Friday, May 4, 2012

And it's into the attic with you, Franz!




Snail mail: you have to love it. Especially when it brings Franz Kafka





who was 'all alone in the bargain bin of the co-op bookshop at Newcastle Uni' (perhaps too gloomy for them there?)

Anyway, here he is,  dropping in on the likes of Djuana Barnes, Stevie Smith, Gertrude Stein and Eve Langley. I think they'll all rub along all right.

He's a writer I'm unsure I've read. But I'm all for a bit of metamorphosis. And I like it that most of his work was published after he was dead - I'm sure that pleased him.

But I have read Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. That counts, doesn't it?

He bore a quotation: "I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy."


As a card-carrying melancholic, I can only agree.

2 comments:

  1. Franz looks quite chirpy...must be the company.

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  2. Yes, - all those women writers. But it's the north coast climate as well - not conducive to the writing of Great Literature, but warm. He'll be over at Byron Bay in boardies next!

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