200 Comic Book Adaptations of Classic Novels Created (1941–1971): Frankenstein, Moby Dick, Hamlet & More

Thanks to “the rise of comics as a ‘respectable’ medi­um,” Ross John­son writes at Barnes and Noble, graph­ic nov­el adap­ta­tions now con­stant­ly reimag­ine lit­er­ary clas­sics for young read­ers. One Goodreads list col­lects over 200 recent graph­ic adap­ta­tions of clas­sics from Austen to Kaf­ka. These adap­ta­tions “aim to hon­or and embell­ish rather than replace the books on which they are based,” writes John­son, “because how could they?” They do, how­ev­er, allow us to “see, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, the sto­ries we love from new angles.” They also give kids and adults who may not fan­cy them­selves read­ers new ways to access and enjoy lit­er­ary clas­sics.

But are graph­ic adap­ta­tions real­ly a new phe­nom­e­non? They may be new­ly respectable, but they’ve been around since the very dawn of com­ic books as a medi­um. Super­man debuted in 1938, Bat­man in 1939, and in 1941, the first issue of Clas­sics Illus­trat­ed appeared — an adap­ta­tion of The Three Mus­ke­teers, fol­lowed by Ivan­hoe and The Count of Monte Cristo. The series was found­ed by Russ­ian-born pub­lish­er Albert Kan­ter, who imme­di­ate­ly seized on the poten­tial of com­ic books as edu­ca­tion­al tools dur­ing what is now known as the Gold­en Age of Comics.

Even as a pres­tige series sup­pos­ed­ly pro­mot­ing “great lit­er­a­ture,” Clas­sics Illus­trat­ed did not escape the notice of Dr. Fredric Wertham, whose book Seduc­tion of the Inno­cent began the moral pan­ic over com­ic books in the 1950s. Wertham found fault with the graph­ic adap­ta­tions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Uncle Tom’s Cab­in for reduc­ing the nov­els to their most stereo­typ­i­cal and sen­sa­tion­al­ist ele­ments. It’s the kind of crit­i­cism we might find levied against graph­ic adap­ta­tions of lit­er­a­ture today, and in many cas­es, it may be war­rant­ed.

Few accused these graph­ic lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions of being great art in their own right. But they accom­plished Kanter’s pur­pose of get­ting comics read­ers excit­ed about clas­sic nov­els. The series ran for 30 years, end­ing in 1971, and became an inter­na­tion­al phe­nom­e­non. In Brazil and Greece, it pub­lished adap­ta­tions of authors from those coun­tries.

A Clas­sics Illus­trat­ed Junior series appeared in 1953, bring­ing chil­dren comics ver­sions of folk­tales and myths. After the series first run, spe­cial issues, reprints, and revivals appeared in lat­er decades, as well a series of tele­vi­sion films in the 70s and 80s. You can peruse over 200 of these adap­ta­tions dig­i­tal­ly scanned at the Inter­net Archive, arti­facts of the Gold­en Age and ances­tors of our cur­rent explo­sion of graph­ic nov­el adap­ta­tions of clas­sic lit­er­a­ture. For a deep­er study of this pub­li­ca­tion, you can pur­chase the 2017 book, Clas­sics Illus­trat­ed: A Cul­tur­al His­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free: Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Free Com­ic Books Turns Kids Onto Physics: Start With the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Take a Free Online Course on Mak­ing Com­ic Books, Com­pli­ments of the Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts

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

Hear Sherlock Holmes Stories Read by The Great Christopher Lee

The extend­ed Sher­lock Holmes Uni­verse, as we might call it, has grown so vast in the last cen­tu­ry (as with oth­er fran­chis­es that have uni­vers­es) that it’s pos­si­ble to call one­self a fan with­out ever hav­ing read the source mate­r­i­al. Depend­ing on one’s per­sua­sion, this is either heresy or the inevitable out­come of so much medi­a­tion by Holme­sian high priests, none of whom can resist writ­ing Holmes fan fic­tion of their own. But Sher­lock­ians agree: the true Holmes Canon (yes, it’s cap­i­tal­ized) con­sists of only 60 works — 56 short sto­ries and four nov­els, exclud­ing apoc­rypha. No more, no less. (And they’re in the pub­lic domain!)

The Canon safe­guards Arthur Conan Doyle’s work against the extra-volu­mi­nous flood of pas­tichists, par­o­dists, and imposters appear­ing on the scene since Holmes’ first appear­ance in 1892. (Doyle per­son­al­ly liked Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie’s Holmes par­o­dy, “The Adven­ture of the Two Col­lab­o­ra­tors,” so much he includ­ed it in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy.) The Holmes Canon remains untouch­able for its wit, inge­nu­ity, and the true strange­ness of its detec­tive — a por­trait of per­haps the most emo­tion­al­ly avoidant pro­tag­o­nist in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture when we first meet him:

All emo­tions, and [love] par­tic­u­lar­ly, were abhor­rent to his cold, pre­cise but admirably bal­anced mind. He was, I take it, the most per­fect rea­son­ing and observ­ing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed him­self in a false posi­tion. He nev­er spoke of the soft­er pas­sions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for draw­ing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained rea­son­er to admit such intru­sions into his own del­i­cate and fine­ly adjust­ed tem­pera­ment was to intro­duce a dis­tract­ing fac­tor which might throw a doubt upon all his men­tal results. Grit in a sen­si­tive instru­ment, or a crack in one of his own high-pow­er lens­es, would not be more dis­turb­ing than a strong emo­tion in a nature such as his.

How to make such a cold fish com­pelling? With a host of quirks, an inge­nious mind, a “Bohemi­an soul,” some unsa­vory qual­i­ties, and at least one or two human attach­ments, if you can call them that. Sherlock’s cold, log­i­cal exte­ri­or masks con­sid­er­able pas­sion, inspir­ing fan the­o­ries about an ances­tral rela­tion­ship to Star Trek’s Spock.

But of course, we see Holmes almost entire­ly through the eyes of his side­kick and amanu­en­sis, James Wat­son, who has his bias­es. When Holmes stepped out of the sto­ries and into radio and screen adap­ta­tions, he became his own man, so to speak — or a series of lead­ing men: Basil Rath­bone, John Giel­gud, Ian McK­ellen, Michael Caine, Robert Downey, Jr., Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, and the late Christo­pher Lee, who played not one of Doyle’s char­ac­ters, but four, begin­ning with his role as Sir Hen­ry Baskerville, with Peter Cush­ing as Holmes, in a 1959 adap­ta­tion.

In 1962, Lee took on the role of Holmes him­self in a Ger­man-Ital­ian pro­duc­tion, Sher­lock Holmes and the Dead­ly Neck­lace, an orig­i­nal sto­ry based on Doyle’s work. He played Holmes’ smarter but unmo­ti­vat­ed old­er broth­er, Mycroft, in 1970, then played a much old­er Holmes twice more in the 90s, paus­ing along the way for the role of Arnaud, a char­ac­ter in anoth­er Doyle adap­ta­tion, The Leather Fun­nel, in 1973 and the nar­ra­tor of a 1985 Holmes doc­u­men­tary, The Many Faces of Sher­lock Holmes. In an extra­or­di­nary career, Lee became an icon in the worlds of hor­ror, sci­ence fic­tion, fan­ta­sy, and Sher­lock Holmes, a genre all its own, into which he fit per­fect­ly.

In the videos here, you can hear Lee read four of the last twelve Holmes sto­ries Doyle wrote in the final decade of his life. These were col­lect­ed in 1927 in The Case-Book of Sher­lock Holmes. We begin, at the top, with the very last of the 56 canon­i­cal sto­ries, “The Adven­ture of Shoscombe Old Place.”  Lee may nev­er have played Dr. Wat­son, but we can imag­ine him bring­ing his famil­iar grav­i­tas to that role, too, as he nar­rates in his deep mel­liflu­ous voice. Find links to 7 more sto­ries from Doyle’s last col­lec­tion, read by Lee, on Metafil­ter, and hear him nar­rate The Many Faces of Sher­lock Holmes, just below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Arthur Conan Doyle Names His 19 Favorite Sher­lock Holmes Sto­ries

Hor­ror Leg­end Christo­pher Lee Reads Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la

Sher­lock Holmes Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain, Declares US Judge

Read the Lost Sher­lock Holmes Sto­ry That Was Just Dis­cov­ered in an Attic in Scot­land

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

Kurt Vonnegut’s Recipes in Deadeye Dick: Polka-Dot Brownies, Linzer Torte & Haitian Banana Soup

Author Kurt Von­negut incor­po­rat­ed sev­er­al recipes into his 1982 nov­el Dead­eye Dick, inspired by James Beard’s Amer­i­can Cook­ery, Mar­cel­la Hazan’s The Clas­sic Ital­ian Cook Book, and Bea Sandler’s The African Cook­book.

He writes in the pref­ace that these recipes are intend­ed to pro­vide “musi­cal inter­ludes for the sali­vary glands,” warn­ing read­ers that “no one should use this nov­el for a cook­book. Any seri­ous cook should have the reli­able orig­i­nals in his or her library any­way.”

So with that caveat in mind…

Ear­ly on, the narrator/titular char­ac­ter, née Rudy Waltz, shares a recipe from his family’s for­mer cook, Mary Hoobler, who taught him “every­thing she knew about cook­ing and bak­ing”:

 

MARY HOOBLER’S CORN BREAD

Mix togeth­er in a bowl half a cup of flour, one and a half cups of yel­low corn-meal, a tea­spoon of salt, a tea­spoon of sug­ar, and three tea­spoons of bak­ing pow­der.

Add three beat­en eggs, a cup of milk, a half cup of cream, and a half cup of melt­ed but­ter.

Pour it into a well-but­tered pan and bake it at four hun­dred degrees for fif­teen min­utes.

Cut it into squares while it is still hot. Bring the squares to the table while they are still hot, and fold­ed in a nap­kin.

Bare­ly two para­graphs lat­er, he’s shar­ing her bar­be­cue sauce. It sounds deli­cious, easy to pre­pare, and its place­ment gives it a strong fla­vor of Slaughterhouse-Five’s “so it goes” and “Poo-tee-weet?” — as iron­ic punc­tu­a­tion to Father Waltz’s full on embrace of Hitler, a seem­ing non sequitur that forces read­ers to think about what comes before:

When we all posed in the street for our pic­ture in the paper, Father was forty-two. Accord­ing to Moth­er, he had under­gone a pro­found spir­i­tu­al change in Ger­many. He had a new sense of pur­pose in life. It was no longer enough to be an artist. He would become a teacher and polit­i­cal activist. He would become a spokesman in Amer­i­ca for the new social order which was being born in Ger­many, but which in time would be the sal­va­tion of the world.

This was quite a mis­take.

MARY HOOBLER’S BARBECUE SAUCE

Sauté a cup of chopped onions and three chopped gar­lic cloves in a quar­ter of a pound of but­ter until ten­der.

Add a half cup of cat­sup, a quar­ter cup of brown sug­ar, a tea­spoon of salt, two tea­spoons of fresh­ly ground pep­per, a dash of Tabas­co, a table­spoon of lemon juice, a tea­spoon of basil, and a table­spoon of chili pow­der.

Bring to a boil and sim­mer for five min­utes.

Rudy’s father is not the only char­ac­ter to fal­ter.

Rudy’s mis­take hap­pens in the blink of an eye, and man­ages to upend a num­ber of lives in Mid­land City, a stand in for Indi­anapo­lis, Vonnegut’s home­town.

His fam­i­ly los­es their mon­ey in an ensu­ing law­suit, and can no longer engage Mary Hoobler and the rest of the staff.

Young Rudy, who’s spent his child­hood hang­ing out with the ser­vants in Mary’s cozy kitchen, finds it “easy and nat­ur­al” to cater to his par­ents in the man­ner to which they were accus­tomed:

As long as they lived, they nev­er had to pre­pare a meal or wash a dish or make a bed or do the laun­dry or dust or vac­u­um or sweep, or shop for food. I did all that, and main­tained a B aver­age in school, as well. 

What a good boy was I!

EGGS À LA RUDY WALTZ (age thir­teen)

Chop, cook, and drain two cups of spinach.

Blend with two table­spoons of but­ter, a tea­spoon of salt, and a pinch of nut­meg.

Heat and put into three oven-proof bowls or cups.

Put a poached egg on top of each one, and sprin­kle with grat­ed cheese.

Bake for five min­utes at 375 degrees. Serves three: the papa bear, the mama bear, and the baby bear who cooked it—and who will clean up after­wards.

By high school, Rudy’s heavy domes­tic bur­den has him falling asleep in class and repro­duc­ing  com­pli­cat­ed desserts from  recipes in the local paper. (“Father roused him­self from liv­ing death suf­fi­cient­ly to say that the dessert took him back forty years.”)

 

LINZER TORTE (from the Bugle-Observ­er)

Mix half a cup of sug­ar with a cup of but­ter until fluffy.

Beat in two egg yolks and half a tea­spoon of grat­ed lemon rind.

Sift a cup of flour togeth­er with a quar­ter tea­spoon of salt, a tea­spoon of cin­na­mon, and a quar­ter tea­spoon of cloves. Add this to the sug­ar-and-but­ter mix­ture.

Add one cup of unblanched almonds and one cup of toast­ed fil­berts, both chopped fine.

Roll out two-thirds of the dough until a quar­ter of an inch thick.

Line the bot­tom and sides of an eight-inch pan with dough.

Slather in a cup and a half of rasp­ber­ry jam.

Roll out the rest of the dough, make it into eight thin pen­cil shapes about ten inch­es long. Twist them a lit­tle, and lay them across the top in a dec­o­ra­tive man­ner. Crimp the edges.

Bake in a pre­heat­ed 350-degree oven for about an hour, and then cool at room tem­per­a­ture.

A great favorite in Vien­na, Aus­tria, before the First World War!

Rudy even­tu­al­ly relo­cates to the Grand Hotel Oloff­son in Port au Prince, Haiti, which is how he man­ages to sur­vive the — SPOILER — neu­tron bomb that destroys Mid­land City.

Here is a recipe for choco­late seafoams,  cour­tesy of one of Mid­land City’s fic­tion­al res­i­dents:

 

MRS. GINO MARTIMO’S SPUMA DI CIOCCOLATA 

Break up six ounces of semi­sweet choco­late in a saucepan.

Melt it in a 250-degree oven.

Add two tea­spoons of sug­ar to four egg yolks, and beat the mix­ture until it is pale yel­low.

Then mix in the melt­ed choco­late, a quar­ter cup of strong cof­fee, and two table­spoons of rum.

Whip two-thirds of a cup of cold, heavy whip­ping cream until it is stiff. Fold it into the mix­ture.

Whip four egg whites until they form stiff peaks, then fold them into the mix­ture.

Stir the mix­ture ever so gen­tly, then spoon it into cups, each cup a serv­ing.

Refrig­er­ate for twelve hours.

Serves six.

Oth­er recipes in Rudy’s reper­toire orig­i­nate with the Grand Hotel Oloff­son’s most valu­able employ­ee, head­wait­er and Vodou prac­ti­tion­er Hip­poly­te Paul De Mille, who “claims to be eighty and have fifty-nine descen­dants”:

He said that if there was any ghost we thought should haunt Mid­land City for the next few hun­dred years, he would raise it from its grave and turn it loose, to wan­der where it would. 

We tried very hard not to believe that he could do that. 

But he could, he could.

HAITIAN FRESH FISH IN COCONUT CREAM

Put two cups of grat­ed coconut in cheese­cloth over a bowl.

Pour a cup of hot milk over it, and squeeze it dry.

Repeat this with two more cups of hot milk. The stuff in the bowl is the sauce.

Mix a pound of sliced onions, a tea­spoon of salt, a half tea­spoon of black pep­per, and a tea­spoon of crushed pep­per.

Sauté the mix­ture in but­ter until soft but not brown.

Add four pounds of fresh fish chunks, and cook them for about a minute on each side.

Pour the sauce over the fish, cov­er the pan, and sim­mer for ten min­utes. Uncov­er the pan and baste the fish until it is done—and the sauce has become creamy.

Serves eight vague­ly dis­grun­tled guests at the Grand Hotel Oloff­son.

HAITIAN BANANA SOUP

Stew two pounds of goat or chick­en with a half cup of chopped onions, a tea­spoon of salt, half a tea­spoon of black pep­per, and a pinch of crushed red pep­per. Use two quarts of water.

Stew for an hour.

Add three peeled yams and three peeled bananas, cut into chunks.

Sim­mer until the meat is ten­der. Take out the meat. What is left is eight serv­ings of Hait­ian banana soup.

Bon appétit!

The recipe that clos­es the nov­el is couched in an anec­dote that’s equal parts scat­ol­ogy and epiphany.

As a daugh­ter of Indi­anapo­lis who was a junior in high school the year Dead­eye Dick was pub­lished, I can attest that Pol­ka-Dot Brown­ies would have been a hit at the bake sales of my youth:

 

POLKA-DOT BROWNIES

Melt half a cup of but­ter and a pound of light-brown sug­ar in a two-quart saucepan. Stir over a low fire until just bub­bly.

Cool to room tem­per­a­ture.

Beat in two eggs and a tea­spoon of vanil­la.

Stir in a cup of sift­ed flour, a half tea­spoon of salt, a cup of chopped fil­berts, and a cup of semi­sweet choco­late in small chunks.

Spread into a well-greased nine-by-eleven bak­ing pan.

Bake at two hun­dred and thir­ty-five degrees for about thir­ty-five min­utes.

Cool to room tem­per­a­ture, and cut into squares with a well-greased knife.

Enjoy, in mod­er­a­tion of course.

I was wear­ing my best suit, which was as tight as the skin of a knack­wurst. I had put on a lot of weight recent­ly. It was the fault of my own good cook­ing. I had been try­ing out a lot of new recipes, with con­sid­er­able suc­cess. — Rudy Waltz

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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”

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

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

Hear Vincent Price Star in a Classic Radio Adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984

Here are some things you may not know about Vin­cent Price:

He was once a young man.

Before becom­ing a hor­ror icon in the 1950s, he was a suc­cess­ful char­ac­ter actor. “Only a third of his movies that he made were actu­al­ly hor­ror films,” says his daugh­ter, Vic­to­ria Price. “He made 105 films. Peo­ple don’t real­ize he had an exten­sive career in the­ater and radio.”

He came from a wealthy St. Louis fam­i­ly and har­bored ear­ly anti-semit­ic views and a mis­guid­ed admi­ra­tion for Hitler in the 1930s.

He com­plete­ly changed his views after mov­ing to New York and was placed on Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s “Pre­ma­ture Anti-Nazi Sym­pa­thiz­er list” in the 1950s, along with Eleanor Roo­sevelt, notes Susan King at the L.A. Times, a list that “raised ques­tions about those who had been against the Nazis before the U.S. went to war with Ger­many.”

He was a gourmet cook, had a degree in art his­to­ry, and worked for nine years in the six­ties as an art con­sul­tant for Sears….

He was black­list­ed for being anti-Nazi too ear­ly….

After being denied work for almost a year, as Price’s daugh­ter writes in her 1999 mem­oir, Vin­cent Price: A Daughter’s Biog­ra­phy, he chose to sign a “secret oath” offered by the FBI to sal­vage his career. Per­haps not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, he took a radio part soon after­ward in Aus­tralia, as a split narrator/Winston Smith in a 1955 Lux Radio The­ater adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984, per­haps fear­ful of a future in which secret oaths became the norm.

Orwell him­self had made it per­fect­ly clear what he feared. “Rad­i­cal in his pol­i­tics and in his artis­tic tastes,” Lionel Trilling wrote in a New York­er review the year the book came out, “Orwell is whol­ly free of the cant of rad­i­cal­ism”; his tal­ent as a writer of fic­tion is to make “com­mon sense” polit­i­cal obser­va­tions serve plot and char­ac­ter. Per­haps the most chill­ing of these arrives in the first few para­graphs of 1984:

In the far dis­tance a heli­copter skimmed down between the roofs, hov­ered for an instant like a blue­bot­tle, and dart­ed away again with a curv­ing flight. It was the police patrol, snoop­ing into peo­ple’s win­dows. The patrols did not mat­ter, how­ev­er. Only the Thought Police mat­tered. 

We may be remind­ed of the dis­tinc­tions between what “Orwellian” means and what it does not, as Noah Tavlin describes in a recent explain­er: if someone’s “talk­ing about mass sur­veil­lance and intru­sive gov­ern­ment, they’re describ­ing some­thing author­i­tar­i­an, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly Orwellian.” Author­i­tar­i­an­ism is pure brute force. The Orwellian requires a con­stant mis­use of lan­guage, a vio­lent twist­ing of con­science, a per­pet­u­al shout­ing of lies as truth until the two are indis­tin­guish­able. No one is served by this but nihilis­tic oli­garchs, Trilling writes:

The rulers of Orwell’s State know that pow­er in its pure form has for its true end noth­ing but itself, and they know that the nature of pow­er is defined by the pain it can inflict on oth­ers. They know, too, that just as wealth exists only in rela­tion to the pover­ty of oth­ers, so pow­er in its pure aspect exists only in rela­tion to the weak­ness of oth­ers, and that any pow­er of the ruled, even the pow­er to expe­ri­ence hap­pi­ness, is by that much a diminu­tion of the pow­er of the rulers.

Orwellian soci­eties exist sole­ly to spread hatred and mis­ery, even to their detri­ment, a point Price made at the end of anoth­er radio broad­cast, a 1950 episode of NBC’s The Saint, in which the actor denounced racism and reli­gious prej­u­dice. Not long after­ward, his name appeared on McCarthy’s list.

Price learned that the gov­ern­ment could deprive him of his hap­pi­ness unless he swore feal­ty to an insane­ly non­sen­si­cal polit­i­cal moral­i­ty. His daugh­ter offers the expe­ri­ence as one rea­son for his love of play­ing vil­lains. “Most of the vil­lains that he played had been wronged in some way. There was a rea­son for their vil­lainy.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What “Orwellian” Real­ly Means: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son About the Use & Abuse of the Term

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

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

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

Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter of Advice to People Living in the Year 2088

A few years ago we post­ed Kurt Von­negut’s let­ter of advice to human­i­ty, writ­ten in 1988 but addressed, a cen­tu­ry hence, to the year 2088. What­ev­er objec­tions you may have felt to read­ing this mis­sive more than 70 years pre­ma­ture­ly, you might have over­come them to find that the author of Slaugh­ter­house-Five and Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons sin­gle-mind­ed­ly impor­tuned his fel­low man of the late 21st cen­tu­ry to pro­tect the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. He issues com­mand­ments to “reduce and sta­bi­lize your pop­u­la­tion” to “stop prepar­ing for war and start deal­ing with your real prob­lems,” and to “stop think­ing sci­ence can fix any­thing if you give it a tril­lion dol­lars,” among oth­er poten­tial­ly dras­tic-sound­ing mea­sures.

Com­mand­ment num­ber sev­en amounts to the high­ly Von­negut­ian “And so on. Or else.” A fan can eas­i­ly imag­ine these words spo­ken in the writer’s own voice, but with Von­negut now gone for well over a decade, would you accept them spo­ken in the voice of Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch instead?

First com­mis­sioned by Volk­swa­gen for a Time mag­a­zine ad cam­paign, Von­negut’s let­ter to 2088 was lat­er found and repub­lished by Let­ters of Note. The asso­ci­at­ed Let­ters Live project, which brings notable let­ters to the stage (and sub­se­quent­ly inter­net video), counts Cum­ber­batch as one of its star read­ers: he’s giv­en voice to wise cor­re­spon­dence by the likes of Sol LeWitt, Albert Camus, and Alan Tur­ing.

Cum­ber­batch even has expe­ri­ence with let­ters by Von­negut, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly read aloud his rebuke to a North Dako­ta school board that allowed the burn­ing of Slaugh­ter­house-Five. Von­negut’s work makes clear that he did­n’t suf­fer fools glad­ly, and that he con­sid­ered book-burn­ing one of the infi­nite vari­eties of fol­ly he spent his career cat­a­loging. In light of his let­ter to 2088, the same went for human­i­ty’s poor stew­ard­ship of their plan­et. Von­negut may not have been a con­ser­va­tion­ist, exact­ly, but nor, in his view, was nature itself, a force that needs “no help from us in tak­ing the plan­et apart and putting it back togeth­er some dif­fer­ent way, not nec­es­sar­i­ly improv­ing it from the view­point of liv­ing things.” This is, of course, the per­son­i­fy­ing view of a nov­el­ist, but a nov­el­ist who nev­er for­got his sense of humor — nor his ten­den­cy to play the prophet of doom.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

The Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five

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

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Albert Camus’ Touch­ing Thank You Let­ter to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher

“Stop It and Just DO”: Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Advice on Over­com­ing Cre­ative Blocks, Writ­ten by Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse (1965)

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Mar­garet Atwood, Stephen Fry & Oth­ers Read Let­ters of Hope, Love & Sup­port Dur­ing COVID-19

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.

The First Museum Dedicated to Mary Shelley & Her Literary Creation, Frankenstein, Opens in Bath, England

Hal­loween came ear­ly this year!

Last week, Mary Shelley’s House of Franken­stein opened its doors in Bath, Eng­land, mere steps from the infi­nite­ly more staid Jane Austen Cen­tre.

Both authors had a con­nec­tion to Bath, a pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tion since 43 CE, as evi­denced by the ruins of the Roman ther­mal spa that give the city its name and UNESCO World Her­itage Site sta­tus.

Austen lived there between 1801 and 1806, and used it as a set­ting for both Per­sua­sion and Northang­er Abbey.

The teenaged Shel­ley’s res­i­dence was briefer, but event­ful, and cre­ative­ly fer­tile.

It was here that she wed poet Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley, learned of the sui­cides of his preg­nant first wife and her own half-sis­ter, attend­ed the birth of her ille­git­i­mate step-niece (daugh­ter of Lord Byron), attend­ed lec­tures on gal­vanism, or rean­i­ma­tion via elec­tri­cal cur­rent… and wrote the major­i­ty of Franken­stein.

Bath has long mined its con­nec­tion to Austen, but in embrac­ing Shel­ley, it stands to diver­si­fy the sort of lit­er­ary pil­grims it appeals to.

Vis­i­tors to the Jane Austen Cen­tre can try on bon­nets, exchange wit­ty repar­tee with one of her char­ac­ters, nib­ble scones with Dorset clot­ted cream in the tea room, and par­tic­i­pate in an annu­al cos­tume prom­e­nade.

Mean­while, over at the House of Franken­stein, expect omi­nous, unset­tling sound­scapes, shock­ing spe­cial effects, ghoul­ish inter­preters in blood-spat­tered aprons, “bespoke scents,” a “dank, fore­bod­ing base­ment expe­ri­ence” and an 8‑foot automa­ton of you-know-who.

(No, not Mary Shel­ley!)

Com­ing soon — Vic­tor Frankenstein’s “mis­er­able attic quar­ters” repack­aged as an escape room “strewn with insane equa­tions, strange arte­facts, and mis­cel­la­neous body parts.”

Co-founder Chris Har­ris explains the cre­ators’ immer­sive phi­los­o­phy:

We are try­ing to play on people’s fears, but we’re not tak­ing our­selves mas­sive­ly seri­ous­ly. With Mary Shelley’s House of Franken­stein, we are cre­at­ing an expe­ri­ence that, hope­ful­ly, peo­ple will real­ly enjoy in a vis­cer­al way. We want them to come out feel­ing that the expe­ri­ence was unnerv­ing, but also feel­ing hap­py. That’s the ulti­mate aim.

The BBC reports that the attrac­tion also promis­es to explore Shel­ley’s “trag­ic per­son­al life, lit­er­ary career and the nov­el­’s con­tin­u­ing rel­e­vance today in regards to pop­u­lar cul­ture, pol­i­tics, and sci­ence.”

May not be suit­able for chil­dren (or tim­o­rous Austen fans) as it con­tains “omi­nous and fore­bod­ing audio and visu­al effects, dark­ened envi­ron­ments and some scenes and depic­tions of a dis­turb­ing nature.”

Lovers of Pride and Prej­u­dice and Zom­bies, how­ev­er, should be sure to exit through the gift shop.

Vis­it the House of Franken­stein on Insta­gram where the week­ly #Franken­ste­in­Fol­low­er­Fri­day should appeal to mon­ster movie buffs of all ages.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Read­ing Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein on Its 200th Anniver­sary: An Ani­mat­ed Primer to the Great Mon­ster Sto­ry & Tech­nol­o­gy Cau­tion­ary Tale

Watch the First Film Adap­ta­tion of Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein (1910): It’s New­ly Restored by the Library of Con­gress

Mary Shelley’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script of Franken­stein: This Is “Ground Zero of Sci­ence Fic­tion,” Says William Gib­son

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

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

“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.

Sylvia Plath’s Tarot Cards (Which Influenced the Poems in Ariel) Were Just Sold for $207,000

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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