An episode from 9/14/26: Tonight, I read my favorite passages from the Diaries of Franz Kafka. (The edition of his diaries that I read has since been replaced by this one). When you approach these passages, as I do here, with almost no comment or connecting links to his life or his work, let alone to the library of Kafka scholarship that has developed in the last century, he suddenly appears very familiar. He sounds like you, or somebody you know, struggling by themselves with whatever it is. We all know somebody who, Ahab-like, has made remarks like these: “What will be my fate as a writer is very simple. My talent for portraying my dreamlike inner life has thrust all other matters into the background; my life has dwindled dreadfully, nor will it cease to dwindle. Nothing else will ever satisfy me.”You can find the text for all the excerpts I read from here. The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at [email protected].

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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