To kick off German Literature Month, Melville House’s marketing manager picked the best beers to drink as you read Heinrich Böll. Now Dogfish Head’s brewmaster Sam Calagione has paired beers with a few other literary classics.
Book & Beer
Three Kafkas Begin the Day
Isotropic Films has begun filming a “fresh, modern horror [film] version” of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. At The New York Review of Books, Mark Harman offers a new translation of the late author’s “A Message From the Emperor,” which Harman calls “hauntingly oblique.” Further away still, Elif Batuman recognizes some Kafkaesque street signage in Turkey.
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Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One
Have you heard the one about the Holocaust historian who loves Donald Trump? No, really. Eric Metaxas, most well-known for his biography of the theologian/anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer, has claimed that Trump’s rhetoric is all just “schtick,” and that the man himself is “culturally Jewish.”
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Building the Labyrinth
“When gender’s not there, it sort of leaves room for us to focus on these other differences—and most of them end up being insignificant, too.” An interview with Emma Ramadan, translator of Anne Garréta’s Sphinx, on writing, translating, and understanding genderless characters.
Righteous Anger
You’ve probably heard the sad news that Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman passed away on May 2nd. In memory of Hanneman’s work with the band, Greg Pollock wrote a paean to God Hates Us All, “the most important album in [his] life.”
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Letters to Roberto Bolaño
“The act of writing is a conscious act of humility”: Diego Trelles Paz recalls the advice on writing given to him by Roberto Bolaño during their brief correspondence, at n+1.
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