In Ovid’s story of Pyramus and Thisbe, two young lovers, forbidden to marry because of family rivalries whisper their forbidden love through cracks in the wall. Their story met its fateful end when the lovers decided to escape their families, and meet under a mulberry tree. Thisbe arrived at the rendezvous first, and narrowly escaped a lion attack, dropping her distinctive veil in the process. When Pyramus arrives and finds the blood soaked veil, he throws himself on his sword; when Thisbe returns to the scene, she does the same.

Does that plot sound familiar? Pyramus and Thisbe are considered to be the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. There are several more stories in the post, plus links about places connected with the tragic lovers. Link

Tired of the classics? Instantly rejuvenate boring fiction by adding feline. I mean, you've got to hand it to I Can Haz Cheezburger and Comediva - they know that LOL cats are like catnip to the Interwebbers in all of us.

Behold: Kitty Lit 101

Previously on Neatorama: Movies Recast with Cats

We’ve featured a bunch of pumpkin carvings for Halloween so far, but Flavorwire’s literary collection definitely has some of the most highbrow jack-o-lantern designs we’ve seen so far.

Link

The original Frankenstein’s monster wasn’t Boris Karloff -it was (believe it or not) a character created by a 19-year-old author named Mary Shelley …more than 190 years ago.

BACKGROUND

In the summer of 1816, 19-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her 24-year-old husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Switzerland “It proved a wet, uncongenial summer,” she wrote some 15 years later, “and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.”

To pass the time, the Shelleys and their neighbors -28-year-old Lord Byron, his 23-year-old personal physician, and his 18-year-old lover- read German ghost stories aloud. They enjoyed it so much that one day, Byron announced, “We will each write a ghost story.” Everyone agreed, but apparently the poets, unaccustomed to prose writing, couldn’t come up with anything very scary.

Mary was determined to do better. “I busied myself to think of a story,” she recalled, “One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror.” Yet she couldn’t come up with anything. Every morning, her companions asked: “Have you thought of a story?” “And each morning,” she wrote later, “I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative.”

A FLASH OF INSPIRATION

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

One evening, Mary sat by the fireplace, listening to her husband and Byron discuss the possibility of reanimating a corpse with electricity, giving it what they called “vital warmth.”

The discussion finally ended well after midnight, and Shelley retired. But Mary, “transfixed in speculation,” couldn’t sleep.

“When I placed my head on the pillow,” she recalled, “I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arouse in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw -with shut eyes but acute mental vision- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together …I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy half-vital motion.

“Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of light which he had communicated would fade; that this thing would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench forever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery eyes…”

THE PERFECT HORROR STORY

At this point, Mary opened her eyes in terror -so frightened that she needed reassurance it had all just been her imagination. She gazed around the room, but just couldn’t shake the image of “my hideous phantom.” Finally, to take her mind off the creature, she went back to the ghost story she’d been trying to compose all week. “If only I could contrive one,” she thought, “that would frighten people as I myself had been frightened that night!” Then she realized that her vision was, in fact, the story she’d been reaching for.

As she recounted: “Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. ‘I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.’ On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began the day with the words, ‘It was on a dreary night in November,’ making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream.”

THE NOVEL

The first version of Frankenstein was a short story. But Mary’s husband encouraged her to develop it further, and she eventually turned it into a novel. It was published anonymously in three parts in 1818. “Mary,” notes one critic, “did not think it important enough to sign her name to the book… And since her husband wrote the book’s preface, people assumed he had written the rest of the book as well… It was not until a later edition of Frankenstein that the book was revealed as the work of a young girl.”

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The article above is reprinted with permission from The Best of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Talk about an easy subject to research! It might have been easier to write up a “books that have never been banned anywhere” list. The banning of books seems so ridiculous, simplistic, and stupid to most of us. But man, in all his Jeckyll and Hyde glory, will all-too-often, when trying to solve a problem, come up with a solution much worse. This is “the 29th annual Banned Books Week.” The week is used to condemn censorship and “thought police.”

O.K., let’s take a look at a brief (in the scheme of these things) list of books that have been (ironically) banned here in the U.S….

1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 has to head this list of “ironic books banned.” Why? Fahrenheit 451 is an entire novel about the future and the banning (and burning) of books. It was banned, ironically, because one of the books that eventually gets banned and burned is the Bible. Drawn your own conclusions, my (hopefully) intelligent readers.

2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Mark Twain was a racist? A product of the times? Twain uses the bombshell “N” word so as to illustrate the awfulness of the word (and all its connotations). This vicious word is still, far and away, the most highly-charged and controversial word in the English language. So, the knee-jerk reaction is to ban the book. Or better still, as in more recent examples, issue the book with the “N” word cleverly edited out.

3. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

There isn’t enough time to edit out all the examples of the expression “f*** you” being used in this one. Also banned because it promotes youthful rebellion and disrespect of authority. Catcher in the Rye was the book that guy was reading when he shot and killed John Lennon. So maybe if it were still banned…  hmmm, slippery slope, isn’t it?

4. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Handford

Misprint, right? Uh, no. The very first Where’s Waldo? book was, indeed, banned, because in one of the Where’s Waldo? drawings a beach is shown featuring a woman lying on the sand with part of her breast showing. It was actually just a side view of her breast, with a penciled-in microscopic nipple shown.

Do you realize the meticulous research and hours of time it must have taken whoever discovered this “offensive” character amidst all the thousands and thousands of characters featured in a Waldo book?

5. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

This is the incredible story of an ever-hopeful and ever-wistful young girl who is eventually killed in the Holocaust. In some ways, it is the ultimate example of the ever-classic theme of “Good vs. Evil.” Or one very good person in the face of perhaps the greatest evil of the past several centuries. Yet despite her incredibly horrible enemies and fate, this remarkable teenage girl still believes in “the basic goodness of mankind.” Banned by the Alabama State Textbook Committee in 1983 for being “a real downer.”

6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Like our pal Huck Finn, this book has been banned because of the free-flowing use of the “N” word. And like Twain’s book, it is used to paint an accurate picture of the period (and all its ignorance). It has been banned across America for “racial slurs” and for “promoting white supremacy.” Also because a parent thought the way “blacks are treated by members of [the] white community in a way that would upset black children.” Only ironic because never, but never, in the entire history of literature, has good and evil been so clearly portrayed and delineated. Real (not ersatz) racism is shown under a clear magnifying glass, in all its vicious cruelty.

(As a sidebar, to those of you who do not like reading -definitely see the movie. To Kill a Mockingbird is without question one of the greatest movies ever made. One of those rare times “the movie is equally as great as the book it is based upon.”)

7. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

The Harry Potter books are far and away the most banned books of the past decade. Extremely ironic in that the Harry Potter series has probably inspired more young people to read than all the Hooked on Phonics and Pizza Hut books in the world.

Also one other point for all those people who have worked so tirelessly to ban these highly-popular books: strip away the magic and the Dr. Seuss creatures and the wizards and sorcerers, and ultimately the series boils down to the message that love, understanding, and tolerance are the most important things in the world.

8. Little Red Riding Hood

(You can’t make this stuff up, folks!)

Little Red Riding Hood has been banned for the use of alcohol (one of the items in Red Riding Hood’s basket is a bottle of wine).

9. Sleeping Beauty

The fairy tale was banned for promoting witchcraft and magic.

10. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

This classic was banned for “vulgar language.”

11. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Why do I feel like I am writing a Monty Python sketch? Could there possibly be a more harmless, innocuous book than Harriet the Spy? O.K. this one was banned because it “teaches children to lie, spy, back-talk, and curse.”

12. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

This book was banned in the South during the Civil War because of its anti-slavery content. Well, heck, that was over 150 years ago. Fortunately, as we all know, man has come a long way since those days of ignorance.

Are CliffsNotes (well, it ws Cliff's Notes when I was in school) still too long for you?

Then you need this: RinkWorks' Book-A-Minute website where you can catch up on all the classic literature you've been meaning to read. For example:

The Catcher In the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Holden Caulfield: “Angst angst angst swear curse swear crazy crazy angst swear curse, society sucks, and I’m a stupid jerk.”

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mr. Darcy: "Nothing is good enough for me."
Ms. Elizabeth Bennet: "I could never marry that proud man."
(They change their minds.)

Link - via Flavorwire

Previously on Neatorama: Movie-A-Minute (by the same people)

We have up to 150 books to share, thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor… We’re not telling you to like the book… we just want you to read it and decide for yourself.

Link Via The Mary Sue

A few months ago I wrote an article on non-literary uses for books. If you liked that post, you’d certainly appreciate this great post on WebUrbanist detailing 12 cool artists that use books as their mediums.

Link

We like to think of our favorite writers as people we would get along with. So much of what attracts us to literature and philosophy is its author’s stated or implied worldview that it’s disturbing to find out that the writers we love have lived morally questionable — or even reprehensible — lives.

In the spirit of hating the author but loving the work, we’ve rounded up a collection of great books by poets, novelist, and philosophers with unsettling biographies.

Check out the rest of the gallery at Flavorwire. Link

When Alice and Mattia first meet in grade school, they realize that they have one thing in common–they are not yet ready for love. Both have been shaped by profound childhood tragedies that crippled their trust in the world around them. But years later, they eventually learn to trust each other enough to overcome their awkwardness. The Solitude of Prime Numbers is an absolutely flawless literary debut from one of Italy’s most promising new authors and the romance between Alice and Mattia–unconventional though it may be–is one for the history books.

Meet the lovers of nine more modern novels you may want to explore. Link

Storytellers drew inspiration from the people passing through Aotea Square in Auckland, New Zealand. The stories were projected on a large screen, where folks could see themselves woven into the stories. The stunt was a promotion for the BNZ Literary Awards. Link -Thanks, Jono Aidney!

The Watsons manuscript shows how Austen’s other manuscripts must have looked. It also shines an interesting light on how she worked. Austen took a piece of paper, cut it in two and then folded over each half to make eight-page booklets. Then she would write, small neat handwriting leaving little room for corrections – of which there are many. “You can really see the mind at work with all the corrections and revisions,” said Heaton.

At one stage she crosses so much out that she starts a page again and pins it in. It seems, in Austen’s mind, her manuscript had to look like a book. “Writers often fall into two categories,” said Heaton. “The ones who fall into a moment of great inspiration and that’s it and then you have others who endlessly go back and write and tinker. Austen is clearly of the latter variety. It really is a wonderful, evocative document.”

The Watsons was written in 1804, not a hugely happy time for Austen professionally – she had one novel rejected and another bought by a publisher who failed to print it.

The manuscript is expected to bring between £200,000 and £300,000. Link -via Holy Kaw!

Before I get started, I want to give a special thank you to WebEcoist and WebUrbanist, who provided a wealth of inspiration and research to this article.

Buildings

Starting on the big scale uses for leftover books, you can build entire structures with them. While Slovakian artist Matej Krén’s building inside The Museum of Modern Art in Bologna (above) may not be structurally sound enough to exist outside another building, the Yellow Pages building (below) might be able to hold its own in a storm. Students from the Dalhousie University Department of Architecture in Nova Scotia built the house using a few wooden and metal beams to hold the thick books in place.

Of course, even if a book building could survive the elements, it would soon become subject to destruction via mold and insects.

Home Insulation

Just because your home can’t be made completely from books doesn’t mean they can’t improve your home though. According to Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller magazine, books are an excellent form of insulation, so even if you don’t want to read certain titles any more, they still can be useful for filling up bookshelves that line the exterior-facing walls of your home.

Bookshelves

Artist Jim Rosenau specializes in making bookshelves and book cases from old books. Why bother chopping down trees to make wood for these book holders when you already have all the materials you need in your pile of books to get rid of?

Desks

If you have a lot of books and need a desk, you’re in luck. All it takes to turn a bunch of books into desk is a nice heavy slab of wood or glass in order to press down on the volumes and give you a smooth writing surface. Both the Brunswick Bound bookstore of Melbourne (above) and the library at the Delft University of Technology (below) are equipped with these stylish and incredibly inexpensive desks.

A Couch

If you need a couch more than a desk, a lot of unwanted books and some tape can be used to make a couch that’s certain to get attention. While the idea comes from “Paper Man,” a Jeff Bridges movie where a frustrated writer uses unsold copies of his first book to create a new couch, the idea is entirely possible –the set designers used real books and packing tape to design the furniture.

A Chair

For something with a substantially smaller book investment, these paperback chairs by artist David Karoff are always a good option. He designed them for a Rhode Island bookstore called Myopic Books, so since they were made to be used by customers on a regular basis, they’re probably quite a bit more comfortable than the book couch.

Lights

“Light up your life with books” sounds like something you’d see on a cheesy library poster from the eighties, but in this case, it’s actually a decorating tip. While you can always buy a beautiful $550 book chandelier from artist Lucy Norman (above), it’s surprisingly easy to make your own less sophisticated model, like the one below, at home. All you need is a lamp shade, a lamp kit, a few hardcover books, a clamp and a drill. Shauna Smith Duty teaches you how in this article on Thrift Fun.

Ceiling Décor

While these books hanging from the ceiling may not provide any useful function, they do look really cool and will certainly make a home with really high ceilings feel a lot more personal and cozy. The original art installation is by Richard Wentworth, but if you wanted to adapt this to your own home, I’m sure some fishing line and a drill would be all you would need.

Christmas Tree

Why chop down a tree when you can make your own out of the same basic material? To be fair, most people couldn’t find enough green books to create a whole tree and even if they did, they might be disappointed with the lack of lighting and ornament options, but for the Gleeson Library at the University of San Francisco, the tree was a perfect holiday decoration.

Image via Shawn Calhoun [Flickr]

Planters

One of the coolest things about using a book as a planter is the fact that you’re using something that was once a living plant to provide care for another plant. I wish I could tell you more about these cool planters, but the company that makes them, Gartenkultur, is Italian and their website doesn’t have an English language version. Using the Google translator though, I was able to discern that they use some kind of insulating materials to ensure the plant can be watered without ruining the book.

Vases

Similarly, these book vases by designer Laura Cahill can be filled with water because hidden inside each papery base is a test tube for water collection. Miss Cahill also makes a great lamp out of book pages and a fun stool out of hard covers.

Clothes

If you’re not interested in decorating your home with books, what about your body? This stunning ball gown by Ryan Novelline is comprised of the covers of discarded Golden Books.

Jewelry

If you need some jewelry to go along with your new Golden Books dress, Little Fly has just the thing –rings, necklaces and more made from the laminated pages of discarded books.

Kindle Case

Are you afraid people will make fun of you for owning a Kindle? Do you hang out in bad neighborhoods where it’s best to hide your valuable possessions? Either way, Etsy seller BustedTypewriter’s carved out book that works as a Kindle case might be just the solution you’ve been hoping for.

3D Artworks

These days, most people are willing to acknowledge that the best part of a Pulp Fiction novel is the cover. Artist Thomas Allen took this idea to a whole new level by cutting and folding these covers and then shooting the images with a shallow depth of field. The result is a fascinating narrative that is even more artistic and vivid than the original artists could have ever hoped for.

Cutout Arts

Brian Dettmer uses a similar medium as Thomas Allen. Only instead of photographing the covers of books that he has moved into position, he instead cuts away at pictures inside of books until the many layers of pages form an all new image. The results are amazingly detailed and strikingly beautiful.

Art Canvases

When most people see a book, they see a series of pages that form a story. Mike Stilkey sees a blank canvas. While he doesn’t exclusively paint on book covers, some of his most eye-catching artworks take advantage of the unique canvases. The only problem I see with the art is how you would take it down if it needed to go to a new museum or to a buyer’s home?

Of course, you can always give your books away to Good Will if you don’t have the motivation to tackle any of these projects yourself.

Have any of you ever used your books for non-literary purposes? If so, please share your stories in the comments.

Gallery 1988 in L.A. is currently exhibiting covers to classic books… but not the covers you’ve seen lining shelves at Barnes & Noble. Forty-five artists have re-imagined the art with amazing results. I love Anne Benjamin‘s Pride and Prejudice, above, but The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Dirk Fowler is also awesome and James Flames‘ The Velveteen Rabbit gives me chills. You can check it out online, but if you’re in the L.A.-area, the Melrose exhibition runs through April 30.

Link via Flavorwire

We showed you 13 Hilarious Peeps Candy Easter Dioramas and led you to Sci-Fi Peeps Dioramas, but since it’s the season for Peeps, there are always more! Check out a roundup of Peeps dioramas that aspire to what we call high culture: scenes of artists, art galleries, famous artworks, and literary references, and a symphony as well, in this collection of pictures from the Chicago Tribune’s competitions at mental_floss. Shown here is a marshmallow version of Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles. Link

A classic in modern literature, “The Lottery” did more in nine pages than most novels do in nine chapters. Here’s how Shirley Jackson outraged a nation with fewer than 3,500 words.

Spoiler alert: this article reveals the ending of “The Lottery”. If you haven’t read it, hop to it! It’ll take 15 minutes, tops.

In 1948, The New Yorker published the most controversial short story in its history: “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a 31-year-old wife and mother living in Vermont. The simply told tale covers a ritual lottery in a sunny, rural town. But what starts out bathed in warmth and charm grows eerier and eerier, until the horrific purpose of the lottery is revealed in the story’s final paragraphs. Soon after the piece was published, angry letters poured in to The New Yorker. Readers canceled their subscriptions. And while many claimed they didn’t understand the story, the intense reaction indicated they understood it all too well.

“The Lottery” was published at a time when America was scrambling for conformity. Following World War II, the general public wanted to leave behind the horrors of war and genocide. They craved comfort, normalcy, and old-fashioned values. Jackson’s story was a cutting commentary on the dangers of blind obedience to tradition, and she threw it, like a grenade, into a complacent post-war society.

LUCK OF THE DRAW

Shirley Jackson was not the kind of person you’d expect to be a literary firebrand. Shy and high-strung, she dropped out of the University of Rochester in 1935. Her second stab at school was more successful. At age 20, she enrolled at Syracuse University, where she met her future husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman. Together, they published a short-lived literary magazine called The Spectre.

After graduating from Syracuse, the two got married and moved to New York City, where Jackson gave birth to the first of her four children. Soon after, in 1945, Hyman got a job teaching at Bennington College in Vermont. The family moved to North Bennington, a tiny, rural town that later became the setting for “The Lottery.” While Stanley taught, Jackson wrote. She penned a few offbeat stories for The New Yorker, but mostly she produced mainstream pieces for women’s periodicals such as Good Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal. After several years of living in Vermont, Jackson had another child and was carrying a third. From a distance, her life seemed tranquil and wholesome. But something darker was brewing inside.

On a sunny June day in 1948, while taking a long walk, that darkness emerged. Several months pregnant and pushing a baby carriage loaded with groceries, Jackson found the trip more difficult than she’d anticipated. The entire time, she couldn’t stop thinking about the book her husband had shown her on ancient rites of human sacrifice.

As soon as Jackson got home, she wrote the 3,378 words of “The Lottery.” It took her just two hours, and seemed to flow out of her nearly perfect. “Except for one or two minor corrections,” she remembered later, “It needed no changes.”

Her husband quickly recognized the story was genius, and Jackson sent it on to her editor at The New Yorker. Soon, her life would change.

THE RULES OF THE GAME

The tale begins pleasantly in a small, unnamed town. The day is “clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day,” and the people are gathering the square, children first. “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones,” we’re told -the first vague note of menace in the story. Soon, the adults arrive, joking, gossiping, and “speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes.” This is Everytown, USA, Jackson implies. But something is off. The villagers are piling up rocks.

Then the lottery begins. One by one, the head of each household draws a slip of paper from the box. Casual dialogue and deadpan description mask a building sense of danger. Only the occasional unexplained reference hints at the macabre. “Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn will be heavy soon,’” says Old Man Warner. It seems that whatever is taking place has been going on since time immemorial.

One of the townspeople, Bill Hutchinson, draws the unlucky slip of paper. Bill, his wife, and their three children must now draw from the box in turn. This time, Bill’s wife, Tessie, gets the marked paper. “All right, folks,” says Mr. Summers, the man in charge, “Let’s finish quickly.”

It’s only in the final short paragraphs of “The Lottery” that the story turns to outright horror. “The children had stones already,” Jackson writes. “And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles.” As the stones hit Tessie, she screams “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right.” The story ends with six infamous words: “And then they were upon her.”

WINNING THE LOTTERY

The editors at The New Yorker were taken aback when Jackson submitted “The Lottery,” but they also appreciated its literary virtues. In the end, the decision to accept it was one vote shy of unanimous.

The public wasn’t quite as accepting. People were outraged. The story’s reception came as a surprise to Jackson. But mostly, she was appalled by the readers who wanted to know where they could find a lottery to watch themselves.

Good or bad, “The Lottery” had everyone talking. Shirley Jackson had made a name for herself in fiction. Her publisher, Farrar Strauss, hurried to capitalize on the buzz by publishing a collection of her work, The Lottery and Other Stories. To promote the book, Strauss circulated rumors that Jackson had used voodoo to break the leg of publishing rival Alfred J. Knopf, billing her as a practicing witch. In truth, Jackson was known to dabble in mysticism and the occult. She read tarot cards and collected books on witchcraft and magic.

Today, the rumors surrounding Jackson’s life and the vitriol over her short story have been largely forgotten. What remains is “The Lottery” itself -the paradigm of a perfectly crafted narrative. While the tale begins on a sunny, summer day, it builds at a ferocious pace, from daydream to nightmare. The writing is tight and compelling, and the story is impossible to forget. As author Jonathon Lethem puts it, “It now resides in the popular imagination as an archetype.”

Just as those initial readers were drawn to the piece in spite of their indignation, generations of readers have since been simultaneously horrified and touched by the tale. Authors including Stephen King, Nigel Kneale, Richard Matheson, and Neil Gaiman all credit Shirley Jackson as a source of inspiration, and for decades, “The Lottery” has been taught in middle schools and high schools across America. As author A.M. Holmes pointed out, the story is introduced to students when they are “just waking up to the oddity of things, and the terror that is in everyday life.”

Until her death at the age of 48, Shirley Jackson kept writing short stories and novels, including The Haunting of Hill House (1959), which sparked multiple film versions. But it’s “The Lottery” for which she’s best known. The story has been adapted for radio, television, film, and even ballet. It’s been written about and dissected in countless theses, dissertation, and books. And its warnings about the danger of conformity are still relevant. “The Lottery” revealed an uncomfortable truth about the human psyche and, in doing so, became a classic piece of American literature.

(YouTube link)

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The article by Dan Saltzstein is reprinted from the January-February 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Subscribe today to get it delivered to you!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

UK’s Royal Mail released a new set of postage stamps this week featuring famous wizards, witches, and enchanters from legend and literature. The eight stamps depict Merlin, Morgan le Fay, Aslan, the White Witch, Nanny Ogg, Rincewind, Volemort, and Dumbledore. See them all in a gallery at The Guardian. Link -via The Daily What

Your knowledge of American literature will be sorely tested in today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. Eleven Americans have won the Nobel Prize for literature. You get to match their names with a statement that describes him or her. I only got five right, for a score of 45%. I am so ashamed. Link

A Study In Scarlet

The first Sherlock Holmes story may very well be one of the weirdest. It starts out with the apprehension of a double murder suspect in London. As he explains his motives for the killings, we are told about a man named John Ferrier and a young girl named Lucy, who are the sole survivors of a group of an ill-fated wagon train and are both dying of thirst. Fortunately, a band of Mormons led by Brigham Young comes by and offers to save them, as long as they agree to convert to Mormonism and come with the group to start a new “promised land.”

John adopts Lucy and while the two have happily converted to the Mormon way of life, he has secretly sworn to never let her marry a Mormon, where she will only be one of many wives. Years later, she falls in love with a traveling man named Jefferson Hope. The two are engaged and the wedding is planned to take place in three months, when Jefferson returns from a trip he must take for his job.

After Jefferson leaves, John is approached by Brigham Young who tells him Lucy must marry a Mormon. He says she can take a month to make her choice between two eligible men in the town. John sends for Jefferson to return and save Lucy. He arrives on the last day before she must make her choice and Lucy, John and Jefferson sneak away. While on the run, Jefferson leaves one day to hunt for food and returns to the camp to find John dead and Lucy missing. He returns to the town and discovers Lucy was forced to marry one of the two Mormon men. A month later, Lucy dies. Jefferson sneaks into the house the night before the funeral and removes her wedding ring. He then swears revenge, stalking the town and almost killing the two men many times.

The men flee to London, hoping to escape certain death, but Jefferson is able to track them down and kill them, which is where the story had begun. Jefferson is already dying and the night before his trial, he passes away, with a smile on his face.

Unsurprisingly, the Mormons of the time (and, I assume, modern Mormons as well) were not happy with their portrayal as murdering kidnappers. Conan Doyle publicly defended the story claiming that his story was completely based on fact, but his daughter claimed that he said many times that the story was filled with a number of errors about the Mormons and one of Brigham Young’s descendants claimed that Doyle privately apologized to the church.

The Man With The Twisted Lip

Sherlock Holmes cases are ripe with people living double lives, but in this case, the secret identity is more strange than criminal. Holmes is hired by a woman, Mrs. St. Clair, who claims her husband has disappeared, but she swears that after his disappearance, she saw him in the second story window of an opium den. When police search the building, they cannot find the husband, but they do discover a disfigured beggar in the room beside Mr. St. Clair’s clothes. His coat is then found outside, loaded with tons of pennies and halfpennies.

The beggar is arrested for Mr. St. Clair’s murder, but a few days later, the wife receives a letter from her husband in his handwriting. Sherlock then reconsiders the case and heads to the police station, where he uses a sponge to clean the beggar’s face, revealing that he is, indeed, Mr. St. Clair. The man then confesses that he used to work as a newspaper reporter and once had to go undercover as a beggar to get a story. During that time, he made a great amount of money and he realized he could make more money begging than working as a reporter (I think that’s still the case today), so he quit his job and started living a double life. If you thought middle class people pretending to be homeless so they can earn an easy living was a modern problem, this story should be a wake up call.

Interestingly, this story not only has a weird resolution, it also stands out from the rest of Sherlock Holmes tales in that no crime actually occurred and that Sherlock never explains how he solved the mystery –although the tale does give enough clues to explain itself.

The Adventure of the Three Garridebs

Think that getting contacted by people in other countries who tell you about your recent inheritance is a modern scam? As it turns out, this scam started long before the internet allowed us to get in touch with random strangers. In fact, the so-called “Nigerian scam” was used by an American man in the 1924 Sherlock Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Three Garridebs.”

In this tale, a man named Nathan Garrideb approaches Sherlock because he needs to find another man with the same name in order for him to obtain a $5,000,000 inheritance. He says that he has been contacted by an American man named John Garrideb who will inherit a $15,000,000 estate from Alexander Hamilton Garrideb, but in order to receive the fortune, the will stipulates that he must find two other men with the same surname and share the fortune with them equally. Because John couldn’t find anyone with that name in America, he has gone to England and has so far only found Nathan.

Sherlock soon learns that Nathan does not own anything particularly valuable. While he and Watson are visiting the house, John arrives with a newspaper advertisement that has been placed by Howard Garrideb. Notably, the ad is filled with a number of American spellings and phrases. John then insists that Nathan visit Birmingham to meet this Howard Garrideb.

The next day, Sherlock visits Scotland Yard and finds a photograph of John stating that his real name is James Winter and that he was previously charged with shooting a man in Chicago, but he was acquitted due to mitigating circumstances. The man John shot was a past occupant of Nathan Garrideb’s house. Sherlock then realizes that John was working to get John out of the house to look for something left by the previous occupant.

He and Watson return to the house where they find John breaking into a cellar. They arrest the thief, after he shoots at them, barely striking Watson, and discover the cellar housed a counterfeiting printing press. James Winter goes to jail and Nathan is so disappointed that he ends up in a nursing home shortly after the case ends.

This story is strikingly similar to another weird Sherlock Holmes tale, “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League,” where a pawn broker is hired for a job for the “Red-Headed League” based solely on how bright his hair color is. Sherlock quickly realizes the job is just a scam to get the man out of his regular office so cons can use his basement to break into the bank vault next door.

The Adventure of the Yellow Face

While Conan O’Doyle might have shown his religious bigotry in “A Study In Scarlet,” he shows a surprisingly progressive attitude towards racism in this tale. Sherlock is approached by a client named Grant Munro, who is suspicious of his wife. She was previously married in America, but the rest of her family died from yellow fever. She then moved to England and married Mr. Munro. The couple was extremely happy together until his wife asked him for a hundred pounds and begged him not to ask why. Shortly afterwards, she started sneaking away to a cottage near their home. Mr. Munro swore he saw someone with a yellow face in the window of the cottage, but after breaking in, he found the place empty. Strangely, the cottage was well-furnished and featured a portrait of his wife on the mantle.

At first, Holmes thinks it must be the woman’s first husband who has returned to England to blackmail her, but when they eventually break into the cabin together, they discover the yellow-faced person is wearing a yellow mask and underneath is a little black girl. As it turns out, the woman’s husband did die in America, but her half-black daughter did not. Because the wife was terrified that her new husband would not love her if he knew she was once married to a black man, she tried to keep the child a secret. When the husband discovers the truth though, he picks up the little girl, gives her a kiss and then holds his wife’s hand as they leave the cottage.

This story is unique for Sherlock Holmes stories in that there is no actual crime, no villain and Sherlock is absolutely wrong in his assumptions. Of course, it also is notable for having such a surprisingly anti-racist message for readers of 1893.

The Adventure of The Creeping Man

While modern crime investigation methods have progressed quite a bit since the Sherlock Holmes series took place, most of the stories are still good enough to hold up in today’s society. The Adventure of The Creeping Man may be one of the only Sherlock Holmes stories of that leaves us giggling about antiquated medical ideas.

In this tale, Holmes has been approached by the secretary and the daughter of a respected sixty-one year old professor who has recently become engaged to a much younger woman. Shortly after the engagement was announced, the professor left for two weeks without telling anyone where he went. His secretary, who opens all of the professor’s mail for him, was able to discover that the professor went to Prague.

Since his return, the professor started acting rather strange. He insisted the secretary not open any letters that arrive with a certain marking on the envelope. His faithful wolfhound suddenly turned on him and had to be tied up outside. His secretary also says that he once entered the professor’s room at night and saw him crawling on his hands and feet. The professor’s daughter says that she once saw him staring through her second-story bedroom window one night although they do not own any ladders at home. Despite this all, he is still quite lucid and has been able to maintain his teaching career without any issues.

Sherlock realizes the dog attacks occurred exactly nine days apart every time. He starts to reach a conclusion when the secretary says that he once angered the professor greatly when he picked up a box that the professor had brought back from Prague.

Given all the info, Holmes realizes that the professor has been taking some kind of a drug every nine days. He then makes the connection that the professor has been behaving like a monkey. He and Watson then come to the house on the night of the next drug dose and discover the man to be scampering on all fours, climbing up the side of the house and tormenting the dog. Eventually the dog gets loose and Holmes has to intervene to save the professor. While the professor is unconscious from the attack, Sherlock enters his study and discovers the drug along with a letter from a quack physician who has advised the professor to get his hands on a substance made from a lemur extract in order to help him be younger and more virile, since he is planning to marry a much younger woman. If only he had access to quality Viagra.

The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire

This tale begins when Sherlock is contacted by a man who says his wife has been sucking the blood from their baby’s neck. She was discovered with blood on her lips and the child had a wound on its neck. The wife has made no attempt to explain herself. According to her handmaiden, it has occurred more than once now and the child has been put under the custody of a nurse.

The client also has a fifteen year-old son from his first wife. While the second wife is ordinarily a kind woman, she beats her stepson. Sherlock immediately realizes what is going on, but insists on visiting the home before he makes any announcements.

When they arrive, Sherlock notices the South American weapons on display and he takes a look at the wounds on the baby’s neck. He then announces what happened, knowing that it is going to be a terrible blow to his client. He reveals that the oldest son is very jealous of his new brother –to the point where he has taken to shooting poisoned darts at the baby. The mother was sucking the blood from the baby’s neck to remove the poison and save the child, but she could not bear to tell the truth to her husband and break his heart. Holmes then suggests the older boy be sent off to sea for a year as punishment, although doesn’t really seem like a suitable solution for such a sociopathic person.

Sources: The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Wikipedia #1, #2

Do you have any favorite, slightly offbeat Sherlock Holmes tales, or stories from other sleuths? If so, share them in the comments.

“The telephone blasted Peter Fallow awake inside an egg with the shell peeled away and only the membranous sac holding it intact. Ah! The membranous sac was his head, and the right side of his head was on the pillow, and the yolk was as heavy as mercury, and it rolled like mercury, and it was pressing down on his right temple… If he tried to get up to answer the telephone, the yolk, the mercury, the poisoned mass, would shift and roll and rupture the sac, and his brains would fall out.” The fictional British journalist is reputed to be based on Christopher Hitchens

The slide show from The Guardian has more hangovers described poetically and painfully. Link -via Nag on the Lake

Mandy J. Watson took text from ten classic novels and generated word clouds in fonts and colors that portray the feeling of the novel. The results are pictures that are quite familiar to those who have read these works. In addition to The Wizard of Oz shown here, see Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, The Time Machine, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, and others. Link

To create this world within our world, Rowling had to do a lot of research into an array of mythologies and stories from all over the globe. She once explained, “children know that I didn’t invent unicorns, but I’ve had to explain frequently that I didn’t actually invent hippogriffs.” So what are some of the mythologies incorporated into her stories? Lets take a look, starting with those hippogriffs.

Hippogriffs:

Image via Ben Dodson [Flickr]

Fans of the series are undoubtedly familiar with Buckbeak, the hippogriff that Harry and Hermoine saved from execution, but as Rowling pointed out, many people don’t realize that hippogriffs have been around much longer than the book series. The creatures entered the public consciousness in medieval times, where they were said to be a cross between a griffin and a horse. The cross breed creature was said to be even stronger, faster and more intelligent than either of its parents and could travel as fast as lightening. Fortunately, they were said to be much easier to tame than griffins, which is why Buckbeak was so willing to be ridden in the novels.

Hippogriffs were exceptionally rare beasts, largely because griffins considered horses to be food. In fact, the concept was considered to be so outlandish that “to mate griffins with horses” was a similar expression to “when pigs fly.” For this reason, hippogriffs were considered a symbol not only of impossibility, but of intense love.

Grindylows:

Grindylows were one of the many dark creatures Harry had to face during his competition in the Triwizard Tournament. The nasty little creatures are known to live in the bottom of Hogwarts Lake and try to pull anyone who comes into their territory down to the bottom of the lake.

These creatures originally started being talked about in the English counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire, but their myth spread throughout England and Ireland, where they were used to scare children from pools, marshes and ponds in order to prevent drowning. Stories said that if a child came too close to the edge, the grindylows would grab them and pull them down to the water’s darkest depths.

Basilisks:

Image via Giovanni Dall’Orto [Wikipedia]

The basilisk that almost took down Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets was monstrously large, stretching almost 50 feet, and at least 50 years old. Rowling credits the creation of the basilisk to Herpo the Foul, who hatched a chicken egg under a toad.

Classic tales of basilisks vary quite a bit from those of the Harry Potter universe. While both of the creatures can kill with a single glance and are exceptionally poisonous, Rowling’s 50 foot serpent is quite a bit larger than traditional basilisks, which were no more than five feet long (although they seemed to get longer as the stories aged). Notably, the creation of a basilisk in classic stories is through a rooster hatching a toad egg, if a toad hatched a chicken egg, a cockatrice (a similar creature with wings) would be born.

Boggarts:

Rowling’s boggarts are entirely different from the boggarts of mythology. While Harry Potter’s boggarts are quiet terrifying, taking on the form of the victim’s worst fear, folklore tells of boggarts being more troublemaker than fearmonger. English tales of boggarts describe them as stealing things around the house, souring milk, ripping bedsheets from sleeping victims and tugging on people’s ears. It’s hardly the terrifying image of boggarts that require the “riddikulus” spell to conquer.

Dementors:

Image via San Diego Shooter [Flickr]

While Rawling claims to have had no inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings, it seems unlikely given certain similarities between the two epic tales. The Forbidden Forrest’s giant spider, Aragog, has a very similar personality to the spider of the Ephel Dúath Mountains, Shelob. Lord Sauron and Lord Voldemort also have quite a bit in common, to the extent that many characters of both stories refuse to use their name and are occasionally referred to as “The Dark Lord.” While the horcrux’s themselves are largely different than anything seen in Lord of the Rings, it is notable how the locket used as a horcrux is similar to the One Ring as it makes the wearer behave in a negative fashion.

One the most notable creature similarities is the way the dementors seem so similar to the Nazgul. Both are tall, thin hooded figures with faces that generally cannot be seen. Aside from their terrifying appearances, both of the creatures are said to affect those in contact with them by making them feel cold and scared. Prolonged contact with either creature can even result in unconsciousness filled with abhorrent nightmares.

Horcruxes:

Lord Voldemort has split his soul into seven parts with the use of horcruxes in an attempt to become immortal. Each fraction of his soul is held in a different magical item and the items must all be destroyed before he can die. This concept of immortality via the storage of the soul in an inanimate object is not Rowling’s, but a concept that originated in Slavic mythology in the tale of Koscei the Deathless.

Koscei evades death by trapping his soul in the eye of a magical needle, which is inside of an egg, inside of a duck, inside a hare, inside an iron chest buried under a great oak tree, on the magical island of Buyan. While Koscei does not have seven different horcruxes to protect his soul, the idea is that if the chest is ever opened, the hare will run away. If the hare is killed, the duck will try to fly away. If someone gets their hand on the egg though, they control Koschei and if they break the egg or the needle, he will die.

Liches:

Image via Wikipedia

Similarly, liches are sometimes said to be magicians who use spells to attach their soul to an object. After they die, they will continue to live as corpses until the object is destroyed. In many stories, they also have armies of slaves and servants similar to the Dark Lord. The fact that Voldemort doesn’t look entirely human indicates that he may be a lich.

The Philosopher’s Stone:

The first novel of the series was released as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. But when the book was set to be released in America, Rowling was asked to change the title and all references to the stone to the “Sorcerer’s Stone” because publishers worried American children wouldn’t want to read a book with the word “Philosopher” in the title. Unfortunately, changing this word didn’t just affect the book title, it also made the novel lose the connection between a legendary part of alchemy and the Harry Potter book.

Many readers don’t realize that the philosopher’s stone and its creator Nicholas Flamel (also mentioned in the book) are not just figments of Rowling’s imagination. The stone is said to be able to turn metals into gold and silver and to help create an elixir of life that could keep someone alive forever. Even Sir Isaac Newton tried to uncover the secret to creating the stone during his lifetime.

Flamel’s actual biography is questionable. He died in the 1400’s, but it wasn’t until the 1600’s that a book was published connecting him to the philosopher’s stone and other alchemy-related quests. He was known to be a manuscript-seller and his posthumous biography claimed this is where he had run across a mysterious 21-page book that he was told was a copy of the original Book of Abraham the Mage. Stories say that he and his wife then worked to translate the book, which taught them how to make the Philosopher’s stone. While some critics doubt that this story, there is little doubt that Flamel has some interest in alchemy, as he designed his own tombstone, which was adorned with alchemical signs and symbols.

While Flamel and his wife both lived into their eighties, many stories claim they are still alive thanks to the stone. In Harry Potter, the couple survived until the 1990s, living over 600 years.

Are you a fan of Harry Potter? Are you going to see the film when it comes out?

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11 (And of course, the books themselves)

4.) Scarlett O’Hara

Gone With the Wind

Author: Margaret Mitchell

For every fan who finds Scarlett O’Hara romantic and admirable, there is another who thinks her a selfish, altogether loathsome figure with few redeeming qualities.

48.) Melanie Hamilton Wilkes

Gone With the Wind

Author: Margaret Mitchell

Along with chief romantic rival Scarlett O’Hara, Melanie Hamilton Wilkes garners quite a bit of hatred as well. Many readers think of her as far too perfect to be relatable, insufferable at worst and boring at best.

Which literary characters do you really dislike? Link -via Interesting Pile

We’re thrilled to announce a new sub-blog we’re launching today, BitLit. Bit, as in binary digits, Lit, as in literature! As far as we know, this is unique to the blogosphere in that we’ll be serializing entire novels and short stories—even some poetry, many published by major publishers like Random House. Every day, a new chapter until the entire story is complete.

Plus, we’ll be interviewing authors and having contests to give away free, autographed copies of their books!

Today, we launch with three stories:

The first is an amazing short story called Nomen Ludi by Rob Beschizza, our pal over at boingboing. If you’re a fan of old computer games, like those created for the Amstrad CPC, if you love that kind of nostalgia, you’re going to love this one. You can read the entire story right here.

Next, we present the critically acclaimed, Frostbite, by David Wellington. Nipped by a wolf during an Arctic camping expedition, Cheyenne Clark suddenly finds herself feeling ferally frisky when the moon is up in Wellington’s far from routine werewolf tale. It turns out that Monty Powell, the loner who gives Chey refuge, is no ordinary guy, but the werewolf who turned her. But then Chey is no ordinary camper: she was sent to draw Monty out by a band of professional hunters who want the oil beneath the vast acreage Monty prowls—and to avenge the death of her father, whom Monty coincidentally slaughtered two decades before. Check out chapter 1 right here.

Finally, a novel that our own David K. Israel co-penned with author Jennifer Byrne called Trivial Pursuits, a novel that follows two protagonists as they try to come to grips with loss. Fareed is a 15-year-old Druze boy living in an RV cruising around Los Angeles with his father and trying to land a spot on the Jeopardy! Teen-tour. His world soon collides with Eos, an older girl who he quickly befriends and who is able to help him accept his mother’s death. Meanwhile Amy, who lives miles away in the Valley, is trying to deal with the loss of her infant-daughter. She relies on the help of an extra-marital lesbian affair that might quite possibly be her undoing. Start with Chapter 1, right here.

So you get a henchman. But you can’t just let him out there all alone. It’s a big dark scary world, and he barely even has a name, much less any characterization! He needs a buddy.

Bonus points if the buddy is the physical opposite of the other, skinny where he is fat, or short where he is tall. Extra bonus points if you can use them as stand-ins to personify a much larger fighting force.

Often they are the funniest part of the story, and certainly have more personality than the evil overlord they work for. Revisit some of your favorites in this expandable list from Geekosystem. Link

Etsy artist Chet Phillips has created a set of dogs and cats as famous authors. Or are they famous authors portrayed as cats and dogs? Anyway, these Literary Pets are sold as prints or sets of trading cards. Shown are H.P. Lovecat and Spaniel Defoe. Link

The flux capacitor, the core component of a machine that allowed Brown to travel through time. Brown came up with the idea of the capacitor on November 5, 1955, and worked tirelessly for the next 30 years developing it into a working time machine. The capacitor, which requires 1.21 Gigawatts of electrical power to function, was first implemented in a customized DeLorean and later, or maybe earlier?, in a 19th century train.

Link

1. June 16, 1904. 8:00 a.m. Stephen Dedalus, a young schoolteacher, speaks to his friend, “stately, plump” Buck Mulligan, in the disused watchtower on the Liffey where they live.

James Joyce’s Ulysses dummified. The convoluted novel is reduced to 18 captioned cartoons.

Link – via Coudal Partners

The flesh-eating reanimated dead exist in ancient writings, in folklore, in news accounts, and in movies. What is it about these creatures that captures our imagination?

Representations of the flesh-hungry undead have been common throughout world mythology. While this includes the deformed and cannibalistic, though still living, ghoul and the blood draining vampire, the zombie in its more common, modern form has appeared in tales dating all the way back to 1000 BC. The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest known works of literature, which was recorded on twelve clay tablets, written in Mesopotamia, now modern day Iraq. Like most epics it records a struggle between a hero, Gilgamesh, and the Gods, as he undertakes quests which displease his spiritual overlords. It is in the sixth tablet that the zombie is alluded to when the Goddess Ishtar threatens to raise the dead who will outnumber and devour the living. The dead do not actually rise in the epic; however it is the first overt mention in recorded literature of the zombie we know today.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by vedran84.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is now studied in schools across the world. Time magazine ranked it as one of the top 100 English-language novels ever written. The book has sold more than 14.5 million copies since it was first published in 1954. And Golding won a Nobel Prize for Literature largely based on this particular work. So I bet the guy who read the original manuscript for it and declared it, “An absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull” spent much of his career regretting his words.

The same could be said about George Orwell’s Animal Farm. It also made Time’s list of best English-language books ever written, ranked in at #31 on the Modern Library’s List of Best 20th-Century Novels, and won retrospective Hugo award in 1996. But not only was Orwell’s classic written off (and completely misunderstood) by a publisher who noted, “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA,” Orwell’s peer and good friend T.S. Eliot was also less than impressed. Orwell sent a draft to Eliot, who responded that the writing was good, but the view was “not convincing” and that publishers would only accept the book if they had personal sympathy for the “Trotskyite” viewpoint.

Moving on to a modern classic, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Plenty of publishers took a gander at the Chosen One and decided not to choose him, including bigwigs like Penguin and HarperCollins. Jo Rowling finally decided to try a small London firm called Bloomsbury, who accepted only after the CEO’s eight-year-old daughter read the book and declared it a winner. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about all of the accolades and great commercial success that followed nearly immediately.

I’m not a big fan of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books myself, but there’s obviously an audience out there – there are now more than 105 titles under the Chicken Soup heading (including Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul), they’ve been translated into 54 languages and there are more than 100 million copies in print. Who would have ever guessed that the book was turned down 33 times in a row before it found a willing publisher? Among the 33 rejections included gems like, “anthologies don’t sell,” and “too positive.”

Some authors like to get their digs in at the publishers who told them they were not marketable. e.e. Cummings, for example, couldn’t find a publisher for 70 Poems, so he borrowed $300 from his mom and printed it himself. But he got his digs in when he wrote a “poem” called “No Thanks,” arranged it to look like a funerary urn, and put it on the dedication page of 70 Poems. The “poem” consisted entirely of the publishers that had rejected him, including Simon & Schuster, Harcourt, Random House, Viking Press and Scribner.

Gone With the Wind – one of the most enduring novels and movies of all time, of course. There aren’t too many people who haven’t heard the phrase, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” But it was 38 publishers who didn’t give a damn originally. When Margaret Mitchell finally found a publisher in Macmillan (Macmillan also published White Fang and Call of the Wild), the book sold in stores for $3 apiece – quite a sum for 1936. Even at this rather high price point, the book sold more than one million copies by the end of the year. It won the Pulitzer Prize the following year, and of course became an Academy Award-winning film in 1939.

“His frenetic and scrambled prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so,” is what one publisher said about Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. After it came out in 1957, The New York Times wrote a review that basically stated the exact opposite opinion: “The most beautifully executed, the clearest and most important utterance” of the generation. At least one author agreed with the rejector’s assessment of the novel, though: Truman Capote, who said of Kerouac’s work, “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”

It was actually thanks to a critic that Norman Bridwell finally got published. The author of Clifford the Big Red Dog had tried multiple publishers and was told repeatedly that his dog pictures were boring and unoriginal. One editor finally told him to create a story to go along with his illustrations in hopes that the story might spark a little more interest. So he did, and less than a month later, Scholastic Books sent Bridwell a contract to publish everyone’s favorite house-sized dog.

There aren’t many teenage girls who haven’t read at least one or two Judy Blume books. But according to Blume herself, she received nothing but rejections for about two years straight. Remember Highlights for Children magazine? She repeatedly tried to get pieces published with them; they liked to send back a form letter with all of the reasons checked as to why she was rejected. “Does not win in competition with others,” was always one of the reasons. Blume says she still can’t look at Highlights without wincing.

There have always been movies that put a clever spin on a fairy tale to make it creepy and dark. But most of the famous fairy tales we all know were fairly horrifying in their original versions. One of the seven tales is Little Red Riding Hood.

This classic went through a few revisions before it became the staple of bedtime stories around the world. In the bloodiest version, there is no hunter that saves the day and the evil wolf is actually a werewolf (but not the type to fall in love with.) After killing and dressing himself up as grandmother, the werewolf feeds bits and pieces of the deceased to Red Riding Hood. Eventually she sees through the disguise and finds a way to escape. But it’s pretty safe to say that Red Riding Hood probably had some issues to deal with after that incident.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by bohchris.

I am a fourteen year old boy and am a low Junior in High School. Today at school our teacher was discussing “good literature.” I asked if Edgar Rice Burroughs was all right for a book report. I knew she’d say “no” (teachers always do) but I didn’t expect her to lecture to the class for the whole period about how terrible your books were!

The author of the Tarzan novels wrote back, in part:

My stories will do you no harm. If they have helped to inculcate in you a love of books, they have done you much good. No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.

Which explains why I bought the Twilight books for my youngest daughter. The 14-year-old boy who wrote the letter was Forrest J. Ackerman, {wiki} who grew up to coin the term “sci-fi”. Ackerman was a film producer, actor, and the editor of the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, and made a name as the biggest science fiction fan ever. Read both letters in full at Letters of Note. Link

It’s no real surprise that Wikipedia has a thorough list of these, but it’s interesting to parse through the many, and find a neat collection of songs and albums that were based on, or influenced by books.  Led Zeppelin has a scatological lyric library referencing JRR Tolkien, but let’s see what else is out there.

13. Alan Parson’s Project – The album is called Tales of Mystery and Imagination, and includes interpretations of  Edgar Allen Poe’s best, like “The Raven”, “Dr. Tar and Professor Feather”, and “The Cask of Amontillado.”  Here’s the awesome “Dream Within A Dream” video.  Also by Parsons: “I, Robot” (Isaac Asimov).

12. Rivendell (Rush) – A quiet, thematic representation of the Elf version of a Bed & Breakfast. (Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, of course.)

11. 2112 (Rush) - Side one* is loosely based on Anthem by Ayn Rand.

10. For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica) - Based on the classic by Ernest Hemingway.

9. The Thing That Should Not Be and The Call of Cthulu (Metallica) - These guys really let good classic fiction influence their songwriting.  We get not one, but two songs in honor of H.P. Lovecraft’s best character.  Also by Metallica: “One”, based on the book Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

8. The Small Print (Muse) - “clearly alluding to Goethe’s Faust, being sung from the point of view of the Devil to someone selling their soul to him in exchange for, presumably, musical prowess and fame…” source

7. Anthrax Loves Stephen King - As do a lot of bands like Pennywise (It).  But Anthrax named one of their best albums Among the Living after King’s character Randall Flagg in The Stand.  They also penned a song called “Skeleton in the Closet” based on King’s “Apt Pupil”.

6. Tom Sawyer (Rush) - Wow, Rush.  Even “Red Barchetta” is based on a vague book called A Nice Morning Drive by Richard S. Foster.  At least Tom Sawyer is pretty well known both as a song and a book.  Who can resist the urge to sing along when Geddy Lee croons, “The River!”

5. Tales of Brave Ulysses (Cream) - Psychedelically sums up all you need to know about all the ins and outs of Homer’s The Odyssey.  And I quote, “Tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers…”  (This was actually a lyric inspired by lyricist Martin Sharp’s travels in Ibiza.)  But the Sirens are there, so that’s cool.

4. The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen) - Based on The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.  Henry Fonda and Bruce Springsteen would have had some cool conversations, I bet.

3. White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane) -Based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.  Here’s a nice rendition of that song.

YouTube Link

2. Animals (Pink Floyd) - It never actually occurred to me before, but an argument can be made that the Animals album, with it’s corrupt pigs (be they on the wing, or three different ones), dogs and sheep, political overtones…  Yeah, it’s definitely based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

1. Iron Maiden (Pretty much every song of theirs, ever) - At least a heavy handful.  These Brit bad boys of metal must have had some scratched up library cards.  Their adaptations include:

• Seventh Son, by Orson Scott Card (on the 7th Son of a 7th Son album, including all songs)
• Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
• Flight of Icarus (Mythology)
• The Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Alan Sillitoe)
• Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert A. Heinlen)
• To Tame a Land (Dune, Frank Herbert)
• The Trooper (The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Tennyson)
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
• Murders in the Rue Morgue (Edgar Allen Poe)

On second thought, an honorable mention should be made for Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore”, as it pretty much describes the Battle of Pellennor Fields in The Return of the King.

(Iron Maiden illustration by Ado Cedric & Tio Julio.)
*For help with determining what this means, ask a grownup.

In honor of the book’s 30^th anniversary, which took place earlier this month, Neatorama is presenting you a collection of facts related to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy. Whether you’ve read the book, heard the radio broadcasts, seen the movie or seen the TV show, there’s certainly something here you don’t know yet.

What’s In A Name?

Fans often abbreviate The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy as HHGTTG, but Adams uses the abbreviation of H2G2, which is also used on the official BBC online guide. Other nicknames can include “The Hitchhiker’s Guide,” “The Guide” or “Hitchhiker’s.” To make matters more confusing, when people use the full name, they are sometimes referring to the series and sometimes referring to the fictional book the series was named after. Just to ensure you’re entirely confused I plan to use all of the names in this article.

Image Via Nicholas “Lord Gordon” [Flickr]

It’s As Multimedia As You Can Get

Fans of the series might know that the Guide started as a radio series (which technically makes H2G2 31 years old, since the first broadcast was 1978), which quickly spawned a series of 5 books, a TV show and a movie, but you may not know there were also a number of stage shows, a comic book adaptation and a computer game based on Hitchhiker’s. There was even a series of towels released with towel part of the first novel, which some fans consider to be the “official version” of the book (if you aren’t familiar with the works, then you may not know how important towels can be).

In other works, these adaptations would end up being watered-down, mediocre versions of the original that don’t reflect the artist’s actual vision. Fortunately, most of the adaptations involved with the HHGTTG were done by Douglas Adams himself.

Time To Celebrate

The H2G2 has even spawned its own holiday. May 25 in Towel Day. Towels are, after all, one of the most important things an interstellar traveler can have with them at any time. If you’re wondering how to celebrate Towel Day – why, just bring a towel with you all day, of course! There are even two sites dedicated to Towel Day, the countdown site, IsItTowelDay.com, and the informational site, TowelDay.org. Here at Neatorama, we’ve even covered towel day twice before.

Image Via JenT [Flickr]

In The Beginning, There Was Destruction

As mentioned above, the first incarnations of the Guide were in radio form. The first series actually was originally going to be called “The Ends of the Earth,” which was to be a six-part radio series. In each of the episodes, the story would end when the world ended – each time in a different way.

When Adams started writing the first episode, he realized he needed an alien there to provide context and the alien needed a reason to be on Earth. In coming up with this reason, he finally decided to have the alien be a researcher for a “wholly remarkable book,” which would be known as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Eventually, the story ended up focusing on the book, which started up the whole crazy phenomenon.

Later on, Adams claimed that he had already came up with the idea of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” while hitchhiking through Europe in his youth.

Image Via Adam Foster Codefor [Flickr]

Sounds Good To Me

The series is notable for being the first BBC radio program to be produced in stereo and later in Dolby surround sound. Adams claimed he wanted the program’s production to be comparable to that of a rock album, and as a result, a lot of the program’s budget went towards sound effects.

Speaking of rock music, the tune used on the radio, television, LP and film versions was “Journey of the Sorcerer,” an instrumental Eagles’ song from the album One of These Nights.

The World’s Most Inaccurate Trilogy Series

The novels were originally released as a trilogy, but then Adams came out with So Long, And Thanks for All The Fish, making the books “a trilogy in four parts.” Then he released Mostly Harmless and the series became “a trilogy in five parts,” the cover of which advertised itself as “The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Trilogy.” The blurb on the book went on to say, “the book that gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘trilogy.’”

At this point, fans continued to be hopeful that the series would eventually become “a trilogy in six parts,” but Adams died of a heart attack in 2001 before a sixth book was finished. Before he passed though, he had hinted that the newest novel he was working on, The Salmon of Doubt, may have been this sixth book. He said in an interview that Mostly Harmless was “very bleak” and that he would love to finish the “trilogy” on a “slightly more upbeat note.”

Image Via Jenbooks [Flickr]

Inspired Inspirations

It’s only natural that any phenomenon as big as the Guide would have inspired some other works – of course, these works are particularly off-the-wall, just like the work that inspired them. Monty Python member Terry Jones actually wrote a novel, Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic, based on Adam’s computer game, “Starship Titanic,” which was based on an idea in Life, the Universe and Everything.

In 2005, Michael Hanlon published The Science of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy, which covered important topics such as the Babel fish, parallel universes and space tourism.

Remember Your Memorabilia

There was tons of merchandise made for Hitchhiker’s over the years. Some of the favorite memorabilia items, as mentioned above, were towels with the Guide’s entry for towels. Then there were the singles released by Stephen Moore sung in the character of Marvin, the Paranoid Android, “Marvin,” Metal Man,” Reasons To Be Miserable,” and “Marvin I Love You.” My favorite though, was the “Beeblebear,” a teddy bear with an extra arm and head like Zaphod Beeblebox.

Image Via ZoeARP [Flickr]

Sources #1, #2, #3

“The whole point is that the boy has to go away from his childhood, from this very idyllic pastoral world of his childhood,” she said. “This is an absolutely perfect ending, and doing anything beyond this is pointless.”

The trustees of the estate believe the sequel will be true to the original…

“The good professor and other great lovers of Pooh will have to form their own conclusions,” Brown said. “And they may say, ‘oh, it’s not quite as good, it’s not quite the same.’ I can’t help that. All I can say is we tried very hard to do something that’s not offensive, shall we say.”

Jennifer Quinn of the AP has more details at the StarTribune.  The BBC has a writeup on a new character – Lottie the Otter – created for the sequel.  And The Guardian makes note in passing of the possibility that Pooh may have had OCD.

Image credit: Wikipedia.

One well-known author recorded “ideas, images, & quotations hastily jotted down for possible future use… for the most part they are merely suggestions or random impressions designed to set the memory or imagination working. Their sources are various—dreams, things read, casual incidents, idle conceptions, & so on…”

In order to keep his/her identity secret for the few moments it will take you to peruse this post, we’ll use for a photo the family grouping at left without saying which one he/she is.

In 1934 the author presented the notebook to an R.H. Barlow “in exchange for an admirably neat typed copy from his skilled hand.”  Several hundred selections from this commonplace book have been assembled at La Petite Claudine.  I’ve winnowed the list down to just a dozen.  Aficionados will recognize the writer immediately and can access the rest of the material at the link.

8 Hor. Sto. – Man makes appt. with old enemy. Dies—body keeps appt.

31 Prehistoric man preserved in Siberian ice. (See Winchell—Walks and Talks in the Geological field—p. 156 et seq.)

34 Moving away from earth more swiftly than light—past gradually unfolded—horrible revelation.

76 Ancient cathedral—hideous gargoyle—man seeks to rob—found dead—gargoyle’s jaw bloody.

88 Lonely philosopher fond of cat. Hypnotises it—as it were—by repeatedly talking to it and looking at it. After his death the cat evinces signs of possessing his personality. N.B. He has trained cat, and leaves it to a friend, with instructions as to fitting a pen to its right fore paw by means of a harness. Later writes with deceased’s own handwriting.

106 A thing that sat on a sleeper’s chest. Gone in morning, but something left behind.

112 Man lives near graveyard—how does he live? Eats no food.

131 Phosphorescence of decaying wood—called in New England “fox-fire”.

142 Members of witch-cult were buried face downward. Man investigates ancestor in family tomb and finds disquieting condition.

182 In ancient buried city a man finds a mouldering prehistoric document in English and in his own handwriting, telling an incredible tale. Voyage from present into past implied. Possible actualisation of this.

190 Primal mummy in museum—awakes and changes place with visitor.

217 Ancient (Roman? prehistoric?) stone bridge washed away by a (sudden and curious?) storm. Something liberated which had been sealed up in the masonry of years ago. Things happen.

Link. Photo via Chepachit.com.

His masterpiece, The Language of the Beard, an epicurean treat confected for the delectation of fellow bon vivants, vaunts the premise that the texture, contours, and growth patterns of a man’s beard indicate personality traits, aptitudes, and strengths and weaknesses of character. A spade beard, according to Underwood’s theories, may denote audacity and resolution, for example, while a forked, finely-downed beard signifies creativity and the gift of intuition, a bushy beard suggests generosity, and so on.

See 15 poets and their beards described and rated. Pictured is the highly-rated beard of Sidney Lanier. Link -Thanks, peacay!

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.

Yes, that’s right, just what you always wanted… apocalyptic horror in your Austen.

I know I’ll be ordering one for every middle school student I know.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

Link Updated Link

From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by knitmeapony.

Update 1/26/09 – Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is written by Seth Grahame-Smith (and of course, Jane Austen) and published by Quirk Books (not Chronicle Books). By Quirk Book’s request, here is the book’s Amazon page: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – Thanks Melissa Monachello!

The Zeray Gazette blog has the list (of which I reprinted the top 10) and I’m sad to say that I’ve only read 4 of these:

1. (1922) Ulysses James Joyce
2. (1925) The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. (1916) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
4. (1955) Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
5. (1932) Brave New World Aldous Huxley
6. (1929) The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
7. (1961) Catch-22 Joseph Heller
8. (1940) Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler
9. (1913) Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence
10. (1939) The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck

How many of the 10 (and 100) have you read? And what’s missing from the list? Link