The Simpsons Pay Wonderful Tribute to the Anime of Hayao Miyazaki

in Animation | June 23rd, 2015

When the TV series The Simp­sons first pre­miered on Decem­ber 17, 1989, the Berlin Wall had just fall­en, the inter­net wasn’t real­ly a thing yet, and Tay­lor Swift was just four days old. While the show might not have the bite or the cur­ren­cy it had in the mid-90s, the series still man­ages to deliv­er some absolute­ly won­der­ful moments. Last Hal­loween, for instance, they did a hilar­i­ous extend­ed riff on the works of Stan­ley Kubrick. But per­haps the best thing they’ve done recent­ly is a trib­ute to leg­endary Japan­ese ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki. You can see the clip above.

The ref­er­ences come thick and fast. There’s Otto, the per­pet­u­al­ly stoned bus dri­ver, as the Cat Bus from My Neigh­bor Totoro. There’s Ralph Wig­gum as the sen­tient fish Ponyo. There’s Pat­ty and Sel­ma as Kiki the Witch from Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice. And, at the end of the seg­ment, the Kwik-E-Mart sprouts legs and walks off like the tit­u­lar build­ing in Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle. A dis­tressed Abu exclaims, “I’m ruined by whim­sy!” The seg­ment even departs from the show’s usu­al man­ic irrev­er­ence and takes on the melan­choly won­der of Miyazaki’s movies.

Unless you have an unusu­al­ly quick eye and a thor­ough under­stand­ing of the worlds of Miyaza­ki, you will prob­a­bly need to watch this more than a cou­ple of times. For­tu­nate­ly, the folks over at Slate have unpacked and anno­tat­ed the seg­ment for you. You can watch it below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Before The Simp­sons, Matt Groen­ing Illus­trat­ed a “Student’s Guide” for Apple Com­put­ers (1989)

Watch The Simp­sons’ Hal­loween Par­o­dy of Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Watch Hayao Miyazaki Animate the Final Shot of His Final Feature Film, The Wind Rises

in Animation, Film | June 19th, 2015

Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s The Wind Ris­es came out in 2013 to a great deal of acclaim and attention—as, I sup­pose, do all the movies his Stu­dio Ghi­b­li puts out, so painstak­ing­ly have they built up their rep­u­ta­tion for medi­um-tran­scend­ing depth, artistry, crafts­man­ship, and atten­tion to detail. But that fic­tion­al­ized bio­graph­i­cal sto­ry of Japan­ese World War II air­plane design­er Jiro Horikos­ki received even more notice than most due not just to the con­tro­ver­sial nature of its mate­r­i­al, but to its place as Miyaza­k­i’s sup­posed swan song, the last fea­ture film he would ever direct.

Then again, Hayao Miyaza­ki has spo­ken of many pos­si­ble retire­ments over the years, and no longer ani­mat­ing fea­ture films hard­ly means the end of his all-con­sum­ing impulse to cre­ate, which dri­ves him to con­tin­ue work­ing on Toky­o’s Ghi­b­li Muse­um and draw­ing the art for com­ic books, among oth­er projects. Cer­tain Miyaza­ki asso­ciates have pub­licly told us not to be sur­prised if the mas­ter one day emerges from this par­tic­u­lar “retire­ment,” but since the man him­self seems quite seri­ous about putting full-length pic­tures behind him, we can assume for now that the clip above shows him at work on the last bit of film ani­ma­tion in his career: The Wind Ris­es’ final shot.

The footage comes from last year’s The King­dom of Dreams and Mad­ness, a doc­u­men­tary on a moment in the life of Stu­dio Ghibli—and pos­si­bly one of the last moments in the life of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, giv­en their announce­ment of a “brief pause” pro­duc­tion as a result of Miyaza­k­i’s retire­ment. On the sub­ject of the stu­dio’s future Miyaza­ki speaks blunt­ly in the doc­u­men­tary: “The future is clear: it’s going to fall apart. I can already see it. What’s the use wor­ry­ing? It’s inevitable.” But all things do, a fact which the finest works of Japan­ese art—Miyazaki’s films included—have always accept­ed. But they also take notice of what small things we can appre­ci­ate along the way to dis­so­lu­tion, as does Miyaza­ki him­self: “Isn’t ani­ma­tion fas­ci­nat­ing?” he asks, seem­ing­ly to him­self, as he walks away from the draw­ing board.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Mag­i­cal Ani­mat­ed Music Video for the Japan­ese Pop Song, “On Your Mark”

Watch Sher­lock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­mat­ed, Steam­punk Take on Sher­lock Holmes

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Samurai 7, an Anime Adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai

in Animation, Film | June 16th, 2015


Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Sev­en Samu­rai (1954) might be over three hours long but you nev­er feel bored. The action scenes nev­er fail to thrill and the char­ac­ters are so well devel­oped that you gen­uine­ly grieve when they die. The epic is so bril­liant­ly real­ized that it’s no sur­prise that film­mak­ers every­where took note. In The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en (1960), a direct remake of Sev­en Samu­rai, Hol­ly­wood swapped out katanas for six-shoot­ers and recast the movie as a West­ern. Oth­er films from The Guns of Navar­ro to the Bol­ly­wood block­buster Sholay to even Pixar’s A Bug’s Life have drawn heav­i­ly from Kurosawa’s mas­ter­piece.

Add to this list Toshi­fu­mi Tak­iza­wa’s 26-episode ani­mat­ed TV series Samu­rai 7. The set up is iden­ti­cal to the orig­i­nal — mas­ter­less samu­rais are hired to pro­tect a vil­lage from a ruth­less gang of ban­dits — and many of the char­ac­ters in the ani­mat­ed series have the same names as char­ac­ters in the orig­i­nal film. But the total run­ning time of the TV show is three times longer than that of Kurosawa’s film, so Tak­iza­wa took a few lib­er­ties.

The show’s open­ing scene, for instance, fea­tures a mas­sive inter­stel­lar bat­tle involv­ing lasers and space­ships. There’s a rust­ing, ele­phan­tine mega­lopo­lis straight out of Blade Run­ner. And also there are robots. The ban­dits, as it turns out, are more metal­lic than human, and Kikuchiyo, who was played bril­liant­ly as a drunk­en wild man by Toshi­ro Mifu­ne, is in this iter­a­tion a grumpy, poor­ly-con­struct­ed cyborg who wields a chain­saw-like sword. The series even has Kirara, a cow-eyed teenaged priest­ess who sports a midriff-bar­ing kimono.

Either the sto­ry ele­ments above sound com­plete­ly pre­pos­ter­ous or total­ly awe­some. If you’re in the for­mer cat­e­go­ry, you can watch the trail­er for Kurosawa’s film below. If you’re in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry – and the show is a lot of fun – then you can watch episode 1 above, and catch the rest on Youtube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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An Introduction to the Literary Philosophy of Marcel Proust, Presented in a Monty Python-Style Animation

in Animation, Literature | June 15th, 2015

Those who know the name Mar­cel Proust, if not his work itself, know it as that of the most soli­tary and intro­spec­tive of writers—a name become an adjec­tive, describ­ing an almost painful­ly del­i­cate vari­ety of sen­so­ry rem­i­nis­cence verg­ing on tantric solip­sism. Proust has earned the rep­u­ta­tion for writ­ing what Alain de Bot­ton above tells us in his Proust intro­duc­tion is “offi­cial­ly the longest nov­el in the world,” A la recher­ché du temps per­du (In Search of Lost Time). The book—or books, rather, total­ing dou­ble the num­ber of words as Tolstoy’s War and Peace—recounts the main­ly con­tem­pla­tive tra­vails of a “thin­ly veiled” ver­sion of the author. It is, in one sense, a very long, mas­ter­ful­ly styl­ized diary of the author’s loves, lusts, likes, moods, and tastes of every kind.

Those who know the iPhone app, “Proust”—a far few­er num­ber, I’d wager—know it as a game that har­ness­es the com­bined pow­er of social net­work­ing, instant online opin­ion, and sur­vey tech­nol­o­gy in a relent­less­ly repet­i­tive exer­cise in face­less col­lec­tiv­i­ty. These two enti­ties are per­haps vague­ly relat­ed by the Proust ques­tion­naire, but the dis­tance between them is more sig­nif­i­cant, stand­ing as an iron­ic emblem of the dis­tance between Proust’s refined lit­er­ary uni­verse and that of our con­tem­po­rary mass cul­ture.

Proust, a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly frag­ile elit­ist born to wealthy Parisian par­ents in 1871, con­clud­ed that a life worth liv­ing requires the unique­ly sen­si­tive, fine­ly-tuned appre­ci­a­tion of every­day life that chil­dren and artists pos­sess, uncol­ored by the spoils of habit and dead­en­ing rou­tine. “Proust” the game—as the host of its vicious­ly satir­i­cal video pro­claims in an ambigu­ous­ly Euro­pean accent—concludes “It’s fun to judge”… in iden­ti­cal, rain­bow-col­ored screens that reduce every con­sid­er­a­tion to a vapid con­test with no stakes or effort. It too rep­re­sents, through par­o­dy, a kind of phi­los­o­phy of life. And one might broad­ly say we all live some­where in-between the hyper-aes­theti­cism of Proust the writer and the mind­less rapid-fire swipe-away triv­i­al­iz­ing of Proust the app.

De Bot­ton, con­sis­tent with the mis­sion of his very mis­sion­ary School of Life, would like us to move clos­er to the lit­er­ary Proust’s phi­los­o­phy, a “project of rec­on­cil­ing us to the ordi­nary cir­cum­stances of life” and the “charm of the every­day.” As he does with all of the fig­ures he con­scripts for his lessons, De Bot­ton pre­sumes that Proust’s pri­ma­ry intent in his inter­minable work was to “help us” real­ize this charm—and Proust did in fact say as much. But read­ers and schol­ars of the reclu­sive French writer may find this state­ment, its author, and his writ­ing, much more com­pli­cat­ed and dif­fi­cult to make sense of than we’re giv­en to believe.

Nonethe­less, this School of Life video, like many of the oth­ers we’ve fea­tured here, does give us a way of approach­ing Proust that is much less daunt­ing than so many oth­ers, com­plete with clever cut-out ani­ma­tions that illus­trate Proust’s the­o­ry of mem­o­ry, occa­sioned by his famed, fate­ful encounter with a cup of tea and a madeleine. The teatime epiphany caused Proust to observe:

The rea­son why life may be judged to be triv­ial, although at cer­tain moments it seems to us so beau­ti­ful, is that we form our judg­ment ordi­nar­i­ly not on the evi­dence of life itself, but of those quite dif­fer­ent images which pre­serve noth­ing of life, and there­fore we judge it dis­parag­ing­ly.

We may take or leave De Botton’s inter­pre­ta­tion of Proust’s work, but it seems more and more imper­a­tive that we give the work itself our full attention—or as much of it as we can spare.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

Mar­cel Proust Fills Out a Ques­tion­naire in 1890: The Man­u­script of the ‘Proust Ques­tion­naire’

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

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

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Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Brought to Life in Sand Animations by the Hungarian Artist Ferenc Cakó

in Animation | June 9th, 2015


It seems per­fect­ly nat­ur­al to us that ani­ma­tion is a medi­um dom­i­nat­ed by cel-by-cel draw­ings, whether made with paint and brush or mouse and soft­ware. But it might have been oth­er­wise. After all, some ani­mat­ed films and videos have been made in less con­ven­tion­al for­mats with less con­ven­tion­al mate­ri­als. In the past, we’ve fea­tured here stop-motion ani­ma­tions made with dead bugs, inno­v­a­tive pin­screen ani­ma­tions, unusu­al cutout ani­ma­tions, and the “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion” of paint­ed plas­ter. And today, we bring you the live-action sand ani­ma­tion of Hun­gar­i­an artist Fer­enc Cakó, who projects his work on a screen for a the­atri­cal audi­ence. These more sculp­tur­al forms may be more painstak­ing than tra­di­tion­al cel ani­ma­tion, and for that rea­son more rare, but they are also often much more inter­est­ing.

Cakó per­forms his “sand ani­ma­tions,” all over the world, to the accom­pa­ni­ment of clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions like Bach’s Orches­tral Suite No. 3 in D major and Orf­f’s Carmi­na Burana. Here we have his ani­mat­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of the most well-known work of Vival­di, the Four Sea­sons (“Spring” and “Sum­mer” above, “Autumn” and “Win­ter” below.) The effect of Cakó’s live tech­nique is mes­mer­iz­ing; his hands and arms break the fourth wall in broad ges­tures under which suc­ces­sions of images take shape. His sand draw­ings tend to be rather static—instead the ani­mat­ed ele­ments in Cakó’s sand ani­ma­tions are his hands as he push­es the sand around, rapid­ly form­ing it into faces, flocks of birds, angry clouds. These are quick­ly wiped away and remade into trees, fright­ened hors­es, soli­tary shep­herds….

Watch­ing him work rais­es many a ques­tion: Is Cakó using from sto­ry­boards? (No.) How much of his live ani­ma­tion does he impro­vise? (A good deal.) And why sand, any­way? (It’s dry.) You will find more com­pre­hen­sive answers to these ques­tions and many more in an inter­view post­ed on Cakó’s web­site. Allud­ing to the dif­fi­cul­ty of his work, com­pound­ed by its per­for­ma­tive aspect, Cakó says, “Sand can­not be cor­rect­ed, so while work­ing I do not have con­trol, no motion con­trol. I do not have any oppor­tu­ni­ty, which car­toon­ists do, such as the trac­ing paper phase, dur­ing which they either draw the lines or scan them in the com­put­er.” In oth­er words, this is unique­ly dif­fi­cult art that requires the skills of a unique­ly con­fi­dent artist.

Cakó’s web­site also con­tains pho­tos of the artist at work, a biog­ra­phy that is also a film‑, art‑, and per­for­mance-ogra­phy, and a page devot­ed specif­i­cal­ly to script­ing “the way Mr Cakó should be announced,” com­plete with inex­plic­a­ble uses of paren­the­ses. It’s a fit­ting bit of brava­do for an artist who has legal­ly copy­right­ed his process.

(Ladies and Gen­tle­men, what you shall see tonight, is a)

Live Sand Ani­ma­tion Per­for­mance, cre­at­ed by Mr Cako, right here by his hands, to the rhythm of the music.

(on the stage and on the screen…….. Mr Fer­enc Cako!)

See many more “sandanimations”—and “paint animations”—at Cakó’s YouTube chan­nel.

Ferenc Cako

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Amaz­ing 1912 Ani­ma­tion of Stop-Motion Pio­neer Ladis­las Stare­vich, Star­ring Dead Bugs

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

Watch Piotr Dumala’s Won­der­ful Ani­ma­tions of Lit­er­ary Works by Kaf­ka and Dos­to­evsky

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

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The John Lennon Sketchbook, a Short Animation Made of Lennon’s Drawings

in Animation, Music | June 9th, 2015

In 1986, Yoko Ono com­mis­sioned the Oscar-win­ning ani­ma­tor John Cane­mak­er to bring to life the draw­ings and doo­dles of John Lennon (1940–1980), cul­mi­nat­ing in the release of a short film called The John Lennon Sketch­book. Almost 30 years lat­er, that film has now been offi­cial­ly released on YouTube.

A prod­uct of Liv­er­pool’s art schools, John Lennon drew through­out his life, illus­trat­ing two of his books with play­ful draw­ings, and draw­ing Christ­mas Cards for Oxfam, just to cite two exam­ples. You can see Lennon’s visu­al tal­ents on full dis­play in The John Lennon Sketch­book, a short ani­ma­tion that is pret­ty whim­si­cal and fun — until the very end, when Lennon seem­ing­ly pre­dicts his own vio­lent death in the audio record­ing that serves as the film’s sound­track.

The John Lennon Sketch­book will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. 

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!

via Car­toon Brew

Relat­ed Con­tent:

I Met the Wal­rus: An Ani­mat­ed Film Revis­it­ing a Teenager’s 1969 Inter­view with John Lennon

The Bea­t­les: Why Music Mat­ters in Two Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

John Lennon Illus­trates Two of His Books with Play­ful Draw­ings (1964–1965)

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

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An Animated Ayn Rand Dispenses Terrible Love Advice to Mike Wallace (1959)

in Animation, Philosophy | June 9th, 2015

In the past, the good folks over at Blank on Blank have turned rarely-seen inter­views with the likes of Ray Brad­bury and John Coltrane into bril­liant lit­tle ani­mat­ed shorts. This week, their lat­est install­ment is on Ayn Rand.

Rand, of course, is the mind behind Objec­tivism, the patron saint of lais­sez faire cap­i­tal­ism, and the author of such unwieldy tomes as The Foun­tain­head and Atlas Shrugged. Among Wall Street bankers, Wash­ing­ton con­ser­v­a­tives and insuf­fer­able col­lege sopho­mores, Rand is a revered fig­ure. For­mer vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Paul Ryan and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Rand Paul are both acknowl­edged fol­low­ers. For­mer Fed­er­al Reserve head Alan Greenspan was Rand’s pro­tégé. To a lot of oth­er peo­ple, of course, her the­o­ries are lit­tle more than a shrill jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of sociopa­thy, an empa­thy-chal­lenged vision of social inter­ac­tion that flies in the face of basic ideas of human decen­cy.

The inter­view dates back to a 1959 inter­view by Mike Wal­lace (see the orig­i­nal here) who grills Rand on her con­cept of love and hap­pi­ness, which leads to this exchange:

Ayn Rand: I say that man is enti­tled to his own hap­pi­ness. And that he must achieve it him­self. But that he can­not demand that oth­ers give up their lives to make him hap­py. And nor should he wish to sac­ri­fice him­self for the hap­pi­ness of oth­ers. I hold that man should have self-esteem.

Mike Wal­lace: And can­not man have self-esteem if he loves his fel­low man? Christ, every impor­tant moral leader in man’s his­to­ry, has taught us that we should love one anoth­er. Why then is this kind of love in your mind immoral?

Ayn Rand: It is immoral if it is a love placed above one­self. It is more than immoral, it’s impos­si­ble. Because when you are asked to love every­body indis­crim­i­nate­ly. That is to love peo­ple with­out any stan­dard. To love them regard­less of whether they have any val­ue or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.

Watch­ing the piece, I kept hear­ing the title of Ray­mond Carver’s bril­liant short sto­ry run through my mind, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” (Hear Carv­er read that sto­ry here.) My sense is that her ver­sion of love is very dif­fer­ent from mine. Watch the full ani­mat­ed video above.

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Ayn Rand Adamant­ly Defends Her Athe­ism on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

The Out­spo­ken Ayn Rand Inter­viewed by Mike Wal­lace (1959)

Ayn Rand Trash­es C.S. Lewis in Her Mar­gin­a­lia: He’s an “Abysmal Bas­tard”

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A Creepy Cut Out Animation of Samuel Beckett’s 1953 Novel, The Unnamable

in Animation, English Language, Literature | June 8th, 2015

Morn­ing, friend! Ready to kick off your week with a Beck­et­t­ian night­mare vision?

Samuel Beck­ett schol­ar Jen­ny Trig­gs was earn­ing a mas­ters in Visu­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Edin­burgh Col­lege of Art when she cre­at­ed the unset­tling, cut out ani­ma­tion for his 1953 nov­el, The Unnam­able, above. (Her PhD exhi­bi­tion, a decade lat­er, was a mul­ti-screen video response to Beckett’s short sto­ry, Ping.)

The wretched crea­tures haunt­ing the film con­jure Bosch and Gilliam, in addi­tion to Ire­land’s best known avant-garde play­wright.

Trig­gs seem to have drawn inspi­ra­tion from the name­less narrator’s phys­i­cal self-assess­ment:

I of whom I know noth­ing, I know my eyes are open because of the tears that pour from them unceas­ing­ly. I know I am seat­ed, my hands on my knees, because of the pres­sure against my rump, against the soles of my feet? I don’t know. My spine is not sup­port­ed. I men­tion these details to make sure I am not lying on my back, my legs raised and bent, my eyes closed.

Despite the narrator’s effort to keep track of his parts, Trig­gs ensures that some­thing will always be miss­ing. Her char­ac­ters make do with rods, bits of chess pieces or noth­ing at all in places where limbs should be.

Are these birth defects or some sort of wartime dis­abil­i­ty that pre­cludes pros­thet­ics?

One char­ac­ter is described as “noth­ing but a shape­less heap… with a wild equine eye.”

The nar­ra­tor steels him­self “to invent anoth­er fairy tale with heads, trunks, arms, legs and all that fol­lows.” Mean­while, he’s tor­ment­ed by a spir­i­tu­al push-me-pull-you that feels very like the one afflict­ing Vladimir and Estragon in Wait­ing for Godot:

Where I am, I don’t know, I’ll nev­er know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

Trig­gs describes The Unnam­able as a book that begs to be read aloud, and her nar­ra­tors Louise Milne and Chris Noon are deserv­ing of praise for pars­ing the mean­der­ing text in such a way that it makes sense, at least atmos­pher­i­cal­ly.

To go on means going from here, means find­ing me, los­ing me, van­ish­ing and begin­ning again, a stranger first, then lit­tle by lit­tle the same as always, in anoth­er place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know noth­ing, being inca­pable of see­ing, mov­ing, think­ing, speak­ing, but of which lit­tle by lit­tle, in spite of these hand­i­caps, I shall begin to know some­thing, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swal­lows me up, I’ll nev­er know, which is per­haps mere­ly the inside of my dis­tant skull where once I wan­dered, now am fixed, lost for tini­ness, or strain­ing against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever mur­mur­ing my old sto­ries, my old sto­ry, as if it were the first time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads From His Nov­el Watt

Take a “Breath” and Watch Samuel Beckett’s One-Minute Play

Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That Fall, Embers, and More

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

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