Kurt Vonnegut Gives Advice to Aspiring Writers in a 1991 TV Interview

in Education, Literature, Television, Writing | December 22nd, 2014

Remem­ber when tele­vi­sion was the big goril­la poised to put an end to all read­ing?

Then along came the mir­a­cle of the Inter­net. Blogs begat blogs, and thus­ly did the peo­ple start to read again!

Of course, many a great news­pa­per and mag­a­zine fell before its mighty engine. So it goes.

So did tele­vi­sion in the old fash­ioned sense. So it goes.

Fun­ny to think that these fast-mov­ing devel­op­ments weren’t even part of the land­scape in 1991, when author Kurt Von­negut swung by his home­town of Indi­anapo­lis to appear on the local pro­gram, Across Indi­ana.

Host Michael Atwood point­ed out the irony of a tele­vi­sion inter­view­er ask­ing a writer if tele­vi­sion was to blame for the decline in read­ing and writ­ing. After which he lis­tened polite­ly while his guest answered at length, com­par­ing read­ing to an acquired skill on par with “ice skat­ing or play­ing the French horn.”

Gee… irony elic­its a more fre­net­ic approach in the age of Buz­zFeed, Twit­ter, and YouTube. (Nailed it!)

Irony and human­i­ty run neck and neck in Vonnegut’s work, but his appre­ci­a­tion for his Hoosier upbring­ing was nev­er less than sin­cere:

When I was born in 1922, bare­ly a hun­dred years after Indi­ana became the 19th state in the Union, the Mid­dle West already boast­ed a con­stel­la­tion of cities with sym­pho­ny orches­tras and muse­ums and libraries, and insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing, and schools of music and art, rem­i­nis­cent of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire before the First World War. One could almost say that Chica­go was our Vien­na, Indi­anapo­lis our Prague, Cincin­nati our Budapest and Cleve­land our Bucharest.

To grow up in such a city, as I did, was to find cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions as ordi­nary as police sta­tions or fire hous­es. So it was rea­son­able for a young per­son to day­dream of becom­ing some sort of artist or intel­lec­tu­al, if not a police­man or fire­man. So I did. So did many like me.

Such provin­cial cap­i­tals, which is what they would have been called in Europe, were charm­ing­ly self-suf­fi­cient with respect to the fine arts. We some­times had the direc­tor of the Indi­anapo­lis Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra to sup­per, or writ­ers and painters, and archi­tects like my father, of local renown.

I stud­ied clar­inet under the first chair clar­inetist of our orches­tra. I remem­ber the orchestra’s per­for­mance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Over­ture, in which the can­nons’ roars were sup­plied by a police­man fir­ing blank car­tridges into an emp­ty garbage can. I knew the police­man. He some­times guard­ed street cross­ings used by stu­dents on their way to or from School 43, my school, the James Whit­comb Riley School.  

Vonnegut’s views were shaped at Short­ridge High School, where he num­bered among the many not-yet-renowned writ­ers hon­ing their craft on The Dai­ly Echo. Thought he did­n’t bring it up in the video above, the Echo also yield­ed his nick­name: Snarf.

Von­negut agreed with inter­view­er Atwood that the dai­ly prac­tice of keep­ing a jour­nal is an excel­lent dis­ci­pline for begin­ning writ­ers. He also con­sid­ered jour­nal­is­tic assign­ments a great train­ing ground. He made a point of men­tion­ing that Mark Twain and Ring Lard­ner got their starts as news­pa­per reporters. It may be hard­er for aspir­ing writ­ers to find pay­ing work these days, but the Inter­net is replete with oppor­tu­ni­ties for those who crave a dai­ly assign­ment.

It’s also over­flow­ing with bul­let point­ed lists on how to become a writer, but if you’re like me, you’ll pre­fer to receive this advice from Von­negut, him­self, on a set fes­tooned with farm­ing imple­ments, quilts, and dipped can­dles.

The inter­view con­tin­ues in the remain­ing parts:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Reads Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Like Von­negut, she’s a native of Indi­anapo­lis, and her moth­er was the edi­tor of the Short Ridge Dai­ly Echo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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

in Education, History, Literature, Philosophy | November 5th, 2014

Once upon a time, ques­tions about the use-val­ue of art were the height of philis­tin­ism. “All art is quite use­less,” wrote the aes­thete Oscar Wilde, pre­sag­ing the atti­tudes of mod­ernists to come. Explain­ing this state­ment in a let­ter to a per­plexed fan, Wilde opined that art “is not meant to instruct, or to influ­ence action in any way.” But if you ask Alain de Bot­ton, founder of “cul­tur­al enter­prise” The School of Life, art—or lit­er­a­ture specifically—does indeed have a prac­ti­cal pur­pose. Four to be pre­cise.

In a pitch that might appeal to Dale Carnegie, de Bot­ton argues that lit­er­a­ture: 1) Saves you time, 2) Makes you nicer, 3) Cures lone­li­ness, and 4) Pre­pares you for fail­ure. The for­mat of his video above—“What is Lit­er­a­ture For?”—may be for­mu­la­ic, but the argu­ment may not be so con­trary to mod­ernist dic­ta after all. Indeed, as William Car­los Williams famous­ly wrote, “men die mis­er­ably every day / for lack / of what is found” in poet­ry. How many peo­ple per­ish slow­ly over wast­ed time, mean­ness, lone­li­ness, and bro­ken dreams?

Like de Botton’s short video intro­duc­tions to philoso­phers, which we fea­tured in a pre­vi­ous post, “What is Lit­er­a­ture For?” comes to us with Mon­ty Python-like ani­ma­tion and pithy nar­ra­tion that makes quick work of a lot of com­plex ideas. Whether you find this inspir­ing or insipid will depend large­ly on how you view de Botton’s broad-brush, pop­ulist approach to the human­i­ties in gen­er­al. In any case, it’s true that peo­ple crave, and deserve, more acces­si­ble intro­duc­tions to weighty sub­jects like lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy, sub­jects that—as de Bot­ton says above in “What is Phi­los­o­phy For?”—can seem “weird, irrel­e­vant, bor­ing.…”

Here, con­tra Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s claims that all phi­los­o­phy is noth­ing more than con­fu­sion about lan­guage, de Bot­ton expounds a very clas­si­cal idea of the dis­ci­pline: “Philoso­phers are peo­ple devot­ed to wis­dom,” he says. And what is wis­dom for? Its appli­ca­tion, unsur­pris­ing­ly, is also emi­nent­ly prac­ti­cal. “Being wise,” we’re told, “means attempt­ing to live and die well.” As some­one once indoc­tri­nat­ed into the Byzan­tine cult of aca­d­e­m­ic human­i­ties, I have to say this def­i­n­i­tion seems to me espe­cial­ly reduc­tive, but it does accord per­fect­ly with The School of Life’s promise of “a vari­ety of pro­grammes and ser­vices con­cerned with how to live wise­ly and well.”

Last­ly, we have de Botton’s expla­na­tion above, “What Is His­to­ry For?” Most peo­ple, he claims, find the sub­ject “bor­ing.” Giv­en the enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty of his­tor­i­cal dra­ma, doc­u­men­tary film, nov­els, and pop­u­lar non-fic­tion, I’m not sure I fol­low him here. The prob­lem, it seems, is not so much that we don’t like his­to­ry, but that we can nev­er reach con­sen­sus on what exact­ly hap­pened and what those hap­pen­ings mean. This kind of uncer­tain­ty tends to make peo­ple very uncom­fort­able.

Unboth­ered by this prob­lem, de Bot­ton press­es on, argu­ing that his­to­ry, at its best, pro­vides us with “solu­tions to the prob­lems of the present.” It does so, he claims, by cor­rect­ing our “bias toward the present.” He cites the obses­sive jack­ham­mer­ing of 24-hour news, which shouts at us from mul­ti­ple screens at all times. I have to admit, he’s got a point. With­out a sense of his­to­ry, it’s easy to become com­plete­ly over­whelmed by the inces­sant chat­ter of the now. Per­haps more con­tro­ver­sial­ly, de Bot­ton goes on to say that his­to­ry is full of “good ideas.” Watch the video above and see if you find his exam­ples per­sua­sive.

All three of de Botton’s videos are brisk, upbeat, and very opti­mistic about our capac­i­ty to make good use of the human­i­ties to bet­ter our­selves. Per­haps some of the more skep­ti­cal among us won’t be eas­i­ly won over by his argu­ments, but they’re cer­tain­ly wor­thy of debate and offer some very pos­i­tive ways to approach the lib­er­al arts. If you are per­suad­ed, then dive into our col­lec­tions of free lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy cours­es high­light­ed in the sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Down­load 100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es & Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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

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A Quick Introduction to Literary Theory: Watch Animated Videos from the Open University

in Education, Literature | October 28th, 2014

Just what is an author? It might seem like a sil­ly ques­tion, and an aca­d­e­m­ic dis­sec­tion of the term may seem like a need­less­ly pedan­tic exer­cise. But the very vari­abil­i­ty of the con­cept means it isn’t a sta­ble, fixed idea at all, but a shift­ing set of asso­ci­a­tions we have with notions about cre­ativ­i­ty, the social role of art, and that elu­sive qual­i­ty known as “genius.” Ques­tions raised in the Open Uni­ver­si­ty video above—part of a series of very short ani­mat­ed entrées into lit­er­ary crit­i­cism called “Out­side the Book”—make it hard to ignore the prob­lems we encounter when we try to define author­ship in sim­ple, straight­for­ward ways. Most of the ques­tions relate to the work of French post­struc­tural­ist Michel Fou­cault, whose crit­i­cal essay “What is an Author?”—along with struc­tural­ist thinker Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author”—dis­turbed many a lit­er­ary critic’s com­fort­able assump­tions about the cre­ative locus behind any giv­en work.

In the 18th cen­tu­ry, at least in Europe, the author was a high­ly cel­e­brat­ed cul­tur­al fig­ure, a sta­tus epit­o­mized by Samuel Johnson’s rev­er­en­tial biog­ra­phy of John Dry­den and edi­tion of Shake­speare—and in turn Johnson’s own biog­ra­phy by his amanu­en­sis Boswell. The 19th cen­tu­ry began to see the author as a celebri­ty, with the hype and some­times tawdry spec­u­la­tion that accom­pa­nies that des­ig­na­tion. In the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, even as the idea of the film direc­tor as auteur—a sin­gu­lar cre­ative genius—gained ascen­dance, the inflat­ed role of the lit­er­ary author came in for a bruis­ing. With Fou­cault, Barthes, and oth­ers like W.K. Wim­satt and Mon­roe Beardsley—whose essay “The Inten­tion­al Fal­la­cy” more or less ruled out biog­ra­phy as a tool of the critic—the author reced­ed and the “text” gained pri­ma­cy as, in Foucault’s words, a “dis­cur­sive unit.”

This means that ques­tions of author­ship became insep­a­ra­ble from ques­tions of read­er­ship, inter­pre­ta­tion, and influ­ence; from ques­tions of his­tor­i­cal clas­si­fi­ca­tion and social con­struc­tion (i.e. how do we know any­thing about “Byron” except through biogra­phies, doc­u­men­taries, etc., them­selves cul­tur­al pro­duc­tions?); from ques­tions of trans­la­tion, pseude­pig­ra­phy, and pen names. Put in much plain­er terms, we once came to think of the author not sim­ply as the writer—a role pre­vi­ous­ly del­e­gat­ed to low­ly, usu­al­ly anony­mous “scribes” who sim­ply copied the words of gods, heroes, and prophets. Instead, the author became a god, a hero, and a prophet, a god­like cre­ator with a “lit­er­ary stamp of approval” that grants his or her every utter­ance on the page a spe­cial sta­tus; “that makes even the note on Shakespeare’s fridge a work of pro­found genius.” But that idea is any­thing but sim­ple, and the crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion around it any­thing but triv­ial.

Dit­to much of the above when it comes to that oth­er seem­ing­ly indi­vis­i­ble unit of lit­er­a­ture, the book. In the even short­er video guide above, Open Uni­ver­si­ty rapid­ly chal­lenges our com­mon­place ideas about book-hood and rais­es the now-com­mon­place ques­tion about the future of this “read­ing giz­mo.” For more “Out­side the Book,” see the remain­ing videos in the series: “Com­e­dy,” “Tragedy,” and “Two Styles of Love.” And for a much more sus­tained and seri­ous study of the art of lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, delve into Pro­fes­sor Paul Fry’s Yale course below. It’s part of Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Intro­duc­tion to The­o­ry of Lit­er­a­ture – Free Online Video – Free iTunes Audio – Free iTunes Video – Course Mate­ri­als – Paul H. Fry, Yale

h/t Cather­ine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture: Watch John Green’s Fun Intro­duc­tions to Gats­by, Catch­er in the Rye & Oth­er Clas­sics

An Intro­duc­tion to World Lit­er­a­ture by a Cast Of Lit­er­ary & Aca­d­e­m­ic Stars (Free Course)

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

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

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New Animated Web Series Makes the Theory of Evolution Easy to Understand

in Biology, Education, K-12, Science | October 23rd, 2014

When it comes to mat­ters of broad sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus, I’m gen­er­al­ly inclined to offer pro­vi­sion­al assent. Like every­one else, I have to rely on the exper­tise of oth­ers in mat­ters out­side my ken, and in many cas­es, this ratio­nal appeal to author­i­ty is the best one can do with­out acquir­ing the rel­e­vant qual­i­fi­ca­tions and years of expe­ri­ence in high­ly spe­cial­ized sci­en­tif­ic fields. In the case of evo­lu­tion, I hap­pen to find the evi­dence and expla­na­tions near­ly all biol­o­gists prof­fer much more per­sua­sive than the claims—and accusations—of their most­ly unsci­en­tif­ic crit­ics. But as we know from recent sur­vey data, a very large per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans reject the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion, at least when it comes to humans, though it’s like­ly a great many of them—like myself—do not know very much about it.

But as a layper­son with an admit­ted­ly rudi­men­ta­ry sci­ence edu­ca­tion, I’m always grate­ful for clear, sim­ple expla­na­tions of com­plex ideas. This is pre­cise­ly what we get in the video series Stat­ed Clear­ly, which har­ness­es the pow­er of web ani­ma­tion as an instruc­tion­al tool to define what the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion is, and why it explains the observ­able facts bet­ter than any­thing else. Stat­ed Clear­ly’s tagline is “sci­ence is for every­one,” and indeed, their mis­sion “is sim­ple”: “to pro­mote the art of crit­i­cal think­ing by expos­ing peo­ple from all walks of life, to the sim­ple beau­ty of sci­ence.” The video at the top gives us a broad overview of the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion. The ani­ma­tion just above presents the evi­dence for evo­lu­tion, or some of it any­way, in clear, com­pelling terms, draw­ing from at least two of the many inde­pen­dent lines of evi­dence. And below, we have a Stat­ed Clear­ly take on nat­ur­al selec­tion, an absolute­ly key con­cept of evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy, and one reg­u­lar­ly mis­un­der­stood.

After watch­ing these three shorts, you might agree that what is “often con­sid­ered a com­plex and con­tro­ver­sial top­ic” is “actu­al­ly a very sim­ple con­cept to under­stand.” In layman’s terms, at least. In fact, artist, nar­ra­tor, and cre­ator of the series, Jon Per­ry, admits that he him­self has no for­mal sci­en­tif­ic train­ing. “He believed,” his bio states, “that if he could cre­ate just one good ani­ma­tion on his own, sci­en­tists and edu­ca­tors would real­ize the poten­tial of this project and help him cre­ate more.” And indeed they have. Stat­ed Clear­ly has a dis­tin­guished pan­el of sci­ence advis­ers and part­ners that include the Cen­ter for Chem­i­cal Evo­lu­tion, Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, Geor­gia Tech, NASA, and the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion. Learn much more about Stat­ed Clearly’s goals and affil­i­a­tions, or lack there­of, at their web­site. And below, see the fourth video of the series, “Does the The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion Real­ly Mat­ter?,” which address­es the prac­ti­cal, real world impli­ca­tions of evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry, and sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Watch Episode #2 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cos­mos: Explains the Real­i­ty of Evo­lu­tion (US View­ers)

Richard Dawkins Makes the Case for Evo­lu­tion in the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary, The Blind Watch­mak­er

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

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Lynda Barry, Cartoonist Turned Professor, Gives Her Old Fashioned Take on the Future of Education

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Creativity, Education | October 21st, 2014

With col­lege tuitions bal­loon­ing to the point of implo­sion, and free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent pro­lif­er­at­ing online, the future of edu­ca­tion is a scorch­ing hot top­ic.

So where are we head­ing?

Cours­era and Khan Acad­e­my?  Video game-based cur­ric­u­la? Expe­ri­ence-dri­ven microlearn­ing?

Or school build­ings that moon­light as can­dy?

So sug­gest­ed one of the younger par­tic­i­pants in a work­shop led by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin’s Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Cre­ativ­i­ty, car­toon­ist and author Lyn­da Bar­ry (aka Pro­fes­sor Long-Title).

Barry’s mes­sian­ic embrace of the arts has proved pop­u­lar with stu­dents of all ages. When the university’s Coun­ter­fac­tu­al Draw­ing Board Project invit­ed fac­ul­ty, staff, and oth­ers to con­sid­er what the “appear­ance, pur­pose, atmos­phere and com­mu­ni­ty of the cam­pus” would be like in 100 years time, Bar­ry delib­er­ate­ly widened the pool to include chil­dren.

Yes, their inno­va­tions tend­ed toward vol­cano schools that erupt at dis­missal, but pre­sum­ably some of those same chil­dren will be in the van­guard when it’s time for ini­tia­tives that seem unimag­in­able now to be imple­ment­ed. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and all that.

Or as one gim­let-eyed youth put it, in a hun­dred years “the teach­ers will all be dead.”

No won­der few adult par­tic­i­pants can see past a but­ton-dri­ven, her­met­i­cal­ly sealed, dig­i­tal future where­in every stu­dent has a chip implant­ed in his or her head.

Bar­ry, no stranger to depres­sion, man­ages to laugh such gloomy fore­casts off, despite what they por­tend for the tac­tile, hand­made ephemera she reveres. A sense of humor—and humanity—is at the core of every edu­ca­tion­al reform she prac­tices.

Rather than rip each other’s writ­ing to shreds dur­ing in-class cri­tiques, her stu­dents call each oth­er by out­landish pseu­do­nyms and draw med­i­ta­tive spi­rals as each oth­ers’ work is read aloud. Every read­er is assured of a hearty “good!” from the teacher. She wants them to keep going, you see.

Sure­ly there are insti­tu­tions where this approach might not fly, but why poo-poo it? Isn’t fuel­ing the cre­ative spir­it a prac­ti­cal invest­ment in the future?

“It’s there in every­body,” Bar­ry believes. “You have to give peo­ple an expe­ri­ence of it, a repeat­ed expe­ri­ence of it that they gen­er­ate them­selves.”

Maybe some­day, some kid who hasn’t had the love of learn­ing squelched out of him or her will apply all that cre­ativ­i­ty toward cur­ing can­cer. That’d be great, huh? At worst, that care­ful­ly tend­ed spark can give solace in the dark days ahead. As fans of Barry’s work well know, art exists to car­ry us through times of “sor­row and grief and trou­ble.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Reveals the Best Way to Mem­o­rize Poet­ry

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

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The 430 Books in Marilyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

in Education, Film, Literature, Poetry | October 6th, 2014

marilyn reading

If you’re a read­er and user of social media, you’ve like­ly test­ed your life­time read­ing list against the BBC Book Quiz.

Or per­haps you’ve allowed your worth as a read­er to be deter­mined by the num­ber of Pulitzer Prize win­ners you’ve made it through.

The Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts’ Big Read, any­one?

The 142 Books that Every Stu­dent of Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture Should Read?

The 50 Best Dystopi­an Nov­els?

Being young is no excuse! Not when the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion pub­lish­es an annu­al list of Out­stand­ing Books for the Col­lege Bound and Life­long Learn­ers.

So… how’d you do? Or should I say how’d you do in com­par­i­son to Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe? The online Mon­roe fan club Ever­last­ing Star used pho­tographs, inter­views, and a Christie’s auc­tion cat­a­logue to come up with a list of more than 400 books in her pos­ses­sion.

Did she read them all? I don’t know. Have you read every sin­gle title on your shelves? (There’s a Japan­ese word for those books. It’s Tsun­doku.)

Fem­i­nist biog­ra­ph­er Oline Eaton has a great rant on her Find­ing Jack­ie blog about the phrase “Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing,” and the 5,610,000 search engine results it yields when typed into Google:

There is, with­in Monroe’s image, a deeply root­ed assump­tion that she was an idiot, a vul­ner­a­ble and kind and lov­ing and ter­ri­bly sweet idiot, but an idiot nonethe­less. That is the assump­tion in which ‘Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing’ is entan­gled.

The pow­er of the phrase Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing’ lies in its appli­ca­tion to Mon­roe and in our assump­tion that she wouldn’t know how.

Would that every­one search­ing that phrase did so in the belief that her pas­sion for the print­ed word rivaled their own. Imag­ine legions of geeks lov­ing her for her brain, bypass­ing Sam Shaw’s icon­ic sub­way grate pho­to in favor of home print­ed pin ups depict­ing her with book in hand.

Com­mem­o­ra­tive postage stamps are nice, but per­haps a more fit­ting trib­ute would be an ALA poster. Like Eaton, when I look at that image of Mar­i­lyn hunched over James Joyce’s Ulysses (or kick­ing back read­ing Walt Whit­man’s Leaves of Grass), I don’t see some­one try­ing to pass her­self off as some­thing she’s not. I see a high school dropout caught in the act of edu­cat­ing her­self. If I saw it taped to a library shelf embla­zoned with the word “READ,” I might just sum­mon the resolve to take a stab at Ulysses myself. (I know how it ends, but that’s about it.)

See below, dear read­ers. Apolo­gies that we’re not set up to keep track of your score for you, but please let us know in the com­ments sec­tion if you’d hearti­ly sec­ond any of Mar­i­lyn’s titles, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are less­er known or have fad­ed from the pub­lic view.

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Read­ing Chal­lenge

(Thanks to Book Tryst for com­pil­ing Ever­last­ing Star’s find­ings)

1) Let’s Make Love by Matthew Andrews (nov­el­iza­tion of the movie)

2) How To Trav­el Incog­ni­to by Lud­wig Bemel­mans

3) To The One I Love Best by Lud­wig Bemel­mans

4) Thurber Coun­try by James Thurber

5) The Fall by Albert Camus

6) Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe by George Car­pozi

7) Camille by Alexan­der Dumas

8) Invis­i­ble Man by Ralph Elli­son

9) The Boston Cook­ing-School Cook Book by Fan­nie Mer­ritt-Farmer

10) The Great Gats­by by F Scott Fitzger­ald

11) From Rus­sia With Love by Ian Flem­ing

12) The Art Of Lov­ing by Erich Fromm

13) The Prophet by Kahlil Gilbran

14) Ulysses by James Joyce

15) Stoned Like A Stat­ue: A Com­plete Sur­vey Of Drink­ing Clich­es, Prim­i­tive, Clas­si­cal & Mod­ern by Howard Kan­del & Don Safran, with an intro by Dean Mar­tin (a man who knew how to drink!)

16) The Last Temp­ta­tion Of Christ by Nikos Kazantza­kis

17) On The Road by Jack Ker­ouac

18) Select­ed Poems by DH Lawrence

19 and 20) Sons And Lovers by DH Lawrence (2 edi­tions)

21) The Portable DH Lawrence (more…)

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Flannery O’Connor Explains the Limited Value of MFA Programs: “Competence By Itself Is Deadly”

in Education, Writing | August 25th, 2014

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Flan­nery O’Connor once wrote, “because fine writ­ing rarely pays, fine writ­ers usu­al­ly end up teach­ing, and the [MFA] degree, how­ev­er worth­less to the spir­it, can be expect­ed to add some­thing to the flesh.” That phrase “worth­less to the spir­it” con­tains a great deal of the neg­a­tive atti­tude O’Connor expressed toward the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of cre­ative writ­ing in MFA pro­grams like the one she helped make famous at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa. The ver­biage comes from an essay she wrote for the alum­ni mag­a­zine of the Geor­gia Col­lege for Women after com­plet­ing her degree in 1947, quot­ed in the Chad Har­bach-edit­ed col­lec­tion of essays MFA vs. NYC. Although fresh from the pro­gram, O’Connor was already on her way to lit­er­ary suc­cess, hav­ing pub­lished her first sto­ry, “The Gera­ni­um,” the year pre­vi­ous and begun work on her first nov­el, Wise Blood. Nev­er­the­less, her insights on the MFA are not par­tic­u­lar­ly san­guine.

On the one hand, she writes with char­ac­ter­is­tic dark humor, writ­ing pro­grams can serve as alter­na­tives to “the poor house and the mad house.” In grad­u­ate school, “the writer is encour­aged or at least tol­er­at­ed in his odd ways.” An MFA pro­gram may offer some small respite from the lone­li­ness and hard­ship of the writ­ing life, and ulti­mate­ly pro­vide a cre­den­tial to be “pro­nounced upon by his future employ­ers should they chance to be of the acad­e­my.” But the time and effort (not to men­tion the expense, unless one is ful­ly fund­ed) may not be worth the cost, O’Connor sug­gests. Her own pro­gram at Iowa was “designed to cov­er the writer’s tech­ni­cal needs […], and to pro­vide him with a lit­er­ary atmos­phere which he would not be able to find else­where. The writer can expect very lit­tle else.”

Lat­er, in her col­lec­tion of essays Mys­tery and Man­ners, O’Connor expressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments. Con­clud­ing a lengthy dis­cus­sion on the very lim­it­ed role of the teacher of cre­ative writ­ing, she con­cludes that “the teacher’s work is large­ly neg­a­tive […] a mat­ter of say­ing ‘This doesn’t work because…’ or ‘This does work because….’” Remark­ing on the com­mon obser­va­tion that uni­ver­si­ties sti­fle writ­ers, O’Con­nor writes, “My opin­ion is that they don’t sti­fle enough of them. There’s many a best-sell­er that could have been pre­vent­ed by a good teacher.” Cre­ative writ­ing teach­ers may nod their heads in agree­ment, and shake them in frus­tra­tion. But we should return to that phrase “worth­less to the spir­it,” for while MFA pro­grams may turn out “com­pe­tent” writ­ers of fic­tion, O’Con­nor admits, they can­not pro­duce “fine writ­ing”:

In the last twen­ty years the col­leges have been empha­siz­ing cre­ative writ­ing to such an extent that you almost feel that any idiot with a nick­el’s worth of tal­ent can emerge from a writ­ing class able to write a com­pe­tent sto­ry. In fact, so many peo­ple can now write com­pe­tent sto­ries that the short sto­ry as a medi­um is in dan­ger of dying of com­pe­tence. We want com­pe­tence, but com­pe­tence by itself is dead­ly. What is need­ed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writ­ing class.

O’Connor prob­a­bly over­es­ti­mates the degree to which “any idiot” can learn to write with com­pe­tence, but her point is clear. She wrote these words in the mid-fifties, in an essay titled “The Nature and Aim of Fic­tion.” As Harbach’s new essay col­lec­tion demon­strates, the debate about the val­ue of MFA programs—which have expand­ed expo­nen­tial­ly since O’Connor’s day—has not by any means been set­tled. And while there are cer­tain­ly those writ­ers, she notes wry­ly, who can “learn to write bad­ly enough” and “make a great deal of mon­ey,” the true artist may be in the same posi­tion after the MFA as they were before it, com­pelled to “chop a path in the wilder­ness of his own soul; a dis­heart­en­ing process, life­long and lone­some.”

via Every­thing That Ris­es

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

Toni Mor­ri­son, Nora Ephron, and Dozens More Offer Advice in Free Cre­ative Writ­ing “Mas­ter Class”

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

Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion’ (c. 1960)

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

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

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Tap Into Timeless Wisdom: Download 36 Free Courses in Ancient History, Literature & Philosophy

in Education, History, Literature, Online Courses, Philosophy | August 14th, 2014

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I know, it’s a dat­ed ref­er­ence now, but since I still watch the remade Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca series on Net­flix, the mys­ti­cal refrain—“All of this has hap­pened before and will hap­pen again”–still seems fresh to me. At any rate, it’s fresh­er than the clichéd “his­to­ry repeats itself.” How­ev­er you phrase it, the tru­ism looks more and more like a gen­uine truth the more one stud­ies ancient his­to­ry, lit­er­a­ture, and phi­los­o­phy. The con­flicts and con­cerns that feel so of the moment also occu­pied the minds and lives of peo­ple liv­ing hun­dreds, and thou­sands, of years ago, and what­ev­er you make of that, it cer­tain­ly helps put the present into per­spec­tive. Can we ben­e­fit from study­ing the wis­dom, and the fol­ly, of the ancients? To this ques­tion, I like to turn to an intro­duc­to­ry essay C.S. Lewis penned to the work of a cer­tain church father:

Every age has its own out­look. It is spe­cial­ly good at see­ing cer­tain truths and spe­cial­ly liable to make cer­tain mis­takes. We all, there­fore, need the books that will cor­rect the char­ac­ter­is­tic mis­takes of our own peri­od. And that means the old books. […] If we read only mod­ern books […] where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggra­vate the error with which we are already dan­ger­ous­ly ill. The only pal­lia­tive is to keep the clean sea breeze of the cen­turies blow­ing through our minds, and this can be done only by read­ing old books.

I may dis­agree with Lewis about many things, includ­ing that “clean sea breeze” of his­to­ry, but I take to heart his point about read­ing the ancients to mit­i­gate our mod­ern bias­es and shine light on our blind spots. To that end, we present links to sev­er­al excel­lent online cours­es on the ancients from insti­tu­tions like Yale, NYU, and Stan­ford, free to peruse or take in full. See our mas­ter list—Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy—for 36 qual­i­ty offer­ings. As always, cer­tain cours­es pro­vide more resources than oth­ers, and a few only offer their lec­tures through iTunes. These are deci­sions course admin­is­tra­tors have made, not us! Even so, these free resources are invalu­able to those wish­ing to acquaint, or reac­quaint, them­selves with the study of ancient human­i­ties.

You can, for exam­ple, take a course on Ancient Israel from NYU’s Daniel Flem­ing (Free Online Video & Course Info — Free Online Video), study Plato’s Laws with the renowned Leo Strauss from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go (Free Online Audio) or Socrates ( Free Online Audio) with that university’s equal­ly renowned Alan Bloom. Take a course called “Ancient Wis­dom and Mod­ern Love” (Syl­labus - Free iTunes Video — Free Online Video) with Notre Dame’s David O’Connor or study Virgil’s Aeneid ( Free iTunes Audio) with Susan­na Braund, whose lec­tures were record­ed at Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. You’ll find many more ancient his­to­ry, lit, and phi­los­o­phy classes—36 in all, includ­ing five more Leo Strauss Pla­to seminars—on our meta list: Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy. Read, study, repeat.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Learn 47 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Ita­lo Calvi­no Offers 14 Rea­sons We Should Read the Clas­sics

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

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