Six Books (and One Blog) Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Summer

in Books | May 23rd, 2015


Bill Gates — Microsoft CEO turned phil­an­thropist, life­long learn­er and fan of The Great Cours­es — is rec­om­mend­ing sev­en texts you should read this sum­mer. They’re not exact­ly light beach read­ing. But you’ll learn a lot, and you’ll get more dialed into issues on Gates’ mind. On his web­site, the video above comes accom­pa­nied by rea­sons for read­ing each work.:

Hyper­bole and A Half , by Allie Brosh:The Book, based on Brosh’s wild­ly pop­u­lar web­site, con­sists of brief vignettes and com­ic draw­ings her young About Life. The adven­tures she recounts are most­ly inside her head, where we hear and see the kind of inner thoughts most of us are too timid to let out in pub­lic. You will rip through it in three hours, tops. But you’ll wish it went on longer, because it’s fun­ny and smart as hell. I must have inter­rupt­ed Melin­da a dozen times to read to her pas­sages that made ​​me laugh out loud.

The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty, by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, an evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist at Oxford, has a gift for mak­ing sci­ence enjoy­able. This Book is as acces­si­ble as the TV series Cos­mos is for Younger Audi­ences-and as Rel­e­vant for Old­Er Audi­ences. It’s an engag­ing, well-illus­trat­ed sci­ence text­book offer­ing com­pelling answers to big ques­tions, like “how did the uni­verse form?” And “what caus­es earth­quakes?” It’s also a plea for read­ers of all ages to approach mys­ter­ies with rig­or and curiosity.Dawkins’s antag­o­nis­tic (and, to me, overzeal­ous) view of reli­gion has earned him a lot of angry crit­ics, but I con­sid­er him to be one of the great sci­en­tif­ic writer / explain­ers of all time.

If what?, by Ran­dall Munroe. The sub­ti­tle of the book is “Seri­ous Sci­en­tif­ic Answers to Absurd Hypo­thet­i­cal Ques­tions,” and that’s exact­ly what it is. Peo­ple write Munroe with ques­tions that range over all fields of sci­ence: physics, chem­istry, biol­o­gy. Ques­tions like, “From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?” (The answer, it turns out, is “high enough that it would dis­in­te­grate before it hit the ground.”) Munroe’s expla­na­tions are fun­ny, but the sci­ence under­pin­ning his answers is very accu­rate. It’s an enter­tain­ing read, and you’ll also learn a bit about things like bal­lis­tics, DNA, the oceans, the atmos­phere, and light­ning along the way.

XKCD, by Ran­dall Munroe. A col­lec­tion of posts from Munroe’s Blog XKCD, which is made up of Car­toons he Draws mak­ing fun of things-Most­ly Sci­en­tists and Com­put­ers, But lots of Oth­er things too. There’s One About Sci­en­tists hold­ing A Press Con­fer­ence to Reveal Their dis­cov­ery That Life is arsenic-based. They research press con­fer­ences and find out that some­times it’s good to serve food that’s relat­ed to the sub­ject of the con­fer­ence. The last pan­el is all the reporters dead on the floor because they ate arsenic. It’s that kind of humor, which not every­body loves, but I do.

On Immu­ni­ty , by Eula Biss. When I stum­bled across this book on the Inter­net, I thought it might be a worth­while read. I had no idea what a plea­sure read­ing it would be. Biss, an essay­ist and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er, exam­ines what lies behind peo­ple’s fears of vac­ci­nat­ing their chil­dren. Like many of us, she con­cludes that vac­cines are safe, effec­tive, and almost mirac­u­lous tools for pro­tect­ing chil­dren against need­less suf­fer­ing. But she is not out to demo­nize any­one who holds oppos­ing views. This is a thought­ful and beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten book about a very impor­tant top­ic.

How to Lie With Sta­tis­tics , by Dar­rell Huff. I Picked up this Short, Easy-to-Read Book after See­ing it on A Wall Street Jour­nal list of good Books for Investors . I enjoyed it so much That it WAS One of A Hand­ful of Books I rec­om­mend­ed to every­one at TED this year. It was first pub­lished in 1954, but aside from a few anachro­nis­tic exam­ples (it has been a long time since bread cost 5 cents a loaf in the Unit­ed States), it does not feel dat­ed. One chap­ter shows you how visu­als can be used to exag­ger­ate trends and give dis­tort­ed comparisons‑a time­ly reminder, giv­en how often info­graph­ics show up in your Face­book and Twit­ter feeds these days. A use­ful intro­duc­tion to the use of sta­tis­tics, and a help­ful refresh­er for any­one who is already well versed in it.

Should We Eat Meat?, by Vaclav Smil. The rich­er the world gets, the more meat it eats. And the more meat it eats, the big­ger the threat to the plan­et. How do we square this cir­cle? Vaclav Smil takes his usu­al clear-eyed view of the whole land­scape, from meat’s role in human evo­lu­tion to hard ques­tions about ani­mal cru­el­ty. While it would be great if peo­ple want­ed to eat less meat, I do not think we can expect large num­bers of peo­ple to make dras­tic reduc­tions. I’m bet­ting on inno­va­tion, includ­ing high­er agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the devel­op­ment of meat sub­sti­tutes, to help the world meet its need for meat. A time­ly book, though prob­a­bly the least beach-friend­ly one on this list.

You can get more ideas from Bill Gates at Gates Notes.

If you’re look­ing to do some more DIY edu­ca­tion this sum­mer, don’t miss the fol­low­ing rich col­lec­tions:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture

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Norman Rockwell Illustrates Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn (1936–1940)

in Art, Books, Literature | May 22nd, 2015

Sawyer 1

There’s no get­ting around it: Nor­man Rock­well was a square. There’s also no get­ting around the fact that his career helped define the way main­stream Amer­i­cans saw them­selves for decades. And while an artist like Rockwell—so steeped in nos­tal­gia, so lack­ing in irony and a taste for transgression—might have fad­ed into com­plete irrel­e­vance amidst the tumult of the six­ties, the oppo­site in fact occurred. Instead of pale, freck­le-faced scamps and neigh­bor­ly civ­il ser­vants, Rock­well paint­ed like­ness­es of world lead­ers like Nehru and Nass­er, as well as a now icon­ic sym­bol of the Civ­il Rights strug­gle on a 1964 Look mag­a­zine cov­er.

Sawyer 2

The six­ties Rock­well, though still very much a pur­vey­or of small town Amer­i­cana, became a some­what weight­i­er fig­ure, even if he nev­er gained (or sought) accep­tance in the art world. But we might think of Rock­well as work­ing on two reg­is­ters through­out his career—as the PG-rat­ed painter of mis­chie­vous, child­ish nice­ness, and the earnest com­men­ta­tor on mores and val­ues in adult soci­ety. In a way, these two sides of America’s most pop­u­lar illus­tra­tor mir­ror those of the nation’s most pop­u­lar writer, Mark Twain. Though sep­a­rat­ed by a gen­er­a­tion, the two, writes the Mark Twain House & Museum’s web­site, are “twinned in many ways in the pub­lic con­scious­ness.”

Sawyer 3

In part, this is because Rock­well illus­trat­ed for Her­itage Press two of Twain’s most famous books, The Adven­tures of Tom Sawyer in 1936 and The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn in 1940. Above, see three of Rockwell’s illus­tra­tions from Tom Sawyer and, below, one from his Huck Finn. The dif­fer­ences between the two books (so hilar­i­ous­ly con­trast­ed by Louis CK), could stand for the two sides of both Twain and Rock­well. As the Mark Twain House puts it, “some crit­ics have dis­missed [Twain and Rockwell’s] work as light­weight, blithe­ly ignor­ing the impor­tant state­ments they made on race.” Tom Sawyer is a light­weight book, the work of Twain the pop­u­lar humorist. (Twain him­self would say, “my books are water: those of the great genius­es are wine. Every­body drinks water.”) Huck Finn on the oth­er hand is a seri­ous adult nov­el with seri­ous adult themes. For all of its flaws, it makes an admirable attempt to iden­ti­fy with and faith­ful­ly ren­der the plight of enslaved peo­ple.

Huck Finn Rockwell

Twain’s great strength as a seri­ous writer was his wealth of empa­thy, a qual­i­ty Rock­well man­i­fest­ed as well. In fact, in order to best rep­re­sent Twain’s books, the illus­tra­tor trav­eled to their set­ting, Han­ni­bal, Mis­souri, where he “acquired a new respect for the char­ac­ters,” writes the Nor­man Rock­well Muse­um. “The longer I worked at the task,” Rock­well wrote, “the more in love with the dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties I became.” Illus­tra­tion and design blog Today’s Inspi­ra­tion points out that Rock­well pur­chased old clothes from the Han­ni­bal locals to “soak up the atmos­phere”: “Of all the illus­tra­tors (and there were quite a few) that illus­trat­ed these nov­els in the past, Rock­well was the first to vis­it Mark Twain’s home town. In typ­i­cal Rock­well fash­ion, no amount of detail or research was ignored, faked or quick­ly glossed over.”

Sawyer 4

Today’s Inspi­ra­tion zooms in on details from sev­er­al of the Tom Sawyer paint­ings to show the fine, almost Ver­meer-like atten­tion Rock­well lav­ished on each illus­tra­tion. The exten­sive exam­i­na­tion of these ear­ly Rock­well clas­sics makes a good case for the folksy illus­tra­tor as a “sto­ry­telling genius with pal­let and brush.” Rock­well may be dis­missed as a cre­ator of kitsch, and in some cas­es the charge is jus­ti­fied, but—like Twain—even his lighter work depend­ed on a fine atten­tion to details of set­ting and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that make his work mem­o­rable and mov­ing, in its corni­est and its weight­i­est moments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50,000 Nor­man Rock­well Pho­tographs Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Twain’sHuckleberry Finn (1996)

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

Mark Twain Writes a Rap­tur­ous Let­ter to Walt Whit­man on the Poet’s 70th Birth­day (1889)

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

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The Art of Collotype: See a Near Extinct Printing Technique, as Lovingly Practiced by a Japanese Master Craftsman

in Art, History, Technology, Travel | May 22nd, 2015

When I was a kid,  I spent a lot of time at the Indi­anapo­lis Star, where my moth­er worked in what was then referred to as the “women’s pages.” She kept me busy return­ing the pho­tos that accom­pa­nied mar­riage and engage­ment announce­ments, using the SASEs the young brides had sup­plied. After that, I’d hit the print­ing floor, where vet­er­an work­ers sport­ed square caps fold­ed from the pre­vi­ous day’s edi­tion, as that day’s issue clacked on tracks over­head. If I was lucky, some­one would make me a gift of my name, set in hot type.

The Star still pub­lish­es — I shud­der to report that its web­site seems to have renamed it IndyS­tar… — but cul­tur­al and dig­i­tal advances have rel­e­gat­ed all of the par­tic­u­lars men­tioned above to the scrap pile.

They came rush­ing back with wild, Prous­t­ian urgency when Osamu Yamamo­to, a mas­ter print­er at Ben­ri­do Col­lo­type Ate­lier in Kyoto, men­tions the smell of the ink, in the short doc­u­men­tary above, how over the years, it has seeped into his skin, and become a part of his being.

Col­lo­type, defined by the Get­ty Con­ser­va­tion Insti­tute as “a screen­less pho­to­me­chan­i­cal process that allows high-qual­i­ty prints from con­tin­u­ous-tone pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tives,” has been on the way out since the 70s. As mas­ter print­er Yamamo­to notes, it’s a low-effi­cien­cy, small batch oper­a­tion, involv­ing messy matrix­es, hand-oper­at­ed press­es, and heavy iron machines that give off a sort of ani­mal warmth when work­ing.

Rather than pressmen’s caps, Ben­ri­do’s shirt­less print­ers wear hachi­ma­ki, rub­ber aprons, and pur­ple dis­pos­able gloves.

Film­mak­er Fritz Schu­mann (whose film on the old­est hotel in Japan we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured before) evokes the work­place — one of two remain­ing col­lo­type com­pa­nies in the world — through small details like the plas­tic-wrapped dig­i­tal Ham­taro clock and also by draw­ing view­ers’ atten­tion to the num­ber of years logged by each employ­ee. The art of col­lo­type takes a long time to mas­ter and novices appear to be in short sup­ply.

Should we con­ceive of this oper­a­tion as a quaint rel­ic, creep­ing along thanks to the whim­sy of a few nos­tal­gia buffs?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, no. The labo­ri­ous col­lo­type process remains the best way to dupli­cate pre­cious art­works and his­toric doc­u­ments. The way the ink inter­acts with retic­u­la­tions in the gelatin sur­face atop results in sub­tleties that pixel­lat­ed dig­i­tal images can­not hope to achieve.

Vis­i­tors to the stu­dio may sup­port the enter­prise by pick­ing up a hand­ful of col­lo­type-print­ed post­cards in the gift shop, but the office of the Japan­ese Emper­or is the one who’s real­ly keep­ing them in busi­ness, with orders to copy hun­dreds of del­i­cate, cen­turies old scrolls, paint­ings and let­ters.

Like a cir­cle in a circle…cultural preser­va­tion via cul­tur­al preser­va­tion! Per­haps the smell of the ink will pre­vail.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hōshi: A Short Film on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

 

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

 

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Astronaut Reads The Divine Comedy on the International Space Station on Dante’s 750th Birthday

in Poetry | May 22nd, 2015

“On April 24th,” writes The New York­er’s John Klein­er, “Saman­tha Cristo­fore­t­ti, Italy’s first female astro­naut, took time off from her reg­u­lar duties in the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion to read from the Divine Com­e­dy.” You can watch a clip of that read­ing of the first can­to of the Par­adiso above. “As Cristo­fore­t­ti spun around the globe at the rate of sev­en­teen thou­sand miles an hour, her read­ing was beamed back to earth and shown in a movie the­ater in Flo­rence.”

While that stands alone as a neat event in and of itself, more cel­e­bra­tion of the epic Ital­ian poem fol­lowed. “Ten days lat­er,” Klein­er con­tin­ues, “the actor Rober­to Benig­ni recit­ed the last can­to of Par­adiso in the Ital­ian Sen­ate” to a stand­ing ova­tion. Benig­ni, one of world cin­e­ma’s best-known rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Ital­ian cul­ture, seems to have a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong appre­ci­a­tion for Dante Alighieri, the best-known rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Ital­ian lit­er­a­ture; you can see him recite the first can­to of the Infer­no just above.

The occa­sion? Dan­te’s 750th birth­day. Though you’ll find no unsuit­able occa­sion to cel­e­brate the Divine Com­e­dy (find it in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free eBooks), this past month has proven a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich one. Today we’ve gath­ered a few more pieces of Dan­teiana so you can con­duct your own per­son­al appre­ci­a­tion. You might con­sid­er as a first stop the Prince­ton Dante Project, which “com­bines a tra­di­tion­al approach to the study of Dan­te’s Com­e­dy with new tech­niques of com­pil­ing and con­sult­ing data, images, and sound,” fea­tur­ing a search­able new verse trans­la­tion, texts of Dan­te’s minor works (with trans­la­tions), his­tor­i­cal and inter­pre­tive lec­tures, more than sev­en­ty com­men­taries, and links to Dante sites from all over the world.

“When Dante began work on the Com­e­dy [cir­ca 1308], none of the dif­fer­ent dialects spo­ken in Italy’s many city-states had any par­tic­u­lar claim to pre­em­i­nence,” writes Klein­er for The New York­er. “Such was the force and influ­ence of the Com­e­dy that the Tus­can dialect became Italy’s lit­er­ary lan­guage and, even­tu­al­ly, its nation­al one.” But if you don’t speak Ital­ian (as much as the lin­guis­tic impor­tance of the Divine Com­e­dy might inspire you to learn it), you might pre­fer an Eng­lish read­ing, which you’ll find here.

Dante has, for so many of us, shaped our very notions of heav­en and hell, but per­haps more impres­sive­ly, as the poet­’s 750th birth­day pass­es, his major work shows no signs of falling into irrel­e­vance. No mat­ter how many of us now have dif­fer­ent visions of the after­life than he did, and no mat­ter how many of us have no visions of it at all, we keep read­ing Dante — whether in Ital­ian or Eng­lish, whether in the Sen­ate or on the inter­net, whether on Earth or in space.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Artists Illus­trate Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Through the Ages: Doré, Dalí, Blake, Bot­ti­cel­li, Mœbius & More

The Death Masks of Great Authors: Dante, Goethe, Tol­stoy, Joyce & More

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics

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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3D Printed Zoetrope Animates Rubens’ Famous Painting, “The Massacre of the Innocents”

in Animation, Art, Religion | May 22nd, 2015

In the 17th cen­tu­ry, the Flem­ish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens paint­ed “The Mas­sacre of the Inno­cents” (see below), an artis­tic depic­tion of a very brief Bib­li­cal pas­sage in The Gospel of Matthew. The pas­sage recounts the sto­ry of how Herod the Great, a Roman client king of Judea, ordered the exe­cu­tion of young male chil­dren in Beth­le­hem, hop­ing to avoid los­ing his throne to a new­ly-born King of the Jews. And it reads like this:

Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceed­ing­ly angry; and he sent forth and put to death all the male chil­dren who were in Beth­le­hem and in all its dis­tricts, from two years old and under, accord­ing to the time which he had deter­mined from the wise men. Then was ful­filled what was spo­ken by Jere­mi­ah the prophet, say­ing:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
Lamen­ta­tion, weep­ing, and great mourn­ing,
Rachel weep­ing for her chil­dren,
Refus­ing to be com­fort­ed,
Because they are no more.”

In the 21st cen­tu­ry, Sebas­t­ian Bur­don and Mat Coll­ishaw have now come along and cre­at­ed “All Things Fall,” a 3d zoetrope that brings the “Mas­sacre of the Inno­cents” to life. Using a 19th cen­tu­ry opti­cal tech­nique that pro­duces the illu­sion of motion, the zoetrope vir­tu­al­ly ani­mates the grue­some Bib­li­cal scene. You can watch it play out, eeri­ly, above.

Accord­ing to Bur­don, it took “6 months to do all the 3d mod­el­ing and ani­ma­tions” and involved “cre­at­ing over 350 char­ac­ter fig­ures, envi­ron­ment ele­ments and archi­tec­ture. A pret­ty stun­ning effort.

Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_Massacre_of_the_Innocents_-_WGA20259

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

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The Music of Avant-Garde Composer John Cage Now Available in a Free Online Archive

in Music | May 21st, 2015

JohnCageArchive

You don’t know avant-garde music unless you know John Cage. And now we have anoth­er rich, eas­i­ly acces­si­ble online resource that can help us get to know John Cage bet­ter. The new site is called Mak­ing the Right Choic­es: A John Cage Cel­e­bra­tion, and it has its ori­gins in the cel­e­bra­tion of Cage’s 100th birth­day put on by con­duc­tor Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Sym­pho­ny in Feb­ru­ary 2013.

This Cage-devot­ed, Knight Foun­da­tion-fund­ed site, in the words of Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Alli­son Meier, “presents a com­pre­hen­sive overview of his career, from a water­ing can poured on nation­al tele­vi­sion to a rhyth­mic solo piano per­for­mance inspired by lost love,” mate­r­i­al from Cage’s life and career as well as mate­r­i­al inspired by it, and of course “video and audio from the 2013 per­for­mances in Mia­mi Beach, includ­ing some famil­iar and some obscure pieces from [Cage’s] influ­en­tial and exper­i­men­tal career of both music and staged silence.”

You may remem­ber when we fea­tured Cage’s 1960 per­for­mance of Water Walk on I’ve Got a Secret. The site does­n’t fail to include that clas­sic tele­vi­sion clip, but it also offers videos on the stag­ing of Water Walk today, from its direc­tion and back­ground to its rehearsal to the the­atri­cal­i­ty of its per­for­mance to the place­ment of the cam­eras film­ing it. You can find these and many oth­er audio­vi­su­al explo­rations of the nuts and bolts of Cage’s work at Mak­ing the Right Choic­es’ cat­a­log of videos.

“John Cage gen­uine­ly want­ed to open up the beau­teous expe­ri­ence of sound for every­one,” writes Tilson Thomas in a piece on the com­pos­er. “Much of his work could be described as kits to be used in the cre­ation of a per­for­mance that relies on the per­cep­tions, imag­i­na­tions and choic­es of the musi­cians. It was a spir­i­tu­al mis­sion for him to cre­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty for the per­for­mance to exist while at the same time to inter­fere with it as lit­tle or as sub­tly as pos­si­ble.” That chal­lenge Cage set for him­self keeps his work fas­ci­nat­ing to us to this day — and as Tilson Thomas and the New World Sym­pho­ny sure­ly found out, it remains as much of a chal­lenge as ever for those who pick it up today.

Vis­it Mak­ing the Right Choic­es: A John Cage Cel­e­bra­tion .

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

10 Rules for Stu­dents and Teach­ers Pop­u­lar­ized by John Cage

Lis­ten to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse)

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Watch a Sur­pris­ing­ly Mov­ing Per­for­mance of John Cage’s 1948 “Suite for Toy Piano”

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 the Hardcore Original Ending to Kevin Smith’s 1994 Cult Hit Clerks

in Film | May 21st, 2015

I’m not sure if it’s still the case today, in fact, I’m almost sure it isn’t, but in my day the ethos of an entire gen­er­a­tion could be tidi­ly summed up by ref­er­ence to a hand­ful of movies. Or at least that’s what we were led to believe, those of us who came of age in the ear­ly-to-mid 90s, when films like Richard Linklater’s Slack­er (watch free online), Ben Stiller’s Real­i­ty Bites, and Kevin Smith’s Clerks achieved almost instant cult sta­tus as totems of mid­dle class ennui—that of overe­d­u­cat­ed nar­cis­sists and direc­tion­less dream­ers and cyn­ics with ser­i­al roman­tic dis­as­ters and a gnaw­ing sense of the dwin­dling returns on their heavy invest­ment in cul­tur­al cap­i­tal.

Of this ad hoc tril­o­gy of 90s slack­er­dom, it’s Smith’s 1994 low-bud­get, black and white paean to the lives of low-wage con­ve­nience and video store clerks, their clue­less cus­tomers, and a com­ic duo of stoned hang­ers-on that per­haps holds up best, and this is because the film’s comedy—ranging from gal­lows humor to gross-out slap­stick to obser­va­tion­al geekery—seems most ground­ed in the every­day expe­ri­ences of real, absurd­ly bored, work­ing stiffs every­where. So it’s for the best that Smith decid­ed not to fin­ish the film with the orig­i­nal end­ing he shot, which you can see above. In it, the movie’s main char­ac­ter, Quick Stop clerk Dante Hicks, is killed in a rob­bery. The last image we see in this version’s har­row­ing dénoue­ment is of his corpse, awk­ward­ly wedged behind the Quick Stop counter.

It’s an end­ing that makes lit­tle sense tonal­ly. Despite the movie’s detours into the macabre, it nev­er gets seri­ous enough to jus­ti­fy this kind of heav­i­ness. As Men­tal Floss puts it, “the alter­nate end­ing to Kevin Smith’s break­through film turned a light­heart­ed vul­gar com­e­dy [see above] into a dark tragedy of Ing­mar Bergman-ish pro­por­tions.” Actor Bri­an O’Halloran, who played Dante, thought as much. “I hat­ed that end­ing,” Rolling Stone quotes him as say­ing, “I just thought it was too quick of a twist.” I guess it’s a good thing for Smith (and O’Hal­lo­ran) that he final­ly agreed, since with­out the Clerks universe’s main char­ac­ter, there may have been no Clerks 2, for what it’s worth, though Jay and Silent Bob would cer­tain­ly have gone on to their post-Clerks revenge.

Smith’s choice to keep it light also speaks to the spir­it of the time—or the spir­it of these filmed rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the time, which are ulti­mate­ly about a lack of res­o­lu­tion, a meta-lack of res­o­lu­tion, that becomes its own brand of tragi­com­e­dy. Clerks is loose­ly mod­eled on Dante’s vision of pur­ga­to­ry, but feels more like Samuel Beck­ett trans­posed to sub­ur­ban New Jer­sey. The char­ac­ters in Smith’s films for­ev­er live their lives in what post-hard­core band Fugazi so anthem­i­cal­ly called the “wait­ing room”—the kind of place where, in the midst of a per­son­al cri­sis, the most log­i­cal thing to do is debate the ethics of killing off inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors on Return of the Jedi’s Death Star.

The Clerks alter­nate end­ing appears on the 10th anniver­sary DVD of the film. You’ll prob­a­bly agree the movie works much bet­ter with­out this fatal­ly abrupt turn, but watch­ing it gives us a glimpse of a world where death—always hov­er­ing on the edges of slackerdom—intrudes to break the spell of ter­mi­nal inac­tion and emo­tion­al paral­y­sis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Kevin Smith’s Clever First Film, Mae Day: The Crum­bling of a Doc­u­men­tary (1992)

The Always-NSFW Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes Catch Up in Jay and Silent Bob Get Old Pod­cast

Hear Kevin Smith’s Three Tips For Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers (NSFW)

Watch Free Online: Richard Linklater’s Slack­er, the Clas­sic Gen‑X Indie Film

 

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

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Take a Free Course on Film Noir; Then Watch Oodles of Free Noir Films Online

in Film, Online Courses | May 21st, 2015

tcm course

Cinephiles, if you have some spare time in the com­ing months and feel like watch­ing, say, over 100 film noir movies from the Turn­er Clas­sic Movie (TCM) vaults, then you will be delight­ed with Sum­mer of Dark­ness, which will devote every Fri­day, from June through July, to 24 hours of noir clas­sics and rar­i­ties. And sup­pose you’d like a reward, like a cer­tifi­cate that proves you not only watched those movies, but prop­er­ly stud­ied them? Well TCM has that cov­ered too, offer­ing a free nine-week course in “The Case of Film Noir” to run con­cur­rent with the series. It’s free to sign up, and the course runs June 1 — August 4. Says TCM:

This is the deep­est cat­a­log of film noir ever pre­sent­ed by the net­work (and per­haps any net­work), and pro­vides an unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for those inter­est­ed in learn­ing more to watch over 100 clas­sic movies as they inves­ti­gate “The Case of Film Noir.”

The course is being taught by Richard L. Edwards, Ph.D. who co-hosts the Out of the Past: Inves­ti­gat­ing Film Noir pod­cast and also teach­es at Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty in Muncie, Indi­anapo­lis.

For those who don’t have TCM, or even cable, don’t wor­ry. The net­work promis­es to post links to online pub­lic domain films. Or, bet­ter yet, you could jump right into our col­lec­tion of 60 Free Noir Films Online, which fea­tures pub­lic domain clas­sics by Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, John Hus­ton, and many more.

Have a hazy, dan­ger­ous sum­mer and watch out for femme fatales!

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Content:

60 Free Film Noir Movies

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

25 Noir Films That Will Stand the Test of Time: A List by “Noir­chael­o­gist” Eddie Muller

Watch Scar­let Street, Fritz Lang’s Cen­sored Noir Film, Star­ring the Great Edward G. Robin­son (1945)

Kansas City Con­fi­den­tial: Did This 1952 Noir Film Inspire Quentin Tarantino’s Reser­voir Dogs?

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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