Watch the Trailers for Tolkien and Catch-22, Two New Literary Films

in Film, Literature, Television | February 15th, 2019

For decades, fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings won­dered if the books could ever become a film. The Bea­t­les and John Boor­man both tried to get adap­ta­tions off the ground in the 1960s and 70s, and ani­ma­tor Ralph Bak­shi came up with his own cin­e­mat­ic inter­pre­ta­tion, if only a par­tial one, in 1978. But now we live in a world rich with Lord of the Rings and Lord of the Rings-relat­ed mate­r­i­al on film, thanks to the efforts of direc­tor Peter Jack­son and his col­lab­o­ra­tors on not just the adap­ta­tions of The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, The Two Tow­ers, and The Return of the King, but three whole fea­ture films bring­ing the rel­a­tive­ly brief tale The Hob­bit to the screen.

What remains for the Tolkien-inspired film­mak­er today? None, so far, have proven brave enough to take on the likes of The Sil­mar­il­lion, the for­bid­ding­ly mythopoe­ic work pub­lished a few years after the writer’s death. But the Finnish direc­tor Dome Karukos­ki, whose last pic­ture told the sto­ry of male-erot­i­ca illus­tra­tor Tom of Fin­land, has found mate­r­i­al in the writer’s life.

Going by the trail­er above, Tolkien deals not just with the writ­ing of The Lord of the Rings, described by star Nicholas Hoult as “a sto­ry about jour­neys, the jour­neys we take to prove our­selves,” about “adven­tures” and “potent mag­ic, mag­ic beyond any­thing any­one has ever felt before.”

It’s also, says Hoult-as-Tolkien, a sto­ry about “what it means to love, and to be loved.” That fits with anoth­er appar­ent sto­ry­line of Tolkien itself, that of the man who dreamed up Mid­dle-Earth­’s rela­tion­ship with Edith Bratt, the girl he met as a teenag­er who would become his wife — not long after which he received the let­ter sum­mon­ing him to France to fight in the First World War, where he man­aged to sur­vive the Bat­tle of the Somme. An equal­ly skilled writer of anoth­er tem­pera­ment might have pro­duced an endur­ing nov­el of the war, but Tolkien, as his gen­er­a­tions of read­ers know, went in anoth­er direc­tion entire­ly. A gen­er­a­tion lat­er, Joseph Heller proved to be that skilled writer of a dif­fer­ent tem­pera­ment, and six­teen years after com­ing back from the Sec­ond World War, he pro­duced Catch-22.

Heller’s nov­el has also made it to the screen a few times: Mike Nichols direct­ed a fea­ture-film adap­ta­tion in 1970, the pilot for a tele­vi­sion series aired three years lat­er, and now we await a Catch-22 minis­eries that will air on Hulu this May. Christo­pher Abbott stars as Cap­tain John Yos­sar­i­an, the hap­less bom­bardier with no aim in the war but to stay out of har­m’s way, and George Clooney (also one of the series’ direc­tors) as Lieu­tenant Scheis­skopf, one of the book’s cast of high­ly mem­o­rable minor char­ac­ters. The series’ six episodes should accom­mo­date more of that cast — and more of the forms Heller’s elab­o­rate satire takes in the nov­el — than a movie can. If, as a result, you need to con­sult Heller’s large-for­mat hand­writ­ten out­line for the book, by all means do — and have a look at Tolkien’s anno­tat­ed map of Mid­dle-Earth while you’re at it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read From The Lord of the Rings and The Hob­bit

J.R.R. Tolkien Expressed a “Heart­felt Loathing” for Walt Dis­ney and Refused to Let Dis­ney Stu­dios Adapt His Work

Joseph Heller’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for Catch-22, One of the Great Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

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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Hear Neil Gaiman Read Aloud 15 of His Own Works, and Works by 6 Other Great Writers: From The Graveyard Book & Coraline, to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven & Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

in Literature | February 14th, 2019

Neil Gaiman is a sto­ry­teller. That title encom­pass­es quite a few pur­suits, most of which seem­ing­ly involve writ­ing — writ­ing nov­els, writ­ing radio dra­mas, writ­ing com­ic books — but he also occa­sion­al­ly tells sto­ries the old-fash­ioned way: speak­ing aloud, and to an audi­ence of rapt lis­ten­ers. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, such sto­ry­telling hap­pened in a cir­cle around the camp­fire, but as a sto­ry­teller of the 21st cen­tu­ry — albeit a mas­ter of time­less tech­niques who uses those tech­niques to deal with time­less themes — Gaiman can tell sto­ries to the entire world. Today we’ve gath­ered all of Gaiman’s stream­able read­ings, both video and audio, in one place.

Near­ly every type of text at which he has tried his hand appears in this col­lec­tion, from nov­els (The Grave­yard Book) to novel­las (Cora­line) to poet­ry (“Instruc­tions,” above) to man­i­festos (“Mak­ing Good Art”). Suit­able as his voice and deliv­ery are to his own work, Gaiman’s live sto­ry­telling tal­ent also extends to the works of oth­ers, as you’ll find out if you lis­ten to the selec­tions on the sec­ond list below.

The mate­r­i­al varies wide­ly, from non­sense or near-non­sense poet­ry like Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham and Lewis Car­rol­l’s “Jab­ber­wocky” to the work of his friend Ursu­la K. Le Guin to a clas­sic like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” whose Goth­ic atmos­phere will no doubt appeal to Gaiman’s fans.

And Gaiman cer­tain­ly has his fair share of fans. If you already count your­self in that group, you’ll need lit­tle con­vinc­ing to do a binge-lis­ten of his read­ings here. But if you aren’t yet famil­iar with Gaiman’s work in all its var­i­ous forms, you might con­sid­er using these pieces of video and audio as an entry­way into his nar­ra­tive world, with its emo­tion­al chiaroscuro, it mod­ern-day mythol­o­gy, and its unflag­ging sense of humor. There’s plen­ty of Neil Gaiman out there to read, of course, but with his style of sto­ry­telling, some­times he must sim­ply be heard — if not around an actu­al camp­fire, then on that largest camp­fire ever cre­at­ed, the inter­net. These texts will be added to our list, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

His own work
Works by oth­ers
  • A Christ­mas Car­ol by Charles Dick­ens — Free Audio
  • Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss — Free Video
  • “Democ­ra­cy” by Leonard Cohen — Free Video
  • “How It Seems to Me,” a Poem by Ursu­la K Le Guin — Free Video
  • “Jab­ber­wocky” by Lewis Car­roll — Free Video
  • “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe — Free Video 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 Sto­ries & Nov­els by Neil Gaiman Online: Free Texts & Read­ings by Neil Him­self

Neil Gaiman Reads His Man­i­festo on Mak­ing Art: Fea­tures the 10 Things He Wish He Knew As a Young Artist

Where Do Great Ideas Come From? Neil Gaiman Explains

Neil Gaiman Teach­es the Art of Sto­ry­telling in His New Online Course

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

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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Why Should We Read Flannery O’Connor? An Animated Video Makes the Case

in Literature | February 12th, 2019

Every time a sto­ry of mine appears in a Fresh­man anthol­o­gy, I have a vision of it, with its lit­tle organs laid open, like a frog in a bot­tle. –Flan­nery O’Connor, “A Rea­son­able Use of the Unrea­son­able”

Why did Flan­nery O’Connor write? To con­vert us? The devout Catholic was not immune to a cer­tain apolo­getic impulse, or a sense of her own pur­pose as a ves­sel for divine truth. Or did she, like Greek trage­di­ans, write to inspire pity and ter­ror? “I don’t have any pre­ten­sions,” she once demurred, “to being an Aeschy­lus or Sopho­cles and pro­vid­ing you in this sto­ry with a cathar­tic expe­ri­ence.” In any case, what drove her may be a less inter­est­ing ques­tion than what should dri­ve us to read her.

O’Connor wrote, as most great writ­ers do, because she was com­pelled to write. What we gain as read­ers is the deeply unset­tling, but also deeply plea­sur­able expe­ri­ence of rec­og­niz­ing our own flawed human­i­ty in her vio­lent, manip­u­la­tive char­ac­ters, none of whom, some­how, are ever beyond redemp­tion. O’Connor’s autho­r­i­al voice does not judge or con­demn but expos­es to light the flaws that even, or espe­cial­ly, her most respectable char­ac­ters would rather hide from them­selves and oth­ers.

By use of what she called “a rea­son­able use of the unrea­son­able” she shows mur­der, con­tempt, and decep­tion as shock­ing­ly ordi­nary states of affairs, bely­ing the polite fic­tions of civil­i­ty and social nice­ness. Per­haps no set­ting could bet­ter illu­mi­nate the con­trasts than the pious­ly vio­lent seg­re­gat­ed mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can South. O’Connor’s “mas­tery of the grotesque,” notes the TED-Ed video above by Iseult Gille­spie, “and her explo­rations of the insu­lar­i­ty and super­sti­tions of the South led her to be clas­si­fied as a ‘South­ern Goth­ic’ writer.”

The label may fit super­fi­cial­ly, but “her work pushed beyond the pure­ly ridicu­lous and fright­en­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics asso­ci­at­ed with the genre to reveal the vari­ety and nuance of human char­ac­ter.” O’Connor her­self sug­gest­ed that what set her apart were “the assump­tions… of the cen­tral Chris­t­ian mys­ter­ies.” Though we need not read her work this way, she grants, there is “none oth­er by which it could have been writ­ten.” We might say that her com­mit­ted belief in the idea of uni­ver­sal human deprav­i­ty gave her unique insight into the mean­ing­less­ness of class and race dis­tinc­tions. Few writ­ers have tak­en the idea as seri­ous­ly, or approached it with more wicked play­ful­ness.

Why did she write? One rea­son is she “took plea­sure in chal­leng­ing her read­ers,” as the video explains. But it was plea­sure that she chiefly desired to share. We can vivi­sect her sto­ries, carve them up and seal them in jars labeled with pol­i­tics and the­olo­gies. Yet “prop­er­ly, you ana­lyze to enjoy,” she wrote. “It’s equal­ly true that to ana­lyze with any dis­crim­i­na­tion, you have to have enjoyed already, and I think that the best rea­son to hear a sto­ry read is that it should stim­u­late that pri­ma­ry enjoy­ment.” Lovers of O’Connor know the answer to the ques­tion of why we should read her. Because they take as much plea­sure in read­ing her sto­ries as she did in writ­ing them.

Dis­cov­er this enjoy­ment on your own. Hear Studs Terkel read her sto­ry “Rev­e­la­tion,” hear Estelle Par­sons read “Every­thing that Ris­es Must Con­verge,” and hear O’Con­nor her­self read that 1959 clas­sic of her South­ern grotesque style, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a Rare Record­ing of Flan­nery O’Connor Read­ing “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1959)

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

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

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

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Neil Gaiman Reads His Manifesto on Making Art: Features the 10 Things He Wish He Knew As a Young Artist

in Art, Books, Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | February 11th, 2019

I think you’re absolute­ly allowed sev­er­al min­utes, pos­si­bly even half a day to feel very, very sor­ry for your­self indeed. And then just start mak­ing art. — Neil Gaiman

It’s a bit ear­ly in the year for com­mence­ment speech­es, but for­tu­nate­ly for life­long learn­ers who rely on a steady drip of inspi­ra­tion and encour­age­ment, author Neil Gaiman excels at putting old wine in new bot­tles.

He repur­posed his keynote address to Philadel­phi­a’s Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts’ Class of 2012 for Art Mat­ters: Because Your Imag­i­na­tion Can Change the World, a slim vol­ume with hand let­ter­ing and illus­tra­tions by Chris Rid­dell.

The above video cap­tures the fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tors appear­ing togeth­er last fall at the East Lon­don cul­tur­al cen­ter Evo­lu­tion­ary Arts Hack­ney in a fundrais­er for Eng­lish PEN, the found­ing branch of the world­wide lit­er­ary defense asso­ci­a­tion. While Gaiman reads aloud in his affa­ble, ever-engag­ing style, Rid­dell uses a brush pen to bang out 4 3/4 line draw­ings, riff­ing on Gaiman’s metaphors.

While the art-mak­ing “rules” Gaiman enu­mer­ates here­in have been extrap­o­lat­ed and wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed (includ­ing, nev­er fear, below), it’s worth hav­ing a look at why this event called for a live illus­tra­tor.

Leav­ing aside the fact that each tick­et pur­chas­er got a copy of Art Mat­ters, auto­graphed by both men, and a large signed print was auc­tioned off on behalf of Eng­lish PEN, Gaiman holds illus­tra­tions in high regard.

His work includes pic­ture books, graph­ic nov­els, and light­ly illus­trat­ed nov­els for teens and young adults, and as a mature read­er, he, too, delights in visu­als, sin­gling out Frank C. Papé’s draw­ings for the decid­ed­ly “adult” 1920s fan­ta­sy nov­els of James Branch Cabell. (1929’s Some­thing about Eve fea­tured a bux­om female char­ac­ter angri­ly fry­ing up her hus­band’s man­hood for din­ner and an erot­ic entry­way that would have thrilled Dr. Seuss.)

In an inter­view with Water­stones book­sellers upon the pub­li­ca­tion of Nev­er­where,  anoth­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with Rid­dell, Gaiman mused:

…a good illus­tra­tor, for me, is like going to see a play. You are going to get some­thing brought to life for you by a spe­cif­ic cast in a spe­cif­ic place. That way of illus­trat­ing will nev­er hap­pen again. You know, some­body else could illus­trate it—there are hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent Alice in Won­der­lands.

Which we could cer­tain­ly take to mean that if Riddell’s style doesn’t grab you the way it grabs Gaiman (and the juries for sev­er­al pres­ti­gious awards) per­haps you should tear your eyes away from the screen and illus­trate what you hear in the speech.

Do you need to know how to draw as well as he does? The rules, below, sug­gest not. We’d love to take a peek inside your sketch­book after.

  1. Embrace the fact that you’re young. Accept that you don’t know what you’re doing. And don’t lis­ten to any­one who says there are rules and lim­its.

  2. If you know your call­ing, go there. Stay on track. Keep mov­ing towards it, even if the process takes time and requires sac­ri­fice.

  3. Learn to accept fail­ure. Know that things will go wrong. Then, when things go right, you’ll prob­a­bly feel like a fraud. It’s nor­mal.

  4. Make mis­takes, glo­ri­ous and fan­tas­tic ones. It means that you’re out there doing and try­ing things.

  5. When life gets hard, as it inevitably will, make good art. Just make good art.

  6. Make your own art, mean­ing the art that reflects your indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and per­son­al vision.

  7. You get free­lance work if your work is good, if you’re easy to get along with, and if you’re on dead­line. Actu­al­ly you don’t need all three. Just two.

  8. Enjoy the ride. Don’t fret it all away. (That one comes com­pli­ments of Stephen King.)

  9. Be wise and accom­plish things in your career. If you have prob­lems get­ting start­ed, pre­tend you’re some­one who is wise, who can get things done. It will help you along.

  10. Leave the world more inter­est­ing than it was before.

Read a com­plete tran­script of the speech here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman Teach­es the Art of Sto­ry­telling in His New Online Course

Hear Neil Gaiman Read a Beau­ti­ful, Pro­found Poem by Ursu­la K. Le Guin to His Cousin on Her 100th Birth­day

18 Sto­ries & Nov­els by Neil Gaiman Online: Free Texts & Read­ings by Neil Him­self

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City tonight as host of The­ater of the Apes’ month­ly  book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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George Orwell’s Essay “British Cookery” is Officially Published 70 Years After It Was Rejected by the British Council (1946)

in Food & Drink, Literature, Politics | February 8th, 2019

Image by BBC, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Voltaire once joked that Britain had “a hun­dred reli­gions and only one sauce.” In my expe­ri­ence, that sauce is a cur­ry, which was already a British sta­ple in Voltaire’s time. No doubt he had some­thing much bland­er in mind. Of course, it’s all hyper­bol­ic fun until some­one takes offense, as did George Orwell in 1946, when he wrote, against Voltaire­an stereo­types, about the mis­un­der­stood plea­sures of British food. His essay, “British Cook­ery,” was com­mis­sioned by the British Coun­cil, but they sub­se­quent­ly deemed that it would be “’unwise to pub­lish,’” reports the Dai­ly Mail, “so soon after the hun­gry win­ter of 1946 and wartime rationing.”

Not that it mat­ters much now, but the Coun­cil has for­mal­ly apol­o­gized to the deceased Orwell, over 70 years lat­er. Senior pol­i­cy ana­lyst Alas­dair Don­ald­son explains they are “delight­ed to make amends” by pub­lish­ing the essay in full, along­side “the unfor­tu­nate rejec­tion let­ter.” You can read it here at the British Coun­cil site. Orwell grants that the British diet is “sim­ple, rather heavy, per­haps slight­ly bar­barous… with its main empha­sis on sug­ar and ani­mal fats…. Cheap restau­rants in Britain are almost invari­ably bad, while in expen­sive restau­rants the cook­ery is almost always French, or imi­ta­tion French.”

Else­where, he con­cedes, “the British are not great eaters of sal­ads.” Indeed, he says, “the two great short­com­ings of British cook­ery are a fail­ure to treat veg­eta­bles with due seri­ous­ness, and an exces­sive use of sug­ar.” He does go on at length, in fact, about what sounds like a nation­al epi­dem­ic of sug­ar addic­tion. Such laps­es of taste are also what we would now label a nutri­tion­al emer­gency. He may seem to grant too much to crit­ics of British cook­ing. But this is main­ly by con­trast with spici­er, more veg­etable-friend­ly cuisines of the con­ti­nent and colonies. The kind of cook­ing he describes makes cre­ative­ly var­ied uses of stur­dy but lim­it­ed local resources (except for the sug­ar).

Orwell’s bru­tal hon­esty about British food’s defi­cien­cies makes him sound like a trust­wor­thy guide to its true delights. One of the truths he tells is that “British cook­ery dis­plays more vari­ety and more orig­i­nal­i­ty than for­eign vis­i­tors are usu­al­ly ready to allow.” The aver­age vis­i­tor encoun­ters British food prin­ci­pal­ly in restau­rants, pubs, and hotels, which, “whether cheap or expen­sive” are not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of “the diet of the great mass of the peo­ple.” This may be said of many region­al cuisines. But Orwell is devot­ed to a native British cook­ing which had, at the time, almost dis­ap­peared after six years of war rationing.

This cook­ing is rich in roast and cold meats, cheeses, breads, York­shire and suet pud­dings, pota­toes and turnips. The British diet is, or was, Orwell writes, eat­en by the low­er and upper class­es alike, under dif­fer­ent names and prices. Sea­son­ings are few. “Gar­lic, for instance, is unknown in British cook­ery prop­er.” What stands out is mint, vine­gar, but­ter, dried fruits, jam, and mar­malade.

Orwell him­self includ­ed a mar­malade recipe. (A hand­writ­ten note reads “Bad recipe! Too much sug­ar and water.”), which you can see below. Decide for your­self how much sug­ar to add.

ORANGE MARMALADE 

Ingre­di­ents:

2 seville oranges

2 sweet oranges (no)

2 lemons (no)

8lbs of pre­serv­ing sug­ar

8 pints of water

Method. Wash and dry the fruit. Halve them and squeeze out the juice. Remove some of the pith, then shred the fruit fine­ly. Tie the pips in a muslin bag. Put the strained juice, rind and pips into the water and soak for 48 hours. Place in a large pan and sim­mer for 1/2 hours until the rind is ten­der. Leave to stand overnight, then add the sug­ar and let it dis­solve before bring­ing to the boil. Boil rapid­ly until a lit­tle of the mix­ture will set into a jel­ly when placed on a cold plate. Pour into jars which have been heat­ed before­hand, and cov­er with paper cov­ers.

An increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple are cut­ting back or quit­ting near­ly every main ingre­di­ent in what Orwell describes as authen­tic British cook­ing: from meat to dairy to gluten to sug­ar to suet…. But if we are going to give it a fair shake, he argues, we must try the real thing. Or his ver­sion of it any­way. He includes sev­er­al more recipes: Welsh rarebit, York­shire pud­ding, trea­cle tart, plum cake, and Christ­mas pud­ding.

Orwell’s “British Cook­ery” wars with itself and comes to terms. He fills each para­graph with frank acknowl­edge­ments of British cuisine’s short­com­ings, yet he rel­ish­es its sim­ple, sol­id virtues. He writes that “British cook­ery” is “best stud­ied in pri­vate hous­es, and more par­tic­u­lar­ly in the homes of the mid­dle-class and work­ing-class mass­es who have not become Euro­peanized in their tastes.” It’s a kind of cul­tur­al nation­al­ism, but per­haps one sug­gest­ing those who want oth­ers to under­stand and appre­ci­ate a spe­cif­ic kind British cul­ture should invite out­siders in to share a meal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell Explains How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

Try George Orwell’s Recipe for Christ­mas Pud­ding, from His Essay “British Cook­ery” (1945)

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

Food­ie Alert: New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restau­rant Menus (1851–2008)

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

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Pioneering Sci-Fi Author William Gibson Predicts in 1997 How the Internet Will Change Our World

in Books, Literature, Sci Fi, Technology | February 5th, 2019

“What’s the one thing that all great works of sci­ence fic­tion have in com­mon?” asks a 1997 episode of The Net, the BBC’s tele­vi­sion series about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of this much-talked-about new thing called the inter­net. “They all tried to see into the future, and they all got it wrong. Orwell’s 1984, Hux­ley’s Brave New World, Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: all, to some extent or oth­er, wrong. And there’s anoth­er name to add to this list: William Gib­son.” But then on strolls Gib­son him­self, fresh off the writ­ing of Idoru, a nov­el involv­ing a human who wants to mar­ry a dig­i­tal­ly gen­er­at­ed Japan­ese pop star, to grant the inter­view above.

In it Gib­son admits that com­put­ers had­n’t gone quite the way he’d imag­ined thir­teen years ear­li­er in his debut nov­el Neu­ro­mancer — but in which he also offers pre­scient advice about how we should regard new tech­nol­o­gy even today. “The thing that Neu­ro­mancer pre­dicts as being actu­al­ly like the inter­net isn’t actu­al­ly like the inter­net at all!” Gib­son says in a more recent inter­view with Wired. “I did­n’t get it right but I said there was going to be some­thing.” Back in the mid-1980s, as he tells the BBC, “there was effec­tive­ly no inter­net to extrap­o­late from. The cyber­space I made up isn’t being used in Neu­ro­mancer the way we’re using the inter­net today.”

Gib­son had envi­sioned a cor­po­rate-dom­i­nat­ed net­work infest­ed with “cyber­net­ic car thieves skulk­ing through it attempt­ing to steal tid­bits of infor­ma­tion.” By the mid-1990s, though, the inter­net had become a place where “a real­ly tal­ent­ed and deter­mined fif­teen-year-old” could cre­ate some­thing more com­pelling than “a multi­na­tion­al enter­tain­ment con­glom­er­ate might come up with.” He tells the BBC that “what the inter­net has become is as much a sur­prise to me as the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union was,” but at that point he had begun to per­ceive the shape of things to come. “I can’t see why it won’t become com­plete­ly ubiq­ui­tous,” he says, envi­sion­ing its evo­lu­tion “into some­thing like tele­vi­sion to the extent that it pen­e­trates every lev­el of soci­ety.”

At the same time, “it does­n’t mat­ter how fast your modem is if you’re being shelled by eth­nic sep­a­ratists” — still very much a con­cern in cer­tain parts of the world — and even the most promis­ing tech­nolo­gies don’t mer­it our uncrit­i­cal embrace. “I think we should respect the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy and try to fear it in a ratio­nal way,” he says. “The only appro­pri­ate response” is to give in to nei­ther techno­pho­bia nor technophil­ia, but “to teach our­selves to be absolute­ly ambiva­lent about them and imag­ine their most inad­ver­tent side effects,” the side effects “that tend to get us” — not to men­tion the ones that make the best plot ele­ments. See­ing as how we now live in a world where mar­riage to syn­thet­ic Japan­ese idols has become a pos­si­bil­i­ty, among oth­er devel­op­ments seem­ing­ly pulled from the pages of Gib­son’s nov­els, we would do well to heed even these decades-old words of advice about his main sub­ject.

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Road Trip with Cyber­space Vision­ary William Gib­son, Watch No Maps for These Ter­ri­to­ries (2000)

How Chris Marker’s Rad­i­cal Sci­Fi Film La Jetée Changed the Life of Cyber­punk Prophet William Gib­son

Cyber­punk: 1990 Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing William Gib­son & Tim­o­thy Leary Intro­duces the Cyber­punk Cul­ture

Sci-Fi Author J.G. Bal­lard Pre­dicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

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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Watch a New Virtual Reality Production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Modern Take on a Classic Play

in Literature, Technology, Theatre | January 29th, 2019

Often com­pared to The Tem­pest, Samuel Beck­et­t’s Endgame may have as much of Shakespeare’s Ham­let in it, though the author was unwill­ing to acknowl­edge the influ­ence to Theodor Adorno. Beck­et­t’s cen­tral char­ac­ter, the blind, aged Hamm, spends all of his time in a throne harangu­ing the oth­er three, in a gloomy place, The New York Times’ Brooks Atkin­son wrote, “some­where between life and death.” Hamm might have been the Dan­ish prince grown old and bit­ter, left with noth­ing but what Beck­ett called Shakespeare’s “fat greasy words.”

In any case, Ham­let has long been thought of as a pro­to­type of the absurd, a play where lit­tle hap­pens because its pro­tag­o­nist is too haunt­ed to have rela­tion­ships with the liv­ing or make deci­sions, a con­di­tion he com­plains about in scene after scene. Trau­ma, exis­ten­tial paral­y­sis, crip­pling doubt punc­tu­at­ed by fits of rage and violence—these are the mak­ings of the 20th cen­tu­ry anti-hero. If the play has a clas­si­cal hero, a man of action and resolve, it is, absurd­ly, a dead man, Hamlet’s father, who testi­ly declares his pur­pose in his final speech, “to whet thy almost blunt­ed pur­pose.”

Should Ham­let be turned into an immer­sive VR and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty expe­ri­ence, allow­ing view­ers to inhab­it a char­ac­ter’s point of view, they might not opt to see things as the moody, depres­sive, speechi­fy­ing prince. In Ham­let 360: Thy Father’s Spir­it, we instead get to inhab­it the ghost, who only appears in the play a hand­ful of times but still fills every scene with his glow­er­ing pres­ence. The 60-minute VR “mod­ern adap­ta­tion” is a co-pro­duc­tion of Boston’s Com­mon­wealth Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and Google.

“Both extreme­ly long by the stan­dards of vir­tu­al real­i­ty and extreme­ly short by the stan­dards of Ham­let,” writes Eliz­a­beth Har­ris at The New York Times, the film “can be watched in 3‑D using a V.R. head­set or in two dimen­sions on a desk­top or mobile device” (see it above). On a vast, dark­ened set clut­tered with fine but shab­by fur­nish­ings in heaps, glow­ing lamps, a bath­tub, and a car, actors per­form con­densed scenes while we, as ghost, freely roam about, view­ing the action in three dimen­sions, a device intend­ed to give the view­er “a sense of agency and urgency as an omni­scient observ­er, guide and par­tic­i­pant,” the pro­duc­tion notes.

The film’s cre­ators, Har­ris writes, “hope that beyond the fresh expe­ri­ence it pro­vides, it will also serve as a tool to bring great the­ater to wider audiences—and bring big­ger audi­ences to the­ater.” It may have that effect, though one might feel it priv­i­leges dig­i­tal effects over the tru­ly immer­sive, full expe­ri­ence of Shakespeare’s “fat greasy words.” It’s hard to think the “great Shake­speare­an” Beck­ett would approve, but he found lit­tle to his lik­ing.

Younger, less can­tan­ker­ous audi­ences might, how­ev­er. “Many young people’s first expe­ri­ence of Shake­speare is not all that great,” says direc­tor Steven Maler. Ham­let 360 allows the Com­mon­wealth Shake­speare Com­pa­ny to “scale up” their mis­sion to “tru­ly democ­ra­tize Shake­speare and the­ater.”  Expe­ri­ence it for your­self above or on YouTube and learn more at Boston’s WGBH, who recent­ly pre­miered the film. The actors “deliv­er pow­er­ful per­for­mances,” the PBS sta­tion writes, “that bring the play for­ward to today, mak­ing it both cur­rent and time­less.”

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Google Gives You a 360° View of the Per­form­ing Arts, From the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny to the Paris Opera Bal­let

30 Days of Shake­speare: One Read­ing of the Bard Per Day, by The New York Pub­lic Library, on the 400th Anniver­sary of His Death

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

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Hear Neil Gaiman Read a Beautiful, Profound Poem by Ursula K. Le Guin to His Cousin on Her 100th Birthday

in Life, Literature, Poetry | January 28th, 2019

It’s quite pro­found, isn’t it? — Helen Fagin, aged 100

Every time I open my lap­top to dis­cov­er a friend post­ing a vin­tage pho­to of their par­ent as a beam­ing bride or saucy sailor boy in lush black and white or gold-tinged Kodachrome, I know the deal.

Anoth­er elder has left the build­ing.

With luck, I’ll have at least two or three decades before my kids start sniff­ing around in my shoe box­es of old snap­shots.

In the mean­time, I’ll won­der how much of the emo­tion that’s packed into those memo­r­i­al post­ings gets expressed to the sub­ject in the days lead­ing up to their final exit.

Seems like most of us pussy­foot around the obvi­ous until it’s too late.

There are, of course, med­ical sit­u­a­tions that force us to acknowl­edge in a loved one’s pres­ence the abyss in their imme­di­ate future, but oth­er­wise, West­ern tra­di­tion has posi­tioned us to shy away from those sorts of dis­cus­sions.

Per­haps our loved ones pre­fer it that way.

Per­haps we do too.

It’s clear that author Neil Gaiman enjoys a spe­cial rela­tion­ship with his 100-year-old cousin, Helen Fagin, a Holo­caust sur­vivor and pro­fes­sor of lit­er­a­ture.

He has shared mem­o­ries of her with those attend­ing his pub­lic appear­ances and in hon­or of World Refugee Day.

His wife, musi­cian Aman­da Palmer, includ­ed a verse about Helen’s 98th birth­day in her song “A Mother’s Con­fes­sion,” below, flesh­ing out the lyrics with foot­notes on her blog.

In cel­e­bra­tion of Helen’s cen­te­nary, Palmer asked Brain Picking’s Maria Popo­va to rec­om­mend a poem that Gaiman could read aloud dur­ing anoth­er in-per­son birth­day vis­it.

Popo­va set­tled on “How It Seems To Me,” a late-in-life poem by sci­ence fic­tion writer Ursu­la K. Le Guin, a close friend of Gaiman’s who died in Jan­u­ary of 2018, 12 years shy of her own cen­te­nary:

HOW IT SEEMS TO ME

In the vast abyss before time, self

is not, and soul com­min­gles

with mist, and rock, and light. In time,

soul brings the misty self to be.

Then slow time hard­ens self to stone

while ever light­en­ing the soul,

till soul can loose its hold of self

and both are free and can return

to vast­ness and dis­solve in light,

the long light after time.

It’s a hell of a hun­dredth birth­day gift, though far from a one-size-fits all propo­si­tion.

Per­haps when you are a nona­ge­nar­i­an, you’d rather the young peo­ple err on the side of tra­di­tion with a com­fy new robe.

There are octo­ge­nar­i­an birth­day boys and girls who’d pick an African vio­let over the misty self, tricky to keep alive though they may be.

As filmed by Palmer, Helen seemed to receive the gift in the spir­it it was intend­ed. Life equipped her for it.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman Presents “How Sto­ries Last,” an Insight­ful Lec­ture on How Sto­ries Change, Evolve & Endure Through the Cen­turies

18 Sto­ries & Nov­els by Neil Gaiman Online: Free Texts & Read­ings by Neil Him­self

Neil Gaiman Reads “The Man Who For­got Ray Brad­bury”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City in Feb­ru­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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