Hear Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage (1967)

in Audio Books, Media | October 28th, 2016

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Briefly not­ed: In 1967, Mar­shall McLuhan teamed up with graph­ic design­er Quentin Fiore to write The Medi­um is the Mas­sage, a short 160-page book that offers a con­densed, effec­tive pre­sen­ta­tion of his ideas on the nature of media, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy. The book was soon accom­pa­nied by an album bear­ing the same name, which Wikipedia describes like this:

An audio record­ing based on the book was made by Colum­bia Records in the late 1960s, pro­duced by John Simon but oth­er­wise keep­ing the same cred­its as the book. The record­ing con­sists of a pas­tiche of state­ments made by McLuhan inter­rupt­ed by oth­er speak­ers, includ­ing peo­ple speak­ing in var­i­ous phona­tions and falset­tos, dis­cor­dant sounds and 1960s inci­den­tal music in what could be con­sid­ered a delib­er­ate attempt to trans­late the dis­con­nect­ed images seen on TV into an audio for­mat, result­ing in the pre­ven­tion of a con­nect­ed stream of con­scious thought. Var­i­ous audio record­ing tech­niques and state­ments are used to illus­trate the rela­tion­ship between spo­ken, lit­er­ary speech and the char­ac­ter­is­tics of elec­tron­ic audio media. McLuhan biog­ra­ph­er Philip Marc­hand called the record­ing “the 1967 equiv­a­lent of a McLuhan video.

One review­er on Ama­zon describes it as “more of a per­for­mance piece than a trea­tise.” And thanks to Spo­ti­fy, you can hear it below, in full. Also find it on YouTube.

The Medi­um is the Mas­sage–yes, it was orig­i­nal­ly spelled that way–will be added to our list: 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­shall McLuhan, W.H. Auden & Buck­min­ster Fuller Debate the Virtues of Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy & Media (1971)

Mar­shall McLuhan on the Stu­pid­est Debate in the His­to­ry of Debat­ing (1976)

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

“Alexander Hamilton” Performed with American Sign Language

in Theatre | October 25th, 2016

Back in 2011, the Los Ange­les Times ran a pro­file on Sarah Tubert, then a 17-year-old stu­dent who lost her hear­ing as a young child. With the help of her fam­i­ly, Sarah per­se­vered, became a star water polo and vol­ley­ball play­er in high school, and earned a full schol­ar­ship to Gal­laudet Uni­ver­si­ty–all with the hope of one day becom­ing an instruc­tor for deaf and hear­ing-impaired stu­dents.

Five years lat­er, Sarah is mak­ing good on her promise. Above, Sarah per­forms “Alexan­der Hamil­ton,” the open­ing num­ber of the Broad­way show, in Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage (ASL). On Twit­ter, the Hamil­ton star Lin-Manuel Miran­da called it “beau­ti­ful.” And it’s hard not to agree.

You can find ASL lessons in our col­lec­tion, Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

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, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

via Kot­tke

Sean Penn Narrates Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff: Download It for Free

in Audio Books | October 23rd, 2016

A very quick heads up: Audi­ble has just released a new audio­book, Bob Hon­ey Who Just Do Stuff, writ­ten by an obscure fig­ure who goes by the name “Pap­py Pari­ah.” Who is Pap­py Pari­ah? Some spec­u­late it’s Sean Penn. But no one can say for sure. The only thing we can say is that Sean Penn nar­rates the audio­book. And also that you can down­load the audio­book for free. Click here or here, and go through the $0 pur­chase process.

As a quick aside, I should men­tion that if you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free (addi­tion­al) audio books of your choice. They’re pro­fes­sion­al­ly read, and you can keep them even if you don’t ulti­mate­ly become an Audi­ble sub­scriber. That said, we do hearti­ly rec­om­mend their ser­vice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Down­load Two Free Audio Books From Audible.com

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Aleister Crowley Reads Occult Poetry in the Only Known Recordings of His Voice (1920)

in Literature, Poetry, Religion | October 18th, 2016

Image by Jules Jacot Guil­lar­mod, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Last week, we brought you a rather strange sto­ry about the rival­ry between poet William But­ler Yeats and magi­cian Aleis­ter Crow­ley. Theirs was a feud over the prac­tices of occult soci­ety the Her­met­ic Order of the Gold­en Dawn; but it was also—at least for Crowley—over poet­ry. Crow­ley envied Yeats’ lit­er­ary skill; Yeats could not say the same about Crow­ley. But while he did not nec­es­sar­i­ly respect his ene­my, Yeats feared him, as did near­ly every­one else. As Yeats’ biog­ra­ph­er wrote a few months after Crowley’s death in 1947, “in the old days men and women lived in ter­ror of his evil eye.”

The press called Crow­ley “the wickedest man in the world,” a rep­u­ta­tion he did more than enough to cul­ti­vate, iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as the Anti-Christ and dub­bing him­self “The Beast 666.” (Crow­ley may have inspired the “rough beast” of Yeats’ “The Sec­ond Com­ing.”) Crow­ley did not achieve the lit­er­ary recog­ni­tion he desired, but he con­tin­ued to write pro­lif­i­cal­ly after Yeats and oth­ers eject­ed him from the Gold­en Dawn in 1900: poet­ry, fic­tion, crit­i­cism, and man­u­als of sex mag­ic, rit­u­al, and symbolism—some penned dur­ing famed moun­taineer­ing expe­di­tions.

Through­out his life Crow­ley was var­i­ous­ly a moun­taineer, chess prodi­gy, schol­ar, painter, yogi, and founder of a reli­gion he called Thele­ma. He was also a hero­in addict and by many accounts an extreme­ly abu­sive cult leader. How­ev­er one comes down on Crowley’s lega­cy, his influ­ence on the occult and the coun­ter­cul­ture is unde­ni­able. To delve into the his­to­ry of either is to meet him, the mys­te­ri­ous, bizarre, bald fig­ure whose the­o­ries inspired every­one from L. Ron Hub­bard and Anton LaVey to Jim­my Page and Ozzy Osbourne.

With­out Crow­ley, it’s hard to imag­ine much of the dark weird­ness of the six­ties and its result­ing flood of cults and eso­teric art. For some occult his­to­ri­ans, the Age of Aquar­ius real­ly began six­ty years ear­li­er, in what Crow­ley called the “Aeon of Horus.” For many oth­ers, Crowley’s influ­ence is inex­plic­a­ble, his books inco­her­ent, and his pres­ence in polite con­ver­sa­tion offen­sive. These are under­stand­able atti­tudes. If you’re a Crow­ley enthu­si­ast, how­ev­er, or sim­ply curi­ous about this leg­endary occultist, you have here a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear the man him­self intone his poems and incan­ta­tions.

“Although this record­ing has pre­vi­ous­ly been avail­able as a ‘Boot­leg,’” say the CD lin­er notes from which this audio comes, “this is its first offi­cial release and to the label’s knowl­edge, con­tains the only known record­ing of Crow­ley.” Record­ed cir­ca 1920 on a wax cylin­der, the audio has been dig­i­tal­ly enhanced, although “sur­face noise may be evi­dent.” Indeed, it is dif­fi­cult to make out what Crow­ley is say­ing much of the time, but that’s not only to do with the record­ing qual­i­ty, but with his cryp­tic lan­guage. The first five tracks com­prise “The Call of the First Aethyr” and “The Call of the Sec­ond Aethyr.” Oth­er titles include “La Gitana,” “The Pen­ta­gram,” “The Poet,” “Hymn to the Amer­i­can Peo­ple,” and “Excerpts from the Gnos­tic Mass.” (Find a com­plete track­list at All­mu­sic.)

It’s unclear under what cir­cum­stances Crow­ley made these record­ings or why, but like many of his books, they com­bine occult litur­gy, mythol­o­gy, and his own lit­er­ary utter­ances. Love him, hate him, or remain indif­fer­ent, there’s no get­ting around it: Aleis­ter Crow­ley had a tremen­dous influ­ence on the 20th cen­tu­ry and beyond, even if only a very few peo­ple have made seri­ous attempts to under­stand what he was up to with all that sex mag­ic, blood sac­ri­fice, and wicked­ly bawdy verse.

Aleis­ter Crow­ley The Great Beast Speaks 1920 — 1936 is avail­able on Spo­ti­fy. If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, get it here. It will be added to our list, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aleis­ter Crow­ley & William But­ler Yeats Get into an Occult Bat­tle, Pit­ting White Mag­ic Against Black Mag­ic (1900)

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

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

How to Fill the Blank Page: Advice from Jonathan Franzen, Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell & 5 Other Authors

in Literature, Writing | October 13th, 2016

A cou­ple months ago we fea­tured a video of eight writ­ers on how to face the blank page pro­duced by Den­mark’s Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. (And if you should ever find your­self in Copen­hagen with time for a bit of a train ride, I do rec­om­mend a vis­it to the muse­um itself.) Now, Louisiana has released eight sep­a­rate videos, each offer­ing one notable writer’s view­point on that scari­est of all con­fronta­tions in their pro­fes­sion. But as The Cor­rec­tions and Free­dom author Jonathan Franzen puts it, “the blank page in the mind has to be filled before you have the courage to face the actu­al blank page.”

“If you say, ‘I want to write,’ and turn on the com­put­er and look at the blank page, it’s over. It’s not going to hap­pen,” says the man who some­how man­ages to turn out his weighty, Amer­i­can-zeit­geist-cap­tur­ing nov­els faster as the years go by. “It’s when you have had a thought in the show­er before, you’ve wok­en in the mid­dle of the night, and sud­den­ly you have a sen­tence or two — you have some­thing. You’ve already writ­ten it in your mind.” In con­trast, the even more expe­ri­enced and pro­lif­ic Mar­garet Atwood, author of The Hand­maid­’s Tale and Oryx and Crake, sees “some­thing com­pelling about the blank page that beck­ons you in to write some­thing on it. It must be filled,” whether or not you’ve filled your mind already.

She likens this phe­nom­e­non to “an invi­ta­tion, but it’s an invi­ta­tion to some­thing like going swim­ming in a very cold lake. So you approach it in a sim­i­lar fash­ion: you put your toe in, you change your mind, ‘Maybe I won’t do that,’ you put your foot in, ‘Real­ly, do I want to do that?’ You come back, and final­ly you just run scream­ing and you plunge in. Unless you plunge in, you’re nev­er going to begin.” The immense­ly imag­i­na­tive number9dream and Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell uses a dif­fer­ent metaphor: “A blank page is a door. It con­tains infin­i­ty, like a night sky with a super­moon real­ly close to the Earth, with all the stars and the galax­ies you can see — it’s very, very clear, maybe at a high alti­tude. You know how that just makes your heart beat faster?”

If that image does­n’t get you writ­ing, Mitchell has anoth­er: “A slight­ly over­weight, bald boss say­ing, “It’s time to work. Get to work, come on. You’re sup­posed to be a writer, aren’t you? You can’t just sit around on your fat arse wait­ing to be inspired, wait­ing for cre­ativ­i­ty. You’re stuck? Fine. Why are you stuck? Why isn’t this work­ing? Why can’t you push on with this scene? What are you try­ing to hold on to what just isn’t work­ing here? Be more hon­est.’ ” Have a look at the series’ entire playlist (embed­ded above), which also fea­tures Joyce Car­ol Oates, Lydia Davis, and oth­ers, and you’ll find as many strate­gies for bat­tling the blank page as writ­ers who win that bat­tle. Whether you use ideas thought up in the show­er, plunge straight into the lake, or stare up at the night sky or a both­er­some boss, only one thing mat­ters: that your page ends up with some words on it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

8 Writ­ers on How to Face Writer’s Block and the Blank Page: Mar­garet Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Joyce Car­ol Oates & More

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & More

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

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.

Free Audio Book: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Read by British Actor Hayward Morse

in Audio Books, Literature | October 12th, 2016

Select­ed by the Mod­ern Library as one of the 100 best nov­els of all time, Joseph Con­rad’s Heart of Dark­ness was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as a three-part ser­i­al sto­ry in Black­wood’s Mag­a­zine in 1899, then lat­er as a novel­la in the 1902 col­lec­tion Youth: A Nar­ra­tive; and Two Oth­er Sto­ries. A com­plex and con­tro­ver­sial “med­i­ta­tion on colo­nial­ism, evil, and the thin line between civ­i­liza­tion and bar­bar­i­ty,” Heart of Dark­ness gained lit­er­ary stature dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s, before peak­ing in the late 1970s–precisely around when Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la released Apoc­a­lypse Now, a film loose­ly based on Con­rad’s tale. What halt­ed the novel­la’s momen­tum was a sting­ing rebuke from Chin­ua Achebe, father of mod­ern African lit­er­a­ture, who crit­i­cized the way it “projects the image of Africa as ‘the oth­er world,’ the antithe­sis of Europe and there­fore of civ­i­liza­tion…”

Despite the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the text, Heart of Dark­ness remains wide­ly read in Amer­i­can high schools and uni­ver­si­ties. And, notes Harold Bloom, it has “had a strik­ing influ­ence on writ­ers, artists, and thinkers from all over the globe.” Below, you can lis­ten to a read­ing of Heart of Dark­ness by British stage and voice actor Hay­ward Morse. It’s free on Spo­ti­fy and will be added to our list, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. In Novem­ber, Ken­neth Branagh will release his own version–which you can down­load for free if you join Audible.com’s 30 free tri­al pro­gram. Oth­er free read­ings of Con­rad’s novel­la can be found on Lib­rivox.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Orson Welles Turns Heart of Dark­ness Into a Radio Dra­ma, and Almost His First Great Film

See the Orig­i­nal Mag­a­zine Pub­li­ca­tion of Heart of Dark­ness and Oth­er Great Works by Joseph Con­rad

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Popular Intro to Computer Science Course: The 2016 Edition

in Computer Science, Online Courses | October 9th, 2016

This fall, Har­vard has been rolling out videos from the 2016 edi­tion of Com­put­er Sci­ence 50 (CS50), the uni­ver­si­ty’s intro­duc­to­ry cod­ing course designed for majors and non-majors alike. Taught by David Malan, a peren­ni­al­ly pop­u­lar pro­fes­sor (you’ll imme­di­ate­ly see why), the one-semes­ter course (taught most­ly in C) com­bines cours­es typ­i­cal­ly known else­where as “CS1” and “CS2.”

Even if you’re not a Har­vard stu­dent, you’re wel­come to fol­low CS50 online by head­ing over to this site here. There you will find video lec­tures (stream them all above or access them indi­vid­u­al­ly here), prob­lem sets, quizzes, and oth­er use­ful course mate­ri­als. Once you’ve mas­tered the mate­r­i­al cov­ered in CS50, you can start branch­ing out into new areas of cod­ing by perus­ing our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. 

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, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Free Text­books: Com­put­er Sci­ence

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

Codecademy’s Free Cours­es Democ­ra­tize Com­put­er Pro­gram­ming

Watch Benedict Cumberbatch Sing Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb,” with David Gilmour Live on Stage

in Music | September 29th, 2016

Around here, when we talk about Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, we usu­al­ly talk about his knack for read­ing clas­sic texts–Kafka’s Meta­mor­pho­sis, Melville’s Moby-Dick, a poignant let­ter by Alan Tur­ing, even pas­sages from a Guan­tá­namo prisoner’s diary. But today we’re putting anoth­er one of his tal­ents on dis­play.

Above, watch Cum­ber­batch join David Gilmour live on stage to per­form Pink Floy­d’s 1979 song, “Com­fort­ably Numb.” The per­for­mance took place last night at Lon­don’s Roy­al Albert Hall. Enjoy.

Note: You can down­load free audio­books read by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch if you sign up for a 30-Day Free Tri­al with Audi­ble.com.  That includes read­ings of Sher­lock Holmes, Jane Austen and Neil Gaiman. Find more infor­ma­tion on Audi­ble’s Free Tri­al pro­gram here.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Ultra Ortho­dox Rab­bis Sing Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” on the Streets of Jerusalem

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

When L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz Series Was Banned for “Depicting Women in Strong Leadership Roles” (1928)

in Books, K-12, Literature, Politics | September 28th, 2016

We’ve reached the final stretch of the most infu­ri­at­ing, unset­tling elec­tion I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. And we find the U.S. so polar­ized  that—as The Wall Street Jour­nal chill­ing­ly demon­strates in their “Blue Feed Red Feed” feature—the left and right seem to live in two entire­ly dif­fer­ent real­i­ties. Still, one would have to work very hard on either side, I think, to deny the role sex­ism has played. One can­di­date, a known and well-doc­u­ment­ed misog­y­nist, leads mil­lions of sup­port­ers call­ing for his opponent’s death, impris­on­ment, and humil­i­a­tion. That oppo­nent, of course, hap­pens to be the first woman to run on a major par­ty tick­et in a gen­er­al elec­tion.

Do many Amer­i­cans still have a prob­lem with accept­ing women as lead­ers? I per­son­al­ly don’t think there’s much of an argu­ment there, and peo­ple who see the ques­tion as redun­dant mar­vel at how long archa­ic atti­tudes about women in pow­er have per­sist­ed. At least these days we can open­ly have the—often high­ly inflamed—conversation about sex­ism in busi­ness, enter­tain­ment, and gov­ern­ment. And we can sup­port a cul­tur­al indus­try thriv­ing on strong female char­ac­ters in fic­tion, film, and tele­vi­sion. Not so much in 1928, when the Chica­go Pub­lic Library banned The Wiz­ard of Oz, writes Kristi­na Rosen­thal at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tul­sa Depart­ment of Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, “argu­ing that the sto­ry was ungod­ly for ‘depict­ing women in strong lead­er­ship roles.’”

First pub­lished in 1900, L. Frank Baum’s fan­ta­sy nov­el ini­ti­at­ed a series of 13 Oz-themed sequels, all of which became immense­ly pop­u­lar after MGM’s 1939 film adap­ta­tion. (You can find them all in text and audio for­mat here.) And yet, “through­out the years the books have been opposed for their pos­i­tive por­tray­als of fem­i­nin­i­ty.” Var­i­ous libraries used sim­i­lar excus­es to ban the books through­out the 50s and 60s. The Detroit pub­lic library banned the Oz books in 1957, stat­ing they had “no val­ue for chil­dren of today.” The ban remained in place until 1972. One Flori­da librar­i­an cir­cu­lat­ed a memo to her col­leagues call­ing the books “unwhole­some,” among oth­er things, and caus­ing a run on local book­stores as chil­dren des­per­ate­ly tried to find them.

Oth­er groups decid­ed that the books pro­mot­ed witch­craft in charges sim­i­lar to those levied at the Har­ry Pot­ter series. In 1986, a group of Fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies in Ten­nessee came togeth­er to remove the The Wiz­ard of Oz from their schools’ cur­ricu­lum, protest­ing “the novel’s depic­tion of benev­o­lent witch­es.” They argued, writes Rosen­thal, “that all witch­es are bad, there­fore it is ‘the­o­log­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble ‘for good witch­es to exist.” Many seek­ing to ban the books since have sim­i­lar­ly referred to their pos­i­tive depic­tions of mag­ic and “god­less super­nat­u­ral­ism,” but the Ten­nessee case stands as a land­mark in the Reli­gious Right’s liti­gious cru­sade against the gov­ern­ment. The attor­ney who rep­re­sent­ed plain­tiff Vic­ki Frost called on “every born-again Chris­t­ian to get their chil­dren out of pub­lic schools.”

It’s odd to think of whim­si­cal children’s lit­er­a­ture so seem­ing­ly innocu­ous as The Wiz­ard of Oz books as ter­ri­to­ry in the long cul­ture wars of the 20th cen­tu­ry. But as we are remind­ed every year dur­ing Banned Books Week (Sep­tem­ber 25 − Octo­ber 1, 2016), lit­er­a­ture often arous­es the ire of those incensed by change and dif­fer­ence. Yet their attempts to sup­press cer­tain books have always back­fired, mak­ing the tar­gets of their cen­sor­ship even more pop­u­lar and sought-after. If you’d like to read Baum’s Oz books now, you needn’t con­front a gate­keep­ing librar­i­an; sim­ply head over to our post on the com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz series, with free eBooks and audio books of all 14 female-cen­tric fan­ta­sy clas­sics.

via The Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

The Com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz Series, Avail­able as Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

North Car­oli­na Coun­ty Cel­e­brates Banned Book Week By Ban­ning Ralph Ellison’s Invis­i­ble Man … Then Revers­ing It

74 Free Banned Books (for Banned Books Week)

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

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

8+ Hours of Classic Charles Dickens Stories Dramatized, Starring Orson Welles, Boris Karloff, Richard Burton & More

in Literature, Radio | September 27th, 2016

Do you know who would have under­stood our cur­rent polit­i­cal moment? Who would have known how to make sense of the naked avarice, wide­spread bul­ly­ing, dem­a­goguery, and preda­to­ry pol­i­tick­ing? Charles Dick­ens, that’s who.

The vil­lainy in Oliv­er Twist alone suf­fices to show just how well Dick­ens under­stood misog­y­ny, crim­i­nal exploita­tion, and the ways seduc­tive insin­cer­i­ty works to ensnare the vul­ner­a­ble.

As we approach the inter­minable hol­i­day sea­son, many of us will reflect on Dick­ens’ scathing indict­ment of greed in A Christ­mas Car­ol. Near­ly every­one wants a piece of Dick­ens’ pre­sumed polit­i­cal views. The Social­ist Review pro­claims “he would have been only too famil­iar with the shame­less pil­ing up of wealth, the poor strug­gling to sur­vive, the pen­ny pinch­ing of wel­fare, and the lofty con­tempt of our rulers” in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

But Dick­ens was no rev­o­lu­tion­ary. His for­eign pol­i­cy ideas “antic­i­pate Kipling’s pro­le­tar­i­an defend­ers of empire,” and he might have fit right in with the most star­ry-eyed of neo­con­ser­v­a­tives.

Was he a defend­er of free mar­ket ideals, as some allege? The idea seems implau­si­ble. Char­ac­ters like pre-redemp­tion Scrooge and Ralph Nickleby—who in, say, Ayn Rand’s hands might be cham­pi­ons of indi­vid­u­al­ism and self­ish­ness as a virtue—become in Dick­ens’ nov­els exam­ples of fright­en­ing­ly trun­cat­ed human­i­ty. Take this descrip­tion of Nick­le­by, uncle of the orphaned Nicholas:

He wore a sprin­kling of pow­der upon his head, as if to make him­self look benev­o­lent; but if that were his pur­pose, he would per­haps have done bet­ter to pow­der his coun­te­nance also, for there was some­thing in its very wrin­kles, and in his cold rest­less eye, which seemed to tell of cun­ning that would announce itself in spite of him.

This is the look of the deceit­ful, schem­ing busi­ness­man in Dick­ens: the cold eyes, the bare­ly-con­cealed mal­ice. In nov­els like Oliv­er Twist and Hard Times, Dick­ens “pro­vides a damn­ing cri­tique of indus­tri­al Eng­land of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry” and “an indict­ment of glob­al lais­sez faire cap­i­tal­ism of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.” So argues The Cop­per­field Review, in any case.

But when we read Dick­ens, we don’t do so fore­most to have our polit­i­cal views bol­stered or chal­lenged, but to expe­ri­ence the immense­ly mov­ing and enter­tain­ing plots, with their vivid­ly delin­eat­ed char­ac­ters like Ralph Nick­le­by above. These qual­i­ties have always made Dick­ens’ work trans­late beau­ti­ful­ly to the stage and screen, and also to the radio waves, where Dick­ens appeared in dra­mat­ic adap­ta­tions dur­ing the medium’s gold­en age and beyond, often in star-stud­ded pro­duc­tions.

For exam­ple, at the top of the post, you can hear a 1950 radio play of David Cop­per­field with Richard Bur­ton in the title role and Boris Karloff as “the smarmi­est creep in Dick­ens,” Uri­ah Heep. The lat­ter char­ac­ter may be one of the most obses­sive­ly described in all of the author’s works, to the point of car­i­ca­ture. And yet, writes Sam Jordi­son at The Guardian, “just as Satan gets the best lines in Par­adise Lost, Heep gets some of the best moments in David Cop­per­field.”

Fur­ther up, you can hear Orson Welles star in a 1938 pro­duc­tion of A Tale of Two Cities. This play is the third in Welles and John Houseman’s series The Mer­cury The­atre on the Air, which fea­tured Welles’ hand­picked com­pa­ny of actors. Soon spon­sored by Campbell’s Soup, the pro­gram was renamed The Camp­bell Play­house by the time Welles pro­duced an adap­ta­tion of A Christ­mas Car­ol with Lionel Bar­ry­more as Scrooge.

In the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, hear that pro­duc­tion as well as a sec­ond Welles-star­ring ver­sion of A Tale of Two Cities record­ed in 1945 for the leg­endary Lux Radio The­ater. You’ll also find Richard Burton’s David Cop­per­field and clas­sic pro­duc­tions of Great Expec­ta­tions, Oliv­er Twist, The Pick­wick Papers, The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood, and short sto­ries like “The Queer Client,” “The Sig­nal­man,” and “The Tri­al for Mur­der.” If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.

Vis­it­ing, or revis­it­ing, the Dick­en­sian world through radio plays fits in per­fect­ly with the author’s own mode of dis­sem­i­nat­ing his fic­tion: he was a show­man who loved to give read­ings of  his work “with full histri­on­ic bril­liance,” writes Simon Cal­low, “and stage-man­aged to a point of high the­atri­cal­i­ty.” And through such enter­tain­ment, he believed, he might move read­ers and audi­ences with his cri­tiques of the exploita­tive sys­tems of his day.

The playlist above will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. Copies of Dick­ens’ works can be found in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life & Lit­er­ary Works of Charles Dick­ens

Hear Charles Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol Read by His Great-Grand­daugh­ter in His Pre­ferred Style

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

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