Favourite footnotes: 5

I took some liberties.

- Dave Eggers, on 'The Animal of the Church', his translation of 'Los Murmullos' by Alejandro Zambra, a translation of 'The Creature in Our Shul' by Nathan Englander, a translation of something I can't read in Hebrew by Etgar Keret, a translation of 'In Our Synagogue' by John Wray, a translation of 'Das Tier in der Synagoge' by Franz Kafka, in Multiples (ed. Adam Thirlwell)

Best pitch EVER!!

Just say yes or no to this: Kafka, Woolf, Hemingway, Chaplin, and Sontag are debating the best movie ever made.

- David Thomson, to the editors of McSweeney's Thirty-One - Vikings, Monks, Philosophers, Whores: old forms, unearthed

Equinimity (and other Kafka jokes)

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks, “Why the long face?” 

“I was born into servitude, and when I die, my feet will be turned into glue,” replied the horse. 

The bartender realized he would not be getting a tip.

- John McNamee, 'Kafka's Joke Book'

In Kafka's footsteps

Of course, one feels sorry for children burdened by their parents with airy-fairy, innuendo-laden or just plain ridiculous names. But I can't help the suspicion that Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii (from New Zealand) perhaps isn't au fait with the overtones of her chosen pseudonym, either.

Kafka was a wet-pants

Kafka refused to put a picture of an insect on the cover of Metamorphosis.

- Elif Batuman, LRB

Kafka - in context (again)

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he discovered that someone had roofied his Isla Negra and he'd been made to sit through the entire final of Strictly Come Dancing.

Kafka - in context

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself slightly put out as those dreams, though not easy, had been mostly about Natalie Portman.