Musician Plays the Last Stradivarius Guitar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

Last night, while the home team lost the big game on TVs at a local dive bar, my noisy rock band opened for a cham­ber pop ensem­ble. Elec­tric gui­tars and feed­back gave way to clas­si­cal acoustics, vio­lin, piano, accor­dion, and even a saw. It was an inter­est­ing cul­tur­al jux­ta­po­si­tion in an evening of cul­tur­al jux­ta­po­si­tions. The sports and music did­n’t gel, but an odd sym­me­try emerged from the two bands’ con­trast­ing styles, to a degree. The instru­ment above, on the oth­er hand, would have fit right in with the sec­ond act, whose old world charm would sure­ly find a place for a 1679 guitar—one craft­ed by the leg­endary mas­ter luthi­er Anto­nio Stradi­vari, no less.

If you know noth­ing at all about music or musi­cal instru­ments, you know the name Stradi­vari and the vio­lins that bear his name. They are such cov­et­ed, valu­able objects they some­times appear as the tar­get of crime capers in the movies and on tele­vi­sion. This Stradi­var­ius gui­tar, called the “Sabionari,” is even rar­er than the vio­lins. The Stradi­vari fam­i­ly, writes For­got­ten Gui­tar, “pro­duced over 1000 instru­ments, of which 960 were vio­lins.” Yet, “a small num­ber of gui­tars were also craft­ed, and as of today only one remains playable.” High­ly playable, you’ll observe in these videos, thanks to the restora­tion by luthiers Daniel Sinier, Fran­coise de Rid­der, and Loren­zo Frig­nani.

In the clip just above, Baroque con­cert gui­tarist Rolf Lisl­e­vand plays San­ti­a­go de Mur­ci­a’s “Taran­tela” on the restored gui­tar, whose sonorous ring­ing tim­bre recalls anoth­er Baroque instru­ment, the harp­si­chord.

So unique and unusu­al is the ten-string Stradi­var­ius Sabionari that it has its own web­site, where you’ll find many detailed, close-up pho­tos of the ele­gant design as well as more music, like the piece above, Ange­lo Michele Bar­tolot­ti’s Suite in G Minor as per­formed by clas­si­cal gui­tarist Krish­na­sol Jiménez, who, along with Lisl­e­vand, has been entrust­ed with the instru­ment for many live per­for­mances. Owned by a pri­vate col­lec­tor, the Sabionari went on dis­play last year in Basel and very often appears at lec­tures on restora­tion and con­ser­va­tion of clas­si­cal instru­ments, as well as in per­for­mances around Europe. The Sabionari.com web­mas­ter has not kept the “Events” page up to date, unfor­tu­nate­ly, but you should scroll through it regard­less. You’ll find there many more videos of the gui­tar in action (like that below of gui­tarist Ugo Nas­truc­ci impro­vis­ing), links to exhibits, descrip­tions of the chal­leng­ing­ly long neck and Baroque tun­ing, and a sense of just how much the Sabionari gets around for such a rare, antique instru­ment.

via For­got­ten Gui­tar

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cians Play Bach on the Octo­bass, the Gar­gan­tu­an String Instru­ment Invent­ed in 1850

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

What Does a $45 Mil­lion Vio­la Sound Like? Vio­list David Aaron Car­pen­ter Gives You a Pre­view

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

Watch Star Trek Continues: The Critically-Acclaimed, Fan-Made Sequel to the Original TV Series

Despite its lega­cy and influ­ence, the orig­i­nal Star Trek ran three sea­sons (or 79 episodes in total) before NBC can­celed the show in June, 1969. Only in syn­di­ca­tion did Star Trek achieve cult sta­tus, and did its grow­ing num­ber of fans start to won­der: What if Star Trek had con­tin­ued? How would the sto­ry have played out? Enter Star Trek Con­tin­ues, a crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed, fan-pro­duced web­series cre­at­ed by direc­tor and actor Vic Mignogna.

If you ask the son of Gene Rod­den­ber­ry, the cre­ator of the orig­i­nal TV series, Star Trek Con­tin­ues has man­aged to cre­ate a bona fide sequel. “I do have to say … I’m pret­ty damn sure my dad would con­sid­er this canon. The fact that you do sto­ries that mean some­thing, that have depth, that make us all think a lit­tle bit… I real­ly think he would applaud you guys.”

The Wall Street Jour­nal adds to this:

[Star Trek Con­tin­ues] comes fright­en­ing­ly close to repli­cat­ing the orig­i­nal series, in the sets, make-up and hair­styles, cos­tumes and music… The art direc­tion pre­cise­ly cap­tures the Day-Glo visu­als of ear­ly col­or TV. Most remark­able is Mr. Mignogna; no actor play­ing, for instance, James Bond has imi­tat­ed Sean Con­nery out­right, but Mr. Mignogna comes so scar­i­ly close to the dynam­ic, stac­ca­to ener­gy of William Shat­ner that we keep for­get­ting we’re look­ing at anoth­er actor.

Thanks to fund­ing raised by two Kick­starter cam­paigns, you can now watch 5 episodes. Click play and watch the episodes on a Youtube playlist above, from start to fin­ish. Or watch them on the offi­cial Star Trek Con­tin­ues web­site, where, among oth­er things, you can take a 360 vir­tu­al tour of the set. You can also make a dona­tion, which will help sup­port the 6th episode due out in May, and anoth­er 7 episodes beyond that.

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:

How Isaac Asi­mov Went from Star Trek Crit­ic to Star Trek­Fan & Advi­sor

Nichelle Nichols Explains How Mar­tin Luther King Con­vinced Her to Stay on Star Trek

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

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Hear Strung Out in Heaven, a Gorgeous Tribute to David Bowie by Amanda Palmer & Jherek Bischoff’s, Made with Help from Neil Gaiman

Strung Out in Heaven

The last four weeks have seen thou­sands of trib­utes to rock­er David Bowie.

Strung Out In Heav­en: A Bowie String Quar­tet Trib­ute by Aman­da Palmer and her The­atre is Evil col­lab­o­ra­tor, pop poly­math Jherek Bischoff, is both gor­geous and ambi­tious.

It came togeth­er quick­ly. Bischoff arranged the album’s five tracks and spent three and a half hours record­ing the strings (Ser­e­na McK­in­ney and Alyssa Park​ on vio­lin, Ben Ullery​ on vio­la, and Jacob Braun on cel­lo).

Mean­while new moth­er Palmer lined up three days worth of babysit­ting in order to dive back into the stu­dio. She also tapped some famous friends, who con­tributed in small­er ways.

The record­ing, coor­di­na­tion, guest appear­ances… and babysit­ting were financed by a stock­pile from Palmer’s 7000-some sup­port­ers on the crowd­fund­ing site Patre­on.

It doesn’t sound like a whip out.

Here’s Palmer’s hus­band, author Neil Gaiman, count­ing down to lift-off on “Space Odd­i­ty:

And writer/director John Cameron Mitchell, who record­ed the “Heroes” call and response on an iPhone in his apart­ment…

…and chan­neled Hed­wig for the Ger­man ver­sion:

Gaiman ques­tioned Palmer’s choice to lead with the title track of Bowie’s final album, but as she told New Musi­cal Express, a lot of fresh­ly mint­ed mil­len­ni­al Bowie fans among her Patre­on sup­port­ers list­ed “Black­star” as a favorite. Singer Anna Calvi duets and plays gui­tar on this stripped down ver­sion:

Each tune is matched to a Bowie-cen­tric image by a visu­al artist. On Palmer’s Patre­on blog,“Blackstar” artist, ele­men­tary school teacher, and can­cer sur­vivor Cas­san­dra Long writes about dis­cussing Bowie’s death with a room­ful of kinder­garten­ers. Palmer plans to pro­vide a sim­i­lar plat­form to the oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing artists in the days to come.

The fin­ished prod­uct is both pro­fes­sion­al and a labor of love.

Music is the bind­ing agent of our mun­dane lives. It cements the moments in which we wash the dish­es, type the resumes, go to the funer­als, have the babies. The stronger the agent, the tougher the mem­o­ry, and Bowie was NASA-grade epoxy to a sprawl­ing span of freaked-out kids over three gen­er­a­tions. He bond­ed us to our weird selves…Bowie worked on music up to the end to give us a part­ing gift. So this is how we, as musi­cians, mourn: keep­ing Bowie con­stant­ly in our ears and brains. 

 — Aman­da Palmer

The com­plete track­list is below. You can lis­ten for free, but an ante-up will help Palmer cov­er 9¢ in licens­ing fees every time one of the songs is streamed. Any left­over pro­ceeds from sales through March 5th will be donat­ed to Tufts Med­ical Cen­ter’s can­cer research wing in mem­o­ry of David Bowie.

Strung Out in Heav­en:

01 “Black­star”  fea­tur­ing Anna Calvi

02 “Space Odd­i­ty” fea­tur­ing Neil Gaiman

03 “Ash­es to Ash­es”

04 “Heroes” fea­tur­ing John Cameron Mitchell

05 Helden” fea­tur­ing  John Cameron Mitchell

06 “Life on Mars?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech At Berklee Col­lege of Music: “Music Has Been My Door­way of Per­cep­tion” (1999)

David Bowie (RIP) Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

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

Walk Inside a Surrealist Salvador Dalí Painting with This 360º Virtual Reality Video


Click on the arrows to get the full 360 degree expe­ri­ence.

I felt as impressed as every­one else did when I saw my first 360-degree video, the tech­nol­o­gy that allows view­ers to “look” in any direc­tion they wish. But most of the 360-degree videos that became pop­u­lar ear­ly sim­ply demon­strat­ed the con­cept, and as much aston­ish­ment as the expe­ri­ence of the con­cept alone can gen­er­ate, even more excite­ment came from think­ing about the tech­nol­o­gy’s poten­tial. It has­n’t tak­en long for 360-degree videos to look beyond vir­tu­al real­i­ty — indeed, to look all the way to vir­tu­al sur­re­al­i­ty, as envi­sioned by per­haps the best-known sur­re­al­ist of them all, Sal­vador Dalí.

“Dreams of Dalí,” the 36o-degree video above, drops you into the world of Dalí’s 1935 can­vas Archae­o­log­i­cal Rem­i­nis­cence of Millet’s ‘Angelus,’  an homage to an ear­li­er work (Jean-François Millet’s paint­ing, “The Angelus”) which enjoyed enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing Dalí’s youth. This ear­li­er work, notes the Dalí’ Muse­um, was “repro­duced on every­thing from prints and post­cards to every­day objects like teacups and inkwells. The late 19th cen­tu­ry paint­ing depicts a peas­ant cou­ple stand­ing in a field with their heads bowed in prayer. For many it was a sen­ti­men­tal work, but for Dalí’ it was trou­bling, with lay­ers of hid­den mean­ing, which he explored through day­dreams and fan­tasies.”

As the artist him­self put it, “I sur­ren­dered myself to a brief fan­ta­sy dur­ing which I imag­ined sculp­tures of the two fig­ures in Millet’s ‘Angelus’ carved out of the high­est rocks.” His for­mi­da­ble imag­i­na­tion con­vert­ed that mid-19th-cen­tu­ry image of rur­al hard­ship and piety into the moon­lit desert land­scape through which “Dreams of Dalí” flies you. Cre­at­ed for “Dis­ney and Dalí: Archi­tects of the Imag­i­na­tion,” an exhib­it at St. Peters­burg, Flori­da’s Dalí Muse­um on the friend­ship and col­lab­o­ra­tion between those two vision­ary 20th-cen­tu­ry world-cre­ators (see Des­ti­no, the short film Dalí and Dis­ney col­lab­o­rat­ed on), the video not only gives the paint­ing a third spa­tial dimen­sion, but a detailed son­ic one fea­tur­ing the god­like voice of Dalí him­self.

If you make use of the arrows that appear in the video’s upper-left cor­ner or click and drag (or, on smart­phones, press and drag with your fin­ger) with­in the frame, you can turn the “cam­era” in any direc­tion. Pay close enough atten­tion, and you’ll spot more than a few touch­es not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal paint­ing that will nonethe­less delight fans of the Dalí sen­si­bil­i­ty, not all of which you can catch on your first flight through. But as much as the expe­ri­ence may feel like a dream — and it counts as one of the few works to real­ly mer­it the term “dream­like” — it won’t van­ish as soon as you emerge from it; you can have at it again and again, see­ing some­thing new and sur­pris­ing each time.

via The Cre­ator’s Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Des­ti­no: See the Col­lab­o­ra­tive Film, Orig­i­nal Sto­ry­boards & Ink Draw­ings

Sal­vador Dalí Goes to Hol­ly­wood & Cre­ates Wild Dream Sequences for Hitch­cock & Vin­cente Min­nel­li

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

Sal­vador Dalí Illus­trates Don Quixote: Two Spaniards with Unique World Views

Sal­vador Dalí’s Haunt­ing 1975 Illus­tra­tions for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juli­et

Sal­vador Dalí Illus­trates Shakespeare’s Mac­beth

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.

Stephen Hawking’s Lectures on Black Holes Now Fully Animated with Chalkboard Illustrations

A quick note: This week, the BBC post­ed the sec­ond of Stephen Hawk­ing’s Rei­th Lec­tures focus­ing on Black Holes. And, once again, they’ve ani­mat­ed the pre­sen­ta­tion with some fun chalk­board illus­tra­tions. You can watch Part 1, “Do Black Holes Have No Hair?” here. And now Part 2, “Black Holes Ain’t as Black as They Are Paint­ed,” above. Hawk­ing is get­ting a lit­tle play­ful with his gram­mar, isn’t he? Enjoy.

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:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Psy­che­del­ic Ani­ma­tion Takes You Inside the Mind of Stephen Hawk­ing

The Big Ideas of Stephen Hawk­ing Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

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“20 Rules For Writing Detective Stories” By S.S. Van Dine, One of T.S. Eliot’s Favorite Genre Authors (1928)

ss dine rules for writing detective fiction

Every gen­er­a­tion, it seems, has its pre­ferred best­selling genre fic­tion. We’ve had fan­ta­sy and, at least in very recent his­to­ry, vam­pire romance keep­ing us read­ing. The fifties and six­ties had their west­erns and sci-fi. And in the for­ties, it won’t sur­prise you to hear, detec­tive fic­tion was all the rage. So much so that—like many an irri­ta­ble con­trar­i­an crit­ic today—esteemed lit­er­ary tastemak­er Edmund Wil­son penned a cranky New York­er piece in 1944 declaim­ing its pop­u­lar­i­ty, writ­ing “at the age of twelve… I was out­grow­ing that form of lit­er­a­ture”; the form, that is, per­fect­ed by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Wilkie Collins, and imi­tat­ed by a host of pulp writ­ers in Wilson’s day. Detec­tive sto­ries, in fact, were in vogue for the first few decades of the 20th century—since the appear­ance of Sher­lock Holmes and a deriv­a­tive 1907 char­ac­ter called “the Think­ing Machine,” respon­si­ble, it seems, for Wilson’s loss of inter­est.

Thus, when Wil­son learned that “of all peo­ple,”Paul Grim­stad writes, T.S. Eliot “was a devot­ed fan of the genre,” he must have been par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­mayed, as he con­sid­ered Eliot “an unim­peach­able author­i­ty in mat­ters of lit­er­ary judg­ment.” Eliot’s tastes were much more ecu­meni­cal than most crit­ics sup­posed, his “atti­tude toward pop­u­lar art forms… more capa­cious and ambiva­lent than he’s often giv­en cred­it for.” The rhythms of rag­time per­vade his ear­ly poet­ry, and “in his lat­er years he want­ed noth­ing more than to have a hit on Broad­way.” (He suc­ceed­ed, six­teen years after his death.) Eliot pep­pered his con­ver­sa­tion and poet­ry with quo­ta­tions from Arthur Conan Doyle and wrote sev­er­al glow­ing reviews of detec­tive nov­els by writ­ers like Dorothy Say­ers and Agatha Christie dur­ing the genre’s “Gold­en Age,” pub­lish­ing them anony­mous­ly in his lit­er­ary jour­nal The Cri­te­ri­on in 1927.

One nov­el that impressed him above all oth­ers is titled The Ben­son Mur­der Case by an Amer­i­can writer named S.S. Van Dine, pen name of an art crit­ic and edi­tor named Willard Hunt­ing­ton Wright. Refer­ring to an emi­nent art his­to­ri­an—whose tastes guid­ed those of the wealthy indus­tri­al class—Eliot wrote that Van Dine used “meth­ods sim­i­lar to those which Bernard Beren­son applies to paint­ings.” He had good rea­son to ascribe to Van Dine a cura­to­r­i­al sen­si­bil­i­ty. After a ner­vous break­down, the writer “spent two years in bed read­ing more than two thou­sand detec­tive sto­ries, dur­ing with time he method­i­cal­ly dis­tilled the genre’s for­mu­las and began writ­ing nov­els.” The year after Eliot’s appre­cia­tive review, Van Dine pub­lished his own set of cri­te­ria for detec­tive fic­tion in a 1928 issue of The Amer­i­can Mag­a­zine. You can read his “Twen­ty Rules for Writ­ing Detec­tive Sto­ries” below. They include such pro­scrip­tions as “There must be no love inter­est” and “The detec­tive him­self, or one of the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tors, should nev­er turn out to be the cul­prit.”

Rules, of course, are made to be bro­ken (just ask G.K. Chester­ton), pro­vid­ed one is clever and expe­ri­enced enough to cir­cum­vent or dis­re­gard them. But the novice detec­tive or mys­tery writer could cer­tain­ly do worse than take the advice below from one of T.S. Eliot’s favorite detec­tive writ­ers. We’d also urge you to see Ray­mond Chan­dler’s 10 Com­mand­ments for Writ­ing Detec­tive Fic­tion.

THE DETECTIVE sto­ry is a kind of intel­lec­tu­al game. It is more — it is a sport­ing event. And for the writ­ing of detec­tive sto­ries there are very def­i­nite laws — unwrit­ten, per­haps, but none the less bind­ing; and every respectable and self-respect­ing con­coc­ter of lit­er­ary mys­ter­ies lives up to them. Here­with, then, is a sort Cre­do, based part­ly on the prac­tice of all the great writ­ers of detec­tive sto­ries, and part­ly on the prompt­ings of the hon­est author’s inner con­science. To wit:

1. The read­er must have equal oppor­tu­ni­ty with the detec­tive for solv­ing the mys­tery. All clues must be plain­ly stat­ed and described.

2. No will­ful tricks or decep­tions may be placed on the read­er oth­er than those played legit­i­mate­ly by the crim­i­nal on the detec­tive him­self.

3. There must be no love inter­est. The busi­ness in hand is to bring a crim­i­nal to the bar of jus­tice, not to bring a lovelorn cou­ple to the hyme­neal altar.

4. The detec­tive him­self, or one of the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tors, should nev­er turn out to be the cul­prit. This is bald trick­ery, on a par with offer­ing some one a bright pen­ny for a five-dol­lar gold piece. It’s false pre­tens­es.

5. The cul­prit must be deter­mined by log­i­cal deduc­tions — not by acci­dent or coin­ci­dence or unmo­ti­vat­ed con­fes­sion. To solve a crim­i­nal prob­lem in this lat­ter fash­ion is like send­ing the read­er on a delib­er­ate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no bet­ter than a prac­ti­cal jok­er.

6. The detec­tive nov­el must have a detec­tive in it; and a detec­tive is not a detec­tive unless he detects. His func­tion is to gath­er clues that will even­tu­al­ly lead to the per­son who did the dirty work in the first chap­ter; and if the detec­tive does not reach his con­clu­sions through an analy­sis of those clues, he has no more solved his prob­lem than the school­boy who gets his answer out of the back of the arith­metic.

7. There sim­ply must be a corpse in a detec­tive nov­el, and the dead­er the corpse the bet­ter. No less­er crime than mur­der will suf­fice. Three hun­dred pages is far too much pother for a crime oth­er than mur­der. After all, the read­er’s trou­ble and expen­di­ture of ener­gy must be reward­ed.

8. The prob­lem of the crime must he solved by strict­ly nat­u­ral­is­tic means. Such meth­ods for learn­ing the truth as slate-writ­ing, oui­ja-boards, mind-read­ing, spir­i­tu­al­is­tic se’ances, crys­tal-gaz­ing, and the like, are taboo. A read­er has a chance when match­ing his wits with a ratio­nal­is­tic detec­tive, but if he must com­pete with the world of spir­its and go chas­ing about the fourth dimen­sion of meta­physics, he is defeat­ed ab ini­tio.

9. There must be but one detec­tive — that is, but one pro­tag­o­nist of deduc­tion — one deus ex machi­na. To bring the minds of three or four, or some­times a gang of detec­tives to bear on a prob­lem, is not only to dis­perse the inter­est and break the direct thread of log­ic, but to take an unfair advan­tage of the read­er. If there is more than one detec­tive the read­er does­n’t know who his cod­e­duc­tor is. It’s like mak­ing the read­er run a race with a relay team.

10. The cul­prit must turn out to be a per­son who has played a more or less promi­nent part in the sto­ry — that is, a per­son with whom the read­er is famil­iar and in whom he takes an inter­est.

11. A ser­vant must not be cho­sen by the author as the cul­prit. This is beg­ging a noble ques­tion. It is a too easy solu­tion. The cul­prit must be a decid­ed­ly worth-while per­son — one that would­n’t ordi­nar­i­ly come under sus­pi­cion.

12. There must be but one cul­prit, no mat­ter how many mur­ders are com­mit­ted. The cul­prit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plot­ter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoul­ders: the entire indig­na­tion of the read­er must be per­mit­ted to con­cen­trate on a sin­gle black nature.

13. Secret soci­eties, camor­ras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detec­tive sto­ry. A fas­ci­nat­ing and tru­ly beau­ti­ful mur­der is irre­me­di­a­bly spoiled by any such whole­sale cul­pa­bil­i­ty. To be sure, the mur­der­er in a detec­tive nov­el should be giv­en a sport­ing chance; but it is going too far to grant him a secret soci­ety to fall back on. No high-class, self-respect­ing mur­der­er would want such odds.

14. The method of mur­der, and the means of detect­ing it, must be be ratio­nal and sci­en­tif­ic. That is to say, pseu­do-sci­ence and pure­ly imag­i­na­tive and spec­u­la­tive devices are not to be tol­er­at­ed in the roman polici­er. Once an author soars into the realm of fan­ta­sy, in the Jules Verne man­ner, he is out­side the bounds of detec­tive fic­tion, cavort­ing in the unchart­ed reach­es of adven­ture.

15. The truth of the prob­lem must at all times be appar­ent — pro­vid­ed the read­er is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the read­er, after learn­ing the expla­na­tion for the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solu­tion had, in a sense, been star­ing him in the face-that all the clues real­ly point­ed to the cul­prit — and that, if he had been as clever as the detec­tive, he could have solved the mys­tery him­self with­out going on to the final chap­ter. That the clever read­er does often thus solve the prob­lem goes with­out say­ing.

16. A detec­tive nov­el should con­tain no long descrip­tive pas­sages, no lit­er­ary dal­ly­ing with side-issues, no sub­tly worked-out char­ac­ter analy­ses, no “atmos­pher­ic” pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. such mat­ters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduc­tion. They hold up the action and intro­duce issues irrel­e­vant to the main pur­pose, which is to state a prob­lem, ana­lyze it, and bring it to a suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion. To be sure, there must be a suf­fi­cient descrip­tive­ness and char­ac­ter delin­eation to give the nov­el verisimil­i­tude.

17. A pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nal must nev­er be shoul­dered with the guilt of a crime in a detec­tive sto­ry. Crimes by house­break­ers and ban­dits are the province of the police depart­ments — not of authors and bril­liant ama­teur detec­tives. A real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing crime is one com­mit­ted by a pil­lar of a church, or a spin­ster not­ed for her char­i­ties.

18. A crime in a detec­tive sto­ry must nev­er turn out to be an acci­dent or a sui­cide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-cli­max is to hood­wink the trust­ing and kind-heart­ed read­er.

19. The motives for all crimes in detec­tive sto­ries should be per­son­al. Inter­na­tion­al plot­tings and war pol­i­tics belong in a dif­fer­ent cat­e­go­ry of fic­tion — in secret-ser­vice tales, for instance. But a mur­der sto­ry must be kept gemütlich, so to speak. It must reflect the read­er’s every­day expe­ri­ences, and give him a cer­tain out­let for his own repressed desires and emo­tions.

20. And (to give my Cre­do an even score of items) I here­with list a few of the devices which no self-respect­ing detec­tive sto­ry writer will now avail him­self of. They have been employed too often, and are famil­iar to all true lovers of lit­er­ary crime. To use them is a con­fes­sion of the author’s inep­ti­tude and lack of orig­i­nal­i­ty. (a) Deter­min­ing the iden­ti­ty of the cul­prit by com­par­ing the butt of a cig­a­rette left at the scene of the crime with the brand smoked by a sus­pect. (b) The bogus spir­i­tu­al­is­tic se’ance to fright­en the cul­prit into giv­ing him­self away. © Forged fin­ger­prints. (d) The dum­my-fig­ure ali­bi. (e) The dog that does not bark and there­by reveals the fact that the intrud­er is famil­iar. (f)The final pin­ning of the crime on a twin, or a rel­a­tive who looks exact­ly like the sus­pect­ed, but inno­cent, per­son. (g) The hypo­der­mic syringe and the knock­out drops. (h) The com­mis­sion of the mur­der in a locked room after the police have actu­al­ly bro­ken in. (i) The word asso­ci­a­tion test for guilt. (j) The cipher, or code let­ter, which is even­tu­al­ly unrav­eled by the sleuth.

You can find S.S. Van Dine’s detec­tive nov­els on Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray­mond Chandler’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Writ­ing a Detec­tive Nov­el

H.P. Love­craft Gives Five Tips for Writ­ing a Hor­ror Sto­ry, or Any Piece of “Weird Fic­tion”

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

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

The Very First Coloring Book, The Little Folks’ Painting Book (Circa 1879)

The_Little_Folks_Paint_Book

Fun­ny how not that long ago col­or­ing books were con­sid­ered the exclu­sive domain of chil­dren. How times have changed. If you are the sort of adult who unwinds with a big box of Cray­olas and pages of man­dalas or out­lines of Ryan Gosling, you owe a debt of grat­i­tude to the McLough­lin Broth­ers and illus­tra­tor Kate Green­away.

First Coloring Book 1

Their Lit­tle Folks’ Paint­ing Book burst onto the scene in around 1879 with such fun-to-col­or out­line engrav­ings as “The Owl’s Advice,” “A Flower Fairy,” and “Lit­tle Miss Pride,” each accom­pa­nied by nurs­ery rhymes and sto­ries. The abun­dance of mob caps, pinafores, and breech­es are of a piece with Green­away’s endur­ing takes on nurs­ery rhymes, though grown up man­u­al dex­ter­i­ty seems almost manda­to­ry giv­en the tiny pat­terns and oth­er details.

First Coloring Book 2

See­ing as how there was no prece­dent, the pub­lish­ers of the world’s first col­or­ing book went ahead and filled in the fron­tispiece so that those tack­ling the oth­er hun­dred draw­ings would know what to do. (Hint: Stay inside the lines and don’t get too cre­ative with skin or hair col­or.)

First Coloring Book 3

Also note: the copy rep­re­sent­ed here has been care­ful­ly hand-col­ored by the pre­vi­ous own­ers, with one con­tribut­ing some exu­ber­ant scrib­bles in pen­cil. See the full book, and down­load it in var­i­ous for­mats, at Archive.org.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: The New York Pub­lic Library, Bodleian, Smith­son­ian & More

The First Adult Col­or­ing Book: See the Sub­ver­sive Exec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book From 1961

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Free Coloring Books from World-Class Libraries & Museums: The New York Public Library, Bodleian, Smithsonian & More

coloring book 1

In ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2016, muse­ums and libraries world­wide took part in #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions–a cam­paign where they made avail­able free col­or­ing books, let­ting you col­or art­work from their col­lec­tions and then share it on Twit­ter and oth­er social media plat­forms, using the hash­tag #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions. Below you can find a col­lec­tion of free col­or­ing books, which you can down­load and con­tin­ue to enjoy. If you see any that we’re miss­ing, please let us know in the com­ments, and we’ll do our best to update the page.

You can find a list of oth­er par­tic­i­pants on Twit­ter. The image above comes from The Hunt­ing­ton. Hap­py col­or­ing.

H/T goes to Heather for mak­ing us aware of this project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Adult Col­or­ing Book: See the Sub­ver­sive­Ex­ec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book From 1961

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

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