Harper Lee Gives Advice to Young Writers in One of Her Only Interviews Captured on Audio (1964)

in Books, K-12, Literature, Radio, Writing | January 3rd, 2022

You know the char­ac­ter Boo Radley? Well, if you know Boo, then you under­stand why I wouldn’t be doing an inter­view. Because I am real­ly Boo. 

– Harp­er Lee, in a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with Oprah Win­frey

Author Harp­er Lee loved writ­ing but resist­ed inter­views, grant­i­ng just a hand­ful in the fifty-six years that fol­lowed the pub­li­ca­tion of her Pulitzer Prize win­ning 1960 nov­el, To Kill a Mock­ing­bird. 

Go Set a Watch­man, her sec­ond, and final, nov­el began as an ear­ly draft of To Kill a Mock­ing­bird, and was pub­lished in 2015, a year before her death.

Roy Newquist, inter­view­ing Lee in 1964 for WQXR’s Coun­ter­point, above, prob­a­bly expect­ed the hot­shot young nov­el­ist had many more books in her when he solicit­ed her advice for “the tal­ent­ed young­ster who wants to carve a career as a cre­ative writer.”

Pre­sum­ably Lee did too. “I hope to good­ness that every nov­el I do gets bet­ter and bet­ter, not worse and worse,” she remarked toward the end of the inter­view.

She oblig­ed Newquist by offer­ing some advice, but stopped short of offer­ing career tips to those eager for the low­down on how to write an instant best­seller that will be adapt­ed for stage and screen, earn a peren­ni­al spot in mid­dle school cur­ricu­lums, and — just last week — be crowned the Best Book of the Past 125 Years in a New York Times read­ers’ poll, beat­ing out titles by well regard­ed, and vast­ly more pro­lif­ic authors on the order of J.R.R. Tolkien, George Orwell, Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez, and Toni Mor­ri­son.

“Peo­ple who write for reward by way of recog­ni­tion or mon­e­tary gain don’t know what they’re doing. They’re in the cat­e­go­ry of those who write; they are not writ­ers,” she drawled.

Harp­er Lee’s Advice to Young Writ­ers

  • Hope for the best and expect noth­ing in terms of recog­ni­tion
  • Write to please an audi­ence of one: your­self
  • Write to exor­cise your divine dis­con­tent
  • Gath­er mate­r­i­al from the world around you, then turn inward and reflect
  • Don’t major in writ­ing

Lis­ten­ing to the record­ing, it occurs to us that this inter­view con­tains some more advice for young writ­ers, or rather, those bring­ing up chil­dren in the dig­i­tal age.

When Newquist won­ders why it is that “such a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of our sen­si­tive and endur­ing fic­tion springs from writ­ers born and reared in the South,” Lee, a native of Mon­roeville, Alaba­ma, makes a strong case for cul­ti­vat­ing an envi­ron­ment where­in chil­dren have no choice but to make their own fun:

I think … the absence of things to do and see and places to go means a great deal to our own pri­vate com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We can’t go to see a play; we can’t go to see a big league base­ball game when we want to. We enter­tain our­selves.

This was my child­hood: If I went to a film once a month it was pret­ty good for me, and for all chil­dren like me. We had to use our own devices in our play, for our enter­tain­ment. We did­n’t have much mon­ey. Nobody had any mon­ey. We did­n’t have toys, noth­ing was done for us, so the result was that we lived in our imag­i­na­tion most of the time. We devised things; we were read­ers, and we would trans­fer every­thing we had seen on the print­ed page to the back­yard in the form of high dra­ma.

Did you nev­er play Tarzan when you were a child? Did you nev­er tramp through the jun­gle or refight the bat­tle of Get­tys­burg in some form or fash­ion? We did. Did you nev­er live in a tree house and find the whole world in the branch­es of a chin­aber­ry tree? We did.

I think that kind of life nat­u­ral­ly pro­duces more writ­ers than, say, an envi­ron­ment like 82nd Street in New York.

Hear that, par­ents and teach­ers of young writ­ers?

  • Nur­ture the cre­ative spir­it by reg­u­lar­ly pry­ing the dig­i­tal device’s from young writ­ers’ hands (and minds.)

Bite your tongue if, thus deprived, they trot off to the the­ater, the mul­ti­plex, or the sports sta­di­um. Remem­ber that iPhones hadn’t been invent­ed when Lee was stump­ing for the ton­ic effects of her chin­aber­ry tree. These days, any unplugged real world expe­ri­ence will be to the good.

If the young writ­ers com­plain — and they sure­ly will — sub­ject your­self to the same terms.

Call it sol­i­dar­i­ty, self-care, or a way of uphold­ing your New Year’s res­o­lu­tion…

Read an account of anoth­er Harp­er Lee inter­view, dur­ing her one day vis­it to Chica­go to pro­mote the 1962 film of To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and attend a lit­er­ary tea in her hon­or, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Harp­er Lee Gets a Request for a Pho­to; Offers Impor­tant Life Advice Instead (2006)

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

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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J.R.R. Tolkien Sent Illustrated Letters from Father Christmas to His Kids Every Year (1920–1943)

in Art, Law, Literature | December 22nd, 2021

It does­n’t take chil­dren long to sus­pect that San­ta Claus is actu­al­ly their par­ents. But if Mom and Dad demon­strate suf­fi­cient com­mit­ment to the fan­ta­sy, so will the kids. This must have held even truer for the fam­i­ly of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s most cel­e­brat­ed cre­ator of fan­tasies, J. R. R. Tolkien. Before Tolkien had begun writ­ing The Hob­bit, let alone the Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, he was hon­ing his sig­na­ture sto­ry­telling and world-build­ing skills by writ­ing let­ters from Father Christ­mas. The tod­dler John Tolkien and his infant broth­er Michael received the first in 1920, just after their Great War vet­er­an father was demo­bi­lized from the army and made the youngest pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds. Anoth­er would come each and every Christ­mas until 1943, two more chil­dren and much of a life’s work lat­er.

Every year, Tolkien’s Father Christ­mas had a great deal to report to John, Michael, and lat­er Christo­pher and Priscil­la. Apart from the usu­al has­sle of assem­bling and deliv­er­ing gifts, he had to con­tend with a host of oth­er chal­lenges includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to attacks by maraud­ing gob­lins and the acci­den­tal destruc­tion of the moon.

The cast of char­ac­ters also includes an unre­li­able polar-bear assis­tant and his cubs Pak­su and Valko­tuk­ka, the sound of whose names hints at Tolkien’s inter­est in lan­guage and myth. Since the pub­li­ca­tion of the col­lect­ed Let­ters From Father Christ­mas a few years after Tolkien’s death, enthu­si­asts have iden­ti­fied many traces of the qual­i­ties that would lat­er emerge, ful­ly devel­oped, in his nov­els. The spir­it of adven­ture is there, of course, but so is the humor.

Under­stand­ing seem­ing­ly from the first how to fire up a young read­er’s imag­i­na­tion, the mul­ti­tal­ent­ed Tolkien accom­pa­nied each let­ter from Father Christ­mas with an illus­tra­tion. Col­or­ful and evoca­tive, these works of art depict the scenes of both mishap and rev­el­ry described in the cor­re­spon­dence (itself stamped with a Tolkien-designed seal from the North Pole). How intense­ly must young John, Michael, Christo­pher, and Priscil­la have antic­i­pat­ed these mis­sives in the weeks — even months — lead­ing up to Christ­mas. And how aston­ish­ing it must have been, upon much lat­er reflec­tion, to real­ize what atten­tion their father had devot­ed to this fam­i­ly project. Grow­ing up Tolkien no doubt had its down­sides, as rela­tion to any famous writer does, but unmem­o­rable hol­i­days can’t have been one of them.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Let­ter From Father Christ­mas” To His Young Chil­dren

Dis­cov­er J. R .R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant-Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

Andy Warhol’s Christ­mas Art

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

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An Oscar-Winning Animation of Charles Dickens’ Classic Tale, A Christmas Carol (1971)

in Animation, K-12, Literature | December 20th, 2021

I HAVE endeav­oured in this Ghost­ly lit­tle book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my read­ers out of humour with them­selves, with each oth­er, with the sea­son, or with me. May it haunt their hous­es pleas­ant­ly, and no one wish to lay it. — Charles Dick­ens

Some twen­ty years before Tim Bur­ton’s The Night­mare Before Christ­mas, anoth­er ani­mat­ed enter­tain­ment inject­ed “the most won­der­ful time of the year” with a potent dose of hor­ror.

Sure­ly I’m not the only child of the 70s to have been equal parts mes­mer­ized and strick­en by direc­tor Richard Williams’ faith­ful, if high­ly con­densed, inter­pre­ta­tion of Charles Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol.

The 25-minute short fea­tures a host of hair-rais­ing images drawn direct­ly from Dick­ens’ text, from a spec­tral hearse in Scrooge’s hall­way and the Ghost of Marley’s gap­ing maw, to a night sky pop­u­lat­ed with mis­er­able, howl­ing phan­toms and the mon­strous chil­dren lurk­ing beneath the Ghost of Christ­mas Present’s skirts:

Yel­low, mea­gre, ragged, scowl­ing, wolfish; but pros­trate, too, in their humil­i­ty. Where grace­ful youth should have filled their fea­tures out, and touched them with its fresh­est tints, a stale and shriv­elled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twist­ed them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, dev­ils lurked, and glared out men­ac­ing. No change, no degra­da­tion, no per­ver­sion of human­i­ty, in any grade, through all the mys­ter­ies of won­der­ful cre­ation, has mon­sters half so hor­ri­ble and dread… This boy is Igno­rance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that writ­ten which is Doom, unless the writ­ing be erased. 

Pro­duc­er Chuck Jones, whose ear­li­er ani­mat­ed hol­i­day spe­cial, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas!, is in keep­ing with his clas­sic work on Bugs Bun­ny and oth­er Warn­er Bros. faves, insist­ed that this car­toon should mir­ror the look of the John Leech steel engrav­ings illus­trat­ing Dick­ens’ 1843 orig­i­nal.

D.T. Neth­ery, a for­mer Dis­ney ani­ma­tion artist and fan of this Christ­mas Car­ol explains that the desired Vic­to­ri­an look was achieved with a labor-inten­sive process that involved draw­ing direct­ly on cels with Mars Omnichrom grease pen­cil, then paint­ing the backs and pho­tograph­ing them against detailed water­col­ored back­grounds.

As direc­tor Williams recalls below, he and a team includ­ing mas­ter ani­ma­tors Ken Har­ris and Abe Lev­i­tow were rac­ing against an impos­si­bly tight dead­line that left them pulling 14-hour days and 7‑day work weeks. Report­ed­ly, the final ver­sion was com­plet­ed with just an hour to spare. (“We slept under our desks for this thing.”)

As Michael Lyons observes in Ani­ma­tion Scoop, the exhaust­ed ani­ma­tors went above and beyond with Jones’ request for a pan over London’s rooftops, “mak­ing the entire twen­ty-five min­utes of the short film take on the appear­ance of art work that has come to life”:

…there are scenes that seem to involve cam­era pans, or sequences in which the cam­era seem­ing­ly cir­cles around the char­ac­ters. Much of this involved not just ani­mat­ing the char­ac­ters, but the back­grounds as well and in dif­fer­ent sizes as they move toward and away from the frame. The hand-craft­ed qual­i­ty, cou­pled with a three-dimen­sion­al feel in these moments, is down­right tac­tile.

Revered British char­ac­ter actors Alis­tair Sim (Scrooge) and Michael Hordern (Marley’s Ghost) lent some extra class, repris­ing their roles from the ever­green, black-and-white 1951 adap­ta­tion.

The short­’s tele­vi­sion pre­miere caused such a sen­sa­tion that it was giv­en a sub­se­quent the­atri­cal release, putting it in the run­ning for an Oscar for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Sub­ject. (It won, beat­ing out Tup-Tup from Croa­t­ia and the NSFW-ish Kama Sutra Rides Again which Stan­ley Kubrick had hand­picked to play before A Clock­work Orange in the UK.)

With the­aters in Dal­las, Los Ange­les, Port­land, Prov­i­dence, Tal­la­has­see and Van­cou­ver can­celling planned live pro­duc­tions of A Christ­mas Car­ol out of con­cern for the pub­lic health dur­ing this lat­est wave of the pan­dem­ic, we’re hap­py to get our Dick­en­sian fix, snug­gled up on the couch with this ani­mat­ed 50-year-old arti­fact of our child­hood.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Neil Gaiman Read A Christ­mas Car­ol Just as Dick­ens Read It

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

A Christ­mas Car­ol, A Vin­tage Radio Broad­cast by Orson Welles (1939)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Hunter S. Thompson Sets His Christmas Tree on Fire, Almost Burns His House Down (1990)

in Literature, Random | December 16th, 2021

It was some­thing of a Christ­mas rit­u­al at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Col­orado cab­in, Owl Farm. Every year, his sec­re­tary Deb­o­rah Fuller would take down the Christ­mas tree and leave it on the front porch rather than dis­pose of it entire­ly. That’s because Hunter, more often than not, want­ed to set it on fire. In 1990, Sam Allis, a writer for then for­mi­da­ble TIME mag­a­zine, vis­it­ed Thomp­son’s home and watched the fiery tra­di­tion unfold. He wrote:

I gave up on the inter­view and start­ed wor­ry­ing about my life when Hunter Thomp­son squirt­ed two cans of fire starter on the Christ­mas tree he was going to burn in his liv­ing-room fire­place, a few feet away from an unopened wood­en crate of 9‑mm bul­lets. That the tree was far too large to fit into the fire­place mat­tered not a whit to Hunter, who was sport­ing a dime-store wig at the time and resem­bled Tony Perkins in Psy­cho. Min­utes ear­li­er, he had smashed a Polaroid cam­era on the floor.

Hunter had decid­ed to video­tape the Christ­mas tree burn­ing, and we lat­er heard on the replay the ter­ri­fied voic­es of Deb­o­rah Fuller, his long­time sec­re­tary-baby sit­ter, and me off-cam­era plead­ing with him, “NO, HUNTER, NO! PLEASE, HUNTER, DON’T DO IT!” The orig­i­nal man­u­script of Hell’s Angels was on the table, and there were the bul­lets. Noth­ing doing. Thomp­son was a man pos­sessed by now, full of the Chivas Regal he had been slurp­ing straight from the bot­tle and the gin he had been mix­ing with pink lemon­ade for hours.

The wood­en man­tle above the fire­place appar­ent­ly still has burn marks on it today. It’s one of the many things you can check out when Owl Creek starts run­ning muse­um tours some time in the future.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Free: Read the Orig­i­nal 23,000-Word Essay That Became Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

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George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four Will Be Retold from a Woman’s Point of View

in Books, Literature | December 9th, 2021

Nine­teen Eighty-Four has been a byword for total­i­tar­i­an dystopia longer than most of us have been read­ing books. But apart from its the title and cer­tain words from its invent­ed “newspeak” — dou­ble­plus­good, unper­son, thought­crime — how deeply is George Orwell’s best-known nov­el embed­ded into the cul­ture? Most of us rec­og­nize the name Win­ston Smith, and many of us may even remem­ber details of his job at the Min­istry of Truth, where the facts of his­to­ry are con­tin­u­al­ly rewrit­ten to suit ever-shift­ing polit­i­cal exi­gen­cies. But how much do we know about the oth­er major char­ac­ter: Julia, Win­ston’s fel­low min­istry employ­ee who becomes his clan­des­tine co-dis­si­dent and for­bid­den lover?

“In some ways she was far more acute than Win­ston, and far less sus­cep­ti­ble to Par­ty pro­pa­gan­da,” writes Orwell in Nine­teen Eighty-Four. “But she only ques­tioned the teach­ings of the Par­ty when they in some way touched upon her own life. Often she was ready to accept the offi­cial mythol­o­gy, sim­ply because the dif­fer­ence between truth and false­hood did not seem impor­tant to her.” Juli­a’s amoral­i­ty throws the rigid­i­ty of Win­ston’s own atti­tudes into con­trast, and also shows up their imprac­ti­cal­i­ty. Now, in the hands of nov­el­ist San­dra New­man, Julia will become not just star of the sto­ry but its nar­ra­tor.

Or so it looks, at least, from the brief pas­sage quot­ed in the Guardian’s announce­ment of Julia, a re-telling of Nine­teen Eighty-Four approved by Orwell’s estate and to be pub­lished in time for the 75th anniver­sary of the orig­i­nal. Though it has no firm pub­li­ca­tion date yet, Julia will come out some time after New­man’s next book The Men, in which, as the Guardian’s Ali­son Flood puts it, “every sin­gle per­son with a Y chro­mo­some van­ish­es from the world.” It will join an abun­dance of recent retellings from the wom­an’s point of view, includ­ing every­thing from “Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, a ver­sion of the Ili­ad from the per­spec­tive of Bri­seis, to Mag­gie O’Farrell’s Ham­net, which cen­ters on the life of Shakespeare’s wife.”

Entrust­ing a lit­er­ary prop­er­ty to a writer of anoth­er era, cul­ture, and sen­si­bil­i­ty is a tricky busi­ness, but there arguably has nev­er been a more oppor­tune time to put out a book like Julia. It seems the dystopia-hun­gry pub­lic has nev­er been read­ier to iden­ti­fy the “Orwellian” in life, nor more respon­sive to re-inter­pre­ta­tions and expan­sions of long-estab­lished bod­ies of pop­u­lar myth. And what with women hav­ing con­quered the world of fic­tion, there will nat­u­ral­ly be great inter­est in Juli­a’s take on life under Big Broth­er — as well as in its inevitable tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion.

via The Guardian/Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Live TV Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty-Four, the Most Con­tro­ver­sial TV Dra­ma of Its Time (1954)

George Orwell’s 1984 Staged as an Opera: Watch Scenes from the 2005 Pro­duc­tion in Lon­don

Aldous Hux­ley to George Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

George Orwell Iden­ti­fies the Main Ene­my of the Free Press: It’s the “Intel­lec­tu­al Cow­ardice” of the Press Itself

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

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

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What Is Sun Tzu’s The Art of War About?: A Short Introduction

in History, Literature, Philosophy | November 11th, 2021

After wars in Japan and Viet­nam, the U.S. mil­i­tary became quite keen on a slim vol­ume of ancient Chi­nese lit­er­a­ture known as The Art of War by a sup­pos­ed­ly his­tor­i­cal gen­er­al named Sun Tzu. This book became required read­ing at mil­i­tary acad­e­mies and a favorite of law enforce­ment, and has formed a basis for strat­e­gy in mod­ern wartime — as in the so-called “Shock and Awe” cam­paigns in Iraq. But some have argued that the West­ern adop­tion of this text — wide­ly read across East Asia for cen­turies — neglects the cru­cial con­text of the cul­ture that pro­duced it.

Despite his­tor­i­cal claims that Sun Tzu served as a gen­er­al dur­ing the Spring and Autumn peri­od, schol­ars have most­ly doubt­ed this his­to­ry and date the com­po­si­tion of the book to the War­ring States peri­od (cir­ca 475–221 B.C.E.) that pre­ced­ed the first empire, a time in which a few rapa­cious states gob­bled up their small­er neigh­bors and con­stant­ly fought each oth­er.

“Occa­sion­al­ly the rulers man­aged to arrange recess­es from the endem­ic wars,” trans­la­tor Samuel B. Grif­fith notes. Nonethe­less, “it is extreme­ly unlike­ly that many gen­er­als died in bed dur­ing the hun­dred and fifty years between 450 and 300 B.C.”

The author of The Art of War was pos­si­bly a gen­er­al, or one of the many mil­i­tary strate­gists for hire at the time, or as some schol­ars believe, a com­pil­er of an old­er oral tra­di­tion. In any case, con­stant war­fare was the norm at the time of the book’s com­po­si­tion. This tac­ti­cal guide dif­fers from oth­er such guides, and from those that came before it. Rather than coun­sel­ing div­ina­tion or the study of ancient author­i­ties, Sun Tzu’s advice is pure­ly prac­ti­cal and of-the-moment, requir­ing a thor­ough knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion, the ene­my, and one­self. Such knowl­edge is not eas­i­ly acquired. With­out it, defeat or dis­as­ter are near­ly cer­tain:

If you know the ene­my and know your­self, you need not fear the result of a hun­dred bat­tles. If you know your­self but not the ene­my, for every vic­to­ry gained you will also suf­fer a defeat. If you know nei­ther the ene­my nor your­self, you will suc­cumb in every bat­tle.

The kind of knowl­edge Sun Tzu rec­om­mends is prac­ti­cal intel­li­gence about troop deploy­ments, food sup­plies, etcetera. It is also knowl­edge of the Tao — in this case, the gen­er­al moral prin­ci­ple and its real­iza­tion through the sov­er­eign. In a time of War­ring States, Sun Tzu rec­og­nized that knowl­edge of war­fare was “a mat­ter of vital impor­tance”; and that states should under­take it as lit­tle as pos­si­ble.

“To sub­due the ene­my with­out fight­ing is the acme of skill,” The Art of War famous­ly advis­es. Diplo­ma­cy, decep­tion, and indi­rec­tion are all prefer­able to the mate­r­i­al waste and loss of life in war, not to men­tion the high odds of defeat if one goes into bat­tle unpre­pared. “The ide­al strat­e­gy of restraint, of win­ning with­out fight­ing… is char­ac­ter­is­tic of Tao­ism,” writes Rochelle Kaplan. “Both The Art of War and the Tao Te Ching were designed to help rulers and their assis­tants achieve vic­to­ry and clar­i­ty,” and “each of them may be viewed as anti-war tracts.”

Read a full trans­la­tion of The Art of War by Lionel Giles, in sev­er­al for­mats online here, and just above, hear the same trans­la­tion read aloud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Life-Chang­ing Books: Your Picks

“The Phi­los­o­phy of “Flow”: A Brief Intro­duc­tion to Tao­ism

When Sci-Fi Leg­end Ursu­la K. Le Guin Trans­lat­ed the Chi­nese Clas­sic, the Tao Te Ching

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

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Behold 84 Great Novels Reinterpreted as Modernist Postage Stamps

in Design, Education, K-12, Literature, Music | November 2nd, 2021

Ali John­son and Jim Quail of Liv­er­pool-based design stu­dio Dorothy had a hit with their music-based graph­ics, which recast sem­i­nal alter­na­tive, psy­che­del­ic, elec­tron­ic, and post-punk albums as over­sized postage stamps.

Now, they’ve turned their atten­tion and knack for high­ly con­densed visu­al respons­es to the realms of lit­er­a­ture.

Their Mod­ern Clas­sics col­lec­tion, above, syn­the­sizes 42 titles into some­thing emblem­at­ic and essen­tial.

How many have you read?

How many would you be able to iden­ti­fy based on image alone?

It’s easy to grasp why the hori­zon fig­ures promi­nent­ly in On The Road, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Road.

And under­stand­ably, the eyes have it when it comes to 1984, A Clock­work Orange, and Slaugh­ter­house-Five.

Else­where, the visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions cre­ate con­nec­tions that may take read­ers by sur­prise.

(Stay tuned for a mas­ter’s the­sis that teas­es out the­mat­ic par­al­lels between The Col­or Purple’s quilts and Hold­en Caulfield’s red hunt­ing hat in The Catch­er in the Rye.)

Accord­ing to John­son, she and Quail, avid read­ers both, fell out sev­er­al times over which titles to include (and, by exten­sion, exclude).

Eng­lish teach­ers at mid­dle and high school lev­el will rejoice at the num­ber of syl­labus favorites that made the cut.

Poten­tial stamp-themed cre­ative assign­ments abound.

The conch may be an obvi­ous choice for Lord of the Flies, but what of The Great Gats­by’s green light?

Why not the eyes of Doc­tor T. J. Eck­le­burg?

A swim­ming pool?

Or one of those beau­ti­ful shirts?

Dis­cuss!

Then make your own stamp!

Stu­dents are far less like­ly to be con­ver­sant in the 42 ear­li­er works com­pris­ing Dorothy’s lit­er­ary Clas­sics stamps, though musi­cal and movie adap­ta­tions of Lit­tle Women, Drac­u­la, and Les Mis­er­ables should pro­vide a toe­hold.

Our igno­rance is such, we may need to reread Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jane Eyre … or at least Google the sig­nif­i­cance of a spoon and all those orange and red tri­an­gles.

(Back in our pre-dig­i­tal youth, Cliff’s Notes were the pre­ferred Philis­tine option…)

Dorothy’s stamp prints of Clas­sics and Mod­ern Clas­sics are avail­able for pur­chase on their web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Good Movies as Old Books: 100 Films Reimag­ined as Vin­tage Book Cov­ers

157 Ani­mat­ed Min­i­mal­ist Mid-Cen­tu­ry Book Cov­ers

Clas­sic Songs Re-Imag­ined as Vin­tage Book Cov­ers Dur­ing Our Trou­bled Times: “Under Pres­sure,” “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” “Shel­ter from the Storm” & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch the New Trailer for a Kurt Vonnegut Documentary 40 Years In the Making

in Film, Literature | October 29th, 2021

When Kurt Von­negut first arrived in Dres­den, a city as yet untouched by war, crammed into a box­car with dozens of oth­er POWs, the city looked to him like “Oz,” he wrote in his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sixth nov­el Slaugh­ter­house-Five. After all, he says, “The only oth­er city I’d ever seen was Indi­anapo­lis, Indi­ana.” When Von­negut and his fel­low GIs emerged from the bow­els of the pork plant in which they’d wait­ed out the Allied bomb­ing of the city, they wit­nessed the after­math of Dresden’s destruc­tion. The city for­mer­ly known as “the Flo­rence of the Elbe” was “like the moon,” as Von­negut’s “unstuck” pro­tag­o­nist Bil­ly Pil­grim says in the nov­el: cratered, pit­ted, lev­eled…. But the smok­ing ruins were the least of it.

Von­negut and his fel­low pris­on­ers spent the next few days remov­ing and incin­er­at­ing thou­sands of bod­ies, an expe­ri­ence that would for­ev­er shape the writer and his sto­ries. Whether men­tioned explic­it­ly or not, Dres­den became a “death card,” writes Philip Bei­dler, that Von­negut plant­ed through­out his work. Death recurs with banal reg­u­lar­i­ty, the phrase “So it goes,” pep­pered (106 times) through­out Slaugh­ter­house-Five, which Von­negut cred­it­ed to the French nov­el­ist Celine, whose cyn­i­cism tipped over into hatred. Von­negut may have gone as far as gen­er­al­ized mis­an­thropy, but his dry, wise­crack­ing humor and his human­ism stayed intact, even if it had picked up a pas­sen­ger: the hor­ror of mass death that haunt­ed his imag­i­na­tion.

Von­negut, like Bil­ly Pil­grim, became “unstuck in time,” a con­di­tion we might see now as anal­o­gous to PTSD, his daugh­ter Nanette says. “He was writ­ing to save his own life,” as news from Viet­nam came in and Von­negut, a paci­fist, found him­self “los­ing his tem­per” at the tele­vi­sion. “He saw the num­bers, how many dead,” she adds, “that these kids were being conned, and sent to their deaths. And I think it prob­a­bly set a fire under him to have his say.” A new doc­u­men­tary on the writer titled Unstuck in Time shows how much impact his “say” had on the coun­try’s read­ers. Von­negut wrote unbri­dled satire, sci­ence fic­tion, and social com­men­tary, in thin books with irrev­er­ent doo­dles in the mar­gins. As direc­tor Robert Wei­de says in the trail­er above, hold­ing a copy of Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, “what high school kid isn’t gonna gob­ble this up?”

Wei­de, like most lovers of Von­negut, dis­cov­ered him as a teenag­er. At 23, the bud­ding film­mak­er con­tact­ed his lit­er­ary hero about mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary. Over the course of the next twen­ty-five years, Wei­de– best known for his work with Lar­ry David on Curb Your Enthu­si­asm (and as a meme) — filmed and taped con­ver­sa­tions with Von­negut until the author’s death in 2007. The result­ing doc­u­men­tary promis­es a com­pre­hen­sive por­trait of the writer’s life, LitHub writes, from his “child­hood in Indi­anapo­lis to his expe­ri­ence as a pris­on­er of war to his rise to lit­er­ary star­dom to the fans left in the wake of his death, all through the lens of Von­negut and Weide’s close friend­ship.”

As the rela­tion­ship between film­mak­er and sub­ject became part of the film itself, co-direc­tor Don Argott joined the project “to doc­u­ment the meta ele­ment of this sto­ry,” says Wei­de, “as I con­tin­ued to focus on Vonnegut’s biog­ra­phy.” Forty years in the mak­ing, Unstuck in Time, evolved from a “fair­ly con­ven­tion­al author doc­u­men­tary” to what may stand as the most inti­mate por­trait of the author put on film. Per­haps some­day we’ll also see the pub­li­ca­tion of an 84-page scrap­book recent­ly sold at auc­tion, a col­lec­tion of Vonnegut’s wartime let­ters, news clip­pings, and pho­tographs of the ruined Ger­man city that he nev­er ful­ly left behind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries (and Amus­ing­ly Graphs the Shapes Those Sto­ries Can Take)

Why Should We Read Kurt Von­negut? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Watch a Sweet Film Adap­ta­tion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Sto­ry, “Long Walk to For­ev­er”

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

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