Today in History Jun 20, 2008
Thought for Today: "Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith." Franz Kafka, Austrian author and poet (1883-1924). Yahoo. (Yahoo News)
Georgia: Directors Detective Film Promises New Life for a Sleeping Industry May 17, 2008
"It s interesting until the end, but when the end comes I forget immediately. Every ending is kind of banal, unless it goes to another dimension -- like Franz Kafka s stories, which begin like detective stories and turn into a completely other world.". That same freedom can be seen in the storyline for "Murder," in which a man, stabbed with a bicycle spoke, is found hours later in a theater on the other side of town from the place where he was mortally wounded. (EurasiaNet.org)
A city forbidden by name - and by history Mar 9, 2008
The palace, a metaphor for Old China, persisted as a metaphor for New China," Barme writes. "As Franz Kafka put it, 'the empire is immortal. " The President, Hu Jintao, and the Premier, Wen Jiabao, continue to live and work with the Communist Party elite in Zhongnanhai. This week they will drive underground in their secret tunnels from Zhongnanhai to take their seats at the National People's Congress. They still appropriate and repudiate the symbols, legacies and policies of imperial China. The... (Sydney Morning Herald -- Business)
A bug's life. Really Mar 9, 2008
In a scandal that's sending shock waves through both the publishing industry and academia, the author Franz Kafka has been revealed to be a fraud. " 'The Metamorphosis' - purported to be the fictional account of a man who turns into a large cockroach - is actually non-fiction," according to a statement released by Kafka's editor, who spoke only on the condition that he be identified as E.. (International Herald Tribune -- Ed/Op)
You should know this face Mar 5, 2008
Who but Nashman can claim to have played Albert Einstein (Picasso at the Lapin Agile), Franz Kafka (Kafka and Son) and Tom Cruise (Hotel Loopy). Ethnically, the "very out Jew" blends into every race and creed on this planet. (Globe and Mail -- Entertainment)
MILOS AT THE MOVIES Feb 14, 2008
19 & 21), embraces the offbeat situational humor perfected by Prague-based writer Franz Kafka and matches it with a conventional youth narrative. Soft-spoken teen Peter (Ladislav Jakim) lands a thankless job at the local grocery store, where he s asked to apprehend thieving shoppers. (New York Press)
Journeys | Prague: Under wintry skies, a city revealed Feb 5, 2008
The Castle remains the seat of government today, and while searching for the bureaucratic approval of some personal documents that brought to mind the work of the city's most famous writer, Franz Kafka, I walked across the castle's wide, snow-filled Deer Moat and passed by the Romanesque Basilica of St. George and the wedding-cake-like Archbishop's Palace without hearing so much as a single tour guide. It is worth noting here that the Czech word for January, Leden, means something akin to "icy."... (International Herald Tribune)
Youth Without Youth **1/2 Jan 4, 2008
Further sifted by Coppola, the film version owes a little to Franz Kafka and more to Jorge Luis Borges, spilling forth as a sustained meditation on such trifles as the meaning of time, the origin of language, the idea of the double, the earthly battle between good and evil, the further fracas between Eastern mysticism and Western rationality, capped off by an 11th-hour pondering of the transmigration of souls. Yep, just another day at the ontological office. (Globe and Mail -- Entertainment)
Film review: I'm Not There Dec 21, 2007
Given that he was talking about Franz Kafka, a writer known to sign his name with a full stop, perhaps there's something to the theory. What makes I'm Not There's titular graphics so playful, so arresting, so perversely right is that, if there's one thing Dylan's life and music represent, it's a furious refusal to be defined, pinned down, closed. (Telegraph.co.uk)
Click for Full Story Dec 12, 2007
Thought for Today: "There are two cardinal sins from which all the others spring: impatience and laziness." -- Franz Kafka, Czech author (1883-1924). (Source: Associated Press). (KWTX.com, TX)
Hollywood's tragicomic adaptations of literary classics Dec 2, 2007
Unlike writers of screenplays, pulp fiction or the ubiquitous made-for-film books nowadays, literary giants like Christopher Marlow, John Donne, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, JD Coetzee, Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Pramodeya Ananta Toer, to name a few, cannot be simply slotted, stereotyped or distilled into populist themes. The depth and multiple facets of Milton's Satan, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, Eliot's J Alfred Prufrock or Steinbeck's Adam Trask offer readers the matchless appeal... (Jakarta Post, Indonesia -- Features)
Community conversations should be offered with humility Nov 27, 2007
Second, there is much more wisdom in a statement made by author Franz Kafka, one of the most influential Western literature writers: "Humility provides everyone with the strongest relationship to his fellow man, and this immediately, though, of course, only in the case of complete and permanent humility.". Humility can't be faked, or at least it can't be faked forever. (Bismarck Tribune, ND)
What about civil liberties of police? Nov 20, 2007
The reference is to the Austrian writer Franz Kafka, whose novels depicted the helplessness of the individual faced with an essentially evil bureaucracy. It all seems a long way from Blacktown railway station. (Sydney Morning Herald -- Opinion)
Classic music with a twistChiara Quartet to perform in Greenwich Nov 19, 2007
All that is left of the book are quotations found in notebooks of Franz Kafka, who read the book while in Prague. The show will conclude with Brahms' String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor. (Stamford Advocate)
Highs and lows Nov 17, 2007
"Danton Eeprom is a very flamboyant Frenchman with a penchant for Pierre Cardin silk scarves. A couple of years back, dance music all went a bit functional, but this has a proper beginning, middle and an end - it's like a post punk/techno crossover record. The title comes from the Thomas De Quincy book, which I read back in sixth form, walking around with books in the pocket of my long rain mac. Probably had a Franz Kafka in the other side.". 6. (Guardian Unlimited)
Misery loves company Nov 2, 2007
Perhaps Mel Brooks put it best when he said, "Richard Lewis may just be the Franz Kafka of modern day comedy." Lewis has taken his life-long therapy fodder and carved it into a commanding and compelling art form. He is currently embarked upon his "Misery Loves Company Tour" and will be featured in two major books on comedy. (The Palm Beach Post)
French poet Bonnefoy receives Czech literary prize Oct 31, 2007
An international jury that included prominent German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki and British publisher John Calder selected Bonnefoy in March to win the annual Franz Kafka Prize awarded by the Prague-based Franz Kafka Society ... Bonnefoy is the seventh recipient of the Franz Kafka Prize. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
R.B. Kitaj, 74; paintings conveyed historical, literary themes Oct 25, 2007
Mr. Kitaj (pronounced kuh-TIE) was a self-taught intellectual whose literary tastes ranged from Franz Kafka to Henry James to Ezra Pound to Walter Benjamin. His canvases often gave a nod to their work, as well as to the filmmakers and other visual artists he claimed as inspirations. (Boston Globe)
Return to Indy's youth Oct 20, 2007
His travels put him next to Ernest Hemingway and Franz Kafka, Woodrow Wilson and Ho Chi Minh, Sidney Bechet and George Gershwin, Mata Hari and Al Capone. "He is," Lucas said, "sort of like Forrest Gump with a whip.". (Los Angeles Times)
Comic review: Funnies you'll love to read Oct 19, 2007
There's the one who writes and illustrates kid-friendly fare like "Spy vs. Spy" for Mad magazine and last year's children's book "Theo and the Blue Note." Then there's the Peter Kuper who has done award-winning illustrated adaptations of works by Franz Kafka and Upton Sinclair. While he definitely leans more toward the latter, Kuper's alter ego Walter Kurtz is a little of both Kupers in "Stop Forgetting to Remember." Like any comics writer, Kurtz clearly has to balance his head-in-the-clouds... (Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- Living)
US novelist tipped to win Nobel Literature Prize announcement Oct 11, 2007
Sweden's biggest daily Dagens Nyheter suggested that the Franz Kafka literary prize could be an indicator of a future Nobel prize, noting that both Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek and British playwright Harold Pinter went on to win the Nobel after winning the Kafka earlier in the year. In such case, the winner could be 84-year-old French poet Yves Bonnefoy. (Yahoo News -- Top Stories)
Philip Roth Braces for Nobel Snub, Australia's Les Murray Rated a Chance Oct 10, 2007
Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka and Joseph Conrad -- all snubbed by the Swedes -- are still read and still relevant. Nobel winners such as Bjornstjerne Bjornson and Odysseus Elytis have sunk back into obscurity -- as I dare say Elfriede Jelinek should, too. (Bloomberg -- Australia & New Zealand)
In 'Sleuth' Harold Pinter probes fighting instinct Oct 9, 2007
" Pinter writes in a handsome study on the second floor of a two-story brownstone in west London, just behind the house he shares with his wife, the writer Antonia Fraser. Tucked in a corner of the downstairs office is a table covered with awards he has amassed in his career as a playwright, director, actor, political provocateur, poet and screenwriter, including the French L?gion d'Honneur, the Franz Kafka Award and the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature. A huge portrait of a younger, vigorous... (International Herald Tribune)
The Jane Austen Book Club **1/2 Sep 28, 2007
How about The Franz Kafka Book Club five depressed guys and a femme fatale hunt down cockroaches while misusing the word Kafkaesque. The Oprah Winfrey Book Club Jonathan Franzen runs roughshod through chain stores defacing Oprah stickers wherever he finds them. (Globe and Mail -- Entertainment)
Flannery O'Connor Sep 24, 2007
She never read James Joyce or Franz Kafka, or any of the other fashionable writers of the era. She was more interested in Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe. (Suite101.com)
North San Diego County Community News Briefs: Beach'n 101 Cruise on tap Sep 6, 2007
As an adjunct professor at San Diego State University, Diamant is the director of the Kafka Project, the international search to recover the missing writings of Franz Kafka. Her first book, "Kafka's Last Love -- The Mystery of Dora Diamant," has received international acclaim and locally won the Theodore Geisel Award, "The Best of the Best" in the 2004 San Diego Book Awards. (North County Times)
Publishers lock horns over rights to Beckett work Sep 2, 2007
Aside from being the first to publish Beckett's prose work in this country and at one point holding the rights in the work of 19 Nobel Laureates, Calder Publications also brought to the attention of British readers the work of Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Franz Kafka, Marguerite Duras and Hubert Selby Jr, who wrote Last Exit to Brooklyn. Calder said he would be looking for a company whose values suited such an important cultural inheritance. (Guardian Unlimited -- UK)
Gold Fields Bidder Leaves Twisted Trail From Homeless Shelter to Argentina Sep 1, 2007
The case of Niren, who devoured Franz Kafka literature and Beatles music in his youth, shows how someone with a lot of guile and a bit of information can roil markets in the Internet age. He used e-mail and online message boards to broadcast takeover bids of little substance to investors around the world, court records and interviews show. (Bloomberg)
Demons, Golems and Dybbuks Aug 18, 2007
" Gerson seized the opportunity to apply for the program grant, which is funded by partnering groups, the American Library Association and its 25-year-old series Let's Talk About It! and Nextbook, a nonprofit devoted to promoting Jewish literature, culture, and ideas. More than 250 libraries are receiving awards to play host to the series this fall. Support from local groups is coming from Learning in Retirement Book Discussion Group and Congregation Children of Israel. As part of the series in... (Athens Banner-Herald)
Japan's Prodigal Novelist Returns Aug 16, 2007
Japanese writer Haruki Murakami attends the 2006 Franz Kafka Award Ceremony in the Old Town Hall on October 30, 2006 in Prague, Czech Republic. Filip Singer / Isifa / Getty Article Tools. (Time.com)
'Make yer point' Aug 11, 2007
I returned to the lives, as well as the works, of writers and artists, particularly Franz Kafka. I saw it as the fundamental and shaping struggle in each, the need to do your work in the face of the socio-economic reality. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
OPINION -- Let there be might: Extreme metal is bigger than the Beatles Aug 4, 2007
Meshuggah, a diverse extreme act from Sweden, explores the inner self through lyrics inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and Franz Kafka. Even though Atlanta s Mastodon is not nearly abrasive as Nile or Meshuggah, they certainly write heavy songs. (Canton Daily Ledger, IL)
Puzzling, tragic suicides of 'golden' couple Aug 2, 2007
She wrote a blog called the Wit of the Staircase, and it is a roiling tour of a capacious mind, bouncing from lowbrow to high, from Kate Moss to Franz Kafka, from film to the history of electricity. She was best known for CD-ROMs she created, works that were targeted at girls, a market she considered neglected. (AZCentral -- News)
'No one made films like him' Jul 31, 2007
In that, it sits alongside Thomas Mann, Heinrich von Kleist, Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz and August Strindberg. There is no one who can compare to him now. (Guardian Unlimited)
Varied lineup at Book Revue this week Jul 19, 2007
The book has garnered praise, including this comment from author Neal Pollack: "If Franz Kafka had lived in central Texas and seen too many midnight movies, he would have been Owen Egerton. This is a divinely weird collection.". On Thursday, also at 8 p.m., you can hear Bohemia psychotherapist Ronald P. Villano speak about his self-published guide, "The Zing," in which he counsels readers on how to progress to "loving the life you live" and "Embrace the Power of Change," as two phrases on his... (Newsday -- Entertainment)
A festival that's like a box of chocolates Jul 2, 2007
By Franz Kafka, adapted by Mark Cassidy and Alon Nashman, directed by Mark Cassidy. "All my writing was about you," wrote Franz Kafka to his father. (Globe and Mail)
Shining moments Jun 11, 2007
I guess that's what living really isI don't have to hide anymoreIt's a weird feeling, though I'm relieved"Song lyrics like Olivier's don't surprise Michaela Gile, the school's English teacher. "They're excellent writers, excellent poets, excellent thinkers," said Gile, who had the students read books by Elie Wiesel, Franz Kafka, and Stephen King.After the students read "The Glass Castle," a book on alcoholism by Jeannette Walls, they wrote poetry to better understand the book and their feelings.... (Boston Globe -- Local)
History explains why TB case caused such worldwide concern Jun 4, 2007
Most epidemics, especially TB are mysterious," Dormandy said. He said became interested in the disease as a medical student when he visited sanatoria in Switzerland, and over the years realized it had been one of the great influences of European literature, art and thought during the 19th Century. Even Nazi doctors sought to identify its origin and find a cure, using Jewish concentration camp victims. Kings, writers, musicians and composers have all fallen to or suffered from TB. Among them:... (International Herald Tribune)
The borrower Jun 2, 2007
Jonathan Lethem's cultish, antic novels might be teeming with cultural and literary references, but at the heart of all his work is the personal loss of his mother. Interview by Aida EdemariamSaturday June 2, 2007. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Sydney Writers' Festival opening night address May 31, 2007
For the struggle of man in the face of the unknowable pressure of totalitarianism, the novels of Franz Kafka are the news that stays news. For her beautiful and expensive evocation of the fragility of the human mind and its imaginings, the writings of Virginia Woolf are the news that stays news. (Sydney Morning Herald -- Entertainment)
`Less Than Zero' Tops BOJ's Summer Reading List May 28, 2007
These days, one could be excused for wondering if Franz Kafka is roaming the halls of Japan's Finance Ministry. The Prague-based writer's tales possessed bizarre, illogical and nightmarishly complex qualities. (Bloomberg -- Columnists)
Lauded, wicked and clever May 21, 2007
There is a link with the themes of Franz Kafka - men are mysteriously incarcerated for something they do not understand. But Phillips says that McDonagh pokes fun at such literary comparisons. (The Age)
More of this story May 5, 2007
Also on the bill is Class Relations, the story of a bourgeois young German who is sent to America by his parents for misbehaving with a female servant, adapted from Franz Kafka's unfinished novel Amerika ... The screening includes Class Relations, based on an unfinished novel by Franz Kafka. (Los Angeles Downtown News, CA)
Fable attraction Apr 29, 2007
It's a lineage that begins with the legendary fool's paradise of Chelm, and extends to more modern Jewish fabulists like Franz Kafka and Groucho Marx. And yet, for all that "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" has in common with this tradition, Chabon is after a quintessentially American synthesis, in which immigrant heritage blends with mass culture fascinations like science fiction and noir. (Los Angeles Times)
Shootings prompt discussion regarding troubled students Apr 24, 2007
It plays a legitimate role in much widely respected literature, from Flannery O'Connor to Franz Kafka and Edgar Allen Poe. "In a creative writing class you encourage students to take risks, not to be afraid to take risks as long as it's in the service of what is hopefully some literary ideal," says Knight, the Tennessee instructor. (CNN -- Education)
Poking holes in greed Mar 11, 2007
The book's underlying idea and the mystery of Zephyr Holdings is so integral to Barry's plot that it remains better off unrevealed here, but in among a suspenseful plot Barry deftly interweaves observations on the social impact of corporate culture; a mix that reads something like Franz Kafka and Agatha Christie collaborating on a Dilbert comic. Most of Barry's observations right down to the continuing motif of missing doughnuts have come first hand from his experience at Hewlett Packard which... (Courier Mail)
A window into Wall Mar 3, 2007
In fact, Wall's sources range from the woodcuts of Hokusai to the writings of Ralph Ellison, Franz Kafka and Yukio Mishima (which he has brought to life with near-slavish fidelity). Still, I had to admit, Degas's painting The Dance Lesson (c. (Globe and Mail -- Entertainment)
Bring on the ghost bunnies Mar 3, 2007
Link is the literary descendant of Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka, those supremely matter-of-fact creators of alternative realities. "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk", Kafka's cheery little fable, would be right at home nestled against Link's story "Catskin", in which children are created from bits and sticks, turned into cats or princes, and sometimes drowned in the river. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Different Voices blog Feb 27, 2007
Also we can claim many significant people: ice hockey player Jaromir Jagr, tennis player Ivan Lendl, writers Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera and Josef Capek who invented the word "robot" in the play "RUR, " composer Antonin Dvorak, Oscar-winning director Milos Forman, singer Magdalena Kozena and former U.S. ambassador Madeleine Albright. Black History Moment. (Pensacola News Journal)
A reformer for the poorAddMyLinkImage("/news/181_1929170,00120001.htm", "A reformer for the poor"); Feb 16, 2007
Franz Kafka s play Metamorphosis has haunted West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee since his university days. There are many interpretations of the play, the most popular one being how a salesman wakes up one night to find himself transformed into a monstrous vermin or a bug or an insect. (Hindustan Times, India)
Louis Menand on quotations Feb 12, 2007
Franz Kafka, a deep mine of quotability, has just eleven entries, and it is disappointing that one of them is not It is enough that the arrows fit exactly in the wounds that they have made. There are two quotations from William James on the subject of truth, but not the most elegant of his formulations: The true is the name for whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief. (New Yorker)
Kundera finds the truth inside an art form Feb 11, 2007
Laurence Sterne learned from Rabelais, Henry Fielding from Cervantes, James Joyce from Gustave Flaubert and post-modernists in all languages from Franz Kafka. Before nodding and saying "of course, of course," it's a good idea to consider in full all of the implications of that - the internationalist imperative. (Buffalo News -- Entertainment)
Tango lessons Feb 3, 2007
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka Short stories by Jorge Luis Borges Sonnets by Francisco de Quevedo Tango music by Astor Piazzolla and Carlos Gardel. . (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Writing For The World Jan 28, 2007
Likewise, Gustave Flaubert's 19th-century novels touched James Joyce, and Franz Kafka inspired Gabriel Garca M rquez to break with artistic tradition. Kundera argues that "the ages of life stand concealed behind the curtain," and that the novelist's purpose is to tear the curtain and expose, as Cervantes did with "Don Quixote," "all the comical nakedness of its prose." History may repeat itself but art should not; it is there "to create its own history.". (New York Post -- Entertainment)
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition Jan 20, 2007
Franz Kafka, who in my view would have been an avid gamer, wrote that fiction should "be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us." Lost Planet has breaking ice all over the place, but it never threatens that skating rink under the surface. Search. (Globe and Mail -- Technology)
The Italian Moliere shows art doesn't translate Jan 7, 2007
Subjects included Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum, Homer's Odyssey, The Trial by Franz Kafka and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Other neighbouring countries are more content in their cultural chauvinism. (Guardian Unlimited -- World)
Funny: Even the Chargers need a spotter Jan 7, 2007
Aside from its present-day politics, a mix of Franz Kafka and Stephen Colbert, Oceanside has it all. It's got the beach, it's got a pier, it's got hotels in the works, it's got vibrant dreams, it's got a well-placed golf course. (North County Times)
