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

in Literature, Television | July 30th, 2021

“Wife Dies as She Watch­es,” announced a Dai­ly Express head­line after the broad­cast of Nine­teen Eighty-Four, a BBC adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s nov­el. The arti­cle seems to have attrib­uted the sud­den col­lapse and death of a 42-year-old Herne Bay Woman to the pro­duc­tion’s shock­ing con­tent. That was the most dra­mat­ic of the many accu­sa­tions lev­eled against the BBC of inflict­ing dis­tress on the view­ing pub­lic with Orwell’s bleak and har­row­ing vision of a total­i­tar­i­an future. Yet that same pub­lic also want­ed more, demand­ing a sec­ond broad­cast that drew sev­en mil­lion view­ers, the largest tele­vi­sion audi­ence in Britain since the Coro­na­tion of Eliz­a­beth II, which had hap­pened the pre­vi­ous year; Orwell’s book had been pub­lished just four years before that.

This was the mid-1950s, a time when stan­dards of tele­vi­su­al decen­cy remained almost whol­ly up for debate — and when most of what aired on tele­vi­sion was broad­cast live, not pro­duced in advance. Dar­ing not just in its con­tent but its tech­ni­cal and artis­tic com­plex­i­ty, a project like Nine­teen Eighty-Four pushed the lim­its of the medi­um, with a live orches­tral score as well as four­teen pre-filmed seg­ments meant to estab­lish the unre­lent­ing­ly grim sur­round­ing real­i­ty (and to pro­vide time for scene changes back in the stu­dio).

“This unusu­al free­dom,” says the British Film Insti­tute, “helped make Nine­teen Eighty-Four the most expen­sive TV dra­ma of its day,” though the pro­duc­tion’s effec­tive­ness owes to much more than its bud­get.

“The care­ful use of close-ups, accom­pa­nied by record­ed voice-over, allows us a win­dow into Win­ston’s inner tor­ment” as he “strug­gles to dis­guise his ‘thought­crimes’, while effec­tive­ly rep­re­sent­ing Big Broth­er’s fright­en­ing omni­science.” It also demon­strates star Peter Cush­ing’s “grasp of small screen per­for­mance,” though he would go on to greater renown on the big screen in Ham­mer Hor­ror pic­tures, and lat­er as Star Wars’ Grand Moff Tarkin. (Wil­frid Bram­bell, who plays two minor parts, would for his part be immor­tal­ized as Paul McCart­ney’s very clean grand­fa­ther in A Hard Day’s Night.) Though it got pro­duc­er-direc­tor Rudolph Carti­er death threats at the time — per­haps because Orwell’s implic­it indict­ment of a grub­by, dimin­ished post­war Britain hit too close to home — this adap­ta­tion of  Nine­teen Eighty-Four holds its own along­side the many made before and since. That’s true even now that its tit­u­lar year is decades behind us rather than decades ahead.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

Hear George Orwell’s 1984 Adapt­ed as a Radio Play at the Height of McCarthy­ism & The Red Scare (1953)

Hear a Radio Dra­ma of George Orwell’s 1984, Star­ring Patrick Troughton, of Doc­tor Who Fame (1965)

A Com­plete Read­ing of George Orwell’s 1984: Aired on Paci­fi­ca Radio, 1975

Rick Wakeman’s Prog-Rock Opera Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984

David Bowie Dreamed of Turn­ing George Orwell’s 1984 Into a Musi­cal: Hear the Songs That Sur­vived the Aban­doned Project

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Sylvia Plath’s Tarot Cards (Which Influenced the Poems in Ariel) Were Just Sold for $207,000

in Games, Life, Literature, Poetry | July 23rd, 2021

We cel­e­brat­ed my birth­day yes­ter­day: [Ted] gave me a love­ly Tarot pack of cards and a dear rhyme with it, so after the oblig­a­tions of this term are over your daugh­ter shall start her way on the road to becom­ing a seer­ess & will also learn how to do horo­scopes, a very dif­fi­cult art which means reviv­ing my ele­men­tary math. 

- Sylvia Plath, in a let­ter to her moth­er, 28 Octo­ber 1956

Sylvia Plath’s Tarot cards, a 24th birth­day present from her hus­band, poet Ted Hugh­es, just went for £151,200 in an auc­tion at Sotheby’s.

That’s approx­i­mate­ly £100,000 more than this lot, a Tarot de Mar­seille deck print­ed by play­ing card man­u­fac­tur­er B.P. Gri­maud de Paris, was expect­ed to fetch.

The auc­tion house’s descrip­tion indi­cates that a few of the cards were dis­col­ored —  evi­dence of use, as sup­port­ed by Plath’s numer­ous ref­er­ences to Tarot in her jour­nals.

Recall Tarot’s appear­ance in “Dad­dy,” her most wide­ly known poem, and her iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the Hang­ing Man card, in a poem of the same name:

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.

I siz­zled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eye­lid :

A world of bald white days in a shade­less sock­et.

A vul­tur­ous bore­dom pinned me in this tree.

If he were I, he would do what I did.

This cen­tu­ry has seen her col­lec­tion Ariel restored to its author’s intend­ed order.
The orig­i­nal order is said to cor­re­spond quite close­ly to Tarot, with the first twen­ty-two poems sym­bol­iz­ing the cards of the Major Arcana.

The next ten are aligned with the num­bers of the Minor Arcana. Those are fol­lowed by four rep­re­sent­ing the Court cards. The collection’s final four poems can be seen to ref­er­ence the pen­ta­cles, cups, swords and wands that com­prise the Tarot’s suits.

Ariel’s man­u­script was rearranged by Hugh­es, who dropped some of the “more lac­er­at­ing” poems and added oth­ers in advance of its 1965 pub­li­ca­tion, two years after Plath’s death by sui­cide. (Hear Plath read poems from Ariel here.)

Daugh­ter Frie­da defends her father’s actions and describes how dam­ag­ing they were to his rep­u­ta­tion in her Fore­word to Ariel: The Restored Edi­tion.

One won­ders if it’s sig­nif­i­cant that Plath’s Page of Cups, a card asso­ci­at­ed with pos­i­tive mes­sages relat­ed to fam­i­ly and loved ones, has a rip in it?

We also won­der who paid such a stag­ger­ing price for those cards.

Will they give the deck a moon bath or salt bur­ial to cleanse it of Plath’s neg­a­tive ener­gy?

Or is the win­ning bid­der such a diehard fan, the chance to han­dle some­thing so inti­mate­ly con­nect­ing them to their lit­er­ary hero neu­tral­izes any occult mis­giv­ings?

We rather wish Plath’s Tarot de Mar­seille had been award­ed to Phillip Roberts in Ship­ley, Eng­land, who planned to exhib­it them along­side her tarot-influ­enced poems in a pop up gallery at the Saltaire Fes­ti­val. To finance this dream, he launched a crowd-fund­ing cam­paign, pledg­ing that every £100 donor could keep one of the cards, to be drawn at ran­dom, with all con­trib­u­tors invit­ed to sub­mit new art or writ­ing to the mini-exhi­bi­tion: Save Sylvia Plath’s cards from liv­ing in the draw­ers of some wealthy col­lec­tor, and let’s make some art togeth­er!

Alas, Roberts and friends fell  £148,990 short of the win­ning bid. Bet­ter luck next time, mate. We applaud your gra­cious­ness in defeat, as well as the spir­it in which your project was con­ceived.

via Lithub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Artis­tic & Mys­ti­cal World of Tarot: See Decks by Sal­vador Dalí, Aleis­ter Crow­ley, H.R. Giger & More

Why Should We Read Sylvia Plath? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 18 Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

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

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The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Oldest-Known Work of Literature in World History

in History, Literature | July 22nd, 2021

You’re prob­a­bly famil­iar with The Epic of Gil­gamesh, the sto­ry of an over­bear­ing Sumer­ian king and demi-god who meets his match in wild man Enkidu. Gil­gamesh is hum­bled, the two become best friends, kill the for­est guardian Hum­ba­ba, and face down spurned god­dess Ishtar’s Bull of Heav­en. When Enkidu dies, Gil­gamesh goes look­ing for the only man to live for­ev­er, a sur­vivor of a leg­endary pre-Bib­li­cal flood. The great king then tries, and fails, to gain eter­nal life him­self. The sto­ry is packed with episodes of sex and vio­lence, like the mod­ern-day comics that are mod­eled on ancient mythol­o­gy. It is also, as you may know, the old­est-known work of lit­er­a­ture on Earth, writ­ten in cuneiform, the old­est-known form of writ­ing.

This is one ver­sion of the sto­ry. But Gil­gamesh beaks out of the tidy frame usu­al­ly put around it. It is a “poem that exists in a pile of bro­ken pieces,” Joan Aco­cel­la writes at The New York­er, “in an extreme­ly dead lan­guage.”

If Gil­gamesh were based on a real king of Ur, he would have lived around 2700 BC. The first sto­ries writ­ten about him come from some 800 years after that time, dur­ing the Old Baby­lon­ian peri­od, after the last of the Sumer­ian dynas­ties had already end­ed. The ver­sion we tend to read in world lit­er­a­ture and mythol­o­gy cours­es comes from sev­er­al hun­dred years lat­er, notes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s Ira Spar:

Some time in the twelfth cen­tu­ry B.C., Sin-leqi-unnin­ni, a Baby­lon­ian schol­ar, record­ed what was to become a clas­sic ver­sion of the Gil­gamesh tale. Not con­tent to mere­ly copy an old ver­sion of the tale, this schol­ar most like­ly assem­bled var­i­ous ver­sions of the sto­ry from both oral and writ­ten sources and updat­ed them in light of the lit­er­ary con­cerns of his day, which includ­ed ques­tions about human mor­tal­i­ty and the nature of wis­dom…. Sin-leqi-unnin­ni recast Enkidu as Gilgamesh’s com­pan­ion and brought to the fore con­cerns about unbri­dled hero­ism, the respon­si­bil­i­ties of good gov­er­nance, and the pur­pose of life. 

This so-called “Stan­dard Baby­lon­ian Ver­sion,” as you’ll learn in the TED-Ed video at the top by Soraya Field Fio­rio, was itself only dis­cov­ered in 1849 — very recent by com­par­i­son with oth­er ancient texts we reg­u­lar­ly read and study. The first archae­ol­o­gists to dis­cov­er it were search­ing not for Sumer­ian lit­er­a­ture but for evi­dence that proved the Bib­li­cal sto­ries. They thought they’d found it in Nin­eveh, in the exca­vat­ed library of King Ashur­ba­n­i­pal, the old­est library in the world. Instead, they dis­cov­ered the bro­ken, incom­plete tablets con­tain­ing the sto­ry of Gil­gamesh and Utnapish­tim, who, like Noah from the Hebrew Bible, built an enor­mous boat in advance of a divine­ly ordered flood. The first per­son to trans­late the pas­sages was so excit­ed, he stripped off his clothes.

The flood sto­ry wasn’t the knock-down proof Chris­t­ian schol­ars hoped for, but the dis­cov­ery of the Gil­gamesh epic was even more impor­tant for our under­stand­ing of the ancient world. What we know of the sto­ry, how­ev­er, was already edit­ed and redact­ed to suit a mil­len­nia-old agen­da. The Epic of Gil­gamesh “explains that Gil­gamesh, although he is king of Uruk, acts as an arro­gant, impul­sive, and irre­spon­si­ble ruler,” Spar writes. “Only after a frus­trat­ing and vain attempt to find eter­nal life does he emerge from imma­tu­ri­ty to real­ize that one’s achieve­ments, rather than immor­tal­i­ty, serve as an endur­ing lega­cy.”

Oth­er, much old­er ver­sions of his sto­ry show the myth­i­cal king and his exploits in a dif­fer­ent light. So how should we read Gil­gamesh in the 21st cen­tu­ry, a few thou­sand years after his first sto­ries were com­posed? You can begin here with the TED-Ed sum­ma­ry and Crash Course in World Mythol­o­gy video fur­ther up. Dig much deep­er with the lec­ture above from Andrew George, Pro­fes­sor of Baby­lon­ian at the Uni­ver­si­ty of London’s School of Ori­en­tal and African Stud­ies (SOAS).

George has pro­duced one of the most high­ly respect­ed trans­la­tions of Gil­gamesh, Aco­cel­la writes, one that “gives what remains of Sin-leqi-unnin­ni’s text” and appends oth­er frag­men­tary tablets dis­cov­ered in Bagh­dad, show­ing how the mean­ing of the cuneiform sym­bols changed over the course of the mil­len­nia between the Old Baby­lon­ian sto­ries and the “New Baby­lon­ian Ver­sion” of the Epic of Gil­gamesh we think we know. Hear a full read­ing of Gil­gamesh above, as trans­lat­ed by N.K. Sanders.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in its Orig­i­nal Ancient Lan­guage, Akka­di­an

20 New Lines from The Epic of Gil­gamesh Dis­cov­ered in Iraq, Adding New Details to the Sto­ry

World Lit­er­a­ture in 13 Parts: From Gil­gamesh to Gar­cía Márquez

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

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Explore Divine Comedy Digital, a New Digital Database That Collects Seven Centuries of Art Inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy

in Art, Literature | July 21st, 2021

The num­ber of art­works inspired by Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy in the sev­en hun­dred years since the poet com­plet­ed his epic, ver­nac­u­lar mas­ter­work is so vast that refer­ring to the poem inevitably means refer­ring to its illus­tra­tions. These began appear­ing decades after the poet­’s death, and they have not stopped appear­ing since. Indeed, it might be fair to say that the title Divine Com­e­dy (sim­ply called Com­e­dy before 1555) names not only an epic poem but also its many con­stel­la­tions of art­works and inter­pre­ta­tions, which would have filled a mod­est-sized set of Dante ency­clo­pe­dias before the inter­net.

Luck­i­ly for art his­to­ri­ans and Dante schol­ars work­ing today, there is now Divine Com­e­dy Dig­i­tal, a beau­ti­ful­ly designed data­base which brings these art­works — spread out all over the world — togeth­er in one vir­tu­al place.

The inter­face requires no spe­cial Dante knowl­edge to nav­i­gate, though it helps to be famil­iar with the poem and/or have a ref­er­ence copy near­by when look­ing through the menus. Divid­ing neat­ly into the poem’s three books (or can­tiche), the menu at the left fur­ther breaks down into cir­cles (Infer­no), ter­races (Pur­ga­to­rio), and Can­tos (all three books).

Tog­gling between options in a menu on the right allows vis­i­tors to see the num­ber of illus­trat­ed vers­es in each Can­to or the num­ber of art­works. With­in a mat­ter of min­utes, you’ll be dis­cov­er­ing Dante illus­tra­tions you nev­er knew exist­ed, from Sal­vador Dali’s The Delight­ful Mount (1950, above) to Alessan­dro Vel­lutel­lo’s Dante and St. Bernard, Mary and the Trin­i­ty (1544) and hun­dreds of oth­ers in the years in-between.

Call­ing itself a “slow surf­ing site,” Divine Com­e­dy Dig­i­tal con­tains a handy tuto­r­i­al if you do get lost and allows users “not only to nav­i­gate through the col­lec­tion, but also to sug­gest miss­ing art­works.” So far, the 17th and 18th cen­turies are huge­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed, though not for a lack of Dante-inspired art­work made in that two-hun­dred year peri­od. The gaps mean there is much more Dante art to come.

Released in June of this year, the project is the work of The Visu­al Agency, “an infor­ma­tion design agency spe­cial­ized in data-visu­al­iza­tion based in Milan and Dubai” and was cre­at­ed to cel­e­brate the 700th anniver­sary of Dante’s death. As he con­tin­ues to inspire artists for the next few hun­dred years, per­haps the work based on his epic poem will trend more dig­i­tal than medieval, cre­at­ing inter­pre­ta­tions the poet nev­er could have dreamt. Enter the Divine Com­e­dy Dig­i­tal project here.

You can also see some of the ear­li­est illus­trat­ed edi­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1487–1568), cour­tesy of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Rarely-Seen Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Are Now Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Uffizi Gallery

Mœbius Illus­trates Dante’s Par­adiso

Artists Illus­trate Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Through the Ages: Doré, Blake, Bot­ti­cel­li, Mœbius & More

Visu­al­iz­ing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Draw­ings of Dante’s Infer­no from the Renais­sance Through Today

Hear Dante’s Infer­no Read Aloud by Influ­en­tial Poet & Trans­la­tor John Cia­r­di (1954)

A Dig­i­tal Archive of the Ear­li­est Illus­trat­ed Edi­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1487–1568)

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

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Haruki Murakami’s Daily Routine: Up at 4:00 a.m., 5–6 Hours of Writing, Then a 10K Run

in Literature, Sports, Writing | July 2nd, 2021

Pho­to via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Haru­ki Muraka­mi has been famous as a nov­el­ist since the 1980s. But for a decade or two now, he’s become increas­ing­ly well known around the world as a nov­el­ist who runs. The Eng­lish-speak­ing world’s aware­ness of Murakami’s road­work habit goes back at least as far as 2004, when the Paris Review pub­lished an Art of Fic­tion inter­view with him. Asked by inter­view­er John Ray to describe the struc­ture of his typ­i­cal work­day, Muraka­mi replied as fol­lows:

When I’m in writ­ing mode for a nov­el, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the after­noon, I run for ten kilo­me­ters or swim for fif­teen hun­dred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and lis­ten to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this rou­tine every day with­out vari­a­tion. The rep­e­ti­tion itself becomes the impor­tant thing; it’s a form of mes­merism. I mes­mer­ize myself to reach a deep­er state of mind. But to hold to such rep­e­ti­tion for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of men­tal and phys­i­cal strength. In that sense, writ­ing a long nov­el is like sur­vival train­ing. Phys­i­cal strength is as nec­es­sary as artis­tic sen­si­tiv­i­ty.

This stark phys­i­cal depar­ture from the pop­u­lar notion of lit­er­ary work drew atten­tion. Truer to writer­ly stereo­type was the Muraka­mi of the ear­ly 1980s, when he turned pro as a nov­el­ist after clos­ing the jazz bar he’d owned in Tokyo. “Once I was sit­ting at a desk writ­ing all day I start­ed putting on the pounds,” he remem­bers in The New York­er. “I was also smok­ing too much — six­ty cig­a­rettes a day. My fin­gers were yel­low, and my body reeked of smoke.” Aware that some­thing had to change, Muraka­mi per­formed an exper­i­ment on him­self: “I decid­ed to start run­ning every day because I want­ed to see what would hap­pen. I think life is a kind of lab­o­ra­to­ry where you can try any­thing. And in the end I think it was good for me, because I became tough.”

Adher­ence to such a lifestyle, as Muraka­mi tells it, has enabled him to write all his nov­els since, includ­ing hits like Nor­we­gian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, and Kaf­ka on the Shore. (On some lev­el, it also reflects his pro­tag­o­nists’ ten­den­cy to make trans­for­ma­tive leaps from one ver­sion of real­i­ty into anoth­er.) Its rig­or has sure­ly con­tributed to the dis­ci­pline nec­es­sary for the rest of his out­put as well: trans­la­tion into his native Japan­ese of works includ­ing The Great Gats­by, but also large quan­ti­ties of first-per­son writ­ing on his own inter­ests and every­day life. Pro­tec­tive of his rep­u­ta­tion in Eng­lish, Muraka­mi has allowed almost none of the lat­ter to be pub­lished in this lan­guage.

But in light of the vora­cious con­sump­tion of self-improve­ment lit­er­a­ture in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, and espe­cial­ly in Amer­i­ca, trans­la­tion of his mem­oir What I Talk About When I Talk About Run­ning must have been an irre­sistible propo­si­tion. “I’ve nev­er rec­om­mend­ed run­ning to oth­ers,” Muraka­mi writes in The New York­er piece, which is drawn from the book. “If some­one has an inter­est in long-dis­tance run­ning, he’ll start run­ning on his own. If he’s not inter­est­ed in it, no amount of per­sua­sion will make any dif­fer­ence.” For some, Murakami’s exam­ple has been enough: take the writer-vlog­ger Mel Tor­refran­ca, who doc­u­ment­ed her attempt to fol­low his exam­ple for a week. For her, a week was enough; for Muraka­mi, who’s been run­ning-while-writ­ing for near­ly forty years now, there could be no oth­er way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & More

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Trans­lates The Great Gats­by, the Nov­el That Influ­enced Him Most

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Why Should You Read Haru­ki Muraka­mi? An Ani­mat­ed Video on His “Epic Lit­er­ary Puz­zle” Kaf­ka on the Shore Makes the Case

Read 12 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Umberto Eco’s 36 Rules for Writing Well (in English or Italian)

in Literature, Writing | June 18th, 2021

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Rob Bogaerts, via the Nation­al Archives in Hol­land

Umber­to Eco knew a great many things. Indeed too many things, at least accord­ing to his crit­ics: “Eco knows every­thing there is to know and spews it in your face in the most blasé man­ner,” declared Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni, “as if you were lis­ten­ing to a robot.” That line appears quot­ed in Tim Parks’ review of Pape Satàn Aleppe, a posthu­mous col­lec­tion of essays from La Busti­na di Min­er­va, the mag­a­zine col­umn Eco had writ­ten since 1985. “This phrase means ‘Minerva’s Match­book,’ ” Parks explains. “Min­er­va is a brand of match­es, and, being a pipe smok­er, Eco used to jot down notes on the inside flap of their pack­ag­ing. His columns were to be equal­ly extem­po­ra­ne­ous, com­pul­sive and inci­sive, each as illu­mi­nat­ing and explo­sive as a struck match.”

At the same time, “the ref­er­ence to the Roman god­dess Min­er­va is impor­tant; it warns us that in the mod­ern world we may strug­gle to dis­tin­guish between divini­ties and bric-a-brac.” This was as true, and remains as true, in the realm of let­ters as in any oth­er. And of all the things Eco knew, he sure­ly knew best how to use words; hence his La Busti­na di Min­er­va col­umn lay­ing out 40 rules for speak­ing and writ­ing.

This meant, of course, speak­ing and writ­ing in Ital­ian, his native tongue and the lan­guage of which he spent his career demon­strat­ing com­plete mas­tery. But as trans­la­tor Gio Clair­val shows in her Eng­lish ren­di­tion of Eco’s rules, most of them apply just as well to this lan­guage.

“I’ve found online a series of instruc­tions on how to write well,” says Eco’s intro­duc­tion to the list. “I adopt them with a few vari­a­tions because I think they could be use­ful to writ­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who attend cre­ative writ­ing class­es.” A few exam­ples will suf­fice to give a sense of his guid­ance:

  • Avoid allit­er­a­tions, even if they’re man­na for morons.
  • Avoid clichés: they’re like death warmed over.
  • Nev­er gen­er­al­ize.
  • Hold those quotes. Emer­son apt­ly said, “I hate quotes. Tell me only what you know.”
  • Don’t write one-word sen­tences. Ever.
  • Rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ence between the semi­colon and the colon: even if it’s hard.
  • Do you real­ly need rhetor­i­cal ques­tions?
  • Be con­cise; try express­ing your thoughts with the least pos­si­ble num­ber of words, avoid­ing long sen­tences– or sen­tences inter­rupt­ed by inci­den­tal phras­es that always con­fuse the casu­al read­er– in order to avoid con­tribut­ing to the gen­er­al pol­lu­tion of infor­ma­tion, which is sure­ly (par­tic­u­lar­ly when it is use­less­ly ripe with unnec­es­sary expla­na­tions, or at least non indis­pens­able spec­i­fi­ca­tions) one of the tragedies of our media-dom­i­nat­ed time.
  • Don’t be emphat­ic! Be care­ful with excla­ma­tion marks!
  • No need to tell you how cloy­ing preteri­tions are.

Not only does each of Eco’s points offer a use­ful piece of writ­ing advice, it ele­gant­ly demon­strates just how your writ­ing will come off if you fail to fol­low it. In the event that “you can’t find the appro­pri­ate expres­sion,” he writes, “refrain from using colloquial/dialectal expres­sions.” To this he appends, of course, a col­lo­qui­al expres­sion, Peso el tacòn del buso: “The patch is worse than the hole.” How­ev­er clichéd it sounds in Ital­ian, all of us would do well to bear it in mind no mat­ter the lan­guage in which we write. (And if you write in Ital­ian, be sure to read Eco’s orig­i­nal col­umn, which con­tains addi­tion­al rules apply­ing only to that lan­guage: Non usare metafore incon­gru­en­ti anche se ti paiono “cantare,” for instance. Sono come un cig­no che deraglia.)

You can read all 36 of Eco’s Eng­lish-rel­e­vant writ­ing rules at Clair­val’s site. If you’d like to hear more of his writ­ing advice, watch the Louisiana Chan­nel inter­view clip we fea­tured after his death in 2016. And else­where in our archives, you can com­pare and con­trast Eco’s list of rules for writ­ing with those drawn up by the likes of Wal­ter Ben­jamin, Steven Pinker, Stephen King, V.S. Naipaul, Friedrich Niet­zsche, Elmore Leonard, and George Orwell. Though Eco could, in his writ­ing, assume what Parks calls an “immea­sur­ably supe­ri­or” per­sona, he sure­ly would have agreed with the final, thor­ough­ly Eng­lish point on Orwell’s list: “Break any of these rules soon­er than say any­thing out­right bar­barous.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Umber­to Eco Dies at 84; Leaves Behind Advice to Aspir­ing Writ­ers

Umber­to Eco’s How To Write a The­sis: A Wit­ty, Irrev­er­ent & High­ly Prac­ti­cal Guide Now Out in Eng­lish

Umber­to Eco Explains Why We Make Lists

Watch Umber­to Eco Walk Through His Immense Pri­vate Library: It Goes On, and On, and On!

Free Ital­ian Lessons

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Hear an Excerpt from the Newly-Released, First Unabridged Audiobook of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

in Audio Books, Literature | June 17th, 2021

Need one go so far in dig­ging out stra­ta of mean­ing? Only if one wish­es to; Finnegans Wake is a puz­zle, just as a dream is a puz­zle, but the puz­zle ele­ment is less impor­tant than the thrust of the nar­ra­tive and the shad­owy majesty of the char­ac­ters… and when our eyes grow bewil­dered with strange roots and incred­i­ble com­pounds, why, then we can switch on our ears. It is aston­ish­ing how much of the mean­ing is con­veyed through music: the art of dim-sight­ed Joyce is, like that of Mil­ton, main­ly audi­to­ry. — Antho­ny Burgess

Finnegans Wake is not typ­i­cal­ly one of those books peo­ple pre­tend they have read, and even when they have read James Joyce’s last nov­el, no one’s like­ly to bring it up at din­ner. It seems like mak­ing sense of Joyce’s poly­glot prose — full of pecu­liar coinages and port­man­teaus — takes spe­cial train­ing and the kind of ded­i­ca­tion and nat­ur­al poly­math­ic tal­ents few read­ers pos­sess. Crit­ic, com­pos­er, lin­guist, poet, screen­writer, play­wright, and nov­el­ist Antho­ny Burgess was one such read­er, spend­ing decades study­ing Joyce and pub­lish­ing his first book on the Irish writer, Here Comes Every­body, in 1965.

Burgess pub­lished two more Joyce books, edit­ed a short­er Finnegans Wake with his own crit­i­cal com­men­tary, and released doc­u­men­tary films about the nov­el, a book he made more approach­able with his plain-spo­ken sum­maries. From the start, in the intro­duc­tion to his first Joyce book — and against the evi­dence of most everyone’s expe­ri­ence with Finnegans Wake — Burgess insist­ed read­ing Joyce was not a rar­i­fied pur­suit. “If ever there was a writer for the peo­ple,” Burgess argued, “Joyce was that writer.”

What’s impor­tant to keep in mind, Burgess empha­sizes, even over and above con­sid­er­a­tions of mean­ing, is the music of Joyce’s lan­guage. One might go so far as to say, the book is noth­ing but lan­guage that must be read aloud, and, crit­i­cal­ly, sung. “[Joyce’s] writ­ing is not about some­thing,” wrote Samuel Beck­ett. “It is that some­thing itself… . When the sense is sleep, the words go to sleep… When the sense is danc­ing the words dance.”

That quote comes from the lin­er notes of the very first unabridged com­mer­cial audio­book record­ing of Finnegans Wake, read by Irish actor Bar­ry McGov­ern (hand­picked by the Joyce estate), with Mar­cel­la Rior­dan. You can hear an excerpt fur­ther up, the first five para­graphs of the book, open­ing with the famous sen­tence frag­ment, “river­run, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a com­mod­ius vicus of recir­cu­la­tion back to Howth Cas­tle and Envi­rons.” Rolling Stone writes:

As it pro­gress­es, McGov­ern expert­ly nav­i­gates seem­ing­ly unpro­nounce­able words like “bababadal­gharagh­takam­mi­nar­ronnkonnbron­nton­nerronntuon­nthun­ntrovar­rhounawn­skawn­toohooho­or­de­nen­thur­nuk” (which con­tains 100 char­ac­ters) and he enun­ci­ates every con­so­nant in Joyce’s unusu­al word inven­tions like “duskt.”

Yes, in print, it’s daunt­ing stuff, but we should remem­ber that for all Finnegans Wake’s lin­guis­tic com­plex­i­ty, its attempts to cap­ture all of human his­to­ry, its illus­tra­tions of the obscure the­o­ries of Giambat­tista Vico and Gior­dano Bruno and so forth, at its heart, wrote Burgess, is song, which gave the book its title.

“Finnegan’s Wake” is a New York Irish bal­lad which tells of the death of Tim Finnegan, a builder’s labour­er who, fond of the bot­tle, falls drunk from his lad­der… This bal­lad may be tak­en as demot­ic res­ur­rec­tion myth and one can see why, with its core of pro­fun­di­ty wrapped round with the lan­guage of ordi­nary peo­ple, it appealed so much to Joyce. 

Joyce, the singer and lover of song, heard it every­where he went, and it’s in every bewil­der­ing sen­tence and para­graph of Finnegans Wake. Hear the entire book, read unabridged for the first time, in the new record­ing, released on June 16th, Blooms­day, by Nax­os Audio­books. Free alter­na­tive ver­sions can be found below…

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Gets Turned into an Inter­ac­tive Web Film, the Medi­um It Was Des­tined For

Hear a Read­ing of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Set to Music: Fea­tures 100+ Musi­cians and Read­ers from Across the World

Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Unabridged & Set to Music By 17 Dif­fer­ent Artists

Hear All of Finnegans Wake Read Aloud: A 35 Hour Read­ing

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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

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The Rashomon Effect: The Phenomenon, Named After Akira Kurosawa’s Classic Film, Where Each of Us Remembers the Same Event Differently

in Film, Literature, Psychology | June 15th, 2021

Toward the end of The Simp­sons’ gold­en age, one episode sent the tit­u­lar fam­i­ly off to Japan, not with­out resis­tance from its famous­ly lazy patri­arch. “Come on, Homer,” Marge insists, “Japan will be fun! You liked Rashomon.” To which Homer nat­u­ral­ly replies, “That’s not how I remem­ber it!” This joke must have writ­ten itself, not as a high-mid­dle­brow cul­tur­al ref­er­ence (as, say, Frasi­er would lat­er name-check Tam­popo) but as a play on a uni­ver­sal­ly under­stood byword for the nature of human mem­o­ry. Even those of us who’ve nev­er seen Rashomon, the peri­od crime dra­ma that made its direc­tor Aki­ra Kuro­sawa a house­hold name in the West, know what its title rep­re­sents: the ten­den­cy of each human being to remem­ber the same event in his own way.

“A samu­rai is found dead in a qui­et bam­boo grove,” says the nar­ra­tor of the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above. “One by one, the crime’s only known wit­ness­es recount their ver­sion of the events that tran­spired. But as they each tell their tale, it becomes clear that every tes­ti­mo­ny is plau­si­ble, yet dif­fer­ent, and each wit­ness impli­cates them­selves.”

So goes “In a Grove,” a sto­ry by cel­e­brat­ed ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry writer Ryūno­suke Aku­ta­gawa. An avid read­er, Kuro­sawa com­bined that lit­er­ary work with anoth­er of Aku­ta­gawa’s to cre­ate the script for Rashomon. Both Aku­ta­gawa and Kuro­sawa “use the tools of their media to give each char­ac­ter’s tes­ti­mo­ny equal weight, trans­form­ing each wit­ness into an unre­li­able nar­ra­tor.” Nei­ther read­er nor view­er can trust any­one — nor, ulti­mate­ly, can they arrive at a defen­si­ble con­clu­sion as to the iden­ti­ty of the killer.

Such con­flicts of mem­o­ry and per­cep­tion occur every­where in human affairs: this TED-Ed les­son finds exam­ples in biol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, pol­i­tics, and media. Suf­fi­cient­ly many psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­na con­verge to give rise to the Rashomon effect that it seems almost overde­ter­mined; it may be more illu­mi­nat­ing to ask under what con­di­tions does­n’t it occur. But it also makes us ask even tougher ques­tions: “What is truth, any­way? Are there sit­u­a­tions when an objec­tive truth does­n’t exist? What can dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the same event tell us about the time, place, and peo­ple involved? And how can we make group deci­sions if we’re all work­ing with dif­fer­ent infor­ma­tion, back­grounds, and bias­es?” We seem to be no clos­er to defin­i­tive answers than we were when Rashomon came out more than 70 years ago — only one of the rea­sons the film holds up so well still today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Time Seems to Fly By As You Get Old­er, and How to Slow It Down: A Sci­en­tif­ic Expla­na­tion by Neu­ro­sci­en­tist David Eagle­man

How to Improve Your Mem­o­ry: Four TED Talks Explain the Tech­niques to Remem­ber Any­thing

How Did Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Make Such Pow­er­ful & Endur­ing Films? A Wealth of Video Essays Break Down His Cin­e­mat­ic Genius

What Is Déjà Vu? Michio Kaku Won­ders If It’s Trig­gered by Par­al­lel Uni­vers­es

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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