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
Tag: you-are-there reading
“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
“No other river in the world can match the Danube for the sheer historical richness of the cities and landscapes through which it passes.”
As an American, I haven’t thought much about the many roles that rivers have played in other parts of the world. In The Danube: A Cultural History, Andrew Beattie argues convincingly that when travelling the Danube, you are taking not just a geographical journey, but a political, linguistic, philosophical, … Read More
“The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is great difference in the beholders.”
Recently, I visited Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house in Concord, MA, which has the chair that Emerson sat in while he wrote his famous essay “Nature.” As a fan of what Anne Fadiman calls “You-Are-There Reading” I had to reacquaint myself with this wonderful piece. When it was published in 1836, … Read More