10 Rules for Writers by Etgar Keret, the Israeli Master of the Short and Strange

in Books, Creativity, Literature, Writing | July 13th, 2015

Etgar Keret, above, is a best sell­ing author and award-win­ning film­mak­er with the soul of a teenage zine pub­lish­er. He’s a mas­ter of the strange and short who plays by his own rules. This sounds like a recipe for out­sider sta­tus but Keret fre­quent­ly pops up in The New York Times, The New York­er, and on pub­lic radio’s This Amer­i­can Life.

The child of Holo­caust sur­vivors told Tikkun that he began writ­ing sto­ries as a way out of his mis­er­able exis­tence as a stut­ter­ing 19-year-old sol­dier in the Israeli army. This may explain why he’s so gen­er­ous with young fans, hand­ing his sto­ries over to them to inter­pret in short films and ani­ma­tions.

When Rook­ie, a web­site for teenage girls, invit­ed him to share ten writ­ing tips, he play­ful­ly oblig­ed. It’s worth not­ing that he refrained from pre­scrib­ing some­thing that’s a sta­ple of oth­er authors’ tip lists — the adop­tion of a dai­ly writ­ing prac­tice. As he told the San Fran­cis­co Bay Guardian:

For me, the term “writ­ing rou­tine” sounds like an oxy­moron. It is a bit like say­ing “hav­ing-a-once-in-a-life­time-insight-which-makes-you-want-to burst-into-tears rou­tine.”

With no fur­ther ado, here are his ten rules for writ­ers, along with a lib­er­al sprin­kling of some of my favorite Keret sto­ries.

1. Make sure you enjoy writ­ing.

You won’t find Keret com­par­ing his cho­sen pro­fes­sion to open­ing a vein. As he told Rook­ie:

Writ­ing is a way to live anoth­er life…be grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand the scope of your life.

2. Love your char­ac­ters.

…though few will ever seem as lov­able as the girl in Goran Dukic’s charm­ing ani­ma­tion of  Keret’s sto­ry “What Do We Have In Our Pock­ets?” below.

3. When you’re writ­ing, you don’t owe any­thing to any­one.

Don’t equate lov­ing your char­ac­ters with treat­ing them nice­ly. See Keret’s sto­ry “Fun­gus.”

4. Always start from the mid­dle.

This is per­haps Keret’s most con­ven­tion­al tip, though his writ­ing shows he’s any­thing but con­ven­tion­al when it comes to locat­ing that mid­dle. His novel­la, Kneller’s Hap­py Campers (on which the film Wrist­cut­ters: A Love Sto­ry, star­ring Tom Waits, was based) man­ages to start at the begin­ning, mid­dle and end.

5. Try not to know how it ends.

At the very least, be pre­pared to dig your­self out to a dif­fer­ent real­i­ty, like the nar­ra­tor in Keret’s very short sto­ry “Mys­tique,” read below by actor Willem Dafoe.

6. Don’t use any­thing just because “that’s how it always is.”

Here, Keret is refer­ring to what he termed “the shrine of form” in an inter­view with his great admir­er, broad­cast­er Ira Glass, but his con­tent is sim­i­lar­ly unfet­tered.  If your writing’s become bogged down by real­i­ty, try intro­duc­ing a mag­ic fish who’s flu­ent in every­thing, as in “What, of This Gold­fish, Would You Wish?,” read by author Gary Shteyn­gart, below.

7. Write like your­self.

Leave the crit­ics hold­ing the bag on com­par­isons to Franz Kaf­ka, Kurt Von­negut and Woody Allen, Lydia Davis, Amos Oz, Don­ald Barthelme…

8. Make sure you’re all alone in the room when you write.

um…Etgar? Does this mean I have to give up my cof­fice?

9. Let peo­ple who like what you write encour­age you.

Nerts to under­min­ers, fren­e­mies, with­er­ing inter­nal edi­tors, and delib­er­ate­ly hate­ful review­ers!

10. Hear what every­one has to say but don’t lis­ten to any­one (except me).

Read the Rook­ie inter­view in which Keret expands on his rules.

via Rook­ie

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Kings’ Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Kurt Von­negut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Piece of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Vintage 1930s Japanese Posters Artistically Market the Wonders of Travel

in Art, Travel | July 13th, 2015

Vintage-Japanese-Tourism-Posters

Ear­li­er this year, we fea­tured vin­tage Japan­ese print adver­tise­ments from the gold­en age of Art Deco and for such prod­ucts as beer, sake, and cig­a­rettes. If you like that sort of thing, you might con­sid­er pay­ing atten­tion to the recent­ly launched Brand­ing in Asia, a site detect­ed to cov­er­ing “the art of brand­ing” as expressed in “the excit­ing new ideas and con­cepts explod­ing from the mind of Asia” — or the excit­ing old ideas and con­cepts which, aes­thet­i­cal­ly speak­ing, remain pret­ty explo­sive still.

Vintage-Japanese-Travel13

Take, for instance, their col­lec­tion of clas­sic Japan­ese steamship ads. “In the ear­ly part of the 20th cen­tu­ry,” writes Steph Aromdee, “Japan’s increas­ing­ly pros­per­ous mid­dle class was tak­ing to the high seas for trav­el. One com­pa­ny, the Japan Mail Steamship, adver­tised heav­i­ly, hop­ing to attract would-be tourists to their lux­u­ry ships. What were like­ly at the time regard­ed as sim­ple adver­tise­ments and brochures that sim­ply showed depar­tures and des­ti­na­tions, have today become viewed as stun­ning works of art.”

Vintage-Japanese-Travel4

Here we’ve excerpt­ed a few such adver­tise­ments from their impres­sive selec­tion which, as you can see, ranges artis­ti­cal­ly from the styl­ized to the real­is­tic, and con­cep­tu­al­ly from the prac­ti­cal to the pure­ly evoca­tive. They might entice read­ers onto a steamship voy­age with an Art Deco bathing beau­ty, a con­trast of human trav­el­er against moun­tain’s majesty, a detailed map enu­mer­at­ing a vari­ety of pos­si­ble des­ti­na­tions, or, as in the case of deer-filled Nara, a scat­ter­ing of local icons.

Vintage-Japanese-Travel11

The age of the steamship has, of course, long since dis­solved into the roman­tic past, even in Japan. Or per­haps I should say espe­cial­ly in Japan, whose shinkansen bul­let train not only put every oth­er mode of trans­port straight into obso­les­cence, but — at least to my mind — also boasts a cut­ting-edge romance of its own.

Vintage-Japanese-Travel-posters7

And so these adver­tise­ments, more than 70 years after their print­ings, still get me plan­ning my next trip to Japan, a coun­try that knows a thing or two about desire and place. “Even in Kyoto,” wrote 17th-cen­tu­ry poet Mat­suo Bashō, “I long for Kyoto.”
Vintage-Japanese-Travel-posters12

via Brand­ing in Asia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Adver­tise­ments from Japan’s Gold­en Age of Art Deco

Glo­ri­ous Ear­ly 20th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Ads for Beer, Smokes & Sake (1902–1954)

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

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

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Read the First Chapter of Harper Lee’s New Book, Then Hear It Read by Reese Witherspoon

in Audio Books, Books | July 10th, 2015

Go Set a Watchman

After much press and debate, Harp­er Lee’s new nov­el — a sequel of sorts to her beloved book, To Kill a Mock­ing­bird — will be released on July 14th. You can pre-order Go Set a Watch­man: A Nov­el (already #1 on Ama­zon’s best­seller list). But, even bet­ter, you can head over to the The Wall Street Jour­nal or The Guardian and read the first chap­ter online. The Guardian also fea­tures an audio ver­sion read by the Oscar-win­ning actress Reese With­er­spoon. Stream it right below. (And, fyi, you can always down­load a free audio copy of To Kill a Mock­ing­bird through the free tri­al pro­grams run by Audiobooks.com and Audible.com.)

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Note: There’s now a way to make sure that our posts show up in your Face­book news­feed. Find info on that here.

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With Medieval Instruments, Band Performs Classic Songs by The Beatles, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica & Deep Purple

in Music | July 10th, 2015

We’ve seen Euro­peans cov­er famous rock and met­al bands in an Amer­i­can folk style—Finnish musi­cians play­ing AC/DC, Iron Maid­en, and Dio in Appalachi­an folk, to be exact. Now, pre­pare to hear famous rock and met­al bands in a dis­tinc­tive­ly Euro­pean folk style: Medieval Belaru­sian folk, played by the beau­ti­ful­ly named Stary Olsa. The band’s name derives from a stream in East Belarus—their cloth­ing, instru­men­ta­tion, and rhythms from an ear­ly Lithuan­ian state called the Grand Duchy—but the songs are all 20th cen­tu­ry radio fod­der. Above, see them do Deep Purple’s “Child in Time,” and below, they tack­le the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers’ “Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion.”

Stary Olsa’s cov­er of Metallica’s “One” (fur­ther down), already an incred­i­bly dra­mat­ic song, works par­tic­u­lar­ly well in their syn­co­pat­ed Spar­tan style. The sounds and cos­tum­ing of the accom­plished Belaru­sian musi­cians will inevitably remind you—if you haven’t been under a rock in Belarus—of that Medieval-style fan­ta­sy show in which your favorite char­ac­ters meet hor­ri­bly vio­lent ends week after week.

When we look at the bloody his­to­ry of Medieval Europe, the grue­some­ness of Wes­t­eros can seem like only a slight exaggeration—dragons and ice zom­bies aside—of the so-called “dark ages.” These asso­ci­a­tions, and the solem­ni­ty of the song selec­tion and stark­ness of the voic­es and instru­ments, lend Stary Olsa’s per­for­mances a grav­i­tas that, frankly, ele­vates some of the mate­r­i­al far above its pop ori­gins (I’m look­ing at you, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers).

In order for such meld­ings of styles, peri­ods, and cul­tures to work, whether they be played for laughs or deeply seri­ous, the musi­cian­ship must be top notch. Such was the case with Finnish blue­grass met­al cov­er band Steve ‘N’ Seag­ulls, and such is cer­tain­ly the case with Stary Olsa, who have appeared on Belaru­sian TV (from which some of these videos come) and are cur­rent­ly find­ing a lev­el of pop­u­lar­i­ty out­side their native coun­try that few Belaru­sian bands have achieved. It’s unlike­ly we’ll see them soon on the rock fes­ti­val cir­cuit, but their sta­tus as an inter­net sen­sa­tion is all but guar­an­teed. Just below, see the band trans­late a med­ley of The Bea­t­les’ “Obla-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” into their musi­cal idiom, prov­ing that they don’t just do dark, haunt­ing, and mys­te­ri­ous; they’re also pos­i­tive­ly dance­able.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

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

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

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

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The 321 Books in David Foster Wallace’s Personal Library: From Blood Meridian to Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder

in Books | July 10th, 2015

Wallace_Books_Williamson_002_large

Not long after David Fos­ter Wal­lace died, his fans found them­selves with a new place of pil­grim­age: not his tomb­stone, in the man­ner of a Jim Mor­ri­son or a Kurt Cobain, but his lit­er­ary archives. You’ll find them at the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin. From their col­lec­tion, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Wal­lace’s fall 1994 Eng­lish 102 syl­labus from when he taught at Illi­nois State Uni­ver­si­ty, his Eng­lish 183A hand­out break­ing down (in the way that only he could) five com­mon usage mis­takes, and the lan­guage books con­tained in his per­son­al library.

Any read­er even casu­al­ly acquaint­ed with Wal­lace’s nov­els and essays will imme­di­ate­ly sense his deep inter­est in lan­guage. But if you browse through the Ran­som Cen­ter’s col­lec­tion of 321 books from the author of Infi­nite Jest and A Sup­pos­ed­ly Fun Thing I’ll Nev­er Do Again’s own shelves (most of them seem­ing­ly well-anno­tat­ed), you’ll find a good deal of evi­dence about what else inter­est­ed him. The Awl’s Maria Bustil­los did a post on the sur­pris­ing vari­ety of self-help books found there­in. Oth­er rep­re­sent­ed types of books include:

  • Mass-mar­ket thrillers like Thomas Har­ris’ The Silence of the Lambs, Han­ni­bal and Han­ni­bal Ris­ing, and Stephen King’s Car­rie
  • The nov­els of his peers like Rick Moody’s The Divin­ers, Richard Pow­ers’ Gain, Galatea 2.2, and Oper­a­tion Wan­der­ing Soul, Mark Leyn­er’s Et Tu, Babe and My Cousin, My Gas­troen­terol­o­gist, Jonathan Franzen’s Strong Motion, Cor­mac McCarthy’s Blood Merid­i­an and Nichol­son Bak­er’s Room Tem­per­a­ture
  • Books he wrote about like Bryan Gar­ner’s A Dic­tio­nary of Mod­ern Amer­i­can Usage, Edwin Williamson’s Borges: A Life, John Updike’s Toward the End of Time
  • Books on his own work like William C. Dowl­ing’s A Read­er’s Com­pan­ion to Infi­nite Jest
  • Books on the mid­west from which he came like A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Mid­west
  • Books clear­ly used as research mate­ri­als for his final, incom­plete, IRS-cen­tric nov­el The Pale King like Michael J. Graet­z’s The U.S. Income Tax: What It Is, How It Got That Way, and Where We Go from Here, William L. Raby’s The Reluc­tant Tax­pay­er, and Mar­ty Kaplan’s What the IRS Does­n’t Want You to Know: A CPA Reveals the Tricks of the Trade
  • My own favorite nov­els like Joseph Heller’s Some­thing Hap­pened, Richard Yates’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Road, and Alexan­der Ther­oux’s Dar­conville’s Cat

Have a look, and maybe you too can find a few of your own cur­rent or future favorite books. We could all do worse, after all, than to read like David Fos­ter Wal­lace did, even if it leads us to the occa­sion­al vol­ume like Mus­cle: Con­fes­sions of an Unlike­ly Body­builder; Barbed Wire: A Polit­i­cal His­to­ry; or Jack B. Nim­ble’s The Con­struc­tion and Oper­a­tion of Clan­des­tine Drug Lab­o­ra­to­ries. And for a week­end activ­i­ty, we could do worse than com­par­ing Wal­lace’s per­son­al library to that of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, which we fea­tured last year.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Breaks Down Five Com­mon Word Usage Mis­takes in Eng­lish

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

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

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

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CERN’s Cosmic Piano and Jazz Pianist Jam Together at The Montreux Jazz Festival

in Music, Physics | July 10th, 2015

The Mon­treux Jazz Fes­ti­val — the sec­ond largest jazz fes­ti­val in the world — has seen many acts come and go since it kicked off in 1967. Miles Davis, Kei­th Jar­rett, Nina Simone, Bill Evans and Ella Fitzger­ald have all played there. And now we have the first con­cert per­formed by a jazz pianist (Al Blat­ter) and The Cos­mic Piano, an instru­ment cre­at­ed by par­ti­cle physi­cists at CERN, the home of the Large Hadron Col­lid­er, in Switzer­land. The Cos­mic Piano works some­thing like this: “When a cos­mic ray pass­es through one of four sep­a­rate detec­tor pads of the Cos­mic Piano, it trig­gers a musi­cal note and a colour­ful flash of light.” The rays arrive in ran­dom inter­vals, and once they’re com­bined with Blat­ter’s notes, you get some inter­est­ing polyrhyth­mic jazz. Catch a few high­lights above, and get more back­ground infor­ma­tion and video clips on CERN’s web site.

via @matthiasrascher

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA & Grate­ful Dead Drum­mer Mick­ey Hart Record Cos­mic Sounds of the Uni­verse on New Album

The Sound­track of the Uni­verse

CERN Physi­cist Explains the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse for Begin­ners with a Short Ani­mat­ed Video

Hig­gs Boson, the Musi­cal: CERN Data Turned into Melody

Free Stan­ford Course Explains Par­ti­cle Physics & the Large Hadron Col­lid­er

Free Online Physics Cours­es

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

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Neil Gaiman & Famous Friends Read Aloud the Entirety of Coraline (and The Graveyard Book Too)

in Audio Books, Books, K-12, Literature | July 10th, 2015

One of the many plea­sures of hear­ing a children’s author read­ing his or her own work is their over­whelm­ing lack of vocal sen­ti­ment. When my chil­dren were young, I always opt­ed for the horse’s mouth, over the more histri­on­ic char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of a hired nar­ra­tor, regard­less of what sit­com or Broad­way play he or she may have starred in. It might have tak­en author E.B. White 17 takes to lay down a track for Charlotte’s Web’s tit­u­lar character’s death scene, but he even­tu­al­ly achieved the healthy remove that lets the listener—not the reader—wallow in the val­ley of deep emo­tions.

Neil Gaiman’s Cora­line is not a weepie, like White’s best loved work. Instead, it rev­els in a sort of under­stat­ed creepi­ness en route to the hor­rif­i­cal­ly bizarre. It’s a tone his fel­low lit­er­ary celebs are bliss­ful­ly well equipped to deliv­er, read­ing chap­ters aloud in hon­or of the book’s 10th anniver­sary. You can see them read all of the chap­ters here and also above and below.

Gaiman him­self book­ends the pro­ceed­ings by claim­ing the first (above) and final chap­ter. Lucky that. One shud­ders to think of the myr­i­ad ways in which a nar­ra­tor of cute­si­er sen­si­bil­i­ties could have screwed up phras­es like “oom­pah oom­pah” and “squidy brown toad­stools” (thus blight­ing the entire book).

I con­ceive of these read­ings as a mul­ti­ple nar­ra­tor audio­book because the per­form­ers are read­ing, rather than attempt­ing to act out the text in their hands, but real­ly it’s more of a video sto­ry­time. Gaiman is def­i­nite­ly on point in front of the camera—his large brown eyes, promi­nent pro­boscis and stringy ster­n­oclei­do­mas­toid mus­cles adding to the pro­ceed­ings.

Sand­wiched in between the master’s per­for­mances, you will find such lumi­nar­ies as authors R.L. Stine, John Hodg­man, and Daniel “Lemo­ny Snick­et” Han­dler, framed so that he has no head. For­mer child star Fairuza Balk would’ve made a gim­crack Cora­line back in the day, but her ren­di­tion of the book’s penul­ti­mate chap­ter sug­gests that she’s even bet­ter suit­ed to the role of Coraline’s “Oth­er Moth­er,” or rather her dis­em­bod­ied hand. Bed­lam, indeed.

Lis­ten to the 10th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion of the book in its entire­ty here.

Should that leave you want­i­ng more, Harp­er Collins has com­piled a stem to stern playlist of Gaiman read­ing 2008’s The Grave­yard Book, culled from var­i­ous videos of the author on tour. You can watch it above, or find it in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman Reads “The Man Who For­got Ray Brad­bury”

Where Do Great Ideas Come From? Neil Gaiman Explains

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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How to Make Sure You Get Open Culture in Your Facebook Newsfeed: Now You Can Take Control

in Media, Technology | July 9th, 2015

For the longest time, Face­book gave you no abil­i­ty to con­trol what con­tent you see in your Face­book news­feed. Some 378,000 peo­ple have “liked” our Face­book page. But only a frac­tion actu­al­ly see Open Cul­ture posts in their news­feed. That’s because a Face­book algo­rithm start­ed mak­ing the deci­sions for you, show­ing you mate­r­i­al from some people/publishers, and not oth­ers.

Now, Face­book has final­ly intro­duced a new fea­ture that will let you con­trol what you see. Please check out the instruc­tions below. When you’re done read­ing them, con­sid­er giv­ing us a Like on Face­book, and then set your news­feed accord­ing­ly. (You get bonus points if you Fol­low us on Twit­ter too!)

  • If you’re using a mobile phone, open the Face­book app, click the “More” icon along the bot­tom of the app, then scroll down and click “News­feed pref­er­ences,” then click “Pri­or­i­tize who to see first,” and make your picks. (You can select more than one item.)
  • If you’re using Face­book on a com­put­er, click on the down­ward fac­ing arrow on the top nav bar, then click “News­feed pref­er­ences,” locate one of the peo­ple or pub­lish­ers you fol­low, and change the set­ting from “Fol­low­ing” to “See First.”

Hope all of that makes sense.

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A Dreamily Animated Introduction to Haruki Murakami, Japan’s Jazz and Baseball-Loving Postmodern Novelist

in Animation, Literature | July 9th, 2015

If the impres­sion­is­tic ani­ma­tion style of psy­chol­o­gist, writer, and film­mak­er Ilana Simons’ “About Haru­ki Murakami”—a short video intro­duc­tion to the jazz bar own­ing, marathon run­ning, Japan­ese novelist—puts you in mind of Richard Lin­klater’s Wak­ing Life, then the ellip­ti­cal, lucid dream nar­ra­tion may do so even more. “He did­n’t use too many words,” Simons tells us. “Too many words is kin­da… too many words. Some­one’s always los­ing their voice. Some­one’s hear­ing is acute. Haru­ki Muraka­mi.” Like Roger Ebert said of Lin­klater’s film, Simons’ ode to Murakami—and the nov­el­ist’s work itself—is “philo­soph­i­cal and play­ful at the same time.”

Simons reads us Murakami’s exis­ten­tial­ist account of how he became a nov­el­ist, at age 29, after hav­ing an epiphany at a base­ball game: “The idea struck me,” he says, “I could write a nov­el…. I could do it.” And he did, sit­ting down every night after work­ing the bar he owned with his wife, writ­ing by hand and drink­ing beer. “Before that,” he has said in an inter­view with singer/songwriter John Wes­ley Hard­ing, “I did­n’t write any­thing. I was just one of those ordi­nary peo­ple. I was run­ning a jazz club, and I did­n’t cre­ate any­thing at all.” And it’s true. Besides sud­den­ly decid­ing to become a nov­el­ist, “out of the blue” at almost 30, then sud­den­ly becom­ing an avid marathon run­ner at age 33, Murakami’s life was pret­ty unre­mark­able.

It’s not entire­ly sur­pris­ing that he became a nov­el­ist. Both of Murakami’s par­ents taught Japan­ese lit­er­a­ture, though he him­self was not a par­tic­u­lar­ly good stu­dent. But the author of such beloved books as Nor­we­gian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, Kaf­ka on the Shore and dozens of short sto­ries (read six free here), has most­ly drawn his inspi­ra­tion from out­side his nation­al tradition—from Amer­i­can base­ball and jazz, from British inva­sion rock and roll, from Fitzger­ald, Kaf­ka, and Hol­ly­wood films. As Col­in Mar­shall wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on the BBC Muraka­mi doc­u­men­tary below, “he remained an author shaped by his favorite for­eign cultures—especially Amer­i­ca’s. This, com­bined with his yearn­ing to break from estab­lished norms, has gen­er­at­ed enough inter­na­tion­al demand for his work to sell briskly in almost every lan­guage.”

Murakami’s desire to break with norms, Simons tells us in her charm­ing, visu­al­ly accom­plished ani­mat­ed short, is symp­to­matic of his “detach­ment” and “intro­spec­tion.” Muraka­mi “liked escape, or he just does­n’t like join­ing groups and invest­ing too many words in places where words have been too often.” The thought of “orga­nized activ­i­ties,” Muraka­mi has said, like “hold­ing hands at a demon­stra­tion… gives me the creeps.” Murakami’s love of soli­tude makes him seem mys­te­ri­ous, “elu­sive,” says pre­sen­ter Alan Yen­tob in the film above. But one of the extra­or­di­nary things about Murakami—in addi­tion to his run­ning a 62-mile “ultra­ma­rathon” and con­quer­ing the lit­er­ary world on a whim—is just how ordi­nary he is in many ways. Both Simons’ increas­ing­ly sur­re­al­ist, bebop-scored short and the BBC’s cool jazz-backed explo­ration make this con­trast seem all the more remark­able. It’s Murakami’s abil­i­ty to stretch and bend the ordi­nary world, Simons sug­gests near the end of her lyri­cal trib­ute, that makes his read­ers feel that “some­how, mag­i­cal­ly… he does some­thing very pri­vate and inti­mate with their brains”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 6 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

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

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

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

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178 Beautifully-Illustrated Letters from Artists: Kahlo, Calder, Man Ray & More

in Art, Letters | July 9th, 2015

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Eight years ago—that’s some­thing like five decades in Inter­net time—the Smith­son­ian held an exhi­bi­tion, “More than Words: Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of Amer­i­can Art,” which fea­tured a curat­ed selec­tion of 178 hand-illus­trat­ed let­ters, love notes, dri­ving direc­tions, and jot­tings of cur­rent events, from var­i­ous artists. The selec­tions can still be found online, even though Liza Kirwin’s selec­tions for the exhib­it can now also be found in an accom­pa­ny­ing book.

The illus­trat­ed let­ters make for human­iz­ing insights into the pri­vate world of artists that we usu­al­ly only expe­ri­ence through their work.

The 1945 let­ter from George Grosz to Erich S. Her­rmann (above) is to invite his friend (and art deal­er) to his birth­day par­ty, promis­ing not just one glass of Hen­nessy, but six (and more). “Lis­ten: boy!” he declares. “You are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to attend the birth­day par­ty of ME.” This was when Grosz was in his 50s and liv­ing in Hunt­ing­ton, New York. It should be not­ed that Grosz met his end falling down a flight of stairs while drunk, but the man knew how to par­ty.

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Joseph Lin­don Smith was an Amer­i­can illus­tra­tor best known for being the artist who trav­eled to Egypt and doc­u­ment­ed the exca­va­tions at Giza and the Val­ley of the Kings, very faith­ful in their rep­re­sen­ta­tion. But in 1894, this let­ter finds Smith, 31 years old, liv­ing in Paris, try­ing to make a go of it as an artist, and hav­ing enough suc­cess to tell his par­ents: “Behold your son paint­ing under a show­er of gold,” he writes. Check out that hand­writ­ing: it’s beau­ti­ful.

calder illustrated letter

Sculp­tor Alexan­der Calder wrote this note to Vas­sar col­league and friend Agnes Rindge Claflin in 1936, con­tin­u­ing some con­ver­sa­tion they were hav­ing about col­or, and not­ing her choic­es mark her as a “Parcheesi hound,” and adding that he’s a fan of the game too. The lit­tle illus­tra­tion, which is straight Calder, is cute too. Claflin would lat­er go on to nar­rate one of MOMA’s first films to accom­pa­ny an exhib­it, Her­bert Matter’s 1944 film on Calder, Sculp­ture and Con­struc­tions.

man ray illustrated letter

This Man Ray let­ter to painter Julian E. Levi looks like it has been wor­ried over or recycled—-“Dear Julian” appears sev­er­al times on the sta­tionery from Le Select Amer­i­can Bar in Mont­par­nasse. It’s a bit dif­fi­cult to make out all his writ­ing: he starts men­tion­ing “Last year’s 1928 wine har­vest is sup­posed to be the very finest in the last fifty years” at the begin­ning, but I’m more fas­ci­nat­ed with the bot­tom right: “I have sev­en tall blondes with 14 big tits and one with sap­phire garters.”

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Final­ly, we close out with a let­ter Fri­da Kahlo sent to her friend Emmy Lou Packard in 1940, where she thanked Packard for tak­ing care of Diego dur­ing an ill­ness. The let­ter gets sealed, Priscil­la Frank notes at Huff­Po, with three lip­stick kiss­es — “one for Diego, one for Emmy Lou, and one for her son.”

There’s plen­ty more illus­trat­ed let­ters to explore at the Smith­son­ian site and in Kir­win’s hand­some book, fea­tur­ing artists well known and obscure, but all who knew how to com­pose a good let­ter.

via Huff­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Six Post­cards From Famous Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Kaf­ka, Ker­ouac & More

James Joyce’s “Dirty Let­ters” to His Wife (1909)

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Download & Play The Shining Board Game

in Books | July 9th, 2015

Shining game 1

Stephen King’s 1977 psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror nov­el The Shin­ing has inspired sev­er­al oth­er works, most notably Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 1980 film adap­ta­tion, a movie wide­ly con­sid­ered to have ele­vat­ed King’s sto­ry of the pos­sessed Over­look Hotel and its luck­less win­ter care­tak­ers, the Tor­rance fam­i­ly, to a high­er artis­tic plane. But King him­self nev­er real­ly approved of Kubrick­’s inter­pre­ta­tion: “Parts of the film are chill­ing, charged with a relent­less­ly claus­tro­pho­bic ter­ror,” he said, “but oth­ers fall flat. A vis­cer­al skep­tic such as Kubrick just could­n’t grasp the sheer inhu­man evil of the Over­look Hotel.”

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Pre­sum­ably King had a bet­ter time play­ing the board game of The Shin­ing, which won the first Microgame Design Con­test in 1998, and about which you can read more at Board Game Geek. It has been said that King him­self helped with the game’s devel­op­ment and offered his ser­vices as an ear­ly play-tester, though some will con­test that. (See the claims in the com­ments sec­tion below.)

You can tell that the game’s faith lies with King’s nov­el rather than Kubrick­’s film by its use of things that nev­er made it from page to screen as game­play ele­ments, such as the hotel grounds’ hedge-sculp­ture ani­mals that come to vicious life.

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You can play The Shin­ing board game as the Tor­rance fam­i­ly, in which case you’ll have to fight those hedge ani­mals. Or you can play it as the Over­look Hotel itself, in which case you’ll con­trol them. Each play­er has a host of imple­ments at their dis­pos­al — ghosts, decoys, the famous axe and snow­mo­bile — all meant to help them accom­plish the task of dri­ving the oth­er side away. Think of it as a sim­pli­fied wargame set in a haunt­ed hotel.

If you’d like to see how you fare, whether in the shoes of the Tor­rances or the Indi­an-bur­ial-ground foun­da­tion of the Over­look, you’ll find all the game’s mate­ri­als freely avail­able on the Micro­grame Design Con­test’s site. Print them out, set them up, and pre­pare to feel some sheer inhu­man evil for your­self.

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!

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

7 Free Stephen King Sto­ries: Pre­sent­ed in Text, Audio, Web Com­ic & a Graph­ic Nov­el Video

Stephen King Reveals in His First TV Inter­view Whether He Sleeps With the Lights On (1982)

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

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

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