Ernest Hemingway’s “Love Letter” to His “Dearest Kraut,” Marlene Dietrich (1955)

in History, Letters, Literature | May 28th, 2014

Hemingway-to-Marlene-Diet-001

Click to enlarge

We think today of Ernest Hem­ing­way as that most styl­is­ti­cal­ly dis­ci­plined of writ­ers, but it seems that, out­side his pub­lished work and espe­cial­ly in his per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence, he could cut pret­ty loose. One par­tic­u­lar­ly vivid exam­ple has returned to pub­lic atten­tion recent­ly by appear­ing for sale on a site called auctionmystuff.com: a let­ter from Hem­ing­way to leg­endary singer-actress Mar­lene Diet­rich, dat­ed August 28, 1955. “In the inti­mate, ram­bling and reveal­ing let­ter,” writes the Wall Street Jour­nal’s Jonathan Welsh, “Hem­ing­way pro­fess­es his love for Diet­rich a num­ber of times, though the two are said to have nev­er con­sum­mat­ed the rela­tion­ship.” He also, Welsh notes, “talks about stag­ing one of her per­for­mances, in which he imag­ines her ‘drunk and naked.’ ” The full let­ter, which spares no detail of this elab­o­rate fan­ta­sy, runs as fol­lows:

Dear­est Kraut :

Thanks very much for the good long let­ter with the gen on what you found wrong. I don’t know any­thing about the the­ater but I don’t think it would occur to me, even, to have you intro­duced even to me with strains of La Vie En Rose. Poor peo­ples.

If I were stag­ing it would prob­a­bly have some­thing nov­el like hav­ing you shot onto the stage, drunk, from a self-pro­pelled min­nen­wer­fer which would advance in from the street rolling over the cus­tomers. We would be play­ing “Land of Hope and Glo­ry.” As you land­ed on the stage drunk and naked I would advance from the rear, or from your rear wear­ing evening clothes and would hur­ried­ly strip off my evening clothes to cov­er you reveal­ing the physique of Burt Lan­cast­er Strong­fort and announce that we were sor­ry that we did not know the lady was loaded. All this time the Thir­ty ton S/P/ Mor­tar would be bull­doz­ing the cus­tomers as we break into the Abor­tion Scene from “Lakme.” This is a scene which is real­ly Spine Tin­gling and I have just the spine for it. I play it with a Giant Rub­ber Whale called Cap­tain Ahab and all the time we are work­ing on you with pul­mo­tors and raversed (sic) clean­ers which blow my evening clothes off you. You are foam­ing at the mouth of course to show that we are real­ly act­ing and we bot­tle the foam and sell it to any sur­viv­ing cus­tomers. You are referred to in the con­tract as The Artist and I am just Cap­tain Ahab. For­tu­nate­ly I am crazed and I keep shout­ing “Fire One. Fire Two. Fire Three.” And don’t think we do not fire them. It is then that the Germ of the Mutiny is born in your disheveled brain.

But why should a great Artist-Cap­tain like me invent so many for so few for only air-mail love on Sun­day morn­ing when I should be in church. Only for fun, I guess. Gen­tle­men, crank up your hears­es.

Mar­lene, dar­ling, I write sto­ries but I have no grace for fuck­ing them up for oth­er medi­ums. It was hard enough for me to learn to write to be read by the human eye. I do not know how, nor do I care to know how to write to be read by par­rots, mon­keys, apes, baboons, nor actors.

I love you very much and I nev­er want­ed to get mixed in any busi­ness with you as I wrote you when this thing first was brought up. Nei­ther of us has enough whore blood for that. Not but what I num­ber many splen­did whores amongst my best friends and cer­tain­ly nev­er, I hope, could be accused of anti-whor­eism. Not only that but I was cir­cum­cised as a very ear­ly age.

Hope you have it good in Cal­i­for­nia and Las Vegas. What I hear from the boys is that many peo­ple in La Vegas (sic) or three or four any­way of the mains are over-extend­ed. This is very straight­gen but every­body knows it if I know it although I have not told any­one what I’ve heard and don’t tell you. But watch all mon­ey ends. Some peo­ple would as soon have the pub­lic­i­ty of mak­ing you look bad as of your expect­ed and legit­i­mate suc­cess. But that is the way every­thing is every­where and no crit­i­cism of Neva­da or any­one there. Cut this para­graph out of this let­ter and burn it if you want to keep the rest of the let­ter in case you thought any of it fun­ny. I rely on you as a Kraut offi­cer and gen­tle­men do this.

New Para­graph. I love you very much and wish you luck. Wish me some too. Book is on page 592. This week Thurs­day we start pho­tog­ra­phy on fish­ing. Am in charge of fish­ing etc. and it is going to be dif­fi­cult enough. With a bad back a lit­tle worse. The Artist is not here nat­u­ral­ly. I only wrote the book but must do the work as well and have no stand-in. Up at 0450 knock off at I930. This goes on for I5 days.

I think you could say you and I have earned what­ev­er dough the peo­ple let us keep.

So what. So Mer­dre. I love you as always.

Papa

“To him she was ‘my lit­tle Kraut,’ or ‘daugh­ter,’ to her he was sim­ply ‘Papa’ — and it was love at first sight when they met aboard a French ocean lin­er in 1934,” writes The Guardian’s Kate Con­nol­ly of the two icons’ unusu­al rela­tion­ship. “Hem­ing­way and Diet­rich start­ed writ­ing to each oth­er when he was 50 and she was 47, remain­ing in close con­tact until the writer’s sui­cide in 1961. But they nev­er con­sum­mat­ed their love, because of what Hem­ing­way referred to as ‘unsyn­chro­nised pas­sion.’ ” A fan of both Hem­ing­way and Diet­rich could pre­sum­ably desire noth­ing more than one of the orig­i­nal pieces of their cor­re­spon­dence, but this par­tic­u­lar let­ter, with a start­ing price of $35,000, drew not a sin­gle bid — per­haps a sale, like the phys­i­cal expres­sion of the Old Man and the Sea author and “Lili Mar­leen” singer’s love, fat­ed nev­er to hap­pen.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­lene Dietrich’s Tem­per­me­n­tal Screen Test for The Blue Angel (and the Com­plete 1930 Film)

Ernest Hem­ing­way to F. Scott Fitzger­ald: “Kiss My Ass”

Ernest Hemingway’s Delu­sion­al Adven­tures in Box­ing: “My Writ­ing is Noth­ing, My Box­ing is Every­thing.”

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

Clive Owen & Nicole Kid­man Star in HBO’s Hem­ing­way & Gell­horn: Two Writ­ers, A Mar­riage and a Civ­il 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How Star Wars Borrowed From Akira Kurosawa’s Great Samurai Films

in Film | May 28th, 2014

Hol­ly­wood has a long his­to­ry poach­ing from abroad. Ask Orson Welles, who along with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Gregg Toland, incor­po­rat­ed the look of Ger­man Expres­sion­ist cin­e­ma into Cit­i­zen Kane. Ask Quentin Taran­ti­no who cribbed much of Ringo Lam’s City on Fire for his break­out debut Reser­voir Dogs. And ask George Lucas who was so great­ly influ­enced by Japan­ese mas­ter Aki­ra Kuro­sawa that he lift­ed large chunks of his Hid­den Fortress for Star Wars.

Above is a video that (if you can get past the bro-tas­tic nar­ra­tion and man­gled Japan­ese pro­nun­ci­a­tion) neat­ly unpacks how Lucas’s sem­i­nal space opera owes a lot to Kuro­sawa. It doesn’t take too much imag­i­na­tion to con­nect a light saber with a samurai’s katana. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s robes look like some­thing that Toshio Mifu­ne might wear in one of Kurosawa’s epics. Lucas even uses Kurosawa’s trade­mark screen wipe. Below is an inter­view with Lucas where he describes how Kurosawa’s visu­al style influ­enced him.

Hol­ly­wood gen­er­al­ly has a bet­ter track record with bor­row­ing from for­eign film­mak­ing genius­es than actu­al­ly work­ing with them. Fritz Lang and John Woo were seduced into com­ing to Amer­i­ca only to be forced by over­bear­ing stu­dios into mak­ing ano­dyne ver­sions of their pre­vi­ous works. Kuro­sawa him­self had a deeply trou­bling expe­ri­ence in Hol­ly­wood; cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences, stu­dio pol­i­tics and Kurosawa’s auto­crat­ic direct­ing style – he wasn’t nick­named ‘The Emper­or’ for noth­ing – got him axed after three weeks from the 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox movie Tora! Tora! Tora!. Kuro­sawa took the blow very per­son­al­ly and, fol­low­ing the box office flop of his next movie Dodesukaden, attempt­ed sui­cide.

Yet the spec­tac­u­lar suc­cess of Star Wars proved to be an unex­pect­ed boon to Kuro­sawa. With his new­found influ­ence in Hol­ly­wood, Lucas man­aged to strong arm 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox, the same stu­dio that axed Kuro­sawa a decade before, into fund­ing Kage­musha. The movie proved to be a com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal hit, win­ning the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The film also gave Kuro­sawa the clout to raise the mon­ey for his last mas­ter­piece Ran.

Of course, Lucas wasn’t the only film­mak­er influ­enced by Kuro­sawa. Check out Kuro­sawa: The Last Emper­or — a doc­u­men­tary about the direc­tor fea­tur­ing a host of film­mak­ers who have been influ­enced by him, includ­ing Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci, John Woo and Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

Watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon Free Online, the Film That Intro­duced Japan­ese Cin­e­ma to the West

The Kuro­sawa Dig­i­tal Archive

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

In Basho’s Footsteps: Hiking the Narrow Road to the Deep North Three Centuries Later

in Poetry | May 28th, 2014

Bashophoto

Mat­suo Basho (1644–1694) lived his pecu­liar life on the con­vic­tion that art could cre­ate an aware­ness that allowed one to see into and com­mu­ni­cate the essence of expe­ri­ence. Through­out his life he searched for the state of being one with the object of his poems, some­thing he believed a poet need­ed to reach in order to write truth­ful­ly. This life-long search brought Basho to wan­der­ing. He thought that trav­el­ling would lead to a state of karu­mi (light­ness), essen­tial for art. In May 1689, when he was already a renowned poet in Japan, he sold his house and embarked on his great­est trip. Basho trav­elled light, always on foot and always slow­ly, look­ing care­ful­ly and deeply. He sought to leave every­thing behind (even him­self) and have a direct expe­ri­ence with the nature around him, and he saw Zen Bud­dhism and trav­el­ling as the way to achieve this. He walked 2000 kilo­me­ters around the north­ern coast of Hon­shu (Japan’s main island), writ­ing prose and poet­ry along the way, and com­pil­ing it all in a book that changed the course of Japan­ese lit­er­a­ture, The Nar­row Road to the Deep North.

We are Pablo Fer­nán­dez (writer) and Anya Gleiz­er (painter), the adven­tur­ers and artists behind In Basho’s Foot­steps. 325 years have passed since Basho began hik­ing the Nar­row Road.  This sum­mer, we will retrace his trail, in an effort to come in con­tact with Basho’s approach to art and trav­el­ling. We will hike for three months, camp­ing on the way, trav­el­ling as light­ly and aus­tere­ly as pos­si­ble. We will write and paint along the route, and com­pile what we pro­duce in an artist’s book. It will be hard, but art avails no com­pro­mis­es. Of course, apart from the phys­i­cal and men­tal hard­ships, there are finan­cial ones (flights and food for three months, and pub­lish­ing costs). To make the project pos­si­ble, we have used Kick­starter, a crowd­fund­ing plat­form. With Kick­starter peo­ple are able to fund the projects they like, and receive a reward in exchange (we are giv­ing our back­ers copies of our book, silk-screen prints and even paint­ings, depend­ing on the pledge).  This is a great way of cre­at­ing an audi­ence involved in the cre­ation process. We don’t only receive finan­cial sup­port, but also very use­ful feed­back, and we will be able to show our audi­ence how the book is com­ing togeth­er. Because we want our art to reach as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, we are giv­ing a dig­i­tal edi­tion of the book to every­one who backs the project with more than $5, before the book is acces­si­ble to the gen­er­al pub­lic. Our Kick­starter cam­paign ends on June 4th. It has been a great suc­cess so far: We have already cov­ered the trav­el­ling costs and now we are fund­ing the pub­lish­ing costs. For us, crowd-fund­ing has opened up the tra­di­tion­al obsta­cles between cre­ators and read­ers. This sum­mer, with the help of all our sup­port­ers, we will retrace Basho’s Foot­steps.

Edi­tor’s note: This has been a guest post by Pablo Fer­nán­dez and Anya Gleiz­er. Please con­sid­er sup­port­ing their great project here. Also find trans­la­tions of Basho’s poet­ry in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Acid Test Reels: Ken Kesey & The Grateful Dead’s Soundtrack for the 1960s Famous LSD Parties

in History, Music | May 27th, 2014

“If you remem­ber the ‘60s, you weren’t there.” The quote was sup­pos­ed­ly uttered by Grace Slick. Or Paul Kant­ner. Or Den­nis Hop­per. The truth is no one real­ly remem­bers who said it first.

Of course, the “60s” was not sim­ply the decade that came between the ‘50s and the ‘70s but a short­hand for a gen­er­a­tional revolt fueled in part by one stu­pid war and a gen­er­al dis­il­lu­sion­ment with con­sumer cap­i­tal­ism. The ground zero for the “60s,” at least in the Unit­ed States, was in San Fran­cis­co and, at the cen­ter of the scene, there was Ken Kesey, the Mer­ry Pranksters and their leg­endary coun­ter­cul­ture bac­cha­na­lias called Acid Tests. These hap­pen­ings fea­tured groovy flash­ing lights, live music from the likes of The Grate­ful Dead, and copi­ous amounts of LSD. Up top, Kesey explains the mean­ing of the Acid Tests for you:

Thanks to the inter­net, you can expe­ri­ence a bit of what these orig­i­nal hip­pie fests were like. Above is audio from two shows in Jan­u­ary 1966 which had Kesey and long­time Mer­ry Prankster Ken Babbs crack­ing jokes and drop­ping truth bombs in between songs from the Grate­ful Dead. Below is the set list of that show along with the audio of two more shows with Kesey and the Dead. Some of the track list­ings might be incom­plete prob­a­bly because every­one was hav­ing too much fun to take notes. So crank it up and turn on, tune in and drop out.

The Fill­more Acid Test

Fill­more Audi­to­ri­um, San Fran­cis­co, CA
Jan­u­ary 8, 1966
1. Stage Chaos/More Pow­er Rap
2. King Bee
3. I’m A Hog For You Baby
4. Cau­tion: Do Not Step On Tracks >
5. Death Don’t Have No Mer­cy
6. Star Span­gled Ban­ner / clos­ing remarks

The Sound City Acid Test
363 6th Street, San Fran­cis­co, CA
Jan­u­ary 29, 1966
7. Ken Kesey inter­viewed by Frank Fey
8. Ken Babbs and har­mon­i­ca
9. Take Two: Ken Kesey
10. Bull
11. Peg­gy The Pis­tol
12. One-way Tick­et
13. Bells And Fairies
14. Lev­i­ta­tion
15. Trip X
16. The End

The Pico Acid Test
Dan­ish Cen­ter, Los Ange­les, CA
March 12, 1966
1. Vio­la Lee Blues
2. You See A Bro­ken Heart
3. In The Mid­night Hour
[mis-dat­ed, accord­ing to David Lemieux, and not cor­re­spond­ing to the vault copy­’s setlist; these are prob­a­bly from 3/19/1966]

The San Fran­cis­co State Acid Test
What­ev­er It Is Fes­ti­val
San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty, San Fran­cis­co, CA
Stereo Con­trol Room Mas­ter (rec. 4:00AM — 6:00AM)
Octo­ber 2, 1966
4. The Head Has Become Fat Rap
5. A Mex­i­can Sto­ry: 25 Ben­nies
6. A Tar­nished Gala­had
7. Get It Off The Ground Rap >
8. It’s Good To Be God Rap >
9. Nir­vana Army Rap >
10. The Butch­er Is Back
11. Acid Test Grad­u­a­tion Announce­ment
12. Send Me To The Moon >Clos­ing Rap
Cred­its on 10/2/66:
Voic­es: Ken Kesey and Hugh Rom­ney
Gui­tar: Ken Kesey
Vio­lin: Dale Kesey
Organ: Jer­ry Gar­cia
Engi­neer­ing: Steve New­man, Ken Kesey, Moun­tain Girl

The San Fran­cis­co State Acid Test
What­ev­er It Is Fes­ti­val
San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty, San Fran­cis­co, CA
Octo­ber 2, 1966
1. Ken Kesey’s dia­logue (iso­lat­ed remix)

Mer­ry Prankster Sound Col­lage Sequences
Octo­ber 2, 1966
2. Prankster Music/Sound Col­lage #1(sequence 1)
3. Kesey Rap > Prankster Music/Sound Col­lage #2 (sequence 2)
4. Prankster Sound Col­lage #3 > Prankster Raga(sequence 3)
Prankster Record­ings broad­cast over the P.A.

End of What­ev­er It Is Fes­ti­val
Octo­ber 2, 1966
5. Clos­ing Jam
6. Prankster Elec­tron­ics

Acid Test Grad­u­a­tion Jam
Win­ter­land, San Fran­cis­co, CA
Octo­ber 31, 1966
7. Jam Ses­sion (musi­cians unknown)
from The World Of Acid film sound­track

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ken Kesey Talks About the Mean­ing of the Acid Tests in a Clas­sic Inter­view

UC San­ta Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grate­ful Dead Archive is Now Online

The Grate­ful Dead Rock the Nation­al Anthem at Can­dle­stick Park: Open­ing Day, 1993

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Visit The Museum of Online Museums (MoOM): A Mega Collection of 220 Online Exhibitions

in Art, Design, History, Museums, Travel | May 27th, 2014

MOOM rijks

It is my habit, when trav­el looms, to case the Inter­net for obscure muse­ums my des­ti­na­tion might have to offer. Once loaded, I fix­ate. Chat me up about my itin­er­ary, and you will def­i­nite­ly come away with the impres­sion that these off­beat locales are the trip’s pri­ma­ry rai­son d’être.

It’s shock­ing how rarely I actu­al­ly make it to one of these off-the-beat­en path gems. Time flies and I rarely trav­el alone these days.

Take a recent fam­i­ly trip to Lon­don. Every time I brought up the Muse­um of Brands, my hus­band expressed reser­va­tions. “But what is it, exact­ly, oth­er than a bunch of old labels?” he’d press.

I hemmed and hawed, real­iz­ing on the cel­lu­lar lev­el that nei­ther he nor the kids could see the beau­ty in old labels. Dinosaurs, maybe. Ves­pas, no doubt. But old labels? This is how I found myself giv­ing the British Muse­um near­ly three times the Muse­um of Brand’s admis­sion charge to join a mighty throng of pen­sion­ers, squint­ing at a hand­ful of bor­ing but­ton frag­ments and a chunk of wood that no longer resem­bled a Viking Ship.

Next time, I swear…

01-1926-Hahn--Albert-alcohol-increases-risk-of-accidents

How for­tu­nate for me and my ilk that Chica­go design firm Coudal Part­ners is com­mit­ted to labor­ing far out­side its expect­ed scope. In addi­tion to cham­pi­oning Stan­ley Kubrick and poet­ry, they’ve tak­en it upon them­selves to con­sol­i­date a panoply of dig­i­tal col­lec­tions into the Muse­um of Online Muse­ums. (The pre­ferred acronym is MoOM, FYI.)

Unlike that of cer­tain of my trav­el­ing com­pan­ions, Coudal Part­ners’ def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes a muse­um is demo­c­ra­t­ic. Gen­er­ous, even. The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Rijksmu­se­um, and the Musée d’Or­say share space with such non-brick-and-mor­tar com­pan­ions as the Busy Beaver But­ton Muse­um, the Gro­cery List Col­lec­tion, and Toast­er Cen­tral.

Raincoat

Like any major insti­tu­tion, MoOM touts their cur­rent exhi­bi­tions, a sea­son­al sam­pling of five. This spring brings togeth­er the Rijksmu­se­um’s Stu­dio Project, NASA’s Space Food Hall of Fame, a col­lec­tion of Dutch safe­ty posters from 50 Watts, 40 retro-groovy Japan­ese ads com­pli­ments of Voic­es of East Anglia, and a pho­to­graph­ic sur­vey of eggnog car­tons. (That last one real­ly deserves a brick and mor­tar home. Loca­tion is imma­te­r­i­al. I’d just like to fan­ta­size about vis­it­ing it some­day.)

egg nog

Mean­while, the talk of the town here in New York City is the reap­pear­ance of Mmu­se­umm, an eclec­tic, non-prof­it housed in a 60-square-foot Tribeca ele­va­tor shaft. MoOM, take note.

Find more online exhi­bi­tions at the Muse­um of Online Muse­ums.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

Ayun Hal­l­i­day wrote about her expe­ri­ences as a muse­um guard in her 3rd book, Job Hop­per. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Ray Bradbury on Zen and the Art of Writing (1973)

in Writing | May 27th, 2014

ray-bradbury-zen

The pro­lif­ic Ray Brad­bury, author of Fahren­heit 451, The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles, and many oth­er works both inside and out­side the realm of sci­ence fic­tion, appar­ent­ly suf­fered no short­age of cre­ativ­i­ty. Pro­lif­ic in his fic­tion writ­ing, he also proved gen­er­ous in his encour­age­ment of younger writ­ers: we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured not just his twelve essen­tial pieces of writ­ing advice but his secret to life and love. He even wrote enough on the sub­ject of writ­ing to con­sti­tute an entire book, the col­lec­tion Zen in the Art of Writ­ing: Essays on Cre­ativ­i­ty. In the 1973 title piece, Brad­bury, hard­ly known as a Bud­dhist, explains his use of the term zen for its “shock val­ue”: “The vari­ety of reac­tions to it should guar­an­tee me some sort of crowd, if only of curi­ous onlook­ers, those who come to pity and stay to shout. The old sideshow Med­i­cine Men who trav­eled about our coun­try used cal­liope, drum, and Black­foot Indi­an, to insure open-mouthed atten­tion. I hope I will be for­giv­en for using ZEN in much the same way, at least here at the start. For, in the end, you may dis­cov­er I’m not jok­ing after all.”

He breaks down his own idea of zen in his writ­ing process by first ask­ing him­self, “Now while I have you here before my plat­form, what words shall I whip forth paint­ed in red let­ters ten feet tall?” He paints the fol­low­ing, and after each we include selec­tions from the essay:

  • WORK. “It is, above all, the word about which your career will revolve for a life­time. Begin­ning now you should become not its slave, which is too mean a term, but its part­ner. Once you are real­ly a co-shar­er of exis­tence with your work, that word will lose its repel­lent aspects. [ … ] We often indulge in made work, in false busi­ness, to keep from being bored. Or worse still we con­ceive the idea of work­ing for mon­ey. The mon­ey becomes the object, the tar­get, the end-all and be-all. Thus work, being impor­tant only as a means to that end, degen­er­ates into bore­dom. Can we won­der then that we hate it so?”
  • RELAXATION. “Impos­si­ble! you say. How can you work and relax? How can you cre­ate and not be a ner­vous wreck? [ … ] Tense­ness results from not know­ing or giv­ing up try­ing to know. Work, giv­ing us expe­ri­ence, results in new con­fi­dence and even­tu­al­ly in relax­ation. The type of dynam­ic relax­ation again, as in sculpt­ing, where the sculp­tor does not con­scious­ly have to tell his fin­gers what to do. The sur­geon does not tell his scalpel what to do. Nor does the ath­lete advise his body. Sud­den­ly, a nat­ur­al rhythm is achieved. The body thinks for itself.”
  • DON’T THINK! “The writer who wants to tap the larg­er truth in him­self must reject the temp­ta­tions of Joyce or Camus or Ten­nessee Williams, as exhib­it­ed in the lit­er­ary reviews. He must for­get the mon­ey wait­ing for him in mass-cir­cu­la­tion. He must ask him­self, ‘What do I real­ly think of the world, what do I love, fear, hate?’ and begin to pour this on paper. Then, through the emo­tions, work­ing steadi­ly, over a long peri­od of time, his writ­ing will clar­i­fy; he will relax because he thinks right and he will think even righter because he relax­es. The two will become inter­change­able. At last he will begin to see him­self.”
  • FURTHER RELAXATION. “We should not look down on work nor look down on the forty-five out of fifty-two sto­ries writ­ten in our first year as fail­ures. To fail is to give up. But you are in the midst of a mov­ing process. Noth­ing fails then. All goes on. Work is done. If good, you learn from it. If bad, you learn even more. Work done and behind you is a les­son to be stud­ied. There is no fail­ure unless one stops. Not to work is to cease, tight­en up, become ner­vous and there­fore destruc­tive of the cre­ative process. [ … ] Isn’t it obvi­ous by now that the more we talk of work, the clos­er we come to Relax­ation.”
  • “Have I sound­ed like a cultist of some sort? A yogi feed­ing on kumquats, grapenuts and almonds here beneath the banyan tree? Let me assure you I speak of all these things only because they have worked for me for fifty years. And I think they might work for you. The true test is in the doing. Be prag­mat­ic, then. If you’re not hap­py with the way your writ­ing has gone, you might give my method a try. If you do, I think you might eas­i­ly find a new def­i­n­i­tion for Work. And the word is LOVE.”

You can read much more about Brad­bury’s method of work­ing, relax­ing, not think­ing, and relax­ing fur­ther still — and his thoughts on the joy of writ­ing, keep­ing the muse fed, estab­lish­ing a thou­sand-or-two-words-a-day habit, and “how to climb the tree of life, throw rocks at your­self, and get down with­out break­ing your bones or your spir­it” — in the book, Zen in the Art of Writ­ing: Essays on Cre­ativ­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

The Secret of Life and Love, Accord­ing to Ray Brad­bury (1968)

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

Ray Brad­bury: “The Things That You Love Should Be Things That You Do.” “Books Teach Us That”

Ray Brad­bury: Sto­ry of a Writer 1963 Film Cap­tures the Para­dox­i­cal Late Sci-Fi Author

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Lewis Carroll’s Photographs of Alice Liddell, the Inspiration for Alice in Wonderland

in Literature, Photography | May 27th, 2014

One of the great poly­maths of the 19th cen­tu­ry, Lewis Car­roll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodg­son) —math­e­mati­cian, logi­cian, author, poet, Angli­can cleric—took to the new medi­um of pho­tog­ra­phy with the same alacrity he applied to all of his pur­suits. Though he may be described as a hob­by­ist in the sense that he nev­er pur­sued the art pro­fes­sion­al­ly, he nonethe­less “became a mas­ter of the medi­um, boast­ing a port­fo­lio of rough­ly 3,000 images and his very own stu­dio.”

So says a recent arti­cle by Gan­non Bur­gett on Carroll’s “24-year career as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er,” dur­ing which he made a num­ber of por­traits, includ­ing one of then-poet lau­re­ate of Eng­land Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson. His sub­jects also includ­ed “land­scapes, dolls, dogs, stat­ues, paint­ings, trees and even skele­tons.”

Hallam_Tennyson_child

Car­roll excelled at a devel­op­ing method called the wet col­lo­di­on process, which replaced the daguerreo­type as the pri­ma­ry means of pho­to­graph­ic image-mak­ing. This process seems to have been some­thing like paint­ing in oils, requir­ing a great deal of dex­ter­i­ty and chem­i­cal know-how, and sim­i­lar­ly sub­ject to decay when done improp­er­ly. Car­roll par­tic­u­lar­ly val­ued this method for its dif­fi­cul­ty (he described it in detail in some lines added to a poem called “Hiawatha’s Pho­tograph­ing”)—so much so that once a dry devel­op­ing process came into being, he aban­doned the medi­um alto­geth­er, com­plain­ing that it became so easy any­one could do it. Carroll’s obses­sive focus on process mir­rored an obses­sion with his favorite pho­to­graph­ic sub­jects, young chil­dren, includ­ing Tennyson’s son Hal­lam (above). Most famous­ly, Car­roll obses­sive­ly pho­tographed the young Alice Lid­dell (top and below as “The Queen of May”), daugh­ter of fam­i­ly friend Hen­ry George Lid­dell and inspi­ra­tion for Carroll’s most famous fic­tion­al char­ac­ter.

Liddell,_Alice_P._-_'The_Queen_of_May'_(Lewis_Carroll,_05_or_06.1860)

Many of Carroll’s pho­tographs of Alice and oth­er chil­dren can seem down­right pruri­ent to our eyes. As Carroll’s biog­ra­ph­er Jen­ny Woolf writes in a 2010 essay for the Smith­son­ian, “of the approx­i­mate­ly 3,000 pho­tographs Dodg­son made in his life, just over half are of children—30 of whom are depict­ed nude or semi-nude.”

Some of his portraits—even those in which the mod­el is clothed—might shock 2010 sen­si­bil­i­ties, but by Vic­to­ri­an stan­dards they were… well, rather con­ven­tion­al. Pho­tographs of nude chil­dren some­times appeared on post­cards or birth­day cards, and nude portraits—skillfully done—were praised as art stud­ies […]. Vic­to­ri­ans saw child­hood as a state of grace; even nude pho­tographs of chil­dren were con­sid­ered pic­tures of inno­cence itself.

Woolf admits that Carroll’s inter­est, as schol­ars have spec­u­lat­ed for decades, may have been less than inno­cent, prompt­ing Vladimir Nabokov to pro­pose “a pathet­ic affin­i­ty” between Car­roll and the nar­ra­tor of Loli­ta. The evi­dence for Carroll’s pos­si­ble pedophil­ia is high­ly sug­ges­tive but hard­ly con­clu­sive. Bur­gett sum­ma­rizes the claims as only spec­u­la­tive at best: “The entire con­tro­ver­sy is an almost cen­tu­ry-long debate, and one that doesn’t seem to be mak­ing any major progress in either direc­tion.” In a Slate review of Woolf’s Lewis Car­roll biog­ra­phy, Seth Lerer also acknowl­edges the con­tro­ver­sy, but reads the pho­tographs of Alice, her sis­ters, and friends as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of larg­er trends, as “bril­liant tes­ti­monies to the taste, the sen­ti­ment, and per­haps the sex­u­al­i­ty of mid-Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land.”

Lorina_and_Alice_Liddell.Chinamen

A great part of this Vic­to­ri­an sen­si­bil­i­ty con­sists of the “recog­ni­tion that all life involves role-play­ing,” hence the recur­ring pho­tos of the girls in dress-up—as fig­ures from myth and lit­er­a­ture and exot­ic Ori­en­tal­ist char­ac­ters, such as the pho­to above of Alice and her sis­ter Lori­na as “Chi­na­men.” “These are the tableaux of Vic­to­ri­an melo­dra­ma,” writes Lerer, “images on stage-sets of the imag­i­na­tion.” We see anoth­er of Carroll’s favorite pho­to­graph­ic sub­jects, Alexan­dra “Xie” Kitchin, daugh­ter of a col­league, also giv­en the Ori­en­tal­ist treat­ment below, posed as an off-duty tea mer­chant.

Carroll’s care­ful­ly staged child pho­tographs are very much like those of oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers of the peri­od like Mary Cow­den Clarke and Julia Mar­garet Cameron, who also pho­tographed Alice Lid­dell, even into her adult­hood. Cameron’s pho­tographs also includ­ed child nudes, to a sim­i­lar effect as Carroll’s—the depic­tion of a “state of grace” in which chil­dren appear as nymphs, “gyp­sies” or oth­er such types sup­pos­ed­ly belong­ing to Edenic worlds untouched by adult cares. Giv­en the con­text Woolf, Lerer and oth­ers pro­vide, it’s rea­son­able to view Carroll’s child pho­tog­ra­phy as con­sis­tent with the tastes of the day. (Though no one sug­gests this as an ali­bi for Car­rol­l’s pos­si­bly trou­bling pro­cliv­i­ties.)

As it stands, the pho­tographs of Alice and oth­er chil­dren open a fas­ci­nat­ing, if some­times dis­com­fit­ing, win­dow on an age that viewed child­hood very dif­fer­ent­ly than our own. They also give us a view of Carroll’s strange inner world, one not unlike the unset­tling fan­ta­sy realm of 20th cen­tu­ry folk artist Hen­ry Darg­er. Unlike Darg­er, Carroll’s work brought him wide­spread fame in his life­time, but like that reclu­sive fig­ure, the author of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land and Through the Look­ing Glass was a shy, intro­spec­tive man whose imag­i­na­tive land­scape pos­sessed a log­ic all its own, charged with mag­ic, threat, and long­ing for lost child­hood inno­cence.

See a gal­leries of Carroll’s pho­tographs of Alice and oth­er chil­dren here and here, and see this site for more gen­er­al info on Carroll’s pho­tog­ra­phy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See The Orig­i­nal Alice In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

See Sal­vador Dali’s Illus­tra­tions for the 1969 Edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land

Free Audio: Alice In Won­der­land Read by Cory Doc­torow

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

Morgan Freeman & Fake Neil deGrasse Tyson Teach Physics While High on Helium and Grass

in Comedy, Physics, Television | May 27th, 2014

Viral video #1: In a new ad for the Sci­ence Chan­nel’s series, Through the Worm­hole, actor Mor­gan Free­man uses heli­um to entice view­ers into think­ing about how physi­cists are study­ing grav­i­ty in places where it acts quite strange­ly. It’s kind of a cryp­tic mes­sage, but it grabs your atten­tion, does­n’t it? Through the Worm­hole returns to the air­waves, with Sea­son 5, on June 4th.

Viral Video #2 asks you to imag­ine what hap­pens when you put the grass in Neil deGrasse Tyson. “Every­thing is star stuff. This piz­za, this cheese, this pep­per­oni.” That’s a reboot of Cos­mos that may actu­al­ly get rat­ings.

via io9 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast