Kafka Americana
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Kafka Americana
''Kafka Americana'' is a 1999 collection of short stories by Jonathan Lethem and Carter Scholz based on the life (and alternate histories) and works of Franz Kafka. Originally published in a limited edition by Subterranean Press, it was released as a trade paperback by W. W. Norton & Company in 2001. The stories * "Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor" (Scholz) :A re-imagining of Kafka's uncompleted short story. First published in ''Crank!'' 1. * "The Notebooks of Bob K." (Lethem) : Batman is presented as Kafka's creation, with parodies of some of Kafka's famous aphorisms and stories, including " The Burrow", " A Crossbreed (A Sport)", and " The Vulture". A significantly different version of the story appeared in ''Gas'' 6. * "Receding Horizon" (Lethem & Scholz) :Kafka comes to America, changes his name to Jack Dawson, and writes screenplays in Hollywood. First published in ''Crank!'' 5. * "The Amount to Carry" (Scholz) :Kafka meets fellow insurance executives Wallace Stevens and C ...
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Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Allen Lethem (; born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, ''Gun, with Occasional Music'', a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. In 1999, Lethem published '' Motherless Brooklyn'', a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published '' The Fortress of Solitude'', which became a ''New York Times'' Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 2011, he has taught creative writing at Pomona College. Early life Lethem was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Judith Frank Lethem, a political activist, and Richard Brown Lethem, an avant-garde painter. He was the eldest of three children. His father was Protestant (with Scottish and English ancestry) and his mother was Jewish, from a family with roots in Germany, Poland, and Russia. His brother Blake became an artist involved in the early New Yo ...
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The Burrow (short Story)
"The Burrow" (German: "Der Bau") is an unfinished short story by Franz Kafka written six months before his death. In the story a badger-like creature struggles to secure the labyrinthine burrow he has excavated as a home. The story was published posthumously in '' Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer'' (Berlin, 1931) by Max Brod, Kafka's friend and literary executor. The first English translation, by Willa and Edwin Muir, was published by Martin Secker in London in 1933. It appeared in '' The Great Wall of China. Stories and Reflections'' (New York City: Schocken Books, 1946). Kafka is alleged to have written an ending to the story detailing a struggle with an invading beast, but this completed version was among the works destroyed by lover Dora Diamant following Kafka's death. Like "The Metamorphosis", "A Report to an Academy", " Investigations of a Dog" and " Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk", "The Burrow" presents an anthropomorphic animal. Kafka worked frequently in this ge ...
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Works About Franz Kafka
Works may refer to: People * Caddy Works (1896–1982), American college sports coach * Samuel Works (c. 1781–1868), New York politician Albums * '' ''Works'' (Pink Floyd album)'', a Pink Floyd album from 1983 * ''Works'', a Gary Burton album from 1972 * ''Works'', a Status Quo album from 1983 * ''Works'', a John Abercrombie album from 1991 * ''Works'', a Pat Metheny album from 1994 * ''Works'', an Alan Parson Project album from 2002 * ''Works Volume 1'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * ''Works Volume 2'', a 1977 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album * '' The Works'', a 1984 Queen album Other uses * Microsoft Works, a collection of office productivity programs created by Microsoft * IBM Works, an office suite for the IBM OS/2 operating system * Mount Works, Victoria Land, Antarctica See also * The Works (other) * Work (other) Work may refer to: * Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community ** ...
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Short Story Collections By Jonathan Lethem
Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as the Short Arts, entertainment, and media * Short film, a cinema format (also called film short or short subject) * Short story, prose generally readable in one sitting * ''The Short-Timers'', a 1979 semi-autobiographical novel by Gustav Hasford, about military short-timers in Vietnam Brands and enterprises * Short Brothers, a British aerospace company * Short Brothers of Sunderland, former English shipbuilder Computing and technology * Short circuit, an accidental connection between two nodes of an electrical circuit * Short integer, a computer datatype Finance * Short (finance), stock-trading position * Short snorter, a banknote signed by fellow travelers, common during World War II Foodstuffs * Short pastry, one which is rich in butt ...
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1999 Short Story Collections
File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootings in the United States; the Year 2000 problem ("Y2K"), perceived as a major concern in the lead-up to the year 2000; the Millennium Dome opens in London; online music downloading platform Napster is launched, soon a source of online piracy; NASA loses both the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander; a destroyed T-55 tank near Prizren during the Kosovo War., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 Death and state funeral of King Hussein rect 200 0 400 200 1999 İzmit earthquake rect 400 0 600 200 Columbine High School massacre rect 0 200 300 400 Kosovo War rect 300 200 600 400 Year 2000 problem rect 0 400 200 600 Mars Climate Orbiter rect 200 400 400 600 Napster rect 400 400 600 600 Millennium Dome 1999 was designated as the Interna ...
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Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern
''Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'' is an American literary journal, founded in 1998, typically containing short stories, reportage, and illustrations. Some issues also include poetry, comic strips, and novellas. ''The Quarterly Concern'' is published by McSweeney's based in San Francisco and it has been edited by Dave Eggers. The journal is notable in that it has no fixed format, and changes its publishing style from issue to issue, unlike more conventional journals and magazines. The first issue featured only works that had been rejected by other publications, but the journal has since begun publishing pieces written with McSweeney's in mind. History ''McSweeney's'' was founded in 1998 after Dave Eggers left an editing position at ''Esquire (magazine), Esquire'', during the same time he was working on ''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius''. ''McSweeney's'' is a sort of successor to Eggers' earlier magazine project ''Might (magazine), Might'', although ''Might'' was ...
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The Trial
''The Trial'' (german: Der Process, link=no, previously , and ) is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously on 26 April 1925. One of his best known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Heavily influenced by Dostoevsky's ''Crime and Punishment'' and ''The Brothers Karamazov'', Kafka even went so far as to call Dostoevsky a blood relative. Like Kafka's two other novels, ''The Trial'' was never completed, although it does include a chapter which appears to bring the story to an intentionally abrupt ending. After Kafka's death in 1924 his friend and literary executor Max Brod edited the text for publication by Verlag Die Schmiede. The original manuscript is held at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, Germany. The first English-language translation, by Willa and Edwin Muir, was published in 19 ...
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Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Later in life, the quality of his music was publicly recognized through the efforts of contemporaries like Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison, and he came to be regarded as an "American original". He was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century. Hence, he is often regarded as the leading American composer of art music of the 20th century. Sources of Ives's tonal imagery included hymn tunes and traditional songs; he also incorporated melodies of the tow ...
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Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his ''Collected Poems'' in 1955. Stevens's first period of writing begins with the 1923 publication of ''Harmonium'', followed by a slightly revised and amended second edition in 1930. His second period occurred in the 11 years immediately preceding the publication of his ''Transport to Summer'', when Stevens had written three volumes of poems including ''Ideas of Order'', '' The Man with the Blue Guitar'', ''Parts of a World'', along with ''Transport to Summer''. His third and final period began with the publication of '' The Auroras of Autumn'' in the early 1950s, followed by the release of his ''Collected Poems'' in 1954, a year before his death. Stevens's best-known ...
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Hollywood, Los Angeles
Hollywood is a neighborhood in the Central Los Angeles, central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a metonymy, shorthand reference for the Cinema of the United States, U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Columbia Pictures, Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures, are located near or in Hollywood. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. It was Merger (politics), consolidated with the city of Los Angeles in 1910. Soon thereafter a prominent film industry emerged, having developed first on the East Coast. Eventually it became the most recognizable in the world. History Initial development H.J. Whitley, a real estate developer, arranged to buy the E.C. Hurd ranch. They agreed on a price and shook hands on the deal. Whitley shared his plans for the new town with General Harrison Gray Otis (publisher), Harrison Gray Otis, ...
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Gas (comic)
Gas was a British adult comic that was published monthly by Galaxy Publications from 1989 to 1991. ''Gas'' was one of many such comics emulating the success of '' Viz'', and like many of its peers (and unlike its upmarket siblings ''Brain Damage'' and ''Talking Turkey'') was a crude copycat of the format ''Viz'' pioneered. Initially, many strips were clearly rejected from ''Viz''; many set in ''Viz's'' fictional town of Fulchester, but with the 'F' tippexed out (thus Gas appeared to be set in Ulchester). These strips were often of extremely poor quality, both in terms of artwork and plotting. As the title matured, however, strips submitted for Gas became more common and the production quality increased. A number of strips from Gas resurfaced in the comic UT which ran for 18 months from 1991. ''Gas'' ran until Volume 3, number 10 (issue 34) Strips included: * The Gas Family - the title strip, an antisocial mother, father, and son, with offensive body odour * Arthur Pilkington ...
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The Vulture (Kafka)
"The Vulture" (German: "Der Geier") is a short story by Franz Kafka, written sometime between 1917 and 1923. Plot summary A vulture hacks at the protagonist's feet until a man passing by asks him why he doesn't do anything about it. The protagonist explains that he is helpless to resist, though at first he tried to drive the vulture away, when he saw that it was about to attack his face he stopped, preferring to sacrifice his feet. The onlooker exclaims, "Fancy letting yourself be tortured like this!", and offers to go and get a gun to shoot the vulture. The protagonist asks him to hurry. The vulture listens to the conversation, then takes wing and thrusts its beak into the protagonist's head, killing him, but also drowning in his blood, as it flows on "filling every depth, flooding every shore." Analysis This text has often been compared with Kafka's ''Prometheus'', with the vulture substituted for the eagle. Vultures were believed by the ancient Egyptians, and later by Renaissa ...
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