Watch Russian Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky Star in His Only Surviving Film, The Lady and the Hooligan (1918)

in Film, Poetry | September 7th, 2016

Tall and dash­ing, with the face of a box­er and glow­er­ing stare of a gang­ster, Russ­ian Futur­ist poet, painter, direc­tor, and actor Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) came by his intim­i­dat­ing look hon­est­ly. As a teenage activist, he car­ried an unli­censed gun, freed female polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, and “was dis­missed from gram­mar school,” short­ly after join­ing the Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Labor Par­ty in 1908; “He spent much of the next two years in prison,” writes the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets, “due to his polit­i­cal activ­i­ties.” A com­mit­ted Bol­she­vik through­out his career, Mayakovsky cel­e­brat­ed the Rev­o­lu­tion with poems and plays and devot­ed his tal­ents to the Par­ty, becom­ing a rare exam­ple of an avant-garde artist who makes pop­ulist art.

In many ways, Mayakovsky’s career seems rep­re­sen­ta­tive, even exem­plary, of the Futur­ist move­ment. Uncrit­i­cal­ly adopt­ing Com­mu­nist doc­trine and embrac­ing whole­sale inno­va­tion, these artists fell vic­tim to the same forces, as Social­ist Real­ism increas­ing­ly became the offi­cial Sovi­et style and the rigid, bland arbiter of Par­ty taste.

In 1912, Mayakovsky signed a man­i­festo with oth­er Futur­ists “A Slap in the Face of Pub­lic Taste,” propos­ing, among oth­er things, to “throw Pushkin, Dos­to­evsky, Tol­stoy, etc., etc. over­board from the Ship of Moder­ni­ty.” Of oth­er pop­u­lar writ­ers of the time, includ­ing Max­im Gorky and Ivan Bunin, the Futur­ists declared, “From the heights of sky­crap­ers we gaze at their insignif­i­cance!…”

By 1918, Mayakovsky was a star. That year, he made three films, “for each of which he authored the sce­nario,” writes biog­ra­ph­er Edward James Brown, “and played the prin­ci­pal part.” Two of the films have dis­ap­peared, the third, The Young Lady and the Hooli­gan, you can watch above. “A sto­ry of hope­less love,” the film stars Mayakovsky as the tit­u­lar hooli­gan who falls for a new schoolmistress “sent into the slums to teach adult class­es.” The hooli­gan enrolls and changes his ways, but is then killed trag­i­cal­ly in a fight. Spoil­er alert: “Before dying he begs his moth­er to have the teacher come to him. She comes, she kiss­es him on the lips, and he dies.”

The silent film, based on an 1885 Ital­ian play called The Work­ers’ Young Schoolmistress, seems to have lit­tle to do with Sovi­et dog­ma, and yet it received tremen­dous acclaim, and became an instru­ment of pro­pa­gan­da, shown in mass screen­ings in Moscow and Leningrad on May Day of 1919. Film schol­ar Mari­na Burke sug­gests some of the rea­sons for its pop­u­lar­i­ty: “many of the scenes are shot out­doors, and the film is rich in nat­u­ral­is­tic details of cur­rent Sovi­et con­di­tions”— the real­ist depic­tion of work­ers’ lives res­onat­ed wide­ly with real-life work­ers. And yet, Mayakovsky’s film also dis­plays those char­ac­ter­is­tics that make him a dis­tinct­ly un-Sovi­et artist and would some­times put him at odds with the State’s over­bear­ing dog­ma­tism.

Mayakovsky plays the hooli­gan in a “dis­con­cert­ing­ly mod­ern, dis­af­fect­ed-young-man style” that reminds crit­ic Mal­colm Le Grice of “a kind of pre­cur­sor to Rebel With­out a Cause, with Mayakovsky as a slight­ly improb­a­ble James Dean.” The poet was too much an indi­vid­ual to play an ide­al­ized every­man. Each of the pro­tag­o­nists in his three film draw from life—three ver­sions of the artist who wrote crit­i­cal poems like “A Talk with a Tax Col­lec­tor” and satir­i­cal plays that made the State uneasy, even as he extolled its virtues at pub­lic events.

Mayakovsky would also not make strict­ly real­ist art, hav­ing dis­avowed its “filthy stig­mas” the year pre­vi­ous in his Futur­ist Man­i­festo. The nat­u­ral­ist scenes in The Young Lady and the Hooli­gan “are inter­spersed,” writes Burke, “with flights of fan­cy that are almost sur­re­al­ist in tone,” such as the school­teacher men­aced by danc­ing let­ters. Despite its con­ven­tion­al, sen­ti­men­tal plot and struc­ture, Mayakovsky’s only sur­viv­ing film presents us with a com­pli­cat­ed, ambiva­lent work, almost “a par­o­dy of roman­tic fic­tion films,” and—like all of his work—the swag­ger­ing expres­sion of a thor­ough­ly indi­vid­ual artist.

The Young Lady and the Hooli­gan will be added to our col­lec­tion of Silent Films, a sub­set of our meta list 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Russ­ian Futur­ist Vladimir Mayakovsky Read His Strange & Vis­cer­al Poet­ry

Down­load 144 Beau­ti­ful Books of Russ­ian Futur­ism: Mayakovsky, Male­vich, Khleb­nikov & More (1910–30)

Three Essen­tial Dadaist Films: Ground­break­ing Works by Hans Richter, Man Ray & Mar­cel Duchamp

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

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Good Morning, Mr. Orwell: Nam June Paik’s Avant-Garde New Year’s Celebration with Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Peter Gabriel & More

in Art, Television | September 6th, 2016

In his New York Times “TV Week­end” col­umn of Decem­ber 30, 1983, John O’Con­nor wrote up the sched­uled “tele­vi­sion fes­tiv­i­ties for the eve of 1984,” includ­ing the Guy Lom­bar­do Orches­tra at the Wal­dorf-Asto­ria; a spe­cial from CBS who, “look­ing for an updat­ed image,” got Andy Williams to broad­cast from the Plaza Hotel; Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on NBC fea­tur­ing Rick James, Cul­ture Club, and Bar­ry Manilow; and on a cer­tain new “Music-TV chan­nel,” live per­for­mances at the Savoy Club by Bil­ly Idol, the Stray Cats, Cyn­di Lau­per, and the Thomp­son Twins, who could­n’t have made too late a night of it — they had to play again on New Year’s day, on a pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion plan­ning to try “some­thing con­sid­er­ably more ambi­tious.”

As 1984 began, a one-time-only broad­cast (avail­able on YouTube) brought togeth­er the avant-garde tal­ents of Lau­rie Ander­son, Peter Gabriel, Yves Mon­tand, John Cage, Mer­ce Cun­ning­ham, Allen Gins­berg, Joseph Beuys, Philip Glass, and Oin­go Boin­go.

What’s more, it all hap­pened at the busi­ly image-manip­u­lat­ing hands of video artist Nam June Paik, as writer, Paris Review edi­tor, and sports­man George Plimp­ton played host. Its con­tent came live via satel­lite from stu­dios in New York, Paris, and San Fran­cis­co. Paik titled this tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly dar­ing pro­duc­tion Good Morn­ing, Mr. Orwell, as a kind of scoff at the drab, dystopi­an 1984 from the more excit­ing real one. 25 mil­lion peo­ple tuned in.

Quot­ing Paik’s descrip­tion of his broad­cast as “sym­bol­ic of how tele­vi­sion can cross bor­ders and pro­vide a lib­er­at­ing infor­ma­tion-com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice,” O’Con­nor high­lights such com­ing attrac­tions as Ander­son and Gabriel’s open­ing per­for­mance, cel­list and long­time Paik col­lab­o­ra­tor Char­lotte Moor­man “recre­at­ing Mr. Paik’s famous, or noto­ri­ous, ‘TV Cel­lo,’ ” “Robert Rauschen­berg, the artist, con­tribut­ing com­men­tary, “a per­for­mance by Urban Sax, con­sist­ing of 80 ‘futur­is­ti­cal­ly cos­tumed’ musi­cians, and, via video­tape from West Ger­many, Sal­vador Dali and the com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen.”

Paik and his col­lab­o­ra­tors real­ly do pack Good Morn­ing, Mr. Orwell’s hour of tele­vi­sion with an incred­i­ble amount of con­tent. That con­tent dif­fered depend­ing on whether you watched the ver­sion broad­cast out of WNET in New York or the one out of the Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou in Paris, some­times accord­ing to plan, some­times as a result of inevitable tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties. The inter­sec­tion of exper­i­men­tal art with still near­ly exper­i­men­tal tech­nol­o­gy pro­duces all the hitch­es, glitch­es, delays, and impro­vi­sa­tions you’d expect.

The good-natured Paik con­sid­ered it all part of the live-ness of the art, all just events in the “glob­al dis­co” he’d built out of the lat­est elec­tron­ic media tech­nol­o­gy. The son of a for­mer­ly well-to-do fam­i­ly who fled Korea for Japan at the out­break of the Kore­an War, he went to Ger­many to study avant-garde com­po­si­tion after grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo with a degree in aes­thet­ics. He start­ed work­ing with tele­vi­sions in the ear­ly 1960s, when he could buy old sec­ond­hand mod­els cheap­ly. Using paint, neon, cam­eras, and much else besides, he turned these dis­card­ed sets into all man­ner of whim­si­cal elec­tron­ic sculp­tures.

“He’s made a TV bud­dha, he’s made a TV gar­den, he’s made a TV chair, a TV pyra­mid, a TV bra!” Moor­man explains to Plimp­ton toward the end of this artis­tic extrav­a­gan­za as she read­ies her­self to play Paik’s TV cel­lo. As it hap­pens, I just last week laid eyes on the TV cel­lo myself, still upright, glow­ing, and pre­sum­ably ready to play a decade after Paik’s death (and a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry after Moor­man’s) at Seoul’s Dong­dae­mun Design Plaza. They’ve got a whole show ded­i­cat­ed to Paik’s work up and run­ning through Octo­ber, all of it as enter­tain­ing and pre­scient as ever. ”I nev­er read Orwell’s book — it’s bor­ing,” he once admit­ted, though that did­n’t stop him from pre­dict­ing things about the future the author of 1984 did­n’t.

“Orwell por­trayed tele­vi­sion as a neg­a­tive medi­um, use­ful to dic­ta­tors for one-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Of course, he was half-right,” said Paik, who want­ed to “show its poten­tial for inter­ac­tion, its pos­si­bil­i­ties as a medi­um for peace and glob­al under­stand­ing. It can spread out, cross inter­na­tion­al bor­ders, pro­vide lib­er­at­ing infor­ma­tion, maybe even­tu­al­ly punch a hole in the Iron Cur­tain.’ ” (He even envi­sioned a now famil­iar-sound­ing “glob­al uni­ver­si­ty” where “vast quan­ti­ties of up-to-date infor­ma­tion on every con­ceiv­able sub­ject can be stored, with com­put­ers to pro­vide instant retrieval.”) The Iron Cur­tain would fall just five years lat­er, but we’ve only just begun, after more than three decades, to explore the bor­der-cross­ing, infor­ma­tion-lib­er­at­ing poten­tial of elec­tron­ic media.

Find anoth­er ver­sion of Good Morn­ing Mr. Orwell at UBUweb.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage Plays Ampli­fied Cac­ti and Plant Mate­ri­als with a Feath­er (1984)

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

George Plimp­ton, Paris Review Founder, Pitch­es 1980s Video Games for the Mat­tel Intel­livi­sion

Chris Bur­den (R.I.P.) Turns Late-Night TV Com­mer­cials Into Con­cep­tu­al Art

When Glenn O’Brien’s TV Par­ty Brought Klaus Nomi, Blondie & Basquiat to Pub­lic Access TV (1978–82)

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired 30 Years Ago on Super Bowl Sun­day

How to Send an E‑mail: A 1984 British Tele­vi­sion Broad­cast Explains This “Sim­ple” Process

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Animated Introduction to French Philosopher Jacques Derrida

in Philosophy | September 5th, 2016

Since the bold arrival of his book Of Gram­ma­tol­ogy in 1967, French philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da has been understood—or misunderstood—as many things: a rad­i­cal rel­a­tivist who ”rejects all of meta­phys­i­cal his­to­ry,” a fash­ion­able intel­lec­tu­al play­ing lan­guage games, a bril­liant phe­nom­e­nol­o­gist of lan­guage…. One asso­ci­a­tion he vehe­ment­ly reject­ed was with the kind of iron­ic, lais­sez faire post­mod­ernism rep­re­sent­ed by Sein­feld. But when it came to clar­i­fy­ing his work for puz­zled read­ers and onlook­ers, Der­ri­da could seem as will­ful­ly, frus­trat­ing­ly eva­sive in per­son as he was on the page. His work, writes Williams Col­lege pro­fes­sor Mark C. Tay­lor, can “seem hope­less­ly obscure… to peo­ple addict­ed to sound bites and overnight polls.”

Most peo­ple famil­iar with some of Derrida’s work know a few key terms of his thought: dif­férance, trace, apo­r­ia, phar­makon. Those who’ve only heard the name prob­a­bly know only one: Decon­struc­tion, a “way of doing phi­los­o­phy,” says Alain de Bot­ton in his video intro­duc­tion to Der­ri­da above, that “fun­da­men­tal­ly altered our under­stand­ing of many aca­d­e­m­ic fields, espe­cial­ly lit­er­ary stud­ies.” But what exact­ly is “Decon­struc­tion”? Rather than a method, Der­ri­da him­self described it as a process already occur­ring with­in a writ­ten work, one we can observe when we “do not assume that what is con­di­tioned by his­to­ry, insti­tu­tions, or soci­ety is nat­ur­al.” 

Derrida’s med­i­ta­tions on the inabil­i­ty of lan­guage to con­tain or com­mu­ni­cate nat­ur­al or meta­phys­i­cal truth devel­oped in unique life cir­cum­stances. Born into a Jew­ish fam­i­ly in French colo­nial Alge­ria in 1930, the philoso­pher grew up very con­scious of “hav­ing been in an infe­ri­or posi­tion at the nexus of three dif­fer­ent reli­gions, Judaism, Chris­tian­i­ty, and Islam, all of which claimed to speak the truth,” says de Bot­ton. Upon arriv­ing in Paris to study in 1949, Der­ri­da found him­self even fur­ther on the social mar­gins. “Though Der­ri­da was not an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal writer, it’s hard not to read his work as a response to big­otry and exclu­sion.”

The claim that the philosopher—whose name has almost become syn­ony­mous with post-mod­ernism, for good or ill—was not an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal writer may seem strange to some. One of his most-read books in col­lege cours­es, Mono­lin­gual­ism of the Oth­er, pro­ceeds from an inves­ti­ga­tion into his fraught rela­tion­ship with the French lan­guage because of his upbring­ing as a reli­gious minor­i­ty in a Euro­pean colony. Lat­er, Der­ri­da deliv­ered a ten-hour address to a con­fer­ence called The Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Ani­mal, pub­lished posthu­mous­ly (and excerpt­ed here).

Nonethe­less, Der­ri­da would not have made much of his place as the author, this being only a rhetor­i­cal occa­sion for analy­sis. Der­ri­da, writes Nazenin Ruso at Phi­los­o­phy Now, argued that “once the text is writ­ten, the author’s input los­es its sig­nif­i­cance.” The per­son of the author—his or her phys­i­cal pres­ence, bio­graph­i­cal expe­ri­ences, emo­tions, desires, and intentions—becomes irre­triev­able for read­ers, one of many absences in the text that we mis­take for pres­ence.

It’s hard to see, then, how we can speak of what Derrida’s “hope” was for his read­ers’ self-improve­ment, as de Bot­ton says in his video intro­duc­tion. This being the School of Life, we are treat­ed to a rather util­i­tar­i­an read­ing of the philoso­pher, one he would per­haps reject. But Der­ri­da bris­tled at the idea that lan­guage could suf­fice to tell us how and who to be in the world. His sus­pi­cion of logo­cen­trism, “an over-hasty, naïve devo­tion to rea­son, log­ic, and clear def­i­n­i­tion,” says de Bot­ton, means he felt that “many of the most impor­tant things we feel can nev­er be expressed in words.” To hear Der­ri­da talk about the prob­lem of priv­i­leg­ing lan­guage over oth­er means of expres­sion with an artist who unique­ly agreed with his posi­tion, read his inter­view with jazz great Ornette Cole­man.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

140 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Phi­los­o­phy with a South­ern Drawl: Rick Rod­er­ick Teach­es Der­ri­da, Fou­cault, Sartre and Oth­ers

Jacques Der­ri­da on Sein­feld: “Decon­struc­tion Doesn’t Pro­duce Any Sit­com”

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Teacher Calls Jacques Derrida’s Col­lege Admis­sion Essay on Shake­speare “Quite Incom­pre­hen­si­ble” (1951)

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

 

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5 Hours of Free Alfred Hitchcock Interviews: Discover His Theories of Film Editing, Creating Suspense & More

in Audio Books, Film | September 5th, 2016

hitchcock photo

Image by Fred Palum­bo, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Here’s an audio col­lec­tion worth shar­ing with the cinephiles among you. Alfred Hitch­cock Inter­views (embed­ded below) brings togeth­er 12 inter­views record­ed over sev­er­al decades, col­lec­tive­ly run­ning five hours and four min­utes. If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here. Then tune into Track 3 and hear Hitch­cock describe his three the­o­ries of film edit­ing. Track 10 lets you lis­ten to his 33-minute “Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma” inter­view record­ed in 1972. And Track 12 presents a 96-minute “Mas­ter Class” on film­mak­ing. This audio col­lec­tion will be housed in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Watch Alfred Hitch­cock Make Cameo Appear­ances in 37 of His Films (Plus Free Hitch­cock Films Online)

The Eyes of Hitch­cock: A Mes­mer­iz­ing Video Essay on the Expres­sive Pow­er of Eyes in Hitchcock’s Films

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Oscar-Winning Filmmaker Errol Morris Creates a Commercial for Depend Adult Diapers

in Life, Psychology, Television | September 5th, 2016

There’s a gen­der assump­tion for every stage of life these days. From gen­der-cod­ed Lego play sets and teen mag­a­zines, we progress to light­weight, pink tool sets or their more tra­di­tion­al, appar­ent­ly “mas­cu­line” coun­ter­part.

After that?

Adult dia­pers.

Phys­i­cal­ly, it makes sense that the lat­ter would divide along assigned gen­der lines. Biol­o­gy may not be the trump card it was once con­sid­ered to be, but, in gen­er­al, it con­tin­ues to vis­it wider hips on those born female organs than those rock­ing the frank n’ beans.  

(That said, as the moth­er of babies, I always appre­ci­at­ed when a reli­able brand went the extra mile with uni­sex pat­terns on the tapes or waist band.)

Film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris chose to widen the gen­der divide in 2009, when he was hired to direct a Depend spot, fea­tur­ing the company’s new line of gen­der-spe­cif­ic adult dia­pers, above.

In the end, the prod­uct itself was wait­ing in the wings, so a cou­ple of cute midlife inter­vie­wees could take turns describ­ing their impres­sions of a sin­gle Rorschach blot. 

Don’t wor­ry. It’s got noth­ing to do with absorben­cy.

The female sub­ject imme­di­ate­ly begins to spin a fan­ci­ful tale involv­ing two cute birds, while the male hems and haws, appar­ent­ly the vic­tim of some trag­ic gen­der-based lack of imag­i­na­tion. I bet he doesn’t like stop­ping to ask for direc­tions either.

Giv­en this director’s track record of grip­ping doc­u­men­taries, I think I’d have pre­ferred a more straight­for­ward approach. I’d be up for a full-length doc­u­men­tary about the expe­ri­ence of actu­al­ly wear­ing those things, espe­cial­ly if Mor­ris used his Inter­ro­tron to elic­it frank eye con­tact, as he does above. 

It’s an uncom­fort­able sub­ject for sure, but I’d like to hear how adult dia­pers impact an indi­vid­u­al’s sense of attrac­tive­ness and self-worth. I would­n’t want Mor­ris to gen­er­al­ize, but by and large, is it a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence for men than it is for women?

Per­haps the riff­ing pair in the com­mer­cial spot have more famil­iar­i­ty with the prod­uct than they were allowed to let on? If so, I’d imag­ine it’s from car­ing for an elder­ly rel­a­tive, but I could be wrong. Either way, those would be sto­ries I’d like to hear.

Per­haps this is a top­ic best tack­led by Wern­er Her­zog…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See? (1921)

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The History of Literature Podcast Takes You on a Literary Journey: From Ancient Epics to Contemporary Classics

in History, Literature, Podcasts | September 5th, 2016

LOGO-COVERS

Even before you start on a jour­ney through the his­to­ry of lit­er­a­ture, you know some of the stops you’ll make on the way: the Epic of Gil­gamesh, the Bible, Home­r’s Ili­ad and Odyssey, Greek tragedy, Shake­speare, Joyce. And so it comes as no sur­prise that Jacke Wil­son, cre­ator and host of the His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture pod­cast (from ancient epics to con­tem­po­rary clas­sics — Android — RSS), has so far devot­ed whole episodes, and often more than one, to each of them. A self-described “ama­teur schol­ar,” Wil­son aims with this show, which he launched last Octo­ber, to take “a fresh look at some of the most com­pelling exam­ples of cre­ative genius the world has ever known.”

Wil­son also address­es ques­tions like “How did lit­er­a­ture devel­op? What forms has it tak­en? And what can we learn from engag­ing with these works today?” And yet he asks this rhetor­i­cal one in The His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture’s very first episode: “Is it just me, or is lit­er­a­ture dying?” The also self-described “wild­ly unqual­i­fied host” admits that he at first tried to cre­ate a straight­for­ward, straight-faced march through lit­er­ary his­to­ry, but found the result staid and life­less. And so he loos­ened up, allow­ing in not just more of his per­son­al­i­ty but more of his doubts about the very lit­er­ary enter­prise in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Giv­en that we get so much of our knowl­edge, human inter­ac­tion, and pure word­craft on the inter­net today, laments Wil­son, what remains for nov­els, sto­ries, poet­ry, and dra­ma to pro­vide us? As a His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture lis­ten­er, I per­son­al­ly see things dif­fer­ent­ly. The fact that we now have such abun­dant out­lets from which to receive all those oth­er things may strip lit­er­a­ture of some of the rel­e­vance it once held by default, but it also lifts from lit­er­a­ture a con­sid­er­able bur­den. Just as the devel­op­ment of pho­tog­ra­phy freed paint­ing from the oblig­a­tion to ever more faith­ful­ly rep­re­sent real­i­ty, lit­er­a­ture can now find forms and sub­jects bet­ter suit­ed to the artis­tic expe­ri­ence that it, and only it, can deliv­er.

Jorge Luis Borges counts as only one of the writ­ers who grasped the unex­plored poten­tial of lit­er­a­ture, and Wil­son uses one of the occa­sion­al episodes that breaks from the lin­ear­i­ty of his­to­ry to dis­cuss the “Gar­den of Fork­ing Paths” author’s thoughts on the mean­ing of life. He record­ed it (lis­ten above) in response to two deaths: that of “Fifth Bea­t­le” George Mar­tin, and even more so that of his uncle. Oth­er relat­able parts of Wilson’s life come into play in oth­er con­ver­sa­tions about writ­ers both ancient and mod­ern, such as the con­ver­sa­tion about the works of Gra­ham Greene and whether he can still get as much out of them as he did dur­ing his youth­ful trav­el­ing days. Lit­er­a­ture, after all, may have no greater val­ue than that it gets us ask­ing ques­tions — a val­ue The His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture demon­strates in every episode. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Are Lit­er­a­ture, Phi­los­o­phy & His­to­ry For? Alain de Bot­ton Explains with Mon­ty Python-Style Videos

A Crash Course in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture: A New Video Series by Best-Sell­ing Author John Green

Enti­tled Opin­ions, the “Life and Lit­er­a­ture” Pod­cast That Refus­es to Dumb Things Down

The Dead Authors Pod­cast: H.G. Wells Com­i­cal­ly Revives Lit­er­ary Greats with His Time Machine

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­cast, Now at 239 Episodes, Expands into East­ern Phi­los­o­phy

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the World (and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty) in 100 Objects

78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The History of Russia in 70,000 Photos: New Photo Archive Presents Russian History from 1860 to 1999

in History, Photography | September 2nd, 2016

1860 Rider

Back in col­lege, I took a sur­vey class on Russ­ian his­to­ry, taught by one of these peo­ple who take up the pro­fes­sion in their active retire­ment after a career spent work­ing in the field. This par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sor had gone to work for the State Depart­ment after grad­u­ate school and served in var­i­ous posts in Sovi­et Rus­sia for sev­er­al decades. The for­mat of his class seemed unre­mark­able on paper. One stan­dard syl­labus, one bulky, expen­sive text­book. But the class­es them­selves con­sist­ed of long, fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries about per­son­al encoun­ters with Brezh­nev and Gor­bachev, or jour­neys into ancient Kiev, or to the out­er reach­es of the Steppes.

1920 Red Square

All that was miss­ing from those vivid rec­ol­lec­tions was a com­pa­ra­ble pho­to essay to tell the sto­ry visu­al­ly. This has been reme­died and then some by the “The His­to­ry of Rus­sia,” an enor­mous joint archive project from Moscow’s Mul­ti­me­dia Art Muse­um and Yan­dex, Russia’s largest search engine. The archive con­tains over 70,000 pho­tos, gath­ered from “more than 40 insti­tu­tions and col­lec­tions,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic, and rep­re­sent­ing “over 150 years of pho­tographs cap­tur­ing all sorts of scenes of Russ­ian life.”

August Putsch

Non-Russ­ian speak­ers can load the site in Google Chrome and have it trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. Addi­tion­al­ly, “a time­line allows you to browse by date, a map enables loca­tion-based search­es, and pre­set cat­e­gories fil­ter the images by theme.” Russ­ian speak­ers can enter spe­cif­ic key­words into the site’s search engine. Cur­rent­ly, the archive fea­tures an exhi­bi­tion on the August Putsch, the 1991 coup attempt on the pres­i­den­cy of Mikhail Gor­bachev, staged by hard-line Com­mu­nist Par­ty Mem­bers opposed to reform. See one icon­ic pho­to of that his­tor­i­cal event above, and many more at the vir­tu­al exhi­bi­tion.

Christmas Tree in Luzhniki Stadium

The late 1980s and 90s may be a peri­od of par­tic­u­lar inter­est for stu­dents and writ­ers of Russ­ian his­to­ry, like David Rem­nick, and for good rea­son. But every decade in the archive holds its own fas­ci­na­tion. State­ly por­traits from the 1860s, like that at the top of the post, show us the soci­ety of Tol­stoy in the decade he seri­al­ized War and Peace. Pho­tos from the 20s, like the satir­i­cal dis­play in Red Square, fur­ther down, show us the days of Lenin’s rule and the ear­ly years of the Sovi­et Union. Images from the 50s give us unique insid­er views—often impos­si­ble at the time—of ordi­nary Sovi­et life at the height of the Cold War, such as the Christ­mas tree in the Luzh­ni­ki Sta­di­um, above, or the man lead­ing an ele­phant from the Red Army The­ater, below.

Elephant Red Army Theater

The 60s in par­tic­u­lar look like a Life mag­a­zine spread, with dra­mat­ic pho­tos of Olympic ath­letes in train­ing, states­men posed with wives and chil­dren, and hun­dreds of arrest­ing pic­tures from every­day life, like that of two boys box­ing below. The huge gal­leries can be a lit­tle cum­ber­some to nav­i­gate and require some patience on the part of the non-Russ­ian-speak­ing user. But that patience is rich­ly reward­ed with pho­to­graph after pho­to­graph of a coun­try we rarely hear spo­ken of in less than inflam­ma­to­ry terms. We encounter, of course, the odd por­trait of Stal­in and oth­er well-worn pro­pa­gan­da images, but for the most part, the pho­tos look and feel can­did, and for good rea­son.

1962 Boys Boxing

“Accord­ing to a release,” Hyper­al­ler­gic writes, “many of the pho­tographs are pub­lished here for the first time, part­ly because the por­tal invites users to upload, describe, and tag images from per­son­al archives. It has the feel of a muse­um collection”—and also of a fam­i­ly pho­to album stretch­ing back gen­er­a­tions. “The His­to­ry of Rus­sia” archive offers occa­sion­al con­text in addi­tion to the dates, names, and loca­tions of sub­jects. But infor­ma­tive text appears rarely, and in near­ly unread­able trans­la­tions for us non-speak­ers. Nonethe­less, a few hours lost in these gal­leries feel like a near total immer­sion in Russ­ian his­to­ry. You can enter the archive here.

Group Portrait 1900

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Col­or Por­trait of Leo Tol­stoy, and Oth­er Amaz­ing Col­or Pho­tos of Czarist Rus­sia (1908)

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en 100 Years Ago—at the Begin­ning of World War I & the End of La Belle Époque

Down­load 650 Sovi­et Book Cov­ers, Many Sport­ing Won­der­ful Avant-Garde Designs (1917–1942)

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

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Malcolm Gladwell on Why Genius Takes Time: A Look at the Making of Elvis Costello’s “Deportee” & Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

in Music, Podcasts | September 2nd, 2016

costello cohen

In every musi­cian’s discog­ra­phy, one album has to rank at the bot­tom. In the case of the pro­lif­ic and respect­ed singer-song­writer Elvis Costel­lo, fans and crit­ics alike tend to sin­gle out 1984’s Good­bye Cru­el World, which even Costel­lo him­self once described as “our worst album.” But with an artist like him doing the cre­at­ing, even the duds hold a cer­tain inter­est, or have a val­ue at their core that emerges in unex­pect­ed ways. “Among the most dis­cor­dant songs on the album was the for­get­table ‘The Depor­tees Club.’ But then, years lat­er, Costel­lo went back and re-record­ed it as ‘Depor­tee,’ and today it stands as one of his most sub­lime achieve­ments.”

That comes from “Hal­lelu­ah,” a recent episode of Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry, the new pod­cast from Mal­colm Glad­well that we first fea­tured back in June. Here, per­haps the best-known curi­ous jour­nal­is­tic mind of our time asks where genius comes from. Or, less abstract­ly, he asks about “the role that time and iter­a­tion play in the pro­duc­tion of genius, and how some of the most mem­o­rable works of art had mod­est and undis­tin­guished births.” His oth­er exam­ple from the realm of music gives the episode its title. It first appeared, in the same year as did Costel­lo’s “The Depor­tees Club,” on Leonard Cohen’s Var­i­ous Posi­tions, not mak­ing much of an impact until a cov­er by John Cale, and then more so one by Jeff Buck­ley, made it the “Hal­lelu­jah” we know today.

“That’s awful,” moans Glad­well, cut­ting off a clip of Costel­lo’s orig­i­nal “The Depor­tees Club” — this from a self-described Elvis Costel­lo super­fan, who in 1984 bought Good­bye Cru­el World the week it came out, just like he bought every oth­er Elvis Costel­lo album the week it came out. He regard­ed it as unlis­ten­able then and still regards it as unlis­ten­able today, apply­ing that adjec­tive at least twice in this pod­cast alone. He goes eas­i­er on Cohen’s orig­i­nal “Hal­lelu­jah,” pok­ing fun at its dirge-like seri­ous­ness. Then, being Mal­colm Glad­well, he goes on to frame the sto­ry of how both songs became great—the for­mer a per­son­al obses­sion of his own, the lat­ter a phe­nom­e­non cov­ered by “near­ly everyone”—in terms of a the­o­ry: some artists are Picas­so, and oth­ers are Cézanne.

Artists of the Picas­so mod­el exe­cute their works seem­ing­ly at a stroke, often after long peri­ods spent con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly assem­bling a coher­ent vision. Artists of the Cézanne mod­el exe­cute, exe­cute, and exe­cute again, refin­ing their way from an imper­fect first prod­uct to a much more per­fect final one. Some­times the first iter­a­tion a Cézanne puts out emerges at the wrong time, the ini­tial fate of “The Depor­tees Club” and “Hal­lelu­jah.” Nei­ther song, each by a musi­cian in his own way unsuit­ed to the cli­mate of pop per­fec­tion­ism that pre­vailed in the mid-1980s, found its form right away. Both would fit well into an insti­tu­tion I’ve long dreamed of called the Muse­um of First Drafts: enter and behold just how far a cre­ation still needs to go even after its “creation”—even when cre­at­ed by a Costel­lo, a Cohen or a Cézanne.

You can down­load Glad­well’s episode here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rufus Wain­wright and 1,500 Singers Sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Street Artist Plays Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” With Crys­tal Glass­es

Hear a Playlist of 300 Songs That Influ­enced Elvis Costel­lo, Drawn From His New Mem­oir, Unfaith­ful Music & Dis­ap­pear­ing Ink

Mal­colm Glad­well Has Launched a New Pod­cast, Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry: Hear the First Episode

Mal­colm Glad­well Asks Hard Ques­tions about Mon­ey & Mer­i­toc­ra­cy in Amer­i­can High­er Edu­ca­tion: Stream 3 Episodes of His New Pod­cast

Mal­colm Glad­well: Tax­es Were High and Life Was Just Fine

Mal­colm Glad­well: What We Can Learn from Spaghet­ti Sauce

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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