The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
In an essay called “The I Without a Self,” W.H. Auden tells us about a rumor “which if true might have occurred in a Kafka story.” That is that Kafka, without knowing it, fathered a child.
I’m midway through teaching a course at Antioch University Seattle called Unreal Fiction and Film. Every week we pair a film or selection of shorts with a short story. The class is scheduled from 7-10 PM on Mondays, a brutal slot, but every week I’ve left invigorated by the discussion.
...moreSomeone bought Agatha Christie’s old “battered” trunk for a hundred quid at auction, and in it, she found some jewels, most likely from the great mystery writer’s infamous collection. (via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind)
Someone made a font out of Franz Kafka’s handwriting!
...moreAllison Flood at the Guardian has dug up an article from the journal Psychological Science showing that reading surrealism may actually make people smarter.
In the study, some subjects were given Kafka’s “A Country Doctor,” and others were given a rewrite of that story that “made more sense.” Those who read Kafka did better in the test researchers gave afterwards, a test that asked people to find patterns in strings of letters.
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