Open Culture
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Term Paper of Champions
At Open Culture, Ayun Halliday introduces Kurt Vonnegut’s final assignment for his Iowa Writer’s Workshop class. Instead of a conventional essay, Vonnegut asks his students to role-play as short story publishers: Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a…
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Who’s Your Dada?
Be the first on your block to download these eight Dada magazines from 1917 which contain all your favorite surrealist heroes. Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings—the whole gang is here. Celebrate the centennial of Dada and relive its origins…
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The “Transmutation” of Objects
For Open Culture, Ayun Halliday investigates Patti Smith’s relationship to objects and literature, highlighting how the songwriter, artist, and author looks to objects in order to feel “closer” to her favorite writers: She and husband Smith celebrated their first anniversary by…
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Brain Training
Great news for avid readers! It turns out that intense reading is good exercise for your brain. Over at Open Culture, Josh Jones writes about a study by Michigan State University Professor Natalie Phillips, who compares the brain activity of participants…
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Fast Friends: Mark Twain and Helen Keller
A new article on Open Culture examines the fascinating friendship between Mark Twain and Helen Keller, two of the 20th century’s most revolution-minded popular authors. Twain was taken with Keller from their first meeting, and made it a personal mission…
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Jane Austen’s Pin Cushion
Jane Austen invented a clever way of editing her manuscripts: pins. Without the convenience of electronic word processors, Austen relied on a method of pinning snippets of text into her manuscript drafts. Open Culture looks at The Watsons, one of…
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Listen to Sylvia Plath Read Her Poems Out Loud
Open Culture’s Josh Jones suggests listening to Sylvia Plath perform her poems out loud as a way to encounter them anew, “without the morbid celebrity baggage Plath’s name carries.” They do seem, in some ways, like completely different poems when…
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“Living On Air”
Via the Poetry Foundation, Open Culture has a 23-minute experimental film by Sandra Lahire using audio of Sylvia Plath reading her poems aloud. Mixing images of Plath’s obsessions (ouija boards, horses, violent self-harm) with photographs of the poet and her work,…
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Why I’m Quitting Ezra Pound
Ever heard that gobsmacking troubadourist Ezra Pound read his elaborate, funkified sestina, “Sestina: Altafore,” in a voice that is one part American-as-European, swilling-with-the-rolling-R’s accent and cantorian swoons and another part a sort of goofy Hailey, Idaho carnival barker? The nifty…
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Eisenhower Answers America: The First Political Advertisements on American TV
Open Culture compiles Eisenhower Answers America, the ad campaign that lead to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s victory in the 1952 presidential election. Eisenhower was an American war hero, and the use of television only solidified his legendary status with American voters,…
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Pollock on Film
Ever wonder what creating abstract expressionist art looks like? This documentary, made one summer way back in 1950 by Hans Namuth, follows Jackson Pollock in his studio. “Above, you can watch the result of Namuth’s second effort. The ten-minute film,…
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More Multimedia Borges Appreciation
Besides this, here is another, more visually-focused way to appreciate Jorge Luis Borges on the anniversary of his birth, 112 years later. It’s The Mirror Man, a 47-minute documentary on his life and work.