literature
I think there’s often an elephant in the room in discussions of Kafka, which is the fact that we may like his work more than we otherwise would because he has this personal mystique, he’s this platonic ideal of what[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I don’t know how much sense it makes outside my head that I should be in a large box because my novel needs work. It makes perfect sense to me. Much as it makes perfect sense that Kafka, if left[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The only Czech I ever knew personally was my uncle Yaacov, who hadn’t lived in Czechoslovakia (which is still what it was when he was born there) since he was a teenager, and who never, as far as I can[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Ask the Internet to show you pictures of Kafka’s grave and you’ll get six Kafkas for the price of one: Franz and his parents Julie and Hermann, who survived him, are all stacked in the same plot, much as Franz[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Franz Kafka looked nothing like his father Hermann, a fleshy, forceful businessman. In looks as in personality he favored his mother’s family, though Julie Kafka’s features were not quite as sharp, not to say rodenty, as her son’s, nor did[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Another joke that may work only in my head, in reference to Kafka’s day job at an insurance agency. I like to think it was a wacky workplace where sitcom-worthy situations arose regularly, but I don’t think Czech insurance offices[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I don’t quite know why I find the phrase he’s not strong so delightful. Partially it’s the recollection of the episode of Ren and Stimpy in which Stimpy piously asks God to “please watch out for my best pal, Ren.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
So far I’ve mostly drawn Kafka looking alarmed or terrified or otherwise incapable of dealing with human existence, but he was a funny guy too — you can’t be all that serious when you’re writing a story about a guy[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…