Posts tagged with ‘authors’

James Joyce reads from ‘Ulysses’ from 1924

As Open Culture explains, this rare 1924 recording of Joyce reading from the Aeolus episode of the novel was arranged and financed by his friend and publisher Sylvia Beach, who brought him by taxi to the HMV (His Master’s Voice) gramophone studio in the Paris suburb of Billancourt. She writes in her memoir, Shakespeare & Company:

Joyce had chosen the speech in the Aeolus episode, the only passage that could be lifted out of Ulysses, he said, and the only one that was “declamatory” and therefore suitable for recital. He had made up his mind, he told me, that this would be his only reading from Ulysses.

I have an idea that it was not for declamatory reasons alone that he chose this passage from Aeolus. I believe that it expressed something he wanted said and preserved in his own voice. As it rings out–”he lifted his voice above it boldly”–it is more, one feels, than mere oratory.

Pair with these rare 1935 illustrations for Ulysses by none other than Henri Matisse. 

Author Maurice Sendak on being a kid

“I still think the same way I thought as a child. I still worry. I’m still frightened… Nothing changes.” - Maurice Sendak

IHC After Dark animated shorts: “Bukowski #1” (NSFW)

They’ve sort of fallen off the radar, but Klasky Csupo, the animation house that made Rugrats has been working on a series of shorts based on the writings of Charles Bukowski. These give me an extremely Aeon Flux vibe (in a good way), and I’m surprised no one has picked them up for distribution.These are very NSFW. And awesome.

Submitted by snarf-prime

IHC After Dark: Anaïs Nin reads from “House of Incest” with a trippy electronic soundtrack

Hugh Parker Guiler (1898–1985) was Anaïs Nin’s husband from 1923 until her death in 1977. He was a successful banker who used the name “Ian Hugo,” to keep his art and experimental filmmaking career separate from the disapproving financial world.

In 1954, “Hugo” made a short film called Bells of Atlantis, featuring Nin, who appears as a mythical queen of Atlantis, reading from her 1936 surrealist novella House of Incest and an electronic music soundtrack courtesy of Louis and Bebe Barron (who made a similar score for Forbidden Planet two years later). Kinetic artist Len Lye also worked on the film with Guiler.

Via

IHC After Dark: ‘George Orwell: One Final Warning’

An interesting bit from the 2003 docudrama ‘George Orwell: A Life in Pictures’.

Today would have been JRR Tolkien’s birthday, so here’s a remake of the Hobbit trailer using footage from the 1977 animated film

A version that for me, will always be superior, no matter what Peter Jackson pulls out of his ass.