Explore 1400 Paintings & Drawings by Vincent van Gogh–and Much More–at the Van Gogh Museum’s Online Collection

in Art, Museums | October 28th, 2019

Read­ers will receive no prizes for guess­ing what they’ll find, broad­ly speak­ing, at the Van Gogh Muse­um. But they may well be sur­prised by the full scope of the Van Gogh and Van Gogh-relat­ed work and infor­ma­tion on offer for their free perusal at the Van Gogh Muse­um’s online col­lec­tion. Nat­u­ral­ly, you can view and learn about all of the paint­ings and draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh in the col­lec­tion, includ­ing some of his best-known pieces like The Pota­to Eaters, a scene of “the harsh real­i­ty of coun­try life” the artist delib­er­ate­ly chose for its dif­fi­cul­ty; The Bed­room (or Bed­room in Arles), with its bright col­ors “meant to express absolute ‘repose’ or ‘sleep’”; and, paint­ed between 1886 and 1889, no few­er than 21 self-por­traits, includ­ing Self-Por­trait with Ban­daged Ear, the face we think of when we think of van Gogh him­self.

For van Gogh’s most famous series of flo­ral still-life paint­ings the Van Gogh Muse­um’s online col­lec­tion goes much deep­er, offer­ing an entire sec­tion of its site ded­i­cat­ed to “every­thing about Sun­flowers.”

Among its sub­sec­tions you’ll find the sto­ry of how van Gogh “paint­ed sun­flow­ers as no one before him had ever done,” a look into the con­ser­va­tion of one of the most frag­ile of the artist’s mas­ter­pieces, and even a for-the-young-and-young-at-heart Sun­flow­ers col­or­ing-book page. If you get through all that and still feel your appetite for post-impres­sion­ist ren­der­ings of Helianthus not ful­ly sati­at­ed, the col­lec­tion’s cura­tors also offer a link to van Gogh’s oth­er depic­tions of sun­flow­ers, from Shed with Sun­flow­ers to Sun­flow­ers Gone to Seed.

Online or off, col­lec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the work of a sin­gle artist some­times suf­fer tun­nel vision, pro­vid­ing a wealth of detail about the life and the mas­ter­pieces, but lit­tle in the way of con­text. The Van Gogh Muse­um does­n’t, hav­ing put on view not just van Gogh’s work, but also that of the Japan­ese wood­block mak­ers from whom he drew inspi­ra­tion (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) as well as that of more recent artists who have drawn their own inspi­ra­tion from van Gogh: Britain’s Jason Brooks, Chi­na’s Zeng Fanzhi, and the Nether­lands’ own Pieter Lau­rens Mol, to say noth­ing of the likes of Edvard Munch and Fran­cis Bacon. Else­where you can even explore “the Parisian print world of the 19th cen­tu­ry,” a “peri­od of artis­tic inno­va­tion and deca­dence” that did more than its part to shape van Gogh’s sen­si­bil­i­ty. As the Van Gogh Muse­um clear­ly under­stands, to know an artist requires immers­ing your­self not just in their work, but in their world as well. Enter the van Gogh online col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

13 of Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

A Com­plete Archive of Vin­cent van Gogh’s Let­ters: Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed and Ful­ly Anno­tat­ed

Van Gogh’s Ugli­est Mas­ter­piece: A Break Down of His Late, Great Paint­ing, The Night Café (1888)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch 700 Videos Nostalgia-Inducing Videos from the Early Days of MTV

in Music, Television | October 28th, 2019

‘We’re gonna do for TV what FM did for radio’–Mark Good­man, the first ever MTV VJ.

When I was grow­ing up, MTV was that rare com­mod­i­ty. Not all cable providers had it, and those that did charged an extra fee to get it. That meant there were cer­tain kids in school that we were friends with just because their par­ents had it. (Sor­ry Tom, no hard feel­ings!)

This exhaus­tive (and some­times exhaust­ing) YouTube playlist offers 710 videos that were sta­ples of the chan­nel in its 1980s hey­day, right through the ‘90s when it slow­ly mor­phed into a lifestyle chan­nel and VH‑1 and then M2 picked up the slack of end­less­ly rotat­ing mem­o­ries.

Music videos had been around long before MTV. From Sco­pi­tones to the Bea­t­les’ pro­mo films for “Pen­ny Lane” and such, visu­als and pop music were nat­ur­al allies. And through the ‘70s and ear­ly ‘80s, music pro­grams mixed live stu­dio per­for­mances with videos often. But not 24/7 often. And not, as the the first VJs pro­claimed on August 1, 1981, in *stereo*. This was a big deal for a lot of peo­ple.

After intro­duc­ing the crew one at a time–Mark Good­man, Alan Hunter, Martha Quinn, J.J. Jack­son, and Nina Black­wood, all soon to become house­hold names–the first video rolled: The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Ear­ly view­ers soon dis­cov­ered this how­ev­er: MTV didn’t real­ly have a lot of videos, and in that first year, cer­tain ones got played more than their pop­u­lar­i­ty deserved. (They seemed to play Saga’s “On the Loose” once every hour.) The oth­er thing view­ers noticed: there was a lot, a LOT of hard rock and Adult Ori­ent­ed Rock as they used to say in radio mar­ket­ing. After the new wave of the Bug­gles came Pat Benatar, Rod Stew­art, REO Speed­wag­on, Styx, .38 Spe­cial, April Wine, Ger­ry Raf­fer­ty. (To be fair, there was also The Cars, Split Enz (!), and The Pre­tenders.

And then there were the pre­dom­i­nant­ly white faces in all the videos. MTV was designed to appeal to rock fans and not, ahem, “urban lis­ten­ers”. Elec­tron­ic music, dance music, r’n’b, and oth­er gen­res were notice­ably absent. (It took pub­lic sham­ing by David Bowie and the unde­ni­able pop jug­ger­nauts of Michael Jack­son and Prince to change that.)

By 1982, the chan­nel had expand­ed for many rea­sons. One of them was the amount of bril­liant videos com­ing out of the UK, shot by direc­tors who seemed to real­ly get the poten­tial of the art form. Tim Pope, Rus­sell Mulc­ahy (who shot most of Duran Duran’s videos), and the duo of Annabel Jankel and Rocky Mor­ton brought in a knowl­edge of film his­to­ry, ani­ma­tion, and sur­re­al­ism to their videos, which com­ple­ment­ed the mix and match fash­ion of the New Roman­tics.

But on both sides of the Atlantic, artists were real­iz­ing the poten­tial of the visu­al ele­ment to their entire iden­ti­ties. Plus, there was mon­ey. Lots and lots of mon­ey. (Some of it even went to the musi­cians!)

As the ‘80s came to a close, MTV had changed music cul­ture for bet­ter and for worse. It had ded­i­cat­ed pro­grams to rap music, to alter­na­tive music, to heavy met­al, and turned Spring Break into a rite of pas­sage. And there were still some good years left in it.

Music videos are every­where on YouTube now, but atom­ized just like every­thing else. You forge your own path as you go down the rab­bit hole. They still have the pow­er to shock, like last year’s “This Is Amer­i­ca” by Child­ish Gam­bi­no, or unite the coun­try very briefly like “Old Town Road” by Lil NasX. But what is miss­ing, real­ly, is that rep­e­ti­tion. We all knew what Michael Jack­son looked like because “Bil­ly Jean” and “Thriller” were on our TVs all the time. Same with Madon­na. Now we know our stars from their social media, from their mag­a­zine spreads, from their live shows, and some­times, just some­times, from these lit­tle music films that used to be the cen­ter of the uni­verse.

Watch the com­plete playlist of 700 ear­ly MTV videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Bowie Take MTV to Task for Fail­ing to Play Music Videos by Black Artists (1983)

Watch Queen’s Drag­tas­tic “I Want to Break Free” Video: It Was More Than Amer­i­ca & MTV Could Han­dle (1984)

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

David Fincher’s Five Finest Music Videos: From Madon­na to Aero­smith

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. 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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Salvador Dalí’s Tarot Cards Get Re-Issued: The Occult Meets Surrealism in a Classic Tarot Card Deck

in Art, Books | October 26th, 2019

Tarot began as a card game and became a tool of occult div­ina­tion. In that form, with its usu­al­ly elab­o­rate illus­tra­tions, the tarot deck found a major cul­tur­al role as an art object: here on Open Cul­ture we’ve fea­tured decks either designed or inspired by the likes of Aleis­ter Crow­ley, H.R. Giger, Philip K. Dick, and Sal­vador Dalí. That last, whose lim­it­ed edi­tion was pub­lished in 1984, has proven to be enough of an object of desire to gain the atten­tion of Taschen, the pub­lish­er of visu­al­ly (and often, in terms of dimen­sions and weight, phys­i­cal­ly) inten­sive pho­to and art books. Next month they’re bring­ing out a new edi­tion of Dalí’s tarot deck, boxed with a com­pan­ion book by tarot schol­ar Johannes Fiebig.

“Leg­end has it that when prepar­ing props for the James Bond film Live and Let Die, pro­duc­er Albert Broc­coli com­mis­sioned Sur­re­al­ist mae­stro Sal­vador Dalí to cre­ate a cus­tom deck of tarot cards,” says Taschen’s descrip­tion of the prod­uct. (Bond fans will remem­ber Jane Sey­mour as Soli­taire, the tarot read­er whom Roger Moore fate­ful­ly encoun­ters ear­ly in the pic­ture.)

Even though Dalí and Broc­coli ulti­mate­ly could­n’t come to an agree­ment — not least over the amount of mon­ey upon which the artist insist­ed — Dalí decid­ed to see the work through to com­ple­tion on his own.

As Josh Jones not­ed when we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Dalí’s tarot, the ear­ly 1970s was an aus­pi­cious time for such a project: “The occult inter­ests of the 60s coun­ter­cul­ture were main­streamed in the 70s thanks to books like Stu­art Kaplan’s Tarot Cards for Fun and For­tune Telling,” and Dalí had suc­cess­ful­ly tapped the mys­ti­cal zeit­geist not long before with his illus­tra­tions for a 1969 edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land. Draw­ing from all the West­ern art that came before his own, Dalí cre­at­ed a tarot deck that Taschen can now pitch as a “sur­re­al kalei­do­scope of Euro­pean art his­to­ry,” a kind of psy­che­del­ic course in West­ern civ­i­liza­tion pre­sent­ed across 78 cards. Dalí also worked him­self in, mak­ing an appear­ance as the Magi­cian and the King of Pen­ta­cles, and includ­ing his wife Gala — whose inter­est in mys­ti­cism sure­ly encour­aged her hus­band’s own enthu­si­asm for the project — as the Empress.

Any­one who has had an inter­est in Dalí’s work (and a lack of will­ing­ness to pay pre­mi­um prices for those first edi­tions) will find them­selves intrigued by Taschen’s Dalí Tarot. Those unfa­mil­iar with the rules of the tarot can rest assured that the com­pan­ion book, in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing sto­ries about the deck­’s con­cep­tion, also includes Fiebig’s expla­na­tions of the mean­ings of the cards as well as how to per­form read­ings with them. Per­ceived cor­rect­ly, so enthu­si­asts say, the cards of the tarot open a win­dow onto an alter­nate per­cep­tion of real­i­ty — a sim­i­lar­i­ty with Dalí’s art hard­ly lost on the artist him­self. Order a copy (set to be released on Novem­ber 15) here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Sal­vador Dalí’s Illus­tra­tions for The Bible (1963)

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Sal­vador Dalí’s Avant-Garde Christ­mas Cards

Take a Close Look at Basquiat’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Art in a New 500-Page, 14-Pound, Large For­mat Book by TASCHEN

Andy Warhol’s Sev­en Hand-Illus­trat­ed Books: Charm­ing, Lit­tle-Known, and Now Avail­able to the World (1952–1959)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Joni Mitchell Publishes a Book of Her Rarely Seen Paintings & Poetry

in Art, Books, Music, Poetry | October 26th, 2019

Self Portrait.”Art work by Joni Mitchell, from “Morn­ing Glo­ry on the Vine” / Cour­tesy Houghton Mif­flin Har­court

Joni Mitchell is a woman of many talents—too many for the label “singer-song­writer” to encom­pass. It does not cap­ture the lit­er­ary depth of her lyri­cism, the unique strength of her dis­tinc­tive voice, or the deft­ness and ver­sa­til­i­ty of her gui­tar play­ing. Nor the fact that she’s one of the most inter­est­ing per­son­al­i­ties in rock (or folk-rock­/­folk/­folk-jazz, what­ev­er). Mitchell’s biog­ra­phy is riv­et­ing; her chat­ty and can­tan­ker­ous inter­views a treat.

And, if you some­how didn’t know from her many album cov­ers, Mitchell is also an accom­plished visu­al artist. “I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by cir­cum­stance,” she said in 2000. “I sing my sor­row and I paint my joy.” It’s a great quote, though she also sings her joy and paints sorrow—as in the por­trait of her hero, Miles Davis, made just after his death. (Davis was a painter too, and they bond­ed over art.)

Mitchell began sell­ing her work “when I was in high school to den­tists, doctors—small time,” she told Rolling Stone in 1990. She has writ­ten poet­ry since her teenage years. Her imag­is­tic song­writ­ing came from a love of lit­er­ary lan­guage. “I wrote poet­ry,” she says, “and I always want­ed to make music. But I nev­er put the two things togeth­er,” until she heard Dylan’s “Pos­i­tive­ly Fourth Street” and real­ized “you could make your songs lit­er­a­ture.”

Painter, poet, singer, song­writer, guitarist—all of the artis­tic sides of Mitchell have min­gled through­out her career in the visu­al splen­dor of her cov­ers, com­po­si­tions, and lyrics. They also came togeth­er in a rare 1971 book. After the release of Blue, Mitchell “gath­ered more than thir­ty draw­ings and water­col­ors in a ring binder and paired them with hand­writ­ten lyrics and bits of poet­ry,” writes Aman­da Petru­sich at The New York­er.

She had the book hand­bound in an edi­tion of 100 copies and gave it to friends for the hol­i­days, call­ing it “The Christ­mas Book.” Now it has a dif­fer­ent title, Morn­ing Glo­ry on the Vine, for a new edi­tion to be released Octo­ber 22nd. Part of the exten­sive cel­e­bra­tions for Mitchell’s 75th birth­day, this edi­tion ful­fills a decade-long desire for the artist. “I always want­ed to redo it and sim­pli­fy the pre­sen­ta­tion,” she tells Petru­sich. “Work is meant to be seen.”

The col­lec­tion “feels con­so­nant with Mitchell’s song­writ­ing” in that it cap­tures “tan­ta­liz­ing details about home,” in this case the home in Lau­rel Canyon that she shared with Gra­ham Nash, the inspi­ra­tion for the Cros­by, Stills & Nash song “Our House.” Still life com­po­si­tions and self-por­traits, both “vivid” and “inti­mate,” com­ple­ment her vul­ner­a­ble, play­ful, “fun­ny and weird,” lyrics and vers­es. You can see more of the paint­ings from Morn­ing Glo­ry on the Vine at The New York­er and order a copy of the book here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Clas­sic Per­for­mances of Joni Mitchell from the Very Ear­ly Years–Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell (1965/66)

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

Songs by Joni Mitchell Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers & Vin­tage Movie Posters

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

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Beautiful New Photo Book Documents Patti Smith’s Breakthrough Years in Music: Features Hundreds of Unseen Photographs

in Music, Photography | October 25th, 2019

Pat­ti Smith is always sur­pris­ing her fans with new work and new oppor­tu­ni­ties to admire her com­mit­ment to art and activism. If she isn’t pub­lish­ing anoth­er mem­oir, or lead­ing 250 peo­ple in a protest song, she’s show­ing her pho­tographs, which she’s tak­en since the 60s, with Polaroid cam­eras and a Ger­man Minox 35EL. “I am not a pho­tog­ra­ph­er,” she says, “yet tak­ing pic­tures has giv­en me a sense of uni­ty and per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion. They are relics of my life. Sou­venirs of my wan­der­ing.” She sur­prised her fans once again by putting her trea­sury of pic­tures on Insta­gram.

But as com­fort­able as Smith has been behind the cam­era, she has been even more relaxed in front of it: “wide­ly regard­ed as a style icon,” writes Stephanie Eckardt at W mag­a­zine, “she’s been a mag­net for pho­tog­ra­phers almost imme­di­ate­ly” after she arrived in New York “to hang around CBG­B’s and pose for Robert Map­plethor­pe.”

She appeared in plen­ty of pho­tos with Map­plethor­pe when the two were just kids. Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Frank Ste­fanko cap­tured her bohemi­an loung­ing in the 60s and 70s in stark black and white. (When he first encoun­tered her in South Jer­sey, he says, she looked like “the bad guy walk­ing into a saloon in an old West­ern movie.”)

“There are many pho­tog­ra­phers who have pho­tographed Pat­ti who are won­der­ful artists,” writes Lynn Gold­smith, whose own strik­ing pho­to­graph­ic record of Smith’s career is now being pub­lished in a new book by Taschen titled Before East­er After. Unlike Gold­smith, how­ev­er, “they did not do doc­u­men­tary as well as con­cert as well as stu­dio work with her. So that enabled Pat­ti and I to have a nar­ra­tive in the book that we could share with peo­ple of what was going on at that time.”

Smith describes what was going on with her usu­al casu­al lyri­cism:

We traipsed the path of rock ‘n’ roll, savour­ing its swag­ger, yet dodg­ing the pit­falls. [Lynn] wit­nessed for­ma­tive nights at CBG­Bs, gain­ing ground across Amer­i­ca, my acci­dent in a Tam­pa are­na, and the strug­gle to rise again.

She refers to her fall off­stage in 1977 while the band toured their album Radio Ethiopia. She broke her neck and spent the year recov­er­ing. Gold­smith cap­tured the trag­ic event: “I saw her near­ing the edge of the stage, but I thought she knew what she was doing because she always did this turn­ing dervish on that song, where she spun and spun and spun.”  The fol­low­ing year, the band released East­er, their third and “most wide­ly known and dis­trib­uted” album, notes AnOth­er, and Gold­smith ner­vous­ly shot Smith onstage at CBG­Bs in a neck brace.

The pho­tog­ra­ph­er sur­prised Smith by ask­ing her long­time friend Sam Shep­ard to write a poem for the book inspired by the 1977 pho­to above. And at the book’s Octo­ber 8th launch par­ty, which includ­ed Hen­ry Rollins, Rosan­na Arquette, Moon Zap­pa, and John Dens­more, Smith sur­prised her 150 guests by play­ing a set of songs “inspired by Goldsmith’s pre­vi­ous unseen pho­tographs of the trans­for­ma­tive peri­od doc­u­ment­ed in the book,” writes Taschen. “She end­ed her set with her best-known hit ‘Because the Night’ from the album East­er… joined in song by every per­son in the room.”

The book is avail­able in a pricey edi­tion from Taschen. Here’s hop­ing they’ll sur­prise Pat­ti Smith fans for the hol­i­days with a paper­back.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith, The God­moth­er of Punk, Is Now Putting Her Pic­tures on Insta­gram

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

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

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A 108-Year-Old Woman Recalls What It Was Like to Be a Woman in Victorian England

in History, Life, Television | October 25th, 2019

The per­ils of old age—demen­tia, eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty, social iso­la­tion—are receiv­ing a lot of atten­tion these days.

How refresh­ing to spend three min­utes in the com­pa­ny of a sharp-wit­ted 108-year-old, who, respond­ing to a ques­tion about what life was like for women in Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, acts out a cou­ple of social­ly rel­e­vant, peri­od Punch car­toons, delib­er­ate­ly draw­ing atten­tion to her shock­ing­ly well-pre­served ankles in the process.

Flo­rence Pan­nell was born in Lon­don in 1868, 3 years after the US abol­ished slav­ery and eleven before the advent of the elec­tric light­bulb.

Her appear­ance on Thames Television’s Mon­ey-Go-Round pro­gram appears to be her only pub­lic record­ing. The Kens­ing­ton Post cap­tured her leav­ing her polling place, after cast­ing her bal­lot in a 1971 elec­tion at the age of 102.

It’s a pity there’s not more of an online pres­ence, as this cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­teller clear­ly rel­ish­es the oppor­tu­ni­ty to revis­it the past.

A pity too, that she was stuck with a dud of an inter­view­er, Joan Shen­ton, who has gone on to find fame as a promi­nent AIDS denial­ist.

The AIDS cri­sis is one event of glob­al his­tor­i­cal impor­tance that Mrs. Pan­nell missed—barely—she died in 1980, a few months shy of her 112th birth­day.

We learn that she found­ed a suc­cess­ful beau­ty care busi­ness that took her to Paris for a time, but oth­er than that, the details of her pri­vate life are left to our spec­u­la­tion. She was mar­ried. Did she have chil­dren, and if so, did she sur­vive them?

Did she ever get the chance to go up in an air­plane? As of 1977, she hadn’t, but was open to the idea, imply­ing that the risk had out­weighed the poten­tial thrill in the ear­ly days of avi­a­tion.

Most strik­ing is her hearty reply con­cern­ing the biggest change she had wit­nessed over the years:

Every­thing! Noth­ing is the same! Everything’s changed!

Some of the mile­stones she was alive for, as not­ed by var­i­ous YouTube and Red­dit com­menters:

The coro­na­tion of the five mon­archs to fol­low Queen Vic­to­ria: Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Eliz­a­beth II (whose 93 years on the plan­et she makes seem mar­gin­al­ly less impres­sive)

Jack the Ripper’s ter­ror­iza­tion of Lon­don

The sink­ing of the Titan­ic

Both World Wars

The Great Depres­sion

The tele­phone

Tele­vi­sion

The hip­pie move­ment

The moon land­ing

Star Wars

Anoth­er com­menter sug­gest­ed that it would have been math­e­mat­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble for Mrs. Pan­nell to have heard sto­ries about Napoleon at her grandpa’s knee.

Read­ers, what are you bog­gled by, with regard to the sig­nif­i­cant events tran­spir­ing with­in this woman’s life­time?

(And for those curi­ous as to her for­mi­da­ble accent, there’s a wealth of lin­guis­tic infor­ma­tion here.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s Advice For How (Not) to Grow Old: “Make Your Inter­ests Grad­u­al­ly Wider and More Imper­son­al”

You’re Only As Old As You Feel: Har­vard Psy­chol­o­gist Ellen Langer Shows How Men­tal Atti­tude Can Poten­tial­ly Reverse the Effects of Aging

Meet Vio­la Smith, the World’s Old­est Drum­mer: Her Career Start­ed in the 1930s, and She’s Still Play­ing at 106

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Flowchart of Philosophical Novels: Reading Recommendations from Haruki Murakami to Don DeLillo

in Literature, Philosophy | October 25th, 2019

Do you want to read a philo­soph­i­cal nov­el? Sure, we all do. But the ques­tion of exact­ly what kind of philo­soph­i­cal nov­el you want to read, let alone which indi­vid­ual book, isn’t quite so eas­i­ly answered. But now a pro­fes­sion­al has come to the res­cue: “Ben Roth, a philoso­pher who teach­es in the Har­vard Col­lege Writ­ing Pro­gram, has put togeth­er a kind of flow­chart rec­om­mend­ing philo­soph­i­cal nov­els and sto­ries,” reports Dai­ly Nous’ Justin Wein­berg. “With cat­e­gories like ‘about a philoso­pher,’ ‘by a Ph.D.,’ ‘hor­ror,’ ‘the com­pli­ca­tions of his­to­ry,’ and many more, the chart is pret­ty big.”

The choic­es you make in nav­i­gat­ing it could land you on the work of a writer from one of a vari­ety of coun­tries, one of sev­er­al eras, and one of a capa­cious range of def­i­n­i­tions of “philo­soph­i­cal.” If you take the word in the sense of a nov­el­’s being about or steeped in the work of a par­tic­u­lar philoso­pher, Roth rec­om­mends books like Thomas Bern­hard’s Cor­rec­tion (Wittgen­stein) and Teju Cole’s Open City (Ben­jamin and Barthes). Else­where on the map he also includes nov­els writ­ten by philo­soph­i­cal­ly cre­den­tialed aca­d­e­mics like William Gass, Iris Mur­doch, and Anuk Arud­pra­gasam.

If you pre­fer nov­els where “fic­tion writ­ers drop into straight essay­is­tic mode,” Roth offers a choice between the easy mode of Milan Kun­der­a’s The Unbear­able Light­ness of Being and the hard mode of Robert Musil’s The Man With­out Qual­i­ties. (If you just want­ed to read about a bunch of phi­los­o­phy stu­dents, well, there’s always Don­na Tart­t’s The Secret His­to­ry.)

To those who go in for more “nov­el­ly nov­els,” as Geoff Dyer (a known Bern­hard enthu­si­ast and author of some pret­ty philo­soph­i­cal fic­tion him­self) mem­o­rably put it, Roth presents more forks in the road: Would you like to read sci­ence fic­tion? Exis­ten­tial­ism? Post­mod­ernism? A book free of ‑isms entire­ly, or any­way as free as pos­si­ble?

Your answers to those ques­tions and oth­ers could have you read­ing any­thing from J.G. Bal­lard’s Crash (“body hor­ror”) to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nau­sea (“mid-cen­tu­ry French clas­sic”) to David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s Infi­nite Jest (post­mod­ern, ency­clo­pe­dic, on addic­tion). Oth­er choic­es may lead you to selec­tions less obvi­ous­ly involved with phi­los­o­phy: J.M. Coet­zee’s Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians, or Vir­ginia Woolf’s To the Light­house, Haru­ki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Won­der­land and the End of the World. Of course, you may not want to read a philo­soph­i­cal nov­el at all: you may want to read philo­soph­i­cal short sto­ries, in which case Roth rec­om­mends such form-defin­ing fig­ures as Edgar Allan Poe, writer of “dis­turb­ing sto­ries”; Lydia Davis, writer of “short sto­ries” (empha­sis his); and Jorge Luis Borges, writer of “awe-induc­ing sto­ries.”

Borges and quite a few oth­er names on Roth’s philo­soph­i­cal-nov­el flow­chart also appear in crit­ic David Auer­bach’s “Inquest on Left-Brained Lit­er­a­ture,” a reveal­ing look at the authors read by “engi­neers with a lit­er­ary bent.” Both also include Don DeLil­lo, whose work Auer­bach char­ac­ter­izes as mak­ing “heavy use of phan­tas­mago­ria, com­ple­ment­ed by very sophis­ti­cat­ed nar­ra­tive con­struc­tion,” and “sim­ple, vis­cer­al, clas­si­cal themes approached in [a] flashy, nov­el way.” Roth, for his part, describes DeLil­lo’s White Noise as his “favorite book ever.” Else­where on the flow­chart, to the philo­soph­i­cal lit­er­a­ture enthu­si­ast who’s read every­thing he offers “the most under­rat­ed philo­soph­i­cal nov­el of all time,” Dino Buz­za­ti’s The Tar­tar Steppe. No, I haven’t heard of it either, but I have to admit that it keeps good com­pa­ny.

via Dai­ly Nous

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Per­son­al Library

A Clock­work Orange Author Antho­ny Burgess Lists His Five Favorite Dystopi­an Nov­els: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & More

R. Crumb Illus­trates Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nau­sea: Exis­ten­tial­ism Meets Under­ground Comics

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Emi­nent Philoso­phers Name the 43 Most Impor­tant Phi­los­o­phy Books Writ­ten Between 1950–2000: Wittgen­stein, Fou­cault, Rawls & More

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Pretty Much Pop #16 Considers the Sitcom “Friends” 25 Years Later

in Pretty Much Pop, Television | October 25th, 2019

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt exam­ine the con­ven­tions, tech­niques, and stay­ing pow­er of the beloved ’90s sit­com. Are we sup­posed to iden­ti­fy with, or idol­ize, or mere­ly like these peo­ple? What makes the for­mu­la work, did it sus­tain itself over its 10-year run, was it suc­cess­ful­ly repli­cat­ed (like by How I Met Your Moth­er or by Chuck Lorre?), and what parts haven’t aged well?

We reviewed a ton of arti­cles to prep for this that you may want to read:

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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