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

in Letters, Literature | June 27th, 2013

Gertrude Stein con­sid­ered her­self an exper­i­men­tal writer and wrote what The Poet­ry Foun­da­tion calls “dense poems and fic­tions, often devoid of plot or dia­logue,” with the result being that “com­mer­cial pub­lish­ers slight­ed her exper­i­men­tal writ­ings and crit­ics dis­missed them as incom­pre­hen­si­ble.” Take, for exam­ple, what hap­pened when Stein sent a man­u­script to Alfred C. Fifield, a Lon­don-based pub­lish­er, and received a rejec­tion let­ter mock­ing her prose in return. Accord­ing to Let­ters of Note, the man­u­script in ques­tion was pub­lished many years lat­er as her mod­ernist nov­el, The Mak­ing of Amer­i­cans: Being a His­to­ry of a Fam­i­ly’s Progress (1925). You can hear Stein read­ing a selec­tion from the nov­el below. Also find oth­er Gertrude Stein works in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books.

via Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Gertrude Stein Read Works Inspired by Matisse, Picas­so, and T.S. Eliot (1934)

Gertrude Stein Recites ‘If I Told Him: A Com­plet­ed Por­trait of Picas­so’

The Dead Authors Pod­cast: H.G. Wells Com­i­cal­ly Revives Lit­er­ary Greats with His Time Machine

James Joyce in Paris: “Deal With Him, Hem­ing­way!”

The Beatles Perform in a Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1964

in Comedy, Television | June 27th, 2013

In late April of 1964, Eng­land was cel­e­brat­ing the 400th birth­day of William Shake­speare. At the same time, “Beat­le­ma­nia” was in full swing. And for a brief moment, two of Britain’s cul­tur­al trea­sures inter­sect­ed when the Bea­t­les per­formed in a play­ful send-up of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream.

The sketch was record­ed in Lon­don on April 28, 1964. Only the month before, the Bea­t­les had made their Amer­i­can debut on the Ed Sul­li­van Show. The Shake­speare­an spoof was part of a one-hour British TV spe­cial called “Around the Bea­t­les.” It’s from the play-with­in-a-play in Act 5, Scene 1 of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, in which a group of actors make a mess of the clas­sic Pyra­mus and This­be sto­ry from Ovid’s Meta­mor­phoses.

Pyra­mus and This­be, a source of inspi­ra­tion for Shake­speare’s Romeo and Juli­et, are a pair of star-crossed lovers whose feud­ing par­ents for­bid them from see­ing one anoth­er. They live next-door to each oth­er but are sep­a­rat­ed by walls. Through a crack in one wall they whis­per their love and make plans to meet on a moon­lit night under a mul­ber­ry tree. This­be arrives first, only to see a lion with blood drip­ping from its mouth after eat­ing its prey. Ter­ri­fied, she drops her veil and runs. Pyra­mus arrives soon after­ward and sees both the blood and the veil. He assumes the lion has killed This­be, so he falls on his sword and dies. This­be returns and finds Pyra­mus dead. She takes his sword and kills her­self.

In the sil­ly Bea­t­les sketch, Paul McCart­ney plays Pyra­mus, John Lennon plays This­be, Ringo Starr plays the Lion and George Har­ri­son plays Moon­shine. When Lennon was asked why he took the role of the maid­en, he said, “Because if any­one likes dress­ing up more stu­pid than the rest, I enjoy it, you know. I was asked to do it because they thought I had the deep­er voice.”

via Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shake­speare­an Mode

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Find Shake­speare’s Col­lect­ed Works in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books Col­lec­tions

Down­load Shake­speare Cours­es from our Col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es

Helen Keller & Annie Sullivan Appear Together in Moving 1930 Newsreel

in History | June 27th, 2013

Helen Keller was born on this day in 1880, some 133 years ago. If you don’t know the Helen Keller sto­ry, you can watch The Mir­a­cle Work­er below, the 1962 film star­ring Pat­ty Duke and Anne Ban­croft. You’ll learn about how Keller, at 19 months, con­tract­ed a dis­ease — either scar­let fever or menin­gi­tis, it’s still not clear — that left her deaf and blind. You’ll also learn how Annie Sul­li­van, her beloved teacher, taught her to com­mu­ni­cate by spelling words into her hand. Their rela­tion­ship would last 49 years. And you’ll dis­cov­er how Keller became the first deaf­blind per­son to earn a Bach­e­lor of Arts degree, en route to becom­ing an activist, author and over­all source of inspi­ra­tion. In the clip above, filmed rough­ly 83 years ago, Helen Keller and Annie Sul­li­van appear in the flesh. Cap­tured in an old news­reel, Sul­li­van explains how Keller learned to talk and, in the final line, Helen mov­ing­ly declares, “I am not dumb now!” Find more Helen Keller vin­tage footage below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

Helen Keller Pays a Vis­it to Martha Graham’s Dance Stu­dio Cir­ca 1954

Watch a Surprisingly Moving Performance of John Cage’s 1948 “Suite for Toy Piano”

in Music | June 27th, 2013

At some point dur­ing his 1948 mania for the Rube Gold­berg pieces of pre­pared pianos, John Cage, inspired by min­i­mal­ist French com­pos­er Erik Satie, decid­ed to turn back to melody for a moment. Still build­ing with a dull per­cus­sive tonal palate, he wrote sole­ly for the key­board this time… of a toy piano. “Suite for Toy Piano” con­sists of five short move­ments, none over two min­utes. Cage liked the abra­sive chim­ing and lim­it­ed range of the instru­ment.

The piece can be mechan­i­cal or struc­tural­ly immer­sive, depend­ing on the play­er. In the per­for­mance above, Por­tuguese pianist Joana Gama achieves the lat­ter effect, imbu­ing the com­po­si­tion with dynam­ic ener­gy many oth­er ren­di­tions lack, though I do not know whether Cage intend­ed a flat affect. In any case, he tend­ed to appre­ci­ate impro­visato­ry takes on his work at all times, so he wouldn’t have been both­ered.

The sur­round­ing audience—shuffling, whis­per­ing, wheezing—only add to Gama’s inten­si­ty. The event marked the 2011 open­ing of the Cen­tre for Art and Archi­tec­ture Affairs in Guimarães, Por­tu­gal.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage Plays Ampli­fied Cac­ti and Plant Mate­ri­als with a Feath­er (1984)

John Cage Unbound: A New Dig­i­tal Archive Pre­sent­ed by The New York Pub­lic Library

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

The Con­tro­ver­sial Sounds of Silence: John Cage’s 4’33″ Per­formed by the BBC Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

The Art of Punk Presents a New Documentary on The Dead Kennedys and Their Gritty Aesthetics

in Art, Music | June 26th, 2013

Last week, Col­in Mar­shall told you all about The Art of Punk, the new doc­u­men­tary series from the Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art in Los Ange­les. This week, the series con­tin­ues with a new video look­ing at The Dead Kennedys and the artist behind their strik­ing art­work, Win­ston Smith. A “punk art sur­re­al­ist” known for his “hand-carved” col­lages, Smith is per­haps best known for cre­at­ing The Dead Kennedys’ icon­ic logo and oth­er arrest­ing images (see a slideshow here). The new MOCA video cov­ers all of that, and then some, above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Punk Meets High Fash­ion in Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Exhi­bi­tion PUNK: Chaos to Cou­ture

Hen­ry Rollins Remem­bers the Life-Chang­ing Deci­sion That Brought Him From Häa­gen-Dazs to Black Flag

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

Free Business Courses: Discover Our New Collection (and Offer Your Own Suggestions)

in Business, Online Courses | June 26th, 2013

Almost dai­ly, read­ers write us and ask for cours­es that can deep­en their pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tion. Some want to learn new tech skills. Oth­ers want to bone up on sta­tis­tics and cal­cu­lus. And still oth­ers want to learn about project man­age­ment. We decid­ed to address this by cre­at­ing a new col­lec­tion of Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es. So far, we’ve com­piled a list of 145 busi­ness-ori­ent­ed cours­es and relat­ed resources. Some cours­es come from lead­ing  uni­ver­si­ties. Oth­ers come from gov­ern­ment, non-prof­its and the occa­sion­al MOOC provider. The list is fair­ly rich. But we will keep adding to it over time. If you know of a great course (or a great busi­ness resource that’s free) please tell us in the com­ments below, or send us an email via this page. We would love to ben­e­fit from your col­lec­tive wis­dom. And you will be help­ing many peo­ple in the process, dur­ing a tough eco­nom­ic time. Vis­it: 145 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es.

The Atlas of True Names Restores Modern Cities to Their Middle Earth-ish Roots

in Life, Random, Travel | June 26th, 2013

I was born in the City of the Flow­land Peo­ple, made my way to Stink Onion upon reach­ing matu­ri­ty, then onward to New Yew Tree Vil­lage where I have lived for the last 217 moons.

Look up some of your key co-ordi­nates in The Atlas of True Names and you too can have a per­son­al his­to­ry as myth­ic-sound­ing as mine. The maps—for the UK, USA, Cana­da, and World—replace mod­ern geo­graph­i­cal names with the orig­i­nal ety­mo­log­i­cal roots of cities, coun­tries, and bod­ies of water, trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. Their web­site picks the “Sahara desert” to illus­trate the true name selec­tion process. Their cho­sen label “The Tawny One” has its basis in es-sahra, trans­lat­ed from the Ara­bic as “the fawn col­ored desert”. It would be inter­est­ing to learn how many pro­fes­sion­al trans­la­tors lent a hand with the ety­mo­log­i­cal pars­ing. There are a lot of lan­guages in this world and we all know the hav­oc Google Trans­late can wreak.

Mar­ried car­tog­ra­phers (and Lord of the Rings fans) Stephan Hormes and Silke Peust acknowl­edge that there could be alter­nates to their trans­la­tions. This should come as a relief to the civic boost­ers of Philadel­phia. Quib­blers will no doubt enjoy tak­ing issue with Hormes and Peust’s choic­es. Hope­ful­ly, any result­ing inter­net brawls will take place on a higher—and dustier—plateau than those where vul­tures pick hap­less celebri­ties to shreds.

Order one of these maps and pack it along on your sum­mer road trip. Even if younger fam­i­ly mem­bers can’t be both­ered to learn how to nav­i­gate with­out a phone, the nar­ra­tive­ly rich names are sure to leav­en those long hours in the car. (How bad­ly do you have to go, Jason? Can you hold out until Table or should Dad­dy pull over in the Val­ley of the Dark­land Dweller?) 

It’s liv­ing his­to­ry in trav­el ver­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Down­load Eight Free Lec­tures on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

Willie Nel­son Audi­tions for The Hob­bit Film Sequel, Turns 80 Today

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books includ­ing the increas­ing­ly obso­lete Zinester’s Guide to NYC and No Touch Mon­key! and Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late. Fol­low her @AyunHallliday

Louis Armstrong’s 1964 Interview with a Pair of Intrepid Kid Reporters

in Animation, Music, Radio | June 26th, 2013

In the sum­mer of 1964, two young boys from the North Shore sub­urbs of Chica­go took a tape recorder and set out to inter­view jazz leg­end Louis Arm­strong for their high school radio sta­tion. Arm­strong was play­ing a con­cert at the Ravinia Fes­ti­val in High­land Park, not far from the boys’ school in Win­net­ka. He agreed to an inter­view, and as a group of pro­fes­sion­al reporters from the city’s major news out­lets wait­ed impa­tient­ly out­side his dress­ing room door, Arm­strong spent 20 min­utes answer­ing ques­tions for a lit­tle 10-watt FM radio sta­tion.

The sto­ry is told above, in the lat­est install­ment of PBS’s ongo­ing ani­ma­tion project with Blank on Blank, a group that brings unheard inter­views back to life. Michael Ais­ner, who was 15 when he met Arm­strong, and his friend James R. Stein, who was 14, recount their adven­ture and play a few high­lights from the inter­view. Arm­strong explains how he got the nick­name “Satch­mo” and talks a lit­tle about his Dick­en­sian child­hood and how he learned to play the coro­net in the Home for Col­ored Waifs in New Orleans. He talks about the need for prac­tic­ing hard every day, and about the tal­ent that was his tick­et out of the slums. “You’ve got to be good,” Arm­strong says, “or bad as the dev­il.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Louis Arm­strong and His All Stars Live in Bel­gium, 1959

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong Per­form­ing Live in Con­cert (Copen­hagen, 1933)

Muham­mad Ali Plans to Fight on Mars in Lost 1966 Inter­view with Child Reporter

What Do Most Philosophers Believe? A Wide-Ranging Survey Project Gives Us Some Idea

in Philosophy | June 26th, 2013

What do most philoso­phers believe? The ques­tion may only inter­est oth­er philosophers—and when it comes to such eso­teric con­cerns as the “ana­lyt­ic syn­thet­ic dis­tinc­tion,” this is prob­a­bly true. But when it comes to the big issues that have giv­en every thought­ful per­son at least one sleep­less night, or the ques­tions reg­u­lar­ly explored by spec­u­la­tive fic­tions like Star Trek or zom­bie movies, the rest of us might sit up and take notice.

Two con­tem­po­rary philoso­phers, David Chalmers and David Bour­get, decid­ed to find out where their col­leagues stood on 30 dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal issues by con­struct­ing a rig­or­ous sur­vey that end­ed up account­ing for the views of over 3,000 pro­fes­sors, grad­u­ate stu­dents, and inde­pen­dent thinkers. Most of the respon­dents were affil­i­at­ed with pres­ti­gious phi­los­o­phy depart­ments in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, though sev­er­al con­ti­nen­tal Euro­pean depart­ments are also rep­re­sent­ed.

Some semi-famous names come up in a perusal of the list of pub­lic respon­dents, like A.C. Grayling and Mas­si­mo Pigli­uc­ci. For the most part, how­ev­er, the sur­vey group rep­re­sents the rank-and-file, toil­ing away as teach­ers, thinkers, writ­ers, and researchers at col­leges across the West­ern world. You sur­vey geeks out there can dig deeply into Chalmers and Bourget’s detailed account­ing of their method­ol­o­gy here. But for a quick and dirty sum­ma­ry, let’s take a cou­ple of gen­er­al cat­e­gories and look at the results.

Meta­physics:

The issues that fall under this head­ing broad­ly involve ques­tions about what exists, and why and how it does. Here’s a break­down of some of the big­gies:

• God: athe­ism 72.8%; the­ism 14.6%; oth­er 12.6%

Grant­ed, this is an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. Pop­u­lar notions of these cat­e­gories don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly cor­re­spond to more sub­tle dis­tinc­tions among philoso­phers, who may be strong or weak athe­ists (or the­ists), or hold some ver­sion of deism, agnos­ti­cism, or none of the above.

•  Free will: com­pat­i­bil­ism 59.1%; lib­er­tar­i­an­ism 13.7%; no free will 12.2%; oth­er 14.9%

Com­pat­i­bil­ism, the major­i­ty view here, is the the­o­ry that we can choose our actions to some degree, and to some degree they are deter­mined by pri­or events. Lib­er­tar­i­an­ism (relat­ed to, but not syn­ony­mous with, the polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy) claims that all of our actions are freely cho­sen.

• Metaphi­los­o­phy: nat­u­ral­ism 49.8%; non-nat­u­ral­ism 25.9%; oth­er 24.3%

Nat­u­ral­ism, accord­ing to the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, is “the idea or belief that only nat­ur­al (as opposed to super­nat­ur­al or spir­i­tu­al) laws and forces oper­ate in the world,” or “the belief that noth­ing exists beyond the nat­ur­al world.” Note that meta­phys­i­cal nat­u­ral­ism needs to be dis­tin­guished from method­olog­i­cal nat­u­ral­ism, which near­ly all schol­ars and sci­en­tists embrace.

• Abstract objects: Pla­ton­ism 39.3%; nom­i­nal­ism 37.7%; oth­er 23.0%

This dis­tinc­tion gets at whether abstrac­tions like geom­e­try or the laws of log­ic exist in some immutable form “out there” in the uni­verse (as Pla­ton­ic ideas) or whether they are “nom­i­nal,” no more than con­ve­nient for­mu­las we cre­ate and apply to our obser­va­tions. It’s a debate at least as old as the ancient Greeks.

Per­son­al Iden­ti­ty:

In this gen­er­al cat­e­go­ry, we deal with ques­tions about what it means to be a per­son and how we can exist as seem­ing­ly coher­ent indi­vid­u­als over time in a world in con­stant flux. Let’s take two fun exam­ples that deal with these quan­daries, shall we?

• Tele­trans­porter: sur­vival 36.2%; death 31.1%; oth­er 32.7%

Here, we’re deal­ing with a thought exper­i­ment pro­posed by Derek Parfit (one of the par­tic­i­pants in the sur­vey) that pret­ty much takes the Star Trek trans­porter tech­nol­o­gy (or the hor­ror ver­sion in The Fly) and asks whether the trans­port­ed individual—completely dis­in­te­grat­ed and recon­sti­tut­ed some­where else—is the same per­son as the orig­i­nal. In oth­er words, can a “per­son” sur­vive this process or does the indi­vid­ual die and a new one take its place? The ques­tion hinges on ideas about a “soul” or “spir­it” that exists apart from the mate­r­i­al body and asks whether or not we are noth­ing more than very spe­cif­ic arrange­ments of mat­ter and ener­gy.

• Zom­bies: con­ceiv­able but not meta­phys­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble 35.6%; meta­phys­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble 23.3%; incon­ceiv­able 16.0%; oth­er 25.1%

Zom­bies are every­where. Try to escape them! You can’t. Their preva­lence in pop­u­lar cul­ture is mir­rored in the phi­los­o­phy world, where zom­bies have long served as metaphors for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a pure (and rav­en­ous) bod­i­ly exis­tence, devoid of con­scious self-aware­ness. The prospect may be as fright­en­ing as the zom­bies of the Walk­ing Dead, but is it a real pos­si­bil­i­ty? A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of philoso­phers seem to think so.

As I said, these are just a few of the issues Chalmers and Bourget’s sur­vey queries. Physi­cist Sean Car­roll has a quick sum­ma­ry of all of the results on his blog, and Chalmers and Bour­get have made all of their data and analy­sis very trans­par­ent and freely avail­able at their Philpa­pers site. David Chalmers, who spe­cial­izes in phi­los­o­phy of mind and looks like one of Spinal Tap’s doomed drum­mers, spills the beans on his ideas of con­scious­ness in the video at the top.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Do Physi­cists Believe in God?

50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God

Daniel Den­nett and Cor­nel West Decode the Phi­los­o­phy of The Matrix in 2004 Film

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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

Explore the Massive Stanley Kubrick Exhibit, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Until June 30

in Film | June 25th, 2013

No Amer­i­can film­mak­er com­mands such over­whelm­ing crit­i­cal respect and pop­u­lar acclaim as Stan­ley Kubrick. A hero to art house film stu­dents and every­day lovers of sci-fi, hor­ror, and war movies, Kubrick’s metic­u­lous crafts­man­ship and vision­ary reimag­in­ing of genre films are leg­endary, and his genius is cur­rent­ly on dis­play at the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art. Or at least it is until the end of the month.

The trav­el­ing Kubrick exhib­it, housed at LACMA since Novem­ber, will move on June 30, so if you’re in the area, don’t delay. The Kubrick exhib­it cov­ers his work as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for Look mag­a­zine in the 1940s through his film­mak­ing achieve­ments from the 50s to the 90s. LACMA fur­ther describes the col­lec­tion on its site:

His films are rep­re­sent­ed through a selec­tion of anno­tat­ed scripts, pro­duc­tion pho­tog­ra­phy, lens­es and cam­eras, set mod­els, cos­tumes, and props. In addi­tion, the exhi­bi­tion explores Napoleon and The Aryan Papers, two projects that Kubrick nev­er com­plet­ed, as well as the tech­no­log­i­cal advances devel­oped and uti­lized by Kubrick and his team.

If you can’t make it to L.A., a YouTube user has cre­at­ed the won­der­ful three-part video tour of the exhib­it above, set to clas­sic Kubrick-ian film scores. Also, be sure to flip through the 100 pho­tos of the exhib­it—includ­ing shots of famous props, Kubrick’s cam­eras, lens­es, and scripts, and his director’s chair—at Jamie & Adam Test­ed.

Note: In con­junc­tion with the exhi­bi­tion, LACMA has cre­at­ed a free app for iPhone, iPad and Android. It “fea­tures pho­tographs, script notes, an inter­ac­tive time­line of Kubrick­’s career, and orig­i­nal inter­views with Stan Dou­glas, Elvis Mitchell, Chris Nolan, Ter­ry Semel, David Slade and Dou­glas Trum­bull about the direc­tor’s life and lega­cy. Excerpts from a rare 1965 inter­view with Kubrick, cour­tesy of Jere­my Bern­stein, are also includ­ed.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Jazz Pho­tog­ra­phy and The Film He Almost Made About Jazz Under Nazi Rule

Room 237: New Doc­u­men­tary Explores Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing and Those It Obsess­es

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