George Orwell’s Five Greatest Essays (as Selected by Pulitzer-Prize Winning Columnist Michael Hiltzik)

in English Language, Literature, Politics | November 12th, 2013

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Every time I’ve taught George Orwell’s famous 1946 essay on mis­lead­ing, smudgy writ­ing, “Pol­i­tics and the Eng­lish Lan­guage,” to a group of under­grad­u­ates, we’ve delight­ed in point­ing out the num­ber of times Orwell vio­lates his own rules—indulges some form of vague, “pre­ten­tious” dic­tion, slips into unnec­es­sary pas­sive voice, etc.  It’s a pet­ty exer­cise, and Orwell him­self pro­vides an escape clause for his list of rules for writ­ing clear Eng­lish: “Break any of these rules soon­er than say any­thing out­right bar­barous.” But it has made us all feel slight­ly bet­ter for hav­ing our writ­ing crutch­es pushed out from under us.

Orwell’s essay, writes the L.A. Times’ Pulitzer-Prize win­ning colum­nist Michael Hiltzik, “stands as the finest decon­struc­tion of sloven­ly writ­ing since Mark Twain’s “Fen­i­more Cooper’s Lit­er­ary Offens­es.” Where Twain’s essay takes on a pre­ten­tious aca­d­e­m­ic estab­lish­ment that unthink­ing­ly ele­vates bad writ­ing, “Orwell makes the con­nec­tion between degrad­ed lan­guage and polit­i­cal deceit (at both ends of the polit­i­cal spec­trum).” With this con­cise descrip­tion, Hiltzik begins his list of Orwell’s five great­est essays, each one a bul­wark against some form of emp­ty polit­i­cal lan­guage, and the often bru­tal effects of its “pure wind.”

One spe­cif­ic exam­ple of the lat­ter comes next on Hiltzak’s list (actu­al­ly a series he has pub­lished over the month) in Orwell’s 1949 essay on Gand­hi. The piece clear­ly names the abus­es of the impe­r­i­al British occu­piers of India, even as it strug­gles against the can­on­iza­tion of Gand­hi the man, con­clud­ing equiv­o­cal­ly that “his char­ac­ter was extra­or­di­nar­i­ly a mixed one, but there was almost noth­ing in it that you can put your fin­ger on and call bad.” Orwell is less ambiva­lent in Hiltzak’s third choice, the spiky 1946 defense of Eng­lish com­ic writer P.G. Wode­house, whose behav­ior after his cap­ture dur­ing the Sec­ond World War under­stand­ably baf­fled and incensed the British pub­lic. The last two essays on the list, “You and the Atom­ic Bomb” from 1945 and the ear­ly “A Hang­ing,” pub­lished in 1931, round out Orwell’s pre- and post-war writ­ing as a polemi­cist and clear-sight­ed polit­i­cal writer of con­vic­tion. Find all five essays free online at the links below. And find some of Orwell’s great­est works in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

1. “Pol­i­tics and the Eng­lish Lan­guage”

2. “Reflec­tions on Gand­hi”

3. “In Defense of P.G. Wode­house”

4. “You and the Atom­ic Bomb”

5. “A Hang­ing”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell’s 1984: Free eBook, Audio Book & Study Resources

The Only Known Footage of George Orwell (Cir­ca 1921)

George Orwell and Dou­glas Adams Explain How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

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

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Charles Bukowski Takes You on a Very Strange Tour of Hollywood

in Poetry | November 12th, 2013

The world tends to think rather loose­ly about the con­cepts of Los Ange­les, Hol­ly­wood, and the motion pic­ture indus­try, throw­ing them around, run­ning them togeth­er, nam­ing one when they mean anoth­er — still, noth­ing a brac­ing splash of Charles Bukows­ki can’t sort out. Above, the famous Los Ange­les-res­i­dent poet, a fig­ure as sham­bol­i­cal­ly glo­ri­ous and stealth­ily inspir­ing as much of the city itself, gives a brief back-seat tour of Hol­ly­wood. No, he does­n’t take us past the movie stu­dios, nor the Walk of Fame, nor the site of Schwab’s Phar­ma­cy. He stays clos­er to home — his home, the sto­ried bun­ga­low at 5124 De Long­pre Avenue. We see his neigh­bor­hood, his neck of Hol­ly­wood, the north­west­ern dis­trict of vast Los Ange­les that con­tains much less of the capital‑I Indus­try than you’d think, but more of gen­uine (if often grotesque) inter­est.

“That’s a lady for­tune teller there,” Bukows­ki says, ges­tur­ing toward one of the mod­est hous­es around him. “I went in there one time. She read my palm. She said, ‘You’re an alco­holic.’ ‘Real­ly? Do I gam­ble, too?’ ‘Yes, you gam­ble. That’ll be five dol­lars.’ ” The dri­ver con­tin­ues down Hol­ly­wood’s epony­mous boule­vard, pass­ing West­ern Avenue, which gets the poet remem­ber­ing more: “There used to be cement bench­es out front, and all the insane peo­ple would sit there. The street peo­ple. They’d talk to each oth­er all day long.” We pass impor­tant land­marks as well: “There’s the old Sex Shop. Keeps chang­ing hands.” He even points out the wheel­ers and deal­ers liv­ing amid this stretch of bars, broth­els, and burg­er stands: “There’s a woman who’s not a hook­er. There’s a dope deal­er.” Give me Bukowski’s Hol­ly­wood tour over those dou­ble-deck­er bus­es you see around town, their con­duc­tors bark­ing about minor celebri­ty sight­ings, any day. “I’ve been to this liquor store many a time,” Bukows­ki notes. “Many a time.”

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 Tells the Sto­ry of His Worst Hang­over Ever

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

Five Cul­tur­al Tours of Los Ange­les

The Last (Faxed) Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

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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The Mother of All Domino Rallies

in Random | November 11th, 2013

Domi­no magi­cians “Hevesh5” and “Mil­lio­nen­dol­lar­boy” teamed up to cre­ate a pret­ty epic domi­no ral­ly. It took 3 months and 25,000 domi­noes to make the video you’re watch­ing above. Actu­al­ly you’re real­ly watch­ing two videos in one. The first part was made by Hevesh5 in the US. Then, at the 1:35 mark, it switch­es to mil­lio­nen­dol­lar­boy’s seg­ment cre­at­ed in Ger­many. It’s amaz­ing to watch the domi­no struc­tures come down. A lit­tle more amaz­ing to think about them going up. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Page Turn­er: A Fab­u­lous Rube Gold­berg Machine for Read­ers

The ABC of Archi­tects: An Ani­mat­ed Flip­book of Famous Archi­tects and Their Best-Known Build­ings

Amaz­ing Flip­book Ani­ma­tion Shows Off the Skills of Ronald­in­ho

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Yoko Ono, Age 80, Still Has Moves, Dances with The Beastie Boys, Ira Glass, Roberta Flack & Friends

in Dance, Life, Music, Philosophy | November 11th, 2013

Yoko Ono, a Bad Dancer?

Pshaw! As she’s very like­ly aware, there’s not a thing wrong with her danc­ing. If there were, I doubt she’d be sport­ing saucy hot pants in the above video for the first sin­gle off of the Plas­tic Ono Band’s Take Me to the Land of Hell.

Her 80-year-old stems are in fan­tas­tic shape. May­haps this youth­ful vibe is a reflec­tion of the com­pa­ny she keeps. A bunch of nifty pals from Gen­er­a­tions X and Y showed up to shake their tail feath­ers on camera—the sur­viv­ing Beast­ie Boys (who also pro­duced), Reg­gie Watts, Cibo Mat­to’s Yuka Hon­da and Miho Hatori, gen­der-bend­ing per­former Justin Vivian Bond, and pub­lic radio star Ira Glass, to name but a few.

Appar­ent­ly, she’s not quite as tight with all her dance part­ners as the video would imply. Glass describes his involve­ment thus­ly:

She’s gra­cious, has to be remind­ed by a han­dler who in the world I am. Then total­ly acts nice, says some­thing along the lines of “I appre­ci­ate the work you do” which either means she’s heard my work or she hasn’t…. The song is called “Bad Dancer” so I’m the per­fect par­tic­i­pant because—though I love to dance, I have no illu­sions. I’m a spaz. I stand in front of the cam­era and 20 han­dlers and hip­sters and pub­li­cists and crew and Yoko Ono and I think a reporter from Rolling Stone and I tell myself to pre­tend I can do this and I dance.

Per­haps declar­ing her­self a Bad Dancer is Ono’s way of encour­ag­ing self-con­scious wall hug­gers to drop their inhi­bi­tions and join in the fun. It’s an approach to life, and aging, that made a cult clas­sic of Harold and Maude.

Place your bets

Watch your step

I’m a bad dancer

With no regrets

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yoko Ono’s Make-Up Tips for Men

Watch John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

Dis­cov­ered: Con­ver­sa­tion with John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Tim­o­thy Leary at Mon­tre­al Bed-In (1969)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day still gets a bang out of Yoko Ono’s FLY. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday-

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“Wear Sunscreen”: The Story Behind the Commencement Speech That Kurt Vonnegut Never Gave

in Graduation Speech, Literature, MIT | November 11th, 2013

On June 1, 1997, Mary Schmich, Chica­go Tri­bune colum­nist and Bren­da Starr car­toon­ist, wrote a col­umn enti­tled “Advice, like youth, prob­a­bly just wast­ed on the young.” In her intro­duc­tion to the col­umn she described it as the com­mence­ment speech she would give to the class of ’97 if she were asked to give one.

The first line of the speech: “Ladies and gen­tle­men of the class of ’97: Wear sun­screen.”

If you grew up in the 90s, these words may sound famil­iar, and you would be absolute­ly right. Aus­tralian film direc­tor Baz Luhrmann used the essay in its entire­ty on his 1998 album Some­thing for Every­body, turn­ing it into his hit sin­gle “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sun­screen).” With spo­ken-word lyrics over a mel­low back­ing track by Zam­bian dance music per­former Roza­l­la, the song was an unex­pect­ed world­wide hit, reach­ing num­ber 45 on the Bill­board Hot 100 in the Unit­ed States and num­ber one in the Unit­ed King­dom.

The thing is, Luhrmann and his team did not real­ize that Schmich was the actu­al author of the speech until they sought out per­mis­sion to use the lyrics. They believed it was writ­ten by author Kurt Von­negut.

For Schmich, the “Sun­screen Con­tro­ver­sy” was “just one of those sto­ries that reminds you of the law­less­ness of cyber­space.” While no one knows the orig­i­na­tor of the urban leg­end, the sto­ry goes that Vonnegut’s wife, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jill Kre­mentz, had received an e‑mail in ear­ly August 1997 that pur­port­ed to reprint a com­mence­ment speech Von­negut had giv­en at MIT that year. (The actu­al com­mence­ment speak­er was the Unit­ed Nations Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Kofi Annan.) “She was so pleased,” Mr. Von­negut lat­er told the New York Times. “She sent it on to a whole of peo­ple, includ­ing my kids – how clever I am.”

The pur­port­ed speech became a viral sen­sa­tion, bounc­ing around the world through e‑mail. This is how Luhrmann dis­cov­ered the text. He, along with Anton Mon­st­ed and Josh Abra­hams, decid­ed to use it for a remix he was work­ing on but was doubt­ful he could get Von­negut’s  per­mis­sion. While search­ing for the writer’s con­tact infor­ma­tion, Luhrmann dis­cov­ered that Schmich was the actu­al author. He reached out to her and, with her per­mis­sion, record­ed the song the next day.

What hap­pened between June 1 and ear­ly August, no one knows. For Von­negut, the con­tro­ver­sy cement­ed his belief that the Inter­net was not worth trust­ing. “I don’t know what the point is except how gullible peo­ple are on the Inter­net.” For Schmich, she acknowl­edged that her col­umn would prob­a­bly not had spread the way it did with­out the names of Von­negut and MIT attached to it.

In the end, Schmich and Von­negut did con­nect after she reached out to him to inform him of the con­fu­sion. Accord­ing to Von­negut, “What I said to Mary Schmich on the tele­phone was that what she wrote was fun­ny and wise and charm­ing, so I would have been proud had the words been mine.” Not a bad end­ing for a col­umn that was writ­ten, accord­ing to Schmich, “while high on cof­fee and M&Ms.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Shape of A Sto­ry: Writ­ing Tips from Kurt Von­negut

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

Kurt Von­negut Reads from Slaugh­ter­house-Five

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George Saunders’ Lectures on the Russian Greats Brought to Life in Student Sketches

in Art, Literature, Writing | November 11th, 2013

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Click for larg­er image

We’ve seen plen­ty of post-mod­ern decay in writ­ers before George Saun­ders—in Don DeLil­lo, J.G. Ballard—but nev­er has it been filled with such puck­ish warmth, such whim­si­cal detail, and such empa­thy, to use a word Saun­ders prizes. As a writer, Saun­ders draws read­ers in close to a very human world, albeit a frag­ment­ed, burned out, and frayed one, and it seems that he does so as a teacher as well. Since 1997, Saun­ders has taught cre­ative writ­ing at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, where he received his M.A. in 1988, and where he remains, despite being award­ed a MacArthur “Genius” Fel­low­ship in 2006 and pub­lish­ing steadi­ly through­out the last decade and a half. To sit in a class with Saun­ders, accord­ing to his one­time stu­dent Rebec­ca Fishow, is to vis­it with a dar­ing prac­ti­tion­er of the short form, one whose “words seem a lot like the trans­fer of secrets through a chain-link of writ­ers.”

Saunders2

While attend­ing one of Saun­ders’ semes­ter-length writ­ing sem­i­nars, writer and artist Fishow com­piled the notes and sketch­es you see here (and sev­er­al more at The Believ­er’s Log­ger site). In each sketch, Saun­ders teach­es from one of his favorite clas­sic Russ­ian short sto­ry writ­ers. At the top, see him expound on Turgenev’s method, prof­fer­ing epipha­nies, keen obser­va­tions on craft, and writer­ly advice in word bubbles—“You are allowed to manip­u­late,” “Tec­ni­cian vs. Artist” [sic], “Instan­ta­neous micro-re-eval­u­a­tion (@end of story)”—while sur­round­ed by a fringy aura. Above, Fishow recon­structs Saun­ders’ take on Chekhov’s “Lady with the Pet Dog” around a por­trait of a pen­sive Saun­ders (look­ing a bit like Chekhov).

Saunders3

Fishow’s recon­struc­tions are obvi­ous­ly very par­tial, and it’s not clear if she took them down on the spot or scrib­bled from mem­o­ry (the mis­spellings make me think the for­mer). In the sketch above, Saun­ders’ expli­cates Gogol, with phras­es like “VERBAL JOY!” and an Ein­stein quote: “No wor­thy prob­lem is ever solved on the plane of its orig­i­nal con­cep­tion.” The lat­ter is an inter­est­ing moment of Saun­ders’ sci­en­tif­ic back­ground slip­ping into his ped­a­gogy. Before he was a MacAu­rthur win­ner and an enthu­si­as­tic teacher, Saun­ders worked as an envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer. Of his sci­ence back­ground, he has said:

…any claim I might make to orig­i­nal­i­ty in my fic­tion is real­ly just the result of this odd back­ground: basi­cal­ly, just me work­ing inef­fi­cient­ly, with flawed tools, in a mode I don’t have suf­fi­cient back­ground to real­ly under­stand. Like if you put a welder to design­ing dress­es.

As a teacher, at least in Fishow’s notes, Saun­ders cel­e­brates “work­ing inef­fi­cient­ly.” As she puts it: “His wis­dom con­firms that flaw and uncer­tain­ty and vari­ety and empa­thy (espe­cial­ly empa­thy) are pos­i­tive aspects of the writ­ing process.” Fishow’s por­traits go a long way toward con­vey­ing those qual­i­ties in Saun­ders as a pres­ence in the class­room.

Find more sketch­es at The Believ­er’s Log­ger site.

Also Read 10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

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

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Developing iOS 7 Apps for iPhone and iPad: A Free Online Course by Stanford

in Apple, Online Courses, Stanford, Technology | November 10th, 2013

ios7

FYI: Apple offi­cial­ly released iOS7,  the lat­est oper­at­ing sys­tem for the iPhone and iPad, on Sep­tem­ber 18. Almost simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Stan­ford began offer­ing a course teach­ing stu­dents how to design apps in the new envi­ron­ment. Although the course is still in progress, the ini­tial video lec­tures are now avail­able online, you guessed it, on iTune­sU.

This course, along with oth­er top-flight cod­ing cours­es, appears in the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of 775 Free Online Cours­es, where you’ll also find cours­es on Phi­los­o­phy, His­to­ry, Physics and oth­er top­ics.

Look­ing for tuto­ri­als on build­ing apps in Android? Find them here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es

Codecademy’s Free Cours­es Democ­ra­tize Com­put­er Pro­gram­ming

The Art of Liv­ing: A Free Stan­ford Course Explores Time­less Ques­tions

Biol­o­gy That Makes Us Tick: Free Stan­ford Course by Robert Sapol­sky

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The Smithsonian Picks “101 Objects That Made America”

in Books, History, Life | November 10th, 2013

101-Objects-photo-collection-631

The Smith­so­ni­an’s 19 muse­ums, 9 research cen­ters, and 140-plus affil­i­ates boast the world’s largest collection—137 mil­lion items, in addi­tion to a stag­ger­ing array of pho­tos, doc­u­ments, films, and record­ings. Choos­ing which to include in The Smith­so­ni­an’s His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca in 101 Objects (pub­lished on Octo­ber 29) from such a wealth of options was no easy task. (On the oth­er hand, the Direc­tor of the British Muse­um Neil Mac­Gre­gor did man­age to encap­su­late two mil­lion years of world his­to­ry in one object less…)

Anthro­pol­o­gist Richard Kurin, the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion’s Under Sec­re­tary for His­to­ry, Art, and Cul­ture, pri­or­i­tized objects with vivid biogra­phies. There may be no way for a muse­um to recre­ate the Civ­il War, as he notes, but a “hand-drawn bat­tle map of the time, a bul­let or gun­nery shelf, a uni­form bear­ing evi­dence of wounds, and bro­ken met­al shack­les are all objects that, hav­ing been present at the event depict­ed, can speak to the larg­er sto­ry. The parts stand for the whole.”

Celebri­ty may have fac­tored into the selec­tion process, too. Not every entry is bespan­gled with a famous name, but one can’t over­look the vic­ar­i­ous thrill inher­ent in Cesar Chavez’s union jack­et, Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s top hat, Helen Keller’s watch, or Mar­i­an Ander­son­’s mink coat.  Who can say whether these res­o­nances will lose their lus­ter in the future. In his intro­duc­tion, Kurin uses the steer­ing wheel of the U.S.S. Maine, once an object of keen nation­al inter­est due to its role in the Span­ish-Amer­i­can War, to exem­pli­fy the descent into obscu­ri­ty.

To cel­e­brate the pub­li­ca­tion of The Smith­so­ni­an’s His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca in 101 Objects, the Smith­son­ian Chan­nel will be pro­fil­ing some of the items in a four-part series, Seri­ous­ly Amaz­ing™ Objects (love the trade­mark, guys).

In the mean­time, have a browse through an online gallery fea­tur­ing 50 of Kur­in’s picks.

Or enjoy these three sam­ples, select­ed by yours tru­ly for their uni­fy­ing round­ness. (I could nev­er accom­plish any­thing on the order of Kur­in’s feat, but encour­age the Smith­son­ian to get in touch when­ev­er they’re in the mar­ket for some­one who could repack­age their col­lec­tion as board books for infants…)

Negro-Baseball-68-963

Negro League Base­ball

1937, Amer­i­can His­to­ry Muse­um

Sports­writer Frank Deford ful­fills Kur­in’s bio­graph­ic require­ments with an essay on the larg­er social impli­ca­tions behind this arti­fact, which scored a home run for Buck Leonard and the East line­up in the ’37 Comiskey All-Star game.

Oklahoma-stamp-963

USS Okla­homa Stamp

1941, Postal Muse­um

“To record when a piece of mail was processed aboard ship, the Navy used wood­en post­mark stamps. This one bears an omi­nous date: Dec 6, 1941 PM. It was recov­ered from the bat­tle­ship Okla­homa after it was hit by sev­er­al tor­pe­does, list­ed to a 45-degree angle, cap­sized and sank in the attack on Pearl Har­bor on Decem­ber 7, 1941. The Okla­homa lost 429 sailors and Marines, a third of its crew.”

Wow.

pill-100-963

The Pill

c. 1965 Amer­i­can His­to­ry Muse­um

As Natal­ie Ang­i­er, author of Woman: An Inti­mate Geog­ra­phy point­ed out in a recent arti­cle in Smith­son­ian mag­a­zine, “when peo­ple speak of the Pill, you know they don’t mean aspirin or Prozac but rather that moth­er of all block­buster drugs, the birth con­trol pill.”  A pin­na­cle of both med­ical and fem­i­nist his­to­ry, its sig­nif­i­cance extends well beyond the nation­al bor­ders.

How about you, read­ers? What item from a muse­um col­lec­tion would you include in a book on Amer­i­can His­to­ry?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Howard Zinn’s His­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Empire

Pulitzer Prize Win­ner Picks Essen­tial US His­to­ry Books

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Read the Curi­ous Edi­tion Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day remem­bers the amaze­ment she felt see­ing Archie and Edith’s chairs on an 8th grade field trip to Wash­ing­ton DC. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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