What Can Philosophy Do For You? Higher Test Scores, Better Jobs, Bigger Pay (Among Other Things)

in Philosophy | August 15th, 2013

What can phi­los­o­phy do for you? The ques­tion is per­haps bet­ter asked this way. What can’t it do for you?

Head over to this web site cre­at­ed by Tomás Bog­a­r­dus, a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Pep­per­dine, and you’ll learn why phi­los­o­phy can answer big ques­tions (we all know that), but also improve your test scores on the LSAT, GRE and GMAT, and then make you more employ­able and bet­ter com­pen­sat­ed in the work­place. Yes, rig­or­ous think­ing can do that.

If you’re won­der­ing which phi­los­o­phy grads have actu­al­ly made a dent in the world, here’s a list of play­ers and yet anoth­er list. They include names like: George Soros, the Karl Pop­per dis­ci­ple who sin­gle­hand­ed­ly broke the Bank of Eng­land (missed the course on ethics, I guess); Phil Jack­son, the zen mas­ter who  led 11 bas­ket­ball teams to NBA cham­pi­onships; Car­ly Fio­r­i­na, the first woman to become the CEO of a For­tune 20 com­pa­ny; and Vaclav Hav­el, the play­wright who lat­er became pres­i­dent of Czecho­slo­va­kia.

If you want to start liv­ing the exam­ined life too, we’d sug­gest get­ting start­ed with our col­lec­tion of 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, and oth­er­wise explor­ing relat­ed cours­es in our col­lec­tion of 750 Free Cours­es Online.

via Leit­er Reports

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

Eric Clapton’s Favorite Guitar Solo: Duane Allman on Wilson Pickett’s 1968 Cover of the Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’

in Music | August 15th, 2013

Ask a group of gui­tarists to name their favorite gui­tar solo, and there’s a pret­ty good chance some­one will men­tion Eric Clap­ton’s solo on the live record­ing of “Cross­roads,” from Cream’s 1968 Wheel’s of Fire album. So then, whose solo does Eric Clap­ton like? On more than one occa­sion he has sin­gled out Duane All­man’s break­through per­for­mance on Wil­son Pick­et­t’s R & B cov­er of the Bea­t­les’ “Hey Jude.”

In late 1968 All­man was about 22 years old and had not yet formed the All­man Broth­ers Band. Eager to make a name for him­self, he showed up at Rick Hal­l’s now-leg­endary FAME Stu­dios in Mus­cle Shoals, Alaba­ma, to offer his ser­vices as a ses­sion gui­tarist. Hall told All­man he already had more gui­tar play­ers than he could use. All­man asked if he could just hang around the stu­dio and help out if the need should ever arise. “I mean, this was Duane,” Hall said to All­man’s biog­ra­ph­er Randy Poe. “He was hell-bent for star­dom and noth­ing was going to stop him.”

Hall let the young gui­tarist hang around, and before long he was play­ing on a few ses­sions with Clarence Carter.  Hall liked what he heard, and All­man’s cru­cial moment arrived short­ly after­ward, when the for­mer Stax record­ing artist Wil­son Pick­ett showed up at the stu­dio unex­pect­ed­ly. As Poe writes in his book Sky­dog: The Duane All­man Sto­ry,

“Pick­ett came into the stu­dio,” says Hall, “and I said, ‘We don’t have any­thing to cut.’ We did­n’t have a song. Duane was there, and he came up with an idea. By this time he’d kind of bro­ken the ice and become my guy. So Duane said, ‘Why don’t we cut “Hey Jude”?’ I said, ‘That’s the most pre­pos­ter­ous thing I ever heard. It’s insan­i­ty. We’re gonna cov­er the Bea­t­les? That’s crazy!’ And Pick­ett said, ‘No, we’re not gonna do it.’ I said, ‘Their sin­gle’s gonna be Num­ber 1. I mean, this is the biggest group in the world!’ And Duane said, ‘That’s exact­ly why we should do it — because [the Bea­t­les sin­gle] will be Num­ber 1 and they’re so big. The fact that we would cut the song with a black artist will get so much atten­tion, it’ll be an auto­mat­ic smash.’ That made all the sense in the world to me. So I said, ‘Well, okay. Let’s do it.’

The orig­i­nal Bea­t­les ver­sion of “Hey Jude” is over sev­en min­utes long. Pick­ett was deter­mined to keep his ver­sion short­er, to make it suit­able for radio play. At four min­utes long, it was still more than a minute longer than the aver­age pop­u­lar song from that era. Most of the extra time is tak­en up by All­man’s explo­sive rock and roll-style gui­tar solo. “From the moment Duane plays the first lick ten sec­onds into the coda,” writes Poe, “until the song fades out over a minute lat­er, it is entire­ly his show. The back­ground vocal­ists are singing those famil­iar ‘na-na-na-na’s’ — but it’s all for naught. Rick Hall has pushed them so far down in the mix, they are mere­ly ambiance. Absolute­ly noth­ing mat­ters but Duane’s gui­tar.” When it was over, every­one rushed to hear the play­back. Hall was so excit­ed he picked up the tele­phone and called Atlantic Records pro­duc­er and exec­u­tive Jer­ry Wexler, who had sent Pick­ett to Mus­cle Shoals. Writes Poe:

Hall cranked up the vol­ume, held the receiv­er near the speak­ers, and played the record­ing all the way through. The gui­tar play­er, nat­u­ral­ly, blew Jer­ry Wexler away. “Who is he?” Wexler asked. Hall told Wexler that Pick­ett called him Sky Man. He said that Sky Man was a hip­pie from Flori­da who had talked Pick­ett into cut­ting the tune. Wexler per­sist­ed. “Who the hell is he?” “Name’s Duane All­man,” Rick replied.

Before Pick­ett chris­tened All­man “Sky Man,” the gui­tarist already had a nick­name he was fond of: “Dog.” In keep­ing with it, he always wore a dog col­lar wrapped around his right boot, like a spur. So the two nick­names were com­bined, and All­man was known there­after as “Sky­dog.”

Although Pick­ett record­ed “Hey Jude” against his will, he liked the result so much he made it the title song of his next album. And right about the time the Bea­t­les’ ver­sion was com­ing down after nine weeks at num­ber one on the Amer­i­can charts, Pick­et­t’s ver­sion start­ed going up. It peaked at num­ber 15 on the R & B chart and num­ber 23 on the pop chart. When Clap­ton first heard All­man’s solo on his car radio, he report­ed­ly pulled over to the side of the road to lis­ten. “I drove home and called Atlantic Records imme­di­ate­ly,” Clap­ton said. “I had to know who that was play­ing gui­tar and I had to know now.”

Lis­ten to the full song:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler on the Six Gui­tars That Shaped His Career

A Poet in Cinema: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Filmmaking and Life

in Film | August 15th, 2013

Those who find their way into the rich emo­tion­al and aes­thet­ic realm of Russ­ian film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky (see our col­lec­tion of Free Tarkovsky movies online) might at first assume that nobody can put the expe­ri­en­tial appeal of his cin­e­ma into words. The well-known writer and Tarkovsky fan Geoff Dyer demon­strat­ed this, in a sense, with his high­ly enter­tain­ing book Zona: A Book About a Film About a Jour­ney to a Room, which osten­si­bly describes the direc­tor’s acclaimed Stalk­er but actu­al­ly heads off in a thou­sand dif­fer­ent digres­sive direc­tions, all of them dri­ven by the writer’s appre­ci­a­tion for the movie. Pic­tures like Stalk­er, Solaris, Nos­tal­ghia, or The Mir­ror may set off with­in you a range of reac­tions to film you’d nev­er thought pos­si­ble, but would­n’t that only make them more dif­fi­cult to talk about? Rarely do the much-dis­cussed musi­cal rather than intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ties of cin­e­ma as an art form seem as rel­e­vant as when you watch Tarkovsky; the old line com­par­ing writ­ing about music to danc­ing about archi­tec­ture comes to mind.

But Tarkovsky him­self thought of film as sculp­ture, as he explains in the posthu­mous­ly pub­lished trea­tise on his craft Sculpt­ing in Time. The book has much to teach about the unique artis­tic poten­tial of the medi­um as this mas­ter under­stood it, and it reveals that, indeed, one can speak cogent­ly about Tarkovsky, and nobody can do it more cogent­ly than Tarkovsky him­self. This abil­i­ty he also dis­plays in the doc­u­men­tary Voy­age in Time, from which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured a clip of his advice to young film­mak­ers. Here we have a less-seen por­trait, but one that makes a sim­i­lar­ly thor­ough exam­i­na­tion, with inter­views, drama­ti­za­tions, and his­tor­i­cal footage, of the auteur’s real­i­ty: Donatel­la Baglivo’s 1983 Tarkovsky: A Poet in Cin­e­ma. (Watch it online here.) From Baglivo’s short but choice prompts, Tarkovsky expounds on not just his life and work but the essen­tial impor­tance of fight­ing, the con­cep­tu­al nonex­is­tence of hap­pi­ness, what child­hood deter­mines about us, wartime’s impact on fan­tasies, and the salu­tary effects of a year labor­ing in Siberia — all in the first fif­teen min­utes of this 140-minute argu­ment that film, at its most pow­er­ful, does­n’t just get you talk­ing about film; it demands that you talk about exis­tence itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Tarkovsky’s Solaris Revis­it­ed

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Very First Films: Three Stu­dent Films, 1956–1960

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.

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

in Art, Museums | August 14th, 2013

Not long ago, I went over to the Get­ty to see the J. Paul Get­ty Trust’s Pres­i­dent and CEO James Cuno in live con­ver­sa­tion with Pico Iyer, one of his favorite writ­ers as well as one of mine. Cuno, him­self the author of books like Whose Cul­ture?: The Promise of Muse­ums and the Debate over Antiq­ui­ties and Muse­ums Mat­ter: In Praise of the Ency­clo­pe­dic Muse­um, impressed me not only with his choice of inter­locu­tors but with the open, for­ward-think­ing nature he revealed dur­ing the talk. On Mon­day, he demon­strat­ed it again by pub­lish­ing anoth­er piece of writ­ing, very brief but unde­ni­ably impor­tant: his announce­ment of the Get­ty’s Open Con­tent Pro­gram, which has just made avail­able over 4600 high-res­o­lu­tion images of the muse­um’s col­lec­tion freely avail­able in the pub­lic domain. You can down­load them, mod­i­fy them, dis­trib­ute them — do what you please with them.

“Why open con­tent? Why now?” Cuno writes. “The Get­ty was found­ed on the con­vic­tion that under­stand­ing art makes the world a bet­ter place, and shar­ing our dig­i­tal resources is the nat­ur­al exten­sion of that belief. This move is also an edu­ca­tion­al imper­a­tive. Artists, stu­dents, teach­ers, writ­ers, and count­less oth­ers rely on art­work images to learn, tell sto­ries, exchange ideas, and feed their own cre­ativ­i­ty.” If you enjoy engag­ing in any of these pur­suits — which, as an Open Cul­ture habitué‎, I assume you do — begin by brows­ing all the Open Con­tent Pro­gram’s cur­rent­ly avail­able images, or check for down­load links on indi­vid­ual Get­ty col­lec­tion pages. This post includes three images straight from the Get­ty: Rem­brandt’s The Abduc­tion of Europa, Walk­er Evans’ A Bench in the Bronx on Sun­day, and a hel­met of Chal­cid­i­an type cir­ca 350–300 B.C. Cuno promis­es many more images to come, and mate­r­i­al from oth­er sources like the Get­ty’s inter­na­tion­al field projects. He’s got my antic­i­pa­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

40,000 Art­works from 250 Muse­ums, Now View­able for Free at the Redesigned Google Art Project

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

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

Art.sy Rolls Out Huge Archive of Fine-Art Images and an Intel­li­gent Art Appre­ci­a­tion Guide

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

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.

Jimi Hendrix Live at Woodstock: Historic Concert Captured on Film

in Film | August 14th, 2013

By the time Jimi Hen­drix arrived onstage at the Wood­stock Fes­ti­val on the morn­ing of August 18, 1969, the crowd of near­ly 500,000 peo­ple had dwin­dled to few­er than 40,000. Much of Max Yas­gur’s farm looked des­o­late. Lit­ter was strewn every­where and — hard as it may be to imag­ine — scores of peo­ple were stream­ing out as Hen­drix played.

The fes­ti­val was billed as “3 Days of Peace & Music,” but rain and oth­er prob­lems delayed Hen­drix’s fes­ti­val-clos­ing per­for­mance until 8:30 on the morn­ing of the fourth day, a Mon­day. The peo­ple who remained were exhaust­ed and wet and just wak­ing up. As fes­ti­val orga­niz­er Michael Lang writes in The Road to Wood­stock:

The mas­sive stage was sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed com­pared to how packed it had been all week­end with musi­cians, crew, and friends. Jimi, a red scarf around his head and wear­ing a white fringed and bead­ed leather shirt, looked almost like a mys­ti­cal holy man in med­i­ta­tion. His eyes closed, his head back, he’d merged with his music, his Strat — played upside down since he’s a lefty — his mag­ic wand. Though he was sur­round­ed by his band, he pro­ject­ed the feel­ing he was all alone.

As he almost rev­er­ent­ly start­ed the nation­al anthem, the bedrag­gled audi­ence, worn out and mud­dy, moved clos­er togeth­er. Those of us who’d bare­ly slept in three days were awak­ened, exhil­a­rat­ed by Jim­i’s song. One minute he was chord­ing the well-worn melody, the next he was reen­act­ing “bombs burst­ing in air” with feed­back and dis­tor­tion. It was bril­liant. A mes­sage of joy and love of coun­try, while at the same time an under­stand­ing of all the con­flict and tur­moil that’s torn Amer­i­ca apart.

The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence had bro­ken up a few weeks ear­li­er, with the depar­ture of bassist Noel Red­ding. At the fes­ti­val, Hen­drix and drum­mer Mitch Mitchell were joined by two musi­cians Hen­drix had worked with before he was famous — bassist Bil­ly Cox and gui­tarist Lar­ry Lee — along with con­ga play­ers Juma Sul­tan and Jer­ry Velez. The group had rehearsed for less than two weeks in Hen­drix’s rent­ed house near Wood­stock. They called them­selves “Gyp­sy Sun & Rain­bows,” or “Band of Gyp­sys” for short.

Hen­drix’s psy­che­del­ic per­for­mance of “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” was immor­tal­ized in Michael Wadleigh’s Acad­e­my Award-win­ning 1970 film, Wood­stock. A two-disc DVD cap­tur­ing most of Hen­drix’s near­ly two-hour set, called Jimi Hen­drix Live at Wood­stock, was released in 1999. The 57-minute film above is an abridged ver­sion. It begins with an excerpt from “Mes­sage to Love” (the song Hen­drix opened with) played over gen­er­al scenes of the fes­ti­val. It goes on to show Hen­drix onstage, play­ing the fol­low­ing songs:

1. “Fire”
2. “Izabel­la”
3. “Red House”
4. “Jam Back at the House”
5. “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”
6. “Star-Span­gled Ban­ner”
7. “Pur­ple Haze”
8. “Wood­stock Impro­vi­sa­tion”
9. “Vil­lano­va Junc­tion”

The songs in the film are not pre­sent­ed in the order Hen­drix played them in, and some have been omit­ted. Sec­ond gui­tarist Lar­ry Lee (who can be heard solo­ing in “Jam Back at the House”) sang lead vocals on “Mas­ter­mind” and “Gyp­sy Woman/Aware of Love,” but those songs have been cut from this ver­sion. Also left out are “Span­ish Cas­tle Mag­ic,” “Hear My Train a Comin’,” “Lover Man,” “Foxy Lady,” “Step­ping Stone,” and an encore of “Hey Joe.” Despite the omis­sions, this abridged ver­sion of Jimi Hen­drix Live at Wood­stock is a fas­ci­nat­ing and enjoy­able look at one of the great moments in rock and roll his­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

See Jimi Hendrix’s First TV Appear­ance, and His Last as a Back­ing Musi­cian (1965)

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

8‑Year-Old George Orwell Sends a Cute Picture and Error-Filled Letter To His Mother, 1911

in K-12, Literature | August 14th, 2013

It’s hard to imag­ine a time when George Orwell did­n’t exer­cise mas­ter­ful con­trol over the Eng­lish lan­guage. But if you go far enough back, you’ll find proof that every writer starts some­where. We all begin as mor­tals.

In Decem­ber 2, 1911, an 8‑year-old Eric Blair (the birth name of Orwell), wrote a let­ter to his moth­er, Ida, detail­ing his day-to-day affairs at St. Cypri­an’s School, a board­ing school in South­ern Eng­land. The let­ter is sweet for many rea­sons, not least because of the pho­net­ic spelling/misspellings that run through the note. The original/uncorrected text appears below. It’s one of many let­ters gath­ered on GeorgeOrwellNovels.com, and it’s also the very first let­ter pub­lished in a new vol­ume this week, George Orwell: A Life in Let­ters. The endear­ing let­ter was appar­ent­ly sent with a cute pic­ture enclosed. You can see it right above.

My dear Moth­er, I hope you are alright,

It was Mrs: Wilkes birth­day yes­ter­day, we had aufel fun after tea and played games all over the house. We all went for a walk to Beachy-Head.

I am third in Arith­mat­ick.
‘Its’ very dull today, and dosent look as if its going to be very warm. Thank you for your let­ter.

It is get­ting very near the end of the term, there are only eigh­teen days more. On Sat­ur­day evening we have dnc­ing, and I am going to say a piece of poet­ry, some of the boys sing.

Give my love to Father and Avril. Is Togo alright, We had the Oxford and Cam­bridge Match­es yes­ter­day. Cam­bridge won in the first and third, and the sec­ond did not have a Match. I am very glad Colonel Hall⁶ has giv­en me some stamps, he said he wold last year but I thought he had for­goten. Its a beast­ly wet day today all rain and cold.

I am very sor­ry to hear we had those beast­ly freaks of smelly white mice back.
I hope these arnt smelly one. if they arnt I shall like them.

From your love­ing son,
E. A. Blair.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm and 1984 as Free Audio Books

The Only Known Footage of George Orwell (Cir­ca 1921)

George Orwell Explains How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

Michel Foucault — Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Documentary Explores the Theorist’s Controversial Life and Philosophy

in Philosophy | August 14th, 2013

Michel Foucault’s col­or­ful life and huge­ly influ­en­tial work were both strug­gles against limitation—the lim­its of lan­guage, of social struc­tures and stul­ti­fy­ing his­tor­i­cal iden­ti­ties. As such, he man­aged to pro­voke schol­ars of every pos­si­ble per­sua­sion, since he called into ques­tion all pos­i­tive programs—the ancient impe­r­i­al, feu­dal, and lib­er­al humanist—while stead­fast­ly refus­ing to replace them with com­pre­hen­sive alter­na­tive sys­tems. And yet sys­tems, social insti­tu­tions of pow­er and dom­i­na­tion, were pre­cise­ly the prob­lem in Foucault’s esti­ma­tion. Through his tech­nique of raid­ing archives to pro­duce an “archae­ol­o­gy of knowl­edge,” Fou­cault showed how every insti­tu­tion is shot through with what William E. Con­nol­ly calls “arbi­trary… sys­temic cru­el­ty.”

The 1993 doc­u­men­tary film above, Michel Fou­cault: Beyond Good and Evil, explores the philoso­pher and his com­plex and con­tro­ver­sial life through inter­views with col­leagues and biog­ra­phers and re-enact­ments of Foucault’s sto­ried exploits in the Amer­i­can coun­ter­cul­ture. Biog­ra­ph­er James Miller points out that Fou­cault was “pre­oc­cu­pied with explor­ing states that were beyond nor­mal every­day expe­ri­ence… drugs, cer­tain forms of eroti­cism,” as a way to “recon­fig­ure the world and his place in it.” In this, says anthro­pol­o­gist Paul Rabi­now, Fou­cault sought to res­ur­rect the ques­tions that sober ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy had large­ly aban­doned: ques­tions about what it means to be human, beyond the social cat­e­gories we take as nat­ur­al and giv­en.

You can find Michel Fou­cault: Beyond Good and Evil list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

John Sear­le on Fou­cault and the Obscu­ran­tism in French Phi­los­o­phy

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

Alfred Hitchcock’s 50 Ways to Kill a Character (and Our Favorite Hitch Resources on the Web)

in Film | August 13th, 2013

Alfred Hitch­cock would have cel­e­brat­ed his 114th birth­day today. And, to mark the occa­sion, The Guardian has cre­at­ed a big info­graph­ic that delves into the themes and motifs that Hitch­cock obsessed over in his many films.  Above, we have a seg­ment show­ing the way Hitch­cock char­ac­ters die, and the num­ber of peo­ple who die accord­ing to par­tic­u­lar meth­ods. The best part is that you can down­load the info­graph­ic for free online.

Now time for us to dish up our favorite Hitch­cock mate­r­i­al found on the web. The best of the best:

Watch 20 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

François Truffaut’s Big 12 Hour Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock

37 Hitch­cock Cameos over 50 Years: All in One Video

36 Hitch­cock Mur­der Scenes Cli­max­ing in Uni­son

Sal­vador Dalí Cre­ates a Dream Sequence for Spell­bound, Hitchcock’s Psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic Thriller

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

The Three Punctuation Rules of Cormac McCarthy (RIP), and How They All Go Back to James Joyce

in Literature, Writing | August 13th, 2013

Cor­mac McCarthy has been—as one 1965 review­er of his first nov­el, The Orchard Keep­er, dubbed him—a “dis­ci­ple of William Faulkn­er.” He makes admirable use of Faulkner­ian traits in his prose, and I’d always assumed he inher­it­ed his punc­tu­a­tion style from Faulkn­er as well. But in his very rare 2008 tele­vised inter­view with Oprah Win­frey, McCarthy cites two oth­er antecedents: James Joyce and for­got­ten nov­el­ist MacKin­lay Kan­tor, whose Ander­son­ville won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955. Joyce’s influ­ence dom­i­nates, and in dis­cus­sion of punc­tu­a­tion, McCarthy stress­es that his min­i­mal­ist approach works in the inter­est of max­i­mum clar­i­ty. Speak­ing of Joyce, he says,

James Joyce is a good mod­el for punc­tu­a­tion. He keeps it to an absolute min­i­mum. There’s no rea­son to blot the page up with weird lit­tle marks. I mean, if you write prop­er­ly you shouldn’t have to punc­tu­ate.

So what “weird lit­tle marks” does McCarthy allow, or not, and why? Below is a brief sum­ma­ry of his stat­ed rules for punc­tu­a­tion:

1. Quo­ta­tion Marks:

McCarthy does­n’t use ’em. In his Oprah inter­view, he says MacKin­lay Kan­tor was the first writer he read who left them out. McCarthy stress­es that this way of writ­ing dia­logue requires par­tic­u­lar delib­er­a­tion. Speak­ing of writ­ers who have imi­tat­ed him, he says, “You real­ly have to be aware that there are no quo­ta­tion marks, and write in such a way as to guide peo­ple as to who’s speak­ing.” Oth­er­wise, con­fu­sion reigns.

2. Colons and semi­colons:

Care­ful McCarthy read­er Oprah says she “saw a colon once” in McCarthy’s prose, but she nev­er encoun­tered a semi­colon. McCarthy con­firms: “No semi­colons.”

Of the colon, he says: “You can use a colon, if you’re get­ting ready to give a list of some­thing that fol­lows from what you just said. Like, these are the rea­sons.” This is a spe­cif­ic occa­sion that does not present itself often. The colon, one might say, gen­u­flects to a very spe­cif­ic log­i­cal devel­op­ment, enu­mer­a­tion. McCarthy deems most oth­er punc­tu­a­tion uses need­less.

3. All oth­er punc­tu­a­tion:

Aside from his restric­tive rationing of the colon, McCarthy declares his styl­is­tic con­vic­tions with sim­plic­i­ty: “I believe in peri­ods, in cap­i­tals, in the occa­sion­al com­ma, and that’s it.” It’s a dis­ci­pline he learned first in a col­lege Eng­lish class, where he worked to sim­pli­fy 18th cen­tu­ry essays for a text­book the pro­fes­sor was edit­ing. Ear­ly mod­ern Eng­lish is noto­ri­ous­ly clut­tered with con­found­ing punc­tu­a­tion, which did not become stan­dard­ized until com­par­a­tive­ly recent­ly.

McCarthy, enam­ored of the prose style of the Neo­clas­si­cal Eng­lish writ­ers but annoyed by their over-reliance on semi­colons, remem­bers par­ing down an essay “by Swift or some­thing” and hear­ing his pro­fes­sor say, “this is very good, this is exact­ly what’s need­ed.” Encour­aged, he con­tin­ued to sim­pli­fy, work­ing, he says to Oprah, “to make it eas­i­er, not to make it hard­er” to deci­pher his prose. For those who find McCarthy some­times mad­den­ing­ly opaque, this state­ment of intent may not help clar­i­fy things much. But lovers of his work may find renewed appre­ci­a­tion for his stream­lined syn­tax.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Wern­er Her­zog Reads From Cor­mac McCarthy’s All the Pret­ty Hors­es

Sev­en Tips From William Faulkn­er on How to Write Fic­tion

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Breaks Down Five Com­mon Word Usage Mis­takes in Eng­lish

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

Listen to Charles Bukowski Poems Being Read by Bukowski Himself & the Great Tom Waits

in Poetry | August 13th, 2013

The out­spo­ken, ragged-edged poet and nov­el­ist Charles Bukows­ki entered our world 93 years ago this Fri­day, and pre­sum­ably began mak­ing trou­ble imme­di­ate­ly. Harper­Collins marks the occa­sion a bit ear­ly this year by releas­ing today eight Bukows­ki audio­books, the first of their kind. (Sign up for a Free Tri­al with Audible.com and you can get one for free.) Alas, Bukows­ki did­n’t live quite long enough to com­mit Post Office, South of No North, Fac­to­tum, Women, Ham on Rye, Hot Water Music, Hol­ly­wood, and Pulp to tape him­self. ”

It would be Bukows­ki him­self read­ing here, if the tech­nol­o­gy had advanced quick­ly enough,” Gal­l­ey­cat quotes pub­lish­er Daniel Halpern as say­ing, “but his voice rings clear and deep in these ren­di­tions – and from them, the genius of Bukows­ki flows forth.” Whether or not you plan to pur­chase these new audio­books, we offer you here a dose of Bukows­ki out loud.

At the top you’ll find one of Bukowski’s own read­ings, “The Secret of My Endurance,” a poem that appeared in Dan­gling In The Tourne­for­tia (1982). Down below you can hear Bukowski’s “Nir­vana” as read by Tom Waits, who pos­sess­es a voice famous­ly evoca­tive of unfor­giv­ing Amer­i­can life, one that per­haps sounds more like that of a Bukows­ki poem than Bukowski’s own. And if you missed our ear­li­er post fea­tur­ing Waits’ inter­pre­ta­tion of “The Laugh­ing Heart (mid­dle),” what more suit­able occa­sion could you have to cir­cle back and heed its bat­tered yet opti­mistic guid­ance: “Your life is your life. Don’t let it be clubbed into dank sub­mis­sion.”

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:

Charles Bukows­ki Sets His Amus­ing Con­di­tions for Giv­ing a Poet­ry Read­ing (1971)

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Charles Bukows­ki: Depres­sion and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Cre­ative Juices (NSFW)

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.