178 Beautifully-Illustrated Letters from Artists: Kahlo, Calder, Man Ray & More

in Art, Letters | July 9th, 2015

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Eight years ago—that’s some­thing like five decades in Inter­net time—the Smith­son­ian held an exhi­bi­tion, “More than Words: Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of Amer­i­can Art,” which fea­tured a curat­ed selec­tion of 178 hand-illus­trat­ed let­ters, love notes, dri­ving direc­tions, and jot­tings of cur­rent events, from var­i­ous artists. The selec­tions can still be found online, even though Liza Kirwin’s selec­tions for the exhib­it can now also be found in an accom­pa­ny­ing book.

The illus­trat­ed let­ters make for human­iz­ing insights into the pri­vate world of artists that we usu­al­ly only expe­ri­ence through their work.

The 1945 let­ter from George Grosz to Erich S. Her­rmann (above) is to invite his friend (and art deal­er) to his birth­day par­ty, promis­ing not just one glass of Hen­nessy, but six (and more). “Lis­ten: boy!” he declares. “You are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to attend the birth­day par­ty of ME.” This was when Grosz was in his 50s and liv­ing in Hunt­ing­ton, New York. It should be not­ed that Grosz met his end falling down a flight of stairs while drunk, but the man knew how to par­ty.

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Joseph Lin­don Smith was an Amer­i­can illus­tra­tor best known for being the artist who trav­eled to Egypt and doc­u­ment­ed the exca­va­tions at Giza and the Val­ley of the Kings, very faith­ful in their rep­re­sen­ta­tion. But in 1894, this let­ter finds Smith, 31 years old, liv­ing in Paris, try­ing to make a go of it as an artist, and hav­ing enough suc­cess to tell his par­ents: “Behold your son paint­ing under a show­er of gold,” he writes. Check out that hand­writ­ing: it’s beau­ti­ful.

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Sculp­tor Alexan­der Calder wrote this note to Vas­sar col­league and friend Agnes Rindge Claflin in 1936, con­tin­u­ing some con­ver­sa­tion they were hav­ing about col­or, and not­ing her choic­es mark her as a “Parcheesi hound,” and adding that he’s a fan of the game too. The lit­tle illus­tra­tion, which is straight Calder, is cute too. Claflin would lat­er go on to nar­rate one of MOMA’s first films to accom­pa­ny an exhib­it, Her­bert Matter’s 1944 film on Calder, Sculp­ture and Con­struc­tions.

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This Man Ray let­ter to painter Julian E. Levi looks like it has been wor­ried over or recycled—-“Dear Julian” appears sev­er­al times on the sta­tionery from Le Select Amer­i­can Bar in Mont­par­nasse. It’s a bit dif­fi­cult to make out all his writ­ing: he starts men­tion­ing “Last year’s 1928 wine har­vest is sup­posed to be the very finest in the last fifty years” at the begin­ning, but I’m more fas­ci­nat­ed with the bot­tom right: “I have sev­en tall blondes with 14 big tits and one with sap­phire garters.”

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Final­ly, we close out with a let­ter Fri­da Kahlo sent to her friend Emmy Lou Packard in 1940, where she thanked Packard for tak­ing care of Diego dur­ing an ill­ness. The let­ter gets sealed, Priscil­la Frank notes at Huff­Po, with three lip­stick kiss­es — “one for Diego, one for Emmy Lou, and one for her son.”

There’s plen­ty more illus­trat­ed let­ters to explore at the Smith­son­ian site and in Kir­win’s hand­some book, fea­tur­ing artists well known and obscure, but all who knew how to com­pose a good let­ter.

via Huff­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Six Post­cards From Famous Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Kaf­ka, Ker­ouac & More

James Joyce’s “Dirty Let­ters” to His Wife (1909)

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. 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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New Archive Offers Free Access to 22,000 Literary Documents From Great British & American Writers

in Archives, Letters, Literature | June 30th, 2015

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Thomas Hardy—archi­tect, poet, and writer (above)—gave us the fierce, stormy romance Far From the Madding Crowd, cur­rent­ly impress­ing crit­ics in a film adap­ta­tion by Thomas Vin­ter­berg. He also gave us Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Return of the Native, and Jude the Obscure, books whose per­sis­tent­ly grim out­look might make them too depress­ing by far were it not for Hardy’s engross­ing prose, unfor­get­table char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and, per­haps most impor­tant­ly, unshak­able sense of place. Hardy set most of his nov­els in a region he called Wes­sex, which—much like William Faulkn­er’s Yoknapatawpha—is a thin­ly fic­tion­al­ized recre­ation of his rur­al home­town of Dorch­ester and its sur­round­ing coun­ties.

Hardy Revisions

Now, thanks to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, we can learn all about this ancient region in South West Eng­land, and Hardy’s trans­mu­ta­tion of it, through Hardy’s own proof copy of a 1905 book by Frank R. Heath called Dorch­ester (Dorset) and its Sur­round­ings, with revi­sions in Hardy’s hand. In the excerpt above, for exam­ple, from page 36 of this schol­ar­ly work, the author dis­cuss­es Hardy’s use of Dorch­ester in The May­or of Cast­er­bridge and the so-called “Wes­sex Poems.” In the mar­gins on the right, we see Hardy’s cor­rec­tions and gloss­es. Though this may not seem the most excit­ing piece of Hardy mem­o­ra­bil­ia, for stu­dents of the author and his invest­ment in a rur­al cor­ner of Eng­land, it is indeed a trea­sure.

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The Hardy archive also con­tains scans of the author’s cor­re­spon­dence, man­u­scripts and signed type­scripts, and archi­tec­tur­al draw­ings, like that of St. Juliot’s Church in Corn­wall, above. This exten­sive dig­i­tal Hardy col­lec­tion is but one of many housed in the Ran­som Cen­ter’s Project Reveal, an acronym for “Read and View Eng­lish & Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture.” Read and view you can indeed, through the inti­ma­cy of first drafts, man­u­scripts, per­son­al writ­ing, and oth­er ephemera.

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See, for exam­ple, a hand­writ­ten draft of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, in French, (excerpt above). Below, we have a hand­writ­ten list of Robert Louis Steven­son’s favorite books, and fur­ther down, a manuscript draft of Kather­ine Mans­field­’s “Now I am a plant, a weed” from her per­son­al poet­ry note­book.

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Oth­er authors includ­ed in the Project Reveal archive include Char­lotte Perkins Gilman, Hart Crane, Hen­ry James, Joseph Con­rad, and William Thack­er­ay. The project, writes the Ran­som Cen­ter in a press release, gen­er­at­ed more than 22,000 high-res­o­lu­tion images, avail­able for use by any­one for any pur­pose with­out restric­tion or fees” (but with attri­bu­tion). The lit­er­ary store­house on dis­play here only adds to an already essen­tial col­lec­tion of arti­facts the Ran­som Cen­ter hous­es, such as the papers of Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez, syl­labi, anno­tat­ed books, and man­u­scripts from David Fos­ter Wal­lace, scrap­books of Har­ry Hou­di­ni, and the first known pho­to­graph ever tak­en. See a com­plete list of con­tents of the Ran­som Cen­ter’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions here, and learn more about this amaz­ing library in the heart of Texas at their main site.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Library of Con­gress Launch­es New Online Poet­ry Archive, Fea­tur­ing 75 Years of Clas­sic Poet­ry Read­ings

Yale Launch­es an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Lit­er­ary Remains of Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Will Rest in Texas

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

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

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Virginia Woolf’s Haunting Suicide Note Read by Actress Louise Brealey

in Letters | May 29th, 2015

A few weeks ago, we fea­tured Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch’s read­ing of the let­ter Alan Tur­ing (whom Cum­ber­batch por­trayed in last year’s The Imi­ta­tion Game) wrote before his 1952 con­vic­tion of “gross inde­cen­cy.” It came from Let­ters Live, “a series of live events cel­e­brat­ing the pow­er of lit­er­ary cor­re­spon­dence” put on by pub­lish­er Canon­gate and Cum­ber­batch’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Sun­ny­March and “inspired by Shaun Ush­er’s Let­ters of Note” — a site Open Cul­ture read­ers sure­ly know well by now.

Back in 2013, Josh Jones wrote a post here on Vir­ginia Woolf’s hand­writ­ten 1941 sui­cide note, “a haunt­ing and beau­ti­ful doc­u­ment, in all its unadorned sin­cer­i­ty behind which much tur­moil and anguish lie.” Hav­ing seen that note, per­haps you’d also like to hear it per­formed. If so, you’ll want to watch the Let­ters Live video at the top of the post, which offers an inter­pre­ta­tion of the To the Light­house author’s dec­la­ra­tion that “I can’t fight any longer” by Cum­ber­batch’s Sher­lock co-star Louise Brealey.

If you haven’t had your fill of lit­er­ary cor­re­spon­dence read aloud by these not­ed British per­form­ers, do pay a vis­it to Let­ters Live’s Youtube page, where you can also hear Brealey read­ing let­ters from Bessie Moore and Clemen­tine Churchill as well as Cum­ber­batch read­ing let­ters from Chris Bark­er and more from Alan Tur­ing. Watch­ing inter­net videos of live per­for­mances of tra­di­tion­al let­ters — the mind may reel at all these simul­ta­ne­ous lay­ers of medi­a­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion, but the pieces of cor­re­spon­dence cho­sen still speak straight to the heart.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vir­ginia Woolf’s Hand­writ­ten Sui­cide Note: A Painful and Poignant Farewell (1941)

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

James Joyce’s Dirty Love Let­ters Read Aloud by Mar­tin Starr, Paget Brew­ster & Oth­er TV Com­e­dy Actors (NSFW)

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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Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Letters

in Letters, Literature | May 27th, 2015

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It’s easy to think of Franz Kaf­ka as a celi­bate, even asex­u­al, writer. There is the notable lack of eroti­cism of any rec­og­niz­able sort in so much of his work. There is the promi­nent bio­graph­i­cal detail—integral to so many interpretations—of his out­sized fear of his father, which serves to infan­tilize him in a way. There is the image, writes Spiked, of “a lone­ly seer too saint­ly for this rank, sunken world.” All of this, James Hawes writes in his Exca­vat­ing Kaf­ka, “is pure spin.” Against such idol­a­try, both lit­er­ary and qua­si-reli­gious, Hawes describes “the real Kaf­ka,” includ­ing the fact that he was “far from an infre­quent vis­i­tor to Prague’s broth­els.” Though “tortured”—as his friend, biog­ra­ph­er, and execu­tor Max Brod put it—by guilt over his sex­u­al­i­ty, Kaf­ka nonethe­less did not deny him­self the fre­quent com­pa­ny of pros­ti­tutes and a col­lec­tion of out­ré pornog­ra­phy.

But a part of the myth, Kafka’s extreme dif­fi­dence in roman­tic rela­tion­ships with two women in his life—onetime fiancé Felice Bauer and Czech jour­nal­ist Mile­na Jesen­ská—is not far off the mark. These rela­tion­ships were indeed “tor­tured,” with Kaf­ka “demand­ing com­mit­ment while doing his best to evade it.” His courtship with Felice was con­duct­ed almost entire­ly through let­ters, and his per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence to both women, pub­lished in sep­a­rate vol­umes by Schock­en Books, “has all the ear­marks of his fic­tion: the same ner­vous atten­tion to minute par­tic­u­lars; the same para­noid aware­ness of shift­ing bal­ances of pow­er; the same atmos­phere of emo­tion­al suffocation—combined, sur­pris­ing­ly enough, with moments of boy­ish ardor and delight.” So writes the New York Times’ Michiko Kaku­tani in her review of Let­ters to Felice in 1988.

A March 25, 1914 let­ter to Felice exem­pli­fies these qual­i­ties, includ­ing Kafka’s ten­den­cy to “berate” his fiancé and to “backpedal” from the seri­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty of mar­riage. In answer to her seem­ing­ly unasked ques­tion of whether Bauer might find in him “the vital sup­port you undoubt­ed­ly need,” Kaf­ka writes,” there is noth­ing straight­for­ward I can say to that”:

The exact infor­ma­tion you want about me, dear­est F., I can­not give you ; I can give it you, if at all, only when run­ning along behind you in the Tier­garten, you always on the point of van­ish­ing alto­geth­er, and I on the point of pros­trat­ing myself; only when thus humil­i­at­ed, more deeply than any dog, am I able to do it. When you post that ques­tion now I can only say: I love you, F., to the lim­its of my strength, in this respect you can trust me entire­ly. But for the rest, F., I do not know myself com­plete­ly. Sur­pris­es and dis­ap­point­ments about myself fol­low each oth­er in end­less suc­ces­sion.

The frus­trat­ed mys­tery, self-abase­ment, vague and fear­ful hints, and ref­er­ence to dogs are all ele­ments of the so oft-invoked Kafkaesque, though the frank procla­ma­tion of love is not. Not long after his 1917 diag­no­sis of tuber­cu­lo­sis, Kaf­ka would break off the engage­ment. In 1920, he began his—also heav­i­ly scripted—affair with Jesen­ská, his side of which appears in the col­lect­ed Let­ters to Mile­na. In these mis­sives, the same set of per­son­al and lit­er­ary impuls­es alter­nate: ten­der expres­sions of devo­tion give way to dark and cryp­tic state­ments like “writ­ten kiss­es… are drunk on the way by the ghosts” and “I have spent all my life resist­ing the desire to end it.” One let­ter seems to have noth­ing at all to do with Mile­na and every­thing to do with Kafka’s project as a writer:

I am con­stant­ly try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate some­thing incom­mu­ni­ca­ble, to explain some­thing inex­plic­a­ble, to tell about some­thing I only feel in my bones and which can only be expe­ri­enced in those bones. Basi­cal­ly it is noth­ing oth­er than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to every­thing, fear of the great­est as of the small­est, fear, par­a­lyz­ing fear of pro­nounc­ing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a long­ing for some­thing greater than all that is fear­ful.

Pas­sages like these war­rant the redu­pli­ca­tion in Kakutani’s review title: “Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters.” It is almost as if he used these let­ters as a test­ing ground for the tan­gled inter­nal con­flicts, doubts, and obses­sions that would make their way into his fic­tion. Or that, in them, we see these Kafkaesque motifs dis­tilled. It is dur­ing his engage­ment to Felice Bauer that Kaf­ka pro­duced “his most sig­nif­i­cant work, includ­ing The Meta­mor­phoses,” and dur­ing his rela­tion­ship with Mile­na Jesen­ská that my per­son­al favorite, The Cas­tle, took shape.

Although it has long been fash­ion­able to resist the “bio­graph­i­cal fal­la­cy,” read­ing an author’s life into his or her work, the exis­tence of hun­dreds of Kafka’s let­ters in pub­li­ca­tion makes this sep­a­ra­tion dif­fi­cult. Elias Canet­ti described Kafka’s let­ters as a dia­logue he was “con­duct­ing with him­self,” one which “provide[s] an index of the emo­tion­al events that would inspire ‘The Tri­al’” and oth­er works. Kafka’s unex­pect­ed bouts of roman­tic pas­sion notwith­stand­ing, these let­ters add a great deal of sup­port to that crit­i­cal assess­ment.

via Michiko Kaku­tani/New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Tweaks to Franz Kafka’s Novel­la The Meta­mor­pho­sis

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

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

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The Letter Between Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke That Sparked the Greatest SciFi Film Ever Made (1964)

in Film, Letters | May 14th, 2015

Clarke and Kubrick

Image cour­tesy of 2001Italia

Ori­gin sto­ries are all the rage these days giv­en the ubiq­ui­ty of super­hero films and tele­vi­sion series. But for all their smash-em-up spec­ta­cle and break­neck pac­ing, they gen­er­al­ly feel over­stuffed and dis­pos­able. As with the Age of Ultron, there is an age, every sum­mer, of some Mar­vel or DC hero or oth­er. Or all of them at once, at this point, in a per­pet­u­al onslaught. On the oth­er hand, we still have the qui­et­ly omi­nous, thought­ful sci­ence fic­tion film, the off­spring of Nico­las Roeg and Andrei Tarkovsky, in movies like Ex Machi­na. These come and go, some bet­ter than oth­ers, but also always with us. Dif­fer­ent as these two types of films can be, in style and tone, nei­ther would like­ly look and feel the way they do with­out Stan­ley Kubrick’s intense­ly intro­spec­tive and pro­found­ly epic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The ori­gin sto­ry of this incred­i­ble 1968 film begins on March 31, 1964 when Kubrick wrote the let­ter below to Arthur C. Clarke, propos­ing that the two col­lab­o­rate on “the prover­bial ‘real­ly good’ sci­ence fic­tion film.” “I had been a great admir­er of your books for quite a time,” writes Kubrick, and gives Clarke three “broad areas” of inter­est, “nat­u­ral­ly assum­ing great plot and char­ac­ter.” Nat­u­ral­ly.

“Clarke’s response,” writes BFI, “was imme­di­ate­ly enthu­si­as­tic, express­ing a mutu­al admi­ra­tion.” Kubrick, Clarke told their mutu­al friend Roger Caras, “is obvi­ous­ly an aston­ish­ing man.” In his response to the direc­tor him­self, Clarke wrote on April 8, ““For my part, I am absolute­ly dying to see Dr. Strangelove; Loli­ta is one of the few films I have seen twice – the first time to enjoy it, the sec­ond time to see how it was done.” The two met in New York and talked for hours, and from Clarke’s short sto­ry “The Sen­tinel of Eter­ni­ty” was born per­haps the best “real­ly good” sci­ence fic­tion film ever made.

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Clarke would com­pare the dif­fer­ences between the sto­ry and the film to those between an acorn and an oak tree, accord­ing to Ital­ian Kubrick site 2001Italia. After that meet­ing, the two would spend almost four years writ­ing the screen­play togeth­er and envi­sion­ing the har­row­ing voy­age to Jupiter that ends so tragically—and strangely—for the two astro­nauts left to expe­ri­ence it. It’s a col­lab­o­ra­tive suc­cess Kubrick clear­ly fore­saw when he approached Clarke, but in his let­ter, above, with tran­script below—cour­tesy of Let­ters of Note—he plays it cool, using the pre­text of a tele­scope Clarke owned to slip in dis­cus­sion about the film project. We are almost led to believe,” writes 2001Italia, “that the movie was an excuse” to dis­cuss the gad­get. But of course we know bet­ter.

Dear Mr Clarke:

It’s a very inter­est­ing coin­ci­dence that our mutu­al friend Caras men­tioned you in a con­ver­sa­tion we were hav­ing about a Ques­tar tele­scope. I had been a great admir­er of your books for quite a time and had always want­ed to dis­cuss with you the pos­si­bil­i­ty of doing the prover­bial “real­ly good” sci­ence-fic­tion movie.

My main inter­est lies along these broad areas, nat­u­ral­ly assum­ing great plot and char­ac­ter:

  1. The rea­sons for believ­ing in the exis­tence of intel­li­gent extra-ter­res­tri­al life.
  2. The impact (and per­haps even lack of impact in some quar­ters) such dis­cov­ery would have on Earth in the near future.
  3. A space probe with a land­ing and explo­ration of the Moon and Mars.

Roger [Caras ]tells me you are plan­ning to come to New York this sum­mer. Do you have an inflex­i­ble sched­ule? If not, would you con­sid­er com­ing soon­er with a view to a meet­ing, the pur­pose of which would be to deter­mine whether an idea might exist or arise which could suf­fi­cient­ly inter­est both of us enough to want to col­lab­o­rate on a screen­play?

Inci­den­tal­ly, “Sky & Tele­scope” adver­tise a num­ber of scopes. If one has the room for a medi­um size scope on a pedestal, say the size of a cam­era tri­pod, is there any par­tic­u­lar mod­el in a class by itself, as the Ques­tar is for small portable scopes?

Best regards,

Kubrick pur­sued his projects very delib­er­ate­ly and pas­sion­ate­ly, moti­vat­ed by great per­son­al inter­est. Though his films can feel detached and cold, and he him­self seems like a very aloof char­ac­ter, the oppo­site was true, accord­ing to those who knew him best. Below, see a short video from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts London’s Stan­ley Kubrick Archive pro­fil­ing the way Kubrick went about choos­ing his films, best summed up by Jan Har­lon, Kubrick’s broth­er-in-law and pro­duc­er: “No love, no qual­i­ty, and in Stanley’s case, no love, no film.”

via BFI

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

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

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Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Special Friendship: He Treated Me Not as a Freak, But as a Person Dealing with Great Difficulties

in History, Letters, Literature | May 13th, 2015

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Some­times it can seem as though the more we think we know a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure, the less we actu­al­ly do. Helen Keller? We’ve all seen (or think we’ve seen) some ver­sion of The Mir­a­cle Work­er, right?—even if we haven’t actu­al­ly read Keller’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy. And Mark Twain? He can seem like an old fam­i­ly friend. But I find peo­ple are often sur­prised to learn that Keller was a rad­i­cal social­ist fire­brand, in sym­pa­thy with work­ers’ move­ments world­wide. In a short arti­cle in praise of Lenin, for exam­ple, Keller once wrote, “I cry out against peo­ple who uphold the empire of gold…. I am per­fect­ly sure that love will bring every­thing right in the end, but I can­not help sym­pa­thiz­ing with the oppressed who feel dri­ven to use force to gain the rights that belong to them.”

Twain took a more pes­simistic, iron­ic approach, yet he thor­ough­ly opposed reli­gious dog­ma, slav­ery, and impe­ri­al­ism. “I am always on the side of the rev­o­lu­tion­ists,” he wrote, “because there nev­er was a rev­o­lu­tion unless there were some oppres­sive and intol­er­a­ble con­di­tions against which to rev­o­lute.” While a great many peo­ple grow more con­ser­v­a­tive with age, Twain and Keller both grew more rad­i­cal, which in part accounts for anoth­er lit­tle-known fact about these two nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can celebri­ties: they formed a very close and last­ing friend­ship that, at least in Keller’s case, may have been one of the most impor­tant rela­tion­ships in either figure’s life.

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Twain’s impor­tance to Keller, and hers to him, begins in 1895, when the two met at a lunch held for Keller in New York. Accord­ing to the Mark Twain Library’s exten­sive doc­u­men­tary exhib­it, Keller “seemed to feel more at ease with Twain than with any of the oth­er guests.” She would lat­er write, “He treat­ed me not as a freak, but as a hand­i­capped woman seek­ing a way to cir­cum­vent extra­or­di­nary dif­fi­cul­ties.” Twain was tak­en as well, sur­prised by “her quick­ness and intel­li­gence.” After the meet­ing, he wrote to his bene­fac­tor Hen­ry H. Rogers, ask­ing Rogers to fund Keller’s edu­ca­tion. Rogers, the Mark Twain Library tells us, “per­son­al­ly took charge of Helen Keller’s for­tunes, and out of his own means made it pos­si­ble for her to con­tin­ue her edu­ca­tion and to achieve for her­self the endur­ing fame which Mark Twain had fore­seen.”

Twain wrote to his wealthy friend, “It won’t do for Amer­i­ca to allow this mar­velous child to retire from her stud­ies because of pover­ty. If she can go on with them she will make a fame that will endure in his­to­ry for cen­turies.” There­after, the two would main­tain a “spe­cial friend­ship,” sus­tained not only by their polit­i­cal sen­ti­ments, but also by a love of ani­mals, trav­el, and oth­er per­son­al sim­i­lar­i­ties. Both writ­ers came to live in Fair­field Coun­ty, Con­necti­cut at the end of their lives, and she vis­it­ed him at his Red­ding home, Storm­field, in 1909, the year before his death (see them there at the top of the post, and more pho­tos here). Twain was espe­cial­ly impressed by Keller’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, writ­ing to her, “I am charmed with your book—enchanted.” (See his endorse­ment in a 1903 adver­tise­ment, below.)

HelenKellerAd2

Twain also came to Keller’s defense, ten years lat­er, after read­ing in her book about a pla­gia­rism scan­dal that occurred in 1892 when, at only twelve years old, she was accused of lift­ing her short sto­ry “The Frost King” from Mar­garet Canby’s “Frost Fairies.” Though a tri­bunal acquit­ted Keller of the charges, the inci­dent still piqued Twain, who called it “unspeak­ably fun­ny and owlish­ly idi­ot­ic and grotesque” in a 1903 let­ter in which he also declared: “The ker­nel, the soul—let us go fur­ther and say the sub­stance, the bulk, the actu­al and valu­able mate­r­i­al of all human utterance—is pla­gia­rism.” What dif­fers from work to work, he con­tends is “the phras­ing of a sto­ry”; Keller’s accusers, he writes pro­tec­tive­ly, were “solemn don­keys break­ing a lit­tle child’s heart.” (The exquis­ite­ly-word­ed let­ter is well worth read­ing in full at Let­ters of Note).

twain-welcomes-keller-4

We also have Twain—not play­wright William Gib­son—to thank for the “mir­a­cle work­er” title giv­en to Keller’s teacher, Anne Sul­li­van. (See Keller, Sul­li­van, Twain, and Sullivan’s hus­band John Macy above at Twain’s home). As a trib­ute to Sul­li­van for her tire­less work with Keller, he pre­sent­ed her with a post­card that read, “To Mrs. John Sul­li­van Macy with warm regard & with lim­it­less admi­ra­tion of the won­ders she has per­formed as a ‘mir­a­cle-work­er.’” In his 1903 let­ter to Keller, he called Sul­li­van “your oth­er half… for it took the pair of you to make com­plete and per­fect whole.”

Twain praised Sul­li­van effu­sive­ly for “her bril­lian­cy, pen­e­tra­tion, orig­i­nal­i­ty, wis­dom, char­ac­ter, and the fine lit­er­ary com­pe­ten­cies of her pen.” But he reserved his high­est praise for Keller her­self. “You are a won­der­ful crea­ture,” he wrote, “The most won­der­ful in the world.” Keller’s praise of her friend Twain was no less lofty. “I have been in Eden three days and I saw a King,” she wrote in his guest­book dur­ing her vis­it to Storm­field, “I knew he was a King the minute I touched him though I had nev­er touched a King before.” The last words in Twain’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, the first vol­ume anyway—which he only allowed to be pub­lished in 2010—are Keller’s; “You once told me you were a pes­simist, Mr. Clemons,” he quotes her as say­ing, “but great men are usu­al­ly mis­tak­en about them­selves. You are an opti­mist.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Only Footage of Mark Twain: The Orig­i­nal & Dig­i­tal­ly Restored Films Shot by Thomas Edi­son

Mark Twain Writes a Rap­tur­ous Let­ter to Walt Whit­man on the Poet’s 70th Birth­day (1889)

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

Helen Keller & Annie Sul­li­van Appear Togeth­er in Mov­ing 1930 News­reel

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

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Benedict Cumberbatch Reads a Letter Alan Turing Wrote in “Distress” Before His Conviction For “Gross Indecency”

in History, Letters | May 5th, 2015

A pio­neer of com­put­er sci­ence, Alan Tur­ing’s name comes up in near­ly every con­ver­sa­tion about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. His “Tur­ing Test” pur­ports to indi­cate whether and when a machine has acquired intel­li­gence and abil­i­ty indis­tin­guish­able from that of a human, and his work with the Bletch­ley Park cryp­tog­ra­phy group dur­ing WWII helped the British break the Enig­ma code used by the Nazis. Those who came to learn about Tur­ing from the recent biopic The Imi­ta­tion Game, with Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch star­ring as the tor­ment­ed math­e­mati­cian, know this part of his life in par­tic­u­lar, as well as the part of his life that trag­i­cal­ly led to his ear­ly death at age 41.

Tur­ing was gay, but forced to hide it because of British law. In 1952, he was con­vict­ed of “gross inde­cen­cy” for his rela­tion­ship with anoth­er man. Before plead­ing guilty to the sup­posed offence, Tur­ing wrote the let­ter below to his col­league and friend Nor­man Rout­ledge.

Employ­ing a dark sense of humor and sign­ing off “Yours in dis­tress,” he gives every indi­ca­tion that he is fear­ful not only for him­self, but for the fate of his work. Just above, see Bene­dict Cum­ber­bach read the let­ter, which begins with a para­graph of small talk from an obvi­ous­ly ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion then abrupt­ly turns to the trou­ble at hand.

My dear Nor­man,

I don’t think I real­ly do know much about jobs, except the one I had dur­ing the war, and that cer­tain­ly did not involve any trav­el­ling. I think they do take on con­scripts. It cer­tain­ly involved a good deal of hard think­ing, but whether you’d be inter­est­ed I don’t know. Philip Hall was in the same rack­et and on the whole, I should say, he did­n’t care for it. How­ev­er I am not at present in a state in which I am able to con­cen­trate well, for rea­sons explained in the next para­graph.

I’ve now got myself into the kind of trou­ble that I have always con­sid­ered to be quite a pos­si­bil­i­ty for me, though I have usu­al­ly rat­ed it at about 10:1 against. I shall short­ly be plead­ing guilty to a charge of sex­u­al offences with a young man. The sto­ry of how it all came to be found out is a long and fas­ci­nat­ing one, which I shall have to make into a short sto­ry one day, but haven’t the time to tell you now. No doubt I shall emerge from it all a dif­fer­ent man, but quite who I’ve not found out.

Glad you enjoyed broad­cast. Jef­fer­son cer­tain­ly was rather dis­ap­point­ing though. I’m afraid that the fol­low­ing syl­lo­gism may be used by some in the future.

Tur­ing believes machines think
Tur­ing lies with men
There­fore machines do not think

Yours in dis­tress,

Alan

Tur­ing had long wres­tled with his sex­u­al­i­ty, but had also long come to terms with it at the time of the let­ter. As the Cum­ber­batch-star­ring film dra­ma­tizes (with some license), over ten years ear­li­er, dur­ing the war, he had attempt­ed to mar­ry the only female mem­ber of the main Bletch­ley group, Joan Clarke, then con­fid­ed his sex­u­al­i­ty to her.

Clarke was most­ly non­plussed and Tur­ing broke off the engage­ment. You can get much more insight about Turing’s strug­gle, and what he was actu­al­ly like, from two of the women who worked with him, includ­ing Clarke her­self in an inter­view above. Below, anoth­er of the Bletch­ley team—one of the thou­sands of “Bletchleyettes”—named Olive Bai­ly dis­cuss­es her impres­sions of Tur­ing. To learn much more about his life, watch The Strange Life and Death of Dr. Tur­ing, in two parts on Youtube.

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Tur­ing, Bril­liant Math­e­mati­cian and Code Break­er, Will Be Final­ly Par­doned by British Gov­ern­ment

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

Watch Break­ing the Code, About the Life & Times of Alan Tur­ing (1996)

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

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Harper Lee on the Joy of Reading Real Books: “Some Things Should Happen On Soft Pages, Not Cold Metal”

in Books, Letters, Literature | February 12th, 2015

News of the new, long-await­ed but hard­ly expect­ed Harp­er Lee nov­el, Go Set a Watch­man—a sequel to the 1960’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird—has been met with vary­ing degrees of skep­ti­cism, sure­ly war­rant­ed giv­en her late sis­ter Alice and oth­ers’ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Lee’s phys­i­cal and men­tal decline. On the oth­er hand, the nov­el­ist, it’s been report­ed, is “extreme­ly hurt” by alle­ga­tions that she has been pres­sured to pub­lish. It would be a shame if the con­tro­ver­sy over the pub­li­ca­tion of the nov­el eclipsed the nov­el itself. While it had become some­thing of a tru­ism that Harp­er Lee would only pub­lish the one, great nov­el and nev­er anoth­er, I for one greet this lat­est news with joy.

For one thing, cir­cum­stances aside, the new Harp­er Lee nov­el has the mass media doing some­thing it rarely does anymore—talking about lit­er­ary fic­tion. And for the thou­sands of school kids required to read To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and won­der­ing why they should both­er, the con­ver­sa­tion hope­ful­ly com­mu­ni­cates that books still mat­ter, and not just dystopi­an YA sci-fi and mass-mar­ket trade books about BDSM fan­tasies, but books about ordi­nary peo­ple in ordi­nary times and places. It’s a les­son Lee learned ear­ly. In a 2006 let­ter to Oprah Win­frey, pub­lished in O mag­a­zine, Lee wrote about her child­hood expe­ri­ences with read­ing, and being read to. She recalls arriv­ing “in the first grade, lit­er­ate,” because of her upbring­ing. She also acknowl­edges that “books were scarce”; her and her sib­lings ear­ly lit­er­a­cy meant they were “priv­i­leged” com­pared to oth­er chil­dren, “most­ly from rur­al areas,” and the “chil­dren of our African-Amer­i­can ser­vants.”

While we may dis­miss Lee’s con­tention that in “an abun­dant soci­ety where peo­ple have lap­tops, cell phones” and “iPods” they also have “minds like emp­ty rooms” as the kvetch­ing of a senior cit­i­zen, I doubt most peo­ple who respect Lee’s wis­dom and good humor would do so light­ly. Her poet­ic evo­ca­tion of the tac­tile dif­fer­ences between books and gad­gets alone should give us pause: “some things should only hap­pen on soft pages, not cold met­al.”

Read the full let­ter below.

May 7, 2006

Dear Oprah,

Do you remem­ber when you learned to read, or like me, can you not even remem­ber a time when you did­n’t know how? I must have learned from hav­ing been read to by my fam­i­ly. My sis­ters and broth­er, much old­er, read aloud to keep me from pes­ter­ing them; my moth­er read me a sto­ry every day, usu­al­ly a chil­dren’s clas­sic, and my father read from the four news­pa­pers he got through every evening. Then, of course, it was Uncle Wig­gi­ly at bed­time.

So I arrived in the first grade, lit­er­ate, with a curi­ous cul­tur­al assim­i­la­tion of Amer­i­can his­to­ry, romance, the Rover Boys, Rapun­zel, and The Mobile Press. Ear­ly signs of genius? Far from it. Read­ing was an accom­plish­ment I shared with sev­er­al local con­tem­po­raries. Why this endem­ic pre­coc­i­ty? Because in my home­town, a remote vil­lage in the ear­ly 1930s, young­sters had lit­tle to do but read. A movie? Not often — movies weren’t for small chil­dren. A park for games? Not a hope. We’re talk­ing unpaved streets here, and the Depres­sion.

Books were scarce. There was noth­ing you could call a pub­lic library, we were a hun­dred miles away from a depart­ment store’s books sec­tion, so we chil­dren began to cir­cu­late read­ing mate­r­i­al among our­selves until each child had read anoth­er’s entire stock. There were long dry spells bro­ken by the new Christ­mas books, which start­ed the rounds again.

As we grew old­er, we began to real­ize what our books were worth: Anne of Green Gables was worth two Bobb­sey Twins; two Rover Boys were an even swap for two Tom Swifts. Aes­thet­ic fris­sons ran a poor sec­ond to the thrills of acqui­si­tion. The goal, a full set of a series, was attained only once by an indi­vid­ual of excep­tion­al greed — he swapped his sis­ter’s doll bug­gy.

We were priv­i­leged. There were chil­dren, most­ly from rur­al areas, who had nev­er looked into a book until they went to school. They had to be taught to read in the first grade, and we were impa­tient with them for hav­ing to catch up. We ignored them.

And it was­n’t until we were grown, some of us, that we dis­cov­ered what had befall­en the chil­dren of our African-Amer­i­can ser­vants. In some of their schools, pupils learned to read three-to-one — three chil­dren to one book, which was more than like­ly a cast-off primer from a white gram­mar school. We sel­dom saw them until, old­er, they came to work for us.

Now, 75 years lat­er in an abun­dant soci­ety where peo­ple have lap­tops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like emp­ty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant infor­ma­tion is not for me. I pre­fer to search library stacks because when I work to learn some­thing, I remem­ber it. 

And, Oprah, can you imag­ine curl­ing up in bed to read a com­put­er? Weep­ing for Anna Karen­i­na and being ter­ri­fied by Han­ni­bal Lecter, enter­ing the heart of dark­ness with Mis­tah Kurtz, hav­ing Hold­en Caulfield ring you up — some things should hap­pen on soft pages, not cold met­al.

The vil­lage of my child­hood is gone, with it most of the book col­lec­tors, includ­ing the dodgy one who swapped his com­plete set of Seck­atary Hawkins­es for a shot­gun and kept it until it was retrieved by an irate par­ent.

Now we are three in num­ber and live hun­dreds of miles away from each oth­er. We still keep in touch by tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions of recur­rent theme: “What is your name again?” fol­lowed by “What are you read­ing?” We don’t always remem­ber. 

Much love, 

Harp­er

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

The Books You Think Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read: Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

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

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