Ernest Hemingway’s Very First Published Stories, Free as an eBook

in Books, Literature | April 10th, 2014

Hemingway1stStories1

“I like the ear­ly stuff”: the clas­sic mas­cu­line com­ment to make about the work of a well-known cre­ator, demon­strat­ing as it does the cul­tur­al con­sumer’s ded­i­ca­tion, purism, judg­men­tal rig­or, and even endurance (giv­en the rel­a­tive acces­si­bil­i­ty, in the intel­lec­tu­al as well as the col­lec­tor’s sens­es, of most “ear­ly stuff”). Now you have a chance to say it about that most osten­si­bly mas­cu­line of all 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can writ­ers, Ernest Hem­ing­way. Above, see the cov­er of a cov­et­ed edi­tion of the then-young “Papa“ ‘s very first book, 1923’s Three Sto­ries & Ten Poems. The print run num­bered only “300 copies, put out by friend and fel­low expa­tri­ate, the writer- pub­lish­er Robert McAl­mon,” writes Steve King at Today in Lit­er­a­ture. “Both had arrived in Paris in 1921, Hem­ing­way an unpub­lished twen­ty-two-year-old jour­nal­ist with a recent bride, a hand­ful of let­ters of intro­duc­tion pro­vid­ed by Sher­wood Ander­son, and a clear imper­a­tive: ‘All you have to do is write one true sen­tence.’ ”

Instead of shelling out to a rare-book deal­er for Three Sto­ries & Ten Poems — admire the sac­ri­fice involved though a true Hem­ing­wayite may — you can read even more of the Old Man and the Sea author’s ear­ly stuff in the free e‑book embed­ded just above: 1946’s The First Forty Nine Sto­ries. It con­tains not just “Up in Michi­gan,” “Out of Sea­son,” and “My Old Man,” those three sto­ries of Hem­ing­way’s bound debut, but, yes, 46 more of his ear­li­est pub­lished pieces of short-form fic­tion. Today in Lit­er­a­ture quotes one notable con­tem­po­rary reac­tion to Three Sto­ries & Ten Poems, from a time before Hem­ing­way had become Hem­ing­way, much less Papa: “I should say that Hem­ing­way should stick to poet­ry and intel­li­gence and eschew the hot­ter emo­tions and the more turgid vision. Intel­li­gence and a great deal of it is a good thing to use when you have it, it’s all for the best.” And who could have writ­ten such an astute ear­ly assess­ment of the ulti­mate lit­er­ary man’s man? A cer­tain Gertrude Stein.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Before The Simpsons, Matt Groening Illustrated a “Student’s Guide” for Apple Computers (1989)

in Comics/Cartoons, Technology | April 10th, 2014

A friend once told me of his old­er cousin who, for the freak­ish act of installing a com­put­er in his col­lege dorm room, found him­self imme­di­ate­ly and irrev­o­ca­bly dubbed “com­put­er Jon.” This hap­pened in the ear­ly 1980s, and boy, have times changed. They’d even changed by the late 1980s, by which time Apple’s col­lege mar­ket­ing efforts had become suf­fi­cient­ly advanced to require the tal­ents of Matt Groen­ing, best known as the man who cre­at­ed The Simp­sons. But that prime-time ani­mat­ed sit­com would­n’t begin its record-break­ing run (still with­out an end in sight) until Christ­mas 1989, while the Groen­ing-illus­trat­ed Who Needs a Com­put­er Any­way? (which you can flip through above) appeared ear­li­er that year. Back then, read­ers might well have known him first and fore­most as the cre­ator of the satir­i­cal alter­na­tive-week­ly com­ic strip Life in Hell, which had debuted in 1977. One of its stars, the hap­less but good-heart­ed young one-eared rab­bit Bon­go, even made his way to Apple brochure’s cov­er. Though com­put­ers them­selves had long since come to dom­i­nate Amer­i­ca’s cam­pus­es by the time I entered col­lege, he and Groen­ing’s oth­er now-less­er-known char­ac­ters did do their part to pre­pare me for acad­e­mia.

I refer, of course, to School is Hell, his 1987 Life in Hell book offer­ing sar­don­ic primers on each and every phase of mod­ern edu­ca­tion from kinder­garten to grad school (“when you haven’t had enough pun­ish­ment”). Groen­ing’s pages in Who Needs a Com­put­er Any­way? read like a less sharp-edged ver­sion of those car­toons, fol­low­ing Life in Hel­l’s sig­na­ture “The 9 Types of…” for­mat to present the read­er with their nine types of future col­lege class­mates, from “the stressed” to “the tech­noid” to “the unem­ployed.” Between these, you can read Apple’s pitch for why you’ll find a piece of equip­ment still some­what out­landish and expen­sive so essen­tial to every aspect of your col­lege career. Though dat­ed tech­ni­cal­ly — the text men­tions noth­ing of the inter­net, for instance, which this gen­er­a­tion of col­lege stu­dents would soon­er drop out than do with­out — it nev­er­the­less under­scores the design virtues of Apple com­put­ers — an intu­itive inter­face, appli­ca­tion inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, “every­thing you need in one small, trans­portable case” — that remain design virtues today. It also dis­plays an impres­sive pre­science of the per­son­al com­put­er’s com­ing indis­pens­abil­i­ty, a con­fi­dent pre­dic­tion that, if not for the slack­er’s lev­i­ty lent by Groen­ing’s hand, might, at the time, actu­al­ly have sound­ed implau­si­ble.

via Retro­naut/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Edgy 1990s Com­mer­cial for Apple’s Mac­in­tosh Com­put­er

Every Apple Ad Ever Aired on TV

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984″ Com­mer­cial, Aired 30 Years Ago on Super Bowl Sun­day

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Johnny Depp Reads Hunter S. Thompson’s Famous “Wave Speech” from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

in Books, Film, Literature | April 10th, 2014

Hunter S. Thomp­son was a lit­er­ary icon – a moral­ist, a gun nut, and the orig­i­nal gonzo jour­nal­ist. He was the inven­tor of the true break­fast of cham­pi­ons and author of the most hilar­i­ous­ly pro­fane pres­i­den­tial obit­u­ary ever.

Of all his writ­ing though, his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a jour­ney through bat coun­try and into the twist­ed dark heart of the Amer­i­can soul, is his most famous and beloved. And aside from per­haps the book’s open­ing line – “We were some­where around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold” – the most mem­o­rable sec­tion of the work is his “wave speech” which shows up in the eighth chap­ter. It is a poet­ic, heart­felt mono­logue about the ide­al­ism and the crushed dreams of the 1960s. Thomp­son him­self said that the pas­sage is “one of the best things I’ve ever fuck­ing writ­ten.”

You can see John­ny Depp — who has played Thomp­son twice on the sil­ver screen — read an abbre­vi­at­ed ver­sion of the speech above. You can read along below. And make sure you turn up your speak­ers a bit.

Strange mem­o­ries on this ner­vous night in Las Vegas. Five years lat­er? Six? It seems like a life­time, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that nev­er comes again. San Fran­cis­co in the mid­dle six­ties was a very spe­cial time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant some­thing. Maybe not, in the long run… but no expla­na­tion, no mix of words or music or mem­o­ries can touch that sense of know­ing that you were there and alive in that cor­ner of time and the world. What­ev­er it meant.…

His­to­ry is hard to know, because of all the hired bull­shit, but even with­out being sure of “his­to­ry” it seems entire­ly rea­son­able to think that every now and then the ener­gy of a whole gen­er­a­tion comes to a head in a long fine flash, for rea­sons that nobody real­ly under­stands at the time—and which nev­er explain, in ret­ro­spect, what actu­al­ly hap­pened.
[…]

There was mad­ness in any direc­tion, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Gold­en Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Hon­da.… You could strike sparks any­where. There was a fan­tas­tic uni­ver­sal sense that what­ev­er we were doing was right, that we were win­ning.…

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable vic­to­ry over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or mil­i­tary sense; we did­n’t need that. Our ener­gy would sim­ply pre­vail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momen­tum; we were rid­ing the crest of a high and beau­ti­ful wave.…

So now, less than five years lat­er, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave final­ly broke and rolled back.

Fear and Loathing was, of course, adapt­ed into a 1998 film star­ring Depp after a very long devel­op­ment stage. Alex Cox – who direct­ed the punk cult hit Repo Man – was orig­i­nal­ly slat­ed to make the movie until he made the mis­take of propos­ing to turn the wave speech into an ani­mat­ed sequence. Thomp­son was extreme­ly unim­pressed. Cox got canned and soon after Ter­ry Gilliam was giv­en the reins to the film. You can see the Gilliam’s treat­ment of the wave speech sequence below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Animated Video: Johnny Cash Explains Why Music Became a Religious Calling

in Animation, Music | April 9th, 2014

Blank on Blank is back with anoth­er ani­mat­ed video. This one ani­mates a long lost inter­view with the great John­ny Cash. Inter­viewed by Bar­ney Hoskyns back in 1996, Cash talked about music as a reli­gious call­ing. Play­ing music was akin to preach­ing the gospel, and he knew he’d con­tin­ue mak­ing music until his final days. Should we be sur­prised then, that sev­en years lat­er, Cash com­plet­ed more than 60 songs dur­ing the last four months of his life? He died with his boots on indeed.

Below we’ve high­light­ed for you some great John­ny Cash mate­r­i­al from our archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Episode of The John­ny Cash Show, Fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan & Joni Mitchell (1969)

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

John­ny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

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Jim Carrey Sings a Pretty Damn Good Cover of The Beatles “I Am the Walrus”

in Music | April 9th, 2014

Back in 1998, the Bea­t­les pro­duc­er, George Mar­tin, pro­duced an album called In My Life. It’s prob­a­bly not an LP that ever made it into your record col­lec­tion, unless you’re a fan of mid­dling cov­ers of Bea­t­les songs. (In which case, you’ll love our old post, The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks.) But the com­pi­la­tion does fea­ture one record­ing that has­n’t quite fad­ed from view — Jim Car­rey’s take on “I Am the Wal­rus.” There’s a comedic com­po­nent to his per­for­mance. But Car­rey also demon­strates a “vocal elas­tic­i­ty” that you might not have expect­ed. If you’ve nev­er heard the Bea­t­les’ orig­i­nal record­ing (God help you), you can find it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Dif­fer­ent Accents

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

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

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Richard Dawkins’ Documentary The God Delusion Tackles Faith & Religious Violence (2006)

in Film, Politics, Religion | April 9th, 2014

The very title of Richard Dawkins’ 2006 book The God Delu­sion was intend­ed to pro­voke, and the Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist has seem­ing­ly done noth­ing but, since tak­ing his stand against reli­gions of all kinds, par­tic­u­lar­ly the big monotheisms that claim most of the world’s inhab­i­tants. Dawkins infu­ri­ates the­ists on the right with his self-assured claim that “there almost cer­tain­ly is no God” and skep­tics on the left, who charge him with sex­ism and racism. Even jour­nal­ist and jour­ney­man intel­lec­tu­al Christo­pher Hedges—no friend to author­i­tar­i­an reli­gions—accus­es Dawkins of the same kind of intol­er­ance as Chris­t­ian, Jew­ish, and Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists.

Mean­while, thou­sands of peo­ple who may or may not fol­low Dawkins’ every inflam­ma­to­ry tweet cred­it him with giv­ing them the courage and con­vic­tion to walk away from faiths they found oppres­sive. In that regard, he’s accom­plished his goal, and his Richard Dawkins Foun­da­tion con­tin­ues to advo­cate stren­u­ous­ly for “sci­en­tif­ic edu­ca­tion, crit­i­cal think­ing and evi­dence-based under­stand­ing of the nat­ur­al world in the quest to over­come reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism, super­sti­tion, intol­er­ance and human suf­fer­ing.”

If you’ve some­how missed Dawkins’ mes­sage amidst the furor over his method, you can get caught up rather quick­ly with the film above. Titled, like his book, The God Delu­sion, the film com­piles the two 45-minute episodes of a doc­u­men­tary series pro­duced for BBC 4 called Root of All Evil?, first broad­cast in 2006 as a com­pan­ion to the book. (The pro­duc­ers chose the title to cre­ate controversy—Dawkins has called the notion of any one thing being the “root of all evil” ridicu­lous.) In his intro­duc­tion to the film, Dawkins pro­pos­es to explore “a world increas­ing­ly polar­ized by reli­gion,” and to find out why faith has such a grip on the human mind.

Sur­vey­ing regions from America’s Mid­west to Israel, the film “takes a hard look at the very con­cept of faith: how it behaves like a kind of ‘brain virus,’ infect­ing gen­er­a­tions of young minds, how it per­pet­u­ates out­dat­ed and dubi­ous moral val­ues.” Why, asks Dawkins, should reli­gion “demand, and usu­al­ly receive, our society’s respect”? It’s still a ques­tion worth ask­ing, even if you don’t like Dawkins’ answers, or Dawkins him­self.

You can find The God Delu­sion in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Unbe­liev­ers, A New Film Star­ring Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, & Cor­mac McCarthy

The Ori­gins Project Brings Togeth­er Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye, Ira Fla­tow, and More on One Stage

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

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

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How the CIA Turned Doctor Zhivago into a Propaganda Weapon Against the Soviet Union

in Books, History, Literature, Politics | April 9th, 2014

ZhivagoTitlePage

Human­i­ty has long pon­dered the rel­a­tive might of the pen and the sword. While one time-worn apho­rism does grant the advan­tage to the pen, most of us have enter­tained doubts: the sword, metaphor­i­cal­ly or lit­er­al­ly, seems to have won out across an awful­ly wide swath of his­to­ry. Still, the pen has scored some impres­sive vic­to­ries, some even in liv­ing mem­o­ry. Take, for exam­ple, the CIA’s recent­ly revealed use of Boris Paster­nak’s nov­el Doc­tor Zhiva­go as a pro­pa­gan­da weapon. Repressed in Paster­nak’s native Rus­sia, the book first appeared in Italy in 1957. The fol­low­ing year, the British sug­gest­ed to Amer­i­ca’s Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency that the book stood a decent chance of win­ning hearts and minds behind the Iron Cur­tain — if, of course, they could get a few copies in there. A CIA memo sent across its own Sovi­et Rus­sia Divi­sion sub­se­quent­ly pro­nounced Doc­tor Zhiva­go as pos­sessed of “great pro­pa­gan­da val­ue, not only for its intrin­sic mes­sage and thought-pro­vok­ing nature, but also for the cir­cum­stances of its pub­li­ca­tion. We have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make Sovi­et cit­i­zens won­der what is wrong with their gov­ern­ment, when a fine lit­er­ary work by the man acknowl­edged to be the great­est liv­ing Russ­ian writer is not even avail­able in his own coun­try in his own lan­guage for his own peo­ple to read.”

That eval­u­a­tion comes from one of the over 130 declas­si­fied doc­u­ments used by Peter Finn and Petra Cou­vée in their brand new his­to­ry of this act of real-life lit­er­ary espi­onage, The Zhiva­go Affair: The Krem­lin, the CIA and the Bat­tle Over a For­bid­den Book. You can read an in-depth arti­cle on some of the events involved in this oper­a­tion — the CIA’s print­ing of both hard­cov­er and minia­ture paper­back Russ­ian-lan­guage edi­tions, the not-so-clan­des­tine dis­tri­b­u­tion of copies at 1958’s Brus­sels Uni­ver­sal and Inter­na­tion­al Expo­si­tion, the CIA’s unex­pect­ed alliance with the Vat­i­can in this mis­sion, the inept prob­ing by Sovi­et “researchers” — at the Wash­ing­ton Post.

You can also watch a CBS This Morn­ing clip on the book just above. Dra­mat­ic though this “Zhiva­go Affair” sounds, it came as nei­ther the first nor last Amer­i­can use of cul­ture as a means of desta­bi­liz­ing the Sovi­et Union. We’ve even pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured two oth­ers: secret­ly-fund­ed abstract expres­sion­ist paint­ing, and Louis Arm­strong’s 1965 East Berlin and Budapest con­certs. Cold War Amer­i­ca may have had the sword, in the form of its vast nuclear arse­nal, pol­ished and ready, but clear­ly it retained a cer­tain regard for the pen — and brush, and trum­pet — as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Free: Watch the First Episode of Silicon Valley, Mike Judge’s New HBO Series

in Technology, Television | April 9th, 2014

Mike Judge’s 1998 movie Office Space struck a nerve with just about any­one who ever wound up in a thank­less low-end white col­lar job. Few movies before or since have been able to artic­u­late the pet­ty indig­ni­ties, the inani­ties and the gen­er­al soul gnaw­ing awful­ness of such gigs. Though the film is far from per­fect, its abun­dance of painful­ly fun­ny jokes along with some emi­nent­ly quotable lines — “Ummm I’m gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomor­row” — have enshrined Office Space into the canon of cult movies.

Six­teen years lat­er, Mike Judge has a new sit­com that aims its satir­i­cal sites on anoth­er white-col­lar ecosys­tem – Sil­i­con Val­ley (the home of Open Cul­ture). The series cen­ters on neb­bish pro­gram­mer Richard who unwit­ting­ly devel­ops a new rev­o­lu­tion­ary way to com­press files. Soon he finds him­self in a bid­ding war between two of the tech world’s biggest entre­pre­neurs. Like Office Space, the fun of the show is its wry, acer­bic obser­va­tions about the rar­i­fied cul­ture of the val­ley.

Just like some apps that offer them­selves for free before mak­ing you pay, the cre­ators of Sil­i­con Val­ley are offer­ing the first episode of the HBO series for free on YouTube. Check it out above. Now if only they would do the same thing for sea­son four of Game of Thrones.

Recent Posts:

The Secret His­to­ry of Sil­i­con Val­ley

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”

Start Your Start­up with Free Stan­ford Cours­es and Lec­tures

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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