Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metropolis (1927)

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | June 26th, 2015

On Mon­day, we brought you evi­dence that Stan­ley Kubrick invent­ed the tablet com­put­er in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Today, we go back forty years fur­ther into cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry to ask whether Fritz Lang invent­ed the video phone in 1927’s Metrop­o­lis. In the clip above, you can watch a scene set in the home of Joh Fred­er­sen, stern mas­ter of the vast, futur­is­tic, tit­u­lar indus­tri­al city of 2026. In order to best rule all he sur­veys — and to com­plete the image of a 20th-cen­tu­ry dystopia — he lives high above the infer­nal roil of Metrop­o­lis, safe­ly ensconced in one of its ver­tig­i­nous tow­ers and equipped with the lat­est hulk­ing, wall-mount­ed, inex­plic­a­bly paper-spout­ing video phone tech­nol­o­gy.

Fred­er­sen, writes Joe Malia in his notes on video phones in film, “appears to use four sep­a­rate dials to arrive at the cor­rect fre­quen­cy for the call. Two assign the cor­rect call loca­tion and two small­er ones pro­vide fine video tun­ing. He then picks up a phone receiv­er with one hand and uses the oth­er to tap a rhythm on a pan­el that is relayed to the oth­er phone and dis­played as flash­es of light to attract atten­tion.”

Not con­tent to infer the mechan­ics of these imag­i­nary devices, Malia would go on to cre­ate the super­cut below, a sur­vey of video phones through­out the his­to­ry of film and tele­vi­sion, from Metrop­o­lis onward, includ­ing a stop at 2001:

The super­cut also includes a clip from Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner, whose (on the whole, aston­ish­ing­ly time­less) design I called out for using video phones in a video essay of my own. In real­i­ty, con­trary to all these 20th-cen­tu­ry visions of the far-flung future, video phone tech­nol­o­gy did­n’t devel­op quite as rapid­ly as pre­dict­ed, and when it did devel­op, it did­n’t spread in quite the same way as pre­dict­ed. Even the rich world of 2015 lacks bulky video phone box­es in every home and on every street cor­ner, but with voice over inter­net pro­to­col ser­vices like Skype, many in even the poor­est parts of the world can effec­tive­ly make bet­ter video phone calls than these grand-scale sci-fi pro­duc­tions dared imag­ine — then again, they do often make them on tablets more or less straight out of 2001.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Did Stan­ley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

Niko­la Tes­la Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed the Rise of the Inter­net & Smart Phone in 1926

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch President Obama Sing “Amazing Grace” at the Funeral of Clementa Pinckney

in Life, Music | June 26th, 2015

It was quite a week for Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. On Mon­day, we all got to hear the reveal­ing inter­view Oba­ma record­ed in the Los Ange­les garage of come­di­an Marc Maron. Mid­week, the Supreme Court reject­ed the lat­est legal chal­lenge to the Afford­able Health­care Act, his sig­na­ture piece of leg­is­la­tion. Now on Fri­day — the same day that Oba­ma wel­comed the court’s land­mark deci­sion on gay mar­riage — the Pres­i­dent solemn­ly presided over the funer­al of Clemen­ta Pinck­ney, one of the nine African-Amer­i­cans mur­dered in a Charleston church last week.

You can watch his eulo­gy above in its entire­ty, but we’re fast for­ward­ing to the end, when, rather unex­pect­ed­ly, the pres­i­dent led the con­gre­ga­tion in singing Amaz­ing Grace, a Chris­t­ian hymn writ­ten in 1779 by John New­ton. In an iron­ic his­toric foot­note, New­ton was the cap­tain of Eng­lish slave ships and wrote the spir­i­tu­al song when his ship, buf­fet­ed by a storm, near­ly met its demise. This marked the begin­ning of a spir­i­tu­al con­ver­sion for New­ton, dur­ing which he remained active in the slave trade. Only years lat­er did he repent and focus his ener­gy on abol­ish­ing slav­ery. He would write ‘Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade,’ an influ­en­tial tract that “described the hor­rors of the Slave Trade and his role in it.”

Like many things, the descen­dants of slaves took the good from “Amaz­ing Grace” and made it their own.

Note: the singing starts at the 35:20 mark if you real­ly need to move things along.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

via Moth­er Jones

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma Chats with David Simon About Drugs, The Wire & Omar

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

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Hear Johnny Cash Deliver Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

in History, Music | June 26th, 2015

Four score and sev­en years ago…

It goes on from there.

If you’re a bit rusty on Abra­ham Lincoln’s Get­tys­burg Address, lis­ten to singer John­ny Cash recite the famous­ly brief speech in its entire­ty, above, from his Amer­i­ca: A 200-Year Salute in Sto­ry and Song album. (The acoustic gui­tar accom­pa­ni­ment is by long time Cash col­lab­o­ra­tor, Nor­man Blake.)

A lit­tle back­ground for those in need of a refresh­er: Lin­coln deliv­ered the speech in Novem­ber 1863, at the ded­i­ca­tion of the Nation­al Ceme­tery in Get­tys­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia.

Four months ear­li­er, rough­ly 10,000 Con­fed­er­ate and Union sol­diers perished—and anoth­er 30,000 were wounded—during three days of fight­ing in the area. The Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg end­ed in a major vic­to­ry for the North, though Lin­coln was frus­trat­ed that Gen­er­al George Meade failed to pur­sue Robert E. Lee’s retreat­ing forces. (Whether or not such a move could have short­ened the war is a mat­ter of some debate.)

Lin­coln wel­comed the invi­ta­tion to the cemetery’s ded­i­ca­tion as a chance to frame the sig­nif­i­cance of the war in terms of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence. Slave own­ers fre­quent­ly cit­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of their actions, for unlike the Dec­la­ra­tion, the Con­sti­tu­tion did not hold that all men were cre­at­ed equal.

The day’s oth­er speak­er, for­mer Har­vard Pres­i­dent and Sec­re­tary of State Edward Everett, praised  the “elo­quent sim­plic­i­ty & appro­pri­ate­ness” of the pres­i­den­t’s two minute speech, per­haps blush­ing a bit, giv­en that he him­self had held the podi­um for two hours.

A year and a half lat­er, when Lin­coln was assas­si­nat­ed, Sen­a­tor Charles Sum­n­er of Mass­a­chu­setts summed it up:

That speech, uttered at the field of Gettysburg…and now sanc­ti­fied by the mar­tyr­dom of its author, is a mon­u­men­tal act. In the mod­esty of his nature he said “the world will lit­tle note, nor long remem­ber what we say here; but it can nev­er for­get what they did here.” He was mis­tak­en. The world at once not­ed what he said, and will nev­er cease to remem­ber it.

(How sor­ry those gen­tle­man would be to learn just how lit­tle most Amer­i­cans today know of the  the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg. Fear not, though. A restored ver­sion of Ken Burns’ Civ­il War doc­u­men­tary is com­ing to PBS this fall.)

Please note that Lincoln’s brief remarks were care­ful­ly pre­pared, and not scrib­bled on the back of an enve­lope dur­ing the train ride that took him to Get­tys­burg. As a nation, we love folksy ori­gin sto­ries, and depend­ing on the size of one’s pen­man­ship, it is indeed pos­si­ble to fit 272 words on an enve­lope, but it’s a myth… no mat­ter what John­ny Cash may say in his intro­duc­tion.

PS — If you would like to com­mit the Get­tys­burg Address to mem­o­ry, try singing it to the tune of “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz. No doubt Pro­fes­sor Lyn­da Bar­ry would approve.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Poet­ry of Abra­ham Lin­coln

Res­ur­rect­ing the Sounds of Abra­ham Lin­coln in Steven Spielberg’s New Biopic

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Commuters Can Download Free eBooks of Russian Classics While Riding the Moscow Metro

in e-books, Literature | June 26th, 2015

Dostoyevskaya

Image by Zig­urds Zakis

They say that Mus­solin­i’s brand of fas­cism made Italy’s trains run on time. Mean­while, it looks like Com­mu­nists and Post-Com­mu­nist auto­crats made the morn­ing sub­way ride in Rus­sia some­thing of a cul­tur­al expe­ri­ence.

As you can see below, the Sovi­ets designed the Moscow sub­way sta­tions as under­ground palaces, adorned with “high ceil­ings, stained glass, mosaics and chan­de­liers.” (Check out a gallery of pho­tos here.) In more recent times, city plan­ners opened the Dos­toyevskaya sub­way sta­tion, a more aus­tere sta­tion where you can see black and white mosaics of scenes from Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky’s nov­els — Crime and Pun­ish­ment, The Idiot and The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov. Some­what con­tro­ver­sial­ly, the mosaics depict fair­ly vio­lent scenes. On one wall, The Inde­pen­dent writes, “Raskol­nikov from Crime and Pun­ish­ment bran­dish­es an axe over the elder­ly pawn­bro­ker Aly­ona Ivanov­na and her sis­ter, his mur­der vic­tims in the nov­el. Near by, a char­ac­ter from Demons holds a pis­tol to his tem­ple.” Noth­ing like con­fronting mur­der and sui­cide on the morn­ing com­mute.

If these gloomy scenes don’t sound famil­iar, don’t fret. Late last year, the Moscow sub­way sys­tem launched a pilot where Moscow sub­way com­muters, car­ry­ing smart­phones and tablets, can down­load over 100 clas­sic Russ­ian works, for free. As they shut­tle from one sta­tion to anoth­er, rid­ing on sub­way cars equipped with free wifi, straphang­ers can read texts by Dos­to­evsky, Tol­stoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Bul­gakov, Ler­mon­tov, Gogol and more. Per­haps that takes the sting out of the soar­ing infla­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dig­i­tal Dos­to­evsky: Down­load Free eBooks & Audio Books of the Russ­ian Novelist’s Major Works

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Stephen Fry Pro­files Six Russ­ian Writ­ers in the New Doc­u­men­tary Russia’s Open Book

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How Leonard Cohen’s Stint As a Buddhist Monk Can Help You Live an Enlightened Life

in Graduation Speech, Philosophy, Religion | June 26th, 2015

There is a cer­tain kind of think­ing that the Bud­dha called “mon­key mind,” a state in which our ner­vous habits become com­pul­sions, haul­ing us around this way and that, forc­ing us to jump and shriek at every sound. It was exact­ly this neu­rot­ic state of mind that Leonard Cohen sought to quell when in 1994 he joined Mt. Baldy Zen Cen­ter in Los Ange­les and became a monk: “I was inter­est­ed in sur­ren­der­ing to that kind of rou­tine,” Cohen told The Guardian in 2001, “If you sur­ren­der to the sched­ule, and get used to its demands, it is a great lux­u­ry not to have to think about what you are doing next.”

There at Mt. Baldy the jour­nal­ist and cos­mopoli­tan racon­teur Pico Iyer met Cohen, unaware at first that it was even him. In his short Bac­calau­re­ate speech above to the 2015 grad­u­at­ing class of the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Iyer describes the meet­ing: After show­ing him fond hos­pi­tal­i­ty and set­tling him into the com­mu­ni­ty, Iyer says, Cohen told him that “just sit­ting still, being unplugged, look­ing after his friends was… the real deep enter­tain­ment that the world had to offer.”

At the time, Iyer was dis­ap­point­ed. He had admired Cohen for exact­ly the oppo­site qualities—for trav­el­ing the world, being plugged into the cul­ture, and liv­ing a rock star life of self-indul­gence. It was this out­ward man­i­fes­ta­tion of Cohen that Iyer found allur­ing, but the poet and song­writer’s inward life, what Iyer calls the “invis­i­ble ledger on which we tab­u­late our lives,” was giv­en to some­thing else, some­thing that even­tu­al­ly brought Cohen out of a life­long depres­sion. Iyer’s the­sis, drawn from his encounter with Leonard Cohen, Zen monk, is that “it is real­ly on the mind that our hap­pi­ness depends.”

Iyer refers not to that per­pet­u­al­ly wheel­ing mon­key mind but what Zen teacher Suzu­ki Roshi called “begin­ner’s mind” or “big mind.” In such a med­i­ta­tive­ly absorbed state, we for­get our­selves, “which to me,” Iyer says, “is almost the def­i­n­i­tion of hap­pi­ness.” Cohen said as much of his own per­son­al enlight­en­ment: “When you stop think­ing about your­self all the time, a cer­tain sense of repose over­takes you.” After his time at Mt. Baldy, he says, “there was just a cer­tain sweet­ness to dai­ly life that began assert­ing itself.” Iyer’s short speech, filled with exam­ple after exam­ple, gives us and his new­ly grad­u­at­ing audi­ence sev­er­al ways to think about how we might find that sense of repose—in the midst of busy, demand­ing lives—through lit­tle more than “just sit­ting still, being unplugged” and look­ing after each oth­er.

Note: You can watch a Euro­pean doc­u­men­tary on Cohen’s stint as a bud­dhist monk here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Young Leonard Cohen Reads His Poet­ry in 1966 (Before His Days as a Musi­cian Began)

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

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

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Hear John Malkovich Read From Breakfast of Champions, Then Hear Kurt Vonnegut Do the Same

in Audio Books, Writing | June 25th, 2015

breakfastofchampionscover2
In high school when I was try­ing to write sur­re­al­is­tic short sto­ries in the vein of Richard Brauti­gan, despite not real­ly under­stand­ing 90 per­cent of Richard Brauti­gan, my Eng­lish teacher rec­om­mend­ed I start read­ing Kurt Von­negut, so lat­er that day I went down to our city’s sci-fi book/comic book store and bought on her rec­om­men­da­tion Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons. A com­ic nov­el, it was breezy and fun, and by gum, had car­toons in it! (One was of a cat’s but­t­hole, the effect of which on a high schooler’s mind can­not be over­stat­ed.)

But, I admit, I haven’t read it since–the world and my tsun­doku is too big for rereadings–and maybe you haven’t read it at all, or per­haps it’s your favorite book. It was the nov­el Von­negut pub­lished four years after his best known work Slaugh­ter­house Five. When he grad­ed his nov­els in his 1981 “Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Col­lage” Palm Sun­day he gave Break­fast a C. It’s cer­tain­ly one of his most ram­bling nov­els, where he brings back Slaugh­ter­house Five’s sci-fi author Kil­go­re Trout and pairs him with the delu­sion­al Dwayne Hoover, and unpacks all the dark parts of Amer­i­can his­to­ry, from racism to cap­i­tal­ism to envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion in pas­sages both sober and bleak­ly com­ic.

John Malkovich does­n’t seem like the obvi­ous choice to read Von­negut for this audio­book, a short excerpt of which can be heard above. (Note: you can down­load the com­plete Malkovich read­ing for free via Audi­ble’s Free Tri­al pro­gram.) But the pas­sage is key in that it intro­duces the mar­ti­ni cock­tail lounge ori­gins of the book’s title, and Malkovich brings out the droll irony of Vonnegut’s writ­ing, espe­cial­ly the way he rolls the word “schiz­o­phre­nia” off his tongue. There’s a bit of the schizoid in every author, let­ting a world of char­ac­ters speak through them like a medi­um.

For com­par­i­son, check out this ear­li­er Open Cul­ture post about Von­negut read­ing a long sec­tion from Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons in 1970. The author chuck­les at some of his more com­ic pas­sages, and the audi­ence roars along. The tim­ing is that of a standup rou­tine, but this opening—one assumes its the opening—would go on to be furi­ous­ly rewrit­ten, drop­ping the first per­son style. It’s an alter­na­tive uni­verse Break­fast that can only leave one to won­der how the rest of the nov­el might have been han­dled.

h/t Ayun

Relat­ed con­tent:

Richard Brautigan’s Sto­ry, ‘One After­noon in 1939,’ Read From a Wood­en Spool

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

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

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Watch the First Russian Science Fiction Film, Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)

in Film | June 25th, 2015

Despite the Sovi­et Union’s sup­pres­sion of a great many writ­ers and film­mak­ers, the com­mu­nist state nonethe­less pro­duced some of the finest film and lit­er­a­ture of the 20th cen­tu­ry. We are lucky, for exam­ple, to have Mikhail Bul­gakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, which was nev­er pub­lished dur­ing the author’s life­time and was for many years there­after cen­sored or rel­e­gat­ed to samiz­dat ver­sions. A sim­i­lar fate almost befell the first Russ­ian sci­ence fic­tion film, Aeli­ta: Queen of Mars, a silent from 1924 that inspired such indis­pens­able clas­sics as Flash Gor­don and Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis. The film—which tops a Guardian list of “Sev­en Sovi­et sci-fi films every­one should see”—con­tributed to a rich cin­e­mat­ic vocab­u­lary with­out which it would be hard to imag­ine the aes­thet­ics of much sci­ence fic­tion in gen­er­al.

Direct­ed by Yakov Pro­tazanov in the the­atri­cal, futur­is­tic con­struc­tivist style that Fritz Lang bor­rowed, Aeli­ta tells the sto­ry of Los, an Earth engi­neer who builds a space­ship and trav­els to Mars to meet and fall in love with its queen.

Fur­ther plot devel­op­ments make clear that Lang may owe some­thing to the film’s sto­ry as well, involv­ing a tyran­ni­cal Mar­t­ian ruler, Aeli­ta’s father, who ruth­less­ly exploits his plan­et’s pro­le­tari­at. All­movie describes Aeli­ta as “the Marx­ist strug­gle reach­es out­er space” and indeed the film dra­ma­tizes an alien rev­o­lu­tion very close to the one that took place back on Earth.

Aelita

Part of the rea­son the film fell out of favor with the Sovi­et gov­ern­ment in lat­er decades—and irked crit­ics at the time—is its ambiva­lence about rev­o­lu­tion­ary pol­i­tics through its por­tray­al of Los as a dis­af­fect­ed intel­lec­tu­al. Alex­ei Tol­stoy—author of the film’s source novel—had few­er reser­va­tions. The so-called “Com­rade Count” won three Stal­in prizes after his return from a brief Euro­pean exile. Unlike the dis­si­dent crit­ic Bul­gakov, Tolstoy—a dis­tant rel­a­tive of both Leo Tol­stoy and Ivan Turgenev—has been described by his ene­mies as cyn­i­cal, oppor­tunis­tic and, lat­er, total­ly in thrall to Stal­in. His friends prob­a­bly described him as a loy­al par­ty man. (He is also cred­it­ed with being the first to ascer­tain the Naz­i’s use of gas vans.)

Aeli­ta the film made a favor­able impres­sion on its first audi­ences (see an orig­i­nal poster above). One of the first full-length films about space trav­el, it enabled ordi­nary Rus­sians to imag­ine what may have seemed to them like the near future of Sovi­et tech­nol­o­gy. And yet, writes Andrew Hor­ton in a lengthy essay on Aeli­ta, despite its rep­u­ta­tion, the sci-fi clas­sic is “nei­ther sci­ence fic­tion nor a pro-rev­o­lu­tion­ary film.” Con­tem­po­rary crit­ics and film­mak­ers felt that Pro­tazanov’s adap­ta­tion not only showed insuf­fi­cient com­mit­ment to the rev­o­lu­tion, but it also man­i­fest­ed “alleged con­ti­nu­ity with the bour­geois cin­e­ma of the Tsarist age”—a seri­ous charge in the age of social­ist real­ism and dis­rup­tive cin­e­mat­ic exper­i­ments like those of Dzi­ga Ver­tov.

In hind­sight, how­ev­er, Aeli­ta turns out to have been a film before its time, and indeed a work of clas­sic sci-fi, in its extreme­ly imag­i­na­tive use of tech­nol­o­gy, cos­tum­ing, and set design. With­out the fas­ci­na­tion it has always held for film buffs, it might have dis­ap­peared, giv­en its oppo­si­tion to Par­ty dog­ma: “The film prais­es domes­tic­i­ty and mar­ried life at a time when soci­ety was exper­i­ment­ing with the nature and mean­ing of rela­tion­ships,” Hor­ton writes, “It is a film that looks to rebuild­ing, con­sol­i­da­tion, progress and the future and rejects rev­o­lu­tion as an unachiev­able Utopi­an ide­al open to hijack.” All of this con­text can seem a bit heavy, but we need­n’t work too hard to untan­gle Aeli­ta’s ide­o­log­i­cal strands. Sim­ply enjoy the movie as an enter­tain­ing tech­ni­cal achieve­ment from which we can draw a line to lat­er sci-fi films like 1957’s Road to the Stars (above) and, from there, to mod­ern mas­ter­pieces like Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001.

Aeli­ta will be added to our list of 101 Silent Films, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metrop­o­lis: Watch a Restored Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece (1927)

Eight Free Films by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, Cre­ator of Sovi­et Avant-Garde Doc­u­men­taries

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Comes Soft Rain’

Sovi­et Artists Envi­sion a Com­mu­nist Utopia in Out­er Space

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

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F. Scott Fitzgerald Conjugates “to Cocktail,” the Ultimate Jazz-Age Verb (1928)

in English Language, Food & Drink | June 25th, 2015

fitzgerald conguates cocktail

I reg­u­lar­ly meet up with speak­ing part­ners who help me learn their lan­guages in exchange for my help­ing them learn Eng­lish. Even though they usu­al­ly speak much bet­ter Eng­lish already than I speak Kore­an, Span­ish, Japan­ese, or what have you, I often feel like I’ve got the heav­ier end of the job. Why? Because the Eng­lish lan­guage, for all its advan­tages — its glob­al reach, the ease with which it incor­po­rates for­eign terms and neol­o­gisms, its wealth of descrip­tive pos­si­bil­i­ty — has the major dis­ad­van­tage of sel­dom mak­ing imme­di­ate sense.

From Eng­lish’s great flex­i­bil­i­ty flows great frus­tra­tion: how many times have for­eign friends put up a piece of text to me — often from respect­ed, canon­i­cal works of Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture — and demand­ed an expla­na­tion? They’ve usu­al­ly stum­bled over some obscure usage that qual­i­fies as at least unortho­dox and per­haps down­right ungram­mat­i­cal, but nonethe­less intu­itive­ly under­stand­able — if only to a native speak­er like me. Here we have one exam­ple of just such a lin­guis­tic inven­tion refined by no less a respect­ed, canon­i­cal writer than F. Scott Fitzger­ald: the verb “to cock­tail.”

“As ‘cock­tail,’ so I gath­er, has become a verb, it ought to be con­ju­gat­ed at least once,” wrote the author of The Great Gats­by in a 1928 let­ter to Blanche Knopf, the wife of pub­lish­er Alfred A. Knopf. Who bet­ter to first lay out its full con­ju­ga­tion than the man who, as the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter puts it, “gave the Jazz Age its name”? Giv­en that his fame “was for many years based less on his work than his personality—the soci­ety play­boy, the speakeasy alco­holic whose career had end­ed in ‘crack-up,’ the bril­liant young writer whose ear­ly lit­er­ary suc­cess seemed to make his life some­thing of a roman­tic idyll,” he found him­self well placed to offer the lan­guage a new “taste of Roar­ing Twen­ties excess.”

And so Fitzger­ald breaks it down:

Present: I cock­tail, thou cock­tail, we cock­tail, you cock­tail, they cock­tail.

Imper­fect: I was cock­tail­ing.

Per­fect or past def­i­nite: I cock­tailed.

Past per­fect: I have cock­tailed.

Con­di­tion­al: I might have cock­tailed.

Plu­per­fect: I had cock­tailed.

Sub­junc­tive: I would have cock­tailed.

Vol­un­tary sub­junc­tive: I should have cock­tailed.

Preter­it: I did cock­tail.

If you, too, decide to teach this advanced verb to your Eng­lish-learn­ing friends, why not sup­ple­ment the les­son with the audio clip just above, a read­ing of the let­ter from the Ran­som Cen­ter? Lan­guage-learn­ing, no mat­ter the lan­guage, inevitably gets to be a grind from time to time, but vary­ing the types of instruc­tion­al media can help alle­vi­ate the inevitable headaches. And when the day’s stud­ies end, of course, an actu­al cock­tail­ing ses­sion could­n’t hurt. After all, they always say you speak a for­eign lan­guage bet­ter after a drink or two.

via the great Lists of Note book

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Drink­ing with William Faulkn­er: The Writer Had a Taste for The Mint Julep & Hot Tod­dy

Film­mak­er Luis Buñuel Shows How to Make the Per­fect Dry Mar­ti­ni

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Pre­pos­ter­ous Ideas for Your Left­over Turkey

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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