“What Kafka is to imprisonment and Beckett is to waiting, Schulz is to trash. Not just trash, but stuff — detritus, objects, substances, matter in all its welter and confusion. The whole spectrum of useless, obsolete junk that fills every corner of the world is present and animate in his work — but why?”

Rumpus contributor Jacob Mikanowski explores the role of decay in Polish author Bruno Schulz’s fiction, and finds parallels in the photography of Czech Surrealist Jindřich Štyrský.