Odyssey Online

Lou Reed died over the weekend.  Reed certainly attained a culturally iconic status, such that his death makes one pause (and makes me think how he figures into the living breathing collection at ODY).  The Daily Beast has a nice “set list” of music and performances by Reed on the open web, and here is a juke box of titles by and about Reed in our collection:

• The Raven lyrics and text by Lou Reed with photographs by Julian Schnabel
• All Yesterdays’ Parties : the Velvet Underground in Print 1966-1971 edited by Clinton Heylin
• Mainlines, Blood feasts, and Bad Taste : a Lester Bangs Reader edited by John Morthland
• The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry edited by Alan Kaufman
• Bob Dylan: Writings 1968-2010 by Greil Marcus
• Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock & Roll by Mikal Gilmore

On Tuesday of this week The Guardian published a transcription of a lecture by writer Neil Gaiman on the topic of reading and libraries.  It is long, it is aimed at a British audience, but it is also an impassioned defense of reading fiction and of libraries.  There are many quotable passages in the lecture, among them:

But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information.

Toward the end of the lecture Gaiman makes the case for a responsible citizens “obligation to day dream.” A wonderful weekend read…

The American Shakespeare Center is making it’s annual visit to St. Lawrence, presenting Henry IV Part I, Othello, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Thusly it’s time to publish our annual selection of notable new materials we’ve acquired, both those new editions of the plays, and new books about Shakespeare.

• Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, edited by John D. Cox
• As You Like It by William Shakespeare, edited by David Bevington
• Richard II: New Critical Essays edited by Jeremy Lopez
• The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer
• The Truth about William Shakespeare: Fact, Fiction and Modern Biographies by David Ellis
• Intimacy and Sexuality in the Age of Shakespeare by James M. Bromley
• Shakespeare and the Apocalypse: Visions of Doom from Early Modern Tragedy to Popular Culture by R.M. Christofides
• Forgiving the Gift: the Philosophy of Generosity in Shakespeare and Marlowe by Sean Lawrence
• Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century edited by Fiona Ritchie and Peter Sabor
• Shakespeare and I edited by William McKenzie and Theodora Papadopoulou

The shut down of the United States Federal Government has shut down the Library of Congress (arguably the cultural gem of the nation).  Web sites associated with the Smithsonian are functional, through the museum is closed. More the implications of the shut down as they become clear–an overview of what is and is not open is available from Firstgov.gov.