“It’s not often one gets the opportunity to take a course on a major literary movement taught by a founding member of that movement,” but Allen Ginsberg‘s lectures on “the literary history of the Beats” are now available online via Open Culture.
Allen Ginsberg, Beat Historian
Cyberpunk/Cyberspace
“I can’t remember another single work of art ever having had that immediate and powerful an impact, which of course makes the experience quite impossible to describe. As I experienced it, it drove me out of my wretched mind … I do know that I knew immediately that my sense of what science fiction could be had been permanently altered.” William Gibson on having his world rocked (and artistic sensibilities altered) by Chris Marker’s 1962 short film La Jetée.
Need something to read?
If you’re in need of a great read this week, you’ll be glad to know that Byliner has compiled a list of 101 spectacular nonfiction stories from 2011. They run the gamut from investigative to personal to borderline trivial: There’s Mac McClelland’s incredibly daring and disturbing essay on working through PTSD through controlled sexual violence, alongside Jon Mooallem’s history of the high five. Happy reading!
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Friday Night Filibusters
Going Clear author Lawrence Wright is adapting his play, Sonny’s Last Shot, to develop an HBO series about “the crazy, brutal world of Texas politics,” reports Deadline.
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Dancing Feet
Fred didn’t always have Ginger: The Boston Review looks at the many dance partners of Fred Astaire, as catalogued by Hermes Pan: The Man Who Danced With Fred Astaire and The Astaires: Fred and Adele.
The Real Deal
“Now, I’m not going to lie. It’s annoying, to have to take time out of my incredibly busy writing schedule in order to spell it all out for young people, just because they spend most of their daylight hours being urged by hoary old theorists in threadbare sweaters to write experimental fiction that will never sell. But I care deeply about the young—all of them, the world’s young—so of course I am humbled and honored to share the trade secrets embedded in my rigorous daily work schedule.” Heather Havrilesky on her writing life.
Open and Shut
The Culturephiles want to put the kibosh on the “open letter” bit. What better way to tackle that than with an open letter.
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Nabokov’s Notes
Vladimir Nabokov spent twenty years translating “the first and fundamental Russian novel,” Aleksandr Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. His battle with the text sparked an intellectual debate with his former friend, Edmund Wilson. The Paris Review has his notes. Pair with our own Lydia Kiesling’s thoughts on Lolita.