Kafkas arriving soon

I'm excited to announce that my bilingual short story collection, Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served, is in the mail, and I'll soon receive 10 paperback copies.

books: 20 + 1

Lying on my couch at an uncommon angle, I looked up at a shelf with a small selection of paperback fiction and saw these ten titles in order: Lorrie Moore's Anagrams, Toni Morrison's Beloved and Sula, Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World, Arthur Nersesian's The Fuck Up and Chinese Takeout, Chris Offutt's Out of the Woods, Yuri Olesha's Envy, Pynchon's V, and Roth's The Human Stain.

I have so many books in storage and in piles on the floor or shelves in other rooms, yet, possibly, these ten represent in exacting proportion all the fiction I read. Having said that, I soon realize that 30% women might be high, sadly enough, and 20% in translation is low, I think, and it would be weighted more toward fiction from Europe and Russia, not 50/50 between Europe/Russia and Asia. Also, because I anticipated teaching contemporary literature, after 1945, when I drove down to South Carolina, I left most of my titles written before World War II in storage space in Philadelphia.

I do have the white whale and friends, Pierre, etc. on hand, at least a couple of the same Penguin paperback editions I read in college. Of the ten I just named, only Olesha's Envy is one I was assigned to read as an undergrad, but the copy on the shelf is one I procured years later. The British Picador paperback V is one of two editions I've owned, and I bought it in England when I was working as a busboy in Paris and then traveling in Europe the summer and autumn before the Berlin Wall fell. The Crying of Lot 49 rests on a different shelf where I keep the books I've been teaching most recently.

What's on the shelf above the first ten, you ask?

Ha Jin's Waiting, Denis Johnson's Angels and Jesus' Son, Edward P. Jones's Lost in the City, two different editions of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and then four Kafka Schocken Classics w/Dad's Kunderas leaning against them. Kerouac's On the Road rests horizontally on top the paperbacks just named.

When Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served, my bilingual stack of stories, arrives from Romania, I'll let the copy I keep rest in its alphabetical place, between Kafka and Kundera, on the higher plane of shelf.

new issues, new horizons

The September/October print issue is out and about, sporting "A Scottish Dizzen," and much, much more! Thank you, Dr. Daniel Peaceman for everything you are doing in this transcontinental literary world.

In my own literary way, I've been living vicariously through The Paris Review's interview with the Italian writer and publisher Roberto Calasso. If only all of our writing lives could be as charmed as his. Here's an excerpt from Calasso on a Kafka in his library:

And this is the first book that Kafka ever published, Betrachtung. There were eight hundred copies. In one of his letters, he mentions having gone to a bookshop to see if anyone had bought the book and realizing that, of the eleven copies sold, only one had been bought by someone other than him.

I hope everyone has a relaxing and healthy weekend.

Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century

I've been reading Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March and have stumbled upon another way to assign myself a D

In this case, it concerns the Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century edition I have, a gold and tannish six by nine with quality paper for pages--you've probably seen these around

Anyway, in the beginning they list the twenty books in the series, and as it turns out, I've read thirteen of them--so that's good for a 65, and you can see where this is headed

Well, which ones you ask? The ones by Delillo, Kafka, Pynchon, Kerouac, Golding, Conrad, Morrison, Proust, Steinbeck, Joyce, Marquez, Ford (as in Ford Maddox), and Cather

And who have I failed to read a particular novel of? Wharton, Bellow (as said, am reading, and perhaps ironic that aside from Delillo or possibly Kafka, I've read more of his work than any other writer on the list), Coetzee, Greene (as in Graham), Rushdie, and Lawrence

If you think "Big Book," you can guess the exact title pretty easily for most of these although the Joyce selection is Portrait of the Artist, not what you were thinking, and, yes, this works in my favor

Overall though, to me, this list seems decidedly more "central to the canon" than some of the other lists I've seen floating around the web, and for the most part, the book chosen is absolutely the right one for each author

Or so says this humble D student, relieved to have passed a literature test

PS--My periods have led several other poignant pieces of punctuation on a work stoppage, and I can't have this held against me!

Arghh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (says the man reduced to the exclamation point)

PPS--I feel a need to confess that I was assigned William Golding's Lord of the Flies three times from grades 8 to 12, got it as a birthday present, and also had it assigned once in college and am almost sure I've read that [redacted] five times! Or, one less than the total number of Bellow's novels I've read (but to an extent, I cheated by dallying about the shorter ones here)

PPPS--Palmetto bug spotted--a huge [redacted]--no doubt from Kafka, his way of reminding me he never would have been a blogger! Or at least not one who overused his exclamation points!!!

PPPPS--[redacted] you, Kafka! At least I've read a title by all but three on the list (Greene, Coetzee, and Kesey)--possibly that means I'm counting a short story by D H Lawrence, yes, okay, I see what you mean, but I wanted to point out that I've read Alan Paton's Too Late the Phalarope, and if I expire tonight I wouldn't mind that this would be the last novel I ever mentioned

PPPPPS--Please God, don't turn me off now, when I was just getting warmed up! Pretty please!!!

PPPPPPS--Oy I really feel I've jinxed myself now