Tag: Franz Kafka

“I had lost my self-confidence where you were concerned, had traded it for a boundless sense of guilt

I’ve been thinking about Kafka’s story about turning into an insect this week, and why he would write a story about a young man who shamed his family by turning into a useless cockroach. A Czech bookstore had a book-length letter that Kafka wrote to his father, which was … Read More

“One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.”

This story about a man who turned into a type of insect has been called surreal, humorous. a horror story, neurotic, and “the greatest short story in the history of literary fiction.” I visited a museum devoted t0 Kafka in Prague. It was the weirdest, most unpleasant museum I’ve ever … Read More

“Kafka attended courses on the History of German Art, History of Architecture, History of Dutch Painting, and History of Christian Sculpture.”

Anne Tyler, John Updike, and Flannery O’Connor all made paintings and sketches in addition to writing fiction. As it turns out, so did Franz Kafka, who had a strong interest in art from his teens to his untimely death at age 40. What can you learn from looking at his … Read More