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!…
-

Embassytown
China Miéville’s latest genre-bending book, Embassytown, unites science fiction and heady wordplay in a universe literally constituted by language.
-

FUNNY 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A judge decides that Kafka’s safe deposit box, which contains an unpublished short story, will be released instead of destroyed, as was stated in his will.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…
-

June 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…
-

Morning 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…
-

Bait and Switch
Like a well-planned itinerary, the blueprints of James Lasdun’s stories are thoughtfully delineated, and each step feels purposeful and sure.
-

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…
-

War 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.