Posts Tagged: kafka
LONELY VOICE #18: Kafka the Dad (Part Three of Five Stray Thoughts on Kafka)
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.
LONELY VOICE #17: In Love Again and Doomed (Part Two of Five Stray Thoughts on Kafka)
My lung was fair at least out there, here where I’ve been for the last fortnight. I’ve not been able to see the doctor. But it can’t be so bad considering for instance that I was able – holy vanity! – to chop for an hour and more without getting tired, and yet was happy, for moments.
...moreKafka-ish
Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis is being adapted into a “fresh modern horror” film of the same name.
Shooting for the movie is beginning next month, but these things are already true: the traveling salesman Gregor Samsa will be a high-school teenager in the movie version, he transforms into a cockroach (not a beetle), and it all happens within the setting of an American suburb.
...moreEmbassytown
China Miéville’s latest genre-bending book, Embassytown, unites science fiction and heady wordplay in a universe literally constituted by language.
...moreFUNNY WOMEN #45: One-Handed Reading
Loads of people have slept with authors or well-read individuals, but what would it be like to sleep with a book?
The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
A judge decides that Kafka’s safe deposit box, which contains an unpublished short story, will be released instead of destroyed, as was stated in his will.
“Some things you just shouldn’t put in your head.” At The Morning News, one star reviews of literary classics.
...moreJune is Novella Month
How’s this for a definition of novella: “a novella, I think, looks through the narrow lens of a short story, and with a short story’s intense focus, at a small, precise part of the world, but it treats what’s within that lens with a novel’s generosity and care.”
Jacket Copy talks about novella-writing month.
...moreMorning Coffee
OMG new dinosaur!!! (which helps solve evolutionary mysteries of the t-rex, or something, whatever).
The History of Jobs in America (a graph).
“On the asking of favors from established writers.”
I’ve often wondered what the internet and digital technolgy has done to the experiencing of stumbling upon things you’ve forgotten about.
...moreBait and Switch
Like a well-planned itinerary, the blueprints of James Lasdun’s stories are thoughtfully delineated, and each step feels purposeful and sure.
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An Old Review of Kafka’s Love Letters
“Freely pouring his emotions into the letters, Kafka is, by turns, passionate ['I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough'], self-deprecating ['my energies have always been pitifully weak'], possessive ['I am jealous of all the people in your letter, those named and those unnamed, men and girls, business people and writers'] and downright bossy ['Please answer all these questions in great detail'].” –Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Letters, by Michiko Kakutani, published Saturday, April 2, 1988
...moreWar Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery
With echoes of 9/11, the protagonist of Jim Knipfel’s novel flees the ubiquitous surveillance of a not-so-futuristic government.
...moreA New Way of Understanding Kafka
Amerika, Kafka’s least read and least written about novel, is being released in a new translation. Adam Kirsch says the difference becomes clear in the very first paragraph.
The Daily Routines of Writers
From Daily Routines: (via Ted Weinstein)
Kafka: Kafka despaired of his twelve-hour shifts that left no time for writing; two years later, promoted to the position of chief clerk at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute, he was now on the one-shift system, 8:30 AM until 2:30 PM.
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