Virginia Woolf & Friends Name Their Favorite and Least Favorite Writers in a Newly Unearthed 1923 Survey

Celebri­ty Twit­ter can be fun… some­times…. Tabloids still have mass appeal, albeit main­ly on the web. But for those who want to see the intro­vert­ed and book­ish caught off-guard and off the cuff, times are a lit­tle tough. Writ­ers can more eas­i­ly con­trol their image than actors or pop stars, nat­u­ral­ly. Most aren’t near­ly as rec­og­niz­able and sub­ject to con­stant pop cul­ture sur­veil­lance. Lit­er­ary scan­dals rarely go beyond pla­gia­rism or pol­i­tics. Some­times one might wish—as in the days of mean drunks like Nor­man Mail­er, Ernest Hem­ing­way, or Hunter S. Thompson—for a good old-fash­ioned lit­er­ary brawl….

Or maybe not. After all, there’s that thing about pens and swords. The sharpest weapons, the tools that cut the deep­est, are wield­ed by wit, whether it’s the flash­ing of rhetor­i­cal steel or the fine needling of ele­vat­ed pet­ti­ness. No clum­sy vio­lence can stand up to the lit­er­ary put-downs we find in the cor­re­spon­dence of, say Flan­nery O’Connor—who wrote that Ayn Rand “makes Mick­ey Spillane look like Dostoevsky”—or Vir­ginia Woolf, who found Joyce “a bore… ulti­mate­ly nau­se­at­ing. When one can have cooked flesh, why have the raw?”

This is won­der­ful­ly nasty stuff: gut-lev­el low blows from the high road of a well-turned phrase. If it’s the kind of thing you enjoy, you’ll love the “bitchy lit­er­ary burn book,” reports Vox, “fea­tur­ing the unvar­nished opin­ions of Vir­ginia Woof, Mar­garet Kennedy, and oth­ers” which has recent­ly come to light. A col­lec­tion of answers to 39-ques­tions, “its yel­low and curl­ing title page” announces it as “’Real­ly and Tru­ly: A Book of Lit­er­ary Con­fes­sions,” notes William Mack­esy, grand­son and lit­er­ary execu­tor of nov­el­ist Kennedy.

It was passed around and filled in by hand by a group of ten writ­ers total, also includ­ing Rose Macaulay, Rebec­ca West, Hilaire Bel­loc, and Stel­la Ben­son, between 1923 and 1927. “Each con­tri­bu­tion was sealed up,” Mack­esy writes, “pre­sum­ably to await a dis­tant thriller-open­ing, which gave safe space for barbs and jokes at con­tem­po­raries’ expense.” With their sim­i­lar­i­ties to our own quick-take cul­tur­al prod­ucts, the ques­tion­naires are sure to be a hit on the inter­net.

These secret lit­er­ary con­fes­sions get prick­ly, thanks to “waspish” ques­tions like “the most over­rat­ed Eng­lish writer liv­ing” and “a deceased writer whose char­ac­ter you most dis­like.” Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Woolf’s answers are some of the sharpest. In answer to the lat­ter ques­tion, she wrote “I like all dead men of let­ters.” As for the liv­ing, one unnamed respon­dent “called T.S. Eliot the worst liv­ing Eng­lish poet as well as the worst liv­ing lit­er­ary crit­ic.”

Rebec­ca West dis­missed the whole thing as “sil­ly… it’s like being asked to select the best sun­set.” Nonethe­less, in answer to a ques­tion about which writer would still be read in 25 years, she sim­ply answered, “me.” Bel­loc did the same. Kennedy called Woolf the most over­rat­ed writer (but great­est liv­ing crit­ic), Woolf and West named Bel­loc most over­rat­ed. Joyce appears more than once in that cat­e­go­ry, as does D.H. Lawrence.

It’s all great fun, but maybe the “bitchy” head­line over­sells this aspect a lit­tle and under­sells the less sen­sa­tion­al but more infor­ma­tive parts of the exer­cise. For instance, all of the writ­ers except one (with one write-in for “I don’t know”) cast the same vote for great­est lit­er­ary genius (spoil­er: it’s Shake­speare). They revered James Boswell, Thomas Hardy, Max Beer­bohm, Pla­to, Jane Austen, Homer, Cat­ul­lus. They ignored many oth­ers. “There is no men­tion any­where,” Mack­esy points out, “of Vir­gil or Donne, and only one of Chaucer, Dick­ens, George Eliot and Hen­ry James.”

No mat­ter how for­ward-look­ing some of their work turned out to be, they were writ­ers of their time, with typ­i­cal atti­tudes, beliefs, and opin­ions when it came to lit­er­a­ture. That said, the casu­al nar­cis­sism and snark some of the ques­tions elic­it are time­less qual­i­ties. Learn more about the book, includ­ing its like ori­gins and mys­te­ri­ous prove­nance, from Mack­esy at the Inde­pen­dent.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­cel Proust Fills Out a Ques­tion­naire in 1890: The Man­u­script of the ‘Proust Ques­tion­naire’

Flan­nery O’Connor Ren­ders Her Ver­dict on Ayn Rand’s Fic­tion: It’s As “Low As You Can Get”

Vir­ginia Woolf on James Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me.” Shen Then Quit at Page 200

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

The Lou Reed Archive Opens at the New York Public Library: Get Your Own Lou Reed Library Card and Check It Out

This past Octo­ber marked the fifth anniver­sary of Lou Reed’s death. This month marks what would have been his 77th birth­day. It seems like as good a time as any to revis­it his lega­cy. As of this past Fri­day, any­one can do exact­ly that in per­son at the New York Pub­lic Library. And they can do so with their own spe­cial edi­tion NYPL Lou Reed library card. The NYPL has just opened to the pub­lic the Lou Reed Archive, “approx­i­mate­ly 300 lin­ear feet,” the library writes in a press release, “of paper records, elec­tron­ic records, and pho­tographs, and approx­i­mate­ly 3,600 audio and 1,300 video record­ings.”

These arti­facts span the musi­cian, writer, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and “tai-chi student”’s life from his 1958 high school band The Shades to “his job as a staff song­writer for the bud­get music label, Pick­wick Records, and his rise to promi­nence through the Vel­vet Under­ground and sub­se­quent solo career, to his final per­for­mance in 2013.”

It is more than fit­ting that they should find a home at the New York insti­tu­tion, in the city where Lou Reed became Lou Reed, “the most lit­er­ary of rock stars,” writes Andrew Epstein for the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion, “one who aspired to make rock music that could stand on the same plane as works of lit­er­a­ture.” See a list of the Lou Reed Archive col­lec­tions below:

  • Orig­i­nal man­u­script, lyrics, poet­ry and hand­writ­ten tai-chi notes
  • Pho­tographs of Reed, includ­ing artist prints and inscrip­tions by the pho­tog­ra­phers
  • Tour itin­er­aries, agree­ments, road man­ag­er notes and paper­work
  • 600+ hours of live record­ings, demos, stu­dio record­ings and inter­views
  • Reed’s own exten­sive pho­tog­ra­phy work
  • Album, book, and tour art­work; mock-ups, proofs and match-prints
  • Lou Reed album and con­cert posters, hand­bills, pro­grams, and pro­mo­tion­al items
  • Lou Reed press for albums, tours, per­for­mances, books, and pho­tog­ra­phy exhibits
  • Fan mail
  • Per­son­al col­lec­tions of books, LPs and 45s

Reed left his first “last­ing lega­cy” at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, as Syra­cuse itself affirmed after his death in 2013, as “a crim­i­nal, a dis­si­dent and a poet.” There, he stud­ied under his lit­er­ary hero, Del­more Schwartz, was report­ed­ly expelled from ROTC for hold­ing an unloaded gun to his superior’s head, and was sup­pos­ed­ly turned away from his grad­u­a­tion by police. Once in New York, how­ev­er, Reed not only pilot­ed the Vel­vet Under­ground into ever­last­ing cult infamy, jump­start­ing waves of punk, post-punk, new wave, and a few dozen oth­er sub­gen­res. He also car­ried forth the lega­cy of the New York poet­ry, Epstein argues.

He had “seri­ous con­nec­tions to the poet­ry world”—not only to Schwartz, but also to the Beats and the New York School—to poets who “played a sur­pris­ing­ly large role in the emer­gence of the Vel­vet Under­ground.” Like all great art, Reed’s best work was more than the sum of its “mul­ti­ple and com­plex influ­ences.” But it should be appre­ci­at­ed along­side mid-cen­tu­ry New York poets as much as jazz exper­i­men­tal­ists like Ornette Cole­man and Cecil Tay­lor who inspired his freeform approach. “Reed’s body of work,” writes Epstein, “rep­re­sents a cru­cial but over­looked instance of poetry’s rich back-and-forth dia­logue with pop­u­lar cul­ture.”

Sim­i­lar things might be said about Reed’s engage­ments with film, the­ater, the visu­al arts, and the New York avant-garde gen­er­al­ly, which he also trans­mut­ed and trans­lat­ed into his scuzzy brand of rock and roll. The NYPL archive doc­u­ments his rela­tion­ships with not only his band­mates and manager/patron Andy Warhol, but also Robert Quine, John Zorn, Robert Wil­son, Julian Schn­abel, and Lau­rie Ander­son. And yet, despite the many rivers he wad­ed into in his long career, immers­ing in some more deeply than oth­ers, it was the New York lit­er­ary world whom he most want­ed to embrace his work.

Accept­ing an award in 2007 from Syra­cuse, Reed said, “I hope, Del­more, if you’re lis­ten­ing you are final­ly proud as well. My name is final­ly linked to yours in the part of heav­en reserved for Brook­lyn poets.” Head over to The Library for the Per­form­ing Arts in Lin­coln Cen­ter to get your own Lou Reed library card. If you’re lucky enough to spend some time with this exten­sive col­lec­tion, maybe con­sid­er how all Reed’s work was, in some way or anoth­er, informed by a life­long devo­tion to New York poet­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lou Reed’s The Raven, a Trib­ute to Edgar Allan Poe Fea­tur­ing David Bowie, Ornette Cole­man, Willem Dafoe & More

Meet the Char­ac­ters Immor­tal­ized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”: The Stars and Gay Rights Icons from Andy Warhol’s Fac­to­ry Scene

Lou Reed Sings “Sweet Jane” Live, Julian Schn­abel Films It (2006)

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

Jack Kerouac’s “Beat Paintings:” Now Gathered in One Book and Exhibition for the First Time

Most of us enter Jack Ker­ouac’s world through his 1959 nov­el On the Road. Those of us who explore it more deeply there­after may find much more than we expect­ed to: Ker­ouac’s inner life came out not just in his for­mi­da­ble body of writ­ten work, but in spo­ken-word jazz albums, fan­ta­sy base­ball mate­ri­als, and even paint­ings. Though Ker­ouac has now been gone for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry, it was­n’t until just last year that his works of visu­al art were brought togeth­er: Ker­ouac: Beat Paint­ing did it in book form, and the Museo Maga near Milan put on an exhi­bi­tion of the more than 80 pieces it could find, begin­ning with his first self-por­trait, drawn at the age of nine.

Ker­ouac had an inter­est in por­trai­ture in gen­er­al: the book, the Inde­pen­dent’s David Bar­nett writes, “begins with a series of por­traits of peo­ple Ker­ouac knew or admired. They also high­light Ker­ouac’s com­pli­cat­ed spir­i­tu­al­i­ty: brought up a Catholic, he lat­er embraced Bud­dhism and devel­oped an almost ‘holy fool’ per­sona.” Car­di­nal Gio­van­ni Mon­ti­ni, lat­er to become Pope Paul VI, counts as one par­tic­u­lar­ly notable sub­ject of a Ker­ouac por­trait; anoth­er is Ker­ouac’s fel­low cul­ture-defin­ing writer Tru­man Capote (above), who at the time Ker­ouac paint­ed him had already crit­i­cized On the Road pub­licly, and harsh­ly. San­d­ri­na Ban­dera, a cura­tor of the exhi­bi­tion and edi­tor of Ker­ouac: Beat Paint­ing, ascribes to the Capote por­trait “a dynam­ic, almost vio­lent qual­i­ty.”

The same could per­haps be said of all of Ker­ouac’s cre­ative out­put, and cer­tain­ly of much of his best-known writ­ing. And like many a cre­ator known for his vis­cer­al nature, Ker­ouac made strict rules and built sys­tems to work with­in: his 1959 man­i­festo for paint­ing includes the com­mand­ments “use only one brush” and “stop when you want to ‘improve’… it’s done.” Detrac­tors of Ker­ouac’s work will cer­tain­ly see a con­nec­tion between his visu­al art and his ver­bal art in his self-direct­ed com­mand­ment to “pile it on,” but who could call the “beat paint­ing” of this Beat Gen­er­a­tion fig­ure­head not of an aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al piece with every­thing else that Ban­dera describes, unim­prov­ably, as “that potent enti­ty known as Jack Ker­ouac.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitch­hik­ing Trip Nar­rat­ed in On the Road

Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spo­ken-World Albums: A Sub­lime Union of Beat Lit­er­a­ture and 1950s Jazz

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Ker­ouac Was a Secret, Obses­sive Fan of Fan­ta­sy Base­ball

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

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

In “Morn­ing Song,” from Sylvia Plath’s posthu­mous 1965 col­lec­tion Ariel, pub­lished two years after her sui­cide, a new­born infant is a “fat gold watch.” Among the inces­sant lists of adjec­tives in both her work, “fat” is one that stands out, appear­ing often, in sev­er­al syn­onyms, as a cel­e­bra­tion of abun­dance and real anx­i­ety over weight gain and a gen­er­al too-much­ness. In the same poem, the baby is a work of art, a “new stat­ue.” Its moth­er, on the oth­er hand, is in one stan­za a cloud effaced by the wind in a mir­ror, and a clum­sy ani­mal, “cow-heavy and flo­ral / In my Vic­to­ri­an night­gown. / Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s.”

Plath’s images are brac­ing and unex­pect­ed, awed and strick­en, usu­al­ly at once. She deploys them so quick­ly and adroit­ly that even when one fails to land, the oth­ers imme­di­ate­ly take up the slack, mak­ing even her less-great poems impres­sive for a line or stan­za that takes hold in the mind for days. This abil­i­ty was not the result of either divine inspi­ra­tion or men­tal ill­ness, but tal­ent honed through hard work and com­mit­ment. Plath “chose the artist’s way. Poet­ry was her call­ing,” the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video by Iseult Gille­spie tells us above. As such, she per­se­vered even through severe bouts with depres­sion and many sui­cide attempts before she final­ly suc­cumbed at age 30.

Plath’s semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el, The Bell Jar, which dra­ma­tizes these themes, as well as a hand­ful of her dark­est poems, have come to pop­u­lar­ly sym­bol­ize her lega­cy. You’ve heard of them even if you’ve nev­er read them. Yet she com­posed a “large bulk of poet­ry,” her hus­band, poet Ted Hugh­es, wrote in the intro­duc­tion to her Col­lect­ed Works, pub­lished and unpub­lished, nev­er throw­ing any­thing out. “She brought every piece she worked on to some final form accept­able to her, reject­ing at most the odd verse…. Her atti­tude to her verse was arti­san-like: if she couldn’t get a table out of the mate­r­i­al, she was quite hap­py to get a chair, or even a toy.”

His char­ac­ter­i­za­tion may not sound like the most char­i­ta­ble, and as her lit­er­ary execu­tor, Hugh­es was accused of refus­ing to pub­lish some of her work. But he was also a fel­low poet who watched her tire­less­ly write and revise. Quot­ing from her jour­nals, Hugh­es shows how her first col­lec­tion, 1960’s The Colos­sus and Oth­er Poems, came togeth­er over a peri­od of many years, its title chang­ing every few months, new poems appear­ing and old ones falling away. The result is a debut whose “breath­tak­ing per­spec­tives on emo­tion, nature, and art con­tin­ue to cap­ti­vate and res­onate,” notes the video’s nar­ra­tor.

Despite her major pres­ence in the lit­er­ary mag­a­zines and the respect she won espe­cial­ly in the UK, The Colos­sus and Oth­er Poems would be Plath’s only pub­lished col­lec­tion in her life­time. It made her a well-respect­ed poet, but did not make her the celebri­ty she became after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Bell Jar three years lat­er and her sui­cide the fol­low­ing month. “With­in a week of her death,” writes Time mag­a­zine in its review of Ariel in 1966, “intel­lec­tu­al Lon­don was hunched over copies of a strange and ter­ri­ble poem she had writ­ten dur­ing her last sick slide toward sui­cide. ‘Dad­dy’ was its title.”

After the pub­li­ca­tion of Ariel, read­ers fixed on “Dad­dy” and “Lady Lazarus,” sen­sa­tion­al poems in which “fear, hate, love, death and the poet’s own iden­ti­ty become fused at bleak heat with the fig­ure of her father, and through him, with the guilt of the Ger­man exter­mi­na­tors and the suf­fer­ing of their Jew­ish vic­tims.” These are poems, wrote Robert Low­ell in his pref­ace, that “play Russ­ian roulette with six car­tridges in the cylin­der.” As fem­i­nist schol­ars embraced her work in the 1970s, a mor­bid fas­ci­na­tion with her image only grew. This is the Plath many peo­ple know by word of mouth. But those who haven’t read more of her will miss out.

Plath doesn’t shy away from star­ing at sui­cide, abuse, and mass mur­der. She helped to “break the silence sur­round­ing issues of trau­ma, frus­tra­tion, and sex­u­al­i­ty.” Ariel and her dozens of uncol­lect­ed poems are also “filled with mov­ing med­i­ta­tions on heart­break and cre­ativ­i­ty,” includ­ing the heart­break and cre­ativ­i­ty of moth­er­hood, a theme always fraught with fears of love and death. Plath’s work can be dark, and it can be at once lumi­nous in its imag­i­na­tive can­dor. In writ­ing about life with depres­sion and the domes­tic mis­ery vis­it­ed on her in her mar­riage to Hugh­es, she cel­e­brates life’s sub­lime plea­sures and mourns its depths of suf­fer­ing, in poem ofter poem, with near-con­stant inge­nu­ity, wit, and courage.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 50+ of Her Dark, Com­pelling Poems

Sylvia Plath, Ted Hugh­es & Peter Porter Read Their Poet­ry: Free Audio 

Sylvia Plath, Girl Detec­tive Offers a Hilar­i­ous­ly Cheery Take on the Poet’s Col­lege Years

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

The Amazing Franz Kafka Workout!: Discover the 15-Minute Exercise Routine That Swept the World in 1904

Does your spare tire show no signs of deflat­ing as biki­ni sea­son looms?

Is the fear of bul­lies kick­ing sand in your face begin­ning to out­strip the hor­ror of trans­form­ing into a giant bug overnight?

Do you long to expe­ri­ence last­ing health ben­e­fits along with an impres­sive­ly fit appear­ance?

Friends, we make you this promise: The Amaz­ing Franz Kaf­ka Work­out will trans­form your life along with your physique in just 15 min­utes a day.

That’s right, just 15 min­utes of dai­ly cal­is­then­ics (and some com­mon sense prac­tices with regard to diet, sleep, and hygiene) is all it takes. Even pen­cil-necked authors walk­ing around with their backs bowed, their shoul­ders droop­ing, their hands and arms all over the place, afraid of mir­rors because they show an inescapable ugli­ness, can dis­cov­er the con­fi­dence that eludes them, through improved pos­ture, breath­ing, and mus­cle tone.

(Note: the Amaz­ing Franz Kaf­ka Work­out will not pro­tect you from the per­ni­cious, even­tu­al­ly fatal effects of tuber­cu­lo­sis.)

The Amaz­ing Franz Kaf­ka Work­out is more cor­rect­ly attrib­uted to fit­ness guru Jør­gen Peter Müller, above, the author of sev­er­al exer­cise reg­i­men pam­phlets, includ­ing the best­selling My Sys­tem: 15 Min­utes’ Exer­cise a Day for Health’s Sake, which was pub­lished in 1904 and then trans­lat­ed into 25 lan­guages.

Kaf­ka was def­i­nite­ly the best known of Müller’s devo­tees, scrupu­lous­ly run­ning through the pre­scribed exer­cis­es morn­ing and evening, wear­ing noth­ing more than the skin he was born in—another prac­tice Müller hearti­ly endorsed.

The chis­eled Mr. Müller was a pro­po­nent of reg­u­lar den­tal check ups, sen­si­ble footwear, and vig­or­ous  tow­el­ing (or “rub­bing”), and an ene­my of con­stric­tive woolen under­wear, closed win­dows, and seden­tary lifestyles. My Sys­tem includes some obser­va­tions that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Kaf­ka nov­el:

The town office type is often a sad phe­nom­e­non pre­ma­ture­ly bent, with shoul­ders and hips awry from his dis­lo­cat­ing posi­tion on the office stool, pale, with pim­ply face and poma­tumed head, thin neck pro­trud­ing from a col­lar that an ordi­nary man could use as a cuff, and swag­ger­ing dress in the lat­est fash­ion flap­ping round the sticks that take the place of arms and legs! At a more advanced age the spec­ta­cle is still more pitiable… the eyes are dull, and the gen­er­al appear­ance is either still more sunken and shriv­eled or else fat, flab­by, and pal­lid, and enveloped in an odour of old paper, putri­fied skin grease, and bad breath.

In an essay on Slate, Sarah Wild­man, the descen­dent of two lean Müller fans, delves into the Müller System’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly amongst 20th-cen­tu­ry Euro­pean Jews.

Just as best-sell­ing fit­ness experts do today, Müller beefed up his fran­chise with relat­ed titles: My Sys­tem for Ladies, My Sys­tem for Chil­dren, and My Sun­bathing and Fresh Air Sys­tem.

The orig­i­nal book is in the pub­lic domain and can be down­loaded for free from the Inter­net Archive, where one com­menter who has been fol­low­ing the sys­tem for near­ly sev­en­ty years gives it a hearty thumbs-up for its sta­mi­na restor­ing pow­ers.

Oth­ers seek­ing to make a buck by charg­ing for Kin­dle down­loads have the decen­cy to offer free instruc­tions for each of the indi­vid­ual exer­cis­es, includ­ing Quick Side­ways Bend­ing of Trunk (with Rub­bing) and the plank‑y Bend­ing and Stretch­ing of the Arms, part­ly Loaded with the Weight of the Body.

Even those unlike­ly to per­form so much as a sin­gle deep knee bend should get a bang out of the orig­i­nal pho­to illus­tra­tions, which, back in 1904, were as ripe for erot­ic dou­ble duty as the whole­some men’s physique mags of the 50s and 60s.

Insert spec­u­la­tion as to Kafka’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion here, if you must.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Walt Whitman’s Unearthed Health Man­u­al, “Man­ly Health & Train­ing,” Urges Read­ers to Stand (Don’t Sit!) and Eat Plen­ty of Meat (1858)

77 Exer­cis­es: A Work­out Video For Fans of the Talk­ing Heads

What’s a Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven Way to Improve Your Abil­i­ty to Learn? Get Out and Exer­cise

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City tonight, March 11, for the next install­ment of her ongo­ing book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Artificial Intelligence Identifies the Six Main Arcs in Storytelling: Welcome to the Brave New World of Literary Criticism

Is the sin­gu­lar­i­ty upon us? AI seems poised to replace every­one, even artists whose work can seem like an invi­o­lably human indus­try. Or maybe not. Nick Cave’s poignant answer to a fan ques­tion might per­suade you a machine will nev­er write a great song, though it might mas­ter all the moves to write a good one. An AI-writ­ten nov­el did almost win a Japan­ese lit­er­ary award. A suit­ably impres­sive feat, even if much of the author­ship should be attrib­uted to the program’s human design­ers.

But what about lit­er­ary crit­i­cism? Is this an art that a machine can do con­vinc­ing­ly? The answer may depend on whether you con­sid­er it an art at all. For those who do, no arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence will ever prop­er­ly devel­op the the­o­ry of mind need­ed for sub­tle, even mov­ing, inter­pre­ta­tions. On the oth­er hand, one group of researchers has suc­ceed­ed in using “sophis­ti­cat­ed com­put­ing pow­er, nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing, and reams of dig­i­tized text,” writes Atlantic edi­tor Adri­enne LaFrance, “to map the nar­ra­tive pat­terns in a huge cor­pus of lit­er­a­ture.” The name of their lit­er­ary crit­i­cism machine? The Hedo­nome­ter.

We can treat this as an exer­cise in com­pil­ing data, but it’s arguable that the results are on par with work from the com­par­a­tive mythol­o­gy school of James Fra­zier and Joseph Camp­bell. A more imme­di­ate com­par­i­son might be to the very deft, if not par­tic­u­lar­ly sub­tle, Kurt Von­negut, who—before he wrote nov­els like Slaugh­ter­house Five and Cat’s Cra­dlesub­mit­ted a master’s the­sis in anthro­pol­o­gy to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. His project did the same thing as the machine, 35 years ear­li­er, though he may not have had the where­with­al to read “1,737 Eng­lish-lan­guage works of fic­tion between 10,000 and 200,000 words long” while strug­gling to fin­ish his grad­u­ate pro­gram. (His the­sis, by the way, was reject­ed.)

Those num­bers describe the dataset from Project Guten­berg fed into the The Hedo­nome­ter by the com­put­er sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ade­laide. After the com­put­er fin­ished “read­ing,” it then plot­ted “the emo­tion­al tra­jec­to­ry” of all of the sto­ries using a “sen­ti­ment analy­sis to gen­er­ate an emo­tion­al arc for each work.” What it found were six broad cat­e­gories of sto­ry, list­ed below:

  1. Rags to Rich­es (rise)
  2. Rich­es to Rags (fall)
  3. Man in a Hole (fall then rise)
  4. Icarus (rise then fall)
  5. Cin­derel­la (rise then fall then rise)
  6. Oedi­pus (fall then rise then fall)

How does this endeav­or com­pare with Vonnegut’s project? (See him present the the­o­ry below.) The nov­el­ist used more or less the same method­ol­o­gy, in human form, to come up with eight uni­ver­sal sto­ry arcs or “shapes of sto­ries.” Von­negut him­self left out the Rags to Rich­es cat­e­go­ry; he called it an anom­aly, though he did have a head­ing for the same ris­ing-only sto­ry arc—the Cre­ation Story—which he deemed an uncom­mon shape for West­ern fic­tion. He did include the Cin­derel­la arc, and was pleased by his dis­cov­ery that its shape mir­rored the New Tes­ta­ment arc, which he also includ­ed in his schema, an act the AI sure­ly would have judged redun­dant.

Con­tra Von­negut, the AI found that one-fifth of all the works it ana­lyzed were Rags-to-Rich­es sto­ries. It deter­mined that this arc was far less pop­u­lar with read­ers than “Oedi­pus,” “Man in a Hole,” and “Cin­derel­la.” Its analy­sis does get much more gran­u­lar, and to allay our sus­pi­cions, the researchers promise they did not con­trol the out­come of the exper­i­ment. “We’re not impos­ing a set of shapes,” says lead author Andy Rea­gan, Ph.D. can­di­date in math­e­mat­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont. “Rather: the math and machine learn­ing have iden­ti­fied them.”

But the authors do pro­vide a lot of their own inter­pre­ta­tion of the data, from choos­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive texts—like Har­ry Pot­ter and the Death­ly Hal­lows—to illus­trate “nest­ed and com­pli­cat­ed” plot arcs, to pro­vid­ing the guid­ing assump­tions of the exer­cise. One of those assump­tions, unsur­pris­ing­ly giv­en the authors’ fields of inter­est, is that math and lan­guage are inter­change­able. “Sto­ries are encod­ed in art, lan­guage, and even in the math­e­mat­ics of physics,” they write in the intro­duc­tion to their paper, pub­lished on Arxiv.org.

“We use equa­tions,” they go on, “to rep­re­sent both sim­ple and com­pli­cat­ed func­tions that describe our obser­va­tions of the real world.” If we accept the premise that sen­tences and inte­gers and lines of code are telling the same sto­ries, then maybe there isn’t as much dif­fer­ence between humans and machines as we would like to think.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

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

Kurt Von­negut Maps Out the Uni­ver­sal Shapes of Our Favorite Sto­ries

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

Here’s John Steinbeck Asking Marilyn Monroe for Her Autograph (1955)

When ask­ing a celebri­ty for a spe­cial favor, it helps to be a bit of a celebri­ty your­self.

As Kei­th Fer­rell details in his biog­ra­phy, John Stein­beck: The Voice of the Land, the Nobel lau­re­ate had lit­tle patience for auto­graph seek­ers, pushy young writ­ers seek­ing help get­ting pub­lished, and “peo­ple who nev­er read books but enjoyed meet­ing authors.”

The shoe went on the oth­er foot when Mrs. Stein­beck let slip to her nephew that Uncle John had met the boy’s movie star crush, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

Sud­den­ly, an auto­graphed pho­to seemed in order.

And not just some stan­dard issue pub­lic­i­ty shot, but ide­al­ly one show­ing the star of The Sev­en Year Itch and Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes in a “pen­sive girl­ish mood.”

Also, could she please inscribe it by name to nephew Jon, a young man with, his uncle con­fid­ed, “one foot in the door of puber­ty”?

The star-to-star tone Stein­beck adopts for the above let­ter seems designed to ward off sus­pi­cion that this nephew could be a con­ve­nient inven­tion on the part of some­one desir­ing such a prize for him­self.

Six­ty years after a sec­re­tary typed it up, Stein­beck­’s mes­sage fetched $3,520 at Julien’s Auc­tions, one of a wide range of items culled from hard­core Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe col­lec­tor, David Gains­bor­ough-Roberts as well as the estate of Mon­roe’s act­ing teacher, Lee Stras­berg.

In addi­tion to oth­er cor­re­spon­dence, the Mar­i­lyn auc­tion includ­ed anno­tat­ed scripts, an emp­ty pre­scrip­tion bot­tle, a bal­le­ri­na paper­weight, stock­ings and gowns, some pin­up-type mem­o­ra­bil­ia, and a pro­gram from John F Kennedy’s 1962 birth­day cel­e­bra­tion at Madi­son Square Gar­den.

One lot that is con­spic­u­ous for its absence is Steinbeck’s promised “guest key to the ladies’ entrance of Fort Knox.”

Could it be that the boy nev­er got his cus­tomized auto­graph?

We’d like to think that he did. Per­haps he’s still savor­ing it in pri­vate.

H/T Alan Gold­wass­er/Let­ters of Note/Flash­bak

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Noth­ing Good Gets Away”: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)

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

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe & Elvis Pres­ley Star in an Action-Packed Pop Art Japan­ese Mon­ster Movie

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this Mon­day, March 11. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Elaborate Pictogram Ernest Hemingway Received in the Hospital During WWI: Can You Decode Its Meaning?

Every­one who knows the work of Ernest Hem­ing­way knows A Farewell to Arms, and every­one who knows A Farewell to Arms knows that Hem­ing­way drew on his expe­ri­ence as a Red Cross ambu­lance dri­ver in Italy dur­ing World War I. Just a few months after ship­ping out, the eigh­teen-year-old writer-to-be — filled, he lat­er said, with “a great illu­sion of immor­tal­i­ty” — got caught by mor­tar fire while tak­ing choco­late and cig­a­rettes from the can­teen to the front line. Recov­er­ing from his wounds in a Milanese hos­pi­tal, he fell in love with an Amer­i­can nurse named Agnes Han­nah von Kurowsky, who would become the mod­el for Cather­ine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms.

Hem­ing­way wrote that nov­el years after Kurowsky had left him for an Ital­ian offi­cer, but when their prospects still looked good, they received this curi­ous let­ter, which at first glance looks like noth­ing more than a few pages of doo­dles. “We think it may be a rebus or anoth­er type of pic­togram that uses pic­tures to rep­re­sent words, parts of words, or phras­es,” wrote Jes­si­ca Green, an intern at the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library where it turned up, in 2012. “Can you help us solve this puz­zle?” Quite a few Hem­ing­way-enthu­si­ast com­menters duti­ful­ly got to their inter­pre­tive work below Green’s post, bring­ing to bear their knowl­edge of the writer’s life and work on these ani­mals, musi­cal notes, grin­ning faces, and mugs of beer, all strung togeth­er with log­ic sym­bols.

If you need a hint, you might start with the appar­ent fact that the let­ter came from three of Hem­ing­way’s ambu­lance-dri­ver bud­dies. “The let­ter is a cheer­ful nar­ra­tive of the three friends’ recent hijinks,” writes Slate’s Rebec­ca Onion. “In the salu­ta­tion, the writ­ers used a foam­ing mug of beer to rep­re­sent Hemingway’s name (he was often called ‘Hem­ing­stein’); clear­ly, these were men who shared Hemingway’s love for ine­bri­a­tion.” But even before they addressed good old Hem­ing­stein, they addressed Kurowsky — as, in the visu­al lan­guage invent­ed for their pur­pos­es, a fry­ing pan with an egg in it. “Ag sounds like egg,” explains the deci­pher­ment Green lat­er post­ed to the JFK Library’s blog.

Green goes on to break down the pic­to­graph­ic let­ter sec­tion by sec­tion, from Brum­my, Bill, and Jenks’ plans to take leave time and come to Milan, Brum­my’s unfor­tu­nate recent expe­ri­ence with “mixed drinks made from Asti Spuman­ti, Rum, Cognac, Marsala, and Rock Syrup,” Jenks’ dri­ving of the bed­bugs in his bed into that of anoth­er dri­ver, and the glo­ri­ous results of Bil­l’s trim­ming and wax­ing of his mus­tache, and more besides. To mod­ern read­ers, the let­ter offers not just a glimpse into the sen­si­bil­i­ties of Hem­ing­way’s social cir­cle but life on the Ital­ian front in 1918. And for Hem­ing­way him­self, receiv­ing such an amus­ing piece of cor­re­spon­dence dur­ing six long months of recu­per­a­tion in the hos­pi­tal must sure­ly have done some­thing to lift the spir­its, though what effect its dis­tinc­tive com­po­si­tion­al style may have had on his own writ­ing seem­ing­ly remains to be stud­ied.

Click here to read a decod­ing of this pic­togram from 1918.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hemingway’s Very First Pub­lished Sto­ries, Free as an eBook

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer (1934)

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Hear Hem­ing­way Read Hem­ing­way, and Faulkn­er Read Faulkn­er (90 Min­utes of Clas­sic Audio)

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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