Briefly noted: Last spring, Haruki Murakami released a new collection of short stories in Japan, roughly translated as Men Without Women. If past trends hold, this volume may never see the light of day in the States. But we may get to read all of the individual stories in the pages of The New Yorker. Last year, the magazine published two of Murakami’s six new stories — “Scheherazade” and “Yesterday.” And now comes another, “Kino.” You can read it online here.
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As much as any contemporary writer of literary fiction ever does, Junot Díaz has become something of a household name in the years since his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao appeared in 2007, then went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, among other many other honors. The novel has recently topped critics lists of the best 21st century novels (so far), and the recognition is well-deserved, and very hard-won. Díaz spent a decade writing the book, his process, in the words of The New York Times’ Sam Anderson, “notoriously slow” and laborious. But none of his time working on Oscar Wao, it seems, was spent idle. During the long gestation period between his first book of stories, 1996’s Drown, his first novel, and the many accolades to follow, Diaz has reliably turned out short stories for the likes of The New Yorker, culminating in his most recent collection from 2012, This Is How You Lose Her.
Díaz is his own worst critic—even he admits as much, calling his overbearing critical self “a character defect” and “way too harsh.” Perhaps one of the reasons he finds his process “miserable” is that his “narrative space,” as critic Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert writes, consists not of “nostalgic recreations of idealized childhood landscapes,” but rather the “bleak, barren, and decayed margins of New Jersey’s inner cities,” as well as the tragic, bloody past of his native Dominican Republic.
Despite the historical violence from which his characters emerge, the voices of Diaz’s narratives are a vital force, full of lightening-fast recall of pop cultural touchstones, hip-hop, historic and folkloric allusions, and the minutiae of high geekery, from sci-fi film, to gaming, to comic book lore. (Watch Diaz discuss geek culture at New York’s St. Mark’s Comics above.)
Like a nerdy New World Joyce, Díaz works in a dizzying swirl of references that critic and playwright Gregg Barrios calls a “deft mash-up of Dominican history, comics, sci-fi, magic realism and footnotes.” The writer’s unique idiom—swinging with ease from the most streetwise and profane vernacular to the most formal academic prose and back again—interrogates categories of gender and national identity at every turn, asking, writes Barrios, “Who is American? What is the American experience?” Diaz’s narrative voice—described by Leah Hager Cohen as one of “radical inclusion”—provides its own answers.
That notoriously slow process pays dividends when it comes to fully-realized characters who seem to live and breathe in a space outside the page, a consequence of Díaz “sitting with my characters” for a long time, he tells Cressida Leyshon, “before I can write a single word, good or bad, about them. I seem to have to make my characters family before I can access their hearts in any way that matters.” You can read the results of all that sitting and agonizing below, in seven stories that are available free online, in text and audio. Stories with an asterisk next to them appear in This Is How You Lose Her. The final story comes from Diaz’s first collection, Drown.
“The Cheater’s Guide to Love” * (The New Yorker, July 2012—text, audio)
Get talking with graphic design people, and Japan will come up sooner or later. That country, always a world leader in aesthetics, has put the time and energy of generations into perfecting the discipline. You can see this progress charted out on the Tokyo-based Ian Lynam Design’s “Misruptions/Disruptions: A Japanese Graphic Design History Timeline.” It labels the busy period of 1910–1941 as the time of an “adoption of Western Avant Garde aesthetics in Graphic Design & Typography, coinciding with Left-leaning experimentation and increased state suppression of the Left” — and the time that gave rise to Japanese Art Deco.
Last year, I attended Deco Japan, a show at the Seattle Art Museum, which showcased a great many artifacts from that prewar movement of such combined artistic and commercial abundance. It put on display all manner of paintings, vases, pieces of furniture, household items, and packages, but somehow, the period advertisements struck me as still the most vital of all. The Japanese graphic designers who made them drew, in the words of Capital’s Grace-Yvette Gemmell, “on staples of progressive European and American high and popular art, incorporating stylized versions of gears and clocks that bring to mind Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times.”
This makes more sense than it sounds like it would: “the Deco use of foreign imagery and design elements was a virtually seamless process given existing practices of both abstraction and cultural appropriation at work in the decorative arts at the time in Japan. Many traditional designs already possessed a sort of visual affinity with the Art Deco aesthetic; the synthesis of conventional design elements with contemporary, pared-down forms appealed to the culture’s collective knowledge of traditional motifs and symbols while feeding their desire for modern consumer products that reflected a keen sense of cosmopolitanism perfectly combining the old with the ultramodern.”
Many of the advertisements, or other works of graphic design like leaflets and magazine covers, to come out of Japan’s Art Deco golden age feature the image of the “moga,” or, in Japanized English, “modern girl.” Having appeared in Japan as a new kind of jazz-loving, bob-haired, relatively liberated woman, the moga quickly became an attractive commercial proposition. The Asian Art Museum printed up a leaflet of their own, listing off the “ten qualifications for being a moga” as originally enumerated in 1929 by illustrator Takabatake Kashō in the magazine Fujin sekai (Ladies’ World):
Strength, the “enemy” of conventional femininity
Conspicuous consumption of Western food and drink
Devotion to jazz records, dancing, and smoking Golden Bat cigarettes from a metal cigarette holder
Knowledge of the types of Western liquor and a willingness to flirt to get them for free
Devotion to fashion from Paris and Hollywood as seen in foreign fashion magazines
Devotion to cinema
Real or feigned interest in dance halls as a way to show off one’s ostensible decadence to mobo (modern boys)
Strolling in the Ginza every Saturday and Sunday night
Pawning things to get money to buy new clothes for each season
Offering one’s lips to any man who is useful, even if he is bald or ugly, but keeping one’s chastity because “infringement of chastity” lawsuits are out of style
Sound a fair bit more interesting than the women demanded for today’s ads in the West, don’t they?
The great capitalist game of Monopoly was first marketed by Parker Brothers back in February 1935, right in the middle of the Great Depression. Even during hard times, Americans could still imagine amassing a fortune and securing a monopoly on the real estate market. When it comes to making money, Americans never run out of optimism and hope.
Monopoly didn’t really begin, however, in 1935. And if you trace back the origins of the game, you’ll encounter an ironic, curious tale. The story goes like this:Elizabeth (Lizzie) J. Magie Phillips (1866–1948), a disciple of the progressive era economist Henry George, created the prototype for Monopoly in 1903. And she did so with the goal of illustrating the problems associated with concentrating land in private monopolies.
As Mary Pilon, the author of the new book The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game, recently explained in The New York Times, the original game — The Landlord’s Game — came with two sets of rules: “an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents.” Phillips’ approach, Pilon adds, “was a teaching tool meant to demonstrate that the first set of rules was morally superior.” In other words, the original game of Monopoly was created as a critique of monopolies — something the trust- and monopoly-busting president, Theodore Roosevelt, could relate to.
Patented in 1904 and self-published in 1906, The Landlord’s Game featured “play money and deeds and properties that could be bought and sold. Players borrowed money, either from the bank or from each other, and they had to pay taxes,” Pilon writes in her new book.
The Landlord’s Game also had the look & feel of the game the Parker Brothers would eventually bastardize and make famous. Above, you can see an image from the patent Philips filed in 1904 (top), and another image from the marketed game.
Magie Philips never got credit or residuals from the Parker Brothers’ game. Instead, a fellow named Charles Darrow came along and drafted his own version of the game, tweaked the design, called it Monopoly (see the earliest version here), slapped a copyright on the packaging with his name, and then sold the game to Parker Brothers for a reported $7,000, plus residuals. He eventually made millions.
As they like to say in the US, it’s just business.
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Today you can be a fly on the wall at Columbia University, and listen to Robert Thurman’s lectures on “The Central Philosophy of Tibet.” Thurman is, as his own website rightly describes him, a “worldwide authority on religion and spirituality,” and an “eloquent advocate of the relevance of Buddhist ideas to our daily lives.” A “leading voice of the value of reason, peace and compassion,” he was “named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential Americans.” And, in case you’re wondering, he’s also Uma Thurman’s dad.
The audio above comes from a course taught by Prof. Thurman at Columbia, and it’s based on his book The Central Philosophy of Tibet. The course “explores the philosophical thought of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, both in the intellectual setting of ancient India and Tibet and in the context of the current global philosophy.” You will find the course added to our ever-growing list, 1,700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities.
Note: There are 13 lectures in total, each running almost two hours. The audio player above should stream through them all. The first 30 seconds are a little muffled, but then things improve. The lectures are hosted by Archive.org.
David Carr took seven years to get through college. He didn’t have a Master’s degree or a PhD. Before he made it big writing for The New York Times, he spent time in rehab and on welfare. David Carr didn’t fit the profile of your average commencement speaker.
And yet Carr, who died in the Times newsroom on Thursday night, earned his spot speaking before the 2014 graduating class at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Known for his insightful reporting on changes in publishing, television and social media, Carr understood the world these young journalists were entering. And when he offered 10 pieces of graduation advice, you know the students took note. You should too:
1.) Someone who is underestimated will be the one who changes the world. It’s not the person everyone expects. It might be you.
2.) “Do what is front of you.” Focus on the small steps ahead of you.
3.) Don’t worry about achieving a master plan, about the plot to take over the world.
4.) Be a worker among workers. It’s more important that you fit in before you stick out.
5.) Follow the “Mom Rule.” Don’t do anything you couldn’t explain or justify to your mom.
6.) Don’t just do what you’re good at. Get outside of your comfort zone. Being a journalist is permission for lifetime learning.
7.) Be present. Don’t worry about documenting the moment with your smartphone. Experience it yourself.
8.) Take responsibility for the good and the bad. Learn to own your failures.
9.) Be honest, and be willing to have the difficult conversation.
10.) Don’t be afraid to be ambitious. It’s not a crime.
He says it’s a listicle that won’t appear on Buzzfeed. But it fits perfectly on OC. David, we’re so sorry to see you go.
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Last year, we featured a 1936 poll where readers predicted what writers would make it into the literary canon of the year 2000. But what results would the same inquiry yield today? What 21st-century novels (early in the game, I know, but still) will remain widely read over half a century from now? How much more prescience have we evolved compared to that of our equivalents almost 80 years ago? How many modern Sinclair Lewises and Willa Cathers would we pick — versus how many modern James Truslow Adamses and James Branch Cabells?
The future already looks bright for several of Luchette’s picks. Junot Diaz’s “habit-formingly colorful and bright” (not to mention Pulitzer-winning) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao recently topped BBC Culture’s critics poll for the best novel of the 21st century so far. Others face longer odds. As high a point in the zeitgeist as Yann Martel’s Life of Pi reached — and no less an opinion leader than Barack Obama called it “an elegant proof of God” — I personally tend to agree with the assessment of James Wood, who likens its central revelation to “an editorial meeting of Social Text.”
And so we hand it over to you, Open Culture readers. What does the future’s canon look like from where you stand? In the comments, name the books you think will remain widely read (or grow more so) at the end of the century, or indeed, the ones widely read now that will have, by that point, collected the better part of a century’s dust. Bonus points for telling us why.
When coffee first came to the western world during the 17th century, it didn’t taste particularly good. So the people importing and peddling the new commodity talked up the health benefits of the new drink. The first known English advertisement for coffee, dating back to 1652, made these claims: Coffee is “very good to help digestion.” It also “quickens the Spirits, and makes the Heart Lightsome.” And it “is good against sore Eys, and the better if you hold your Head o’er it, and take in the Steem that way.”
It turns out that chocolate had a similar introduction to the West. Writing at the always interesting Public Domain Review,Christine A. Jones recounts how when chocolate “first arrived from the Americas into Europe in the 17th century it was a rare and mysterious substance, thought more of as a drug than as a food.” The Spanish, who conquered the Aztecs in 1521, first documented the chocolate they encountered there in 1552. And then, in 1631, they placed chocolate in the annals of medical history when Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma, a Spanish physician and surgeon, wrote a medical essay called Curioso Tratado de la naturaleza y calidad del chocolate. The essay made the case that chocolate, if taken correctly, could help balance the body’s humors (Blood, Yellow Bile, Black Bile & Phlegm) and ward off disease. (You can bone up on the ancient science of Humorism here.) When translated into English in 1651, the treatise now called Chocolate; or, an Indian Drinke came prefaced by an introduction that touted chocolate’s health benefits:
It is an excellent help to Digestion, it cures Consumptions, and the Cough of the Lungs, the New Disease, or Plague of the Guts, and other Fluxes, the Green Sicknesse, Jaundise, and all manner of Inflamations, Opilations, and Obstructions. It quite takes away the Morphew, Cleanseth the Teeth, and sweetneth the Breath, Provokes Urine, Cures the Stone, and strangury, Expells Poison, and preserves from all infectious Diseases.
And it featured one of the first recipes for hot chocolate:
To every 100. Cacaos, you must put two cods of the*Chiles long red Pepper, of which I have spoken before, and are called in the Indian Tongue, Chilparlagua; and in stead of those of the Indies, you may take those of Spaine which are broadest, & least hot. One handfull of Annis-seed Orejuelas, which are otherwise called Pinacaxlidos: and two of the flowers, called Mechasuchil, if the Belly be bound. But in stead of this, in Spaine, we put in six Roses of Alexandria beat to Powder: One Cod of Campeche, or Logwood: Two Drams of Cinamon; Almons, and Hasle-Nuts, of each one Dozen: Of white Sugar, halfe a pound: of Achioteenough to give it the colour.
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