“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning. Every day at eight o’clock he was brought his breakfast by Frau Grubach, the cook, but today she did not come.”
Annotation: where description collapses into self
1. Apparent fact – but already contaminated
“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K.”
This sounds like explanation of an external situation. But notice: No evidence. No witness. No uncertainty marker except “must”. This is not world-description. It is K.’s assumption. The world has not yet been described at all — only K.’s defensive inference.2. Moral assertion posing as fact
“for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning.” Key phrase: “without having done anything wrong.” Arrest is an external event. Innocence is an internal claim. Kafka fuses them grammatically, as if innocence were observable. The “world” here is already being narrated from inside K.’s self-justifying consciousness.3. Routine as psychological anchor
“Every day at eight o’clock he was brought his breakfast by Frau Grubach.” This is a real-world habit. But its function is psychological: K. defines reality by routine. Normalcy is his measure of legitimacy. The description is telling us how K. stabilizes his sense of self.4. The disturbance (pure projection)
“but today she did not come.”
Objectively: someone is late.
Subjectively: A violation
A threat. A sign that order has broken. Kafka gives us no external confirmation that this matters. The importance of the event exists only in K.’s inner framework.What we learn
About the world:
Almost nothing verifiable. Only actions stripped of motive
About Josef K.:
He equates innocence with order. He treats routine as legitimacy. He assumes accusation requires malice. He experiences authority as intrusion, not structure.The world is opaque. The self is over-exposed.
Category: Arts and Letters
Crowd Admires Burning Building – Thomas De Quincey Quote
But perhaps the fire may be confined to public buildings. And in any case, after we have paid our tribute of regret to the affair, considered as a calamity, inevitably, and without restraint, we go on to consider it as a stage spectacle. Exclamations of—How grand! How magnificent! arise in a sort of rapture from the crowd. For instance, when Drury Lane was burned down in the first decennium of this century, the falling in of the roof was signalized by a mimic suicide of the protecting Apollo that surmounted and crested the centre of this roof. The god was stationary with his lyre, and seemed looking down upon the fiery ruins that were so rapidly approaching him. Suddenly the supporting timbers below him gave way; a convulsive heave of the billowing flames seemed for a moment to raise the statue; and then, as if on some impulse of despair, the presiding deity appeared not to fall, but to throw himself into the fiery deluge, for he went down head foremost; and in all respects, the descent had the air of a voluntary act. What followed? From every one of the bridges over the river, and from other open areas which commanded the spectacle, there arose a sustained uproar of admiration and sympathy.
On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts
Thomas De Quincey
Hell in a Bucket – Grateful Dead
Restaurant Manager as Revelation
His favorite was the manageress of the restaurant, a handsome blonde with a very sweet motherly smile, about thirty years old. Bergmann approved of her highly. “I have only to look at her,” he told me,” to know that she is satisfied. Deeply satisfied. Some man has made her happy. For her, there is no longer any search. She has found what we are all looking for. She understands all of us. She does not need books, or theories, or philosophy, or priests. She understands Michelangelo, Beethoven, Christ, Lenin—even Hitler. And she is afraid of nothing, nothing.… Such a woman is my religion.”
The manageress would always have a special smile for Bergmann when we came in; and, during the meal, she would walk over to our table and ask if everything was all right. “Everything is all right, my darling,” Bergmann would reply; “thanks to God, but chiefly to you. You restore our confidence in ourselves.”
I don’t know exactly what the manageress made of this, but she smiled, in an amused, kindly way. She really was very nice. “You see?” Bergmann would turn to me, after she had gone. “We understand each other perfectly.”
Prater Violet: A Novel
Christopher Isherwood
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
byu/oh_bruddah inJokes
Halcione
How many Freudian psychologists does it take to change a life bulb?
Two. One to change the bulb and another to hold the penis, I mean the father, I mean the ladder.
MaxwellzDaemon
How many hipsters does it take to change a lightbulb?
It’s some number you probably never heard of.
GdoubleWB
How many philosophy majors does it take to change a lightbulb?
Doesn’t matter, they never change anything.
Grunge – History of Term
1: one that is grungy
2: rock music incorporating elements of punk rock and heavy metal
also : the untidy fashions typical of fans of grunge
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grunge
JONATHAN PONEMAN I read the expression grunge many, many times in music journalism before Everett True used it. Everett took the word from the Sub Pop mail-order catalog description of Green River’s Dry as a Bone that Bruce wrote: “ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation.”
MARK ARM The word grunge was tossed around a little bit here and there well before I ever used it. Steve Turner picked up this ’70s reissue of a Rock ’n’ Roll Trio album, and the liner notes talk about Paul Burlison’s “grungy guitar sound.” That was written in the ’70s about a ’50s guitar player.
Grunge was an adjective; it was never meant to be a noun. If I was using it, it was never meant to coin a movement, it was just to describe raw rock and roll. Then that term got applied to major-label bands putting out slick-sounding records. It’s an ill fit.
JACK ENDINO None of us is entirely sure about who used the word first. I saw it in a Lester Bangs record review in Rolling Stone in the ’70s. Mark Arm had used the word in the early ’80s.
Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge
Mark Yarm
From the introduction:
First, let’s get that word out of the way. Grunge. Yes, this is a book about grunge. The term that bedeviled and, let’s face it, benefited (at least temporarily) many a Seattle rock musician in the early to mid-1990s. I cannot count how many times, when I described to an interviewee what exactly it was I was working on, I’d get back, “I hate that word …” And here they would go one of two ways: spit out “that word” grunge or insist, “I don’t even like to say it,” as if uttering that one syllable would somehow validate a now decades-old coinage. (For a thorough, yet inconclusive, probe into how grunge got its name, see chapter 17.) Others reacted to the term thusly: “rubs me raw,” “a marketing tool,” “it’s all just music,” “fuckin’ concocted bullshit.” And this: “When I see the word grunge, especially on books, I kind of go”—and at this point, the guy I was interviewing made a rather convincing vomiting sound.
Benefit of the Law for the Devil – Man for All Seasons Quote
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060665/quotes/?ref_=tt_dyk_qu
A Man for All Seasons is a 1966 British historical drama film directed and produced by Fred Zinnemann, adapted by Robert Bolt from his play of the same name. It depicts the final years of Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century Lord Chancellor of England who refused both to sign a letter asking Pope Clement VII to annul Henry VIII of England’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon and to take an Oath of Supremacy declaring Henry Supreme Head of the Church of England.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_for_All_Seasons_(1966_film)
Black Sabbath as Protest Music – Vernon Reid Interview
The greatest protest record
Black Sabbath was never seen as a protest band, but War Pigs is one of the greatest anti-war songs of all time. It’s up there with [Bob Dylan’s] Masters Of War. It’s up there with [Jimi Hendrix’s] Machine Gun. It’s a masterpiece, there’s no mistaking what it’s about. They equated the military industrial complex with the occult, and that was very powerful and very new and cleverer than they’re given credit for.
“What guitar meant for everyone, he changed it, and he did it with incredible songs”: Living Colour’s Vernon Reid picks the soundtrack of his life
Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid picks his records, artists and gigs of lasting significance, and reveals what it’s like to be in a stadium filled with people singing War Pigs
Dive Bars – Origin of Term, Simpsons Reference
Do bars like Moe’s from the Simpsons exist where guys just go to get away from home?
Reddit
your_fave_redditor
It’s a thing in The Simpsons because it is a thing irl.
perfectdrug659
My favorite dive bar had $10 pitchers and free pool and they would stay open as late as people wanted to stay, as long as you were quiet about that last bit.
Appsoul
Oh, perfect time to ask this question. Why do they call them dive bars?
reclusive_ent
The less legit, but cheaper, drinking spots were in basements cellars and back rooms. So you usually had to duck or “dive” to get into them.
SkiyeBlueFox
According to Wikipedia, its because in the late 1800s establishments of poor reputation were often in basements, so you would “dive” down into the joint
Connermets25
Yes they still exist. It used to be more common place. I worked at several big companies and most of them had a bar where workers would often frequent nearby. The younger generation isn’t like that much anymore.
Mole Revisits Home – The Wind in the Willows, Quote from
The weary Mole also was glad to turn in without delay, and soon had his head on his pillow, in great joy and contentment. But ere he closed his eyes he let them wander round his old room, mellow in the glow of the firelight that played or rested on familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him, and now smilingly received him back, without rancour. He was now in just the frame of mind that the tactful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He saw clearly how plain and simple—how narrow, even—it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.
The Wind In The Willows
Kenneth Grahame
Invisible Literatures – J.G. Ballard
Since then I’ve continued on my magpie way, and in the last 10 years have found that I read more and more, in particular the 19th- and 20th-century classics that I speed-read in my teens. Most of them are totally different from the books I remember. I have always been a voracious reader of what I call invisible literatures — scientific journals, technical manuals, pharmaceutical company brochures, think-tank internal documents, PR company position papers — part of that universe of published material to which most literate people have scarcely any access but which provides the most potent compost for the imagination. I never read my own fiction.
In compiling my list of 10 favorite books I have selected not those that I think are literature’s masterpieces, but simply those that I have read most frequently in the past five years. I strongly recommend Patrick Trevor-Roper’s “The World through Blunted Sight” to anyone interested in the influence of the eye’s physiology on the work of poets and painters. “The Black Box” consists of cockpit voice-recorder transcripts (not all involving fatal crashes), and is a remarkable tribute to the courage and stoicism of professional flight crews. My copy of the Los Angeles “Yellow Pages” I stole from the Beverly Hilton Hotel three years ago; it has been a fund of extraordinary material, as surrealist in its way as Dalí’s autobiography.
“The Day of the Locust,” Nathanael West
“Collected Short Stories,” Ernest Hemingway
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“The Annotated Alice,” ed. Martin Gardner
“The World through Blunted Sight,” Patrick Trevor-Roper
“The Naked Lunch,” William Burroughs
“The Black Box,” ed. Malcolm MacPherson
“Los Angeles Yellow Pages”
“America,” Jean Baudrillard
“The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí,” by Dalí
J.G. Ballard: My Favorite Books
The renowned English writer reflects on the literature that shaped his imagination.
The MIT Press Reader
Excerpted from: Selected Nonfiction, 1962-2007
Prison Inmate’s Christmas Gift
“What can I send you as a gift for Christmas?” she asked in a letter that December.
Calvin had one request.
“Could you ask if an elder of your synagogue would say the kind of prayer for me that a father says while touching the head of his son? I’m told that if a father blesses his son in prayer, then everything the father has blessed the son with comes true in the life of the son. My father never got to bless me, and I’m quite sure his father never blessed him. My father once did time in this same penitentiary that I’m in. I hope that the curse that was on him—and now on me—will be the last curse to follow my family.”Ora’s response was humbling.
“I passed your request on to my father,” she wrote. “And he gave you this blessing: Y’varekh’kha ADONAI v’yishmerekha. Ya’er ADONAI panav eleikha vichunekka. Yissa ADONAI panav eleikha v’yasem l’kha shalom.
May God bless you and keep you. May God cause the divine light to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May God turn his face toward you, and grant you peace.
As Calvin read the rabbi’s words, they flowed over him like water, seeping into the cracks of his despair and loosening its grip.
He sent Ora a reply. “Please, tell your father I said thank you.”
The Jailhouse Lawyer
Calvin Duncan, Sophie Cull
Slop – Word of the Year 2025
2025 Word of the Year: Slop
Plus ‘gerrymander’, ‘touch grass’, ‘performative’, and other words that defined the year
Hip-Hop – Origin of Term
By the mid-1970s, neighborhood D.J.s started holding parties in parks and community centers. In July 1977 — the month of a blackout that left New York City dark — the brothers met a D.J. named Joseph Saddler, who called himself Grandmaster Flash.
Flash worked with a bowlegged teenager named Keef Cowboy, who energized the crowds with simple rhymes and exhortations. When a friend enlisted in the military, Cowboy teased him on the microphone: “Hip, hop, hip, hop!”
The new culture would soon have a name.
The Fall of Kidd Creole: Inside a Rap Pioneer’s Tragic Descent
As a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, he helped invent hip-hop. He spent the rest of his life trying to recapture that glory. Then, in seven minutes on a Manhattan street, it all came to an end.
Best Books I Read in 2025 that Weren’t Published in 2025
Selections mine. Comments via Amazon. In order of publication date.
The Night of the Gun
David Carr
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: In his fabulously entertaining The Kid Stays in the Picture, legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans wrote: “There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth.” David Carr’s riveting debut memoir, The Night of the Gun, takes this theory to the extreme, as the New York Times reporter embarks on a three-year fact-finding mission to revisit his harrowing past as a drug addict and discovers that the search for answers can reveal many versions of the truth. Carr acknowledges that you can’t write a my-life-as-an-addict story without the recent memoir scandals of James Frey and others weighing you down, but he regains the reader’s trust by relying on his reporting skills to conduct dozens of often uncomfortable interviews with old party buddies, cops, and ex-girlfriends and follow an endless paper trail of legal and medical records, mug shots, and rejection letters. The kaleidoscopic narrative follows Carr through failed relationships and botched jobs, in and out of rehab and all manner of unsavory places in between, with cameos from the likes of Tom Arnold, Jayson Blair, and Barbara Bush. Admittedly, it’s hard to love David Carr–sometimes you barely like the guy. How can you feel sympathy for a man who was smoking crack with his pregnant girlfriend when her water broke? But plenty of dark humor rushes through the book, and knowing that this troubled man will make it–will survive addiction, fight cancer, raise his twin girls–makes you want to stick around for the full 400-page journey. –Brad Thomas Parsons
Planet Funny
Ken Jennings
Publication Date: May 29, 2018
In his “smartly structured, soundly argued, and yes—pretty darn funny” (Booklist, starred review) Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means—or doesn’t—to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected President of the United States purely on showmanship. “Fascinating, entertaining and—I’m being dead serious here—important” (A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically), Planet Funny is a full taxonomy of what spawned and defines the modern sense of humor.
The Art of Logic in an Illogical World
Eugenia Cheng
Publication Date: September 11, 2018
In a world where fake news stories change election outcomes, has rationality become futile? In The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, Eugenia Cheng throws a lifeline to readers drowning in the illogic of contemporary life. Cheng is a mathematician, so she knows how to make an airtight argument. But even for her, logic sometimes falls prey to emotion, which is why she still fears flying and eats more cookies than she should. If a mathematician can’t be logical, what are we to do? In this book, Cheng reveals the inner workings and limitations of logic, and explains why alogic — for example, emotion — is vital to how we think and communicate. Cheng shows us how to use logic and alogic together to navigate a world awash in bigotry, mansplaining, and manipulative memes. Insightful, useful, and funny, this essential book is for anyone who wants to think more clearly.
The History of Bones
John Lurie
Publication Date: August 17, 2021
In the tornado that was downtown New York in the 1980s, John Lurie stood at the vortex. After founding the band The Lounge Lizards with his brother, Evan, in 1979, Lurie quickly became a centrifugal figure in the world of outsider artists, cutting-edge filmmakers, and cultural rebels. Now Lurie vibrantly brings to life the whole wash of 1980s New York as he developed his artistic soul over the course of the decade and came into orbit with all the prominent artists of that time and place, including Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Boris Policeband, and, especially, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the enigmatic prodigy who spent a year sleeping on the floor of Lurie’s East Third Street apartment.
