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Eastern European

Little Known Literary Facts

by Levi Asher on Wednesday, March 3, 2010 09:28 am
Beat Generation, Classics, Eastern European, Fiction, Kid Lit, News, Southern, Television, Transgressive, Tributes

1, A font face captures Franz Kafka's handwriting, which turns out be rather pretty in a Kafkaesque sort of way.

2. Tablet Magazine interviews eternal Fug Tuli Kupferberg and points us to his excellent YouTube Channel. I love the audience participation in this little-known literary facts video, in which Tuli reveals that T. S. Eliot was Jewish, that Walt Whitman was heterosexual, that Homer's Iliad was actually written by a guy named Iliad, and that when Dylan Thomas drank himself to death his drink of choice was strawberry milkshakes. All true.

... read more and add your thoughts (5 comments)



Twitterstream of Consciousness

by Levi Asher on Monday, November 30, 2009 09:31 pm
Classics, Eastern European, Fiction, Film, Internet Culture, Music, New York Times Book Review, Russian

... read more and add your thoughts (9 comments)



Curtains

by Levi Asher on Thursday, November 12, 2009 07:29 pm
Eastern European, Fiction, History, Postmodernism

... read more and add your thoughts (1 comment)



Reviewing the Review: October 25 2009

by Levi Asher on Sunday, October 25, 2009 07:06 pm
Comix, Eastern European, Fiction, Internet Culture, New York Times Book Review, Postmodernism, Religion
International literature gets a decent workout in today's New York Times Book Review. I'm about to dive into The Book of Fathers, a 300-year family novel by Hungarian favorite Miklos Vamos, and I'm encouraged to hear that Jane Smiley thinks well of it.
... read more and add your thoughts (1 comment)



Herta Who?

by Dedi Felman on Monday, October 12, 2009 04:49 pm
Awards, Eastern European, News, Politics

... read more and add your thoughts (4 comments)



Fictional Keys to the Milan Kundera Uproar

by Jamelah Earle on Friday, October 17, 2008 12:14 am
Eastern European, Fiction, News, Politics

This week it was reported that in 1950, author Milan Kundera allegedly informed on Miroslav Dvoracek, and as a result, Dvoracek ended up serving 14 years in communist prison camps. (Story here.) In many ways, the news is reminiscent of the story of German author Gunter Grass and his admission that he served in the Nazi Waffen SS as a young man.

... read more and add your thoughts (12 comments)



Big Thinking: Kundera and Image

by Jamelah Earle on Friday, October 10, 2008 01:25 am
Big Thinking, Eastern European, Fiction, Politics

Milan Kundera's novels are punctuated by philosophical asides, and whether you agree with him or think he's full of crap (or fall somewhere in between), he provides plenty of fodder for keeping the hamsters running on the wheels in your brain. Like his other books, his novel Immortality contains several digressions. Or at first they seem like digressions, but in the end, they serve the whole in a maddeningly perfect way.

... read more and add your thoughts (15 comments)



Looking for Franz Kafka’s Doll

by Lila Lizabeth Weisberger on Monday, October 1, 2007 10:41 pm
Eastern European, Existential, Postmodernism, Psychology
[Editor's Note: Lila Lizabeth Weisberger is a psychologist, a leading member of the National Institute for Poetry Therapy and the co-author of The Healing Fountain: Poetry Therapy for Life's Journey. She's also my mother. -- Levi Asher]

... read more and add your thoughts (5 comments)



The Burroughs Brothers and the Plastic People of the Universe

by Levi Asher on Wednesday, September 26, 2007 07:27 pm
Eastern European, Music, New York City, News, Transgressive
1. As promised, I went to see Augusten Burroughs and John Elder Robison, who read from Look Me In The Eye. The elder Burroughs/Robison brother has a good sense of humor and an appealing lack of self-consciousness on stage. He's almost as big a ham as Augusten, in fact, and that's a good thing. I recommend this book to anybody who enjoyed Running With Scissors and also to anybody interested in learning more about Asperger's syndrome.
... read more and add your thoughts (2 comments)



The Invisible Writer

by Jamelah Earle on Thursday, March 15, 2007 05:09 pm
Eastern European, Fiction, News, Postmodernism
I've liked Milan Kundera for awhile, but reading his novel Immortality sealed the deal for me. Now I am a full-blown fan, and think he's a wonderfully brilliant writer -- not just as a craftsman of prose, though that would be enough -- but as a builder of novels that are stunningly well put together. Since I'm a Kundera groupie, I was glad to see an excerpt from his latest, The Curtain on The Guardian recently.
... read more and add your thoughts (16 comments)



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