Two Beautifully-Crafted Russian Animations of Chekhov’s Classic Children’s Story “Kashtanka”

in Animation, Literature | April 22nd, 2013

Long before mas­ters of the short sto­ry like Ray­mond Carv­er and Flan­nery O’Connor com­mand­ed the respect of cre­ative writ­ing teach­ers every­where, Anton Chekhov’s spare, man­nered sto­ries set the stan­dard for the form. Known for their sub­tle­ty and keen obser­va­tions of human weak­ness and social ills, the typ­i­cal Chekhov sto­ry nev­er boils over into melo­dra­ma but sim­mers, slow­ly push­ing ten­sions close to the sur­face of rou­tine inter­ac­tions with­out let­ting them break through and explode.

The sto­ry ani­mat­ed above, how­ev­er, is some­thing of an excep­tion to Chekhov’s domes­tic human dra­mas. “Kash­tan­ka” is a about a dog, and a good bit of it is told from her per­spec­tive. First pub­lished in 1884 as “In Bad Times,” the sto­ry was alleged­ly inspired by Chekhov’s love of the cir­cus. Chekhov wrote the sto­ry for chil­dren, so it’s fit­ting that it receive this Dis­ney-esque treat­ment (the open­ing scene remind­ed me of Gep­pet­to’s work­shop).

Russ­ian poster design­er and children’s book illus­tra­tor Mikhail Tsekhanovsky made the film in 1952, when car­toons were painstak­ing­ly hand-drawn cel by cel. Anoth­er Russ­ian ani­ma­tor, Natalia Orlo­va, takes advan­tage of 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy in her 2004 ren­der­ing of “Kash­tan­ka” below, but she does so in a unique way that inte­grates hand-paint­ed images; the flick­er­ing stop-motion resem­bles children’s book illus­tra­tions come to life. Along with the excel­lent sound design, her cap­ti­vat­ing style makes for a very dif­fer­ent visu­al­iza­tion of the sto­ry.

Note: You will need to click CC at the bot­tom of the video to launch the sub­ti­tles.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Gaiman

12 Ani­mat­ed Plays by William Shake­speare: Mac­beth, Oth­el­lo and Oth­er Great Tales Brought to Life

“The Me Bird” by Pablo Neru­da: An Ani­mat­ed Inter­pre­ta­tion

Three Inter­pre­ta­tions of Charles Bukowski’s Melan­choly Poem “Nir­vana”

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

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

in Film | April 22nd, 2013

Alfred Hitch­cock made so many time­less films, but Spell­bound, alas, has­n’t held up quite so com­fort­ably. Most of the prob­lem has to do with its theme: psy­cho­analy­sis, which enjoyed a trendy moment in the mid-for­ties and may have attained enough rel­e­vance at the time to dri­ve a plot, but now seems a rather weak engine. That era’s ther­a­py craze swept up pic­ture’s pro­duc­er, old-Hol­ly­wood titan David O. Selznick, with such force that he per­son­al­ly asked the direc­tor to take it on as a sub­ject. Hitch­cock grudg­ing­ly agreed, set­ting the pro­duc­tion gears turn­ing on Spell­bound. Selznick arranged for his own ther­a­pist to both act as the movie’s tech­ni­cal advis­er and to cause Hitch­cock a num­ber of on-set headaches. So if Spell­bound seems faint­ly un-Hitch­cock­ian, we can chalk it up part­ly to Selznick­’s psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic zeal, but some of the cred­it must also go to Sal­vador Dalí.

Hired to craft a dream sequence, the Span­ish sur­re­al­ist painter and film­mak­er report­ed­ly pro­duced over twen­ty min­utes of footage, four and a half min­utes of which appear in the clip above. “I can’t make out just what sort of a place it was,” Gre­go­ry Peck mut­ters, reclined on the ther­a­pist’s couch, as the shot dis­solves into his mind and into Dalí’s imagery. “It seemed to be a gam­bling house, but there weren’t any walls, just a lot of cur­tains with eyes paint­ed on them. A man was walk­ing around with a large pair of scis­sors, cut­ting all the drapes in half. And then a girl came in with hard­ly any­thing on and start­ed walk­ing around the gam­bling room, kiss­ing every­body.” Sure­ly those days offered no more ide­al can­di­date for the job of real­iz­ing such a vision than Dalí. The light­ly theremin-ed score comes from Mik­lós Rózsa, but Hitch­cock did­n’t like that either. Though the famous­ly con­trol­ling auteur may have found his pow­er com­pro­mised in its pro­duc­tion, Spell­bound does end up being a rare thing indeed in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma: dream sequences com­pelling enough not to put you to sleep.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 20 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

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

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

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 Surreal Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

in Comedy, Film | April 19th, 2013

To some fans of his not-exact­ly-a-sit­com Louie, Louis C.K. sim­ply appeared a few years ago, ful­ly formed and acclaimed by his peers as per­haps the most skilled, ded­i­cat­ed comedic crafts­men work­ing today. But he does have a past, stretch­ing back well beyond his voice role on the ani­mat­ed series Home Movies and his direc­tion of the film Pootie Tang, and he has offered up enter­tain­ing frag­ments of it online. Above you’ll find his ear­li­est known short film, Ice Cream. Begin watch­ing this black-and-white med­i­ta­tion on the vagaries of dis­af­fect­ed twen­tysome­thing love in the nineties — one which opens in a con­ve­nient store, no less — and you’ll imme­di­ate­ly think of Kevin Smith’s Clerks. But C.K. made Ice Cream in 1993, the year before Clerks came out, and it tilts in direc­tions even Smith would­n’t dare pre­dict, ulti­mate­ly arriv­ing at a mari­achi band-scored finale.

Just above, we have 1998’s Hel­lo There. In four min­utes, the film fol­lows a cata­ton­ic-look­ing fel­low (played by come­di­an Ron Lynch) wear­ing a poor­ly fit­ting suit and a cas­sette recorder around his neck as he makes his way through town. “Excuse me,” his machine says when he press­es its play but­ton, “do you have the cor­rect time?” A bystander ner­vous­ly answers. “Hel­lo there,” his speak­er blares to a bum doz­ing in a card­board box, “is that a new hat? You are a good guy.”

As the morn­ing con­tin­ues, we come to under­stand that this eccen­tric is not the only one of his kind. Below you can watch that same year’s Brunch, which throws the ver­bal­ly NSFW come­di­an Rick Shapiro into a sharply observed mid-morn­ing hud­dle of pon­tif­i­cat­ing senior cit­i­zens. These all come from Louis C.K.s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel, and indeed, C.K. pre­scient­ly made them in a form neat­ly suit­ed to the Youtube era, just as Louie has proven an ide­al artis­tic, intel­lec­tu­al, and finan­cial fit for the mod­ern cable tele­vi­sion land­scape.

Louis C.K.‘s short films: Ice Cream (1993), The Let­ter V (1998), The Leg­end of Willie Brown (1998), Ugly Revenge, Hijack­er (1998), Hel­lo There (1998), Brunch (1998), Per­sona Ne’ll Aqua (1999),Search­ing for Nixon

(via Metafil­ter)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

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.

Steel-Willed Hand Balancer Jaakko Tenhunen Explains Why Effort Brings the Most Satisfaction

in Life, Sports, Video - Arts & Culture | April 19th, 2013

Few of us pos­sess the phys­i­cal strength and even stee­l­i­er will to fol­low in the hand­prints of pro­fes­sion­al bal­ancer Jaakko Ten­hunen, but most of us have oth­er projects that could ben­e­fit from the sort of relent­less deter­mi­na­tion he brings to his work. “Effort, not com­fort, is what gives the most tan­gi­ble sense of sat­is­fac­tion,” he remarks in the voiceover above, as the cam­era cap­tures him sup­port­ing his entire body weight on a sin­gle palm, his face intense but not at all anguished. Reduce this ele­gant phi­los­o­phy to the far punchi­er “just do it,” and you stand to sell a lot of shoes.

As Ten­hunen knows first­hand, this sort of effort­ful pur­suit depends on dis­ci­pline and dai­ly prac­tice. Patience is also key, as suc­cess is cumu­la­tive, and dif­fi­cult to mea­sure in the ear­ly stages.

The stripped down aes­thet­ic of his per­for­mance does not nec­es­sar­i­ly make what he does look easy, so much as worth­while. If you are a fledg­ling hand bal­ancer, you may well find it dis­cour­ag­ing, but for those of us striv­ing to see oth­er goals through to com­ple­tion, Tehunen pro­vides a brac­ing visu­al metaphor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure

Con­for­mi­ty Isn’t a Recipe for Excel­lence: Wis­dom from George Car­lin & Steve Jobs (NSFW)

Meet Frank Catal­fu­mo, the Shoe­mak­er Who Has Been Mend­ing Souls in Brook­lyn Since 1945

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will be at tabling at the Brook­lyn Zine­fest this Sun­day. Imme­di­ate­ly there­after catch her per­form­ing the Com­plete His­to­ry of her long run­ning zine, the East Vil­lage Inky… in song, as part of Brook­lyn Brain Frame.

New Documentary Brings You Inside Africa’s Little-Known Punk Rock Scene

in Film, Music | April 19th, 2013

Punk rock has died a thou­sand deaths in the West.  Almost as soon as the mass media picked it up, punk split into sev­er­al hun­dred sub­species and spawned oth­er monoliths—post-punk, new wave, “alter­na­tive.” Giv­en that his­to­ry, it’s gen­er­al­ly assumed—a cou­ple gen­er­a­tions of sub­ur­ban mall­rats aside—that the orig­i­nal move­ment flashed and failed, over­tak­en by key­boards and drum machines, cor­po­rate greed and nar­cis­sism. But that his­to­ry is incom­plete. As a recent Guardian head­line pro­claims, punk rock is “alive and kick­ing in a repres­sive state near you.” The cause célèbre of inter­na­tion­al punk is, of course, Russia’s Pussy Riot, three of whose mem­bers were con­vict­ed of “hooli­gan­ism” and sent to labor camps. But dis­si­dent punk scenes thrive under the radar in many oth­er places hos­tile to dis­sent, such as Bur­ma, Indone­sia, and Chi­na.

And while the con­tem­po­rary phe­nom­e­non of glob­al punk makes for fas­ci­nat­ing news sto­ries, a new doc­u­men­tary, Punk in Africa, demon­strates that inter­na­tion­al punk rock is as old as the West­ern vari­ety. It just nev­er got the same press. In South Africa, short­ly after the 1976 Sowe­to Upris­ing, mul­ti-racial punk bands began to form, with names like Gay Marines, Nation­al Wake, and Scream­ing Foe­tus. Meet­ing and per­form­ing under the pall of Apartheid, these bands defied laws against racial mix­ing and braved con­stant harass­ment by police. As one mem­ber of Nation­al Wake says in the trail­er above, “the vice squad would vis­it us, some­times three times in one day.” He calls the racial ter­ri­to­ry the band had to nav­i­gate a “mine­field.”

A lot of the Afrop­unk fea­tured in the film is rem­i­nis­cent of the meet­ing of black and white sounds and musi­cians in Eng­land, espe­cial­ly in bands like The Clash, The Beat and The Spe­cials. Lat­er African ska bands like Hog Hog­gi­ty Hog and The Rudi­men­tals cer­tain­ly car­ry on that tra­di­tion. But many of the bands profiled—from South Africa, Zim­bab­we, and Mozambique—melded raw punk ener­gy with African polyrhythms and dis­tinc­tive local sounds and instru­men­ta­tion. Nation­al Wake pro­vides a good exam­ple of such hybridiza­tion. The live per­for­mance above even includes a drum solo—anathema to most West­ern punk rock.

Punk in Africa promis­es to add some nec­es­sary bal­ance to the slew of punk his­to­ries that focus only on Britain and the U.S.. In the inter­view above, one of the documentary’s direc­tors, Deon Maas, points out that the “punk thing in Africa” start­ed vir­tu­al­ly weeks after its U.K. cousin, first in imi­ta­tion, then as a true move­ment in its own right. Like the inter­na­tion­al punk scenes bur­geon­ing around the world today, it’s a move­ment that deserves to be heard.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

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

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing

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

Animations Revive Lost Interviews with David Foster Wallace, Jim Morrison & Dave Brubeck

in Animation, Music | April 19th, 2013

David Ger­lach left a com­fort­able job work­ing as a TV pro­duc­er to launch Blank on Blank, a mul­ti­me­dia non­prof­it with a sim­ple mis­sion — to curate jour­nal­ists’ for­got­ten inter­views with cul­tur­al icons, and then bring them back to life again, some­times as ani­mat­ed shorts. You can start enjoy­ing the fruit of Blank on Blank’s labors by watch­ing a series of web ani­ma­tions, recent­ly pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with PBS Dig­i­tal Stu­dios. Above, we’re start­ing you off with a four-minute ani­ma­tion of David Fos­ter Wal­lace reflect­ing on his ear­ly ten­nis days, the per­ils of per­fec­tion­ism, and his ten­den­cy to be a “gram­mar nazi” when teach­ing col­lege stu­dents — some­thing we’ve cov­ered here before. The inter­view orig­i­nal­ly aired on WNY­C’s Leonard Lopate Show in 1996, and you can lis­ten to the con­ver­sa­tion in its entire­ty here.

Next comes some mem­o­rable moments with Jim Mor­ri­son, the great singer-song­writer, who met with Vil­lage Voice writer Howard Smith back in Novem­ber, 1969. Going into the meet­ing, Smith sensed that things would­n’t be easy. He lat­er recalled, “I had a feel­ing that it was going to be a tough inter­view. I just kin­da had a feel­ing that … it was going to be tricky, and I said .… if things get real­ly dif­fi­cult with him, I’m gonna sug­gest that we arm wres­tle.” As you’ll hear, Smith made his great arm-wrestling escape an inevitabil­i­ty when he nee­dled Mor­ri­son, sug­gest­ing that the singer had put on too much weight. You can see how things played out above, or catch the com­plete inter­view here.

Blank on Blank has pro­duced oth­er ani­mat­ed inter­views with Bono, Lar­ry King, and surfer Kel­ly Slater. But we’re going to wind things down with Dave Brubeck recall­ing how Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er sent him to East­ern Europe to fight Com­mu­nism with Jazz. Brubeck relat­ed this sto­ry at the Litch­field Jazz Fes­ti­val in 2008.

If you’re look­ing to rum­mage through a big archive of lost inter­views, I’d encour­age you to spend time with the Blank on Blank pod­cast avail­able on iTunes and rss.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

An Uplift­ing Musi­cal Sur­prise for Dave Brubeck in Moscow (1997)

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

in Art, Books, e-books, Harvard, Photography | April 18th, 2013

A group of top Amer­i­can libraries and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions launched a new cen­tral­ized research resource today, the Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Library of Amer­i­ca (DPLA), mak­ing mil­lions of resources (books, images, audio­vi­su­al resources, etc.) avail­able in dig­i­tal for­mat. First hatched as an idea at Har­vard’s Berk­man Cen­ter for Inter­net & Soci­ety, the DPLA is now real­iz­ing its vision of being “an open, dis­trib­uted net­work of com­pre­hen­sive online resources that draws on the nation’s liv­ing her­itage from libraries, uni­ver­si­ties, archives, and muse­ums in order to edu­cate, inform, and empow­er every­one in the cur­rent and future gen­er­a­tions.”

The Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Library of Amer­i­ca rolls out today as a beta site with some kinks to work out. Some links to mate­ri­als don’t work at the oth­er end. And right now the offer­ing is built around a mod­est num­ber of online exhi­bi­tions that have been dig­i­tized by cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions through­out the coun­try, accord­ing to Robert Darn­ton, a dri­ving force behind the DPLA. When you vis­it the site, a dynam­ic map and time­line will help you nav­i­gate the col­lec­tions by year, decade or place. It will lead you to exhi­bi­tions, for exam­ple, about the Great Depres­sion and Roo­sevelt’s New Deal, Boston’s sto­ried sports tem­ples, and Pro­hi­bi­tion in the US. Around this core, the DPLA will grow until it tru­ly serves as the dig­i­tal pub­lic library of Amer­i­ca.

You can read more about Robert Darn­ton’s vision for the Dig­i­tal Pub­lic Library of Amer­i­ca in the pages of The New York Review of Books.

via Har­vard Press

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site, .

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

Albert Ein­stein Archive Now Online, Bring­ing 80,000+ Doc­u­ments to the Web

Roy­al Soci­ety Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endearing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

in Music | April 18th, 2013

Since time immemo­r­i­al — or, in any case, since the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry — ado­les­cents have looked to rock stars for life lessons. This works out bet­ter with some rock stars than oth­ers, of course, and in bygone days kids would have to infer these lessons from song lyrics and the occa­sion­al Rolling Stone inter­view. Now that most of their musi­cal idols main­tain active, even gar­ru­lous pres­ences on sev­er­al forms of social media at once, inter­net-age young­sters in need of coun­sel have a great deal more mate­r­i­al to work with. Cer­tain rock stars have tak­en this respon­si­bil­i­ty seri­ous­ly, as you can see in the video above fea­tur­ing Radio­head mas­ter­mind Thom Yorke and pro­duc­er/­mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Nigel Godrich (also known as the men behind the super­group Atoms for Peace). If you find your­self con­fused by boys, let these two fortysome­thing Brits clear it right up.

You can find a lit­tle more cov­er­age of the video at, yes, Rolling Stone. “Yorke is par­tic­u­lar­ly sage about teenage love woes,” writes the mag­a­zine’s Jon Blis­tein. “ ‘If you have a crush on him,’ Yorke says, ‘if you’re real­ly, real­ly, real­ly, real­ly shy, which is what I was at that age — also, I was at a boys’ school so it was impos­si­ble to meet girls any­way — how about just write him a note? Or throw him against the wall some time.’ ” Yorke and Godrich’s sev­en­teen min­utes of advice comes as the lat­est install­ment in the series “Ask a Grown Man” from Rook­ie, just the sort of web mag­a­zine we wish we could have had back when we were teenage girls — if we were ever teenage girls, that is. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Ira Glass’ seg­ment, and you can enjoy oth­er moments of sagac­i­ty with the likes of come­di­an-film­mak­er Judd Apa­tow, talk-show host Jim­my Fal­lon, and actor John Hamm. You cer­tain­ly would­n’t find them in the pages of Sassy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass Makes Bal­loon Ani­mals and Gives NSFW Advice to Teens — At the Same Time!!

A Glimpse of Teenage Life in Ancient Rome

This is Your Brain in Love: Scenes from the Stan­ford Love Com­pe­ti­tion

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.

Flannery O’Connor Reads ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction’ (c. 1960)

in Books, Literature, Writing | April 18th, 2013

Here is a rare record­ing of Flan­nery O’Con­nor read­ing an ear­ly ver­sion of her wit­ty and reveal­ing essay, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion.”

O’Con­nor gives an elo­quent out­line of her vision as both a South­ern and a Catholic writer. She defends her work against crit­ics who say it is high­ly unre­al­is­tic. “All nov­el­ists are fun­da­men­tal­ly seek­ers and describers of the real,” she says, “but the real­ism of each nov­el­ist will depend on his view of the ulti­mate reach­es of real­i­ty.” In the pub­lished ver­sion of the essay, she writes:

When­ev­er I’m asked why South­ern writ­ers par­tic­u­lar­ly have a pen­chant for writ­ing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to rec­og­nize one. To be able to rec­og­nize a freak, you have to have some con­cep­tion of the whole man, and in the South the gen­er­al con­cep­tion of man is still, in the main, the­o­log­i­cal. That is a large state­ment, and it is dan­ger­ous to make it, for almost any­thing you say about South­ern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal pro­pri­ety. But approach­ing the sub­ject from the stand­point of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hard­ly Christ-cen­tered, it is most cer­tain­ly Christ-haunt­ed. The South­ern­er, who isn’t con­vinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and like­ness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instruc­tive. They cast strange shad­ows, par­tic­u­lar­ly in our lit­er­a­ture. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a fig­ure for our essen­tial dis­place­ment that he attains some depth in lit­er­a­ture.

This pas­sage can be heard, in dif­fer­ent form, begin­ning at the 3:40 mark in the record­ing. Like many of O’Con­nors essays, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion” was writ­ten not for pub­li­ca­tion, but for pub­lic read­ing. She was known to rewrite and rearrange these pieces between read­ings. In this record­ing, O’Con­nor is using the piece as a prepara­to­ry state­ment for a read­ing of her clas­sic sto­ry, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

We don’t know the date of the record­ing, but the text dif­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the posthu­mous­ly pub­lished ver­sion, so per­haps it is an ear­ly ver­sion. The ear­li­est extant record­ing of the essay that we know of was made on Octo­ber 28, 1960 for the Dorothy Lamar Blount Lec­ture Series at Wes­leyan Col­lege in Macon, Geor­gia. There is also known to be a record­ing of O’Con­nor read­ing the piece on Novem­ber 16, 1962 at East Texas State Uni­ver­si­ty.

To com­pare the record­ed ver­sion to the one even­tu­al­ly pub­lished in Mys­tery and Man­ners: Occa­sion­al Prose, you can click here to open the essay in a new win­dow.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Hear Flan­nery O’Connor’s Short Sto­ry, “Rev­e­la­tion,” Read by Leg­endary His­to­ri­an & Radio Host, Studs Terkel

Flan­nery O’Connor’s “Every­thing That Ris­es Must Con­verge” Read by Estelle Par­sons

Enrich Yourself with Free Courses, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Textbooks & More

in Audio Books, e-books, Education, Film, Online Courses | April 18th, 2013

How’s that New Year’s res­o­lu­tion going? You know, the one where you promised to make bet­ter use of your free time and learn new things? If you’re off track, fear not. It’s only April. It’s not too late to make good on your promise. And we can help. Below, we’ll tell you how to fill your Kin­dle, iPad, com­put­er, smart­phone, com­put­er, etc. with free intel­li­gent media — great ebooks and audio books, movies, cours­es, and the rest:

Free eBooks: You have always want­ed to read the great works. And now is your chance. When you dive into our Free eBooks col­lec­tion you will find 400 great works by some clas­sic writ­ers (Dick­ens, Dos­to­evsky, Shake­speare and Tol­stoy) and con­tem­po­rary writ­ers (F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asi­mov, and Kurt Von­negut). The col­lec­tion also gives you access to the 51-vol­ume Har­vard Clas­sics.

If you’re an iPad/iPhone user, the down­load process is super easy. Just click the “iPad/iPhone” links and you’re good to go. Kin­dle and Nook users will gen­er­al­ly want to click the “Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats links” to down­load ebook files, but we’d sug­gest watch­ing these instruc­tion­al videos (Kin­dle –Nook) before­hand.

Free Audio Books: What bet­ter way to spend your free time than lis­ten­ing to some of the great­est books ever writ­ten? This page con­tains a vast num­ber of free audio books, includ­ing works by Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and more recent writ­ers — Ita­lo Calvi­no, Vladimir Nabokov, Ray­mond Carv­er, etc. You can down­load these clas­sic books straight to your gagdets, then lis­ten as you go.

[Note: If you’re look­ing for a con­tem­po­rary book, you can down­load one free audio book from Audible.com. Find details on Audi­ble’s no-strings-attached deal here.]

Free Online Cours­es: This list brings togeth­er over 700 free online cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, UC Berke­ley, Oxford and beyond. These full-fledged cours­es range across all dis­ci­plines – his­to­ry, physics, phi­los­o­phy, psy­chol­o­gy and beyond. Most all of these cours­es are avail­able in audio, and rough­ly 75% are avail­able in video. You can’t receive cred­its or cer­tifi­cates for these cours­es (click here for cours­es that do offer cer­tifi­cates). But the amount of per­son­al enrich­ment you will derive is immea­sur­able.

Free Movies: With a click of a mouse, or a tap of your touch screen, you will have access to 525 great movies. The col­lec­tion hosts many clas­sics, west­erns, indies, doc­u­men­taries, silent films and film noir favorites. It fea­tures work by some of our great direc­tors (Alfred Hitch­cock, Orson Welles, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stan­ley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch) and per­for­mances by cin­e­ma leg­ends: John Wayne, Jack Nichol­son, Audrey Hep­burn, Char­lie Chap­lin, and beyond. On this one page, you will find thou­sands of hours of cin­e­ma bliss.

Free Lan­guage Lessons: Per­haps learn­ing a new lan­guage is one of your res­o­lu­tions. Well, here is a great way to do it. Take your pick of 40 lan­guages — Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Eng­lish, Russ­ian, Dutch, even Finnish, Yid­dish and Esperan­to. These lessons are all free and ready to down­load.

Free Text­books: And one last item for the life­long learn­ers among you. We have scoured the web and pulled togeth­er a list of 150 Free Text­books. It’s a great resource par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re look­ing to learn math, com­put­er sci­ence or physics on your own. There might be a dia­mond in the rough here for you.