Kafka Americana
1999 collection of short stories
Kafka Americana is a 1999 collection of short stories by Jonathan Lethem and Carter Scholz based on the life (and alternate histories) and works of Franz Kafka. Originally published in a limited edition by Subterranean Press, it was released as a trade paperback by W. W. Norton & Company in 2001.
The stories
- "Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor" (Scholz)
- A re-imagining of Kafka's uncompleted short story. First published in Crank! 1.
- "The Notebooks of Bob K." (Lethem)
- Batman is presented as Kafka's creation, with parodies of some of Kafka's famous aphorisms and stories, including "The Burrow", "A Crossbreed (A Sport)", and "The Vulture". A significantly different version of the story appeared in Gas 6.
- "Receding Horizon" (Lethem & Scholz)
- Kafka comes to America, changes his name to Jack Dawson, and writes screenplays in Hollywood. First published in Crank! 5.
- "The Amount to Carry" (Scholz)
- Kafka meets fellow insurance executives Wallace Stevens and Charles Ives. First published in Starlight 2.
- "K. is for Fake" (Lethem)
- Parody of The Trial. First published in McSweeney's Quarterly 4.
References
- v
- t
- e
Jonathan Lethem
- Gun, with Occasional Music
- Amnesia Moon
- As She Climbed Across the Table
- Girl in Landscape
- Motherless Brooklyn
- The Fortress of Solitude
- You Don't Love Me Yet
- Chronic City
- Dissident Gardens
- A Gambler's Anatomy
- The Feral Detective
- The Arrest (novel)
- Brooklyn Crime Novel
- The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye
- Kafka Americana
- Men and Cartoons
- How We Got Insipid
- Believeniks!: 2005: The Year We Wrote a Book About the Mets
- The Disappointment Artist
- They Live
- The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.
- The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (Editor)
- Talking Heads' Fear of Music