Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka

by Wilson, William S.

• ISBN13: 9781573661010
• ISBN10: 1573661015
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-09-01
• Publisher: Fc2/Black Ice Books

Summary

In a 1978 New York Timesbook review, Kenneth Baker described Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafkaas: "...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.

Author Biography

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. Wilson holds a Ph.D. from Yale University

Table of Contents

Love	1	(12)
Marriage	13	(5)
Men	18	(8)
Women	26	(5)
Motherhood	31	(6)
Fatherhood	37	(5)
Desire	42	(5)
America	47	(14)
Metier	61	(14)
History	75	(13)
Anthropology	88	(16)
Interim	104	(13)
Conveyance	117