Kafka Americana: Fiction [Paperback]

Jonathan Lethem (Author), Carter Scholz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2001 | Series: Norton Paperback

"Inspired by affection.... Extremely witty and intelligent."—Publishers Weekly

Previously published only in a signed, limited edition, Kafka Americana has achieved cult status. Norton now brings this reimagination of our labyrinthine world to a wider audience. In an act of literary appropriation, Lethem and Scholz seize a helpless Kafka by the lapels and thrust him into the cultural wreckage of twentieth-century America. In the collaboratively written "Receding Horizon," Hollywood welcomes Kafka as scriptwriter for Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, with appropriately morbid results. Scholz's "The Amount to Carry" transports "the legal secretary of the Workman's Accident Insurance Institute" to a conference with fellow insurance executives Wallace Stevens and Charles Ives, to muse on what can and can't be insured. And Lethem's "K for Fake" brings together Orson Welles, Jerry Lewis, and Rod Serling in a kangaroo trial in which Kafka faces fraudulent charges. Taking modernism's presiding genius for a joyride, the authors portray an absurd, ominous world that Kafka might have invented but could never have survived.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Inspired by affection.... Extremely witty and intelligent. -- Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Jonathan Lethem is the author of six novels, including the bestsellers The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in Brooklyn and Maine.

Carter Scholz is the co-author of Palimpsests. His novel Radiance was published in 2002. He lives in California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 100 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (September 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039332253X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393322538
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,298,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)