The Unnameable

How fast can you think? And how many items can you contemplate at once? Some people find they achieve a certain clarity and ability to make withdrawals from their memory bank, when they’re going so fast there isn’t time to forget. Thinking too much is the villain and that pertains to writing too. Remember the old Yellow Pages jingle “let your fingers do the walking.” It also goes for those yellow legal pads on which many writers still like to scribble. Naturally you want mind, but the question is: how to get there? Do you like milk in your coffee? Apparently a cocktail of hysteria and digital acuity are the path to scrivener's Mecca. The yellow brick road to the unconscious is where imagination maintains a rent stabilized dwelling. In the middle of the night you’re trying to remember the names of Kafka parables, "A Hunger Artist," "The Great Wall of China," "In the Penal Colony," “A Report to the Academy.” Then you think Bad Behavior. Who wrote that book? The same writer who wrote the story in which Secretary starring James Spater played the sadistic male lead. "Mary"--it starts to come. You seem to remember everything about the story but the writer's name. 

listen to Francis Levy read from The Kafka Studies Department at Unnameable Books, September 26th at 7PM.

Read the review of The Kafka Studies Department in The East Hampton Star