This French version of Kafka, this cross between Pascal and Orwell remains unclassifiable. She is intellectually stateless, prophet without any country in which she can be sure of honor. A Catholic Jewess who criticized impeccably…
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and ReflectionsEdited by Hannah ArendtSchocken Books, 1988 The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that “the state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We…
Marcel Proust, Selected Letters, volume 4: 1918-1922 Edited by Philip Kolb, translated and with an introduction for Joanna Kilmartin Months ago, I read volume 4 of Proust’s selected letters translated into English. As the Buddhists…
But then I think What do these awards mean They gotta serve somebody I’ve checked the libraries It’s her only book On this—or any— subject Why should the luminaries and guardians honor her Which is…
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading…
I am looking, as I write of Kafka, at the photograph taken of him at the age of forty (my age)—it is 1924, as sweet and hopeful a year as he may ever have known…
The marvelous thing is that the bareness brought him not to self-denial or self-hatred but rather to a kind of tense curiosity about every Jewish phenomenon, especially the Jews of Eastern Europe, the Yiddish language,…
Franz Kafka was seen walking briskly Into the Old City at Damascus Gate Late as usual for his Arabic instruction
“I read your manuscript… twice” “Really?” “Lemme tell you, it was something else” “Oh yeah?” “It’s like … I don’t know how to put it” “Just try” “OK … it’s like … Kafka on acid”…
Our Latin America Reading Group will discuss Elvia Alvarado’s testimony, Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo on Thursday 30 May at 7 p.m. at Café Ventana. I imagine Elvia meeting up with Che And the revolutionary…