8‑Year-Old George Orwell Sends a Cute Picture and Error-Filled Letter To His Mother, 1911

in K-12, Literature | August 14th, 2013

orwell drawing

It’s hard to imag­ine a time when George Orwell did­n’t exer­cise mas­ter­ful con­trol over the Eng­lish lan­guage. But if you go far enough back, you’ll find proof that every writer starts some­where. We all begin as mor­tals.

In Decem­ber 2, 1911, an 8‑year-old Eric Blair (the birth name of Orwell), wrote a let­ter to his moth­er, Ida, detail­ing his day-to-day affairs at St. Cypri­an’s School, a board­ing school in South­ern Eng­land. The let­ter is sweet for many rea­sons, not least because of the pho­net­ic spelling/misspellings that run through the note. The original/uncorrected text appears below. It’s one of many let­ters gath­ered on GeorgeOrwellNovels.com, and it’s also the very first let­ter pub­lished in a new vol­ume this week, George Orwell: A Life in Let­ters. The endear­ing let­ter was appar­ent­ly sent with a cute pic­ture enclosed. You can see it right above.

My dear Moth­er, I hope you are alright,

It was Mrs: Wilkes birth­day yes­ter­day, we had aufel fun after tea and played games all over the house. We all went for a walk to Beachy-Head.

I am third in Arith­mat­ick.
‘Its’ very dull today, and dosent look as if its going to be very warm. Thank you for your let­ter.

It is get­ting very near the end of the term, there are only eigh­teen days more. On Sat­ur­day evening we have dnc­ing, and I am going to say a piece of poet­ry, some of the boys sing.

Give my love to Father and Avril. Is Togo alright, We had the Oxford and Cam­bridge Match­es yes­ter­day. Cam­bridge won in the first and third, and the sec­ond did not have a Match. I am very glad Colonel Hall6 has giv­en me some stamps, he said he wold last year but I thought he had for­goten. Its a beast­ly wet day today all rain and cold.

I am very sor­ry to hear we had those beast­ly freaks of smelly white mice back.
I hope these arnt smelly one. if they arnt I shall like them.

From your love­ing son,
E. A. Blair.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm and 1984 as Free Audio Books

The Only Known Footage of George Orwell (Cir­ca 1921)

George Orwell Explains How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

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Michel Foucault — Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Documentary Explores the Theorist’s Controversial Life and Philosophy

in Philosophy | August 14th, 2013

Michel Foucault’s col­or­ful life and huge­ly influ­en­tial work were both strug­gles against limitation—the lim­its of lan­guage, of social struc­tures and stul­ti­fy­ing his­tor­i­cal iden­ti­ties. As such, he man­aged to pro­voke schol­ars of every pos­si­ble per­sua­sion, since he called into ques­tion all pos­i­tive programs—the ancient impe­r­i­al, feu­dal, and lib­er­al humanist—while stead­fast­ly refus­ing to replace them with com­pre­hen­sive alter­na­tive sys­tems. And yet sys­tems, social insti­tu­tions of pow­er and dom­i­na­tion, were pre­cise­ly the prob­lem in Foucault’s esti­ma­tion. Through his tech­nique of raid­ing archives to pro­duce an “archae­ol­o­gy of knowl­edge,” Fou­cault showed how every insti­tu­tion is shot through with what William E. Con­nol­ly calls “arbi­trary… sys­temic cru­el­ty.”

The 1993 doc­u­men­tary film above, Michel Fou­cault: Beyond Good and Evil, explores the philoso­pher and his com­plex and con­tro­ver­sial life through inter­views with col­leagues and biog­ra­phers and re-enact­ments of Foucault’s sto­ried exploits in the Amer­i­can coun­ter­cul­ture. Biog­ra­ph­er James Miller points out that Fou­cault was “pre­oc­cu­pied with explor­ing states that were beyond nor­mal every­day expe­ri­ence… drugs, cer­tain forms of eroti­cism,” as a way to “recon­fig­ure the world and his place in it.” In this, says anthro­pol­o­gist Paul Rabi­now, Fou­cault sought to res­ur­rect the ques­tions that sober ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy had large­ly aban­doned: ques­tions about what it means to be human, beyond the social cat­e­gories we take as nat­ur­al and giv­en.

You can find Michel Fou­cault: Beyond Good and Evil list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

John Sear­le on Fou­cault and the Obscu­ran­tism in French Phi­los­o­phy

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

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Alfred Hitchcock’s 50 Ways to Kill a Character (and Our Favorite Hitch Resources on the Web)

in Film | August 13th, 2013

hitchock obsessionsAlfred Hitch­cock would have cel­e­brat­ed his 114th birth­day today. And, to mark the occa­sion, The Guardian has cre­at­ed a big info­graph­ic that delves into the themes and motifs that Hitch­cock obsessed over in his many films.  Above, we have a seg­ment show­ing the way Hitch­cock char­ac­ters die, and the num­ber of peo­ple who die accord­ing to par­tic­u­lar meth­ods. The best part is that you can down­load the info­graph­ic for free online.

Now time for us to dish up our favorite Hitch­cock mate­r­i­al found on the web. The best of the best:

Watch 20 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

François Truffaut’s Big 12 Hour Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock

37 Hitch­cock Cameos over 50 Years: All in One Video

36 Hitch­cock Mur­der Scenes Cli­max­ing in Uni­son

Sal­vador Dalí Cre­ates a Dream Sequence for Spell­bound, Hitchcock’s Psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic Thriller

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

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Who’s Who on a Movie Crew: An Animated Primer

in Film | August 13th, 2013

Next time the cred­its are rolling, stick around so you can edu­cate your fel­low audi­ence mem­bers on what exact­ly a gaffer does.

This is but one of the mys­ter­ies addressed in Who’s Who on a Movie Crew, a campy but unde­ni­ably infor­ma­tive primer on film set respon­si­bil­i­ties and hier­ar­chies. Some job details get glossed over — grips have far more to keep track of than can ever fit in a rhyming cou­plet — but it’s in keep­ing with the delib­er­ate­ly anachro­nis­tic  ani­ma­tion style and equip­ment. The breezy style makes for appro­pri­ate view­ing for all ages. Hun­dreds of star­ry-eyed young­sters (and their par­ents) stand to ben­e­fit.

Hon­ey, are you sure you want to be a pro­duc­tion assis­tant? 

More in-depth, non-rhyming expla­na­tions of the var­i­ous roles can be found on Vimeo’s Video School. Dit­to Pro­duc­er Chris­tine Vachon’s dishy how-to / mem­oir A Killer Life, which goes into key posi­tions that failed to make the Video School cut, such as park­ing man­ag­er and cater­er (when you’re starv­ing and bored, there’s no one who’s greater-er….)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Film Before the Film: An Intro­duc­tion to the His­to­ry of Title Sequences in 10 Min­utes

Alfred Hitch­cock on the Filmmaker’s Essen­tial Tool: ‘The Kuleshov Effect’

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Spike Lee Shares His NYU Teach­ing List of 87 Essen­tial Films Every Aspir­ing Direc­tor Should See

Ayun Hal­l­i­day appears as the least believ­able female cop in NYC in an upcom­ing short adap­tion of Ita­lo Calvi­no’s The Man Who Only Came Out at Night. Fol­low her at @AyunHalliday.

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The Three Punctuation Rules of Cormac McCarthy (RIP), and How They All Go Back to James Joyce

in Literature, Writing | August 13th, 2013

Cor­mac McCarthy has been—as one 1965 review­er of his first nov­el, The Orchard Keep­er, dubbed him—a “dis­ci­ple of William Faulkn­er.” He makes admirable use of Faulkner­ian traits in his prose, and I’d always assumed he inher­it­ed his punc­tu­a­tion style from Faulkn­er as well. But in his very rare 2008 tele­vised inter­view with Oprah Win­frey, McCarthy cites two oth­er antecedents: James Joyce and for­got­ten nov­el­ist MacKin­lay Kan­tor, whose Ander­son­ville won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955. Joyce’s influ­ence dom­i­nates, and in dis­cus­sion of punc­tu­a­tion, McCarthy stress­es that his min­i­mal­ist approach works in the inter­est of max­i­mum clar­i­ty. Speak­ing of Joyce, he says,

James Joyce is a good mod­el for punc­tu­a­tion. He keeps it to an absolute min­i­mum. There’s no rea­son to blot the page up with weird lit­tle marks. I mean, if you write prop­er­ly you shouldn’t have to punc­tu­ate.

So what “weird lit­tle marks” does McCarthy allow, or not, and why? Below is a brief sum­ma­ry of his stat­ed rules for punc­tu­a­tion:

1. Quo­ta­tion Marks:

McCarthy does­n’t use ’em. In his Oprah inter­view, he says MacKin­lay Kan­tor was the first writer he read who left them out. McCarthy stress­es that this way of writ­ing dia­logue requires par­tic­u­lar delib­er­a­tion. Speak­ing of writ­ers who have imi­tat­ed him, he says, “You real­ly have to be aware that there are no quo­ta­tion marks, and write in such a way as to guide peo­ple as to who’s speak­ing.” Oth­er­wise, con­fu­sion reigns.

2. Colons and semi­colons:

Care­ful McCarthy read­er Oprah says she “saw a colon once” in McCarthy’s prose, but she nev­er encoun­tered a semi­colon. McCarthy con­firms: “No semi­colons.”

Of the colon, he says: “You can use a colon, if you’re get­ting ready to give a list of some­thing that fol­lows from what you just said. Like, these are the rea­sons.” This is a spe­cif­ic occa­sion that does not present itself often. The colon, one might say, gen­u­flects to a very spe­cif­ic log­i­cal devel­op­ment, enu­mer­a­tion. McCarthy deems most oth­er punc­tu­a­tion uses need­less.

3. All oth­er punc­tu­a­tion:

Aside from his restric­tive rationing of the colon, McCarthy declares his styl­is­tic con­vic­tions with sim­plic­i­ty: “I believe in peri­ods, in cap­i­tals, in the occa­sion­al com­ma, and that’s it.” It’s a dis­ci­pline he learned first in a col­lege Eng­lish class, where he worked to sim­pli­fy 18th cen­tu­ry essays for a text­book the pro­fes­sor was edit­ing. Ear­ly mod­ern Eng­lish is noto­ri­ous­ly clut­tered with con­found­ing punc­tu­a­tion, which did not become stan­dard­ized until com­par­a­tive­ly recent­ly.

McCarthy, enam­ored of the prose style of the Neo­clas­si­cal Eng­lish writ­ers but annoyed by their over-reliance on semi­colons, remem­bers par­ing down an essay “by Swift or some­thing” and hear­ing his pro­fes­sor say, “this is very good, this is exact­ly what’s need­ed.” Encour­aged, he con­tin­ued to sim­pli­fy, work­ing, he says to Oprah, “to make it eas­i­er, not to make it hard­er” to deci­pher his prose. For those who find McCarthy some­times mad­den­ing­ly opaque, this state­ment of intent may not help clar­i­fy things much. But lovers of his work may find renewed appre­ci­a­tion for his stream­lined syn­tax.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Wern­er Her­zog Reads From Cor­mac McCarthy’s All the Pret­ty Hors­es

Sev­en Tips From William Faulkn­er on How to Write Fic­tion

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

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

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Listen to Charles Bukowski Poems Being Read by Bukowski Himself & the Great Tom Waits

in Poetry | August 13th, 2013

The out­spo­ken, ragged-edged poet and nov­el­ist Charles Bukows­ki entered our world 93 years ago this Fri­day, and pre­sum­ably began mak­ing trou­ble imme­di­ate­ly. Harper­Collins marks the occa­sion a bit ear­ly this year by releas­ing today eight Bukows­ki audio­books, the first of their kind. (Sign up for a Free Tri­al with Audible.com and you can get one for free.) Alas, Bukows­ki did­n’t live quite long enough to com­mit Post Office, South of No North, Fac­to­tum, Women, Ham on Rye, Hot Water Music, Hol­ly­wood, and Pulp to tape him­self. ”

It would be Bukows­ki him­self read­ing here, if the tech­nol­o­gy had advanced quick­ly enough,” Gal­l­ey­cat quotes pub­lish­er Daniel Halpern as say­ing, “but his voice rings clear and deep in these ren­di­tions – and from them, the genius of Bukows­ki flows forth.” Whether or not you plan to pur­chase these new audio­books, we offer you here a dose of Bukows­ki out loud.

At the top you’ll find one of Bukowski’s own read­ings, “The Secret of My Endurance,” a poem that appeared in Dan­gling In The Tourne­for­tia (1982). Down below you can hear Bukowski’s “Nir­vana” as read by Tom Waits, who pos­sess­es a voice famous­ly evoca­tive of unfor­giv­ing Amer­i­can life, one that per­haps sounds more like that of a Bukows­ki poem than Bukowski’s own. And if you missed our ear­li­er post fea­tur­ing Waits’ inter­pre­ta­tion of “The Laugh­ing Heart (mid­dle),” what more suit­able occa­sion could you have to cir­cle back and heed its bat­tered yet opti­mistic guid­ance: “Your life is your life. Don’t let it be clubbed into dank sub­mis­sion.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Charles Bukows­ki Sets His Amus­ing Con­di­tions for Giv­ing a Poet­ry Read­ing (1971)

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Charles Bukows­ki: Depres­sion and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Cre­ative Juices (NSFW)

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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Flashmob Performs The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unemployment Office

in Life, Music | August 13th, 2013

One of my favorite songs comes from the Qui­et Bea­t­le, George Har­ri­son. A tune that can rival any­thing from the Lennon/McCartney song­book, Here Comes the Sun was writ­ten in 1969, dur­ing a fair­ly bleak time. Har­ri­son sets the scene is his 1980 book, I, Me, Mine. He recalls:

“Here Comes the Sun” was writ­ten at the time when Apple [the Bea­t­les’ record label] was get­ting like school, where we had to go and be busi­ness­men: ‘Sign this’ and ‘sign that’. Any­way, it seems as if win­ter in Eng­land goes on for­ev­er, by the time spring comes you real­ly deserve it. So one day I decid­ed I was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clap­ton’s house. The relief of not hav­ing to go see all those dopey accoun­tants was won­der­ful, and I walked around the gar­den with one of Eric’s acoustic gui­tars and wrote “Here Comes the Sun.”

It’s a song about get­ting through the dark­ness — per­son­al, pro­fes­sion­al, sea­son­al, etc. And it’s sim­ply a per­fect pick for the flash­mob per­for­mance you’ll wit­ness above. Unlike so many oth­er feel-good flash­mob per­for­mances staged in Europe (see below), this one takes place in a drea­ry unem­ploy­ment office in Spain (Madrid, to be pre­cise) where unem­ploy­ment hov­ers around 26% and home­less­ness is on the rise. It does­n’t try to sug­ar­coat life in Spain. It just pro­vides a lit­tle ray of hope.

This video was shot back in Jan­u­ary. Accord­ing to a recent IMF report, con­di­tions will remain dif­fi­cult in Spain for years to come, but some new data hints that the worst may be over. Or so we hope.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

Copen­hagen Phil­har­mon­ic Plays Ravel’s Bolero at Train Sta­tion

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

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Watch Werner Herzog’s From One Second to the Next, an Eye-Opening Film Reveals the Dangers of Texting While Driving

in Film | August 12th, 2013

Soon after I start­ed dri­ving, back in high school, I got a mobile phone capa­ble of SMS mes­sag­ing. As with any tech­nol­o­gy not yet wide­spread, it then seemed more nov­el­ty than con­ve­nience; I hard­ly knew any­body else with a cell­phone, much less with one capa­ble of receiv­ing my mes­sages. But in the inter­ven­ing dozen years, every­one start­ed tex­ting, and the prac­tice turned from odd­i­ty into near-neces­si­ty, no mat­ter the time, no mat­ter the place.

Now, hav­ing tak­en for grant­ed the abil­i­ty to instant­ly send short mes­sages across the city, coun­try, or world to one anoth­er, soci­ety has, inevitably, begun to focus on the asso­ci­at­ed dan­gers of tex­ting. But few of us have thought quite as hard about them as has Wern­er Her­zog, direc­tor of Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitz­car­ral­do, Cave of For­got­ten Dreams, and now a doc­u­men­tary against tex­ting while dri­ving. But don’t peo­ple already know the dan­gers? Haven’t pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments cau­tioned them not to do it, and stiff, fee-threat­en­ing laws gone on the books across Amer­i­ca?

Judg­ing by the sud­den pop­u­lar­i­ty of Her­zog’s new 35-minute film From One Sec­ond to the Next, spon­sored by cell ser­vice provider AT&T, a Ger­man New Wave lumi­nary’s words car­ry more weight. “I’m not a par­tic­i­pant of tex­ting and dri­ving — or tex­ting at all,” many have already quot­ed him as say­ing, “but I see there’s some­thing going on in civ­i­liza­tion which is com­ing with great vehe­mence at us.” Despite not hav­ing dri­ven reg­u­lar­ly since high school, I do on my rare occa­sions at the wheel feel that strange­ly strong temp­ta­tion to text in motion. Hav­ing watched Her­zog’s unblink­ing take on the real-life con­se­quences of doing so — unpayably high med­ical bills at best, paral­y­sis and death at worst — I don’t see myself giv­ing in next time. Whether or not it sim­i­lar­ly effects the stu­dents of the 40,000 schools in which it will screen, it marks a vast improve­ment upon all the murky, heavy-hand­ed cau­tion­ary videos I remem­ber from my own dri­ver’s ed days. Per­haps what Her­zog did for Bad Lieu­tenant, he should now do for that class­room clas­sic Red Asphalt.

You can find From One Sec­ond to the Next in our col­lec­tion of 550 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

An Evening with Wern­er Her­zog

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Has a Beef With Chick­ens

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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