The Late, Great Alan Rickman Reads Shakespeare, Proust & Thomas Hardy

in Literature | January 15th, 2016

Just this week we lost Alan Rick­man, one of the most beloved British actors of his gen­er­a­tion. And like all the best beloved British actors of any gen­er­a­tion, he could, of course, do Shake­speare the way the rest of us can tie our shoes — and not just the lines from the plays, but the son­nets. In the clip above, you can hear Rick­man give a read­ing of the satir­i­cal Son­net 130, which sends up the wor­ship­ful excess­es of con­tem­po­rary court­ly son­nets with lines like “My mis­tress’ eyes are noth­ing like the sun” and “I have seen ros­es damask’d, red and white, but no such ros­es see I in her cheeks.”

To prop­er­ly deliv­er this mate­r­i­al requires a cer­tain sense of irony, and we could rely on Rick­man to bring his own for­mi­da­ble yet sub­tle iron­ic capac­i­ty to the screen.

We always enjoyed see­ing him pop up in a movie — no mat­ter how impres­sive or mediocre the movie in ques­tion — because, I would argue, of the dis­tinc­tive sense of intel­li­gence with which he imbued all his char­ac­ters, from the ghost boyfriend in Tru­ly, Mad­ly, Deeply to the Sher­iff of Not­ting­ham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves to Har­ry Pot­ter’s Severus Snape to the bad guy in Die Hard. And nat­u­ral­ly, he does­n’t leave it at home when assum­ing the role of the nar­ra­tor of Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native, a sam­ple of which you can hear above.

One must strike an even more com­pli­cat­ed bal­ance of emo­tions to do jus­tice to the prose of Mar­cel Proust, a task to which the actor proves him­self equal in his recita­tion just above.  “I think that life would sud­den­ly seem won­der­ful to us if we were threat­ened to die,” he says, using his inim­itable voice for words that now sound more mean­ing­ful than ever:

Just think of how many projects, trav­els, love affairs, stud­ies, it – our life – hides from us, made invis­i­ble by our lazi­ness which, cer­tain of a future, delays them inces­sant­ly.

But let all this threat­en to become impos­si­ble for ever, how beau­ti­ful it would become again! Ah! If only the cat­a­clysm doesn’t hap­pen this time, we won’t miss vis­it­ing the new gal­leries of the Lou­vre, throw­ing our­selves at the feet of Miss X, mak­ing a trip to India.

The cat­a­clysm doesn’t hap­pen, we don’t do any of it, because we find our­selves back in the heart of nor­mal life, where neg­li­gence dead­ens desire. And yet we shouldn’t have need­ed the cat­a­clysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.

Mr. Rick­man, you, too, will be missed…

Note: Do you want to hear Alan Rick­man read Hardy’s Return of the Native in its entire­ty for free? Just head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al and you can down­load that, and anoth­er book of your choice, at no cost. Find more details here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Rick­man Does Epic Vio­lence to a Cup of Tea in Super Slow Motion

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

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Lis­ten­ing to Proust’s Remem­brance of Things Past, (Maybe) the Longest Audio Book Ever Made

Free eBooks: Read All of Proust’s Remem­brance of Things Past

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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

in Books, Literature | January 12th, 2016

Some of you may won­der what inspires such devo­tion among the fans of Haru­ki Muraka­mi, the world’s most inter­na­tion­al­ly pop­u­lar nov­el­ist. The rest of you — well, you’ll prob­a­bly already know that today is the man’s birth­day. Whichev­er group you fall into, you might like to use the day as an excuse to either deep­en your Muraka­mi fan­dom, or to final­ly have a look across his sin­gu­lar lit­er­ary land­scape, made up of books like A Wild Sheep Chase, Nor­we­gian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, and 1Q84, with its prose at once style­less and ultra-dis­tinc­tive, its scope of ref­er­ence Japan­ese and glob­al, and the mate­r­i­al of its sto­ries thor­ough­ly strange as well as mun­dane.

Haru­ki Muraka­mi: In Search of this Elu­sive Writer, the BBC doc­u­men­tary at the top of the post, pro­vides a fine intro­duc­tion to Muraka­mi, his work, and the fans who love it. For a short­er and more impres­sion­is­tic glance into the author’s biog­ra­phy (in which the young Muraka­mi famous­ly trans­formed from a jazz bar own­er to a nov­el­ist by watch­ing a home run at a base­ball game), see psy­chol­o­gist, writer, and film­mak­er Ilana Simons’ video “About Haru­ki Muraka­mi” just above. But soon, you’ll want to have the expe­ri­ence with­out which nobody can real­ly grasp the Muraka­mi appeal: read­ing his work. The New York­er offers six of his sto­ries in their archive, read­able even by non-sub­scribers (as long as they haven’t hit their six-arti­cle-per-month pay­wall yet).

If you haven’t read any Muraka­mi before, those sto­ries may well start to give you a sense of why his fans (a group that includes no small num­ber of oth­er artists, like Pat­ti Smith) go so deep into his work. What do I mean by going deep? Not just read­ing his books over and over again — though they, or rather we, do indeed do that — but gath­er­ing togeth­er in a par­tic­u­lar Tokyo jazz cafe (we’ve even got a Muraka­mi-themed book cafe here in Seoul, where I live), putting togeth­er playlists of not just the jazz but all the oth­er music ref­er­enced in his books, writ­ing in to his advice col­umn by the thou­sands, and even doc­u­ment­ing the loca­tions in Tokyo impor­tant in both his fic­tion and his real life.

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Some­how, Murakami’s high­ly per­son­al work has won not just the some­times obses­sive love of its read­ers, but world­wide com­mer­cial suc­cess as well: the pub­li­ca­tion of each new nov­el comes as a near­ly hol­i­day-like event, brands like J. Press have com­mis­sioned sto­ries from him, and over in Poland they stock his books in vend­ing machines. It gets even those who don’t con­nect with his writ­ing deeply curi­ous: how does he do it? The mod­est Muraka­mi, while not espe­cial­ly giv­en to pub­lic appear­ances (though he did once give an Eng­lish-lan­guage read­ing at the 92nd Street Y), has in recent years shown more will­ing­ness to dis­cuss his process. What does it take to be like Muraka­mi? He con­sid­ers three qual­i­ties essen­tial to the work of the nov­el­ist (or to run­ning, which he took up not long after turn­ing nov­el­ist): tal­ent, focus, and endurance.

As far as the writ­ing itself, he puts it sim­ply: “I sit at my desk and focus total­ly on what I’m writ­ing. I don’t see any­thing else, I don’t think about any­thing else.” Many of his enthu­si­asts would say the same about their expe­ri­ence of read­ing his books. If all this has piqued your inter­est, don’t hes­i­tate to plunge down the well of Murakami’s real­i­ty, where, on the vin­tage jazz-sound­tracked streets, at the train sta­tions, and down the secret pas­sage­ways of Tokyo by night, you’ll meet talk­ing cats, pre­co­cious teenagers, and mys­te­ri­ous women (and their ears), dis­cov­er par­al­lel worlds — and ulti­mate­ly become quite good at Muraka­mi bin­go.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 6 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

Dis­cov­er Haru­ki Murakami’s Adver­to­r­i­al Short Sto­ries: Rare Short-Short Fic­tion from the 1980s

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Pub­lish­es His Answers to 3,700 Ques­tions from Fans in a New Japan­ese eBook

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

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

Read Online Haru­ki Murakami’s New Essay on How a Base­ball Game Launched His Writ­ing Career

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

A Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Japan’s Jazz and Base­ball-Lov­ing Post­mod­ern Nov­el­ist

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

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

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

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Nov­els Sold in Pol­ish Vend­ing Machines

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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William S. Burroughs Reads & Sings His Experimental Prose in a Big, Free 7‑Hour Playlist

in Literature | January 11th, 2016

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Image by Chris­ti­aan Ton­nis, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I don’t have any data, but I think it’s close enough to fact to say that expo­nen­tial­ly more peo­ple have heard of William S. Bur­roughs—have even come to revere Burroughs—than have read Bur­roughs. The phe­nom­e­non is unavoid­able with a fig­ure as huge­ly influ­en­tial through­out the last half of 20th cen­tu­ry coun­ter­cul­ture. His close asso­ci­a­tion with the Beats; his influ­ence on the 60s through Frank Zap­pa, The Bea­t­les, and more; his pop­u­lar­i­ty among punks and 70s art rock­ers and exper­i­men­tal­ists; his close affin­i­ty with 90s “alter­na­tive” bands, Queer writ­ers, and post­mod­ernists; his impor­tance to the drug­gy rave sub­cul­tures of the 90s and oughties…. In almost any cre­ative coun­ter­cul­ture you wish to name from the 50s to today, you will find enshrined the name of Bur­roughs. He was “indeed a man of the 20th Cen­tu­ry,” writes Chal Ravens at The Qui­etus, “he was alive for most of it, after all—and his life and works form the very fab­ric of the coun­ter­cul­ture, seep­ing into lit­er­a­ture, paint­ing, film, the­atre and most of all music like a drop of acid on a sug­ar cube.”

In Bur­roughs’ case, the life and work are insep­a­ra­ble. His “quixot­ic and shock­ing life sto­ry should not be dis­missed when assess­ing his lega­cy,” writes Beard­ed mag­a­zine. That strange life, which did not include writ­ing until he turned 40, “defined him to such a degree that it was many decades before his lit­er­ary achieve­ments were tak­en seri­ous­ly” by the estab­lish­ment. Nonethe­less, in the 50s, “Bur­roughs opened the doors for sex, drugs, alter­na­tive lifestyles and rad­i­cal pol­i­tics to be palat­able con­cerns in main­stream cul­ture.” While such themes became palat­able through the artists Bur­roughs influ­enced, his own writ­ing con­tin­ues to shock and sur­prise.  Bur­roughs may have moved in and through so many of the cul­tures named above, but he was not of them.

He appeared even to the Beats as a men­tor, an “out­law guru,” and he wrote like a man pos­sessed. Bur­roughs, The New York­er remarks, wrote in the “voice of an out­law rev­el­ing in wicked­ness,” a voice that “bragged of occult pow­er….. He always wrote in tones of spooky authority—a com­ic effect, giv­en that most of his char­ac­ters are, in addi­tion to being gaudi­ly depraved, more or less con­spic­u­ous­ly insane.” Bur­roughs in fact described his impulse to write as a kind of insan­i­ty or pos­ses­sion. The most out­ra­geous sto­ry about him—that he shot his wife Joan Vollmer in Mex­i­co in a sup­posed William Tell-like stunt—is true. In the intro­duc­tion to 1985’s Queer, Bur­roughs con­fessed:

I am forced to the appalling con­clu­sion that I would nev­er have become a writer but for Joan’s death, and to a real­iza­tion of the extent to which this event has moti­vat­ed and for­mu­lat­ed my writ­ing. I live with the con­stant threat of pos­ses­sion, and a con­stant need to escape from pos­ses­sion, from con­trol. So the death of Joan brought me in con­tact with the invad­er, the Ugly Spir­it, and maneu­vered me into a life long strug­gle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out.

Per­son­al obses­sions with death, addic­tion, legal and social con­trol, the occult, and his trou­bled sex­u­al­i­ty drove all of Bur­roughs’ work—and drove the themes of 20th Cen­tu­ry cul­tur­al revolt against con­for­mi­ty and con­ser­vatism. But though he may have been “a man of the 20th Cen­tu­ry,” Bur­roughs’ most imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sors come large­ly from the 19th: in deca­dent poets like Arthur Rim­baud, trou­bled adven­tur­ers like Joseph Con­rad, fear­less satirists like Ambrose Bierce, and gen­uine out­laws like Jack Black (who wrote in the 20s of his crim­i­nal exploits in the 1880s and 90s). It is in part, per­haps, his trans­mis­sion of these voic­es to post­war artists and writ­ers and beyond that grant­ed him such author­i­ty. Bur­roughs’ writ­ing always car­ried with it the voic­es of the dead.

Bur­roughs was obsessed with voices—recorded, cut-up, rearranged; he believed in their pow­er to dis­rupt, influ­ence, and cor­rupt. Fit­ting­ly, he left us acres of tape of his own omi­nous monot­o­ne: read­ing his work, offer­ing com­men­tary on tech­nique, spin­ning bizarre, half-seri­ous con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, and dis­tort­ing lit­er­a­ture beyond all recog­ni­tion through his cut-up tech­nique. Though we all know Bur­roughs’ name, we can now—no mat­ter our lev­el of famil­iar­i­ty with his writing—become equal­ly famil­iar with his voice in the playlist above, fea­tur­ing sev­en hours of Bur­roughs record­ings from five spo­ken word albums avail­able on Spo­ti­fy: The Best of William Bur­roughs, Spare Ass Annie and Oth­er Tales, Dead City Radio, Break Through in Grey Room, and Call Me Bur­roughs. (If you don’t already have it, down­load Spo­ti­fy here to lis­ten to the playlist.)

Though “we should not under­es­ti­mate the direct influ­ence of his writ­ing” on counter- and pop cul­ture, Beard­ed mag­a­zine points out (see this list for exam­ple), we should also not dis­count the spooky influ­ence of Bur­roughs’ haunt­ing record­ed voice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

William S. Bur­roughs Reads Naked Lunch, His Con­tro­ver­sial 1959 Nov­el

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

How David Bowie, Kurt Cobain & Thom Yorke Write Songs With William Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

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

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Splendid Hand-Scroll Illustrations of The Tale of the Genjii, The First Novel Ever Written (Circa 1120)

in Art, Literature | January 9th, 2016

Genji Scroll 1

Ah, The Tale of Gen­ji — a ver­i­ta­ble Mount Ever­est for stu­dents of the Japan­ese lan­guage, and a fix­ture on so many read­ing lists drawn up by fans of world lit­er­a­ture in trans­la­tion as well. This for­mi­da­ble sto­ry of an emper­or’s son turned com­mon­er, writ­ten most­ly or entire­ly by Heian-peri­od noble­woman Murasa­ki Shik­ibu (also known as Lady Murasa­ki) in the ear­ly 11th cen­tu­ry, makes a cred­i­ble claim to the sta­tus of the very first nov­el (or, as more timid boost­ers might claim for it, the first psy­cho­log­i­cal nov­el, or the first “clas­sic” nov­el).

1200px-Genji_emaki_Yadorigi

It has thus had plen­ty of time to get adapt­ed into oth­er forms: trans­la­tions into mod­ern Japan­ese and oth­er cur­rent­ly under­stand­able lan­guages, anno­tat­ed ver­sions by lat­er gen­er­a­tions of writ­ers, live-action movies, and ani­ma­tion and com­ic books — ani­me and man­ga.

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Many of those Gen­jis appeared in the past hun­dred years. Much clos­er to Murasak­i’s own time is the Gen­ji Mono­gatari Ema­ki, com­mon­ly called the Tale of Gen­ji Scroll, cre­at­ed about a cen­tu­ry after the Gen­ji itself, some­time around 1120 to 1140. Here you see pieces of the scrol­l’s sur­viv­ing sec­tions, thought to con­sti­tute only a small por­tion of the orig­i­nal work meant to depict and explain some of the events of the nov­el. Art his­to­ri­ans haven’t pinned down the iden­ti­ty of the artist, but they do know that the style of these images, cre­at­ed with the female-dom­i­nat­ed tsukuri‑e (or “man­u­fac­tured paint­ing” process), which involves lay­er­ing a draw­ing over pig­ment itself paint­ed over a first draw­ing, strong­ly sug­gests a woman artist.

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The Gen­ji Mono­gatari Ema­ki fits into the longer Japan­ese tra­di­tion of pic­ture scrolls, which first com­bined images and text in a ground­break­ing way in the ninth or tenth cen­tu­ry and, one could argue, con­tin­ue to influ­ence Japan­ese art today.

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That goes espe­cial­ly for pop­u­lar Japan­ese art: in Japan, where you can see thou­sands of com­ic book-read­ers of all ages on the trains each and every day, peo­ple take the union of words and images more seri­ous­ly than they do in the West — or at least West­ern com­ic art enthu­si­asts see it that way. So if these evoca­tive images from the Gen­ji Scroll make you want to pick up the nov­el, but you still don’t know if you can han­dle it straight, start with one of the man­ga adap­ta­tions, which, as you can see, have more his­tor­i­cal legit­i­ma­cy than we might have assumed.

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It’s worth not­ing that Oxford has a site where you can down­load a com­plete Eng­lish trans­la­tion of The Tale of the Gen­ji. A new trans­la­tion by Den­nis Wash­burn also came out in the last six months.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Poet­ry of the Cher­ry Blos­soms Comes to Life in a One Minute Time Lapse Video

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

The (F)Art of War: Bawdy Japan­ese Art Scroll Depicts Wrench­ing Changes in 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The New York Public Library Lets You Download 180,000 Images in High Resolution: Historic Photographs, Maps, Letters & More

in Archives, History, Letters, Literature, Photography | January 7th, 2016

NYPL 1

Most of us Open Cul­ture writ­ers and read­ers sure­ly grew up think­ing of the local pub­lic library as an end­less source of fas­ci­nat­ing things. But the New York Pub­lic Library’s col­lec­tions take that to a whole oth­er lev­el, and, so far, they’ve spent the age of the inter­net tak­ing it to a lev­el beyond that, dig­i­tiz­ing ever more of their fas­ci­nat­ing things and mak­ing them freely avail­able for all of our perusal (and even for use in our own work). Just in the past cou­ple of years, we’ve fea­tured their release of 20,000 high-res­o­lu­tion maps, 17,000 restau­rant menus, and lots of the­ater ephemera.

This week, The New York Pub­lic Library (NYPL) announced not only that their dig­i­tal col­lec­tion now con­tains over 180,000 items, but that they’ve made it pos­si­ble, “no per­mis­sion required, no hoops to jump through,” to down­load and use high-res­o­lu­tion images of all of them.

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You’ll find on their site “more promi­nent down­load links and fil­ters high­light­ing restric­tion-free con­tent,” and, if you have techi­er inter­ests, “updates to the Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions API enabling bulk use and analy­sis, as well as data exports and util­i­ties post­ed to NYPL’s GitHub account.” You might also con­sid­er apply­ing for the NYPL’s Remix Res­i­den­cy pro­gram, designed to fos­ter “trans­for­ma­tive and cre­ative uses of dig­i­tal col­lec­tions and data, and the pub­lic domain assets in par­tic­u­lar.”

NYPL 3

And what do those assets include? Endur­ing pieces of Amer­i­can doc­u­men­tary art like the Farm Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion pho­tographs tak­en dur­ing the Great Depres­sion by Dorothea Lange, Walk­er Evans, and Gor­don Parks. Lange’s shot of the Mid­way Dairy Coop­er­a­tive near San­ta Ana, Cal­i­for­nia appears at the top of the post. Arti­facts from the cre­ative process­es of such icons of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture as Hen­ry David Thore­au, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whit­man, whose hand­writ­ten pref­ace to Spec­i­men Days you’ll find sec­ond from the top. The let­ters and oth­er papers of the Found­ing Fathers, includ­ing Thomas Jef­fer­son­’s list of books for a pri­vate library just above. And, of course, all those maps, like the 1868 Plan of New York and Brook­lyn just below.

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These selec­tions make the NYPL’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion seem strong­ly Amer­i­ca-focused, and to an extent it is, but apart from host­ing a rich repos­i­to­ry of the his­to­ry, art, and let­ters of the Unit­ed States, it also con­tains such fas­ci­nat­ing inter­na­tion­al mate­ri­als as medieval Euro­pean illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts; 16th-cen­tu­ry hand­scrolls illus­trat­ing The Tale of Gen­ji, the first nov­el; and 19th-cen­tu­ry cyan­otypes of British algae by botanist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Anna Atkins, the first per­son to pub­lish a book illus­trat­ed with pho­tos. You can start your own brows­ing on the NYPL Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions front page, and if you do, you’ll soon find that some­thing else we knew about the library grow­ing up — what good places they make in which to get lost — holds even truer on the inter­net.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

100,000+ Won­der­ful Pieces of The­ater Ephemera Dig­i­tized by The New York Pub­lic Library

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

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Simpsons Present Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Teachers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Literature

in Animation, Literature | January 7th, 2016

The Simp­sons have mocked or ref­er­enced lit­er­a­ture over its 27 (!!) sea­sons, usu­al­ly through a book Lisa was read­ing, or with guest appear­ances (e.g., Michael Chabon & Jonathan Franzen, Maya Angelou and Amy Tan). And it has ref­er­enced Edgar Allan Poe in both title (“The Tell-Tale Head” from the first sea­son) and in pass­ing (in “Lisa’s Rival” from 1994, the title char­ac­ter builds a dio­ra­ma based on the same Poe tale.)

But on the first ever “Tree­house of Hor­ror” from 1990–the Simp­sons’ recur­ring Hal­loween episode–they adapt­ed Poe’s “The Raven” more faith­ful­ly than any bit of lit found in any oth­er episode. The poem, read by James Earl Jones, remains intact, more or less, but with Dan Castellaneta’s Homer Simp­son pro­vid­ing the unnamed narrator’s voice. Marge makes an appear­ance as the long depart­ed Lenore, with hair so tall it needs an extra can­vas to con­tain it in por­trait. Mag­gie and Lisa are the censer-swing­ing seraphim, and Bart is the annoy­ing raven that dri­ves Homer insane.

Castel­lan­e­ta does a great job deliv­er­ing Poe’s verse with con­vic­tion and humor, while keep­ing the char­ac­ter true to both Homer and Poe. It’s a bal­anc­ing act hard­er than it sounds.

Suf­fice it to say that this for­ay into Poe was good enough for sev­er­al teach­ers guides (includ­ing this one from The New York Times) to sug­gest using the video in class. (We’d love to hear about this if you were a teacher or stu­dent who expe­ri­enced this.) And it’s the first and only time that Poe got co-writ­ing cred­it on a Simp­sons episode.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Watch The Simp­sons’ Hal­loween Par­o­dy of Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

Thomas Pyn­chon Edits His Lines on The Simp­sons: “Homer is my role mod­el and I can’t speak ill of him.”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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74 Ways Characters Die in Shakespeare’s Plays Shown in a Handy Infographic: From Snakebites to Lack of Sleep

in Literature, Theatre | January 1st, 2016

In the grad­u­ate depart­ment where I once taught fresh­men and sopho­mores the rudi­ments of col­lege Eng­lish, it became com­mon prac­tice  to include Shakespeare’s Titus Andron­i­cus on many an Intro to Lit syl­labus, along with a view­ing of Julie Taymor’s flam­boy­ant film adap­ta­tion. The ear­ly work is thought to be Shakespeare’s first tragedy, cob­bled togeth­er from pop­u­lar Roman his­to­ries and Eliz­a­bethan revenge plays. And it is a tru­ly bizarre play, swing­ing wild­ly in tone from clas­si­cal tragedy, to satir­i­cal dark humor, to com­ic farce, and back to tragedy again. Crit­ic Harold Bloom called Titus “an exploita­tive par­o­dy” of the very pop­u­lar revenge tragedies of the time—its mur­ders, maim­ings, rapes, and muti­la­tions pile up, scene upon scene, and leave char­ac­ters and readers/audiences reel­ing in grief and dis­be­lief from the shock­ing body count.

Part of the fun of teach­ing Titus is in watch­ing stu­dents’ jaws drop as they real­ize just how bloody-mind­ed the Bard is. While Taymor’s adap­ta­tion takes many mod­ern lib­er­ties in cos­tum­ing, music, and set design, its hor­ror-show depic­tion of Titus’ unre­lent­ing may­hem is faith­ful to the text. Lat­er, more mature plays rein in the exces­sive black com­e­dy and shock fac­tor, but the bod­ies still stack up. As accus­tomed as we are to think­ing of con­tem­po­rary enter­tain­ments like Game of Thrones as espe­cial­ly gra­tu­itous, the whole of Shakespeare’s cor­pus, writes Alice Vin­cent at The Tele­graph is “more gory” than even HBO’s squirm-wor­thy fan­ta­sy epic, fea­tur­ing a total of 74 deaths in 37 plays to Game of Thrones’ 61 in 50 episodes.

All of those var­i­ous demis­es will now come togeth­er in a com­pendi­um play being staged at The Globe (in Lon­don) called The Com­plete Deaths. It will include every­thing “from ear­ly rapi­er thrusts to the more elab­o­rate viper-breast appli­ca­tion adopt­ed by Cleopa­tra.” The only death direc­tor Tim Crouch has exclud­ed is “that of a fly that meets a sticky end in Titus Andron­i­cus.” In the info­graph­ic above, see all of the caus­es of those deaths, includ­ing Antony and Cleopa­tra’s snakebite and Titus Andron­i­cus’ piece-de-resis­tance, “baked in a pie.”

Part of the rea­son so many of my for­mer under­grad­u­ate stu­dents found Shakespeare’s bru­tal­i­ty shock­ing and unex­pect­ed has to do with the way his work was tamed by lat­er 17th and 18th cen­tu­ry crit­ics, who “didn’t approve of the on-stage gore.” The Tele­graph quotes direc­tor of the Shake­speare Insti­tute Michael Dob­son, who points out that Eliz­a­bethan dra­ma was espe­cial­ly grue­some; “the Eng­lish dra­ma was noto­ri­ous for on-stage deaths,” and all of Shakespeare’s con­tem­po­raries, includ­ing Christo­pher Mar­lowe and Ben Jon­son, wrote vio­lent scenes that can still turn our stom­achs.

Recent pro­duc­tions like a bloody stag­ing of Titus at The Globe in 2014 are restor­ing the gore in Shakespeare’s work, and The Com­plete Deaths will leave audi­ences with lit­tle doubt that Shakespeare’s cul­ture was as per­me­at­ed with rep­re­sen­ta­tions of vio­lence as our own—and it was as much, if not more so, plagued by the real thing.

via The Tele­graph/Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

Shakespeare’s Rest­less World: A Por­trait of the Bard’s Era in 20 Pod­casts

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

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Mark Twain Knocks New Year’s Resolutions: They’re a “Harmless Annual Institution, Of No Particular Use to Anybody”

in Life, Literature | January 1st, 2016

Twain

Now that anoth­er New Year’s Day has come around, we must once again ask our­selves: do we believe in New Year’s res­o­lu­tions, or don’t we? As with most insti­tu­tions, Mark Twain, that most quot­ed of all Amer­i­can humorists, both believed and did­n’t believe in them. Or maybe we could say that his lack of belief tran­scend­ed run-of-the-mill cyn­i­cism to become a kind of devout faith in human fol­ly itself.

Here we have a few words on the sub­ject from the man him­self, first pub­lished in the Jan­u­ary 1, 1863 edi­tion of the Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Enter­prise, the Vir­ginia City, Neva­da news­pa­per where the young Twain worked for a time:

Now is the accept­ed time to make your reg­u­lar annu­al good res­o­lu­tions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usu­al. Yes­ter­day, every­body smoked his last cig­ar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. To-day, we are a pious and exem­plary com­mu­ni­ty. Thir­ty days from now, we shall have cast our ref­or­ma­tion to the winds and gone to cut­ting our ancient short com­ings con­sid­er­ably short­er than ever. We shall also reflect pleas­ant­ly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. How­ev­er, go in, com­mu­ni­ty. New Year’s is a harm­less annu­al insti­tu­tion, of no par­tic­u­lar use to any­body save as a scape­goat for promis­cu­ous drunks, and friend­ly calls, and hum­bug res­o­lu­tions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a loose­ness suit­ed to the great­ness of the occa­sion.

Twain made a career of skew­er­ing the count­less pieties of Amer­i­can life, and the cul­ture’s per­haps overzeal­ous spir­it of self-improve­ment pro­vid­ed him a vast and nev­er ful­ly deflat­able tar­get. His assess­ment feels as true today, and makes us laugh just as much today, as it must have 153 years ago. So keep enjoy­ing the friend­li­ness, fes­tiv­i­ty, and human com­e­dy of the New Year’s hol­i­day as Twain would have. If you do make a res­o­lu­tion, keep it to a man­age­able lev­el of moral­i­ty. And don’t for­get to revis­it the oth­er per­spec­tives on New Year’s we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured from such oth­er cul­tur­al lumi­nar­ies as Neil Gaiman, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sci­ence of Willpow­er: 15 Tips for Mak­ing Your New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Last from Dr. Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal

A New Year’s Wish from Neil Gaiman

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan

Woody Guthrie’s Doo­dle-Filled List of 33 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions From 1943 in Life, Music| Jan­u­ary 1st, 2014

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Go-Get­ter List of New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions (1955)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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