An Atlas of Literary Maps Created by Great Authors: J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island & More

in Books, Literature, Maps | November 7th, 2018

Plot, set­ting, char­ac­ter… we learn to think of these as dis­crete ele­ments in lit­er­ary writ­ing, com­pa­ra­ble to the strat­e­gy, board, and pieces of a chess game. But what if this scheme doesn’t quite work? What about when the set­ting is a char­ac­ter? There are many lit­er­ary works named and well-known for the unfor­get­table places they intro­duce: Walden, Wuther­ing Heights, Howards End…. There are invent­ed domains that seem more real to read­ers than real­i­ty: Faulkner’s Yok­na­p­a­tow­pha, Thomas Hardy’s Wes­sex… There are works that describe impos­si­ble places so vivid­ly we believe in their exis­tence against all rea­son: Ita­lo Calvino’s Invis­i­ble Cities, Chi­na Miéville’s The City and the City, Jorge Luis Borges’ “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Ter­tius”….

What sus­tains our belief in the integri­ty of fic­tion­al places? The fact that they seem to act upon events as much as the peo­ple who live in them, for one thing. And, just as often, the fact that so many authors and illus­tra­tors draw elab­o­rate maps of lit­er­ary set­tings, mak­ing their fea­tures real to us and embed­ding them in our minds.

A new book, The Writer’s Map, edit­ed by Huw Lewis-Jones, offers lovers of lit­er­ary maps—whether in non-fic­tion, real­ism, or fantasy—the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pore over maps of Thomas More’s Utopia (said to be the first lit­er­ary map), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Trea­sure Island, J.R.R Tolkien’s Mid­dle Earth, Bran­well Brontë’s Ver­dopo­lis (above), and so many more.

The book is filled with essays about lit­er­ary map­ping by writ­ers and map-mak­ers, and it touch­es on the way authors them­selves view imag­i­na­tive map­ping. “For some writ­ers mak­ing a map is absolute­ly cen­tral to the craft of shap­ing and telling their tale,” writes Lewis-Jones. For oth­ers, mak­ing maps is also a way to avoid the painful task of writ­ing, which Philip Pull­man calls “a mat­ter of sullen toil.” Draw­ing, on the oth­er hand, he says, “is pure joy. Draw­ing a map to go with a sto­ry is mess­ing around, with the added fun of col­or­ing it in.” David Mitchell agrees: “As long as I was busy dream­ing of topog­ra­phy,” he says of his maps, “I didn’t have to get my hands dirty with the mechan­ics of plot and char­ac­ter.”

It may sur­prise you to hear that writ­ers hate to write, but writ­ers are peo­ple, after all, and most peo­ple find writ­ing tedious and dif­fi­cult in some part. What all of the writ­ers fea­tured in this col­lec­tion share is that they love indulging their imag­i­na­tions, mak­ing real their lucid dreams, whether through the diver­sion of draw­ing maps or the grind of gram­mar and syn­tax. Many of these maps, like Thoreau’s draw­ing of Walden Pond or Johann David Wyss’s illus­tra­tion of the desert island in The Swiss Fam­i­ly Robin­son, accom­pa­nied their books into pub­li­ca­tion. Many more remained secret­ed in authors’ note­books.

There are many such “pri­vate trea­sures” in The Writer’s Map, notes Atlas Obscu­ra: “J.R.R. Tolkien’s own sketch of Mor­dor, on graph paper; C.S. Lewis’s sketch­es; unpub­lished maps from the note­books of David Mitchell… Jack Kerouac’s own route in On the Road….” Do we read a lit­er­ary map dif­fer­ent­ly when it wasn’t meant for us? Can maps be sly acts of mis­di­rec­tion as well as whim­si­cal visu­al aids? Should we treat them as para­tex­tu­al and unnec­es­sary, or are they cen­tral, when an author choos­es to include them, to our under­stand­ing of a sto­ry? Such ques­tions, and many, many more, are tak­en up in The Writer’s Map, a long over­due sur­vey of this long­stand­ing lit­er­ary tra­di­tion.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

12 Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Road Trips in One Handy Inter­ac­tive Map

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

William Faulkn­er Draws Maps of Yok­na­p­ataw­pha Coun­ty, the Fic­tion­al Home of His Great Nov­els

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

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Edward Gorey Talks About His Love Cats & More in the Animated Series, “Goreytelling”

in Animation, Books, Literature | November 6th, 2018

My child­hood dis­cov­ery of Edward Gorey proved rev­e­la­to­ry. I rec­og­nized my own bewil­der­ment in the blank expres­sions of his obses­sive­ly-ren­dered Edwar­dian chil­dren. His char­ac­ters, impris­oned in starched col­lars and stays, stared at the world through hol­low eyes, struck dumb by alter­nat­ing cur­rents of absur­di­ty and hor­ror. Every young­ster with bud­ding goth and New Roman­tic sen­si­bil­i­ties found them­selves drawn into Gorey’s weird worlds. Con­fessed Goreyphiles like Tim Bur­ton and Neil Gaiman took much from a style Steven Kurutz describes as “camp-macabre, iron­ic-goth­ic or dark whim­sy.”

He gave his read­ers per­mis­sion to be odd and haunt­ed, and to laugh about it, but he nev­er seemed to have need­ed such per­mis­sion him­self. He was as sui gener­is as he was mys­te­ri­ous, the scowl­ing old­er gen­tle­man with the long white beard assumed the role of an anti-San­ta, bestow­ing gifts of guilt-free, soli­tary indul­gence in dark fan­ta­sy.

But the man him­self remained shroud­ed, and that was just as well. Learn­ing more about him as an adult, I have been struck by just how close­ly he resem­bles some of his char­ac­ters, or rather, by how much he was, in work and life, entire­ly him­self.

A fash­ion­ably book­ish her­mit and Wildean aes­thete, a man to whom, “by his own admis­sion… noth­ing hap­pened,” Gorey orga­nized his life in New York around read­ing, see­ing films, and attend­ing George Balanchine’s bal­lets. (He rarely missed a per­for­mance over the course of three decades, then moved to his famed Cape Cod house when Bal­an­chine died in the mid-80s.) “Despite being a life­long Anglophile, he made just one brief vis­it to Scot­land and Eng­land,” writes Kurutz, “his only trip abroad.”

In a Proust Ques­tion­naire he answered for Van­i­ty Fair, Gorey wrote that his favorite jour­ney was “look­ing out the win­dow.” The supreme love of his life, he wrote: his cats. Those beloved crea­tures are the sub­ject of the third episode of Goreytelling, at the top, an ani­mat­ed web series con­sist­ing of short excerpts from an upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary sim­ply titled Gorey, direct­ed by Christo­pher Seufert, who spent sev­er­al years record­ing his con­ver­sa­tions with Gorey. The very Gorey-like ani­ma­tions are by Ben­jamin and Jim Wick­ey.

If you’ve ever won­dered what Edward Gorey sound­ed like, won­der no more. Hear his solid­ly Mid­west­ern accent (Gorey grew up in Chica­go) as he describes the tra­vails of liv­ing with adorable, frus­trat­ed preda­tors who destroy the fur­ni­ture and throw them­selves on his draw­ing table, ruin­ing his work. Fur­ther up, he tells the sto­ry of a mummy’s head he kept wrapped up in his clos­et, and just above he tells a sto­ry about The Loathe­some Cou­ple a 1977 book he wrote based a series of real-life mur­ders of British chil­dren by a mar­ried cou­ple. “A lot peo­ple,” he says, would tell him “this one book of yours, I real­ly find a lit­tle… much.”

Goreyphiles out there, and they num­ber in the mil­lions, will thor­ough­ly enjoy these ani­ma­tions (see episode 2, “Fan Mail,” here and 4, “Drac­u­la,” here). Gorey the doc­u­men­tary promis­es to bring us even clos­er to the cur­mud­geon­ly author and artist. His life makes for a quirky series of vignettes, but ulti­mate­ly Gorey was a “Mag­el­lan of the imag­i­na­tion,” says cul­tur­al crit­ic and biog­ra­ph­er Mark Dery. “He jour­neyed vast­ly between his ears…. So that’s where you have to look for the life. On the psy­chic geog­ra­phy of his uncon­scious,” and in the pages of his over 100 sat­is­fy­ing­ly unset­tling books.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

Alfred Hitch­cock Med­i­tates on Sus­pense & Dark Humor in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

The Out­siders: Lou Reed, Hunter S. Thomp­son, and Frank Zap­pa Reveal Them­selves in Cap­ti­vat­ing­ly Ani­mat­ed Inter­views

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

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The “Most Secretive Library in the World”: The Future Library Will Collect 100 Original Manuscripts by Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell & More, to Be Read for the First Time in 2114

in Books, Libraries, Literature | November 5th, 2018

Should intel­li­gent life of some form or anoth­er still inhab­it the plan­et in the year 6939, such beings might come upon an “800-pound tube of an alloy of cop­per and chromi­um called Cupaloy” that was buried 50 feet beneath what was once Queens. The first time cap­sule, low­ered under the West­ing­house exhib­it at the 1939 New York World’s Fair con­tains “35 items one might find in any run-of-the-mill Smith fam­i­ly house­hold,” as Jin­woo Chong writes at Untapped Cities, “includ­ing copies of Life mag­a­zine, a Sears and Roe­buck cat­a­log, cig­a­rettes and seeds of wheat, corn, alfal­fa and soy.”

The Future Library, a time cap­sule-like project present­ly in the works, takes a very dif­fer­ent approach to the con­cept. “A for­est is grow­ing in Nor­way,” explains an intro­duc­to­ry video on cre­ator Katie Paterson’s web­site. “In 100 years it will become an anthol­o­gy of books.” The books that will be print­ed from 1,000 trees plant­ed in Nord­mar­ka, north of Oslo, will not, how­ev­er, trans­mit min­ing and nav­i­ga­tion­al instruc­tions, but a full range of human emo­tion and per­son­al expe­ri­ence. Or so we might assume. Unlike the 1939 time cap­sule, we’ll nev­er know what’s inside them.

Scot­tish artist Pater­son has planned a library of 100 cre­ative works of fic­tion, non-fic­tion, and poetry—one man­u­script sub­mit­ted every year until 2114, when she intends them all to be print­ed in 3,000 copies each and read for the first time. Almost none of us will be there to wit­ness the event, yet “the timescale is… not vast in cos­mic terms,” she says. “It is beyond our cur­rent lifes­pans, but close enough to come face to face with it, to com­pre­hend and rel­a­tivize,” unlike the incom­pre­hen­si­ble future of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine or the far-off world for which West­ing­house designed their cap­sule.

Nonethe­less, tech­no­log­i­cal, and per­haps even evo­lu­tion­ary, change has increased expo­nen­tial­ly in the past sev­er­al decades, as have the pos­si­bil­i­ties for glob­al extinc­tion events. Mar­garet Atwood, the first author to sub­mit an unpub­lished, unread man­u­script to the Future Library in 2014, is char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly less than san­guine about the exis­tence of future read­ers for her man­u­script, enti­tled Scrib­bler Moon. “It’s very opti­mistic to believe that there will still be peo­ple in 100 years,” she says in the short video above, and “that those peo­ple will still be read­ing.” Atwood imag­ines a near-future that may not even rec­og­nize our time.

Which words that we use today will be dif­fer­ent, archa­ic, obso­lete? Which new words will have entered the lan­guage? We don’t know what foot­notes we will need. Will they have com­put­ers? Will they call them some­thing else? What will they think smart­phones are? Will that word still exist?

Writ­ers for the project are cho­sen by the Future Library’s board of trustees. After the can­ny selec­tion of Atwood, they chose the equal­ly on-the-nose David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, who calls the library “the Ark of Lit­er­a­ture.” It is a strange ark, filled with ani­mals few peo­ple liv­ing now will like­ly ever see. “The world’s most secre­tive library,” The Guardian calls it.  In 2016, Ice­landic nov­el­ist and poet Sjón sub­mit­ted his mys­te­ri­ous text. The fourth work came from Turk­ish nov­el­ist Elif Shafak, who named the project “a sec­u­lar act of faith.”

The lat­est writer cho­sen is Man Book­er-win­ning South Kore­an nov­el­ist Han Kang, who described the Future Library as a lit­er­al expres­sion of the writer’s thoughts on their duty to pos­ter­i­ty: “I can­not sur­vive 100 years from now, of course. No one who I love can sur­vive, either. This relent­less fact has made me reflect on the essen­tial part of my life. Why do I write? Who am I talk­ing to, when I write?” Did Jane Austen imag­ine her read­ers of 100 years lat­er? Could she ever have imag­ined us?

Not only is the Future Library an act of lit­er­ary faith, but it is an eco­log­i­cal one. “The next 96 years do not look promis­ing for the seedlings,” writes Merve Emre at The New York Times, “which are more vul­ner­a­ble than their ances­tors to all man­ner of man-made dis­as­ters.” The project sym­bol­i­cal­ly binds togeth­er the fates of the book and the trees, mak­ing “the phys­i­cal­i­ty of cul­ture pal­pa­ble by insist­ing that we con­front the long, labo­ri­ous process of pre­serv­ing lan­guage.”

In 2020, the col­lec­tion of man­u­scripts will be moved to a “Silent Room” in Oslo, a “womb-shaped cham­ber fac­ing the for­est, lined with wood from its trees.” Vis­i­tors can come and ven­er­ate these secre­tive future relics in their rib­bon-wrapped gray box­es. But their contents—should the ambi­tious endeav­or go as planned—will remain as elu­sive as the shape of our col­lec­tive future 100 years from now.

via NYTimes

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Books Could Be Used to Rebuild Civ­i­liza­tion?: Lists by Bri­an Eno, Stew­art Brand, Kevin Kel­ly & Oth­er For­ward-Think­ing Minds

Bertrand Russell’s Advice to Peo­ple Liv­ing 1,000 Years in the Future: “Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish”

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

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

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Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” Gets Released on Instagram as a Digital “Insta Novel”: It’s Free from The New York Public Library

in e-books, Libraries, Literature | October 31st, 2018

Back in August, we high­light­ed a new ini­tia­tive by the New York Pub­lic Library. An insti­tu­tion that’s hip with our times, the NYPL released on Insta­gram a dig­i­tal ver­sion of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land. Now, in the Hal­loween spir­it, comes a dig­i­tal adap­ta­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s clas­sic tale, “The Raven.” They write:

“The Raven” includes a unique series of ani­ma­tions pro­duced by Psy­op and Stu­dio AKA that takes read­ers on an omi­nous pro­ces­sion through a stark psy­cho­log­i­cal land­scape where the dif­fer­ing per­spec­tives of both the Raven and Poe’s pro­tag­o­nist are depict­ed. The view­points steadi­ly inter­cut and con­verge as the ani­ma­tion builds to its dis­qui­et­ing cli­max, as the door creaks open reveal­ing “dark­ness there and noth­ing more.”

Read “The Raven” on Insta­gram here. And keep an eye out for NYPL’s upcom­ing adap­ta­tion of “The Meta­mor­pho­sis” by Franz Kaf­ka. It’s due out by the end of the year.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

900 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Hear Clas­sic Read­ings of Poe’s “The Raven” by Vin­cent Price, James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Walken, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee & More

Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven: Watch an Award-Win­ning Short Film That Mod­ern­izes Poe’s Clas­sic Tale

The Raven: a Pop-up Book Brings Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Super­nat­ur­al Poem to 3D Paper Life

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

A Read­ing of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in 100 Celebri­ty Voic­es

The Grate­ful Dead Pays Trib­ute to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in a 1982 Con­cert: Hear “Raven Space”

 

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RIP Todd Bol, Founder of the Little Free Library Movement: He Leaves Behind 75,000 Small Libraries That Promote Reading Worldwide

in Books, K-12, Libraries, Life, Literature | October 29th, 2018

“The Lit­tle Free Library: Bil­lions and bil­lions read.”

In the 2013 Ted‑X talk above, Todd Bol, founder of the Lit­tle Free Library move­ment, expressed the desire that one day, he might be able to boast that his labor of love had sur­passed McDon­alds with regard to the num­ber of cus­tomers’ served.

It’s clos­ing in…

Bol, who passed away ear­li­er this month, was inspired by Andrew Carnegie’s mis­sion of repay­ing his own good for­tune by estab­lish­ing 2,509 free pub­lic libraries.

The Lit­tle Free Libraries are vast­ly more numer­ous if less impos­ing than Carnegie’s state­ly edi­fices.

Some, like the pro­to­type Bol craft­ed with lum­ber sal­vaged from a garage door in his late mother’s hon­or, resem­ble doll hous­es.

One in Detroit is a dead ringer for Doc­tor Who’s TARDIS.

There’s a bright yel­low one embla­zoned with char­ac­ters from The Simp­sons, auto­graphed by series cre­ator Matt Groen­ing.

Oth­ers are housed in repur­posed suit­cas­es, stor­age cab­i­nets, or news­pa­per hon­or box­es.

While the non-prof­it Lit­tle Free Library store sells sev­er­al stur­dy, weath­er­proof mod­els and its web­site hosts a healthy col­lec­tion of blue­prints and tips for DIY­ers, Bol was nev­er doc­tri­naire about the aes­thet­ics, pre­fer­ring to leave that up to each vol­un­teer stew­ard.

He seemed proud­est of the libraries’ com­mu­ni­ty build­ing effect (though he was also pret­ty chuffed when Read­er’s Digest ranked the project above Bruce Spring­steen in its 2013 fea­ture ”50 Sur­pris­ing Rea­sons We Love Amer­i­ca.” )

While not entire­ly devoid of naysay­ers, the good­will sur­round­ing the Lit­tle Free Library move­ment can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed.

A stew­ard who post­ed news of his dog’s death on the side of his library received sym­pa­thy cards from neigh­bors both known and unknown to him.

A stew­ard who spe­cial­izes in giv­ing away cook­books, and invites patrons to snip herbs from an adja­cent gar­den, fre­quent­ly wakes to find home­made quiche and oth­er good­ies on the doorstep.

And when an arson­ist torched a Lit­tle Free Library in Indi­anapo­lis, the com­mu­ni­ty ral­lied, vow­ing to get enough dona­tions to replace it with 100 more.

To date, stew­ards have reg­is­tered over 75,000, in 85 coun­tries, in ser­vice of Bol’s “Take a book, Leave a book” phi­los­o­phy.

Find a Lit­tle Free Library near you, learn how to become a stew­ard, or make a dona­tion on the project’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets Patrons Check Out Ties, Brief­cas­es & Hand­bags for Job Inter­views

The Rise and Fall of the Great Library of Alexan­dria: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Down­load 150 Free Col­or­ing Books from Great Libraries, Muse­ums & Cul­tur­al Insti­tu­tions: The British Library, Smith­son­ian, Carnegie Hall & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 12 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why Read Waiting For Godot?: An Animated Case for Samuel Beckett’s Classic Absurdist Play

in Literature, TED Talks, Theatre | October 22nd, 2018

Iseult Gille­spie’s lat­est lit­er­a­ture themed TED-Ed les­son—Why should you read Wait­ing For Godot?—pos­es a ques­tion that’s not too dif­fi­cult to answer these days.

The mean­ing of this sur­pris­ing­ly stur­dy Absur­dist play is famous­ly open for debate.

Author Samuel Beck­ett told Roger Blin, who direct­ed and act­ed in its first pro­duc­tion at the Théâtre de Baby­lon in 1953, that all he knew for cer­tain was that the two main char­ac­ters, Vladimir and Estragon, wore bowler hats.

(Anoth­er thing he felt sure of was that they were male, and should only be brought to life by those in pos­ses­sion of a prostate gland, a spec­i­fi­ca­tion that ran­kles female the­ater artists eager to take a crack at char­ac­ters who now seem as uni­ver­sal as any in Shake­speare. The Beck­ett estate’s vig­or­ous enforce­ment of the late playwright’s wish­es is itself the sub­ject of a play, The Under­pants Godot by Dun­can Pflaster.)

A “tragi­com­e­dy in two acts,” accord­ing to Beck­ett, Wait­ing for Godot emerged dur­ing a vibrant moment for exper­i­men­tal the­ater, as play­wrights turned their backs on con­ven­tion to address the dev­as­ta­tion of WWII.

Com­e­dy got dark­er. Bore­dom, reli­gious dread, and exis­ten­tial despair were major themes.

Per­haps we are on the brink of such a peri­od our­selves?

Crit­ics, schol­ars, and direc­tors have found Godot a mean­ing­ful lens through which to con­sid­er the Cold War, the French resis­tance, England’s col­o­niza­tion of Ire­land, and var­i­ous forms of apoc­a­lyp­tic near-future.

Per­haps THAT is why we should read (and/or watch) Wait­ing for Godot.

Vladimir:

Was I sleep­ing, while the oth­ers suf­fered? Am I sleep­ing now? Tomor­row, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I wait­ed for Godot? That Poz­zo passed, with his car­ri­er, and that he spoke to us? Prob­a­bly. But in all that what truth will there be? (Estragon, hav­ing strug­gled with his boots in vain, is doz­ing off again. Vladimir looks at him.) He’ll know noth­ing. He’ll tell me about the blows he received and I’ll give him a car­rot. (Pause.) Astride of a grave and a dif­fi­cult birth. Down in the hole, lin­ger­ing­ly, the grave dig­ger puts on the for­ceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. (He lis­tens.) But habit is a great dead­en­er. (He looks again at Estragon.) At me too some­one is look­ing, of me too some­one is say­ing, He is sleep­ing, he knows noth­ing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) I can’t go on! (Pause.) What have I said?

Gillespie’s les­son, ani­mat­ed by Tomás Pichar­do-Espail­lat, above, includes a sup­ple­men­tal trove of resources and a quiz that edu­ca­tors can cus­tomize online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Hear Wait­ing for Godot, the Acclaimed 1956 Pro­duc­tion Star­ring The Wiz­ard of Oz’s Bert Lahr

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Samuel Beck­ett, Absur­dist Play­wright, Nov­el­ist & Poet

“Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Bet­ter”: How Samuel Beck­ett Cre­at­ed the Unlike­ly Mantra That Inspires Entre­pre­neurs Today

The Books Samuel Beck­ett Read and Real­ly Liked (1941–1956)

Watch the Open­ing Cred­its of an Imag­i­nary 70s Cop Show Star­ring Samuel Beck­ett

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot pre­miered in New York City in 2017. Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Behold Kurt Vonnegut’s Drawings: Writing is Hard. Art is Pure Pleasure.

in Art, Creativity, Literature | October 19th, 2018

I see hints of blue­prints, tile work, lead­ed-glass win­dows, William Blake, Paul Klee, Saul Stein­berg, Al Hirschfeld, Edward Gorey, my mother’s wasp waist, cats and dogs. I see my father, at age four, forty, and eighty-four, doo­dling his heart out.

—Nanette Von­negut

Car­toon­ist, edu­ca­tor, and neu­rol­o­gy buff Lyn­da Bar­ry believes that doo­dling is good for the cre­ative brain.

In sup­port of that the­o­ry, we sub­mit author Kurt Von­negut, a very con­vinc­ing case.

His daugh­ter, Nanette, notes that he was drawn by the human face—his own and those of oth­ers.

Por­traits include one of his best-known fic­tion­al char­ac­ters, the unsuc­cess­ful sci­ence fic­tion author Kil­go­re Trout. It’s a rev­e­la­tion, espe­cial­ly to those of us who imag­ined Trout as some­thing  clos­er to vet­er­an char­ac­ter actor Sey­mour Cas­sel.

In addi­tion to his humor­ous doo­dles, Von­negut was known to chis­el out a sculp­ture or two on the kitchen counter.

As a Cape Cod year-rounder, he paint­ed seascapes.

He had a one-man show of his felt tip draw­ings in Green­wich Vil­lage in 1980 (“not because my pic­tures were any good but because peo­ple had heard of me”).

But the doo­dles are what cap­tured the pub­lic’s imag­i­na­tion, from the illus­tra­tions of Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons to his numer­ous self por­traits.

The son and grand­son of archi­tects, Von­negut pre­ferred to think of him­self less as an artist than as a “pic­ture design­er.” Work­ing on a nov­el was a “night­mare,” but draw­ing was pure plea­sure.

Per­fec­tion was not the goal. Von­negut real­ized a sym­pa­thet­ic com­mu­ni­ty would spring up around an artist strug­gling with­in his lim­i­ta­tions, and act­ed accord­ing­ly.

To that end, he rec­om­mend­ed that peo­ple prac­tice art “no mat­ter how bad­ly because it’s known to make a soul grow.”

 

See a book of 145 Von­negut draw­ings curat­ed by his daugh­ter, Nanette Von­negut here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Maps Out the Uni­ver­sal Shapes of Our Favorite Sto­ries

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A 26-Hour Playlist Featuring Music from Haruki Murakami’s Latest Novel, Killing Commendatore

in Literature, Music | October 16th, 2018

We know well the role music plays in the work of pro­lif­ic Japan­ese nov­el­ist Haru­ki Muraka­mi. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his pas­sion for jazz, his first love. He began as a jazz club own­er in Tokyo, and he has writ­ten two col­lec­tions of essays titled Por­trait in Jazz and Por­trait in Jazz 2. But Muraka­mi is no less a fan of clas­si­cal music and rock and roll—all three forms inter­twine in his nov­els and sto­ries, pro­vid­ing recur­ring motifs, sound­tracks, and back­drops. Music is more than the­mat­ic; it defines his lit­er­ary style, as he told lis­ten­ers on “Muraka­mi Radio,” his stint as a DJ on Tokyo FM.

“Rather than learn­ing sto­ry­telling tech­nique from some­one,” the nov­el­ist explained, “I’ve tak­en a musi­cal approach, while being very con­scious about rhythms, har­mo­ny and impro­vi­sa­tion.” Per­haps this approach explains the won­der­ful­ly evoca­tive qual­i­ty of his prose.

Read­ing his books, “you feel sad with­out know­ing why,” writes Charles Finch at The Inde­pen­dent, in a review of Murakami’s lat­est, Killing Com­menda­tore, “and yet, with­in that sad­ness glows a small ember of hap­pi­ness, because to feel sad is at least to feel hon­est­ly.” We could say some­thing sim­i­lar about the feel­ings evoked by an aria, a blues, or a Dylan song—music helps us access emo­tions for which we don’t have ready words.

Muraka­mi trans­lates that “inef­fa­ble yearn­ing” into writ­ing. “The obscure­ly lone­ly domes­tic images that run through his novels—rain, swim­ming, pas­ta, jazz, a par­tic­u­lar sort of warm, imper­son­al sex—root that yearn­ing in the truth of every­day life.” His newest nov­el brings in a third art, paint­ing; its pro­tag­o­nist, seek­ing to rein­vent his life and work, comes to dis­cov­er an impor­tant mes­sage through a series of mag­i­cal events. It’s famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry for Muraka­mi, but don’t ask him to explain any of it. As he told Sarah Lyall at The New York Times, “I can­not explain any­thing at all… you just have to accept the form. A book is a metaphor.”

Bet­ter to get him talk­ing about music, which he is hap­py to do, mov­ing smooth­ly between styles with the same imag­i­na­tive leaps he makes on the page. Above, some fine soul has put togeth­er a playlist (listen to it on Spo­ti­fy here) for Killing Com­menda­tore and it is clas­sic Muraka­mi, a col­lec­tion of music from Sheryl Crow, Puc­ci­ni, the Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet, Mozart, Thelo­nious Monk, Ver­di, Dylan, The Doors, Beethoven, Bruce Spring­steen, Rober­ta Flack, The Bea­t­les, The Beach Boys, and more. How do all of these artists fit togeth­er? Like the strange hap­pen­ings in Murakami’s world, you have to stop try­ing to make sense of things and just go with it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Became a DJ on a Japan­ese Radio Sta­tion for One Night: Hear the Music He Played for Delight­ed Lis­ten­ers

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

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

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Reads in Eng­lish from The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle in a Rare Pub­lic Read­ing (1998)

An Intro­duc­tion to the World of Haru­ki Muraka­mi Through Doc­u­men­taries, Sto­ries, Ani­ma­tion, Music Playlists & More

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

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