The internet’s repository of Franz Kafka-inspired literary treats seems to have no bounds. This latest: his excellent short story “The Country Doctor” has been adapted by Japanese filmmaker Kōji Yamamura into a 20-minute animated film (subtitled). Kafka adaptations clearly aren’t going anywhere. Pair with our essay on the subtle art of rereading his most famous story.
Kafka’s “The Country Doctor” as a film
Permeated by Violence
Ratik Asokan reviews Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador by Horacio Castellanos Moya, a story about dealing with the violence that permeates El Salvador’s culture. “Fiction, unlike journalism, has allowed Moya to express the frustration and existential terror of living in a society thoroughly permeated by violence.” Pair with our reviews of Moya’s Tyrant Memory and The Dream of My Return.
Book Trailer Contest
Would you like to win all 37 novellas from Melville House’s “The Art of the Novella” series? Then try your hand at making a video book trailer for their “The Duel x 5” set.
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Sound-Word Index: Say What You Really Feel
Emoticons are unbelievably passé, right? And GIFs are just too much work, right? It’s time to better utilize our technological advancements. Behold The Sound-Word Index, a project by Blanche de Lasa, Stina Gromark, and James Godwin that can use “sound, volume and rhythm” to “help to translate our emotions hidden behind our screens.”
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The Barbarian Nurseries to be a Film?
Héctor Tobar’s The Barbarian Nurseries is being developed into a movie, reports Edward Douglas for ComingSoon. (You can read an excerpt of the book over here.) Elsewhere, you can read Tobar’s take on how “the writer is a revered figure in France.”
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Hearing the Voices
“Macbeth has a twist that sets it apart from every other Shakespearean tragedy: Macbeth murders his voice. Mad with fear that Banquo’s heirs will seize the throne, Macbeth has Banquo killed. After that, our antihero is on his own. There is no one left to verify what is real and what is not … When Macbeth’s voice dies, everything else disappears, too. Macbeth is alone.” This excerpt from Jillian Keenan’s Sex With Shakespeare touches on everything from sexuality in Singapore to The O.C. fan-fiction.
Post-Apocalypse Now
“I’ve turned paranoid lately. When I’m in an airport, I look at the people around me at the gate, trying to suss out who might make a good ally if things went bad. I carry two plastic tubs full of warm clothes, hiking boots, and first-aid supplies in the back of my Subaru at all times. I have as large a volume of canned and dry goods in my pantry and laundry room as the shelves will hold.” Rebecca Onion for Slate on the appeal and contagion of “prepper fiction.” Pair with our review of Claire Vaye Watkins‘s Gold Fame Citrus, one of the recent bumper crop of apocalyptic narratives.
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