2.16.12

Updates ...

The Dadaoism anthology from Chomu Press is going forward as planned. Here is the TOC.

Ex Occidente's tribute volume dedicated to Bruno Schulz has its webpage as well, here. My story, "The Vile Game of Gunter and Landau" is included, and I am proud to have the opportunity to salute Schulz.

There has been a bit of an exchange involving the Bealu translation. In other translation-related news, I've recently completed what I believe is the only English version of Julio Cortazar's short story "Headache" ("Cefalea"). I hope to be able to present it soon.

I've also just finished translating a collection of short stories first published a little over a hundred years ago, and also, to the best of my knowledge, never before rendered in English: Cuentos Nerviosos, or Nervous Stories, by Carlos Diaz Dufoo, Sr. I'm currently working on doing the same for his son, Carlos Diaz Dufoo Jr (hijo), who wrote epigrams, philosophical essays, and apparently plays. Information about these two is very scarce in English.

2.6.12

You can read a posthumous interview with Franz Kafka, as relayed by your reporter to the best of his meager necromantic abilities, here.

And the opening passages from three of my unpublished novels, The Wretch of the Sun, MEMBER, and UNLANGUAGE, have been posted here.

The image is accurate, excepting in that I'm right handed.

1.19.12

Announcement:

New novel:

Title: CELEBRANT

Publisher: Chômu Press

When: 2012

More details to come.

12.20.11

News from under the isolator ...

I'm very honored to announce that a story of mine was selected for inclusion in The Weird, a mammoth anthology of some of the best weird fiction of all time. This will be released in May of next year.

Weird Fiction Review has named The Great Lover "Weird Book of the Year!"

D.F. Lewis' very thoughtful real-time review of The Great Lover can be found here.

My essay on supernatural literature and what's wrong with Todorov's definition of "the fantastic" is now available in the print version of The Weird Fiction Review #2, edited by S.T. Joshi and published by Centipede Press. Centipede will also be releasing a multi-volume collection of my novels, essays, and stories next year ... more on that later.

It's likely that a new novel from your reporter will be appearing from Chomu Press in 2012, and a new short story of mine has been chosen for their upcoming Dadaoism anthology.

And the Kafka blog is already up to aphorism #20.

Many happy returns of the season to everyone, and thank you for your continued attention and interest!

11.26.11

New blog project: Kafka's "Zurau Aphorisms," aka "Reflections on Sin, Suffering, Hope, and the True Way" [Brod's title, or couldn't you guess?]. The 109 aphorisms will be posted one by one and in order, with commentary where possible from your reporter.

The first post and wretched exegesis can be found here.

9.10.11

Johnny sez Occupy Wall Street and/or your own town. Donate.

The President has already begun his campaign for 2012, and he's dusting off his Progressive drag again. Democratic politicians are already maneuvering themselves out in front of the occupiers, trying to co-opt them much in the same way way the Tea Party was co-opted by the Republicans.

The more people there are in the streets making trouble, the harder it will be for either party to maintain the pretense that they represent anybody, so viva trouble.

10.7.11

Blood and Other Cravings is available, with a new story, "Bread and Water," from your reporter.

Jihan was a softspoken Hispanic man with African features. His air of thoughtfulness, which could still be distinguished from the vacant quiet of being sick, struck me. A greying moustache blurred the gauntness of his face, half obscuring his mouth, and his sleepy eyes were always downcast and apparently unseeing. He’d been present when the other one, the one I’d been introduced to that day, died. The nurses tried to keep our morale up by gathering us together periodically, and I heard about it the last day they propped us up in front of the television in the day room. We noticed that we were only five; the nurses evidently had planned to keep this from us, telling us only that so-and-so was a bit too sick to join us. Jihan, however, had been visiting this person when he went. Jihan struggled to make himself heard over the noise from the television. “Garfield Goes Hawaiian.” With haunted eyes, he kept pressing his hands to his throat, and his lips trembled as he spoke. The remote was missing, and none of us could get up. Jihan’s voice failed, but he continued to whisper to himself until the nurses came. Not more than a few days after that he hanged himself with the shower curtain from the back bathroom."