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…
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Open Culture
13 posts
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…