Franz Kafka

Where one scholar is in error and another in scholarly license

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Yes, this is yet another entry for the Ungeziefer file… One where scholar and author Rebecca Schuman, who is obviously highly intelligent and supremely credible as evidenced by her skepticism (likeminded with yours truly of course) of Michael Hoffman translating Kafka’s Ungezeifer as a cockroach, as discussed in her 2017 Literary Hub article I Made … Read more

What time is it? That’s right, it’s the Boy from Bohemia Time!

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While I wasn’t exactly thrilled with Kafka translator Michael Hoffman translating Ungeziefer as cockroach… To say the least… I am in definite accord with him on much of what he discusses in his introduction to METAMORPHOSIS AND OTHER STORIES, a collection translated by him consisting of all of Kafka’s stories that were published in Kafka’s … Read more

Hungry Artists, Kafkian or Otherwise, Fasting for Influence, Spiritual or Otherwise

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Why does one fast? The obvious answers to me are most likely for spiritual or health reasons, and, should the need arise, for political and judicial reasons as well. But who knows really — it’s such a strange thing to do if you think about it. Back in the Nineties, which some Dennis Hopper character … Read more

There’s vermin in my library!

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And by vermin I mean Ungeziefer of course. And if that Ungeziefer were a snake, the little bugger probably would have bitten me. Yeah, so… after yesterday’s mostly tongue-in-cheek diatribe re: my frustration with translators who blasphemously translate Ungeziefer, the German word for the mysterious critter into which Franz Kafka has Gregor Samsa of “The … Read more

If it’s Ungeziefer why not just call it Ungeziefer?!

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Okay, admittedly, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer so please take my perplexity for what it’s worth… About a plug nickel, that’s what. But anyway, I know it’s easy for a one-language knuklehead like me to complain, but if in “The Metamorphosis” Kafka writes that when Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled … Read more

WE ALL DIE IN THE END by Elizabeth Merry – A Review

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Merry’s is some of the best writing I’ve read in a while. Like Faulkner, she creates a fictional world unto its own, Faulkner’s set as a struggling Mississippi town, Merry’s as a struggling seaside town in Ireland…

BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO — A Review of Sorts

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BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO
FILM | MOVIE | BRITISH | HORROR
WRITER: PETER STRICKLAND
DIRECTOR: PETER STRICKLAND
STARRING: TOBY JONES
IFC FILMS UNLIMITED
RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

If Kafka were to have written movies…

He would have written a movie like Berberian Sound Studio.

Now if you know me, you know that calling a movie Kafkaesque, and calling this movie Kafkaesque is an understatement, is all I really need to say about it since, you know me, I am pretty much a slave to anything ol’ Franz has put to paper.

But I’m also a slave to the word count so, for the sake of it, I guess I should say a few things more.

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LAST DAYS by Brian Evenson — A Reluctant Review

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BOOK | FICTION | HORROR
LAST DAYS BY BRIAN EVENSON
RATING: ★ ★

I had been looking hard for a killer horror noir novel ever since reading FALLING ANGEL by William Hjortsberg, a stellar benchmark of the sub-genre that is in close competition for greatness with ANGEL HEART, its movie adaptation starring Mickey Rourke.

I eventually came across a couple of pretty good lists of horror noir books and found that LAST DAYS was high on both of them.

In Last Days I thought for sure I had a ringer.

And then when I began reading Peter Straub’s introduction for it there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was going to be the absolutely best horror noir book I had ever read.

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Fake News is so Poe-thetic

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I read an Edgar Allan Poe story today entitled The Angel of the Odd.

It’s a fun, fast, Kafka-meets-Twain, easy to forget kind of read.

But what is most memorable to me about the story is that it is entirely set up around the protagonists drunken dismay over what we would call the “fake news” of the day…

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