What Books Could Be Used to Rebuild Civilization?: Lists by Brian Eno, Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly & Other Forward-Thinking Minds

in Books, Life | February 18th, 2015

One par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tress­ing hall­mark of late moder­ni­ty can be char­ac­ter­ized as a cul­tur­al loss of the future. Where we once delight­ed in imag­in­ing the turns civ­i­liza­tion would take hun­dreds and even thou­sands of years ahead—projecting rad­i­cal designs, inno­v­a­tive solu­tions, great explo­rations, and pecu­liar evo­lu­tion­ary developments—we now find the mode of fore­cast­ing has grown apoc­a­lyp­tic, as cli­mate change and oth­er cat­a­stroph­ic, man-made glob­al phe­nom­e­na make it dif­fi­cult to avoid some very dire con­clu­sions about humanity’s impend­ing fate. We can add to this assess­ment the loss of what we may call the “long view” in our day-to-day lives.

As the Long Now Foun­da­tion co-founder Stew­art Brand describes it, “civ­i­liza­tion is revving itself into a patho­log­i­cal­ly short atten­tion span,” dri­ven by “the accel­er­a­tion of tech­nol­o­gy, the short-hori­zon per­spec­tive of mar­ket-dri­ven eco­nom­ics, the next-elec­tion per­spec­tive of democ­ra­cies, or the dis­trac­tions of per­son­al mul­ti-task­ing.”

Such is the tex­ture of mod­ern exis­tence, and though we may run our hands over it dai­ly, remark­ing on how tight­ly woven the fab­ric is, we seem to have few-to-no mech­a­nisms for unweaving—or even loosening—the threads. Enter the Long Now Foun­da­tion and its pro­pos­al of “both a mech­a­nism and a myth” as a means encour­ag­ing “the long view and the tak­ing of long-term respon­si­bil­i­ty.”

libraryfar

Image cour­tesy of Because We Can

Inspired by com­put­er sci­en­tist Daniel Hill’s idea for a Stone­henge-sized clock that “ticks once a year, bongs once a cen­tu­ry, and the cuck­oo comes out every mil­len­ni­um,” the foun­da­tion pro­pos­es a num­ber of projects and guide­lines for restor­ing long-term think­ing, includ­ing “mind­ing myth­ic depth,” “reward­ing patience,” and “ally­ing with com­pe­ti­tion.” The clock, ini­tial­ly a thought exper­i­ment, is becom­ing a real­i­ty, as you can see in the short video above, with a mas­sive, “mon­u­ment scale” ver­sion under con­struc­tion in West Texas and scale pro­to­types in Lon­don and the Long Now Foundation’s San Fran­cis­co head­quar­ters. Large­ly a sym­bol­ic ges­ture, the “10,000 year clock,” as it’s called, has been joined with anoth­er, emi­nent­ly prac­ti­cal under­tak­ing rem­i­nis­cent of Isaac Asimov’s Ency­clo­pe­dia Galac­ti­ca—a “library of the deep future.”

One wing of this library, the Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion, aims to com­pile a col­lec­tion of 3,500 books in the Foun­da­tion’s phys­i­cal space—books deemed most like­ly to “sus­tain or rebuild civ­i­liza­tion.” To begin the project, var­i­ous future-mind­ed con­trib­u­tors have been asked to make their own lists of books to add. The first list comes from musician/composer/producer/musical futur­ist and found­ing board mem­ber Bri­an Eno, who named the foun­da­tion. Oth­er notable con­trib­u­tors include Long Now Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Stew­art Brand and board mem­ber and co-founder of Wired mag­a­zine Kevin Kel­ly. Below, see the first ten titles from each of these futurist’s lists, and fur­ther down, links to the full list of con­trib­u­tors’ selec­tions so far. As you scan the titles below, and browse through each contributor’s list, con­sid­er why and how each of these books would help human­i­ty rebuild civ­i­liza­tion, and sug­gest books of your own in the com­ments.

10 Titles from Bri­an Eno’s Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion list

10 Titles from Stew­art Brand’s Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion list

10 Titles from Kevin Kelly’s Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion list

Once again, these are only excerpts from longer lists by these three futur­is­tic thinkers. For their com­plete selec­tions, click on their lists below, as well as those from such cul­tur­al fig­ures as sci-fi writer Neal Stephen­son and Brain Pick­ings’ edi­tor Maria Popo­va. And please let us know: Which books would you include in the “Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion” library project, and why? You can also add your own sug­ges­tions for the grow­ing library at the Long Now Foun­da­tion’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Books Should Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Read?: Tell Us Your Picks; We’ll Tell You Ours

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

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

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Let Me Librarian That for You: What People Asked Librarians Before Google Came Along

in History, Life | February 18th, 2015

5NYPLQS

I often won­der just how I would have done my job(s) before the advent of an inter­net that puts more or less what­ev­er infor­ma­tion I might need right at my fin­ger­tips. The answer, of course, applies to any ques­tion about how we did things in an ear­li­er tech­no­log­i­cal era: we would’ve had to talk to some­one. Some of us would’ve had to talk to a librar­i­an, just like the ones The New York Pub­lic Library has employed (and con­tin­ues to employ) to research and respond to any ques­tions peo­ple need answered.

LetMeLibrarianThatForYou-10

The inter­net, as it hap­pens, has loved #let­meli­brari­anthat­fory­ou, the hash­tag the New York Pub­lic Library start­ed using on Insta­gram to iden­ti­fy the unusu­al such ques­tions it field­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry. Their recent dis­cov­ery of a box of note­cards filled with pre­served ques­tions from the 1940s through the 80s, pho­tographs of which they now post on a reg­u­lar basis, has pro­vid­ed a clear win­dow onto the human curios­i­ty of days past — or rather, the instances of human curios­i­ty that librar­i­ans found curi­ous enough to pre­serve in their box labeled “inter­est­ing research ques­tions” and kept behind the desk.

nypl questions 2

Search tech­nol­o­gy, of course, has­n’t yet made human con­sul­tants of every kind obso­lete; there are more Googleable and less Googleable ques­tions, after all. Exam­ples of the for­mer include 1962’s “What is the ges­ta­tion of human beings in days?” (“I was born on 1/29/62,” replies one com­menter. “Maybe my moth­er was get­ting impa­tient!”), 1966’s query about whether Jules Verne wrote Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, and the undat­ed “Are Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, and Socrates the same per­son?”

nypl questions

Some patrons, on the oth­er end of the spec­trum, pre­ferred to ask the unan­swer­able: one need­ed the solu­tion to “the rid­dle of exis­tence,” and anoth­er called in pur­suit of The Oxford Ornithol­o­gy of Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture. Even if the librar­i­ans could­n’t help out these inquis­i­tive peo­ple of the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, I do hope they found a way to sati­ate your curios­i­ty. It almost makes me want to see what mod­ern human­i­ty is Googling right now. Wait, no — I said “almost.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Art Can Answer Life’s Big Ques­tions in Art as Ther­a­py

Woody Allen Answers 12 Uncon­ven­tion­al Ques­tions He Has Nev­er Been Asked Before

What Ques­tions Would Stephen Fry Ask God at the Pearly Gates?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Animated Lou Reed Explains The Velvet Underground’s Artistic Goals, and Why The Beatles Were “Garbage”

in Animation, Music | February 18th, 2015

Blank on Blank returns this week with anoth­er one of their groovy ani­ma­tions. This time, we find Lou Reed recall­ing the goals and ambi­tions of his avant-garde rock band, The Vel­vet Under­ground. We want­ed, he says, “to ele­vate the rock n’ roll song, to take it where it had­n’t been tak­en before.” And, in his hum­ble opin­ion, they did just that, far exceed­ing the musi­cal out­put of con­tem­po­rary bands like The Doors and The Bea­t­les, which he respec­tive­ly calls “stu­pid” and “garbage.” If you lis­ten to the com­plete inter­view record­ed in 1987 (web — iTunes), you’ll hear Lou diss a lot of bands. But which one did he give props to? U2. Go fig­ure.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Lou Reed Reads Del­more Schwartz’s Famous Sto­ry “In Dreams Begin Respon­si­bil­i­ties”

Teenage Lou Reed Sings Doo-Wop Music (1958–1962)

Watch Red Shirley, Lou Reed’s Short Doc­u­men­tary on His Fas­ci­nat­ing 100-Year-Old Cousin (2010)

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187 Big Thinkers Answer the Question: What Do You Think About Machines That Think?

in Science, Technology | February 18th, 2015

bigquestion21- (1)

It’s time, again, for Edge.org’s annu­al ques­tion. The 2015 edi­tion asks 187 accom­plished (and in some cas­es cel­e­brat­ed) thinkers to answer the ques­tion: What Do You Think About Machines That Think?

John Brock­man, the lit­er­ary über agent and founder of Edge.org, flesh­es the ques­tion out a bit, writ­ing:

In recent years, the 1980s-era philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sions about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI)—whether com­put­ers can “real­ly” think, refer, be con­scious, and so on—have led to new con­ver­sa­tions about how we should deal with the forms that many argue actu­al­ly are imple­ment­ed. These “AIs”, if they achieve “Super­in­tel­li­gence” (Nick Bostrom), could pose “exis­ten­tial risks” that lead to “Our Final Hour” (Mar­tin Rees). And Stephen Hawk­ing recent­ly made inter­na­tion­al head­lines when he not­ed “The devel­op­ment of full arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence could spell the end of the human race.”

But wait! Should we also ask what machines that think, or, “AIs”, might be think­ing about? Do they want, do they expect civ­il rights? Do they have feel­ings? What kind of gov­ern­ment (for us) would an AI choose? What kind of soci­ety would they want to struc­ture for them­selves? Or is “their” soci­ety “our” soci­ety? Will we, and the AIs, include each oth­er with­in our respec­tive cir­cles of empa­thy?

Numer­ous Edgies have been at the fore­front of the sci­ence behind the var­i­ous fla­vors of AI, either in their research or writ­ings. AI was front and cen­ter in con­ver­sa­tions between char­ter mem­bers Pamela McCor­duck (Machines Who Think) and Isaac Asi­mov (Machines That Think) at our ini­tial meet­ings in 1980. And the con­ver­sa­tion has con­tin­ued unabat­ed, as is evi­dent in the recent Edge fea­ture “The Myth of AI”, a con­ver­sa­tion with Jaron Lanier, that evoked rich and provoca­tive com­men­taries.

Is AI becom­ing increas­ing­ly real? Are we now in a new era of the “AIs”? To con­sid­er this issue, it’s time to grow up. Enough already with the sci­ence fic­tion and the movies, Star Mak­er, Blade Run­ner, 2001, Her, The Matrix, “The Borg”. Also, 80 years after Tur­ing’s inven­tion of his Uni­ver­sal Machine, it’s time to hon­or Tur­ing, and oth­er AI pio­neers, by giv­ing them a well-deserved rest. We know the his­to­ry. (See George Dyson’s 2004 Edge fea­ture “Tur­ing’s Cathe­dral”.) So, once again, this time with rig­or, the Edge Question—2015: WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?

The replies — 187 in total — fea­ture thoughts by Bri­an Eno, Dou­glas Cou­p­land, Kevin Kel­ly, Esther Dyson, and Daniel Den­nett, among oth­ers. You can access the com­plete col­lec­tion of respons­es here.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

Isaac Asi­mov Explains His Three Laws of Robots

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40 Years of Saul Bass’ Groundbreaking Title Sequences in One Compilation

in Design, Film | February 18th, 2015

A good title sequence tells you every­thing you need to know about the world of a movie. As it unspools the cred­its for a giv­en film, it can also con­vey the movie’s mood, its sense of place, its story’s theme and even a few of its plot points. Saul Bass invent­ed the mod­ern title sequence with Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Gold­en Arm (1955). Con­sist­ing large­ly of mov­ing white rec­tan­gles on a black back­ground set to a jazzy score, the piece feels like a Blue Note record cov­er come to life – per­fect for a grit­ty tale about hero­in addic­tion. The open­ing was so strik­ing that Hol­ly­wood took note and soon title sequences became the rage, espe­cial­ly ones made by Bass.

Above you can watch a long com­pi­la­tion of Saul Bass titles, start­ing with Man with the Gold­en Arm and end­ing with Mar­tin Scorsese’s Casi­no (1995). Along the way, the mon­tage illus­trates the evo­lu­tion of style over the course of those 40 years, show­ing how titles grew in ambi­tion and sophis­ti­ca­tion. You can see titles for some great films from the yawn­ing spi­ral in Ver­ti­go to the mono­chrome crum­bling busts in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus to the abstract shots of neon in Casi­no.

But to real­ly get a sense of Bass’s tal­ents, look to some of the less famous movies he worked on. For Carl Forman’s The Vic­tors (1963), a bleak, big-bud­get anti-war flick, Bass com­pressed Euro­pean his­to­ry from the end of WWI to the dev­as­ta­tion of WWII into one mas­ter­ful mon­tage. At one point, still pho­tos of Hitler giv­ing a speech flash across the screen, each shot pushed clos­er in on his mouth than the last, before the sequence cul­mi­nates in a series of explo­sions. It’s one of the most con­cise and elo­quent retellings of his­to­ry in cin­e­ma. And for the zany com­e­dy Not with My Wife, You Don’t!, Bass cre­at­ed an ani­mat­ed green-eyed mon­ster of jeal­ousy play­ing a vio­lin. Say what you will about con­tem­po­rary movies, but there are def­i­nite­ly not enough car­toon green-eyed mon­sters of jeal­ousy these days.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Saul Bass’ Vivid Sto­ry­boards for Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus (1960)

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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The Mastermind of Devo, Mark Mothersbaugh, Shows Off His Synthesizer Collection

in Music | February 17th, 2015

Mark Moth­ers­baugh’s stu­dio is locat­ed in a cylin­dri­cal struc­ture paint­ed bright green — it looks more like a fes­tive auto part than an office build­ing. It’s a fit­ting place for the icon­o­clast musi­cian. For those of you who didn’t spend your child­hoods obses­sive­ly watch­ing the ear­ly years of MTV, Mark Moth­ers­baugh was the mas­ter­mind behind the band Devo. They skew­ered Amer­i­can con­for­mi­ty by dress­ing alike in shiny uni­forms and their music was nervy, twitchy and weird. They taught a nation that if you must whip it, you should whip it good.

In the years since, Moth­ers­baugh has segued into a suc­cess­ful career as a Hol­ly­wood com­pos­er, spin­ning scores for 21 Jump Street and The Roy­al Tenen­baums among oth­ers.

In the video above, you can see Moth­ers­baugh hang out in his stu­dio filled with syn­the­siz­ers of var­i­ous makes and vin­tages, includ­ing Bob Moog’s own per­son­al Mem­o­ry­moog. Watch­ing Moth­ers­baugh pull out and play with each one is a bit like watch­ing a pre­co­cious child talk about his toys. He just has an infec­tious ener­gy that is a lot of fun to watch.

Prob­a­bly the best part in the video is when he shows off a device that can play sounds back­ward. It turns out that if you say, “We smell sausage” back­wards it sounds an awful lot like “Jesus loves you.” Who knew?

Below you can see Moth­ers­baugh in action with Devo, per­form­ing live in Japan dur­ing the band’s hey­day in 1979.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

Watch Her­bie Han­cock Rock Out on an Ear­ly Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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600+ Covers of Philip K. Dick Novels from Around the World: Greece, Japan, Poland & Beyond

in Art, Books | February 17th, 2015

Radio Free Albemuth-gr

I envy book design­ers tasked with putting togeth­er cov­ers for Philip K. Dick nov­els, and yet I don’t envy them. On one hand, they get the chance to visu­al­ly inter­pret some of the most unusu­al, inde­scrib­able genre fic­tion ever writ­ten; on the oth­er hand, they bear the bur­den of visu­al­ly rep­re­sent­ing some of the most unusu­al, inde­scrib­able genre fic­tion ever writ­ten.

valis-it

Dick wrote inter­est­ing books, to put it mild­ly, and as book-lovers know, cer­tain coun­tries’ pub­lish­ing indus­tries tend to put out more inter­est­ing book cov­ers than oth­ers. So what hap­pens at the inter­sec­tion? Here we present to you a selec­tion of Philip K. Dick cov­ers from around the world, begin­ning with a Greek cov­er of his posthu­mous­ly pub­lished nov­el Radio Free Albe­muth that fea­tures the man him­self, relax­ing in his nat­ur­al inter­plan­e­tary envi­ron­ment beside his vin­tage radio.

mancastle-chile

That book put a bare­ly fic­tion­al gloss on Dick­’s own psy­cho­log­i­cal expe­ri­ences, as did Valis, whose Ital­ian edi­tion you also see pic­tured here. But his more fan­tas­ti­cal nov­els, such as the I Ching-dri­ven sto­ry of an Amer­i­ca that lost the Sec­ond World War, have received equal­ly com­pelling inter­na­tion­al cov­ers, such as the one from Chile just above.

flow-jp

You can usu­al­ly trust Japan­ese pub­lish­ers to come up with book designs nei­ther too abstract nor too lit­er­al for the con­tents with­in, as one of their edi­tions of Flow My Tears, the Police­man Said quite lit­er­al­ly illus­trates just above. And if you can rely on Japan for that sort of cov­er, you can rely on France for under­state­ment; half the French nov­els I’ve seen have noth­ing on the front but the name of the work, the author, and the pub­lish­er, but behold how Dick­’s untamed exper­i­men­tal spir­it allowed Robert Laf­font to cut loose:

ubik-french28

But if you real­ly want to see an unusu­al graph­ic design cul­ture, you’ve got to look to Poland. We fea­tured that coun­try’s dis­tinc­tive movie posters a few years ago, but their books also par­take of the very same delight­ful­ly askew visu­al tra­di­tion, one I imag­ine that would have done Dick him­self proud­est. Below we have Pol­ish cov­er art for Con­fes­sions of a Crap Artist, his nov­el of mid­cen­tu­ry sub­ur­ban strife, com­posed with mate­ri­als few of us would have thought to use:

confessions-of-a-crap-artist-polish

You can see 600+ inter­na­tion­al Philip K. Dick cov­ers at philipkdick.com’s cov­er gallery, which has for some rea­son gone offline, but which most­ly sur­vives through the mag­ic of the Inter­net Way­back Machine — a device Dick nev­er imag­ined even in his far­thest-out, trick­i­est-to-rep­re­sent fan­tasies.

Relat­ed Content:

Philip K. Dick Takes You Inside His Life-Chang­ing Mys­ti­cal Expe­ri­ence

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Down­load 14 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Read 3 Stories from Haruki Murakami’s Short Story Collection Published in Japan Last Year

in e-books, Literature | February 17th, 2015

Briefly not­ed: Last spring, Haru­ki Muraka­mi released a new col­lec­tion of short sto­ries in Japan, rough­ly trans­lat­ed as Men With­out Women. If past trends hold, this vol­ume may nev­er see the light of day in the States. But we may get to read all of the indi­vid­ual sto­ries in the pages of The New York­er. Last year, the mag­a­zine pub­lished two of Murakami’s six new sto­ries — “Scheherazade” and “Yes­ter­day.” And now comes anoth­er, “Kino.”  You can read it online here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Read 6 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Reads in Eng­lish from The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle in a Rare Pub­lic Read­ing (1998)

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

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7 Short Stories by Junot Díaz Free Online, In Text and Audio

in Literature | February 16th, 2015

As much as any con­tem­po­rary writer of lit­er­ary fic­tion ever does, Junot Díaz has become some­thing of a house­hold name in the years since his debut nov­el, The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao appeared in 2007, then went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, among oth­er many oth­er hon­ors. The nov­el has recent­ly topped crit­ics lists of the best 21st cen­tu­ry nov­els (so far), and the recog­ni­tion is well-deserved, and very hard-won. Díaz spent a decade writ­ing the book, his process, in the words of The New York Times’ Sam Ander­son, “noto­ri­ous­ly slow” and labo­ri­ous. But none of his time work­ing on Oscar Wao, it seems, was spent idle. Dur­ing the long ges­ta­tion peri­od between his first book of sto­ries, 1996’s Drown, his first nov­el, and the many acco­lades to fol­low, Diaz has reli­ably turned out short sto­ries for the likes of The New York­er, cul­mi­nat­ing in his most recent col­lec­tion from 2012, This Is How You Lose Her.

Díaz is his own worst critic—even he admits as much, call­ing his over­bear­ing crit­i­cal self “a char­ac­ter defect” and “way too harsh.” Per­haps one of the rea­sons he finds his process “mis­er­able” is that his “nar­ra­tive space,” as crit­ic Liz­a­beth Par­avisi­ni-Gebert writes, con­sists not of “nos­tal­gic recre­ations of ide­al­ized child­hood land­scapes,” but rather the “bleak, bar­ren, and decayed mar­gins of New Jersey’s inner cities,” as well as the trag­ic, bloody past of his native Domini­can Repub­lic.

Despite the his­tor­i­cal vio­lence from which his char­ac­ters emerge, the voic­es of Diaz’s nar­ra­tives are a vital force, full of light­en­ing-fast recall of pop cul­tur­al touch­stones, hip-hop, his­toric and folk­loric allu­sions, and the minu­ti­ae of high geek­ery, from sci-fi film, to gam­ing, to com­ic book lore. (Watch Diaz dis­cuss geek cul­ture at New York’s St. Mark’s Comics above.)

Like a nerdy New World Joyce, Díaz works in a dizzy­ing swirl of ref­er­ences that crit­ic and play­wright Gregg Bar­rios calls a “deft mash-up of Domini­can his­to­ry, comics, sci-fi, mag­ic real­ism and foot­notes.” The writer’s unique idiom—swinging with ease from the most street­wise and pro­fane ver­nac­u­lar to the most for­mal aca­d­e­m­ic prose and back again—interrogates cat­e­gories of gen­der and nation­al iden­ti­ty at every turn, ask­ing, writes Bar­rios, “Who is Amer­i­can? What is the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence?” Diaz’s nar­ra­tive voice—described by Leah Hager Cohen as one of “rad­i­cal inclusion”—provides its own answers.

That noto­ri­ous­ly slow process pays div­i­dends when it comes to ful­ly-real­ized char­ac­ters who seem to live and breathe in a space out­side the page, a con­se­quence of Díaz “sit­ting with my char­ac­ters” for a long time, he tells Cres­si­da Leyshon, “before I can write a sin­gle word, good or bad, about them. I seem to have to make my char­ac­ters fam­i­ly before I can access their hearts in any way that mat­ters.” You can read the results of all that sit­ting and ago­niz­ing below, in sev­en sto­ries that are avail­able free online, in text and audio. Sto­ries with an aster­isk next to them appear in This Is How You Lose Her. The final sto­ry comes from Diaz’s first col­lec­tion, Drown.

  • “The Cheater’s Guide to Love” * (The New York­er, July 2012—text, audio)
  • “Mon­stro” (The New York­er, June 2012—text)
  • “Miss Lora” * (The New York­er, April 2012—text)
  • “The Pura Prin­ci­ple” * (The New York­er, March 2010—text)
  • “Alma” * (The New York­er, Decem­ber 2007—text, audio)
  • “Wild­wood” (The New York­er, June 2007—text)
  • “How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or hal­fie)” (text, audio)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

A Sneak Peek at Junot Díaz’s Syl­labi for His MIT Writ­ing Class­es, and the Nov­els on His Read­ing List

Junot Díaz Anno­tates a Selec­tion of The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao for “Poet­ry Genius”

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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

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Advertisements from Japan’s Golden Age of Art Deco

in Art | February 16th, 2015

JDeco 1

Get talk­ing with graph­ic design peo­ple, and Japan will come up soon­er or lat­er. That coun­try, always a world leader in aes­thet­ics, has put the time and ener­gy of gen­er­a­tions into per­fect­ing the dis­ci­pline. You can see this progress chart­ed out on the Tokyo-based Ian Lynam Design’s “Misruptions/Disruptions: A Japan­ese Graph­ic Design His­to­ry Time­line.” It labels the busy peri­od of 1910–1941 as the time of an “adop­tion of West­ern Avant Garde aes­thet­ics in Graph­ic Design & Typog­ra­phy, coin­cid­ing with Left-lean­ing exper­i­men­ta­tion and increased state sup­pres­sion of the Left” — and the time that gave rise to Japan­ese Art Deco.

JDeco 2

Last year, I attend­ed Deco Japan, a show at the Seat­tle Art Muse­um, which show­cased a great many arti­facts from that pre­war move­ment of such com­bined artis­tic and com­mer­cial abun­dance. It put on dis­play all man­ner of paint­ings, vas­es, pieces of fur­ni­ture, house­hold items, and pack­ages, but some­how, the peri­od adver­tise­ments struck me as still the most vital of all. The Japan­ese graph­ic design­ers who made them drew, in the words of Cap­i­tal’s Grace-Yvette Gem­mell, “on sta­ples of pro­gres­sive Euro­pean and Amer­i­can high and pop­u­lar art, incor­po­rat­ing styl­ized ver­sions of gears and clocks that bring to mind Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis and Char­lie Chaplin’s Mod­ern Times.”

JDeco 3

This makes more sense than it sounds like it would: “the Deco use of for­eign imagery and design ele­ments was a vir­tu­al­ly seam­less process giv­en exist­ing prac­tices of both abstrac­tion and cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion at work in the dec­o­ra­tive arts at the time in Japan. Many tra­di­tion­al designs already pos­sessed a sort of visu­al affin­i­ty with the Art Deco aes­thet­ic; the syn­the­sis of con­ven­tion­al design ele­ments with con­tem­po­rary, pared-down forms appealed to the culture’s col­lec­tive knowl­edge of tra­di­tion­al motifs and sym­bols while feed­ing their desire for mod­ern con­sumer prod­ucts that reflect­ed a keen sense of cos­mopoli­tanism per­fect­ly com­bin­ing the old with the ultra­mod­ern.”

JDeco 4

Many of the adver­tise­ments, or oth­er works of graph­ic design like leaflets and mag­a­zine cov­ers, to come out of Japan’s Art Deco gold­en age fea­ture the image of the “moga,” or, in Japanized Eng­lish, “mod­ern girl.” Hav­ing appeared in Japan as a new kind of jazz-lov­ing, bob-haired, rel­a­tive­ly lib­er­at­ed woman, the moga quick­ly became an attrac­tive com­mer­cial propo­si­tion. The Asian Art Muse­um print­ed up a leaflet of their own, list­ing off the “ten qual­i­fi­ca­tions for being a moga” as orig­i­nal­ly enu­mer­at­ed in 1929 by illus­tra­tor Tak­a­batake Kashō in the mag­a­zine Fujin sekai (Ladies’ World):

  1. Strength, the “ene­my” of con­ven­tion­al fem­i­nin­i­ty
  2. Con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of West­ern food and drink
  3. Devo­tion to jazz records, danc­ing, and smok­ing Gold­en Bat cig­a­rettes from a met­al cig­a­rette hold­er
  4. Knowl­edge of the types of West­ern liquor and a will­ing­ness to flirt to get them for free
  5. Devo­tion to fash­ion from Paris and Hol­ly­wood as seen in for­eign fash­ion mag­a­zines
  6. Devo­tion to cin­e­ma
  7. Real or feigned inter­est in dance halls as a way to show off one’s osten­si­ble deca­dence to mobo (mod­ern boys)
  8. Strolling in the Gin­za every Sat­ur­day and Sun­day night
  9. Pawn­ing things to get mon­ey to buy new clothes for each sea­son
  10. Offer­ing one’s lips to any man who is use­ful, even if he is bald or ugly, but keep­ing one’s chasti­ty because “infringe­ment of chasti­ty” law­suits are out of style

JDeco 5

Sound a fair bit more inter­est­ing than the women demand­ed for today’s ads in the West, don’t they?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gaze at Glob­al Movie Posters for Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go: U.S., Japan, Italy, Poland & Beyond

René Magritte’s Ear­ly Art Deco Adver­tis­ing Posters, 1924–1927

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Monopoly: How the Original Game Was Made to Condemn Monopolies & the Abuses of Capitalism

in Economics, History | February 16th, 2015

The great cap­i­tal­ist game of Monop­oly was first mar­ket­ed by Park­er Broth­ers back in Feb­ru­ary 1935, right in the mid­dle of the Great Depres­sion. Even dur­ing hard times, Amer­i­cans could still imag­ine amass­ing a for­tune and secur­ing a monop­oly on the real estate mar­ket. When it comes to mak­ing mon­ey, Amer­i­cans nev­er run out of opti­mism and hope.

Monop­oly did­n’t real­ly begin, how­ev­er, in 1935. And if you trace back the ori­gins of the game, you’ll encounter an iron­ic, curi­ous tale. The sto­ry goes like this: Eliz­a­beth (Lizzie) J. Magie Phillips (1866–1948), a dis­ci­ple of the pro­gres­sive era econ­o­mist Hen­ry George, cre­at­ed the pro­to­type for Monop­oly in 1903. And she did so with the goal of illus­trat­ing the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with con­cen­trat­ing land in pri­vate monop­o­lies.

As Mary Pilon, the author of the new book The Monop­o­lists: Obses­sion, Fury, and the Scan­dal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game, recent­ly explained in The New York Times, the orig­i­nal game — The Landlord’s Game — came with two sets of rules: “an anti-monop­o­list set in which all were reward­ed when wealth was cre­at­ed, and a monop­o­list set in which the goal was to cre­ate monop­o­lies and crush oppo­nents.” Phillips’ approach, Pilon adds, “was a teach­ing tool meant to demon­strate that the first set of rules was moral­ly supe­ri­or.” In oth­er words, the orig­i­nal game of Monop­oly was cre­at­ed as a cri­tique of monop­o­lies — some­thing the trust- and monop­oly-bust­ing pres­i­dent, Theodore Roo­sevelt, could relate to.

Patent­ed in 1904 and self-pub­lished in 1906, The Land­lord’s Game fea­tured “play mon­ey and deeds and prop­er­ties that could be bought and sold. Play­ers bor­rowed mon­ey, either from the bank or from each oth­er, and they had to pay tax­es,” Pilon writes in her new book.

The Landlord’s Game also had the look & feel of the game the Park­er Broth­ers would even­tu­al­ly bas­tardize and make famous. Above, you can see an image from the patent Philips filed in 1904 (top), and anoth­er image from the mar­ket­ed game.

Magie Philips nev­er got cred­it or resid­u­als from the Park­er Broth­ers’ game. Instead, a fel­low named Charles Dar­row came along and draft­ed his own ver­sion of the game, tweaked the design, called it Monop­oly (see the ear­li­est ver­sion here), slapped a copy­right on the pack­ag­ing with his name, and then sold the game to Park­er Broth­ers for a report­ed $7,000, plus resid­u­als. He even­tu­al­ly made mil­lions.

As they like to say in the US, it’s just busi­ness.

For more on the ori­gins of Monop­oly, read Mary Pilon’s piece in The Times.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hen­ry Rollins: Edu­ca­tion is the Cure to “Dis­as­ter Cap­i­tal­ism”

Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mas­ter­piece Stalk­er Gets Adapt­ed into a Video Game

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