Kafka‘s The Metamorphosis has officially hit the century mark, and over at The Guardian Richard T. Kelly celebrates with “100 thoughts for 100 years.” Pair with our own Matt Seidel‘s thoughts on rereading Kafka’s masterpiece, which you can find here.
Kafka’s Century
Football Book Club: Bye Week
It’s bye week over at Football Book Club. And while there’s no new book to read this week — everybody’s resting up, licking their wounds, and sticking pins in Jay Cutler voodoo dolls — you, gentle reader, should be sure to check in for new posts on Louisa Hall’s Speak — and Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts.
Dystopian (Non)Fictions
Alexandra Alter traces how “a bleak, apocalyptic strain of post-revolutionary literature has taken root” in the Middle East following the Arab Spring.
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Saul Bellow, “Wise Guy”
Writing for The Dublin Review of Books, Kevin Stevens reviews Saul Bellow: Letters, the collected correspondence of “Wise Guy” Saul Bellow, “one of America’s best writers and most interesting men.”
The Books Coming from Ukraine
Citing the cliché that people “only become interested in a country’s literature once we start bombing in” as his reason, Chad Post takes a close look at some recently published Ukrainian books.
My Body Shall Be All Yours
“I am nostalgic for letters. There’s a craft that’s been lost in expressing some kind of desire or passion or bodily experience for someone else.” From James Joyce to Frida Kahlo, The Guardian collects bits of great artists’ erotic missives to one another. And speaking of literary love letters, how about Nicholson Baker‘s Vox [ed. note: it makes a great Valentine’s Day gift]?
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Ask Her About Her Uterus
“Too often, a woman’s pain is not merely met with doubt, but suspicion, both within the medical community and outside of it.” The New Republic writes about female pain, the medical community, and Abby Norman‘s book, Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain.
How Do You Illustrate Footnotes?
Seven Stories Press is publishing three volumes of a Graphic Canon, which will illustrate and panel everything from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Infinite Jest. Their first volume, Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons will be released on May 22nd.
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