The Drawings of Franz Kafka (1907–1917)

in Art, Books | February 4th, 2014

Run­ner 1907–1908

Runner 1907-1908

UK-born, Chica­go-based artist Philip Har­ti­gan has post­ed a brief video piece about Franz Kaf­ka’s draw­ings. Kaf­ka, of course, wrote a body of work, most­ly nev­er pub­lished dur­ing his life­time, that cap­tured the absur­di­ty and the lone­li­ness of the new­ly emerg­ing mod­ern world: In The Meta­mor­pho­sis, Gre­gor trans­forms overnight into a giant cock­roach; in The Tri­al, Josef K. is charged with an unde­fined crime by a mad­den­ing­ly inac­ces­si­ble court. In sto­ry after sto­ry, Kaf­ka showed his pro­tag­o­nists get­ting crushed between the pin­cers of a face­less bureau­crat­ic author­i­ty on the one hand and a deep sense of shame and guilt on the oth­er.

On his deathbed, the famous­ly tor­tured writer implored his friend Max Brod to burn his unpub­lished work. Brod ignored his friend’s plea and instead pub­lished them – nov­els, short sto­ries and even his diaries. In those diaries, Kaf­ka doo­dled inces­sant­ly – stark, graph­ic draw­ings infused with the same angst as his writ­ing. In fact, many of these draw­ings have end­ed up grac­ing the cov­ers of Kafka’s books.

“Quick, min­i­mal move­ments that con­vey the typ­i­cal despair­ing mood of his fic­tion” says Har­ti­gan of Kafka’s art. “I am struck by how these sim­ple ges­tures, these zigza­gs of the wrist, con­tain an econ­o­my of mark mak­ing that even the most expe­ri­enced artist can learn some­thing from.”

In his book Con­ver­sa­tions with Kaf­ka, Gus­tav Janouch describes what hap­pened when he came upon Kaf­ka in mid-doo­dle: the writer imme­di­ate­ly ripped the draw­ing into lit­tle pieces rather than have it be seen by any­one. After this hap­pened a cou­ple times, Kaf­ka relent­ed and let him see his work. Janouch was aston­ished. “You real­ly didn’t need to hide them from me,” he com­plained. “They’re per­fect­ly harm­less sketch­es.”

“Kaf­ka slow­ly wagged his head to and fro – ‘Oh no! They are not as harm­less as they look. These draw­ing are the remains of an old, deep-root­ed pas­sion. That’s why I tried to hide them from you…. It’s not on the paper. The pas­sion is in me. I always want­ed to be able to draw. I want­ed to see, and to hold fast to what was seen. That was my pas­sion.”

Check out some of Kafka’s draw­ings below:

Horse and Rid­er 1909–1910

Horse and Rider 1909-1910

Three Run­ners 1912–1913

Three Runners 1912-1913

The Thinker 1913

The Thinker 1913

Fenc­ing 1917

Fencing 1917

via Arts­Cen­tre

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find Works by Kaf­ka in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion

Watch Franz Kaf­ka, the Won­der­ful Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

Vladimir Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Tweaks to Franz Kafka’s Novel­la

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

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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How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

in Music | February 4th, 2014

The arrival of the com­pact disc was thought to be the death sen­tence for LPs. Vinyl was big, impre­cise, and stuck in the past: CDs were the wave of the future. Recent years, how­ev­er, have seen a sur­pris­ing trend. Vinyl col­lec­tors have man­aged to weath­er the dig­i­tal music storm of the ‘80s and ‘90s, while com­pact discs, hav­ing seen bet­ter days, have dropped in pop­u­lar­i­ty. In fact, accord­ing to The Tele­graph, LP sales are bet­ter than they’ve been at any point over the past 12 years. Although it is the hob­by­ist col­lec­tor and the DJ who have buoyed vinyl sales for many years, the recent surge in LP pop­u­lar­i­ty is, in part, due to younger fans who pre­fer the expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to vinyl records over dig­i­tal down­loads. Daft Punk, Arc­tic Mon­keys, The Nation­al, and Vam­pire Week­end are just some of the A‑list bands tak­ing advan­tage of the trend.

But how are LPs man­u­fac­tured today? Pret­ty much the exact way they’ve been pro­duced through­out the past 50 years, actu­al­ly. Many of the LP press­ing plants use restored press­es, bought sec­ond-hand for about $25,000. The video above, made in 1956 by RCA Vic­tor, gives a detailed descrip­tion of the process. After the sound record­ing, the audio is trans­ferred to a lac­quer mas­ter disc.

The play­ing time of the music dic­tates the num­ber of grooves on the disc, and the sound dynam­ics deter­mine the dis­tance between them. As the video explains, the loud pas­sages need more room, while qui­et ones need less. A fine­ly ground and elec­tri­cal­ly heat­ed piece of sap­phire cuts the vinyl with pre­ci­sion. Once it is com­plete, the mas­ter disc is coat­ed in var­i­ous met­als, which, when sep­a­rat­ed, cre­ate a new, sil­ver-faced mas­ter copy. This metal­lic mas­ter can’t be played, and is used to cre­ate a mold, which must be checked for sound qual­i­ty. Final­ly, the mold is used to make a stam­per, which stamps the appro­pri­ate grooves on the records. The record press heats the plas­tic, turn­ing it into a warm, mold­able goo, press­es it, and cools its once the grooves have been stamped. If you got lost some­where along the way, don’t wor­ry. Visu­als help, and the video above should give you an idea of how things hap­pen.

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!

via Boing Boing

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

World Records: New Pho­to Exhib­it Pays Trib­ute to the Era of Vinyl Records & Turnta­bles

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Ira Glass’ Advice on Achieving Creative Excellence Presented in Two Artful, Typographic Videos

in Creativity, Life, Radio | February 4th, 2014

”All of us who do cre­ative work,” says Ira Glass, cre­ator This Amer­i­can Life, quite pos­si­bly the most respect­ed pro­gram on pub­lic radio, “we get into it because we have good taste.” Yet despite this dis­cern­ment, or indeed because of it, “there’s a gap: for the first cou­ple years that you’re mak­ing stuff, what you’re mak­ing isn’t so good. [ … ] Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re mak­ing is kind of a dis­ap­point­ment to you.” For this rea­son, Glass argues, the taste­ful often fail at their cre­ative endeav­ors entire­ly. “Most every­body I know who does inter­est­ing cre­ative work,” he con­tin­ues, “they went through a phase of years where they had real­ly good taste, and they could tell what they were mak­ing was­n’t as good as they want­ed it to be.” This astute diag­no­sis of a “total­ly nor­mal” syn­drome comes extract­ed from Glass’ talk on the craft of sto­ry­telling, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

For­tu­nate­ly for those of us strug­gling with the very taste-abil­i­ty mis­match Glass describes, a solu­tion exists. If you want a quick fix, though, pre­pare for dis­ap­point­ment. “Do a lot of work,” he flat­ly advis­es. “Do a huge vol­ume of work. Put your­self on a dead­line so that every week or every month you know you’re going to fin­ish one sto­ry. Because it’s only by actu­al­ly going through a vol­ume of work that you’re actu­al­ly going to catch up and close that gap.” These words have proven inspir­ing enough that they’ve sure­ly spurred lis­ten­ers on to plow paths of sheer pro­duc­tion through their cho­sen rocky yet fer­tile cre­ative fields. Two lis­ten­ers in par­tic­u­lar, David Shiyang Liu and Frohlocke, appar­ent­ly found them­selves imme­di­ate­ly gal­va­nized to work with the words them­selves, result­ing in the typo­graph­i­cal­ly focused video inter­pre­ta­tions above. Only one ques­tion remains: how large a vol­ume of typo­graph­i­cal­ly focused video inter­pre­ta­tions of Ira Glass’ words did they have to cre­ate before they could make ones this impres­sive?

via Vimeo Staff Picks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass, the Host of This Amer­i­can Life, Breaks Down the Fine Art of Sto­ry­telling

Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Sto­ries

Hen­ry Rollins Tells Young Peo­ple to Avoid Resent­ment and to Pur­sue Suc­cess with a “Monas­tic Obses­sion”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Teddy Roosevelt’s 10 Rules For Reading: Seek Enjoyment, Spurn Fads, Read What You Like

in Books, History | February 4th, 2014

Theodore_Roosevelt_circa_1902

Ted­dy Roo­sevelt seems to us a para­dox today, and did in his time as well: A man’s man hunter, cow­boy, and war hero, who sup­pos­ed­ly saved the game of foot­ball from extinc­tion (Roo­sevelt wor­ried that ban­ning the game would pro­duce “mol­ly­cod­dles instead of vig­or­ous men”); also, a Har­vard-edu­cat­ed New York pro­gres­sive and tree­hug­ging con­ser­va­tion­ist hero, who re-defined pres­i­den­tial style with Brooks Broth­ers three-piece suits and uni­forms. And for all of his pub­lic hero­ics, Roo­sevelt was also a dot­ing father who gave his nick­name to the most uni­ver­sal­ly cud­dly species of bear. Per­haps some of the best rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Roo­sevelt’s per­son­al ethos are pho­tographs of his com­bi­na­tion library and gun room, hung with hunt­ing tro­phies and skins in the home he built for his fam­i­ly in Oys­ter Bay, New York (below—see more at the appro­pri­ate­ly named “Art of Man­li­ness”).

trfirstfloorlibrary

One sig­nif­i­cant rea­son Roo­sevelt could embody seem­ing­ly wide­ly diver­gent traits was that he was a devour­er of books, read­ing tens of thou­sands in his life­time, absorb­ing thou­sands of points of view from every pos­si­ble source. But Roo­sevelt did not read the way we do today—rapidly tak­ing in infor­ma­tion for its own sake, with auto­mat­ed ser­vices com­pil­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from the meta­da­ta (a phe­nom­e­non Susan Jaco­by has indict­ed as part of our hyper-par­ti­san, group­think cul­ture). He read accord­ing to his whim, putting plea­sure ahead of prof­it and dis­dain­ing fads and rigid cul­tur­al norms. He was, lit­er­ary site Book Riot sup­pos­es, “prob­a­bly the most well-read pres­i­dent, and per­haps one of the most well-read men in all of his­to­ry.”

Book Riot points us toward a few pages of Roosevelt’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, in which—amidst picaresque chap­ters like “In Cow­boy Land” and heavy ones like “The Pres­i­den­cy; Mak­ing an Old Par­ty Progressive”—Roosevelt paus­es to detail his thoughts on read­ing in a par­tic­u­lar­ly prag­mat­ic chap­ter titled “Out­doors and Indoors.” Although Roo­sevelt does not present his con­tem­pla­tion as an eas­i­ly digestible list of rules, as is the fash­ion now, Book Riot has seen fit to con­dense his thought. Below see the first five of their list, “Ted­dy Roosevelt’s 10 Rules for Read­ing.” I’d be will­ing to bet that if every­one fol­lowed Teddy’s advice, we could up the woe­ful nation­al lit­er­a­cy quo­tient with­in a few short years.

1. “The room for choice is so lim­it­less that to my mind it seems absurd to try to make cat­a­logues which shall be sup­posed to appeal to all the best thinkers. This is why I have no sym­pa­thy what­ev­er with writ­ing lists of the One Hun­dred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library [a ref­er­ence to the Har­vard Clas­sics]. It is all right for a man to amuse him­self by com­pos­ing a list of a hun­dred very good books… But there is no such thing as a hun­dred books that are best for all men, or for the major­i­ty of men, or for one man at all times.”

2. “A book must be inter­est­ing to the par­tic­u­lar read­er at that par­tic­u­lar time.”

3. “Per­son­al­ly, the books by which I have prof­it­ed infi­nite­ly more than by any oth­ers have been those in which prof­it was a by-prod­uct of the plea­sure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, because I liked read­ing them, and the prof­it came in as part of the enjoy­ment.”

4. “The read­er, the booklover, must meet his own needs with­out pay­ing too much atten­tion to what his neigh­bors say those needs should be.”

5. “He must not hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly pre­tend to like what he does not like.”

Head over to Book Riot for the remain­ing five of Roo­sevelt’s “rules,” along with some wit­ty com­men­tary.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘The Right of the Peo­ple to Rule’: Lis­ten to Theodore Roo­sevelt Speak­ing 100 Years Ago Today

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

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

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

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Neil Gaiman Reads Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham

in K-12, Literature | February 3rd, 2014

This morn­ing, we’re serv­ing up some green eggs and ham. Or rather Neil Gaiman is. When­ev­er I think about some­one read­ing Dr. Seuss’ clas­sic chil­dren’s book, I can’t help but think back to Jesse Jack­son’s clas­sic read­ing on SNL in 1991. But who knows, maybe 20 years from now, anoth­er gen­er­a­tion might call to mind this ver­sion by the unshaven Gaiman. If the read­ing whets your appetite a bit, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries, which includes, among oth­er things, audio & video record­ings of @neilhimself read­ing his own sto­ries. We’ve got some more good Dr. Seuss mate­r­i­al below.

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!

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fake Bob Dylan Sings Real Dr. Seuss

The Epis­te­mol­o­gy of Dr. Seuss & More Phi­los­o­phy Lessons from Great Children’s Sto­ries

New Archive Show­cas­es Dr. Seuss’s Ear­ly Work as an Adver­tis­ing Illus­tra­tor and Polit­i­cal Car­toon­ist

550 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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New Carl Sagan Archive Features His Digitized Home Movies, Student Journalism, Draft of His Pale Blue Dot & More

in Archives, Astronomy, History, Science | February 3rd, 2014

Sev­er­al days ago, we brought you a rare Carl Sagan sketch, where the young sci­en­tist depict­ed an imag­ined his­to­ry of inter­stel­lar space flight. In that post, we made brief men­tion of the Seth Mac­Far­lane Col­lec­tion of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, which mer­its to be high­light­ed in its own right: its arrival means that the Inter­net now has access to a vast repos­i­to­ry of the emi­nent sci­ence educator’s orig­i­nal papers and per­son­al arti­facts.

His­to­ri­ans, biog­ra­phers, and die-hard Sagan devo­tees will inevitably want to vis­it the Library of Con­gress in per­son to view the full archive, which con­tains over 1700 box­es of mate­r­i­al. The lay read­er curi­ous about Sagan’s life, how­ev­er, won’t need to make the trek to the U.S. cap­i­tal to sam­ple the archive’s con­tents. That’s because the Library of Con­gress has uploaded a por­tion of the col­lec­tion online, includ­ing sundry fas­ci­nat­ing bio­graph­i­cal pieces. Above, you can view a dig­i­tized set of the Sagan fam­i­ly’s silent home movies, where young Carl shows off his boy­hood box­ing prowess, rides horse­back, and plays piano (pre­cious­ly, we pre­sume).

It was dur­ing high school that Sagan began to fill out intel­lec­tu­al­ly. His senior year­book is tes­ti­mo­ny to both his inter­est in sci­ence and the human­i­ties: not only was Sagan pres­i­dent of both the sci­ence and chem­istry clubs, he also led the French club, served as an edi­tor on his school’s news­pa­per, debat­ed, took part in the­atre pro­duc­tions, and was a mem­ber of the pho­tog­ra­phy club.

sagan archive

Indeed, Sagan dis­played his uncan­ny abil­i­ty to merge sci­ence with the human­i­ties in Wawawhack, his high school news­pa­per, writ­ing a piece enti­tled “Space, Time, and The Poet.” He begins by say­ing, “it is an exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence to read poet­ry and observe its cor­re­la­tion with mod­ern sci­ence. Pro­found sci­en­tif­ic thought is hard­ly a rar­i­ty among the poets.” Through­out the piece, Sagan goes on to draw from vers­es by Alfred Lord Ten­nyson, T. S. Eliot, John Mil­ton, and Robert Frost.

Mix­ing sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture would remain one of Sagan’s spe­cial­ties, and would even­tu­al­ly lead to his writ­ing The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of Human Future In Space (1994). The book dis­cuss­es humankind’s place in the uni­verse, past, present, and future, and a PDF ver­sion of the anno­tat­ed sec­ond draft, pic­tured below, is avail­able in the archive.

sagan archive 3

For more of the dig­i­tized col­lec­tion, vis­it Seth Mac­Far­lane Col­lec­tion of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive.

via Boing Boing

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Free Mini Course: Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

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1967 Cookbook Features Recipes by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, Barbra Streisand & More

in Books, Food & Drink, Music | February 3rd, 2014

Singers-and-SwingersCover

Am I alone in think­ing that the “dozens of nut­ty, turned-on, easy-to-pre­pare recipes” in 1967’s Singers and Swingers in the Kitchen bear more than pass­ing resem­blance to the fes­tive­ly pho­tographed dish­es in Bet­ty Crock­er’s 1965 New Boys and Girls Cook Book?

Could Son­ny and Cher, Simon and Gar­funkel, and Her­man’s Her­mits — to name a few of the “top scene­mak­ers” Singers and Swingers author Rober­ta Ash­ley des­ig­nates as the “groovi­est gourmets hap­pen­ing” — real­ly shared a com­mon palate with Bet­ty and her child-chefs?

stones recipe
It’s hard to imag­ine 1967’s rock stars” eat­ing this stuff, let alone mak­ing it. The Rolling Stones’ “Hot Dogs on the Rocks” sounds more suit­ed to Mick Jag­ger’s hot pot at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics than the back of a “Ruby Tues­day” era tour bus. I don’t recall Kei­th Richards men­tion­ing them in Life.

(Though take away the recipe’s three mid­dle words, and you’re left with the title of a cer­tain mul­ti-plat­inum dou­ble hits album. Coin­ci­dence?)

 

betty-crocker-rocket

Mov­ing on to Singers and Swingers’ sal­ad course, Mon­kee Peter Tork’s “Mad Man­darin Sal­ad” (click here for ingre­di­ents) sounds like it would taste quite sim­i­lar to the New Boys and Girls Cook Book’s “Rock­et Sal­ad”, above. Canned fruit fea­tures promi­nent­ly in both, but “Rock­et Sal­ad” is way more phal­lic, and thus more rock n’ roll.

 

barbra-streisands-coffee-ice-cream-001

“Bar­bra Streisand’s Instant Cof­fee Ice Cream” sounds sophis­ti­cat­ed, may­haps because cof­fee, like alco­hol, has no place in the Bet­ty Crock­er New Boys and Girls’ realm. It seems like it would uphold the Singers and Swingers’ man­date by being “easy-to-pre­pare”. Dare I say “easy enough for a child to pre­pare”? So my own moth­er told the Indi­anapo­lis Star some­time in the late 60’s. The evi­dence is below. Just like Bar­bra’s, my moth­er’s recipe required marsh­mal­lows and a blender.

coffeemallow

And, oh by the way, don’t miss Simon and Garfunkel’s Pota­to Pan­cake Recipe. It’s to die for…

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Learn to Make Borscht with Neko Case and Get a Taste of Her New Album

Alice B. Tok­las Talks About Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge

Ayun Hal­l­i­day con­tin­ues to lust after Bet­ty Crock­er’s Enchant­ed Cas­tle Cake. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Read Two Poems David Foster Wallace Wrote During His Elementary School Days

in Literature, Poetry | February 3rd, 2014

WallacePoems

Some read­ers dis­cov­er David Fos­ter Wal­lace through his fic­tion, and oth­ers dis­cov­er him through his essays. (Find 30 Free Sto­ries & Essays by DFW here.) Now that the pub­lish­ing indus­try has spent more than five years putting out every­thing of the late writer’s left­over mate­r­i­al they can rea­son­ably turn into books, new DFW fans may arrive through more forms still: his inter­views, Keny­on com­mence­ment speech, phi­los­o­phy the­sis, etc.. And though he pro­duced too few of them to appear col­lect­ed between cov­ers, Wal­lace once wrote poems as well, though judg­ing by the hand­writ­ing of the two shown here, he seems to have both start­ed down and aban­doned that par­tic­u­lar lit­er­ary avenue in child­hood. Still, that very qual­i­ty — and the oppor­tu­ni­ty it holds out to see the lin­guis­tic for­ma­tion of a man lat­er regard­ed as a prose genius — makes them all the more intrigu­ing. First, we have the unti­tled poem above, a sym­pa­thet­ic paean to the labors of moth­er­hood:

My moth­er works so hard
And for bread she needs some lard.
She bakes the bread. And makes the bed.
And when she’s threw
She feels she’s dayd.

dfwviking

Sec­ond, we have ”Viking Song”, which he prob­a­bly wrote lat­er. (The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin, where the text resides, believes he was 6 or 7 when he wrote the poem.)

Vikings oh! They were so strong
Though there war­riors won’t live so long.
For a long time they rode the stormy seas.
Whether there was a great big storm or a lit­tle breeze.
There ships were made of real strong wood
As every good ship real­ly should.
If you were to see a Viking today
It’s best you go some oth­er way.
Because they’d kill you very well
And all your gold they’ll cer­tain­ly sell
For all these rea­sons stay away
From a Viking every day.

Though not what we would call mature works, these two poems still offer much of inter­est to the ded­i­cat­ed DFW exegete. “Note Wallace’s uncom­mon phras­ing in ‘so hard and for bread,’ ” writes Jus­tine Tal Gold­berg of the first. “I can’t think of a sin­gle child who would opt for this phras­ing over, say, a more sim­ple ‘so hard to make bread,’ ” a choice that demon­strates he “was already exhibit­ing the mas­ter­ful grasp of lan­guage for which he would lat­er become famous.” Alex Balk at The Awl calls “Viking Poem” “ ‘charm­ing and trag­ic,” adding that “the obvi­ous enthu­si­asm with which he wrote it makes me reflect on the joys of child­hood that we tend to for­get.” Wal­lace’s biog­ra­ph­er D.T. Max goes into more depth at the New York­er, iden­ti­fy­ing “moments in these poems that her­ald (or just acci­den­tal­ly fore­shad­ow?) the mature David’s Amer­i­can plain­song voice.” I’ve heard it assert­ed that every child has a nat­ur­al capac­i­ty for poet­ry, but the young Wal­lace, preter­nat­u­ral­ly per­cep­tive even then, must have soon real­ized that his tex­tu­al strengths resided else­where.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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