours. With that free­dom, small envi­ron­men­tal watch­dog agen­cies and mon­i­tor­ing groups have access to the same data that the big guys have had for years. All they need to do is write the algo­rithms to help inter­pret what they’re see­ing.

And best of all, we can all see the results.

Watch Las Vegas grow from a dusty casi­no town into sub­ur­ban sprawl.

See the Palm Islands bloom into being off the coast of Dubai between 1984 and 2012.

One of the most dev­as­tat­ing is to watch the her­ring­bone of roads devel­op in the Ama­zon over just 28 years.

Down­load GoogleEarth’s free plu­g­in to view pre­com­put­ed datasets, like this one ren­der­ing the few remain­ing places on the Earth that are more than a kilo­me­ter from the near­est road.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Bomb­ing Remem­bered with Google Earth

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

Cut­ting-Edge Tech­nol­o­gy Recon­structs the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg 150 Years Lat­er

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site and fol­low her on Twit­ter. 

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Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Stories (Read 7 Free Online)

in Literature | September 9th, 2013

Image by Grete Stern via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In Jorge Luis Borges’ short sto­ry “The Library of Babel,” the tit­u­lar library con­tains “all that it is giv­en to express, in all lan­guages”:

Every­thing: the minute­ly detailed his­to­ry of the future, the archangels’ auto­bi­ogra­phies, the faith­ful cat­a­logue of the Library, thou­sands and thou­sands of false cat­a­logues… the trans­la­tion of every book in all lan­guages, the inter­po­la­tions of every book in all books.

As well as an iron­ic alle­gor­i­cal take on the New­ton­ian notion of the uni­verse as leg­i­ble and orga­nized, Borges’ sto­ry enacts his expe­ri­ence of a life lived almost entire­ly inside lit­er­a­ture as one of the most eru­dite writ­ers, essay­ists, and librar­i­ans of all time. Borges was not only intim­i­dat­ing­ly wide­ly-read, but his crit­i­cal opin­ions were noto­ri­ous­ly idio­syn­crat­ic and con­trar­i­an. He pre­ferred the obscure to the wide­ly cel­e­brat­ed, cas­ti­gat­ing, for exam­ple, admir­ers of Baude­laire as “imbe­ciles” (accord­ing to his long­time friend and biog­ra­ph­er Adol­fo Bioy Casares) while pro­fess­ing his own admi­ra­tion for Baudelaire’s one­time friend, the morose and unpleas­ant zeal­ous Catholic con­vert Leon Bloy.

But in addi­tion to his pen­chant for writ­ers no one reads, Borges also loved more pop­ulist writ­ers like G.K. Chester­ton and Rud­yard Kipling and had the canons of sev­er­al Euro­pean lit­er­a­tures mem­o­rized, not to men­tion the labyrinthine works of sev­er­al medieval Catholic philoso­phers and all of Spin­oza. In short, his tastes were unpre­dictable and entire­ly his own, untaint­ed by any ges­tures toward fash­ion or pub­lic sen­ti­ment. And that is why he is an excel­lent guide to the genre of writ­ing that his name has become asso­ci­at­ed with more than any oth­er: that of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion or “fan­tas­tic tales.” In 1979, Borges edit­ed a col­lec­tion of such writ­ing, in 33 vol­umes, in Span­ish (though per­haps orig­i­nal­ly in Ital­ian). Each vol­ume is devot­ed to a selec­tion of works from a sin­gle author (includ­ing Borges him­self, vol­ume 2) or to a geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion, such as “Russ­ian Tales” (vol­ume 29) and “Argen­tin­ian Tales” (vol­ume 30).

In a 2009 piece for The Rum­pus, Grant Mon­roe details his attempt to track down the con­tents of this mas­sive anthol­o­gy, called, after Borges’ sto­ry, The Library of Babel. While the col­lec­tion is con­sid­er­ably less impen­e­tra­ble, “indef­i­nite and per­haps infi­nite” than the library-world of his famous sto­ry, it is nonethe­less daunt­ing, and one could get lost in its cor­ri­dors for sev­er­al months. Below, you can find a list of sev­en select­ed stories—with links to online versions—very rough­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the breadth and strange depths of Borges’ cura­to­r­i­al imag­i­na­tion. Then see the full con­tents of The Library of Babel anthol­o­gy below the jump.

1. Auguste Vil­liers de l’Isle-Adam, “A Tor­ture by Hope”

A con­tem­po­rary and friend of Borges’ detest­ed Baude­laire, Vil­liers de l’Isle-Adam was just the kind of down-at-heel aris­to­crat­ic roué whom every­one imag­ines when think­ing of French sym­bol­ist poet­ry. Great­ly influ­enced by Poe, his Cru­el Tales, from which the sto­ry above comes, is a col­lec­tion of most­ly mys­ti­cal sto­ries.

2. Pu Songling, “The Tiger Guest”

This 17^th cen­tu­ry Chi­nese writer was much-beloved by Borges, and his influ­ence on the latter’s work is patent­ly evi­dent from a cur­so­ry scan of the titles in Pu’s col­lec­tion, Strange Sto­ries from a Chi­nese Stu­dio.

3. Charles Hin­ton, “A Plane World”

Hin­ton, a British math­e­mati­cian and sci-fi writer who was much inter­est­ed in the fourth dimen­sion and who coined the word “tesser­act,” wrote spec­u­la­tive fic­tion deeply informed by physics and math­e­mat­ics, often com­plete with dia­grams, as in the above short work, one of nine pam­phlets pub­lished as Sci­en­tif­ic Romances.  Hin­ton is men­tioned in at least two of Borges’ sto­ries.

4. Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky, “The Croc­o­dile: An Extra­or­di­nary Inci­dent”

One does not gen­er­al­ly think of Dos­to­evsky as a writer of “fan­tas­tic tales,” nor, for that mat­ter, of short fic­tion. But Borges includes this lit­tle-known short in his vol­ume of Russ­ian Tales.

5. Arthur Machen, The Shin­ing Pyra­mid

Briefly asso­ci­at­ed with British occultists like A.E. Waite and exert­ing a great deal of influ­ence on Aleis­ter Crow­ley, H.P. Love­craft, and gen­er­a­tions of genre writ­ers, Welsh writer Arthur Machen was also a favorite of Borges.

6. Voltaire, “Micromegas”

Every­one is famil­iar with Voltaire the philoso­pher and satirist, but few know of his con­tri­bu­tion to the devel­op­ment of sci­ence fic­tion with his sev­en-part sto­ry “Micromegas,” the tale of a 20,000 foot tall alien ban­ished from his world for heresy.

7. Leopol­do Lugones, “Yzur”

This Argen­tin­ian writer was a major influ­ence on Borges. Although he receives his own edit­ed vol­ume in the anthol­o­gy (vol­ume 19), this sto­ry appears in vol­ume 30, “Argen­tin­ian Tales.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Borges: Pro­file of a Writer Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Two Draw­ings by Jorge Luis Borges Illus­trate the Author’s Obses­sions

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time      

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

List via The Rum­pus

The Library of Babel

1. Jack Lon­don, The Con­cen­tric Deaths

“The Min­ions of Midas”

“The Shad­ow and the Flash”

“Lost Face”

“The House of Mapuhi”

“The Law of Life”

 

2. Jorge Luis Borges, August 26, 1983

“August 26, 1983″

“The Rose of Per­acel­sus”

“Blue Tigers”

“Shakespeare’s Mem­o­ry”

An Inter­view with Borges, with Maria Esther Vasquez

A Chronol­o­gy of J.L. Borges’ Life, from Siru­ela Mag­a­zine

The Ruler and Labyrinth: An Approx­i­ma­tion of J.L Borges’ Bib­li­og­ra­phy, by Fer­nan­dez Fer­rer

 

3.  Gus­tav Meyrink, Car­di­nal Napel­lus

“Der Kar­di­nal Napel­lus”

“J.H. Obere­its Besuch bei den Zeit­egeln”

“Der Vier Mond­brüder”

 

4.  Léon Bloy, Dis­agree­able Tales

“La Taie d’Argent”

“Les Cap­tifs de Longjumeau”

“Une Idée Médiocre”

“Une Mar­tyre”

“La Plus Belle Trou­vaille de Caïn”

“On n’est pas Par­fait”

“La Reli­gion de M. Pleur”

“Ter­ri­ble Châ­ti­ment d’un Den­tiste”

“La Tisane”

“Tout Ce Que Tu Voudras!”

“La Dernière Cuite”

“Le Vieux de la Mai­son”

 

5.  Gio­van­ni Pap­i­ni, The Mir­ror That Fled

“Il Giorno Non Resti­tu­ito”

“Due Immag­i­ni in una Vas­ca”

“Lo Spec­chio che Fugge”

“Sto­ria Com­ple­ta­mente Assur­da”

“Il Men­di­cante di Ani­me”

“Una Morte Men­tale”

“Non Voglio Più Essere Ciò che Sono”

“Chi Sei?”

“Il Sui­ci­da Sos­ti­tu­to”

“L’ultima Visi­ta del Gen­tilu­o­mo Mala­to”

 

6.  Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime

“Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime”

“The Can­ter­ville Ghost”

“The Self­ish Giant”

“The Hap­py Prince”

“The Nightin­gale and the Rose”

 

7.  Vil­liers de L’Isle-Adam, El Con­vi­da­do de las Últi­mas Fes­ti­vas

“L’Aventure de Tsé-i-la”

“Le Con­vive des Dernières Fêtes”

“A Tor­ture By Hope”

“La Reine Ysabeau”

“Som­bre Réc­it Con­teur Plus Som­bre”

“L’Enjeu”

“Véra”

 

8.  Pedro Anto­nio de Alar­cón, El Ami­go de la Muerte

“El Ami­go de la Muerte” [or “The Strange Friend of Tito Gil”]

“The Tall Woman”

 

9.  Her­man Melville, Bartle­by the Scriven­er

“Bartle­by, the Scriven­er: A Sto­ry of Wall-Street”

 

10.  William Beck­ford, Vathek

Vathek, a novel­la.

 

11.  H.G. Wells, The Door in the Wall

“The Plat­tner Sto­ry”

“The Sto­ry of Late Mr. Elve­sham”

“The Crys­tal Egg”

“The Coun­try of the Blind”

“The Door in the Wall”

 

12.  Pu Songling, The Tiger Guest

“The Bud­dhist Priest of Ch’ang-Ch’ing”

“In the Infer­nal Regions”

“The Mag­ic Mir­ror”

“A Super­nat­ur­al Wife”

“Exam­i­na­tion for the Post of Guardian Angel”

“The Man Who Was Changed into a Crow”

“The Tiger Guest”

“Judge Lu”

“The Paint­ed Skin”

“The Stream of Cash”

“The Invis­i­ble Priest”

“The Mag­ic Path”

“The Wolf Dream”

“Dream­ing Hon­ors”

“The Tiger of Chao-Ch’ëng”

“Tak­ing Revenge”

 

13.  Arthur Machen, The Shin­ing Pyra­mid

“The Nov­el of the Black Seal”

“The Nov­el of the White Pow­der”

“The Shin­ing Pyra­mid”

 

14.  Robert Louis Steven­son, The Isle of Voic­es

“The Bot­tle Imp”

“The Isle of Voic­es”

“Thrawn Janet”

“Markheim”

 

15.  G.K. Chester­ton, The Eye of Apol­lo

“The Duel of Dr Hirsch”

“The Queer Feet”

“The Hon­or of Israel Gow”

“The Eye of Apol­lo”

“The Three Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse”

 

16.  Jacques Cazotte, The Dev­il in Love

The Dev­il in Love, a novel­la.

“Jacquez Cazotte,” an essay by Ger­ard de Ner­val

 

17.  Franz Kaf­ka, The Vul­ture

“The Hunger Artist”

“First Sor­row” [or “The Trapeze Artist”]

“The Vul­ture”

“A Com­mon Con­fu­sion”

“Jack­als and Arabs”

“The Great Wall of Chi­na”

“The City Coat of Arms”

“A Report to the Acad­e­my”

“Eleven Sons”

“Prometheus”

 

18.  Edgar Allan Poe, The Pur­loined Let­ter

“The Pur­loined Let­ter”

“Ms. Found in a Bot­tle”

“The Facts in the Case of M. Valde­mar”

“The Man in the Crowd”

“The Pit and the Pen­du­lum”

 

19.  Leopol­do Lugones, The Pil­lar of Salt

“The Pil­lar of Salt”

“Grand­moth­er Juli­eta”

“The Hors­es of Abdera”

“An Inex­plic­a­ble Phe­nom­e­non”

“Francesca”

“Rain of Fire: An Account of the Immo­la­tion of Gomor­ra”

 

20.  Rud­yard Kipling, The Wish House

“The Wish House”

“A Sahib’s War”

“The Gar­den­er”

“The Madon­na of the Trench­es”

“The Eye of Allah”

 

21.  The Thou­sand and One Nights, Accord­ing to Gal­land

“Abdu­la, the Blind Beg­gar”

“Alladin’s Lamp”

 

22.  The Thou­sand and One Nights, Accord­ing to Bur­ton

“King Sin­bad and His Fal­con”

“The Adven­tures of Bul­ulkia”

“The City of Brass”

“Tale of the Queen and the Ser­pent”

“Tale of the Hus­band and the Par­rot”

“Tale of the Jew­ish Doc­tor”

“Tale of the Ensor­celled Prince”

“Tale of the Prince and the Ogres”

“Tale of the Wiz­ir and the Wise Duban”

“The Fish­er­man and the Genii”

 

23.  Hen­ry James, The Friends of the Friends

“The Friends of the Friends”

“The Abase­ment of the North­mores”

“Owen Wingrave”

“The Pri­vate Life”

 

24.  Voltaire, Micromegas

“The Black and the White”

“The Two Con­forters”

“The His­to­ry of the Trav­els of Scara­men­ta­do”

“Mem­non the Philoso­pher”

“Micromegas”

“The Princess of Baby­lon”

 

25.  Charles Hin­ton, Sci­en­tif­ic Romances

“A Plane World”

“What is the Fourth Dimen­sion?”

“The Per­sian King”

 

26.  Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Great Stone Face

“Mr. Higginbotham’s Cat­a­stro­phe”

“The Great Stone Face”

“Earth’s Holo­caust”

“The Minister’s Black Veil”

“Wake­field”

 

27.  Lord Dun­sany, The Coun­try of Yann

“Where the Tides Ebb and Flow”

“The Sword and the Idol”

“Car­cas­sonne”

“Idle Days on the Yann”

“The Field”

“The Beg­gars”

“The Bureau d’Echange de Maux”

“A Night at an Inn”

 

28.  Saki, The Ret­i­cence of Lady Anne

“The Sto­ry-Teller”

“The Lum­ber Room”

“Gabriel-Ernest”

“Tober­mory”

“The Back­ground” [trans­lat­ed as “El Mar­co” (or “The Frame”)]

“The Unrest Cure”

“The Inter­lop­ers”

“Quail Seed”

“The Peace of Mowsle Bar­ton”

“The Open Win­dow”

“The Ret­i­cence of Lady Anne”

“Sred­ni Vashtar”

 

29.  Russ­ian Tales

“Lazarus”, Leonid Andreyev

“The Croc­o­dile”, Fydor Doesto­evsky

“The Death of Ivan Illitch”, Leo Tol­stoy

 

30.  Argen­tinean Tales

“El Cala­mar Opta por su Tin­ta,” Adol­fo Bioy Casares

“Yzur,” Leopol­do Lugones [See above.]

“A House Tak­en Over”, Julio Cor­tazar

“La Galera,” Manuel Muji­ca Láinez

“Los Objec­tos,” Silv­ina D’a­cam­po

“El Pro­fe­sor de Aje­drez,” Fed­eri­co Peltzer

“Pudo Haberme Ocur­ri­do,” Manuel Pey­rou

“El Elegi­do,” Maria Esther Vasquez

 

31.  J.L. Borges and Adol­fo Bioy Casares, New Sto­ries of H. Bus­tos Domecq

 

32.  The Book of Dreams (A Col­lec­tion of Recount­ed Dreams)

List of Authors: Fran­cis­co de Queve­do y Vil­le­gas, Alexan­dra David-Néel, Alfon­so X, Alfred de Vigny, Aloy­sius Bertrand, Anto­nio Macha­do, Bern­abé Cobo, D. F. Sarmien­to, Eliseo Díaz, Fran­cis­co Aceve­do, François Rabelais, Franz Kaf­ka, Friedrich Niet­zsche, Gastón Padil­la, Giuseppe Ungaret­ti, Got­tfried Keller, H. Desvi­gnes Doolit­tle, Her­bert Allen Giles, Herodotus, H. Gar­ro, Horace, Ibrahim Zahim [Ibrahim Bin Adham], James G. Fraz­er, Jorge Alber­to Fer­ran­do, Jorge Luis Borges, José Fer­rater Mora, José María Eça de Queiroz, Joseph Addi­son, Juan José Arreo­la, Lewis Car­roll, Lao Tzu, Louis Aragon, Lui­gi Piran­del­lo, Luis de Gón­go­ra, Mircea Eli­ade, Moham­mad Mossadegh, Nemer ibn el Barud [no Wiki entry; see Ama­zon com­ment field], O. Hen­ry, Otto von Bis­mar­ck, Paul Grous­sac, Pla­to, Plutarch, Rab­bi Nis­sim ben Reuven, Ray­mond de Beck­er,  Roder­i­cus Bar­tius, Roy Bartholomew, Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge, Sebastián de Covar­ru­bias Oroz­co, Thorn­ton Wilder, Lucretius, Tsao Hsue Kin [Cao Xue­qin], Ward Hill Lam­on, William But­ler Yeats, Wu Cheng’en, Gio­van­ni Pap­i­ni, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Baude­laire

 

33.  Borges A to Z (A Com­pi­la­tion)

(Con­tents unknown.)

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The Pleasure Garden, Alfred Hitchcock’s Very First Feature Film (1925)

in Film | September 9th, 2013

Last week, we fea­tured Sight & Sound mag­a­zine’s last crit­ics poll, in which Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go unseat­ed the long­time cham­pi­on, Orson Welles’ Cit­i­zen Kane. The lat­ter famous­ly appeared as Welles’ debut, released in 1941, just days before the direc­tor and star attained the ripe old age of 26. Ver­ti­go, by con­trast, rep­re­sents the work of a mature film­mak­er; when it came out in 1958, its 59-year-old direc­tor had 46 pre­vi­ous pic­tures under his belt. Today, let’s go back to the first of those, to a Hitch­cock film far less wide­ly seen — though of no less inter­est to Hitch­cock enthu­si­asts — than the San Fran­cis­co tale of the trou­bled Scot­tie Fer­gu­son and elu­sive Madeleine Elster: 1925’s The Plea­sure Gar­den, view­able free in full at the top of this post. This silent adap­ta­tion of an Oliv­er Sandys nov­el, a British pro­duc­tion meant to show­case Amer­i­can star Vir­ginia Val­li, plunges into the roman­ti­cal­ly tur­bu­lent milieu of Lon­don cho­rus girls.

It takes that plunge by open­ing with a sequence crit­ic Dave Kehr calls “a clip reel of Hitch­cock motifs to come.” Clear­ly the 26-year-old Hitch­cock arrived with his skills and sen­si­bil­i­ties in place, but when he took on this project in 1925, he’d already had a bad expe­ri­ence in the film indus­try: 1922’s abort­ed Num­ber 13 would have giv­en him his first direc­to­r­i­al cred­it, but that pro­duc­tion ran out of mon­ey when pho­tog­ra­phy had only just begun.

The Plea­sure Gar­den itself would­n’t get pub­licly screened until 1927, after Hitch­cock had already had some suc­cess with his third fea­ture The Lodger. But the pic­ture that will always remain his first has accrued a good deal of respect over the past 86 years, and it received a BFI restora­tion this year. If you can’t find a show­ing of the restora­tion yet, watch the ear­li­er ver­sion right here. You can also watch the trail­er for the restora­tion here.

You will find oth­er great films in our col­lec­tion of Free Hitch­cock Movies Online, as well as in our larg­er col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

Watch 25 Alfred Hitch­cock Trail­ers, Excit­ing Films in Their Own Right

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

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Free Online Chemistry Courses

in | September 8th, 2013

Get free Chem­istry cours­es online from the world’s lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties.  You can down­load these audio & video cours­es straight to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er. For more online cours­es, vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

• Bio­chem­istry 1 — Free Video Down­load — S. Das­gup­ta, IIT
• Cos­mic Ori­gin of the Chem­i­cal Ele­ments — Free Online Video — Anna Frebel, MIT
• Crys­tal­log­ra­phy — Free Online Course — H. K. D. H. Bhadeshia, Cam­bridge
• Fresh­man Organ­ic Chem­istry — Free Online Video — Free iTunes Video — Course Mate­ri­als - J. Michael McBride, Yale
• Fresh­man Organ­ic Chem­istry II — Free Online Video — Free iTunes Audio — Course Mate­ri­als — J. Michael McBride, Yale
• Fun­da­men­tals of Chem­istry — Free Online Video — Ver­non Thiel­mann, Mis­souri State
• Intro­duc­tion to Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing — Free Online Video — Free iTunes Video — Chan­ning Robert­son, Stan­ford
• Intro­duc­tion to Green Chem­istry - Free Online Video — Paul Anas­tas, Yale
• Intro­duc­tion to Phys­i­cal Chem­istry — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Mul­ti­ple pro­fes­sors, Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter
• Intro­duc­tion to Quan­tum Chem­istry — Free Online Video — Prof. K. Man­gala Sun­der, IIT Madras
• Intro­duc­to­ry Quan­tum Chem­istry — Free Online Video — Free Video Down­load — KL Sebas­t­ian, IISc Ban­ga­lore
• Intro­duc­tion to Sol­id State Chem­istry - Free Online Video — Jef­frey C. Gross­man, MIT
• Intro­duc­tion to Sol­id State Chem­istry — Free Online Video — Free Video & Course Info - Don­ald Sad­oway, MIT
• Organ­ic Chem­istry — Free Online Video — James Now­ick, UC Irvine
• Organ­ic Chem­istry — Free Online Video — James S. Now­ick, UC Irvine
• Organ­ic Reac­tions and Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals — Free Online Video — Steven Hardinger, UCLA
• Organ­ic Spec­troscopy — Free Online Video — James Now­ick, UC Irvine
• Phys­i­cal Chem­istry — Free Online Video — Robert Field, MIT
• Prin­ci­ples of Chem­i­cal Sci­ence — Free Online Video — Course Mate­ri­als — MIT, Cather­ine Dren­nan and Eliz­a­beth Vogel Tay­lor

For a com­plete list of online cours­es, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For a list of online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams, vis­it 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies, which fea­tures pro­grams from our part­ners Cours­era, Udac­i­ty, Future­Learn and edX.

And if you’re inter­est­ed in Online Mini-Mas­ters and Mas­ter’s Degrees pro­grams from uni­ver­si­ties, see our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Student Poses as Professor, Kicks Off Chemistry Class at University of Rochester With a Prank

in Comedy, Random | September 8th, 2013

Patrick Adel­man is a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester pur­su­ing degrees in math­e­mat­ics and polit­i­cal sci­ence. He’s also, accord­ing to his LinkedIn pro­file, a mem­ber of the Cham­ber Boys, the uni­ver­si­ty’s radio com­e­dy group. And, oh yes, a pro­duc­tion intern at the Howard Stern show. That’s prob­a­bly all the set up you need to see what hap­pened in Dr. Ben­jamin Hafen­stein­er’s Chem­istry 131 class last week. Enjoy the rest of the week­end.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Ele­ments: Tom Lehrer Recites Chem­i­cal Ele­ments to the Tune of Gilbert & Sul­li­van

The Thanks­giv­ing Math Lec­ture: Real Meets Vir­tu­al

Pro­fes­sor Ronald Mal­lett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Cen­tu­ry … and He’s Not Kid­ding

Free Online Chem­istry Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

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18 (Free) Books Ernest Hemingway Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

in Literature | September 6th, 2013

In the 1930s, Ernest Hem­ing­way wrote a series of short pieces for Esquire mag­a­zine called the “Key West Let­ters.” One of those pieces, the 1935 “Remem­ber­ing Shoot­ing-Fly­ing” has an inter­est­ing premise—Hemingway claims that remem­ber­ing and writ­ing about shoot­ing are more plea­sur­able than shoot­ing itself. Or at least that he’d rather remem­ber shoot­ing pheas­ant than actu­al­ly shoot clay pigeons. In the next para­graph, this nos­tal­gia for good shoot­ing gets tied up with good books, such that the essay betrays its true desire—to be a med­i­ta­tion on read­ing. Before he catch­es him­self and gets back on top­ic, Hem­ing­way launch­es into a long par­en­thet­i­cal:

I would rather read again for the first time Anna Karen­i­na, Far Away and Long Ago, Bud­den­brooks, Wuther­ing Heights, Madame Bovary, War and Peace, A Sportsman’s Sketch­es, The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, Hail and Farewell, Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, Wines­burg, Ohio, La Reine Mar­got, La Mai­son Tel­li­er, Le Rouge et le Noire, La Char­treuse de Parme, Dublin­ers, Yeat’s Auto­bi­ogra­phies and a few oth­ers than have an assured income of a mil­lion dol­lars a year.

Is this hyper­bole? Lit­er­ary blus­ter? The gen­uine desire to encounter again “for the first time” the lit­er­a­ture that trans­formed and widened his world? Maybe all of the above. Bet­ter to stay home and remem­ber the greats—write about them and hope for a time when they’re new again—than to fill one’s time with mediocre and for­get­table books. At least that seems to be his argu­ment. And while I’m sure you have your own lists (feel free to add them to the com­ments sec­tion below!), some of you may wish to take a shot at Hemingway’s and savor those works that for him over­shad­owed near­ly every oth­er.

To that end, we’ve com­piled a list of the books he names, with links to online texts and audio, where avail­able. Enjoy them for the first time, or read (and lis­ten) to them once again. And remem­ber that the texts are per­ma­nent­ly housed in our col­lec­tions of Free Book Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Anna Karen­i­na by Leo Tol­stoy (eBook—Audio Book)

Far Away and Long Ago by W.H. Hud­son (eBook—Audio Book)

Bud­den­brooks by Thomas Mann (eBook)

Wuther­ing Heights by Emi­ly Bron­të (eBook—Audio Book)

Madame Bovary by Gus­tave Flaubert (eBook—Audio Book)

War and Peace by Leo Tol­stoy (eBook—Audio Book)

A Sportsman’s Sketch­es by Ivan Tur­genev (eBook)

The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov by Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky (eBook—Audio Book)

Hail and Farewell by George Moore (eBook)

Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn by Mark Twain (eBook—Audio Book)

Wines­burg, Ohio by Sher­wood Ander­son (eBook—Audio)

Queen Mar­got by Alexan­dre Dumas (eBook)

La Mai­son Tel­li­er by Guy de Mau­pas­sant (eBook)

The Red and the Black by Stend­hal (eBook—Audio Book)

La Char­treuse de Parme by Stend­hal (eBook)

Dublin­ers by James Joyce (eBook—Audio Book)

Rever­ies over Child­hood and Youth by William But­ler Yeats (eBook)

The Trem­bling of the Veil by William But­ler Yeats (eBook)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Ernest Hem­ing­way Writes of His Fas­cist Friend Ezra Pound: “He Deserves Pun­ish­ment and Dis­grace” (1943)

Ernest Hem­ing­way to F. Scott Fitzger­ald: “Kiss My Ass”

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

via Lists of Note

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

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Watch The Amazing 1912 Animation of Stop-Motion Pioneer Ladislas Starevich, Starring Dead Bugs

in Animation, Film | September 5th, 2013

Last week we fea­tured 1937’s The Tale of the Fox, the crown­ing glo­ry of inven­tive Russ­ian film­mak­er Ladis­las Stare­vich’s work in pup­pet ani­ma­tion. But he did­n’t always shoot pup­pets as we know them; at the dawn of his career — and thus the dawn of Russ­ian ani­ma­tion — he had to make use of what lay close at hand. Today we go back a cou­ple decades fur­ther, to the time when Stare­vich (then known, before his immi­gra­tion to Paris, as Władysław Starewicz) worked not as an ani­ma­tor but as the direc­tor of Kovno, Lithua­ni­a’s Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. Inter­est­ed in film­ing noc­tur­nal stag bee­tles but unable to get a per­for­mance out of them under film lights, he hit upon the idea of shoot­ing not liv­ing insects but dead ones, their legs replaced with wire which he could repo­si­tion frame-by-frame. The result? Stare­vich’s ear­ly, still-enter­tain­ing shorts like 1911’s The Ant and the Grasshop­per (also known as The Drag­on­fly and the Ant) at the top.

But you haven’t tru­ly expe­ri­enced dead-bug ani­ma­tion until you’ve seen The Cam­era­man’s Revenge, just above. Stare­vich made it in 1912, by which time his ani­ma­tion skills had devel­oped to the point that each play­er moves in a man­ner both real­is­ti­cal­ly bug­like (some con­tem­po­rary view­ers mis­took them for trained insects mov­ing in real time) and par­o­d­i­cal­ly evoca­tive of human char­ac­ters. Slate’s Joan New­berg­er describes the plot of this “com­ic melo­dra­ma in metic­u­lous­ly detailed minia­ture sets” as fol­lows: “We meet a bee­tle cou­ple, Mr. and Mrs. Zhukov (zhuk means bee­tle in Russ­ian), both of whom are car­ry­ing on extra­mar­i­tal affairs. Zhukov wins the affec­tions of a drag­on­fly cabaret dancer, but flies into a rage when he comes home to dis­cov­er his wife in the ‘arms’ of an artist (also played by a bee­tle).” But the plot thick­ens, and this seem­ing­ly sim­ple (if obvi­ous­ly com­plex in craft, espe­cial­ly for the time) tale even uses a bit of cin­e­ma-with­in-cin­e­ma at its denoue­ment. Starewicz made ear­ly stop-motion for sure, but he did­n’t make the ear­li­est. Smithsonian.com has a post on that, cit­ing the 1902 Thomas Edi­son-pro­duced Fun in a Bak­ery Shop as the first sur­viv­ing exam­ple — but, alas, a bug­less one.

Stare­vich’s films can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Look under Ani­ma­tion.

via Slate’s Vault Blog

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

The Mas­cot, Pio­neer­ing Stop Ani­ma­tion from Wla­dys­law Starow­icz

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

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