Take a Virtual Tour of the 1913 Exhibition That Introduced Avant-Garde Art to America

in Art, History, Museums | February 28th, 2013

One hun­dred years ago, Amer­i­ca had only just begun talk­ing about “avant garde” art. Before the famous “Armory Show,” no one was even using the term; after it, Unit­ed States’ art-watch­ers had many rea­sons to. It’s what they saw on dis­play at the exhi­bi­tion, mount­ed by two dozen artists entire­ly with­out pub­lic fund­ing. Prop­er­ly called The Inter­na­tion­al Exhi­bi­tion of Mod­ern Art, the show got its pop­u­lar name by start­ing out in the 69th Reg­i­ment Armory on Lex­ing­ton Avenue in New York. It then moved to Chica­go and Boston, pro­vok­ing shock, dis­missal, and some­times even appre­ci­a­tion across the East Coast and Mid­west. A lit­tle Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Cezanne, Picas­so, Matisse, and Duchamp can do that to you.

Or at least, they do that to you if you live in 1913 and have nev­er seen such bold destruc­tion and rein­ven­tion of visu­al art’s estab­lished forms. To mark the Armory Show’s cen­ten­ni­al, the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go has recre­at­ed its view­ing expe­ri­ence on the web. There you can explore the gal­leries as Chicagoans actu­al­ly saw them a cen­tu­ry ago, albeit in black-and-white. The site also pro­vides much in the way of con­text, offer­ing arti­cles on the exhi­bi­tion’s gen­e­sis, pro­gram notes, lega­cy, and more. You can learn more about the impact of the Armory Show in this recent NPR piece, which quotes Muse­um of Mod­ern Art cura­tor Leah Dick­er­man on the sub­ject: “It’s this moment in time, 100 years ago, in which the foun­da­tions of cul­tur­al prac­tice were total­ly reordered in as great a way as we have seen. And that this marks a reorder­ing of the rules of art-mak­ing — it’s as big as we’ve seen since the Renais­sance.”

via @coudal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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.

Short Documentary, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Lolita?, Psychoanalyzes Vladimir Nabokov

in Books, Comedy, Literature | February 27th, 2013

Here’s a flawed but fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle film about the life of Vladimir Nabokov, exam­ined through the prism of his most famous book.

How Do You Solve a Prob­lem Like Loli­ta? first aired on British tele­vi­sion in 2009. The host is Stephen Smith, a cul­ture cor­re­spon­dent for BBC News­night. We don’t know the rest of Smith’s resume, but in watch­ing the doc­u­men­tary we get the feel­ing he may have picked up a lit­tle of his jour­nal­is­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty from the British tabloids.

The prob­lem referred to in the title is the sense–at least among Smith’s friends–that there is some­thing “per­vy” about Nabokov’s 1955 nov­el, Loli­ta, and that this rais­es cer­tain ques­tions about the author’s own sex­u­al pen­chants. “Was it a moral­i­ty play,” Smith asks at the out­set, “or the fan­ta­sy of a dirty old man?”

It’s a con­temptible point of depar­ture. But How Do You Solve a Prob­lem Like Loli­ta? man­ages to be worth­while in spite of itself. It’s filled with inter­est­ing old footage of Nabokov talk­ing about him­self and his work, as well as con­tem­po­rary footage of the writer’s old haunts in Rus­sia, Amer­i­ca and Switzer­land. The film is a kind of trav­el­ogue. Watch­ing it is like tak­ing a one-hour tour through a fas­ci­nat­ing land­scape with an ami­able but slight­ly annoy­ing guide.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Hunter S. Thompson Runs for Aspen, Colorado Sheriff on the “Freak Power” Platform (1970)

in History, Literature, Politics | February 27th, 2013

In 1970, Hunter S. Thomp­son was look­ing to become the new sher­iff in town — the town being Aspen, Col­orado. In a heat­ed elec­tion, Thomp­son ran against a tra­di­tion­al, con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­ate, Car­rol Whit­mire, on what he called the “freak pow­er” plat­form, which most­ly called for the legal­iza­tion of mar­i­jua­na and uncon­ven­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions.

As Thomp­son lat­er explained in his essay “Freak Pow­er in The Rock­ies,” hun­dreds of Haight-Ash­bury refugees moved to Aspen after the ill-fat­ed “Sum­mer of Love” in 1967, and they became part of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. In the town, reg­is­tered Repub­li­cans his­tor­i­cal­ly out­weighed reg­is­tered Democ­rats by a two-to-one mar­gin.

But both camps were out­weighed by inde­pen­dents, which includ­ed “a jan­gled mix of Left/Crazies and Birchers; cheap big­ots, dope deal­ers, nazi ski instruc­tors and spaced off ‘psy­che­del­ic farm­ers’ with no pol­i­tics at all beyond self-preser­va­tion,” remem­bers Thomp­son. So, win­ning an elec­tion came down to reg­is­ter­ing indie vot­ers and get­ting them to the polls — some­thing that was eas­i­er said than done, it turns out.

In the short term, Hunter S. Thomp­son lost the “Bat­tle of Aspen” by 300–500 votes, depend­ing on whose accounts you read. In the long-term, he arguably won. 42 years after Thomp­son made the legal­iza­tion of mar­i­jua­na his cen­tral cam­paign promise, Col­orado vot­ers passed Amend­ment 64, legal­iz­ing mar­i­jua­na for recre­ation­al use. Some­where, the would-be gonzo politi­cian is smil­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards, and Very Lit­tle Makes Sense

Hunter S. Thomp­son Calls Tech Sup­port, Unleash­es a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

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

in Music, Television | February 27th, 2013

After Jimi Hendrix’s dis­charge from the army, he earned his liv­ing as a trav­el­ing musi­cian on the so-called Chitlin’ Cir­cuit—the cir­cuit of venues through­out the seg­re­gat­ed South that booked black musi­cians. Hen­drix backed such giants of R&B, soul, and elec­tric blues as Wil­son Pick­ett and Sam Cooke, and dur­ing those ear­ly years with his own band the King Casu­als, the Nashville scene he’d set­tled into, and the cir­cuit gigs, he per­fect­ed the styl­is­tic quirks and stunts that would make him world famous just a few years later—playing right-hand­ed gui­tars upside down as a lefty, play­ing solos with his teeth and behind his head—often to the irri­ta­tion of his band­mates and employ­ers. He want­ed to do his own thing, but he paid his dues, jam­ming with and learn­ing from some of the top acts in ear­ly rock & roll while Eric Clap­ton and Kei­th Richards were lis­ten­ing to those same groups on the radio, painstak­ing­ly copy­ing their sound.

After near­ly two years on the cir­cuit, the rest­less and flam­boy­ant young Hen­drix, chaf­ing under the direc­tion of strict band­lead­ers, final­ly had enough of Ten­nessee and moved to Harlem to strike out on his own, but he still worked as a side­man: he record­ed with the Isley Broth­ers, toured with Lit­tle Richard, and in 1965, he made his first ever TV appear­ance with a pair of Long Island singers named Bud­dy and Sta­cy on Nashville’s Chan­nel 5 pro­gram Night Train, doing the Junior Walk­er & the All Stars top-ten hit “Shot­gun.” In the video above you can see Hen­drix (to the right of the drum­mer), groov­ing behind the fop­pish­ly-dressed vocal duo. Note how his moves are out of sync with the rest of the band, all right-hand­ed play­ers. Note how his pom­padour is slight­ly unkempt. Note, if you watch close­ly, his right hand trav­el­ing up and down the neck of his gui­tar, pulling off some killer runs—in a song that stays on one note for the duration—even while stuck behind the action.

This per­for­mance marks one of the last times Hen­drix would stand in the shad­ows of oth­er band­lead­ers. After work­ing steadi­ly in the stu­dio as a ses­sion play­er in 1966, he formed his own band, the Blue Flame (as Jim­my James), and took up res­i­dence at the his­toric Café Wha? in Green­wich Vil­lage (where my father saw him play, he tells me, and was floored, hav­ing no idea who the guy was). ’66 is the year Hen­drix ful­ly crossed over (some said sold out; some said sold his soul) from the soul/R&B cir­cuit to main­stream rock & roll suc­cess. He wouldn’t crack the U.S. until his leg­endary appear­ance at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val in June of 1967, but after form­ing the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence in late ’66, he wowed audi­ences in Europe with his first sin­gle “Hey Joe,” and appeared on UK TV shows Ready Steady Go! and Top of the Pops. Three months before Mon­terey, the band appeared on pop­u­lar Ger­man TV pro­gram Beat Club. Check out their per­for­mance above, doing “Hey Joe” and “Pur­ple Haze.” Hen­drix doesn’t set any fires, but he does get in a solo with his teeth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Jimi Hen­drix Record­ing, “Some­where,” with Bud­dy Miles and Stephen Stills

‘Elec­tric Church’: The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence Live in Stock­holm, 1969

Hen­drix Plays Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band

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

Johnny Cash Stars as a Menacing, Musical Gangster in 1961 Film Five Minutes to Live

in Film, Music | February 26th, 2013

As every­one sure­ly knows by now, today would have been John­ny Cash’s 81st birth­day, and he’s been right­ly cel­e­brat­ed all around the inter­net for his one-of-a-kind coun­try per­sona as “The Man in Black.” Cash was so well-loved in part because, like only a hand­ful of oth­er coun­try stars (Hank Williams, Pat­sy Cline, Dol­ly Par­ton, Emmy­lou Har­ris), he tran­scend­ed the genre, win­ning fans from every con­ceiv­able cor­ner. The out­law singer was also no stranger to TV and film cam­eras, once host­ing his own talk show and appear­ing in sev­er­al dozen films and TV shows as him­self.

But did you know that Cash once had a star­ring fea­ture film role along­side Vic Tay­back and Ron Howard? That’s right, in the 1961 crime dra­ma above, Five Min­utes to Live, Cash plays John­ny Cabot, described by Rot­ten Toma­toes as “a blood­thirsty New Jer­sey gang­ster who is forced to hide out in a small Cal­i­for­nia sub­urb after killing a cop dur­ing a job gone wrong.”

Cabot is a musi­cal crook, who tricks his way into a bank pres­i­den­t’s home by con­vinc­ing the pres­i­den­t’s wife he’s a gui­tar sales­man. Once inside, he ter­ror­izes her and sings men­ac­ing songs in her direc­tion. Ron Howard plays the vic­tim­ized wom­an’s son Bob­by, and anoth­er coun­try great, gui­tarist Mer­le Travis, has a small role as a bowl­ing alley own­er. It’s all in keep­ing, I guess, with the John­ny Cash out­law leg­end (though he may have regret­ted the lurid, grind­house movie poster below).

Five Min­utes to Live was re-released in 1966 as Door-to-Door Mani­ac. What­ev­er you call it, you may hear more about this movie soon: Speed direc­tor Jan de Bont has been brought on to direct a remake in the near future. And yes, there’s been talk (if only tongue-in-cheek) of cast­ing Joaquin Phoenix in the Cash role.

Five Min­utes to Live is in the pub­lic domain, and we’ve added it to our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

John­ny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

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

The BBC’s Horrible Histories Videos Will Crack You Up and Teach You About WWI (and More)

in Comedy, History, K-12 | February 26th, 2013

My 12-year-old, home-schooled son recent­ly expressed an inter­est in study­ing World War I. This was encour­ag­ing, but also nerve-wrack­ing, giv­en the dis­dain that led me to spend most of World His­to­ry pass­ing notes and doo­dling (not in the Lyn­da Bar­ry col­lege course / this will help you absorb the infor­ma­tion bet­ter way). I retained noth­ing of what I’d been for­mal­ly taught. My most sol­id knowl­edge of the peri­od was gleaned from the sec­ond sea­son of Down­ton Abbey and an Audrey Tautou movie that was rat­ed R for sex and vio­lence. (There’s also a fam­i­ly pho­to­graph of us pos­ing on the Sara­je­vo street cor­ner where Franz Fer­di­nand was assas­si­nat­ed, but the sig­nif­i­cance of the spot had to be explained to me first.)

Some online scrab­bling led me to the BBC’s Hor­ri­ble His­to­ries’ brief overview of the “caus­es of World War I” (above). Wow. If only this series—and, ahem, the Internet—had exist­ed when I was the boy’s age! I think it’s safe to say my atten­tion would have been cap­tured. It’s sil­ly, yes, but that’s the whole point. The play­ers’ over-the-top comedic style ensures that even the dri­est of his­tor­i­cal facts will stick, as any­one who’s watched Michael Cera bring Alexan­der Hamil­ton to life in Drunk His­to­ry can attest. It’s the per­fect gate­way for fur­ther study.

Hor­ri­ble His­to­ries’ take on World War I proved  such a hit, the boy imme­di­ate­ly delved into oth­er peri­ods, often when he was sup­posed to be doing oth­er things, like play­ing Minecraft or watch­ing YouTube (tech­ni­cal­ly, I guess this sort of counts). Still it’s grat­i­fy­ing to hear him stud­ding his con­ver­sa­tion with casu­al ref­er­ences to the Bor­gias, the Tudors, and Mar­tin Luther. It makes me want to learn more, or at least bring myself up-to-speed on the videos. In the words of School­house Rock, knowl­edge is pow­er.

A WWI cen­ten­ni­al’s loom­ing, folks. Don’t get caught with your draw­ers down.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Drunk His­to­ry: An Intox­i­cat­ed Look at the Famous Alexan­der Hamil­ton – Aaron Burr Duel

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

School­house Rock at 40: Revis­it a Col­lec­tion of Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Videos

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day  grad­u­at­ed from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty with a degree in the­ater and has been mak­ing up for it ever since. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Computer Science Course And Other Free Tech Classes

in Harvard, MOOCs, Online Courses, Technology | February 26th, 2013

I’ll con­fess, when it comes to com­put­ers, I’m pret­ty much strict­ly a user. And these days, with the poten­tial free­dom and cre­ative­ly afford­ed by open access soft­ware, the end­less hacks for vir­tu­al­ly every­thing, and the avail­abil­i­ty of free online com­put­er class­es, that seems like kind of a lame admis­sion. So I’m tempt­ed to rec­ti­fy my pro­gram­ming igno­rance by push­ing through what promis­es to be a rig­or­ous intro to com­put­er sci­ence, CS50, Harvard’s intro­duc­to­ry course for both majors and non-majors alike. The course offers a broad knowl­edge base to build on, as you can see from the descrip­tion below:

Top­ics include abstrac­tion, algo­rithms, encap­su­la­tion, data struc­tures, data­bas­es, mem­o­ry man­age­ment, secu­ri­ty, soft­ware devel­op­ment, vir­tu­al­iza­tion, and web­sites. Lan­guages include C, PHP, and JavaScript plus SQL, CSS, and HTML. Prob­lem sets inspired by real-world domains of biol­o­gy, cryp­tog­ra­phy, finance, foren­sics, and gam­ing. Designed for con­cen­tra­tors and non-con­cen­tra­tors alike, with or with­out pri­or pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence.

Har­vard has made this course avail­able free to anyone—via YouTube, iTunes, and the course page—with a series of lec­tures filmed dur­ing the Fall 2011 semes­ter. The class is led by David J. Malan, an enthu­si­as­tic young pro­fes­sor and Senior Lec­tur­er on Com­put­er Sci­ence at Har­vard, and him­self a prod­uct of Harvard’s Com­put­er Sci­ence pro­gram. Pro­fes­sor Malan has also offered Harvard’s CS50 as a MOOC through edX. In the intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture to CS50 (above), Malan promis­es that “this is one of those rare cours­es that actu­al­ly squeezes your brain so much and your sched­ule so much that by the end of the semes­ter you actu­al­ly feel smarter.”

Pro­fes­sor Malan has become some­thing of a hot shot at Har­vard. His mission—to make com­put­er sci­ence more acces­si­ble and far less daunt­ing. He’s done this in part by gen­er­ous­ly mak­ing sev­er­al of his cours­es avail­able free online to non-Har­vard stu­dents. In addi­tion to CS50, Malan offers the fol­low­ing cours­es for those who want to pur­sue pro­gram­ming or web design fur­ther:

• Build­ing Dynam­ic Web Sites — iTunes — Video & Audio
• Build­ing Mobile Appli­ca­tions — iTunes — Web Site
• Under­stand­ing Com­put­ers and the Inter­net — iTunes — Web Site
• XML with Java — iTunes — Web Site

And if you still need some sell­ing on the val­ues and virtues of com­put­er sci­ence, watch Malan below deliv­er an inspir­ing talk called “And the Geek Shall Inher­it the Earth” at Har­vard Thinks Big 2010 (Harvard’s ver­sion of TED Talks).

We’ve added Har­vard’s CS50 to the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our list of 750 Free Online Cours­es and our list of 150 Free Busi­ness Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Com­put­er Sci­ence: Free Cours­es

Codecademy’s Free Cours­es Democ­ra­tize Com­put­er Pro­gram­ming

Learn to Build iPhone & iPad Apps with Stanford’s Free Course, Cod­ing Togeth­er

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

An Oral History of Pulp Fiction: the Making of the Indie Film that Changed the Rules

in Film | February 26th, 2013

Steel your­selves, movie­go­ers over thir­ty: the cin­e­mat­ic phe­nom­e­non known as Pulp Fic­tion hap­pened nine­teen years ago. Which means that the mak­ing of Pulp Fic­tion hap­pened twen­ty years ago. Van­i­ty Fair’s Mark Seal has seized this occa­sion to write “Cin­e­ma Taran­ti­no: The Mak­ing of Pulp Fic­tion,” an oral his­to­ry of the con­cep­tion of the one movie that, more than any oth­er, stoked the Amer­i­can indie-film boom of the nineties to its full cul­tur­al blaze. Seal quotes Har­vey Wein­stein, a force of this move­ment at the helm of Mira­max Films and Taran­ti­no’s long­time busi­ness col­lab­o­ra­tor, as describ­ing Pulp Fic­tion as “the first inde­pen­dent movie that broke all the rules,” which “set a new dial on the movie clock.” Though pos­sessed of a leg­endary way with hyper­bole, Wein­stein may have this time put it too mild­ly.

As a movie­go­er slight­ly under thir­ty, I grew up regard­ing Pulp Fic­tion as the movie cool grown-ups loved (I remem­ber my dad buy­ing the poster almost imme­di­ate­ly after see­ing the film), only know­ing that it had some­thing to do with McDon­ald’s Quar­ter- Pounders in France. Seal’s arti­cle sheds spe­cial light on the pic­ture’s gen­e­sis for those too young to have engaged with the con­sid­er­able indus­try buzz at the time, using not just the rec­ol­lec­tions of John Tra­vol­ta, Bruce Willis, Samuel Jack­son, Uma Thur­man, Har­vey Kei­t­el, and Taran­ti­no him­self, but also of instru­men­tal behind-the-scenes fig­ures like co-writer Roger Avary, agent Mike Simp­son, and typ­ist Lin­da Chen. Before you peti­tion your local revival cin­e­mas to hold trib­ute screen­ings, have anoth­er shot of Pulp Fic­tion back­sto­ry by watch­ing the on-set footage above. It opens on not just any set, but Jackrab­bit Slim’s, the very same fic­tion­al theme restau­rant Pulp Fic­tion’s cre­ators remem­ber so vivid­ly in the arti­cle.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives Sneak Peek of Pulp Fic­tion to Jon Stew­art (1994)

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (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.

Norwegian Musician Creates Ice Instruments with a Chain Saw and Sub-Zero Weather

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | February 26th, 2013

Most pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians have a very spe­cial rela­tion­ship with their instru­ments. Male gui­tarists treat their favorite gui­tars like girlfriends—maybe bet­ter in some cas­es. Trav­el­ing cel­lists buy air­line tick­ets for instru­ments. It’s just too risky to put your liveli­hood in car­go.

Not so for Ter­je Insungset, a Nor­we­gian musi­cian who, among oth­er things, carves instru­ments out of ice. His back­ground is in jazz and tra­di­tion­al Scan­di­na­vian music, but he’s built a rep­u­ta­tion as an artist who makes music on uncon­ven­tion­al mate­ri­als. Con­sid­er­ing where he is from, it’s not sur­pris­ing that he has turned his atten­tion to ice and its musi­cal poten­tial.

Turns out the sound of an ice xylo­phone is lovely—soft, deep, tin­kly. The ice horn sounds like a lone­ly beast call­ing out across the tun­dra. Insungset col­lab­o­rates with vocal­ist Mari Kvien Brun­voll. Togeth­er they per­form around the world, some­times indoors and some­times in the snow, with elab­o­rate micro­phone cords draped around and beau­ti­ful light­ing.

There’s even an ice gui­tar.

Insungset has also built instru­ments out of arc­tic birch, slate, cow bells and gran­ite. His inter­est in ice as a mate­r­i­al devel­oped when he was com­mis­sioned to play music in a frozen water­fall at the 1994 Win­ter Olympics in Lille­ham­mer, Nor­way.

Unlike most musi­cians, he has to build his instru­ments in situ, as he did for recent con­certs in Cana­da where the tem­per­a­ture was 36 below zero with a light wind. Per­fect weath­er for ice music.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­ry Partch’s Kooky Orches­tra of DIY Musi­cal Instru­ments

“Glitch” Artists Com­pose with Soft­ware Crash­es and Cor­rupt­ed Files

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

Listen to James Franco Read from Jack Kerouac’s Influential Beat Novel, On the Road

in Literature | February 25th, 2013

“Movie star, con­cep­tu­al artist, fic­tion writer, grad stu­dent, cipher.” These roles, and oth­ers, New York mag­a­zine attrib­uted to the sub­ject of their pro­file, “The James Fran­co Project.” If you reg­u­lar­ly read Open Cul­ture, you’ve sure­ly had your own areas of inter­est touched by the lit­er­ar­i­ly inclined young Hol­ly­wood mav­er­ick. Maybe you’ve seen him appear in a book trail­er, read the Paris Review in bed, nar­rate an ani­ma­tion of Allen Gins­berg’s Howl, or direct and star in a docu­d­ra­ma about poet Hart Crane. Above you can hear him give a ten minute read­ing from a work of lit­er­a­ture that, whether or not it made a per­ma­nent dent in your own con­scious­ness, we’ve all encoun­tered: Jack Ker­ouac’s On the Road. When Lapham’s Quar­ter­ly excerpt­ed the nov­el for a trav­el issue, Fran­co turned up to per­form.

“It was driz­zling and mys­te­ri­ous at the begin­ning of our jour­ney,” Ker­ouac wrote and Fran­co reads. “I could see that it was all going to be one big saga of the mist. ‘Whooee!’ yelled Dean. ‘Here we go!’ And he hunched over the wheel and gunned her; he was back in his ele­ment, every­body could see that.” Hear­ing this par­tic­u­lar voice inter­pret this par­tic­u­lar nov­el reminds you of both Fran­co and Ker­ouac’s images as thor­ough­ly Amer­i­can cre­ators, though each express­es that Amer­i­can-ness in very much their own way: Ker­ouac, of course, actu­al­ly comes from a French-Cana­di­an fam­i­ly, and Fran­co leads the kind of cul­tur­al renais­sance-man career the mod­ern Unit­ed States tends to frown upon. But giv­en the places they’ve both secured for them­selves in the Amer­i­can zeit­geist — and the best sort of places: unlike­ly ones — was­n’t it inevitable that their crafts would inter­sect?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

The Bro­ken Tow­er, James Franco’s Docu­d­ra­ma On “Dif­fi­cult” Poet Hart Crane: A Pre­view

James Fran­co Reads a Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

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.