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Every great novel—or at least every finished novel—needs a plan. I remember well a James Joyce course I took in college, taught by a belligerent Irishman who began the first class meeting by slamming his decades-old copy of Ulysses on the table, sending clouds of dust and Post-It notes around [...]]]>

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Every great novel—or at least every finished novel—needs a plan. I remember well a James Joyce course I took in college, taught by a belligerent Irishman who began the first class meeting by slamming his decades-old copy of Ulysses on the table, sending clouds of dust and Post-It notes around his ears and shouting, “This is my Bible!” He proceeded over the next few months to unravel the dark mysteries of Joyce’s design, with chart after chart of floral symbology, musical motifs, Dante allusions, mythic and Catholic rewritings, and Dublin city maps. Needless to say I was intimidated.

But not every author requires the god-like foresight of Joyce. Witness, for instance, J.K. Rowling’s spreadsheet for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (top), hand-drawn on lined notebook paper. Fine, Rowling’s no Joyce, but no one can say her method didn’t yield impressive results. For a more canonically literary example, see William Faulkner’s plan for A Fable (above). Faulkner famously outlined his fiction on the walls of his Rowan Oaks study, in-between bottles of bourbon.

Flavorwire has compiled a number of author outlines, from Joseph Heller’s dense, intricate grid design for Catch-22 to Jennifer Egan’s storyboards for “Black Box” and Norman Mailer’s medieval manuscript of a plan for Harlot’s Ghost. Each outline betrays a little of the author’s mind at work.

via Flavorwire

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Washington, DC. Follow him @jdmagness

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In sixth grade, my friend Amy Osborn’s parents took us to a screening of Annie Hall. The bedroom scenes with Carol Kane, Janet Margolin and Diane Keaton were chaste by today’s standards. The repartee was so beyond my frame of reference, it caused but little discomfort. What did me in [...]]]>

In sixth grade, my friend Amy Osborn’s parents took us to a screening of Annie Hall. The bedroom scenes with Carol Kane, Janet Margolin and Diane Keaton were chaste by today’s standards. The repartee was so beyond my frame of reference, it caused but little discomfort. What did me in was the two-line exchange between a cartoon Woody Allen and Snow White’s Wicked Queen concerning her period (or lack thereof). Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was our sacred text, but its most sensational subject matter—menstruation—was deeply taboo outside of my 1970′s Indiana tribe. I could have died, knowing Mr. Osborn was sitting right there. The one consolation was that my own parents weren’t.

These awkward encounters can be defining, which explains why the Tribeca Film Festival sought to ferret them out as part of its One Question series. It’s impressive that the four directors and one producer featured above decided to pursue careers in film after inadvertently sharing with their parents such tender moments as a masturbating Philip Seymour Hoffman in Todd Solondz’s seminal (pardon the pun) Happiness or the relentless defloration scene at the top of Larry Clark’s Kids.

Perhaps you can relate. If so, please spill the gory details below. Provided you’re strong enough to revisit the trauma, what was your most cringe-inducing moment at the movies with your mom or dad, or—let’s not be ageist here—your kids?

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Ayun Halliday grows less ashamed with every passing year. Follow her @AyunHalliday

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Making a movie? Need to shoot some large-scale desert scenes? You might consider taking your production to North Africa, where you’ll find not only a great many acres of sand, but will follow in the footsteps of some of the twentieth century’s highest-profile filmmakers. Just above, you see a picture of one of the [...]]]>

Making a movie? Need to shoot some large-scale desert scenes? You might consider taking your production to North Africa, where you’ll find not only a great many acres of sand, but will follow in the footsteps of some of the twentieth century’s highest-profile filmmakers. Just above, you see a picture of one of the many Star Wars sets still standing in Tozeur, Tunisia, 36 years after the shoot. New York photographer Rä di Martino has taken it upon herself to determine the locations and collect images of these cinematic ruins in the projects “No More Stars” and “Every World’s a Stage.” Given the surprisingly sound condition of some of these sets — that dry air must have something to do with it — I foresee an entrepreneurial opportunity in the vein of all those New Zealand Lord of the Rings fan tours.

Even if Star Wars doesn’t get you excited enough to book a trip to Tunisia, a visit to Morocco may still interest you. Di Martino’s short Petite histoire des plateaux abandonnès (Short History of Abandoned Sets) seeks out more such long-silent fake towns, fortresses, and gas stations around Ouarzazate, originally used for everything from cheap horror movies to Lawrence of Arabia. There, a group of kids recites, deadpan, scenes from the various productions that swung through town well before they were born. These surviving chunks of artifice, meant only for the camera, have found the camera again — or, rather, the camera has found them — with results that now look more interesting than many of the major films that commissioned them.

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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on literature, film, cities, Asia, and aesthetics. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.

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Almost every year since 1901, the Swedish Academy has apportioned one fifth of the interest from the fortune bequeathed by dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel to honor, as Nobel said in his will, “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.”

Many of the [...]]]> William Faulkner, 1949:

Almost every year since 1901, the Swedish Academy has apportioned one fifth of the interest from the fortune bequeathed by dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel to honor, as Nobel said in his will, “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.”

Many of the greatest writers of the past 112 years have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, but there have been some glaring omissions right from the start. When Leo Tolstoy was passed over in 1901 (the prize went to the French poet Sully Prudhomme) he was so offended he refused later nominations. The list of great writers who were alive after 1901 but never received the prize is jaw-dropping. In addition to Tolstoy, it includes James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Anton Chekhov, Marcel Proust, Henry James, Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov.

But the Nobel committee has honored many worthy writers, and today we’ve gathered together seven speeches by seven laureates. Our choice was restricted by the limitations of what is available online in English. We have focused on the short speeches traditionally given on December 10 of every year at the Nobel banquet in Stockholm. With the exception of short excerpts from Bertrand Russell’s lecture, we have passed over the longer Nobel lectures (which typically run about 40 minutes) presented to the Swedish Academy on a different day than the banquet.

We begin above with one of the most often-quoted Nobel speeches: William Faulkner’s eloquent acceptance of the 1949 prize. There was actually no prize in literature given in 1949, but the committee decided to award that year’s medal 12 months later to Faulkner, citing his “powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel.” Faulkner gave his speech on December 10, 1950, in the same ceremony with Bertrand Russell. Unfortunately the audio cuts off just before the finish. To follow along and read the missing ending, click here to open the full text in a new window. Faulkner stumbles a few times during his delivery. You can listen to his smoother 1954 reading of a polished version of the speech here.

Bertrand Russell, 1950:

The British logician and philosopher Bertrand Russell was one of several prize-winners in literature who were primarily known for their work in other fields. (The short list includes statesman Winston Churchill and philosopher Henri Bergson.) In addition to his ground-breaking contributions to mathematics and analytic philosophy, Russell wrote many books for the general reader. In 1950 the Nobel committee cited his “varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.” Above are two short audio clips from Russell’s long Nobel lecture, which he gave on December 11, 1950. You can click here to open the full text in a new window.

Ernest Hemingway, 1954:

The American writer Ernest Hemingway was awarded the 1954 prize “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.” Hemingway was not feeling well enough in December of 1954 to travel to Stockholm, so he asked John C. Cabot, United States Ambassador to Sweden, to deliver the speech for him. Fortunately we do have this recording from sometime that month of Hemingway reading his speech at a radio station in Havana, Cuba. You can click here to open the full text in a new window.

John Steinbeck, 1962:

The American John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, was awarded the Nobel in 1962 “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception.” To read along as you watch Steinbeck give his speech, click here to open the text in a new window.

V.S. Naipaul, 2001:

Jumping ahead from 1962 all the way to 2001, we have video of the speech given by the Trinidadian-British writer V.S. Naipaul, author of such books as In a Free State and A Bend in the River. Naipaul was cited by the Nobel committee “for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.” You can click here to open a text of Naipaul’s banquet speech in a new window.

Orhan Pamuk, 2006:

The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, author of such books as The Museum of Innocence and Snow, received the prize in 2006. The Nobel committee praised the Istanbul-based writer, “who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.” To read Pamuk’s banquet speech, click here to open the text in a new window.

Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010:

The prolific Peruvian-Spanish writer Mario Vargas Llosa, author of such novels as Conversation in the Cathedral and Death in the Andes, was cited by the Nobel committee in 2010 “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.” To read along with Vargas Llosa as he speaks, click here to open the text in a new window.

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Another quick heads up: The National’s sixth LP, Trouble Will Find Me, will be released on May 21. But, right now, you can jump over to iTunes and stream it for free on your computer or iPad (for a limited time).

To access the stream, click this link, tap the “View in iTunes” button, click [...]]]>

Another quick heads up: The National’s sixth LP, Trouble Will Find Me, will be released on May 21. But, right now, you can jump over to iTunes and stream it for free on your computer or iPad (for a limited time).

To access the stream, click this link, tap the “View in iTunes” button, click the “Listen Now” button, and you’re good to go.

Above, we’re starting you off with “Sea of Love,” the first video from the album.

H/T Liz

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Cadillac Records—a 2008 biopic about the rise and fall of Chicago’s Chess Records—won acclaim for bravura performances, garnered Beyonce a White House performance and threats of violence from Etta James, and took it on the chin for its deeply muddled history. But nobody goes to the movies for a history [...]]]>

Cadillac Records—a 2008 biopic about the rise and fall of Chicago’s Chess Records—won acclaim for bravura performances, garnered Beyonce a White House performance and threats of violence from Etta James, and took it on the chin for its deeply muddled history. But nobody goes to the movies for a history lesson, right? What stuck with me was its dramatization of that moment (okay, decade) when R&B and “race records” got rebranded by Alan Freed as “Rock n’ Roll” and crossed over the color line. Hundreds of bands hijacked Chuck Berry’s licks (as he saw it), and then Jagger crashed the party with his Muddy Waters impression while his band took their name from one of his blues songs.

The Stones may not have been the first British band to make American electric blues their own, but they were arguably the most popular. In an excerpt (below) from a longer interview from 1973, Keith Richards namechecks both Waters and Berry, as well as usual suspects Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo, and the much earlier Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson. The host pushes Keith on his roots influences and the part of black music in the Stones’ sound, asking if their lack of sentimentalism came from the blues. Keith replies,“I don’t get sentimental about things because… it doesn’t lead to clarity of thought.” And when I think clarity, I think Keith Richards. But seriously, it’s a gem of an interview.

Asked about how black musicians reacted to his blues appropriation, Richards gets philosophical: “Probably as many different reactions from them as anybody else.” We know how Chuck Berry felt—robbed—but Keith tells us Waters took it in stride, “grateful” for the introduction to the white college circuit which put more bread in his pocket. Maybe so, but Waters’ crossover before white audiences predated the Stones. Before the British invaded—two years before the Stones formed—Muddy hit England’s shores in 1958 (one year after Sister Rosetta Tharpe brought her electric blues across the pond). While the usual belief that Waters’ blues shocked the Brits may be a misconception, he won a new audience on the folk circuit, returning to England in ‘64. After laying low for a while, Waters saw a career revival late in life, performing into his final years with The Stones, Eric Clapton, Johnny Winters, and his own band. In the video above, see a full performance of Waters with the Stones from 1981, two years before Waters’ death from heart failure. He’s 66 at this gig, three years younger than Richards is now.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Washington, DC. Follow him @jdmagness

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Given the prominence of “Gatsby” brand men’s hair products over there, I can’t claim that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s doomed literary icon of the American Dream goes totally unrecognized in Japan. But according to Haruki Murakami, the country’s best-known living novelist, “Japanese readers have never truly appreciated The Great Gatsby.” This he ascribes, in an [...]]]>

Given the prominence of “Gatsby” brand men’s hair products over there, I can’t claim that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s doomed literary icon of the American Dream goes totally unrecognized in Japan. But according to Haruki Murakami, the country’s best-known living novelist, “Japanese readers have never truly appreciated The Great Gatsby.” This he ascribes, in an essay (read it online here) from the new collection In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means, to the datedness, despite the excellence, of most Japanese-language editions of the book. “Although numerous literary works might properly be called ‘ageless,’” he explains, “no translation belongs in that category. Translation, after all, is a matter of  linguistic technique, which naturally ages as the particulars of a language change. Thus, while there are undying works, on principle there can be no undying translations.”

Hence his own translation of Gatsby, a project he originally set for his sixtieth birthday, by which time he hoped his “skill would have improved to the point where [he] could do the job properly.” Despite starting the translation years ahead of schedule, he found himself just wise enough to understand the task’s complexity. “At strategic moments,” he remembers, “I brought my imaginative powers as a novelist into play. One by one, I dug up the slippery parts of Fitzgerald’s novel, those scattered places that had proved elusive, and asked myself, If I were the author, how would I have written this? Painstakingly, I examined Gatsby’s solid trunk and branches and dissected its beautiful leaves.” Asked why he chose to translate Gatsby, he gave this reply:

When someone asks, “Which three books have meant the most to you?” I can answer without having to think: The Great Gatsby, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. All three have been indispensable to me (both as a reader and as a writer); yet if I were forced to select only one, I would unhesitatingly choose Gatsby.

(Thanks to GalleyCat.)

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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on literature, film, cities, Asia, and aesthetics. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.

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Back during the 1920s, Claude Friese-Greene, an early British pioneer of film, shot The Open Road, “a series of ten-minute travelogues of Britain,” which were meant “to be shown before the main feature in cinema programmes,” according to the British Film Institute. Clips from that series have appeared for years on the BFI’s YouTube [...]]]>

Back during the 1920s, Claude Friese-Greene, an early British pioneer of film, shot The Open Road, “a series of ten-minute travelogues of Britain,” which were meant “to be shown before the main feature in cinema programmes,” according to the British Film Institute. Clips from that series have appeared for years on the BFI’s YouTube Channel. But, in recent days, the hive mind of the internet has focused on these five minutes of footage showing 1920s London in rare moving color. What draws us to this footage? Perhaps one Vimeo commenter put it best, saying: “Profoundly moving somehow. All those ghosts on film, foreshadowing our footsteps through the same city. Parts of London remain startlingly unchanged. The megalopolis was less corporate then, more imperial, certainly less suspicious of the camera. But, those pastel shades of people are shown dodging the traffic in the same way as we do, perhaps showing us a way through the labyrinth.” It’s hard not to stop and take notice when the past seems distant, yet so close and familiar.

via Kottke

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The volume of data in our age is so vast that whole new research fields have blossomed to develop better and more efficient ways of presenting and organizing information. One such field is data visualization, which can be translated in plain English as visual representations of information.

The PBS “Off Book” series turned its attention to [...]]]>

The volume of data in our age is so vast that whole new research fields have blossomed to develop better and more efficient ways of presenting and organizing information. One such field is data visualization, which can be translated in plain English as visual representations of information.

The PBS “Off Book” series turned its attention to data visualization in a short video featuring Edward Tufte, a statistician and professor emeritus at Yale, along with three young designers on the frontiers of data visualization. Titled “The Art of Data Visualization,” the video does a good job of demonstrating how good design—from scientific visualization to pop infographics—is more important than ever.

In much the same way that Marshall McLuhan spoke about principles of communication, Tufte talks in the video about what makes for elegant and effective design. One of his main points: Look after truth and goodness, and beauty will look after herself.

What does Tufte mean by this? That design is only as good as the information at its core.

For those of us who aren’t designers, it’s refreshing to consider the elements of good visual story-telling. And that’s what the best design is, according to the experts in this video. Every data set, or big bunch of information, has its own core concept, just as every story has a main character. The designer’s job is to find the hero in the data and then tell the visual story.

So much of the information we encounter every day is hard to conceptualize. It’s so big and complicated that a visual rendering represents it the best. That’s because human brains are wired to take in a lot of information at once. Good designers know that decision-making isn’t linear. It’s a super-fast process of recognizing patterns and making sense of them.

Information may be more abundant but it isn’t new, and neither is data visualization. In the video, Tufte talks about stone maps carved by early humans and how those ancient graphics form the template for Google maps.

What comes across in PBS’s video is that data visualization is an art, and the simpler the better. Tufte seems to argue that good data guides the designer to do good work, which leads to the question: Is the medium no longer, as McLuhan famously commented, the message?

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Kate Rix writes about digital media and education. Visit her website. Follow her on Twitter @mskaterix

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