ALL1353-C First 6 Weeks 31-Jan Wednesdays 12:00-1:20
Grossman 115 Limit 25
On the centenary of his premature death, let’s let a few weird, witty, cryptic, startling, moving, harrowing, visceral, cerebral, dream-scary, cartoon-funny, heart-bruising, spirit-wrestling, brain-tingling fictions conjured by Prague’s most famously anxious German-writing Jew mess with our minds. Let’s see what stories ranging from the 50-page “The Metamorphosis” to a bonbon-brief 45 words of nail-on-the-head prose do to us and what we make of them.
Text: Students should acquire, if at all possible, Franz Kafka, _The Complete Stories_ (NY, Schocken Books, ISBN #0-8052-1055-5). We’ll look at some lesser-known fictions that may not appear in other collections, & it would be great, for close analysis & class discussion, to share translations & page numbers.
Coordinator: Robert Chibka
Bob Chibka taught fictions and fiction-writing at Boston College for 30-some-odd years before retiring to Brewster. He enjoys being pushed around by sentences and returning the favor.