William Faulkner Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

in Literature | July 6th, 2012

faulkner nobel

Today is the 50th anniver­sary of the death of William Faulkn­er. To mark the occa­sion, we bring you a 1954 record­ing of Faulkn­er read­ing his Nobel Prize speech from four years ear­li­er. “I feel that this award was not made to me as a man,” Faulkn­er says on the tape, “but to my work–a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spir­it, not for glo­ry and least of all for prof­it, but to cre­ate out of the mate­ri­als of the human spir­it some­thing which did not exist before.”

In clas­sic nov­els like As I Lay Dying, Absa­lom, Absa­lom! and The Sound and the Fury, Faulkn­er cre­at­ed his own cos­mos, com­bin­ing his knowl­edge of the peo­ple and his­to­ry of Mis­sis­sip­pi with his gift for spin­ning tales. He called his cos­mos Yok­na­p­ataw­pha Coun­ty. “I dis­cov­ered,” Faulkn­er said in his 1956 Paris Review inter­view, “that my own lit­tle postage stamp of native soil was worth writ­ing about and that I would nev­er live long enough to exhaust it, and that by sub­li­mat­ing the actu­al into the apoc­ryphal I would have com­plete lib­er­ty to use what­ev­er tal­ent I might have to its absolute top.”

Faulkn­er died at Wright’s Sana­to­ri­um in Byhalia, Mis­sis­sip­pi in the ear­ly morn­ing hours on July 6, 1962, which also hap­pened to be the birth­day of the great-grand­fa­ther he was named for, William Clark Falkn­er, the flam­boy­ant rail­road builder and nov­el­ist who was remem­bered as the “Old Colonel.” Faulkn­er had been suf­fer­ing from back pain due to an ear­li­er fall from a horse. His pre­ferred way to deal with pain was to drink alco­hol. After a binge he would typ­i­cal­ly go to the sana­to­ri­um to recov­er. This par­tic­u­lar vis­it had seemed rou­tine. Joseph Blot­ner describes the scene in Faulkn­er: A Biog­ra­phy:

The big clock ticked past mid­night and July 6 came in–the Old Colonel’s birthday–with no promise of a let­up in the heat. Insects thumped against the screens while elec­tric fans hummed here and there. Faulkn­er had been rest­ing qui­et­ly. A few min­utes after half past one, he stirred and then sat up on the side of his bed. Before the nurse could reach him he groaned and fell over. With­in min­utes Dr. Wright was there, but he could not detect any pulse or heart­beat. He began exter­nal heart mes­sage. He con­tin­ued it for forty-five min­utes, with­out results. He tried mouth-to-mouth resus­ci­ta­tion, again with no results. There was noth­ing more he could do. William Faulkn­er was gone.

When Albert Camus died two years ear­li­er, Faulkn­er was asked by La Nou­velle Revue Française to write a few words about his fall­en friend. What Faulkn­er wrote of Camus could be his own epi­taph:

When the door shut for him, he had already writ­ten on this side of it that which every artist who also car­ries through life with him that one same fore­knowl­edge and hatred of death, is hop­ing to do: I was here.

NOTE: To fol­low along as Faulkn­er reads his Nobel address, you can find the text at the Ole Miss Faulkn­er on the Web site. (The page will open in a new win­dow.) The Ole Miss page also includes  a par­tial record­ing of Faulkn­er giv­ing his speech in Stock­holm on Decem­ber 10, 1950, along with film footage of the cer­e­mo­ny. (Faulkn­er won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture for 1949 but it was­n’t pre­sent­ed until 1950, the year Bertrand Rus­sell won the award. So Rus­sell and Faulkn­er can both be seen in the film footage.) To hear more of Faulkn­er’s 1954 Caed­mon record­ings, vis­it Harp­er Audio. You can also hear over 28 hours of lec­tures by Faulkn­er at the audio archive of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, where he was writer-in-res­i­dence in 1957 and 1958. The archive con­cludes with a half-hour press con­fer­ence giv­en by the Eng­lish Depart­ment fac­ul­ty 50 years ago today, as they react­ed to the news of Faulkn­er’s death.

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Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade Pushed the Boundaries of Theater, and Still Does

in Film | July 6th, 2012

This 1967 film adap­ta­tion of Peter Weiss’s play Marat/Sade (its full title is The Per­se­cu­tion and Assas­si­na­tion of Jean-Paul Marat as Per­formed by the Inmates of the Asy­lum of Char­en­ton Under the Direc­tion of the Mar­quis de Sade) is based on the play’s famous 1964 the­atri­cal pro­duc­tion by the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny. Trans­lat­ed from Ger­man by Geof­frey Skel­ton and direct­ed by Peter Brook, the RSC pro­duc­tion starred Patrick Magee as de Sade, Clive Revill as Marat, and Glen­da Jack­son as Char­lotte Cor­day, Marat’s killer. The orig­i­nal cast and direc­tor from the ’64 stag­ing came togeth­er for the film in 1967, with Ian Richard­son step­ping into the role of Marat. It’s a jar­ring expe­ri­ence, with mas­ter­ful per­for­mances and some very dark humor.

The play imag­ines the Mar­quis de Sade in 1808, fif­teen years after the French Rev­o­lu­tion, stag­ing the death of Jacobin hero Jean-Paul Marat as a play and enlist­ing as actors his fel­low inmates at the Char­en­ton Asy­lum, where de Sade was con­fined from 1801 to his death in 1814, and where he did, in fact, write and direct plays. The film is essen­tial view­ing for fans of con­fronta­tion­al Brecht­ian Ver­frem­dungsef­fekt­ (dis­tanc­ing or alien­ation effects) and the dizzy­ing device of sus­tained mise en abyme. Marat/Sade still unset­tles the­ater audi­ences near­ly 50 years after its first pro­duc­tion. The RSC recent­ly revived the play at their new­ly-refur­bished the­ater in Strat­ford and sent sev­er­al audi­ence mem­bers flee­ing; at one pre­view, 80 the­ater­go­ers left at the inter­mis­sion. Wher­ev­er and when­ev­er Marat/Sade is per­formed, it offers a brac­ing cri­tique of polit­i­cal vio­lence with its unspar­ing depic­tions of mad­ness, tor­ture, and rev­o­lu­tion­ary fer­vor.

via Mefi

Josh Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Johnny Cash: Singer, Outlaw, and, Briefly, Television Host

in Music, Television | July 6th, 2012

John­ny Cash needs no intro­duc­tion. But unless you hap­pened to be watch­ing ABC between June 1969 and March 1971, The John­ny Cash Show might. Cash added one more chap­ter to his leg­en­dar­i­ly sto­ried career by host­ing 58 episodes of the musi­cal vari­ety show from the Ryman Audi­to­ri­um in Nashville, then the home of the Grand Ole Opry. You might expect from such a set­up noth­ing but coun­try music, and Cash and his pro­duc­ers did indeed make a point of intro­duc­ing the gen­re’s stars to all of Amer­i­ca as well as high­light­ing its skilled but low-pro­file per­form­ers who would­n’t oth­er­wise have received nation­al expo­sure. But many John­ny Cash Show broad­casts reached well beyond Cash’s own pre­sump­tive base, mak­ing non-coun­try lumi­nar­ies acces­si­ble to coun­try lis­ten­ers as much as the oth­er way around. Above you’ll find a pop­u­lar video of Joni Mitchell singing “Both Sides, Now” on the pro­gram; Bob Dylan and Neil Young also made appear­ances rep­re­sent­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of singer-song­writ­ers.

But Cash also rou­tine­ly shared the stage with his elders, most notably Louis Arm­strong in a broad­cast that fea­tured Arm­strong singing “Crys­tal Chan­de­liers” and “Ram­blin’ Rose” and both of them per­form­ing “Blue Yodel #9.” He also joined in when he brought on Pete Seeger, which demon­strates an impres­sive col­lab­o­ra­tive range. I did­n’t expect to see poet Shel Sil­ver­stein turn up on the show, but then I’d for­got­ten that he wrote “A Boy Named Sue,” one of Cash’s best-known songs, not to men­tion the less­er-known “25 Min­utes to Go,” which each of them record­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly on their own albums. Alas, despite its sur­pris­ing cul­tur­al reach, The John­ny Cash Show could­n’t sur­vive the caprice of net­works eager to cap­ture a younger demo­graph­ic; it got the axe, along­side the likes of Green Acres, The Bev­er­ly Hill­bil­lies, and Hee-Haw in the so-called “rur­al purge” of the ear­ly sev­en­ties.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

John­ny Cash Remem­bered with 1,000+ Draw­ings

Den­nis Hop­per Reads Rud­yard Kipling on John­ny Cash Show

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Evolution of the Moon: 4.5 Billions Years in 2.6 Minutes (and More Culture From Around the Web)

in Astronomy, Video - Science | July 6th, 2012

Here it is. A short his­to­ry of the Moon. 4.5 bil­lion years cov­ered in a slick 2.6 min­utes, all thanks to NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter. The video, mov­ing from the Moon’s hot cre­ation to its pock­marked present, can be down­loaded via NASA’s web site.

Now More Cul­ture from Around the Web (all pre­vi­ous­ly aired on our Twit­ter Stream):

BBC’s Col­lec­tion of Famous Authors Read­ing From Their Works

Five Key TED Talks, Accord­ing to The New York­er

“Oh my ass burns like fire! ” Mozart Writes a Let­ter to His Cousin, 1777

Sylvia Plath’s Draw­ings (Pre­sent­ed at London’s May­or Gallery)

Van Gogh’s ‘Star­ry Night’ Recre­at­ed in 7,000 Domi­noes

Drunk Texts from Famous Authors, Cour­tesy of The Paris Review

An Abridged His­to­ry of Video Games in Under Three Min­utes

Matt Taib­bi Looks Back at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s “Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail” 

How William Faulkn­er Tack­led Race — and Freed the South From Itself

Colum McCann Reads His Sto­ry “Transat­lantic.” Added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books

Anne Frank’s Diary Was Almost Nev­er Pub­lished. Francine Prose Tells the Sto­ry

Dar­win & Design (MIT). Added to our List of 500 Free Cours­es (under Lit­er­a­ture)

Famed Har­vard Biol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son Gives Advice to Young Sci­en­tists at TEDMed

Author Rohin­ton Mis­try Offers Words of Wis­dom to Grad­u­at­ing Class at Ryer­son Uni­ver­si­ty

Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty, the Clas­sic Film by Bil­ly Wilder on YouTube

 

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Dark Matter Animated: The Next Frontier of Discovery for Physicists and Cosmologists

in Physics, Video - Science | July 5th, 2012

We final­ly got the big announce­ment. After decades of work, physi­cists have pinned down the Hig­gs Boson. It’s a major mile­stone. But physi­cists at CERN won’t be left with noth­ing to do. The same folks at PhD Comics who gave us this help­ful primer that uses ani­ma­tion to explain the Hig­gs Boson have also pro­duced a com­pan­ion video on Dark Mat­ter, the mys­te­ri­ous stuff being researched by CERN sci­en­tists and their Large Hadron Col­lid­er.

In the clip above, physi­cists Daniel White­son and Jonathan Feng under­score how much of the uni­verse remains dark to us. We under­stand about 5% of what makes up the cos­mos. Anoth­er 75%, we call Dark Ener­gy, the oth­er 20%, Dark Mat­ter, which are pos­si­bly man­i­fes­ta­tions of the same thing (or pos­si­bly not). Research on Hig­gs Boson will tell us some­thing impor­tant about the ori­gin of mass in the uni­verse. But whether any of this will help explain Dark Mat­ter (which accounts for most of the mat­ter in the uni­verse and behaves dif­fer­ent­ly than the mass we under­stand — it nei­ther emits nor absorbs light) — that’s anoth­er big ques­tion.

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The Ph.D. Grind: Philip J. Guo’s Free Memoir Offers An Insider’s Look at Doctoral Study

in e-books, Education | July 5th, 2012

Recent­ly, a video circulated—one of those weird Xtra­nor­mal cre­ations that set text to stilt­ed ani­ma­tion and robot­ic voices—entitled “So you want to get a Ph.D. in human­i­ties.” It spawned a num­ber of imi­ta­tions, in oth­er dis­ci­plines, of a sim­i­lar scenario—a world-weary pro­fes­sor chip­ping away at a star­ry-eyed undergraduate’s naïve illu­sions about the world of acad­e­mia. For a week or so, this meme had some of us wiz­ened, griz­zled doc­tor­al stu­dents laugh­ing through our tears while we hunched over key­boards and suf­fered through carpel tun­nel syn­drome and irrel­e­vance. In his free and down­load­able mem­oir, The Ph.D. Grind, author Philip J. Guo points out that such dis­par­age­ment can serve a purpose—as com­mis­er­a­tion for dis­tressed insiders—but it hard­ly helps less jad­ed or expe­ri­enced stu­dents and can be mis­lead­ing and disin­gen­u­ous.

In his pref­ace, Guo promis­es to give clear-eyed advice, avoid too much geek-speak, and steer clear of “bit­ter whin­ing.” Guo is an accom­plished engi­neer at Google who received his Mas­ters from MIT and his Ph.D. in Com­put­er Sci­ence from Stan­ford. His memoir—written imme­di­ate­ly after he fin­ished his degree and there­fore free, he claims, of what he calls “selec­tive hindsight”—documents his expe­ri­ences as a doc­tor­al stu­dent over the course of six years. He offers the book as a prac­ti­cal man­u­al for a vari­ety of read­ers, includ­ing under­grad­u­ates, cur­rent Ph.D. stu­dents, pro­fes­sors and poten­tial employ­ers of Ph.D.s, and any­one gen­uine­ly curi­ous about the nature of aca­d­e­m­ic research.

The most imme­di­ate­ly help­ful part of the book is the Epi­logue, which func­tions as a set of con­clu­sions in which Guo lays out twen­ty of the most mem­o­rable lessons he learned dur­ing the years he nar­rates in the book.  It’s all good advice and well worth read­ing his fuller expla­na­tion of each one. Here’s the short ver­sion of Guo’s “twen­ty lessons”:

  1. Results trump inten­tions
  2. Out­puts trump inputs
  3. Find rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion
  4. Cre­ate lucky oppor­tu­ni­ties
  5. Play the game
  6. Lead from below
  7. Pro­fes­sors are human
  8. Be well-liked
  9. Pay some dues
  10. Reject bad defaults
  11. Know when to quit
  12. Recov­er from fail­ures
  13. Ally with insid­ers
  14. Give many talks
  15. Sell, sell, sell
  16. Gen­er­ous­ly pro­vide help
  17. Ask for help
  18. Express true grat­i­tude
  19. Ideas beget ideas
  20. Grind hard and smart

Notice that none of these relate direct­ly to the arcana of Ph.D.-level com­put­er sci­ence. While Guo cer­tain­ly achieved a high degree of mas­tery in his field, his mem­oir demon­strates that, despite the inten­sive spe­cial­iza­tion of doc­tor­al work and the pre­car­i­ous posi­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic pro­fes­sion­als in the cur­rent job mar­ket, com­plet­ing a Ph.D. has many intan­gi­ble ben­e­fits that well exceed the nar­row goal of tenure-track employ­ment. The full-text of Guo’s book is avail­able in PDF here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a PhD

500 Free Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Josh Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Allen Ginsberg Reads a Poem He Wrote on LSD to William F. Buckley

in Poetry, Television | July 5th, 2012

On Sep­tem­ber 3, 1968, William F. Buck­ley invit­ed poet Allen Gins­berg onto his TV pro­gram, “Fir­ing Line.” It was an odd encounter. “We’re here to talk about the avant-garde,” Buck­ley says grandil­o­quent­ly. “I should like to begin by ask­ing Mr. Gins­berg whether he con­sid­ers that the hip­pies are an inti­ma­tion of the new order.”

“Ah,” says Gins­berg, “why don’t I read a poem?”

Buck­ley smiles uncom­fort­ably as Gins­berg reach­es into his bag and pulls out a poem called “Wales Vis­i­ta­tion,” writ­ten under the influ­ence of LSD dur­ing a vis­it the pre­vi­ous year to the ancient ruins of Tin­tern Abbey, on the Riv­er Wye in South­east Wales. It was the same place that inspired William Wordsworth to write his “Lines Com­posed a Few Miles above Tin­tern Abbey” in 1798 and Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson to write “Tears, Idle Tears” in 1847. Buck­ley set­tles back in his chair as Gins­berg reads three of nine stan­zas from “Wales Vis­i­ta­tion,” begin­ning with the first:

White fog lift­ing & falling on moun­tain-brow
Trees mov­ing in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigan­tic eddy lift­ing mist
above teem­ing ferns exquis­ite­ly swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mul­lioned glass in val­ley raine–

To fol­low along with the oth­er two stan­zas recit­ed by Gins­berg and to read the rest of the poem, you can open this page in a new win­dow. Also don’t miss Gins­berg read­ing his sig­na­ture Beat poem, “Howl”. It’s a rol­lick­ing 26 minute affair, and you can always find it in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William F. Buck­ley Meets (Pos­si­bly Drunk) Jack Ker­ouac, Tries to Make Sense of Hip­pies, 1968

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

William F. Buck­ley Flogged Him­self to Get Through Atlas Shrugged

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The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange

in Film | July 5th, 2012

Over forty years after its release, Stan­ley Kubrick­’s film adap­ta­tion of Antho­ny Burgess’ nov­el A Clock­work Orange retains all its aes­thet­ic and vis­cer­al impact. Cinephiles would expect this of any­thing by a per­fec­tion­ist auteur like Kubrick, but as it usu­al­ly goes, works of pop­u­lar art that grow instant­ly famous for their shock val­ue tend not to hold their artis­tic val­ue. How this par­tic­u­lar pic­ture man­aged that trick makes up the implic­it sub­ject of the 30-minute doc­u­men­tary Mak­ing A Clock­work Orange, avail­able to watch on YouTube. Here was a film con­tro­ver­sial enough, and alleged­ly inspi­ra­tional of enough real-life crime, that Kubrick him­self pulled it from dis­tri­b­u­tion in the Unit­ed King­dom. What did the direc­tor and his many col­lab­o­ra­tors have to do to make a film whose own tagline calls “the adven­tures of a young man whose prin­ci­pal inter­ests are rape, ultra-vio­lence and Beethoven” obscu­ri­ty-proof? Mak­ing A Clock­work Orange’s answer: they had to think hard and work long at every sin­gle aspect of the cin­e­mat­ic craft.

Offered a com­par­a­tive­ly low bud­get of $2.2 mil­lion, Kubrick and his team had to con­struct an ambigu­ous­ly futur­is­tic dystopi­an Lon­don and an entire way­ward youth cul­ture with­in it. For­mer mem­bers of this team describe the direc­tor as a “sponge,” hear­ing every last idea any­one could offer him and adapt­ing them to his and Burgess’ hybrid vision. He worked not from a script but straight from the nov­el, exhaus­tive­ly attack­ing each page from every pos­si­ble visu­al approach. He and his design­ers sat down with stacks of archi­tec­tur­al mag­a­zines to find the ugli­est pos­si­ble mid­cen­tu­ry build­ings in which to shoot. Apply­ing to pro­tag­o­nist Alex deLarge a sin­gle set of false eye­lash­es came from a hunch by the make­up spe­cial­ist. And Alex belts out “Sin­gin’ in the Rain” dur­ing he and his gang of hoods’ fate­ful assault on the home of an elder­ly writer — a scene that assures you’ll nev­er quite hear Gene Kel­ly the same way again — because it’s the only song star Mal­colm McDow­ell hap­pened to know. Vio­lence, crime, pun­ish­ment, and even the Beethoven: A Clock­work Orange presents them all at the height of styl­iza­tion. This assures a per­ma­nent pur­chase on our con­scious­ness that grit­ty, effects-laden explic­it­ness can nev­er attain.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange: Mal­colm McDow­ell Looks Back

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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