History | History
Oct.18.2012
I can't promise this will be the last I post about this new wealth of Kafka material (with some original writing by Kafka himself). It was a trial of four years but a wait of decades. How Kafka would react to see this leap of his work go from obscurity to an international internet presence (...
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Oct.17.2012
Here is some more about the four year trial concerning Kafka manuscripts. I wonder what Kafka would be thinking ... from the grave. First off, he gave charge to burn his manuscripts to the one person he knew would not do the deed. He knew this because Brod had previously told him he would not do it...
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Oct.14.2012
At Checkpoint Charlie, for nearly three decades the gateway between East Berlin and West Berlin, it could take an hour or more to move from east to west through the great Berlin Wall. The guards cross-examined drivers and passengers in cars and buses and trucks, matching passport photos with...
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Oct.14.2012
At long last - and I mean decades, not just the four years of this trial - manuscripts which his friend Max Brod spirited out of Prague, on the last train before the Nazis captured the city, are to be made public. It might not please Kafka. It probably would please Brod. But it certainly pleases me...
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Oct.12.2012
I have found myself - totally unplanned- the author of four and three-quarters historical novels. One of the major difficulties (for me) has been having to deal with no modern methods of communication. But one adapts. Otherwise, an author writes to propel characters through a plot. This is the main...
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Oct.08.2012
Whether Peter Rabbit is in a stew is anyone's guess. But surely there be carrots. To say nothing of onions.
ROAST TURKEY:
Pluck the bird carefully and singe all over with a piece of white paper; then wipe it with a clean cloth; draw in and keep the liver and gizard.
Wash the inside well and wipe...
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Oct.03.2012
My first typewriter was (and, indeed, is - as it it easily fifty pounds of indestructible steel) a Remington Rand of heft and might. Blackened ribbons which had to be spooled into place. Keys which gave the fingers a good workout. Cranking in the piece of paper so it would be straight. Letters...
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Oct.03.2012
image via karenswhimsy.com
Today, I'll finish the third edit of a historical novel I've written set in the Middle Ages, and this has me looking back. I started research on this rather obscure subject and personality some 20 years ago, and then came compiling and synthesizing the data. The...
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Sep.25.2012
“There’s no work for us,” Ali said, “because we’re old.” The sound of the Bulgarian words was familiar to my ears by now. My friend L. was translating. Ali and his wife C. were only in their fifties, but considered themselves old – and, to be honest, their hard lives had aged them...
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Sep.21.2012
There is information in this article which I did not know - always a pleasing situation when learning about Kafka. I did not realize that the bulk of his extant manuscripts were given to his nieces by Max Brod and it was they, in turn, who gave them to Oxford University's Bodleian Library. How...
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