F. Scott Fitzgerald Creates a List of 22 Essential Books (1936)

in Books, Literature | October 24th, 2019

In 1936 — perhaps the darkest year of his life — F. Scott Fitzgerald was convalescing in a hotel in Asheville, North Carolina, when he offered his nurse a list of 22 books he thought were essential reading. The list, above, is written in the nurse’s hand.

Fitzgerald had moved into Asheville’s Grove Park Inn that April after transferring his wife Zelda, a psychiatric patient, to nearby Highland Hospital. It was the same month that Esquire published his essay “The Crack Up”, in which he confessed to a growing awareness that “my life had been a drawing on resources that I did not possess, that I had been mortgaging myself physically and spiritually up to the hilt.”

Fitzgerald’s financial and drinking problems had reached a critical stage. That summer he fractured his shoulder while diving into the hotel swimming pool, and sometime later, according to Michael Cody at the University of South Carolina’s Fitzgerald Web site, “he fired a revolver in a suicide threat, after which the hotel refused to let him stay without a nurse. He was attended thereafter by Dorothy Richardson, whose chief duties were to provide him company and try to keep him from drinking too much. In typical Fitzgerald fashion, he developed a friendship with Miss Richardson and attempted to educate her by providing her with a reading list.”

It’s a curious list. Shakespeare is omitted. So is James Joyce. But Norman Douglas and Arnold Bennett make the cut. Fitzgerald appears to have restricted his selections to books that were available at that time in Modern Library editions. At the top of the page, Richardson writes “These are books that Scott thought should be required reading.”

Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser
The Life of Jesus, by Ernest Renan
A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen
Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson
The Old Wives’ Tale, by Arnold Bennett
The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiel Hammett
The Red and the Black, by Stendhal
The Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant, translated by Michael Monahan
An Outline of Abnormal Psychology, edited by Gardner Murphy
The Stories of Anton Chekhov, edited by Robert N. Linscott
The Best American Humorous Short Stories, edited by Alexander Jessup
Victory, by Joseph Conrad
The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France
The Plays of Oscar Wilde
Sanctuary, by William Faulkner
Within a Budding Grove, by Marcel Proust
The Guermantes Way, by Marcel Proust
Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust
South Wind, by Norman Douglas
The Garden Party, by Katherine Mansfield
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete Poetical Works

via The University of South Carolina

Seven Tips From F. Scott Fitzgerald on How to Write Fiction

Rare Footage of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald From the 1920s

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Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Interactive Map That Catalogues the 700,000 Trees Shading the Streets of New York City

in Data, Environment, Maps, Nature | October 23rd, 2019

It may sound odd, but one of the things I miss most about living in New York City is the ability to hop on a bus or train, or walk a few blocks from home, and end up lounging in a forest, the cacophony of traffic reduced to a dim hum, squirrels bounding around, birds twittering away above. Such urban respites are plentiful in NYC thanks to its 10,542 acres of forested land, “about half as much as the Congaree Swamp in South Carolina,” notes James Barron at The New York Times, in one of the most densely populated urban areas in the country.

“Most of the city’s forest is deep in parks”—in Central Park, of course, and also Prospect Park and Riverside, and dozens of smaller oases, and the lush Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. The city’s forests are subject to the usual pressures other wooded areas face: climate change, invasive species, etc.

They are also dependent on a well-funded Parks Department and nonprofits like the Natural Areas Conservancy for the preservation and upkeep not only of the large parks but of the trees that shade city streets in all five boroughs.

Luckily, the city and nonprofit groups have been working together to plan for what the conservancy’s senior ecologist, Helen Forgione, calls “future forests,” using big data to map out the best paths for urban woodland. The NYC Parks department has been busy compiling figures, and you can find all of their tree stats at the New York City Street Tree Map, which “brings New York City’s urban forest to your fingertips. For the first time,” the Parks department writes, “you have access to information about every street tree in New York City.”

Large forested parks on the interactive map appear as flat green fields—the department has not counted each individual tree in Central Park. But the map gives us fine, granular detail when it comes to street trees, allowing users to zoom in to every intersection and click on colored dots that represent each tree, for example lining Avenue D in the East Village or Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. You can search specific locations or comb through citywide statistics for the big picture. At the time of this writing, the project has mapped 694,249 trees, much of that work undertaken by volunteers in the TreesCount! 2015 initiative.

There are many more trees yet to map, and the department’s forestry team updates the site daily. Out of 234 species identified, the most common is the London Planetree, representing 12% of the trees on the map. Other popular species include the Littleleaf Linden, Norway Maple, Pin Oak, and Ginko. Some other stats show the ecological benefits of urban trees, including the amount of energy conserved (667,590,884 kWh, or $84,279,933.06) and amount of carbon dioxide reduced (612,100 tons).

Visit the New York City Street Tree Map for the full, virtual tour of the city’s trees, and marvel—if you haven’t experienced the city’s vibrant tree life firsthand—at just how green the empire city’s streets really are.

New York City: A Social History (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.)

The Secret Language of Trees: A Charming Animated Lesson Explains How Trees Share Information with Each Other

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Night When John Coltrane Soloed in a Bathroom and David Crosby, High as a Kite, Nearly Lost His Mind

in Film, Music | October 23rd, 2019

David Crosby is not only one of rock’s great songwriters; he is also one of rock’s great raconteurs—always ready with a story, told as only he can tell it, about life in not just one, but two of the most influential bands of the 1960s, the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash and sometimes Young. Few people have lived a life as colorful as his and lived to tell about it. Even fewer possess Crosby’s wit and eye for detail.

He came by his wealth of anecdotes at a significant cost, however, to himself and the people around him, as he readily admits in the newly released (on Blu-ray) Cameron Crowe-produced documentary Remember My Name. Now a wizened 78-years-old and still prolific and raising hell (on Twitter, at least) Crosby reached far back in the memory vault to tell the tale of his life, from childhood to his 60s heyday to his stints in jail and rehab and through every sordid stage of full blown addiction.

Drugs will seriously mess up your life, says Crosby, in no uncertain terms, but it’s also clear his life would have been much less eventful, and less interesting, without them. Take the story he tells of running into John Coltrane in the men’s room of the South Side Chicago club called McKie’s in 1963. Incredibly high, Crosby finds himself blown out of his seat and against the wall by Elvin Jones’ drum solo. He retreats to the bathroom and promptly hits the floor. “I’ve got my head against this puke green tile,” he says in the clip above from Remember My Name (see the trailer below).

While Crosby tried to pull himself together, who should walk in but Coltrane, still playing:

He never stopped soloing. He’s still soloing. And he’s like burning in this bathroom. He doesn’t even know I’m there. He never even saw me. I’m thinking I’m gonna slide right down this tile. I’m thinking my nose is gonna open and my brain is gonna rush out onto the floor. It was so intense. I never heard anyone be more intense with music than that in my life.

Crosby gets into more detail in an interview with JazzTimes. Coltrane, he says, “played in the [restroom] for a couple of minutes because the sound was good—it was echoey—and he was… as good as you think he was.” He also talks at length about his long relationship with jazz, from his discovery of late-50s records by Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker, and Bill Evans, to Miles Davis recording a version of his song “Guinnevere.” (Davis was apparently instrumental in getting the Byrds signed to Columbia Records.)

The influence of Davis and Coltrane on Crosby’s songwriting is perhaps less evident than in, say, the work of Joni Mitchell, but Crosby admits that his “phrasing and melody choice” derived from “really good horn players.” It’s interesting to note just how much impact late-50s/early 60s jazz had on not only Crosby and Mitchell, but also 60s icons like Grace Slick. Listening to these classic rock survivors describe how Miles and Coltrane helped shape their sound shows just how much the mid-century jazz revolution fueled the rock revolution that followed.

Now that he’s sober, Crosby’s stories don’t involve nearly as much floor tile and brains sliding out of noses, but they’re still full of jazz encounters, including his recent collaborations with Wynton Marsalis and jazz collective Snarky Puppy. Read more about his recent projects and history with jazz over at JazzTimes.

How Grace Slick Wrote “White Rabbit”: The 1960s Classic Inspired by LSD, Lewis Carroll, Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, and Hypocritical Parents

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

Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Is Opera Part of Pop Culture? Pretty Much Pop #15 with Sean Spyres

in Music, Opera, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Theatre | October 23rd, 2019

Opera used to be a central part of European pop culture, Pavarotti was as big a pop star as they come. But still, it’s now the quintessential art-form of the wealthy and snobbish. What gives?

Guest Sean Spyres from Springfield Regional Opera joins his sister Erica along with Mark and Brian to discuss opera’s place in culture (including its film appearances), how it’s different from music theater, the challenges it faces and how it might become more relevant.

Some articles:

“Expecting Rain: Opera as Popular Culture” by John Storey
“14 Artists Who Are Transforming The Future Of Opera” by Priscilla Frank
“As Hip as Elvis: Caruso the Pop Idol” by John Potter
“Emotions Unveiled: Romance at the Opera in Moonstruck (1987), Pretty Woman (1990) and Little Women (1994)” by Kordula Knaus

Watch the Shawshank Redemption opera scene or perhaps the Pretty Woman scene. What Is pop opera? Here’s Ranker’s list of artists. Paul Potts sings that famous song on Britain’s Got Talent. Plus, check out albums from brother Michael Spyres. Yes, you can hear an opera-singer sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” but you probably shouldn’t.

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.

by Mark Linsenmayer | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Found: A Long Lost Chapter from the World’s Oldest Novel, the 11th-Century Japanese Classic, The Tale of Genji

in Literature | October 22nd, 2019

Henry James’ disparagement of Victorian novels has always struck me as odd. “What do such large loose baggy monsters,” as he called them, “with their queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary, artistically mean?” The question might be asked of what has often been considered the first modern novel, Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, a tragic-comic adventure whose first volume ranges over 52 loose, episodic chapters and whose second appeared ten years later to comment explicitly on the first’s success.

And then, six-hundred years earlier, there appeared what many consider to be the first novel ever written, The Tale of Genji, which “covers almost three quarters of a century,” notes translator Edward Seidensticker in an introduction to his 1976 edition. “The first forty-one chapters have to do with the life and loves of the nobleman known as ‘the shining Genji,’” the son of an emperor. We follow Genji from birth to his 52nd year, then the final ten chapters relate the tale of Kaoru, “who passes in the world as Genji’s son but is really the grandson of his best friend.” (See a 12th-century illustration from the tale above.)

Written by a noblewoman and lady of the court in 11th century Heian Japan, the book’s author is called Murasaki Shikibu, but her real name is unknown. Shikibu “designates an office held by her father”; Murasaki probably derives from the name of a main character in the novel. There is no “conclusive evidence that the Genji was either finished or unfinished at the time, nor is there conclusive evidence that it is finished or unfinished today.” Some chapters have been thought spurious, some deemed missing. No original manuscript exists, and only four of the novel’s 54 chapters have been authenticated as transcriptions from the original text.

That is, until this month, when a “lost”—or previously unknown—chapter surfaced, and “is now the fifth confirmed transcription of the historical novel,” as Hakim Bishara writes at Hyperallergic. “The newly discovered chapter, titled ‘Wakamurasaki,’ depicts Genji’s encounter with Murasaki-no-ue, the young woman who later becomes his wife.” It was discovered by Motofuyu Okochi, The Japan Times reports, “a descendent of the former feudal lord of the Mikawa-Yoshida Domain in Aichi Prefecture.”

The new Genji material appears “in one chapter of a five-chapter work called ‘Aobyoshibon’ (blue cover book), compiled by poet Fujiwara Teika,” who is believed to have transcribed the oldest documented versions of the novel during the Kamakura Period (1185–1333). There is as yet no critical discussion of how this find might change the way scholars read the book, but as a loose baggy monster, it can expand and contract, change its shape and composition, without losing its essential character.

As Seidensticker writes, “Murasaki Shikibu was no Aristotelian, planning her beginning, middle, and end before she set brush to paper. The Genji is full of hesitations and wrong turns and retreats.” Full, in other words, of the meanderings of the mind. (You can read Seidensticker’s translation of the Genji online here.) Another Western admirer of the novel, Jorge Luis Borges, writing of an earlier translation, put it another way: “What interests us is not the exoticism—the horrible word—but rather the human passions… Murasaki’s work is what one would quite precisely call a psychological novel.”

via Hyperallergic

The Oldest Book Printed with Movable Type is Not The Gutenberg Bible: Jikji, a Collection of Korean Buddhist Teachings, Predated It By 78 Years and It’s Now Digitized Online

Hand-Colored Photographs of 19th Century Japan

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The First Faked Photograph (1840)

in History, Photography | October 22nd, 2019

The photograph was invented in the early 19th century, but who invented it? Histories of photography point to several different independent inventors, most of them French: Nicéphore Niépce, for example, who in 1826 made the first work recognizable as a photograph, or more famously Louis Daguerre, honored for his invention of the daguerreotype photographic process by the French Academy of Sciences and the Académie des Beaux Arts in 1839. But what about Daguerre’s contemporary Hippolyte Bayard, who had also been developing and refining his own form of photography? After going unacknowledged by the Academy, he had only one option left: suicide.

The Vox Darkroom video above tells the story of Bayard’s 1840 Self Portrait as a Drowned Man, which depicts exactly what its title suggests: Bayard’s corpse, retrieved from the water and propped up unclaimed at the morgue. “The Government which has been only too generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it can do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned himself,” reads the note on the back of the photograph. “Oh the vagaries of human life.…!”

A sorry tale, to be sure, and of a kind not unknown in the history of invention. But wait: how could a dead man shoot a “self-portrait”? And if indeed “no-one has recognized or claimed him,” as the note adds, who would have bothered to write the note itself?

Bayard, still very much alive, made Self Portrait as a Drowned Man as a kind of artistic stunt, the latest in a series of self-portraits testing his photographic process. The “morgue” shot contains some of the artifacts in its predecessors, including a garden statue, a floral vase, and Bayard’s signature broad straw hat. (Even the expression of death was of a piece with his previous self-portraits: the long exposure time meant he’d had to hold absolutely still with his eyes closed in all of them as well.) Until his death in 1887 — long after Daguerre had passed — Bayard continued experimenting with photography, creating reality-departing images including “double self portraits.” If he couldn’t go down as the inventor of the photograph, at least he could go down as the inventor of the fake photograph — a still-relevant invention, to say the least, given our increasingly complicated relationship with the truth in the 21st century.

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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 Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Story of Ziggy Stardust Gets Chronicled in a New Graphic Novel, Featuring a Foreword by Neil Gaiman

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Music | October 22nd, 2019

Film has always been a medium that seeks to entertain as well as edify, framing thrills and chills for profit, and framing compositions deserving of the label of “art.” Very often it has done both at the same time. Every casual student of the medium will, at least, admit this much. But never have the differences between movie art and entertainment seemed as magnified and polarized as they are now, in the midst of debates about comic book franchises and the fine art we call cinema.

Whatever the reasons, film has not reached the détente between art and entertainment achieved by popular music—another medium dependent on late-19th/20th century recording technologies and born of a thoroughly modern commercial matrix. Of course, not all pop aspires to art. But the idea that music can be hugely entertaining—drawing on the “low” genres of fantasy, science fiction, and comic books—and also worthy of cultural immortality has become uncontroversial in large part because of the career of one musician.

David Bowie, rock and roll’s original space alien superhero, used his bankable personae through the decades to give credence to the idea of “art rock,” to realize its glam possibilities, to turn the rock auteur into an actor. He learned from a host of experimenters, both his direct influences and his spiritual predecessors. And he inspired a legion of successors who weren’t afraid to play characters in their work, to mix interests in philosophy, literature, and the occult with the flamboyant, campy styles of the comics. (A mix comics themselves played with in both popular and underground manifestations.)

Bowie embodied the future when he appeared on the scene as Ziggy in 1972, after years of laboring in obscurity and a few fleeting brushes with fame. “The incarnations of David Bowie were, in themselves, science fictional, “writes Neil Gaiman in the forward to a new graphic novel, BOWIE: Stardust, Rayguns, & Moonage Daydreams, which tells the story of Bowie’s rise as Ziggy. “All I was missing was a Bowie comic,” says Gaiman of his own fandom. “And, missing it, I would draw bad Bowie comics myself.” Ziggy Stardust especially called for such treatment.

Bowie wore the glam rock Martian mask with such commitment no one doubted that he meant it—only what, exactly, he meant by it. “He defied classification,” notes Simon & Schuster, “with his psychedelic aesthetics, his larger-than-life image, and his way of hovering on the border of the surreal.” Fittingly, the comic is drawn by an artist who realized a psychedelic, surrealist creative vision of Neil Gaiman’s: Michael Allred, who worked on the Sandman series.

The story, “part biography and part imagination,” reports Rolling Stone, is written by Steve Horton and colored by Laura Allred. You can order a copy here.

via Rolling Stone

David Bowie Songs Reimagined as Pulp Fiction Book Covers: Space Oddity, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Meet Viola Smith, the World’s Oldest Drummer: Her Career Started in the 1930s, and She Played Until She Was 107

in History, Music | October 21st, 2019

Update: Viola Smith sadly passed away this past week. You can read her obituary at The Guardian.

She may be the most famous jazz drummer you’ve never heard of.

Viola Smith played with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, performed for Harry Truman’s inauguration in 1949, and played in the Kit-Kat Band (see them below on I’ve Got a Secret), in the first Broadway run of Cabaret from 1966–70. These mark only a handful of her career highlights. She’s still thriving—and still playing—at the age of 106. While a fall has forced her to rely on a walker, she “looks like a seventy-five-year-old in terrific shape!” writes Dan Barrett at The Syncopated Times.

Born Viola Schmitz in Mount Calvary, Wisconsin in 1912, Smith started playing in the 1920s with her family band, the Schmitz Sisters Family Orchestra (later the Smith Sisters Orchestra). Consisting of Viola, seven of her sisters, and one of her two brothers, they played the vaudeville and movie theater circuit on weekends. Their father managed, directed, and booked the band. An appearance on America’s Got Talent, “the 1930s radio version,” notes Barrett, gave Viola and her sisters the confidence to form the Coquettes, who garnered a considerable amount of fame after their debut in 1938.

In 1942, Viola wrote an article for Down Beat magazine titled “Give Girl Musicians a Break!,” suggesting that bands who lost musicians to WWII should hire women. Later that year, when Mildred, Viola’s last remaining sister in the Coquettes, got married, Viola moved to New York, “where I always wanted to be,” she tells Barrett. She earned a summer scholarship to Julliard, Benny Goodman asked her to join his band (she turned him down), and she played with Ella Fitzgerald and many other greats. She recorded film music and played with the National Symphony Orchestra. She appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show five times.

Though often compared to Gene Krupa, whom she considers a “lovely person” and an influence, Smith had a very distinctive style all her own, characterized by a twelve-drum kit with two 16-inch toms mounted on either side of her head, as you can see in the clip at the top of the post, in a 1939 performance with the Coquettes. This was no mere gimmick. Smith had studied tympani at Julliard and imported classical training into her big band sound. (She claims drummer Louis Bellson’s use of two bass drums was due to her influence.)

Why isn’t Viola Smith better known? It may have something to do with patronizing coverage in the press, where she was described as “the girl Gene Krupa,” the “fastest girl drummer,” “the famous girl drummer” etc. Other female instrumentalists were similarly belittled as “girl” novelty acts, or ignored, even when they played with bandleaders like Benny Goodman, whose orchestra featured trumpet players Billie Rogers and Laurie Frink. (Smith herself frowns on women playing brass instruments, for some odd reason.) In her Down Beat article, Viola named a number of other top female players of the day who deserved more work and recognition.

She may forget things here and here, but Smith still has a steel-trap memory for a 106-year old who has lived such a rich life. Her interview with Barrett is full of detailed reminisces (she briefly dated Frank Sinatra, for example). She gives us a picture of a musician at the top of her game and in full command of her career during the golden age of big band swing. We can credit Smith’s lifetime as a professional musician with much of this confidence. Like all of her siblings she learned to play piano and read music from a young age, and she honed her skills as part of a hard-working family “pit band,” as she says. But she was also driven to succeed above all else, leaving behind the conventional life each of her sibling bandmates eventually chose.

Smith did it her way—reportedly turning down offers to play in Sinatra’s band and refusing bandleader Woody Herman in order keep playing with the Coquettes. She played for the radio show Hour of Charm until she was 63, and has played concerts recently in Costa Mesa, California, where she now lives, tended to by the staff of a quilting supply shop called Piecemakers. Smith talks easily about the sources of her musical longevity—her family band, education, and the tight-knit community of musicians who embraced her.

As for her physical vigor and stamina, this she chalks up to the rigor of playing the drums, and to relaxing with a drink or two on occasion—a lifetime of activity and moderation that has helped keep her sharp and healthy after all of her contemporaries have passed away. See Smith in interviews at 100, further up, and 102, just above, and read her recent interview at 106 at The Syncopated Times here.

via McGill Media

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New Web Project Immortalizes the Overlooked Women Who Helped Create Rock and Roll in the 1950s

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

F. Scott Fitzgerald Creates a List of 22 Essential Books (1936)

Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Interactive Map That Catalogues the 700,000 Trees Shading the Streets of New York City

The Night When John Coltrane Soloed in a Bathroom and David Crosby, High as a Kite, Nearly Lost His Mind

Is Opera Part of Pop Culture? Pretty Much Pop #15 with Sean Spyres

Found: A Long Lost Chapter from the World’s Oldest Novel, the 11th-Century Japanese Classic, The Tale of Genji

The First Faked Photograph (1840)

The Story of Ziggy Stardust Gets Chronicled in a New Graphic Novel, Featuring a Foreword by Neil Gaiman

Meet Viola Smith, the World’s Oldest Drummer: Her Career Started in the 1930s, and She Played Until She Was 107

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