Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka - Softcover

Wilson, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573661015 ISBN 13: 9781573661010

Publisher: Fiction Collective 2, 2002

Synopsis

In a 1978 New York Times book review, Kenneth Baker described Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka as: "...the most powerful New American fiction I have encountered in years. A demanding, exhilarating work." Nearly 25 years later, FC2 is proud to reissue this classic collection of short fiction by William S. Wilson that seems even more relevant today. It touches on controversies over the role of science in our lives and deals with cosmetic surgery and the medical uses of human embryos, heart transplants, and regenerated genitalia. And that's only the beginning. The story "Metier: Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka," implies that Kafka responded in his fiction to questions that no longer need to be asked in fiction. The epistolary story, "Conveyance: The Story I Wouldn't Want Bill Wilson to Read," is an intimate letter from a woman who had wanted to write fiction and who now challenges Wilson's reaction to her report of a tragedy. "Interim" chronicles the imaginary reforestation of Scotland and "Anthropology" turns on the actual moment in Structuralism when Claude Levi-Strauss relocates the ear to the back of the head in order to interpret a myth. Written with cool precision and a subtle touch, these meditations and metafictions will continue to reverberate for decades to come.

About this title

About the Author

William S. Wilson is an art critic who lives in New York City. He authored the novel Birthplace: Moving Into Nearness, for which he was a Pen-Faulkner Award nominee. His short story "anthropology: what is lost in rotation," was included in the 1977 edition of The Best American Short Stories. Wilson holds a Ph.D. from Yale University.

From the Back Cover

Many of the stories in Why I Don't Write like Franz Kafka turn on physical operations in a possible future when regeneration of organs is possible. Others reflect intellectual operations as abstract as logic, with adaptations of both Kurt Goedel's Undecidability Theorem and Bertrand Russell's Paradox in set theory. The titles are set in lower case, as in a dictionary, with physical and intellectual actions defining the concept in the title.

The story "metier: why I don't write like Franz Kafka," implies that Kafka responded in his fiction to questions about divine laws that no longer need to be asked in fiction. The epistolary story, "conveyance: the story I wouldn't want Bill Wilson to read," is an intimate letter from a woman who had wanted to write fiction. She writes to challenge Wilson's complacencies with her report of a tragedy which is beyond consolations and the coherence of art. The story, "interim," chronicles the imaginary reforestation of Scotland, while "anthropology" turns on the actual moment in Structuralism when Claude Levi-Strauss relocates the ear to the back of the head in order to interpret a myth.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fiction Collective 2
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573661015
• ISBN 13: 9781573661010
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144