Kafkaesque
Franz Kafka has a sixty-something-word story called “The Watchman” in the translation from German. In this piece, the narrator keeps running back and forth in front of the watchman in order to taunt him, while also being terrified that he might be arrested at any moment, but unable to desist. In sixty or so words, Kafka encapsulates the outcast outsider, the paranoid underdog known as the modern human being: the contemporary everyman.
Best known for his long story “The Metamorphosis,” in which a lonely traveling salesman gets permanently turned into a bug by life, by his dreams, his society, his bosses, his family, or all of the above, Kafka’s works were part of a twentieth-century surrealism that captures the continuous uncertainty of the modern condition and world, the place American literary critic Harold Bloom called “the evening land.” Salvador Dali, and Pablo Picasso, born two years before Kafka, were also part of this tradition. It was a mode that influenced innumerable other works in many genres later in the century, from Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd and the Beatles in music to Rod Serling, Alfred Hitchcock, and David Lynch in television.
Orson Welles’ film, “The Trial,” stars Anthony Perkins as a tortured, persecuted, anxiety-ridden, hilarious vision of Franz Kafka himself. Welles the actor appears in the film as an uncanny embodiment of one of Kafka’s characters from the novel of the same name. Vastly underrated, this is probably Welles’ greatest film, and surely one of the greatest, most overlooked American movies ever produced.
Kafka was also the author of many unpublished (in his lifetime) parables and fables, short short stories and flash fictions. His characters in these works include the humans who built the Tower of Babel; a man tied to a creature half kitten, half lamb that he both loves and hates; Sancho Panza imagining Don Quixote and writing the novel about his hero which he then continues to enjoy forever; a man whose feet are being attacked by a vulture while he remains remarkably calm; Ulysses and the Sirens, who refuse to entice him; Prometheus; a living dead man with his own boat visiting various towns along a river; a man who’s imprisoned because his teenaged sister knocked on someone’s door in jest; a beautiful woman who turns into a beautiful horse the narrator is still in love with; and a parable-writer who writes a parable about characters who narrate a parable called “On Parables,” among many others. (Today, Franz might have added a parable about a character being filmed by a monkey wearing a tuxedo sitting in a tree.)
In all these brief fictional narratives, Kafka, like Aristotle and Sigmund Freud, explored the deep nature of human dreams and how they affect and are affected by our waking life. But he also has much of the ancient Jewish prophet Jeremiah about him, who tried to warn his people about oncoming disaster, who Michelangelo painted as thinking and pondering among the ruins of afterward.
Kafka’s sisters, like Freud’s, were murdered in German death camps. One of the most liberal, original, and brilliant cultures of all time had descended into horrific barbarism and primordial savagery because of an inhumanity in man sometimes depicted in Kafka’s tales. (Picasso’s “Guernica” also captured IT). But this culture would rise again. Kafka himself had passed on at forty long before, via a writer’s disease, tuberculosis.
And Kafka, the lonely office worker staying at his solitary desk all night writing alone, not for money or immediate publication at all, is part of the humane, democratic Western tradition, from Leonardo da Vinci to Goethe. His unpublished writings reach for the ultimate in human perception and empathy. His midnight story-telling, his Christ-like parables, are an enduring part of the human exploration of humanity itself. This is a mode that can never be understood, nor produced, by robots: no matter how robotic, hot and nonhuman much of the world may continue to become.
literally stories 
Dale
Brilliant observations once again! I recall another short Kafka piece in which he sees a running man and wonders if he is a criminal and if this is his big chance to be a hero and stop the man. Maybe a hundred words, but the inner conflict and doubt and fear resulted in his just watching the guy go by. This inaction has an effect on the man yet he is unable to explain it to himself.
This is a lively and wonderful look at genius (so often such things get to analytical and tend to bore–but not here) and another top essay by you!
Leila
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Hi Leila!
Thanks for accepting, publishing/posting, and, before that, inspiring this essay!
Your editorial skills are as inspirational and reassuring as your creative writing skills are uncanny and wide-ranging!! That makes you a double-edged sword as a literary force, like Edgar Allan Poe in that way (brilliant editor AND writer…)
I keep thinking, for some reason, about how similar FK is to Charlie Chaplin…vastly different in innumerable ways, these two artists have way more in common than they’ve ever been given credit for!
I’ve got more to say on Kafka in the future. First, reflections on his letters and his one-of-a-kind love life. Two, the resemblances between himself and Charlie Chaplin. The title of this essay, and the whole essay, was influenced by the poem “Chaplinesque,” by Hart Crane…..
THANK YOUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
D.
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Pleasantly astonished by your linking FK with Chaplin . . . I once wrote a story (unpublished) about Kafka the (failed) Komedian – with his “deadpan routines depicting the madder aspects of Prague life.” It’s a bit naff quoting myself there, but glad to see the link made. Somehow easy to imagine Kafka having something of Chaplin’s slapstick grace. (The young Bob Dylan too was often described as having about him a “Chaplinesque” quality. ) And Kafka, I think, sometimes attended Prague’s Cabaret Lucerne – which will have had its stand-ups.
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So engaging and insightful, it would do well to feature in a volume of essays on Kafka, fitting nicely alongside, say, David Foster Wallace’s short 1999 piece – and both would in turn complement those longer well known essays by the likes of Walter Benjamin, George Steiner, Anthony Storr and others.
As luminous examples of what these days might be called microfiction, Kafka’s shorter pieces, playful and mysterious, infused with myth, still surprise, beguile, unsettle, delight. This essay brings it home with style. Superb.
Geraint
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Geraint
Thanks for, as usual, comments filled with brilliance, originality, insight, and a wide-ranging knowledge of the writing world! (the good writers, not the bad ones, which is a massive difference…)
(Since I was writing about K’s microfictions (as fittingly, retrospectively named by yourself in your comments,) I tried to keep this piece brief and punchy and say as much as possible on this topic within a limited word count so it would have a “flash fiction”/”flash essay” aspect to it all its own….)
I’m planning on re-reading your short story, “The Fleurnoir I Knew” in the near future. I remember it quite well, and am looking forward to going back to it and giving it a few re-reads, as it’s a piece which seems especially well able to invite, and stand up, to this kind of thing. After I do re-read it, I’ll add some more comments/reactions to your story under the comments section over there.
I always look forward to what you have to say, so thanks again!
Dale
PS, Look for new comments from me on “Fleurnoir” early or mid-week this week…
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Geraint
The Kafka as Komedian story sounds hilarious, and even a bit visionary! Thanks for reminding me that they used to call Dylan a Chaplinesque figure, I had forgotten that but it seems to fit somehow (even now it does and in some ways maybe more than ever). Strange how K and Chaplin were born in the same decade, and did some of their best work in the same decade, too. It’s also strange (in a good way) to think how both of them feed directly into the stream of consciousness that becomes SAMUEL BECKETT. Chaplin and Kafka produced offspring without knowing it, and it’s called Samuel Beckett and All of his Characters! (in a great way, and at least sort of). Thanks again!
Dale
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Hi Geraint
I wrote some literary reflection/reaction commentary to your “Fleurnoir,” which I placed under Leave a Comment by the story itself.
I tried to do justice to your story, to the best of my ability. Check it out when you get a chance. Interested to hear what you think. Thanks!
Dale
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Dale
Wow! This is great, written with such expertise. I love the description of the 20th Century, “The Evening Land.” That is so apt. Kafka does seem to foresee these faceless forces like the Nazi’s in his dreamlike tales. They could easily be the Gestapo in their leather coats who pick up the MC in “The Trial.”
Such a sad thing about Kafka and Freud’s sisters, murdered by the SS in the camps.
Orson Wells was great! I really liked him in “The Long, Hot Summer,” with arsonist Paul Newman and his smoldering hot and unbelievably talented wife, Joanne Woodward.
I would read anything I could get my hands on by Kafka, but the aversion to cockroaches has caused me to skirt around his most famous work “The Metamorphosis.” But the way you described it makes it sound so much more than the story of a bug. And I’m sure it is, since Kafka wrote it. So this will be the next story on my “Hoopla” App from the library.
The way you wove the connections between all these other artist that have created this “Evening Land,” is very cool.
Dreams/nightmares makes this a haunting referendum of the world seen through the Kafkaesque lens. As well as a mention of Freud, reminding me of his “The Interpretation of Dreams.”
I liked how it ended as well. The “lonely office worker” writing into midnight. Writing his warnings to the world. Brilliant!
Christopher
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Hi Christopher,
Thanks for your great reading, and understanding, of this essay! I just read a quote by Martin Luther King, where he says, As the things humans have built become bigger and bigger (and more widespread), individual humans themselves seem to become smaller and smaller (at least in the big picture), and this is not a good thing! I think that’s partly what the “evening land” phrase is about, and definitely it’s partly what Kafka’s best work is about, like where the Hunger Artist eventually gets shoved off into the middle of nowhere until he completely disappears in a pile of dust, straw, and ashes!
Orson Welles was awesome. I love watching his interviews on You Tube, every thing he says and does is awesome! His add for the wine maker is one of the few I remember fondly from back in the day, where he drunkenly states (hoisting his glass), “We will sell no wine before its time!” (taking another slug of it as he does so). He died WHILE writing, which is how I wanna go when my time comes! (or maybe be able to finish what I’m working on at the moment, then konk out while taking a walk afterward)……CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT is probably my favorite movie by him, along with THE TRIAL…
My favorite parts of Sigmund’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” are where he interprets HIS OWN DREAMS…every place he starts doing that (and he does it in many places), his true genius (not his occasional mistakes) shines through, and he’s a writer almost as good as Shakespeare on some level…repression, projection, defense mechanism, the ego/and id, the superego, the pleasure principle, the death drive, libido, transference, unconscious, psychoanalysis….just a few of the terms/concepts he added to humans’ understanding of ourselves! Most folks who use these don’t even know they come from him…political commentators use “projection” ALL THE TIME in an accurate way, but I bet very few of them know where it comes from….Sigmund. There’s a cool T shirt I saw that said, “Pink Freud.” Everyone who’s ever seen a therapist, counselor, or mental health professional on any level (good or bad) also owes Freud a debt, since he almost SINGLE-HANDEDLY began all of that…(and sometimes a GOOD therapist can actually help, I’ve found out more than once…)
Every time I’ve ever read “The Metamorphosis,” I’ve gotten totally creeped out by all the bug imagery, so I know what you mean!
Freud was trying to get his sisters over to where he was in England when he died, but at least he managed to save his daughter Anna by taking her with him…He left for London with Anna the moment the Nazis started harassing her.
THANKSSSS AGAINNNN, big time!!!!!!!!!!!
Dale
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Dale
You sure pick the best topics to write about! And they are top notch essays as people have said!
That is a really mechanized way to put the “evening land.” So very true, the length and breadth of this industrialized society does diminish the person. Like in some old black and white movie with the skyscrapers’ shadows stretching to the edge of the screen.
Kafka’s dismissal of the famous “Hunger Artist,” is quite the sobering ending, being less of an attraction than where the animals were at–some times people walking by him. But he was able to finally get what he wanted to fulfill his art in starving to death. Maybe that’s what I’m doing with all of this writing knowing how the ass is in a chair as that’s the only way to do it, and the body gets less active. But I force myself to take long walks. But my phone is with me because ideas or a better turn of the phrase comes…
I heard Joyce Carol Oates describe her inner writing life as something the people around her would be amazed at how consuming it is. How they would be a kind of garnish to her real life. That’s not word for word and possibly not even the exact gist of what she was saying… but it’s what I took. My favorite story the first story I read of hers was, “Zombie.” “Where are you going, where have you been,” is a classic. I found that out like I had gotten to the party late.
I think of Stephen King’s terrible accident ( or terrible negligence) described in “On Writing.” is a warning to the writer who wants to get their steps in. Guess I’m all over the place.
I listened to “The Metamorphosis.” I can see why it’s a great work of literature. It’s one I may need to go back over to understand better, how he made a human sized cockroach so sympathetic and the reality of having such a loathsome bug as a family member. it’s almost like the “Hunger Artist” at the end. This terrible isolation and withering away. I imagined what that would be like to be in that room in the dark under the couch with the rotten apple in his back, dust gathering on him in his despondency. I’m not sure I’m capable on a first reading to grasp the magnitude of this work. I like to read his stories over and over and I think the aversion to the bug is somewhat over.
Freud seems like an equally interesting fellow. All of those things you said that people don’t know have surely changed the very language of the world. I like the psychoanalysis approach better than the behaviorist. I know there’s help in journaling and uncovering moral defects. Like in the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Especially the 4 step “Having made a searching and fearless moral inventory.” The written work of this step affects a person, as you know as a writer, to the core. I don’t know if that step would have made it into the 12 steps without Freud. And really Freud’s “Talk therapy” is the basis for all of these recovery programs.
The Nazis are a whole different topic of the gun. Who rode the dark waves or were the dark waves. My first real introduction to them was the mini series in the eighties “The Holocaust.” Then I read the same titled book. I have read all about Heydrich and Himmler and their camp commandant’s and einsatzsgruppen. It’s unbelievable those times and Stalin said Beria was his Himmler. Mao Zedong killed even more people. Whenever I get caught up reading or looking at the Nazis online like at the women tried in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. I feel like I’m doing something wrong (ghoulish even), but as a student of history those bastards and bitches too (I guess) are endlessly compelling. But darkness is always compelling. I think it was Poe who said “Write about death.”
Christopher
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Christopher
Thank you for your latest set of comments, which are entirely worthy of the subject: Kafka, and what is meant by “Kafkaesque.”
Since the presidential election went down, I’ve been turning for solace to a lot of things, including Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King is worth turning to these days (very, very, very much so). I have a small book which is a collection of his writings from books and speeches, which also includes a preface by his widow Coretta, a timeline of his life and various photographs of him, as well as photographs of things like Civil Rights marchers being sprayed with firehoses by small town sheriffs and cops in Alabama, including one photo where they’re spraying a little girl with the hose, and another one where they’re sending an attack dog after a beautiful woman.
Dr. King said this: “This is no time for apathy and complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”
Marching in the streets against injustice is good (I did so with my daughters during the George Floyd stuff back then), but it is FAR from the only kind of vigorous and positive action.
READING, AND WRITING, like the kind you do, is exactly what King meant by VIGOROUS AND POSITIVE ACTION. Staring down the horrors of the Nazis makes one knowledgeable about what people truly ARE capable of, and that knowledge, as contained in an individual human soul, is part of a chain that connects all of humanity together: AND IT HELPS COMBAT THE FORCES OF DARKNESS. It creates the vibes, and the waves, that do that. So just the reading itself (when done in the right spirit), is an ACT: of courage, AND humanity.
(Such reading also expands the imagination so a person doesn’t fall victim to the all-too-common “it can’t happen here” mentality so many Americans seem to embrace.)
You have the talent and creativity to take it even further and ALSO do the writing part. Thanks again for commenting on the Kafka material in ways that are both profound, and illuminating. And creative and individual! And an ACT which is AGAINST THE FORCES OF DARKNESS!!! (to quote Yoda).
Dale
PS,
Look for new comments on “Broken” coming forth from yours truly tomorrow….I’ll give you the heads up after I send them in. They connect to what I’ve said here.
PPS,
A lot of people get down on MLK cuz he smoked two packs a day, which he hid from a lot of people, and also liked to get drunk sometimes (and have a few affairs on the side…) For me, it makes him even MORE HUMAN and relatable than he already was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s weird to think that Dr. King would “only” be 95 if he was still alive!
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Dale
I don’t know much about MLK. Except his famous quote, but I’m sure there is a treasure trove to be learned from this man. I did have an experience in a business class once. The instructor, an old respectable black man, talked about how he once rode in the back seat of a big car with MLK. It seemed presidential, his description, or even royal. Like riding through the night on some grave mission in the fight for civil rights with King Richard himself on the way to Jerusalem.
I wouldn’t want to be the one to criticize MLK for being human. A lot of cities Iv’e driven in Indiana, perhaps the most northern of the southern states (not a compliment) have streets named after him, but they are usually in the rougher neighborhoods. Toledo Ohio is the same–down by the tracks and underpasses painted with graffiti.
Thanks for checking out “Broken!”
Christopher
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Christopher
That’s a COOL Martin Luther King Jr. story!!!! and hauntingly described; thanks for sharing!!!!!!
Also totally COOL that you’ve explored/driven/been in all these Midwestern cities and towns, like Jack Kerouac and Walt Whitman…I’ve explored my fair share too, mostly in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana (I’ve been in 49 states (not Hawaii)).
I read the other day that Wisconsin has 24,000, twenty-four thousand, black bears in it! I knew they had a lot, but no idea it’s 24,000…WI also has over a thousand wolves…Michigan has 12,000 black bears….My brother has seen a mountain lion, a wolf, and many black bears, plus tons of coyotes, near the farmhouse he lives in in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (an ancient Finnish farmhouse in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE on an, old, no-longer farming, farm with all these unused outbuildings on it not to far from LAKE SUPERIOR…they already have THREE FEET of snow on the ground!!!!)…I like exploring nature AND the towns and cities.
The Midwest has MILLIONS of wild bobcats living in it, which I also didn’t know until the other day!
Also a huge fan of railroad tracks like you are AS WAS Hemingway!!!!!!! In Illinois the tracks have a resonance kind of like the sea does in coastal areas…
MLK said many times that one of his favorite short stories was “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving. When asked why, he stated, “Because it’s about a hapless white dude sleeping through a revolution.”
The man had a wicked sense of humor too, very akin to Old Honest Abe’s on many levels!!!
Dale
PS, I saw THE WHO in Indianapolis in 1982…Did academic stuff at The University of Notre Dame in early 2000s….Tons of time in the Dunes areas and Turkey Run State Park, among others…Some folks in Indiana almost have a Southern accent as in Southern Illinois! Also saw RAY CHARLES in Indiana not too long before the end!!!!!!….
Dale
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Dale
Thanks! 24000 bears! I would love to see a bear! The Midwest is a really cool place to see things. We like to go on nature photography trips around Indiana. Especially during migration–warblers are a big draw.
A lot of my driving was done through driving railroad crews. So, I saw a lot of the railroads–sometimes desolated places like up in “Scary Gary.” That’s what brought me to Chicago–usually dropping them at a seedy Motel 8 off Halstead. They would talk about the ladies of the night knockin on the door and the drug dealers. I’ve always loved the railroad. As far as a sustainability factor they cut a light narrow bit through the earth nothing like the invasive highway system.
That’s cool about your visits to Notre Dame. I have only seen the golden dome from the highway on these trips up north and it’s been so long ago I’m not really sure I even saw it.
MLK sounds like a truly interesting person. It seems these giants like him and Abe have this sense of humor. Maybe the Hitler’s of the world could lighten up, too.
That must have been a great concert! I love THE WHO! “We won’t get fooled again.” I used to come home from the bar in my youth and crank “My Generation,” Magic Bus, My Wife,” all that. I saw them in Miami with my ex-wife (courtesy of my generous brother-in-law) at the Super Bowl in 2010–bad ass. When New Orleans beat the Colts.The “Aints” went to the Saint’s.
Hey that’s cool about Turkey Run! That’s a beautiful place. We’ve been there too. It’s a small world! That really brightens me up to see you’ve been to these places. Sugar Creek (sounds like a fairy tale name) runs through it. Shades is another good one down that way.
Yes that southern accent is there. I don’t know what I might sound like to a person’s from another region. I suspect its that typical flat accent they talk about. Indiana is quite hilly down south its way more than the cornfields. There are actually a few mountains in Indiana. The hilly places are the only places they don’t cut down (at least not yet). Indiana needs more conservation, but in the end were all doomed to so called progress. Especially now that a Real Estate developer is in charge, again. Lining the pockets of the wealthy and their offspring. Now the oligarchies are in full swing, but they messed up coming out behind their tall gates.. The smart ones remain in anonymity. They should take a lesson from the Carlo Gambinos of the world.
My Grandma was a big Ray Charles fan, (I like him too) so I’m sure she loved “Georgia on my Mind.” The movie was great with Jamie Lee Fox.
Christopher
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CJA,
I composed a mini-essay in the form of a letter/posting and placed it over by your “Broken.” I forgot to do “Reply” and placed it under “Leave a Comment” instead, just fyi…..check it out when you get a chance!!! It’s high praise (every bit deserved) combined with literary analysis of the accessible and lucid variety, which is the only good kind there is!
DWB
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Dale
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment about my story. And I will excitedly check it out!
Christopher
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Christopher
That’s COOL that you saw The Who then….I wish I had seen them more recently than 41 years ago, but I do remember the concert quite well! My friend and I drove all the way across Illinois from Quincy and into Indiana, saw the show, turned around right after and drove back all night so we could make it to school in the morning!!! (I didn’t even have a driver’s license)…
I’m actually working on an essay about a WHO song, “Real Good Looking Boy,” which is kind of like a Pete Townshend autobiography in song…it was the first new song they had put out in years (or decades) and there haven’t been many since, either…but this one song is good enough. Daltrey is amazing, absolutely mind-blowingly good, on this song in the recorded and the live acoustic versions…check it out when you get a chance if you haven’t happened upon it already!
“I saw myself / in the mirror / in profile / for the first time / and I thought ‘Hey! that’s a real good-lookin’ boy’…And I felt then / like I moved / with all those lucky fucks and angels / high in the theater / in the sky / so I ran to my mother / and I said ‘Hey ma! take a look at me! Have you ever seen a teen fly so high?’ / She said, ‘Son, well you know / you’re an ugly boy. / You don’t really look like him. / In this long line there’s been some real strange genes / and you’ve got ’em all / you’ve got ’em all / with some extras thrown in’. / That’s a real good-lookin’ boy…”
That’s only a small part of it. It’s a great song, one of my favorite WHO songs of all time…
Dale
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Dale
That’s a crazy funny story about your road trip to see THE WHO! The no license part is perfect, lol. All those years ago, my cousin and I hitch hiked to Fort Wayne to Def Leppard in the summer sun than stupidly scalped our tickets, split up after video games at Chucky Cheese. Then on some kind of odyssey of walking into the darkness, he got picked up by a homosexual predator (explained in the context of the homophobic 80s’) and I was riding in a van full of people like the ones in the original Texas Chainsaw massacre, but drinking beer.
I really like Roger Daltrey. So that’s going to be another kick ass essay, I’m sure. He’s a funny dude Iv’e checked him out on You Tube. I’ll have to listen to that song, too. We listen to “Behind Blue eyes”, sometimes always saying “Let me wear your coat.” I think they were the loudest band at one time. I remember that terrible fire that happened in Cincinnati and those people got killed–trampled. Large crowds are inherently dangerous. The masses are a scary force capable of everything in a moment.
Christopher
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Christopher
“Driving railroad crews…” WOW! That phrase alone is a small piece of real Americana, and it kinda reminds me of Jack Kerouac when he worked as a brakeman on the railroad…and it has a sense of Midwestern grit and toughness to it as well, which is awesome! I can tell that you weren’t just driving either, but also closely observing…which = being a writer. Thanks for sharing! Totally cool…
Dale
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Dale
Yes indeed. After that I was driving a medicaid taxi– we did a lot of methadone runs. I was back in scary Gary on a few of those. I think that’s when I started observing people in a larger way. Ernest Hemingway said it was a writer’s job to observe. I have a story coming out that mentions these methadone addicts. Christopher
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Christopher
Just a quick one to say that I’m very much looking forward to reading the story that mentions the methadone addicts!!!! Anything from your keyboard is bound to be fascinating, and you’re one of the most interesting writers currently at work that I know of (and I know of a lot, many, many, many, in fact), and in things like this, I NEVER exaggerate!
More soon in near future! Thanks again for all your reading, AND writing!
Dale
“I know a good poem when I feel like the top of my head has been taken off…and that is the ONLY way I know it…” – Emily Dickinson
“A book should be an axe for the frozen sea inside us.” – Kafka
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Dale
Thanks, that is really inspiring! Those two quotes– talk about hard hitting.
Christopher
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Christopher
Hi! Here’s another cool quote that bears repeating at this time of year.
“Peace I leave with you; my own peace I give you. I do not give it to you as the world does. Do not be worried and upset; do not be afraid. You heard me say, ‘I am leaving, but I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, because he is greater than I. I have told you this now, before it all happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. I cannot talk with you much longer, because the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me, but the world must know that I love the Father; that is why I do everything that he commands me. Come, let us go from this place.”
Here’s another cool one:
“The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God.”
Merry Xmas Season!!!
Dale
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Dale
It would be nice to find favor with God. This is indeed the season. Sometimes people forget this place is God’s foot stool. He’ll work it out.
Merry Christmas
Christopher
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Ananias
Your faith makes mine stronger. That’s the best Christmas gift I can receive. Thank you.
D.W.B.
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Dale
Yes indeed. We’re on the road to Damascus.
Christopher
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Greetings Ananias!!
I’ve been rocking out this morn’ to THE BAND’s song “Must Be Christmas Tonight” 2 remind myself that the Season didn’t end yesterday!!
Written by Robbie Roberston, Sung by Rick Danko:
“Saw it with my own eyes, written up in the skies / but why a simple herdsman such as I? / And then it came to pass, / he was born at last / right below the star that shines on high / How a little baby boy, bring the people so much joy / Son of a carpenter, Mary carried the light / This must be Christmas / must be tonight…..”
Dale
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Greeting Dale!
Definitely down with THE BAND. I’ll have to it check out. Saw “The Last Waltz” spectacular! Robbie Robertson was a great guitarist and I like when Rick Danko breaks it down a lil in “The Weight.” Ole crazy Chester followed me.
CJA
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Hi Christopher!!
Hello and Happy New Year on the road to Damascus!
You’re right, The Band is a great band, one of the very best, most American bands of all time in fact: far greater than their levels of popularity would indicate. They are plenty popular, but technically they should be far more so, given their general accomplishments and the greatness of some of the songs they managed to create, not to mention being probably the best band that ever backed Bob Dylan, except maybe The Grateful Dead, who can join them as Dylan collaborators, and were hugely influenced by them!
“The Weight” is such a great, and classic, song…”Hey mister can ya tell me! / Where a man might find a bed. / He just grinned, and shook my hand. ‘No’ was all he said.” I think I’ve been there before…
And all five members were complete characters of their own in such a unique way. Rick Danko’s birthday was a few days ago. Robbie Robertson is a GREAT story-teller in that classic film I just recently re-watched, THE LAST WALZ. In certain ways, The Band is the greatest and most American band of all time, bar none! And they all partied their asses off (almost literally in some cases), especially Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. Dylan called Manuel and Danko two of the wildest people he’d ever met. Someone once called Levon Helm “the only rock drummer who can make you cry,” because of his singing voice. Garth Hudson, only surviving member, is strange, uncanny, unique and brilliant!
They were also friends with Emmylou Harris, a truly, truly great singer, one of my favorites.
The truth is, The Band were/are probably too GOOD to be too popular in the Cheeseball Factory that is mainstream American music, now, and then…but they are in it for the long haul.
Getting any writing done lately? What have you been reading? How are the holidays treating you? More later…
Dale
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Hey Dale!
Yes they weren’t made for the mainstream too talented for the bubble gum of pop. Too much soul for the soulless stuff one might hear in the “Cheeseball Factory” you mentioned (that’s funny).Lol! I think they will last for sure!
The first time I heard “The night they drove all Dixie” down sung by Joan Baez it totally caught me–not knowing it was by “The Band.” Then I heard it in “The Last Waltz”! I like Levon Helm the best. Jonnie Cash sang it too.
I gambled once “Up on Cripple Creek” at the casinos in Colorado. Not sure it’s the same Cripple Creek or not a lot of those around. Levon played a role in James Lee Burke s “In the Electric Mist” He plays a dead Confederate General. Tommy lee Jones is in it too!
I watched a few documentaries about them and they came to some sad endings. Robbie Robertson had family that lived on a reservation in Canada, which I thought that was pretty cool. He’s ranked well on the all time best guitarist list.
I just got done with “Nobody Move,” by our great heroic friend Denis Johnson! It does not disappoint. That is one helluva a brilliant gritty story! Now I’m bouncing around with Joyce Carol Oates and have pretty much landed on a story collection by Tobias Wolff. Good stuff!
The writing is sort of focusing on fixing up the old stuff, but always bouncing into new stuff. I finished that bar story I told you about a while back. 2000 words. Named it “Canyons of Darkness.” Not sure if it’s any good or not. Might have some good moments. Submitted it a few places. Now i’m working on the insane moments of youth remembered by a guy in the state hospital. How he sort of learned insanity from some sad fuck ups. From town to the old folks home or poor house as he likes to say. But the question is why is he in the nut house? Hopefully that will drive the story.
Holidays have gone well. Spending some time replacing the kitchen and bathroom faucets–they are a bitch to get out !
How about you? What have you been reading and writing? Hey, are you going to write about “The Band?”
Christopher
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Christopher
Hello! That’s good news about the “Nobody Move” Dennis Johnson novel. I’ve never tried that one; I’m glad it’s an attention-keeper all the way through. I’ll check it out!
I saw a really good documentary about Levon Helm a while back. It had old stuff on him intermixed with new, “live” material which is all him in his house hanging out smoking weed and telling one great story after another. The dude was a lion in a world of pussy cats; a real man in a land of carbon copies or feminized buffoons (wife-slaves…lol). It also showed him driving around on his tractor a lot.
Funny that you mention Tobias Wolff!! I used to be madly in love with his memoir “This Boy’s Life”! And I just re-read his essay about Raymond Carver literally a day or two before I got your letter/post. As usual, great minds think alike or at least on the same wavelength at some frequency!
“Canyons of Darkness” is an awesome title: vivid imagery, suspenseful, poetic, unusual in the right kind of way. The insane-moments-of-youth-from-the-state-hospital sounds like a brilliant plot-line. The interest level on that is “all in,” big time!
I wrote my first poem in over six months in between Christmas and New Year’s. As with all of my poems, I had zero intention of writing this one at all. It showed up for me unannounced, and I spent the next two days (three in total) copying down what I was told to by the Poem Muses. I realized half way in that the poem was definitely going to be one of the best I’ve ever written.
It has more than one title. The short title is “Dogs and Deer.” One of its long titles is “Two Siberian Huskies, the Foggy Haunted Deer, and the Pitbull Sidekick in Foggy Illinois, 12/28/’24.” A third title for this poem is “Leila Allison’s Birthday Poem,” as I dedicated the poem to her because it was partly inspired by her writing about Boo, one of my Siberians, a few weekends ago when she used Boo’s picture.
SO the poem is all about one of the things I do on an almost daily basis, which is walk my three dogs in local parks and/or forest preserves (two of the dogs actually belong to Tressa and Elina, my twin daughters). I tried to capture the “action” of this just as closely as Hemingway captures the “action” of fishing or hunting in so many of his stories.
The poem also has a lot of Christian imagery in it that only the real, true Christian reader might recognize (not the White Nationalist a–holes taking over D.C.), such as:
“…three or four fawns / disappearing, or blending into the heavy thorny / branches of Christmas season thick hedge row / desolation as I strain and pull the dogs along.” That foreshadows the death of innocence and his crucifixion. For the non-Christian reader, it is what it is.
The poem is in seven stanzas, thirty-one lines long. It has five human characters in it (me and four old black men smoking their weed around a trash can fire in the parking lot) and three dogs, plus two bucks, three does, and the three or four fawns.
This poem is so absorbing and so good (for me) that I’m now writing an essay about it! One of the first poems I’ve ever written that also comes with its own, full-blown essay attached. A separate work, but also attached.
That’s a great idea to write an essay about THE BAND, and that essay-to-be is now on my list!!! I have a list of maybe 12 possible essays to write in 2025 (so far). Another one of them is your idea to turn my Gordon Lish Motel 6 Indiana Road Trip into a full-blown essay.
The title for that one is: “”Gordon Lish Motel 6 Indiana Road Trip.”
I also reread Sam Shepard’s “Indianapolis (Highway 70)” recently. MAN is that a great story! Thanks for reminding me about it! Write back when you can…
Dale
PS…I have two essays coming out in LS this January. One on Hemingway, and one on Bukowski. First up is this Sunday, the 5th. I forget at the moment if that one is Buk or Ernie…Those two go together very much so anyway, so on one level it doesn’t matter!
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Dale
Yes Levon Helm was one of a kind. Great description, lol. “a real man in a land of carbon copies or feminized buffoons (wife-slaves…lol).” How true!
“This Boy’s Life”! I saw the movie with Robert Deniro and DiCaprio playing Jack.I would like to read that essay about Carver. “Bullet in the brain” was the first thing I ever read by T. Wolff. i’m finding he is some kind of genius. He describes nature a lot like Jame Lee Burke. Quite the world building dudes.
Thanks on the Canyons of Darkness comments. The title came from the ending paragraphs when I was searching for a title or had one in progress. It’s actually 2700 words I mixed it up with another story.
The “Poe Muse” sounds like they were rocking over Christmas! “Dogs and Deer” has good alliteration. It’s neat to see a fellow writer’s progress as you go through your titles. I wasn’t privy to these things until I started writing fiction mainly, and the things you have to do. I used to write poetry but I realized I knew nothing about meter and stanzas and those technical things and didn’t study other’s work. Even as a novice I enjoyed Robert Frost. My poetry started through the bleak scribbling night of drunkenness, lol, but it got me into writing in a big way. I even wrote a 100 page book of poetry mostly about alcoholism. This is where I found the pure cathartics of writing. Never had such an escape!
I think your “Gordon Lish Motel 6” is going to be fantastic! I was totally drawn in when you elaborated about it in these comments. That is such a cool Title! I’ll definitely check out your essays. You are fine writer! Even your comments are nearly flawless. Mine get a little clunky. but I never learned to properly keyboard no excuse but still…I have to say screw and send it. lol.
“Highway 70” sounds like its coming this weekend here in central Indiana. Stay warm my friend
Christopher
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Christopher
Holy Sh-t! I want to read that 100-page book of poetry one of these days! While I didn’t know you were a poet in the “literal” sense, it doesn’t surprise me at all that you are, because your stories have a very, very high poetic content and quality to them. Your way with words truly does make you a poet in stories, and if you wrote that much poetry under those conditions, the FACT that you ARE A POET is absolutely beyond dispute.
There are some poets who have survived for centuries and are still well-known to this day (well, among poets, anyway), on the basis of NO MORE THAN A SINGLE POEM. Once you write one good one, if it’s really, really good, you can rest on your oars for a while and know that you’ve contributed your bit to the vast category that is HUMAN LITERATURE. Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” is just one example. Entire books have been and still are being written on just that one, single poem by him from 300 years ago.
As a side-note, good writers in general survive in history FAR, FAR, FAR, longer than any other kind of human accomplishment, and that includes the second and third categories, which are politicians and generals. When we look at written history, like all the way back to the ancient Jews and the ancient Greeks in the Western World, it’s WRITERS, NOT politicians and generals, who survive. BY FAR AND AWAY WRITERS ARE NUMBER ONE, beating scientists and other artists as well, like visual artists and musicians, and actors. In many ways, this makes creative writing the most important, and the most misunderstood, human activity there is. (Think of the BIBLE, which was written by writers; inspired writers, yes, very much so, but still writers, some anonymous, some not, like Paul, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc.)
Anyone with your talent who wrote a 100-page book of poetry under those circumstances and about the topic you mentioned absolutely has the right to call themselves, and believe and know about themselves, that they ARE a poet. Even if you don’t write poetry any more in the literal sense (not sure if you do or don’t), having done it then to that level of intensity = POET.
A hundred pages is a lot of poetry. Even if only 30 percent of it is/was “keepable” material, you’re still the author of a full-length poetry collection. That’s absolutely AWESOME, fabulous, fantastic, and cool!!
I love Robert Frost, and have loved Robert Frost since my mother started reading me his poems when I was probably five years old. Truly one of the very, very greatest writers America has ever produced.
When “Bullet in the Brain” first came out, I probably read that story twenty times or more! You’re right, T. Wolff is some kind of genius, or near-genius, at least in a handful of his best stories. Like Denis Johnson, in my opinion he’s churned out and published a lot that falls below what his best is. But everyone should really be judged by their best, and in his best, he’s as good as Raymond Carver, his pal (or almost). Tobias’s Carver essay is called “Appetite.” In a few places, he pats himself on the back a little too much for having been Carver’s friend, trying to be funny and self-effacing about it and not succeeding, but overall, it’s a very excellent essay.
Still can’t get over a 100 pages-of-poetry book written under those conditions and on that topic, and with that cathartic result, as well as the springboard into other kinds of writing from it! Writing that produces other writing is real writing. Would like to hear more about your poetry writing when you get a chance. Like I said, having done it once makes you a poet forever, even if you never write another line.
T.S. Eliot, who’s as good as Robert Frost, actually wrote very, very, very few poems that are any good, which he himself pointed out repeatedly. The work he’s best known for consists of literally a couple of handfuls at the very most.
FREE VERSE, also, is really the modern way to go, so not understanding all the technicalities of poetry is not an issue at all. I don’t understand at least half of them myself (or more). It’s kind of like a musician who can’t read music, and there are many of those. But it’s GREAT that you’re self-critical in this way. That’s another Hemingwayesque sign of a REAL WRITER.
It’s brutally cold in Chicagoland, but the Siberians, at least, love it!! (You can take them for a two-hour walk and they act like they’re just getting warmed up, although two hours is also enough to settle them down once they chill out.)
Dale
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Dale
Thanks that’s really encouraging on writing poetry! The first few lines of poetry I remember writing was after another night at the bar. When I was 25. But I remember it clearly as if it were something valuable in the most invaluable times. On second glance I’m not so sure…I found this one: ( I think rhyming is out-dated but here goes)
Honey Bees
November sunshine and rolled down sleeves
Favorite hiking boots kick red and yellow leaves
a backpack riding gently
Worn blue jeans carried me tenderly
On a walk around the lake
A bright blue and silver landscape
The trail was narrow as was the marrow of the season
A descending fall, only a whisper of summer’s thaw
And the day was almost lost
The honey bees were less active
Slowing down to a crawl, listless and dull
Then the wind picked up from the North
A ribbon of leaves flew from what was left on the trees
The moment changed
It became cold with winter
Then over an oak tree’s stretching pleas
A formation of sandhill cranes flew South
I heard their call
“Take us Mother Earth, take us all”
I fooled around writing little rhymes for years. Filling up note books and old floppy disk when the dinosaurs walked the earth, lol. I think I feel more comfortable writing short fiction these days, because I’ve studied more fiction writers–not that fiction is easy. Poetry might be upper level algebra maybe trig for me. It seems almost religious.
The piece you said about writers being more memorable than politicians and generals could certainly be proven in a lot of cases. I think the writer wants to create a legacy. There aren’t many places to do this in a historical context. To even make a ripple. There are very few Abraham Lincolns–just one–most people disappear from this world without a trace in 100 years or so and everyone they knew too. Although, the Internet may stretch this shelf life.
So that is very interesting about what you said about a single poem being able to withstand the test of time. Like what you said about Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,”
This I will have to read!
I read TS Eliot’s ” The Wasteland.” I can’t say I know much more of his poetry. Even though an attempt was made. I find him a rather fascinating character, born in St Louis but like a total Brit. He was a famous literary critic and I think he shipped his wife “Viv” off to a sanitarium. There’s a really good movie called “Tom and Viv,” starring Willem Defoe and Miranda Richardson.
That’s a great analogy about poets and musicians not able to read music. I think Angus Young in AC/DC is like that.
Read a really cool story by T. Wolff called “Leviathan.” About a scary ass whale watching incident. Have to read his self grandstanding essay on Carver, lol.
Wow your dogs sound great! Siberian Huskies are beautiful and majestic creatures. I could imagine them in a Jack London story!
Christopher
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Christopher
I totally dig your Honey Bees poem, thanks for sending! It’s one of the best nature poems I’ve seen in a while, it totally captures the transitions and strange, sudden, changes that happen in nature, and the lines have a liveliness to them that is winning. Also, it reminds me very much of my own short story “The Ghost of Van Gogh,” except told in fewer words, which makes it better than mine!! It’s beyond good to know that there’s another writer from the Midwest with massive talent who likes to write about the same kinds of (midwestern/universal) subjects as I do. Writing is a lonely life (but a good one, none better) and I kind of feel like F. Scott Fitzgerald did when he met/found out about Ernest Hemingway.
Yes, one of the things that makes Lincoln so, so, so, so great is that he was everything, America’s greatest writer, greatest politician, and greatest military commander all in one. Perhaps only David and Moses from the Bible can truly compare, or outshine, old Honest Abe! (Alexander the Great also in the running.)
(And yet, one of the things that makes Jesus the greatest person of all time is that he was NOT a politician or military commander.)
Off to check out your comments on my “Hemingway Begins,” thanks again for the poem, I’ll return to it more than once for sure! (Already read it three times)…
Dale
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Dale
Thanks on the poem! Yes writing is lonely, but does enrich one’s life. I think–hope so anyway. Love the creative process when it’s going well, catching the wave of artistic expression that seems to come from thin air is pretty neat!
Christopher
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Hi Dale,
I could try to bullshit you, look at the other comments and try to come up with something unoriginal original…But I know that I’d fail miserably!!!
My knowledge of anything considered classic or whatever other word for it, well, to be honest you could write on half of a stamp that had been torn into pieces!!
I’ve not read many novels since I started doing this because for me, the short story is a different reading discipline. I have read over four hundred books but very few classics. (Dracula, Frankenstein, Of Mice And Men, Macbeth (Love the small ‘b’ if that’s correct! and 1984)
My problem was I was forced to read ‘1984’, ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Of Mice and Men’ Whether it was a misjudged rebellion in me, I knew that I was bored so I didn’t seek out anything else. Oh I did try to read ‘Tortilla Flat (I’m fucked if I know why!!) but I fell asleep a few pages in, a few times and then gave up.
In contrast, for me, the first ‘adult book’ I read was ‘The Fog’ by the late great James Hebert and the first page was only half a page and I was hooked.
I suppose I’m a lazy reader! I want grabbed quick and I’m not sure if I want to think too much. HAH!! That ideology has fucked me so many times in life!!!!
My point is, even though I have very little understanding to most of your references, your enthusiasm and knowledge is infectious and I love reading your thoughts. I may have said this before, I don’t fish and I hate cars but I love the enthusiasm Robson Green has for fishing and Jeremy Clarkson has for cars. (Clarkson is also a prick!!)
Your mention of ‘Metamorphosis’ made me think on one of my favourite stories on the site by one of our founding authors, Mr Nik Eveleigh. I’ve been at him many a time to expand this story as it could go full length very easily. If you get the chance, check out, ‘The Adamant Carbonisation Of Henry Spiller’
The tone pace and reveal are is as good as I’ve ever read!!
All the very best my fine friend.
Hugh
Oh and if you have missed it, I had more recommendations of the watching kind on my answer to you from Saturday’s Post.
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Hi Hugh!
Thanks for all your support and enthusiasm since I’ve become involved with the site! I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you directly for this, either, but thanks for a few of the rejection notes you sent me when I started submitting to LS…your notes were brief, but well-worded and encouraging, and they were a huge part of the reason why I kept trying….and I’m obviously VERY GLAD I did! So thanks again!
I had one grandmother who never read anything in her life except romance novels, and those were of the cheesiest kind and variety you can think of…..and she was, in life, one of the smartest humans I’ve ever come across, by far (and she hated the classics, and even used to tease me because she thought it was all I read).
My other grandmother never read anything else in her life except the Bible (originally in German, later in English, the King James version), and Bible-related items, and she, too, was one of the smartest, wisest, most deeply understanding humans I’ve ever come across (and she worked as a cleaning woman) (she believed in “turn the other cheek,” and “love your neighbor,” and was NOT a White Christian Nationalist)….so, while I do recommend the classics for those who can handle it or want to, I also know that they are NOT necessary to make someone highly intelligent…and there are many really good books that are not official “classics” that also help make folks wise, and empathetic. Good music, good art, good films, good tv shows, good political commentators (like Richard Wolff, Chris Hedges, and Cornell West), and good comedians also help, which brings me to Billy Connolly!!!!….
I’ll say more about his style and themes later, but I want to state here that he’s a GREAT character, and he has a certain HUMANITY to him that’s extremely endearing! SO much so, that I think he can stand shoulder to shoulder with the US’s two greatest stand-up comedians, Pryor and Carlin….Billy seems to truly UNDERSTAND and empathize with Humanity (as much as we can) even while mercilessly pillorying it and making fun of it, and that is the aspect that elevates him above a million other, less-talented jokesters…
I’ll check out the Nik E story you cited, thanks for the recommendation!!
Dale
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Kafka remains a giant of literature. Thanks for sharing this with us, Dale.
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Hi David
Sometimes I wonder what K would think of his giant status, since he asked his best buddy to burn everything after his demise. And then again, he had the opportunity to burn everything himself, and didn’t! Sometimes I think he’s been pulling all of our legs this whole time….Thanks!
Dale
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That’s a great write-up, Dale. There was a period in my life when I couldn’t afford hard backs and borrowed (and loved) a collection of Kafka stories from the library. I particularly remember a wonderful conversation between a walker and a wagoner who gives the walker a lift. So now you’ve enthused me to go and buy a copy – thank you!
Here’s an odd story about Kafka, rather than Kafka story. Apparently, his diary entry for Aug 2nd 1914 read: ‘Germany has declared war on Russia. In the afternoon, swimming lessons.’ It seems he was a far-sighted man, but not a prophet.
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Hi Mick!
Thanks for reading and commenting! Glad this inspired you to read some Kafka again! He definitely had an unusual, to say the least, relationship with the world at large, including the events of world history. Wonder what it might have been like to be a co-worker of his. They had to have known he was watching them very carefully. My guess is he also frequently disappeared from his desk for mysterious reasons and extended absences. Long, gloomy silences punctuated by grunts when asked a question were probably also not too unusual. And the occasional outburst of laughter as he sat there by himself in the corner. Thank you!
Dale
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Great selection of comments. There’ll also be those who, on first reading Kafka, found themselves seized by a kind of deja vu, a feeling of coming into (unsafe) harbour, the territory and the behaviour of the locals seeming to be weirdly familiar. For persons, e.g., reared in households riven by perpetual tension, who learned early to gauge the ever-shifting moods of the Father &/or the Mother , The Castle, for one, remains a fair guide to How Things Are; ditto for the spouse similarly attuned to the Other’s fluctuations. An obvious point to make, for sure, but then the Obvious can often come as a shock to those who’ve never noticed it, it being too obvious.
And just to add that among fine microfictionists at work these days is LS’s own David Henson – more than a dozen of whose 100-word pieces can be found on the now defunct Microfiction Monday Magazine site.
Geraint
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Geraint
Somehow, one of my very favorite pieces of writing by Kafka for all time has always been the “Letter to His Father,” which is a shattering account, and becomes an even more shattering document when you find out that he wrote it while he was living with the man. If ever a sensitive artistic type felt unseen, misunderstood, misrepresented, misinterpreted, and maligned by the solid, shallow, sentimental, there-but-not-really-there, businessman figure of dear old dad, it was little Franz and Hermann Kafka (even tho’ Kafka was an adult when he typed the letter). And the letter is thousands and thousands of words long (45 pages). “Dearest Father, You asked me recently why I am afraid of you…” No wonder he felt like a bug.
Dale
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Hi Dale,
Your response to my comments very much appreciated – as indeed are ALL your comments generally. I’d looked forward to reading your Kafka piece – and it was well worth the wait.
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Geraint
Hello again! And thanks again; it’s truly, deeply appreciated.
Look for new comments from me on “Fleurnoir” on Wednesday of this week…
Also, THANKS for pointing out the Henson microfiction pieces, I look forward to checking them out…
I also have more to say on the microfiction form itself, which has been inspired by your commentary…those written thoughts will be forthcoming some time this week as well…
You are a word artist, reader, and commentator who’s truly, truly on the cutting edge, as they used to say in the Paris of the old days (and some of us do still say): the avant-garde. THANK YOU!!!!!!!
Dale
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Kafka wanted his works destroyed upon his death. His best friend Max Brod promised to do that, but he didn’t, one broken promise allowing us to read Kafka’s work. I like the final paragraph about Kafka’s motivation. AI also comes into the piece, the world is becoming in many aspects much like Kafka envisioned. I also like the comparison of Kafka with Jeremiah. One of my favorite short stories by him is “The Judgment,” about human connection and disconnection. I didn’t know about these unpublished works.
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Hi Harrison,
Thanks for commenting, I responded about The Judgement, etc., but I think i put it under Leave a Comment and not Reply, fyi…
Thanks for reading!
Dale
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Harrison
Hi, THANKS for reading and commenting; AND for pointing out The Judgement, a fantabulous and horrible FATHER horror story that will scare the h-ll and be-jesus out of anyone who’s ever not seen eye to eye with dear old dad all the time and had the gumption to tell them/him so (and then feel the guilt)!!!! I think the story goes that he wrote it in one night, in one night that probably involved a lot of pacing around too, tearing of hair and hilarious, hysterical, solitary laughter!…and that this was the story he said “gave me my voice.”
Brod, his bud who didn’t burn the papers, said: “He asked the only person on the planet he knew would NEVER DO IT – because I told him so!!!!…” And I’ve often wondered, why didn’t he burn it himself if he wanted it burned so bad?! Gogol the Russian burned at least five novels’ worth when he was writing in the middle of the years when he was writing best….Has Franz been messing with our heads all these years in his Chaplinesque way? Still, it took courage to throw down the gauntlet in that way with Max. Courage and a kind of Taoist/Jewish not-caring which he got from the writing itself. And then again, MAYBE HE REALLY WANTED IT BURNED….
Thanks again for pointing out The Judgement, it had slipped my mind but is great and well-worth remembering, a tale that can be returned to and then you learn more as FK continues to teach his reader the more you go back, even when I’m 17 years older than he was when he passed on….the young punk!
Dale
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I’m a big fan of Kafka, and the Kafkaesque, and this is a superbly thought-provoking piece. A writer who can say so much with so little is a true master in my opinion and I have to admit to have not having read The Watchman before, so thank you for introducing it. I’m glad to see Gogol gets a mention in the comments as well, and am a huge fan of his (and a good few other Russian writers), and pretty much anything Gogolian!
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Hi Paul
Thanks for reading and commenting; and shining a spotlight on old Gogol!…His stories, especially The Overcoat, The Nose, and more than any of them, DIARY OF A MADMAN, have meant a lot to me…his life story is pretty wild, too! (He was as crazy a character as any of his fictional characters are!) He’s kind of like a combination of Edgar Allan Poe, and Franz Kafka…He influenced so many other Russian writers after him as well, especially Dostoevsky, who said, “We all came out from under Gogol’s Overcoat.” That’s awesome that you’re into him and his world! Thanks again!!!!
Dale
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