What to Read When You Want to Reclaim Your Time
Books that center us and offer new perspectives.
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Posts Tagged: Franz Kafka
Finding Kafka
Was Franz Kafka really a tortured neurotic writer? A new biography shows a different side of the surreal German writer: He loved beer and slapstick. He undertook a fitness regime popularized by a Danish exercise guru. He tried to cheat on his high-school exams. He used his desk as a metaphor for self-parody and waxed lyrical […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Jeff VanderMeer
Jeff VanderMeer discusses the environment, his childhood, and the conception and conclusion of his Southern Reach Trilogy.
...moreThe Partisan Review, Digitized
The Partisan Review, printed from 1934 to 2004, marked 69 years of cultural history in the US, with notable contributors such as Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, Allen Ginsberg, Franz Kafka, Doris Lessing, George Orwell, Marge Piercy, Jean-Paul Sartre, Roger Shattuck, Susan Sontag, William Styron, Lionel Trilling, and Robert Penn Warren. Its whole archive […]
...moreGregor Samsa Dreams of RoboCop
Susan Bernofsky, in the introduction to her new translation of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, compares Gregor Samsa to famed American literary character Willy Loman. Over at the LA Review of Books, David Burr Gerrard praises the translation but disagrees that this is the character with whom Gregor has most in common: Perhaps the troubled dreams from which […]
...moreLONELY 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.
...moreThe Eyeball #40: Unreal Fiction and Film, Part 1
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. While recognizing that the very […]
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
Someone 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! The post is in German, but even if you don’t speak the language, […]
...moreThe Surreal Makes You Smarter
Allison 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 […]
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