Norman Mailer & Martin Amis, No Strangers to Controversy, Talk in 1991

in Literature | June 20th, 2011

Mar­tin Amis will nev­er win a pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test. Nor did Nor­man Mail­er. Back in 1960, Mail­er famous­ly stabbed his wife after a din­ner par­ty in New York City, and even when things weren’t so extreme, he was often behav­ing bad­ly. Take for exam­ple this appear­ance on The Dick Cavett Show with Gore Vidal in 1971. It’s hard to find a less sym­pa­thet­ic fig­ure, at least dur­ing his ear­ly years.

As for Amis, he has nev­er worked hard to make friends, stak­ing out con­tro­ver­sial posi­tions on Mus­lims and euthana­sia and then, ear­li­er this year, going out of his way to mock writ­ing for chil­dren: “Peo­ple ask me if I ever thought of writ­ing a chil­dren’s book. I say, if I had a seri­ous brain injury I might well write a chil­dren’s book, but oth­er­wise the idea of being con­scious of who you’re direct­ing the sto­ry to is anath­e­ma to me, because, in my view, fic­tion is free­dom and any restraints on that are intol­er­a­ble.” You get the drift.

But good writ­ers rarely win pop­u­lar­i­ty con­tests. And few will deny that Mail­er and Amis have put their stamp on the Anglo-Amer­i­can lit­er­ary scene. So here you have it — Mar­tin Amis inter­view­ing Nor­man Mail­er in 1991, upon the release of Mail­er’s sprawl­ing 1400-page CIA epic, Har­lot’s Ghost. The first clip (above) starts with the nov­el, the remain­ing parts move in many dif­fer­ent direc­tions. The writ­ing life, writ­ing about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, the state of cap­i­tal­ism, Amer­i­ca after the Cold War, Mail­er’s lega­cy — it’s part of the 40 minute con­ver­sa­tion. Find Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

You can find this video per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our new col­lec­tion of 235 Cul­tur­al Icons.

via Metafil­ter

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What Are Your Favorite Non-Fiction Books?

in Life, Literature | June 20th, 2011

A few days ago, The Guardian pub­lished its list of the 100 Great­est Non-Fic­tion Books of all time. The col­lec­tion spans biog­ra­phy, art, phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry and sev­er­al oth­er hefty cat­e­gories, and, for the most part, there’s not much for any­one seek­ing light sum­mer read­ing, unless you’re the sort who reg­u­lar­ly brings Kant, Hume, Herodotus, and Pepys down to the sea­side. (Note: The Guardian pub­lished Fri­day The Best Hol­i­day Reads, which goes heavy on vaca­tion-wor­thy fic­tion.)

Inspired by the Guardian project, The New York Times turned to its staff and put togeth­er a list of their own favorite non-fic­tion books. Some of their choic­es are what you’d expect (Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, Joan Did­ion’s The White Album, Michael Lewis’ Mon­ey­ball), and a few oth­ers both sur­prised and delight­ed us (Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage, Adri­an Nicole LeBlanc’s Ran­dom Fam­i­ly and Please Kill Me: The Uncen­sored Oral His­to­ry of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain). But we still found the list vague­ly incom­plete.

So now, dear read­ers, we turn to you.

Sev­er­al years ago we asked you to tell us about the books that changed your life, and you deliv­ered. (Your first choice by a wide mar­gin was George Orwell’s 1984.) This time around, we want to hear your favorite non-fic­tion books, and we’ll both post your choic­es and — of course — let you know if they’re avail­able for free online.

We’ll kick it off with a few per­son­al favorites:

The Pos­sessed, by Elif Batu­man. A delight­ful rem­i­nis­cence by a recov­er­ing grad­u­ate stu­dent, in which she treats, among oth­er things, Russ­ian nov­el­ists, doomed love affairs, aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ences, Tur­kic poet­ry, and most­ly, the plea­sures and per­ils of lov­ing books just a lit­tle bit too much.

The Best Amer­i­can Sports Writ­ing of the Cen­tu­ry, edit­ed by David Hal­ber­stam and Glenn Stout. You don’t even need to know or care about sports, because like all great lit­er­a­ture, these essays aren’t real­ly just about what they’re about. The sub­ject may be sports, but the sto­ries are Amer­i­ca.

Your turn! Feel free to add your favorites to the com­ments sec­tion below…

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Stephen Colbert Dishes Out Wisdom & Laughs at Northwestern

in Life, Television | June 19th, 2011

Conan O’Brien’s speech at Dart­mouth’s grad­u­a­tion last week­end — that’s a hard act to fol­low. But Stephen Col­bert put on a very good show Fri­day at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, his alma mater (Class of 1986).

Best Joke:

We did­n’t have cell phones [dur­ing my days at North­west­ern]. If you made plans to meet some­one in a snow storm and they did­n’t show up, you just assumed that they were devoured by wolves and went on with your life. And we could­n’t text, and we cer­tain­ly could­n’t sext each oth­er. If you want­ed to send some­one a pic­ture of your pri­vate parts, you had to fax it. That’s how Kinko’s got its name!

Best Advice:

In my expe­ri­ence, you will tru­ly serve only what you love, because ser­vice is love made vis­i­ble. If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love com­mu­ni­ty, you will serve your com­mu­ni­ty. If you love mon­ey, you will serve your mon­ey. If you love only your­self, you will serve only your­self and you will have only your­self… Try to love oth­ers and serve oth­ers, and hope­ful­ly find those who will love and serve you in return…

H/T @webacion

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Clarence Clemons, The Big Man & His Big Sound Will Be Missed

in Music | June 18th, 2011

Clarence Clemons, the sax­o­phon­ist who played along­side Bruce Spring­steen for four decades, passed away today at 69. The Big Man and his sound will be missed.

Above, a sim­ple mourn­ful reminder of what we’ll be going with­out: First up, a soul­ful solo from “Jun­gle­land,” per­formed in Mil­wau­kee back in March 2008. And then a return to the ear­ly days, a youth­ful per­for­mance of “Thun­der Road” record­ed at the Capi­tol The­atre, Pas­sa­ic, NJ (1978). Clarence takes over at the 6:12 mark.

H/T to David Rem­nick for bring­ing this vin­tage clip to the suface.

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War & Peace: An Epic of Soviet Cinema

in Film, Literature | June 17th, 2011

War_and_Peace_poster,_1967

It’s hard to do cin­e­mat­ic jus­tice to any good nov­el, let alone the great­est of Rus­si­a’s many great nov­els, Leo Tol­stoy’s War & Peace. But Sovi­et direc­tor Sergei Bon­darchuk some­how man­aged to pull it off. Review­ing Bon­darchuk’s film back in 1969, a young Roger Ebert wrote:

“War and Peace” is the defin­i­tive epic of all time. It is hard to imag­ine that cir­cum­stances will ever again com­bine to make a more spec­tac­u­lar, expen­sive, and — yes — splen­did movie. Per­haps that’s just as well; epics seem to be going out of favor, replaced instead by small­er, more per­son­al films. Per­haps this great­est of the epics will be one of the last, bring­ing the epic form to its ulti­mate state­ment and at the same time sup­ply­ing the epi­taph.

No cor­ners were cut, and no expens­es spared, in mak­ing the film. Indeed, the film (avail­able on DVD here) was made “at a cost of $100,000,000, with a cast of 120,000, all clothed in authen­tic uni­forms, and the Red Army was mobi­lized to recre­ate Napoleon’s bat­tles exact­ly (it is claimed) as they hap­pened.” What’s more, 35,000 cos­tumes were made for the pro­duc­tion, and many Sovi­et muse­ums con­tributed arti­facts for the pro­duc­tion design. That’s stag­ger­ing, even by today’s stan­dards.

Released in four parts between 1965 and 1967, the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning film runs more than sev­en hours and you can now find it play­ing on YouTube. You can watch Part 1 here, and here you have Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. And if you need sub­ti­tles, click CC at the bot­tom of the videos. The film is, of course, list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Thanks Ammar for the heads up on this film!

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How Shea Hembrey Became 100 Artists

in Art, TED Talks | June 17th, 2011

Arkansas-born artist Shea Hem­brey kicks off his TED talk by con­fess­ing to a hick child­hood in which he and his sis­ter “would com­pete to see who could eat the most squir­rel brains.” That mod­est joke sets the stage for his intro­duc­tion of Seek, a project Hem­brey con­ceived in response to his dis­ap­point­ment with sev­er­al exhibits of con­tem­po­rary art in Europe, includ­ing the Venice Bien­nale. Find­ing much of the work he encoun­tered too obtuse and inac­ces­si­ble, Hem­brey decid­ed to cre­ate an inter­na­tion­al bien­ni­al of his own, fea­tur­ing the 100 most inspir­ing artists he could find.

The twist, of course, is that all 100 artists (and art­works) were cre­at­ed by Hem­brey him­self, in strict accor­dance with two per­son­al cri­te­ria:  First, the work must be some­thing he could explain to his grand­ma in less than five min­utes; next, its process must engage the three “H’s” of head, heart, and hand.

All 100 pieces fea­ture dis­tinct mate­ri­als, char­ac­ter and craft, and tak­en togeth­er they pro­vide an impres­sive show­case for Hem­brey’s humor and vir­tu­os­i­ty. But that grand­ma of his had bet­ter be hid­ing a degree in semi­otics, or at least an old copy of the The Post­mod­ern Con­di­tion, because the suc­cess of Seek’s joke is large­ly depen­dent on our knowl­edge of the world it lam­poons.  And for all the deter­mined folksi­ness of his man­i­festo, the posi­tion Hem­brey stakes out — some­where between par­o­dy and homage — would not be unfa­mil­iar to the cura­tors of the Venice Bien­nale.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Sylvia Plath Reads “Daddy”

in Poetry, Video - Arts & Culture | June 17th, 2011

What do you get for the father who has every­thing? How about a healthy dose of canon­i­cal resent­ment, in the form of Sylvia Plath’s most famous poem, read by Plath her­self, from our list of Cul­tur­al Icons?

Or, if you’d pre­fer some­thing that says “I love you” with a lit­tle less ran­cor, you might want to go with a video that’s guar­an­teed to make him smile.

Hap­py Father’s Day!!!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Antho­ny Hop­kins Reads Dylan Thomas

Vir­ginia Woolf: Her Voice Recap­tured

Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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My Water’s On Fire Tonight: The Fracking Song

in Current Affairs, Video - Science | June 16th, 2011

In 2005, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney per­son­al­ly engi­neered a loop­hole in the U.S. ener­gy bill exempt­ing com­pa­nies that use an oil- and gas-drilling pro­ce­dure known as hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or “frack­ing,” from reg­u­la­tion under the Safe Drink­ing Water Act. As a result, tons of diesel fuel and assort­ed chemicals–some of them tox­ic, like benzyne–are inject­ed at high pres­sure into the earth at the sole dis­cre­tion of the com­pa­nies doing the inject­ing. One of the chief ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Cheney’s string-pulling is the com­pa­ny that invent­ed the pro­ce­dure, Hal­libur­ton, which employed Cheney as chair­man and CEO just pri­or to his becom­ing vice pres­i­dent. (A coin­ci­dence?)

In the wake of the Hal­libur­ton Loop­hole, as it has come to be known, there have been a grow­ing num­ber of water pol­lu­tion cas­es, from Penn­syl­va­nia to Col­orado, asso­ci­at­ed with frack­ing. Some of those cas­es were doc­u­ment­ed in last year’s Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary, Gasland, by Josh Fox, who said in a PBS inter­view, “I could take a car bat­tery and throw it in the water­shed and go to fed­er­al prison, but these guys can take the same chem­i­cals and inject it by the thou­sands of gal­lons, and they’re exempt. It makes no sense.”

It’s a seri­ous issue involv­ing two of Amer­i­ca’s vital interests–the need for ener­gy and the need for safe drink­ing water–but a group of jour­nal­ism stu­dents in New York Uni­ver­si­ty’s Stu­dio 20 mas­ter’s pro­gram, in asso­ci­a­tion with the pub­lic-inter­est jour­nal­ism group ProP­ub­li­ca, has tak­en a light-heart­ed approach, cre­at­ing a music video to raise aware­ness of frack­ing. It’s called “My Water’s on Fire Tonight (The Frack­ing Song).”  The pur­pose of the project, accord­ing to group leader David Holmes, is to encour­age peo­ple to read ProP­ub­li­ca’s report­ing on the issue. “We were con­cerned with build­ing a bet­ter entry­way into that inves­ti­ga­tion,” Holmes told Poynter.org, “and we fig­ured a song would be the per­fect way to do it–especially since it’s called frack­ing.”

via Explainer.net

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A Year of the Moon in 2.5 Minutes

in Astronomy, Video - Science | June 16th, 2011

If you were stuck some­where far away from yes­ter­day’s lunar eclipse, here’s some con­so­la­tion cour­tesy of NASA. The Sci­en­tif­ic Visu­al­iza­tion Stu­dio at the God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter has com­piled this two and a half minute video from over a year’s worth of data record­ed by the Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO), which has been orbit­ing the moon at 50 kilo­me­ters above its sur­face for over a year.

The results are pret­ty spec­tac­u­lar, and might ren­der the pain of miss­ing a chance to watch the moon turn red a lit­tle more bear­able, espe­cial­ly for all you heart­bro­ken Can­cers (we’ll get through this.)

via Wired News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD)

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Un Chien Andalou: Revisiting Buñuel and Dalí’s Surrealist Film

in Art, Film | June 16th, 2011

The New York Times has post­ed A.O. Scot­t’s 3‑minute look back at the 1929 short film Un Chien Andalou. Scott describes the sur­re­al­ist clas­sic, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between painter Sal­vador Dalí and a very young first-time film­mak­er Luis Buñuel, as an “old dog with an end­less sup­ply of new tricks.” The short­’s pro­ces­sion of seem­ing­ly absurd, uncon­nect­ed images, he adds, does not fol­low the log­ic of nar­ra­tive but rather the “log­ic of dreams.”

Even though its most famous (or infa­mous) images — a sev­ered hand, a hand cov­ered with ants, and most final­ly a hand slic­ing into a wom­an’s eye­ball with a razor blade —  seem less shock­ing now than they did 80 years ago, Un Chien Andalou is still a plea­sure. Our real­i­ty has changed since the 20s. Our dreams, less so.

You can watch Un Chien Andalou in its entire­ty, along with L’Âge d’Or, anoth­er Buñuel/Dalí pro­duc­tion, in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Movies. But pro­ceed with cau­tion: About 25 years ago, I slipped a copy into the fam­i­ly VCR, expect­ing a cute car­toon about an Andalu­sian dog. I’m still recov­er­ing.

Relat­ed:

Sal­vador Dali (and Oth­er VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Werner Herzog Reads “Go the F**k to Sleep” in NYC (NSFW)

in Film, Literature | June 15th, 2011

Sev­er­al weeks back, Go the F**k to Sleep, the irrev­er­ent new chil­dren’s book, gained nation­al atten­tion when pirat­ed PDF copies went viral on the inter­net. But don’t feel sor­ry for the author and illus­tra­tor. The book is now #1 on the Ama­zon best­seller list; Samuel Jack­son has nar­rat­ed the offi­cial audio book (you can prob­a­bly snag a free copy through this Audible.com deal); and Wern­er Her­zog delight­ed fans when he read the (not safe for work) book at the New York Pub­lic Library book par­ty held ear­li­er this week. And, yes, this is the real Wern­er Her­zog — not the imper­son­ator who passed around pop­u­lar read­ings of Curi­ous George and Twas the Night Before Christ­mas on YouTube …

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