Franz Kafka Archives - Public Seminar

Literature

How to Keep Your Soul Intact

A poetry series documents ten weeks under COVID-19

August 25, 2020 • by Val Vinokur

Over ten weeks spanning June, July, and August 2020, Val Vinokur composed a cycle of poems documenting life during the COVID-19 pandemic and published weekly at Public Seminar. Titled "The Big Cats,” the resulting series serves as a poetic diary, a kind of "Waste Land” with hyperlinks, responding to the ...

The Big Cats, Part I

On tigers, Richard Brautigan, and six feet of distance

June 2, 2020 • by Val Vinokur

In the Bronx the tigers have come down / with a dry cough and febrile dreams...

Franz Kafka, Sociologist of Domination

A Review of “Kafka, Angry Poet”

November 16, 2018 • by Richard Lachmann

Kafka, Angry Poet ([2011] 2015), Pascale Casanova’s final book (she died in September 2018), offers an innovative and insightful reading of Kafka’s literary work and of his place in early twentieth century Czech, German, and Jewish intellectual debates. However, Casanova does more, and what she does deserves attention from sociologists concerned ...