John Cleese, Ringo Starr and Peter Sellers Trash Priceless Art (1969)

in Comedy, Film | March 19th, 2013

Here’s a curi­ous scene from the 1969 cult film The Mag­ic Chris­t­ian. In the sto­ry, Peter Sell­ers plays an eccen­tric bil­lion­aire, Sir Guy Grand, who adopts a home­less man, played by Ringo Starr, and sets out to play a series of prac­ti­cal jokes on peo­ple, demon­strat­ing that “every­one has their price.”

Sell­ers and Starr were at the hight of their fame when the movie was made, but John Cleese, who plays a snooty auc­tion direc­tor at Sothe­by’s, was still a few months away from the for­ma­tion of Mon­ty Python. The Mag­ic Chris­t­ian is based on a book of the same name by comedic nov­el­ist Ter­ry South­ern. Cleese and anoth­er future Python mem­ber, Gra­ham Chap­man, co-wrote an ear­ly ver­sion of the script, includ­ing this scene, which was not in the book.

The film was direct­ed by Joseph McGrath and includes an assort­ment of bizarre cameo appear­ances, includ­ing Christo­pher Lee as a vam­pire, Rac­quel Welch as an S&M priest­ess and Yul Bryn­ner as a trans­ves­tite cabaret singer. But per­haps the most endur­ing ele­ment of The Mag­ic Chris­t­ian is the hit song “Come and Get it,” which was writ­ten and pro­duced for the film by Paul McCart­ney and per­formed by Badfin­ger.

You can watch the com­plete film here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

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Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla Face Off in “Epic Rap Battles of History”

in Comedy, History, Science | March 19th, 2013

We’ve writ­ten a fair amount on the var­i­ous facets of Thomas Edison’s career, and some­what less on his less-famous for­mer employ­ee-become-rival Niko­la Tes­la (who seems to polar­ize peo­ple in ways Edi­son doesn’t). Both inven­tors pro­voke all kinds of seri­ous spec­u­la­tion, com­men­tary, and debate. But even peo­ple hav­ing fun with these larg­er-than-life char­ac­ters feel the need to pick sides. For exam­ple, there’s web­com­ic The Oatmeal’s “Why Niko­la Tes­la was the great­est geek who ever lived,” which obvi­ous­ly comes down hard in favor of Tes­la. Then there’s Tet­suya Kuro­sawa Bio­graph­i­cal com­ic Thomas Edi­son: Genius of the Elec­tric Age, which gives the edge to Edi­son.

Now, in anoth­er show­down between the pio­neer­ing genius­es of the elec­tric age, we have Epic Rap Bat­tles of His­to­ry, Sea­son 2, with Edi­son and Tes­la spit­ting rhymes to prove who should wear the top inventor’s crown. Pre­vi­ous Epic Rap Bat­tles of His­to­ry episodes pit Gand­hi against Mar­tin Luther King, Oba­ma vs. Rom­ney, and Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates. They’re all pret­ty great, but this one goes out to the sci­ence his­to­ry nerds (who have a sense of humor). The lyrics hit the high points of Edi­son and Tesla’s careers—Edison’s intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty theft, end­less string of patents, use of direct cur­rent, and “stack­ing rich­es”; Tesla’s almost reli­gious belief in the pow­er of elec­tric­i­ty, dis­in­ter­est in busi­ness, griev­ances with Edison—and there are plen­ty of per­son­al insults thrown into the mix.

Whether you’re a par­ti­san of Edi­son or Tes­la, or couldn’t care less either way, no doubt you’ll get a kick out of this. And for an added bonus, check out the “mak­ing of” video below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Magi­cian Mar­co Tem­pest Daz­zles a TED Audi­ence with “The Elec­tric Rise and Fall of Niko­la Tes­la”

A Brief, Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Thomas Edi­son (and Niko­la Tes­la)

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

Hayek vs. Keynes Rap

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

 

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Watch Brian Eno’s “Video Paintings,” Where 1980s TV Technology Meets Visual Art

in Art, Music | March 19th, 2013

Bri­an Eno, the well-known music pro­duc­er, res­i­dent intel­lec­tu­al of rock, “non-musi­cian” musi­cian, “drift­ing clar­i­fi­er,” and pop­u­lar­iz­er of ambi­ent records, went to art school. (The Colch­ester Insti­tute in Essex, specif­i­cal­ly.) Any­one famil­iar with Eno’s career knows that Eng­lish art school of the six­ties must have per­fect­ly suit­ed his inter­ests and incli­na­tions. But read up on his gen­er­a­tion of U.K. pop­u­lar musi­cians, and you’ll find art school not a whol­ly unusu­al rite of pas­sage. That back­ground unit­ed sev­er­al of the mem­bers of Roxy Music, the band in which Eno would hone his son­ic craft (and build his noto­ri­ety) in the ear­ly sev­en­ties. Though music would offer him his high­est peaks of fame and for­tune, Eno nev­er quite for­got that he’d orig­i­nal­ly entered art school with the inten­tion of paint­ing. Attend­ing an exhi­bi­tion of his 77 Mil­lion Paint­ings a few years back, I delight­ed in see­ing his inter­est in tech­nol­o­gy and com­po­si­tion inter­sect with his pen­chant for the visu­al arts.

Rewind, now, to the eight­ies, where we find anoth­er, equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of Eno con­tin­u­ing to “paint,” but in a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly rethought man­ner. You can now watch his “video paint­ings” of that era on Youtube. Here you can see Thurs­day After­noon, his series on the female form (some of which, despite approach­ing abstrac­tion, could poten­tial­ly be con­sid­ered NSFW, though any main­stream gallery today would show them open­ly). Just above, you’ll find an excerpt from his series Mis­tak­en Mem­o­ries of Medieval Man­hat­tan. It may not look like much, and indeed, Eno’s ini­tial process involved lit­tle more than acci­den­tal­ly leav­ing his cam­corder record­ing on the win­dowsill. But bear in mind that the actu­al instal­la­tion involved screen­ing the piece right-side-up on a tele­vi­sion itself turned on its side — a sim­ple recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion, but as those who saw the orig­i­nal have assured me, a strik­ing one. Rainy-day project: try repli­cat­ing that set­up at home. I think Eno would approve.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

Day of Light: A Crowd­sourced Film by Mul­ti­me­dia Genius Bri­an Eno

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

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.

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Watch Philip Roth, Now 80, Read from His Irreverent Classic, Portnoy’s Complaint

in Literature | March 19th, 2013



While it did come as a shock to some of Philip Roth’s friends when the nov­el­ist announced his retire­ment from writ­ing last year, one might imag­ine that after 31 nov­els, two Nation­al Book Awards, a Pulitzer, three PEN/Faulkner Awards and a host of oth­er acco­lades, the man deserves a break. Roth cel­e­brat­ed his 80th birth­day on Tues­day. New York­er edi­tor David Rem­nick writes in his account of Roth’s Newark birth­day par­ty that the writer “sensed that bet­ter books were not ahead” and quit rather than expe­ri­ence his pow­ers fail­ing. This is in char­ac­ter, writes Rem­nick, for a writer whose books “rage against the indig­ni­ties and inevitabil­i­ties, the inescapa­bil­i­ty, the hor­rif­ic cos­mic joke of age, of death.”

Remnick’s obser­va­tion reminds me of the two Roth char­ac­ters who loom large in my mem­o­ry of his work—both over­sexed mama’s boys, dri­ven by grim humor and nar­cis­sis­tic self-regard. First I think of grotesque old lech­er Mick­ey Sab­bath in Sabbath’s The­ater, who ekes out his lat­er years on tiny bits of sym­pa­thy, las­civ­i­ous remem­brances, and sui­ci­dal fan­tasies. At one point in the nov­el, he observes, “we are immod­er­ate because grief is immod­er­ate, all the hun­dreds and thou­sands of kinds of grief.”

If Sab­bath is a pro­jec­tion of Roth’s fear of aging, he is an effec­tive­ly ter­ri­fy­ing por­trait of dis­so­lu­tion and decay; for all his gal­lows humor, he can’t hide the fact that he just doesn’t know when to let go of for­mer glo­ries. If he’s an elder­ly Alexan­der Port­noy (per­haps), he’s a Port­noy gone to pot with a few hun­dred kinds of grief. Of course Port­noy— 33-year-old neu­rot­ic chron­ic mas­tur­ba­tor and “lust-rid­den, moth­er addict­ed young Jew­ish bach­e­lor”— nar­rates the nov­el that made Roth a house­hold name. You can see Roth read from Portnoy’s Com­plaint in the video above from PBS.

Since Port­noy’s 1969 pub­li­ca­tion, Roth has endured ques­tion after ques­tion about the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal con­tent in his nov­els. Sure­ly he invest­ed Port­noy and Sab­bath with some mea­sure of his rag­ing Id, but his body of work takes in con­cerns far beyond sex­u­al­ly obses­sive Jew­ish mother’s boys. To get a glimpse of the ear­ly, pre-Port­noy Roth, take a look at the 1958 and ‘59 short sto­ries “Epstein” and “The Con­ver­sion of the Jews” at the Paris Review. Both sto­ries appeared in Roth’s first book Good­bye, Colum­bus, for which he won his first Nation­al Book Award in 1960. And for a look at the aging writer wrestling with the brave new world of open source col­lab­o­ra­tive author­ship, read his fas­ci­nat­ing “An Open Let­ter to Wikipedia” from Sep­tem­ber of last year, a month before he announced his retire­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip Roth Reads the Last Pages of His Last Work of Fic­tion: “The End of the Line After Thir­ty-One Books”

Philip Roth Pre­dicts the Death of the Nov­el; Paul Auster Coun­ters

Philip Roth on Aging

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

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Big History: David Christian Covers 13.7 Billion Years of History in 18 Minutes

in Astronomy, History, TED Talks | March 19th, 2013

Per­haps you noticed? Dur­ing the past two years, the TED brand has mor­phed into some­thing new. Once known for stag­ing a cou­ple of high-priced annu­al con­fer­ences, TED has recent­ly launched a series of new prod­ucts: TEDx con­fer­ences for the mass­es, TED Books, TED Radio, TED ED and Ads Worth Spread­ing. In the wake of all of this, some have ques­tioned whether TED has grown too quick­ly, or to put it more col­lo­qui­al­ly, “jumped the shark.” There are days when TED feels like a vic­tim of its own suc­cess. But there are oth­er days — espe­cial­ly when it returns to its roots — where the orga­ni­za­tion can still be a vital force. That hap­pens when­ev­er TED wraps up its big annu­al con­fer­ence, as it did two weeks ago, and puts some note­wor­thy talks online. (See, for exam­ple, Stew­art Brand describ­ing how sci­en­tists will bring extinct species back from the dead.) Or it hap­pens when TED brings old­er talks from its archive to YouTube.

Which brings us to the talk above. Here we have David Chris­t­ian, a pro­fes­sor at Aus­trali­a’s Mac­quar­ie Uni­ver­si­ty, explain­ing the his­to­ry of the world in less than 18 min­utes, start­ing with the Big Bang and then cov­er­ing anoth­er 13.7 bil­lion years. For­mal­ly trained as a Russ­ian his­to­ri­an, Chris­t­ian began work­ing on Big His­to­ry in the 1980s, a meta dis­ci­pline that “exam­ines long time frames using a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary approach based on com­bin­ing numer­ous dis­ci­plines from sci­ence and the human­i­ties.” Chris­t­ian then pop­u­lar­ized his new­fan­gled way of telling his­to­ry when he pro­duced for the Teach­ing Com­pa­ny: Big His­to­ry: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Human­i­ty. It did­n’t hurt that Bill Gates stum­bled upon the lec­tures and gave back­ing to The Big His­to­ry Project, an online ini­tia­tive that exper­i­ments with bring­ing Big His­to­ry to high school stu­dents. The Big His­to­ry Project got its start at the 2011 TED con­fer­ence, with the talk pre­sent­ed above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the World (and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty) in 100 Objects

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

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Adrian Belew Presents the Fine Art of Making Guitar Noise — Past, Present, and Future

in Music | March 18th, 2013

Since 1989, the Chica­go Human­i­ties Fes­ti­val has been “devot­ed to mak­ing the human­i­ties a vital and vibrant ingre­di­ent of dai­ly life.” A quick perusal of their site should con­vince you of their seri­ous­ness. The most recent line­up fea­tures a lec­ture on Josephine Bak­er and Eva Per­on, a his­to­ry of the ban­jo, and three Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois pro­fes­sors dis­cussing the first book-length aca­d­e­m­ic study of Mad Men.

But while the focus of CHF may be schol­ar­ly, the fes­ti­val is not all lec­ture-based. In the sum­mer of 2011, gui­tarist Adri­an Belew appeared on a pan­el enti­tled “The His­to­ry and Future of Gui­tar Noise.” Musi­cians out there will like­ly know Belew’s name, but for those who don’t, he was an inte­gral part of prog-rock giants King Crim­son, played with Frank Zap­pa, the Talk­ing Heads, David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, and has made a name for him­self as one of the most unique elec­tric play­ers of the past sev­er­al decades (ref­er­ence his solo below, for exam­ple, at 2:20, in a 1978 live per­for­mance of Bowie’s “Jean Genie”).

In the video at the top of the page, see Belew in con­ver­sa­tion with host Stu­art Flack and a live audi­ence. He talks the his­to­ry of Fend­er guitars—his instru­ments of choice until he start­ed play­ing the Park­er Fly he holds on stage. He dis­cuss­es his cur­rent effects set­up, and the influ­ence of effects pio­neer Jimi Hen­drix on his play­ing. But more than just gui­tar noise, Belew talks about, and demon­strates, the phys­i­cal­i­ty of his play­ing, and the ways that he adapt­ed the instru­ment as an exten­sion of his body.

Belew’s phys­i­cal own­er­ship of the gui­tar makes him a fas­ci­nat­ing play­er to watch, and lis­ten to. He respects the shred­ders who prac­tice six­teen hours a day in their bed­rooms, and yet Belew’s affec­tion lies with play­ers like Jeff Beck, “the guys who make it sound like a voice.” Whomev­er he’s played with, and what­ev­er tech he uses, Belew makes gui­tars sing, in weird elec­tric tones no voice could match. The con­ver­sa­tion above is a treat, but if you’re anx­ious to hear what Belew sounds like late­ly, watch his instru­men­tal per­for­mance of “Dri­ve” (below), a com­po­si­tion built of lay­ers upon lay­ers of looped “noise” and Belew’s indi­vid­ual chordal phras­ing, bends, fin­ger tap­ping, and vibra­to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Watch Phish Play the Entire­ty of the Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light(1996)

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

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Free: Download Dan Brown’s Bestseller, The DaVinci Code, Until March 24

in Books, e-books | March 18th, 2013

DaVinciCodeI’ll be the first one to admit it, The DaVin­ci Code isn’t exact­ly an easy fit on a site that promis­es to talk about “the best cul­tur­al media” out there. But Dan Brown’s 2003 mys­tery nov­el has sold north of 80 mil­lion copies and now finds itself trans­lat­ed into 44 lan­guages. And the Lou­vre fig­ures cen­tral­ly in the book’s plot. That gives it some cul­tur­al cred, no? Okay, maybe not! Any­way, to cel­e­brate the 10th anniver­sary of the book’s pub­li­ca­tion, Dou­ble­day has decid­ed to give away copies of the best­seller through March 24, mak­ing the book avail­able as a free down­load on mul­ti­ple ebook plat­forms: Ama­zon, Apple iBook­store, Barnes & Noble, Google, Sony Read­er, and Kobo. Accord­ing to Gal­l­ey­cat, the down­load will include “the pro­logue and first chap­ter of Infer­no, Brown’s upcom­ing nov­el.”

Mean­while, if you’re look­ing for a weight­i­er read, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks for the Kin­dle, iPad and Nook

H/T Medi­a­bistro

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The Rise of Webcomics: PBS’ Off Book Series Explores the Emergence of New Popular Art Form

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | March 18th, 2013

I’m a paper loy­al­ist by age and incli­na­tion. I don’t begrudge those who do the bulk of their read­ing dig­i­tal­ly, I just pre­fer the famil­iar­i­ty and object-ness of the print­ed page. As a lover of comics and graph­ic nov­els, my brick and mor­tar needs are more than met by the com­par­a­tive wealth of indie shops and fes­ti­vals here in New York City, as well as its belea­guered pub­lic library sys­tem.

I could­n’t help notic­ing, though, that many of the new­er titles I favor got their start online. The pro­po­nents of the form who dis­cuss the Rise of Web­comics for PBS’ Off Book series make a com­pelling case for explor­ing that realm a bit more ful­some­ly.

Many artists who put their stuff up on the web ben­e­fit from the imme­di­a­cy of the act and the—theoretically—larger audi­ence. But pub­lish­ing in this for­mat also opens it up for Sam Brown and Andrew Hussie to cre­ate a large body of work based on read­er sug­ges­tions. Hussie takes full advan­tage of the mul­ti plat­form pos­si­bil­i­ties. Lucy Knis­ley, no stranger to edi­to­r­i­al refine­ment in a more tra­di­tion­al pub­li­ca­tion mod­el, gives her mon­sters of the id free rein online. And Nick Gure­witch’s Per­ry Bible Fel­low­ship (though he yanked a cou­ple of them offline to “make the book more spe­cial”) is the ves­sel into which his tor­rent of hilar­i­ous, dis­so­cia­tive ideas flows.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Gold­en Age Comics

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

The Art of Illus­tra­tion: Four Illus­tra­tors Intro­duce You to the Awe-Inspir­ing State of Their Art

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s favorite web­com­ic (until now the only one she read) remains Hyper­bole and a Half.

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Are You Ready for the Return of Lost Species?: Stewart Brand on the Dawn of De-Extinction

in Biology, TED Talks | March 18th, 2013

The Earth is los­ing life forms at a dis­turb­ing rate. The biol­o­gist Edward O. Wil­son has esti­mat­ed that at least 27,000 species per year are dis­ap­pear­ing from our plan­et. That’s an aver­age of 74 species a day, or three every hour. Researchers warn that if we stay on this track, the Earth will enter its sixth mass extinc­tion–the first since the one that killed off the dinosaurs.

With ani­mal and plant habi­tats being crowd­ed out by a human pop­u­la­tion that has passed the 7 bil­lion mark and is grow­ing at a rate of 70 mil­lion peo­ple per year, sci­en­tists attempt­ing to stem the tide of extinc­tion have their work cut out for them. The vast major­i­ty of efforts, of course, are aimed at pre­serv­ing endan­gered species and mak­ing sure more species do not become endan­gered. But one man is spear­head­ing a bold project to actu­al­ly bring back species we have already lost.

Stew­art Brand first came to noto­ri­ety in the 1960s, as one of Ken Kesey’s Mer­ry Pranksters and as the cre­ator of the Whole Earth Cat­a­log. In 1996 he co-found­ed the Long Now Foun­da­tion, ded­i­cat­ed to fos­ter­ing long-term think­ing in our accel­er­at­ing cul­ture, with its “patho­log­i­cal­ly short atten­tion span.” One of Brand’s pet projects at Long Now is Revive & Restore, a pro­gram to coor­di­nate genet­ic research into bring­ing back present­ly extinct species. Brand spoke about the project (see above) on Feb­ru­ary 27 at a TED con­fer­ence in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia.

Revive & Restore’s first project is to bring back the pas­sen­ger pigeon, a bird that died off in 1914 but was once so abun­dant that migra­to­ry flocks in North Amer­i­ca would dark­en the sky. The pas­sen­ger pigeon was cho­sen as the ini­tial project because it is bet­ter-known than many extinct species and because the bird’s DNA (tak­en from muse­um spec­i­mens) has already been sequenced. But Brand promis­es that the pas­sen­ger pigeon is only the begin­ning. “The fact is,” he says, “humans have made a huge hole in nature in the last 10,000 years. We have the abil­i­ty now, and maybe the moral oblig­a­tion, to repair some of the dam­age.”

Passenger Pigeon Audubon .jpg

Pas­sen­ger Pigeon (Ectopistes migra­to­rius) by John James Audubon, 1824. Water­col­or, pas­tel, graphite, gouache, black chalk and black ink on paper. The image depicts a behav­ior known as “billing,” in which one bird shares food by regur­gi­tat­ing it into the bill of anoth­er. The male, with it’s more col­or­ful plumage, is shown stand­ing on the low­er branch, with the female up above.

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The Life and Controversial Work of Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe Profiled in 1988 Documentary

in Photography, Television | March 18th, 2013

In March 1988, the BBC’s Are­na turned its lens toward pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Map­plethor­pe. The tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary series had already spent well over a decade cul­ti­vat­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for cov­er­ing every­thing—Super­man, Philip K. Dick, the fall­en Sovi­et empire, the Ford Cortina—but some view­ers must still have felt a bit star­tled by the choice of such a con­tro­ver­sial artist, let alone by how mild and non-threat­en­ing he ulti­mate­ly seems. Map­plethor­pe had made his name both in por­trai­ture, espe­cial­ly of musi­cians, and in high­ly charged erot­ic imagery. This lat­ter cur­rent in his work, did not, of course, please every­body. By the time the Are­na pro­file aired, Map­plethor­pe, suf­fer­ing from AIDS, would have only one year of life remain­ing, with the worst of the high-pro­file bat­tles over his artis­tic val­ue and/or “obscen­i­ty” still to come.

Though wary of extin­guish­ing the mys­tery of his pho­tographs by say­ing too much about them, Map­plethor­pe does reveal what sounds like an impor­tant ele­ment of his moti­va­tion, espe­cial­ly in the face of the obscen­i­ty charges: “I want­ed to retain the for­bid­den feel­ing of pornog­ra­phy and make an art state­ment, to make some­thing unique­ly my own.” We see the man at work, and we hear a good deal more from him in an on-cam­era inter­view. Nov­el­ist Edmund White appears to pro­vide con­text and com­men­tary, as do sev­er­al of the peo­ple Map­plethor­pe pho­tographed, both those who sought fame and those who oth­er­wise avoid­ed it. Cov­er­ing Map­plethor­pe’s life as much as it does his work, the broad­cast nat­u­ral­ly includes a con­ver­sa­tion with Pat­ti Smith, not­ed rock­er and per­haps the pho­tog­ra­pher’s clos­est friend. For ide­al sup­ple­men­tary read­ing, have a look at Smith’s Map­plethor­pe-cen­tric mem­oir Just Kids, about which we’ve post­ed before.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Remem­bers Robert Map­plethor­pe

Pat­ti Smith Reads Her Final Words to Robert Map­plethor­pe

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.

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

in e-books, Literature | March 18th, 2013

For writ­ers and seri­ous read­ers, George Saun­ders is any­thing but a new­com­er. Saun­ders pub­lished his first short sto­ry with The New York­er back in 1992, and his new sto­ries have reg­u­lar­ly debuted in the mag­a­zine’s Fic­tion sec­tion ever since. Over the years, he has gained the rep­u­ta­tion of being a “writer’s writer,” with authors like Tobias Wolff say­ing about Saun­ders: “He’s been one of the lumi­nous spots of our lit­er­a­ture for the past 20 years.” But despite his lit­er­ary accom­plish­ments, and despite win­ning the pres­ti­gious MacArthur award in 2006, George Saun­ders nev­er quite became a house­hold name until Jan­u­ary 6 of this year. On that day, The New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle with the title, “George Saun­ders Has Writ­ten the Best Book You’ll Read This Year,” a pret­ty bold dec­la­ra­tion giv­en that 2013 still had 359 days to go. Since then, Saun­ders has found him­self in the lime­light talk­ing about Tenth of Decem­ber, his new­ly-pub­lished col­lec­tion of short sto­ries. You can watch him give a read­ing at Google above, or make appear­ances on the PBS News Hour and The Col­bert Report.

If you’re not famil­iar with Saun­ders’ writ­ing, then we have you cov­ered. Below we’ve col­lect­ed 10 sto­ries by the author, all free to read online. Even bet­ter, the list fea­tures three sto­ries from Tenth of Decem­ber, includ­ing the sto­ry after which the book takes its name. All sto­ries from the new col­lec­tion have an aster­isk next to the title.

Relat­ed Con­tent

George Saun­ders Extols the Virtues of Kind­ness in 2013 Speech to Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Grads

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 11 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

375 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

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