Blogagaard Preforms "Kafka Gets a Pony" for Graduate School Class About Trauma & the Artist
I'm glad my friends the Captain, Eric, and Jay were in class tonight, because no one else may have laughed at my reading of "Kafka Gets A Pony". Maybe it was the Captain's earlier, stunning performance about the Holocaust, his family, and a writer/survivor named (help me out here, Captain, I am in a stupor) but the class didn't seem to be ready for Kafka, or the pony that arrived so wonderously on his doorstep. I thought I gave a decent reading, for a first performance of a piece written five days ago in about two hours time, but I don't know, man. I wasn't feeling the love. I actually got more laughs doing marker board graphs on Kafka's major works and my invention of the "suffering index line". At least I can give Kafka a rest now.
Thank you for humoring me during the last few Kafka filled weeks, Gentle Readers. Hope I didn't vermin you too much.
Blogagaard Loves to Ponder
About Me
- David Oppegaard
- St. Paul, Minnesota
- I am the author of And the Hills Opened Up, The Suicide Collectors, and Wormwood, Nevada.
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8 comments:
No more Kafka? Forget this blog.
Bloggie, I had a shit-eating grin on my face throughout the whole thing. I really liked it. You should take it easy on yourself. This is a class about pain. People don't know if they're supposed to laugh, even when something's funny.
I think that while the larger symbolism of the piece is interesting in that it alludes to Snugglekins as an intimation of the beauty of distraction that we sometimes feel under pressure, I wonder if your piece wouldn't have more impact with its intended audience were the name different. Snugglekins, a bit obviously, if I might add, is a combination of the word snuggle (which we all understand) and kin, or brother. That Snugglekins is synonymous with brotherly love, essentially, adds a certain air of homoeroticism that distracts from the overall theme of beautiful distraction, and I wonder if we couldn't see more of either the distraction, or perhaps, if you are in fact shooting for the homoerotic vein, the addition of a sex scene between Kafka and his father may be beneficial.
And I find that the humour is solid.
Apparition, that is the most dynamic piece of lit anaylsis ever writtne about my work. Thank you, I'll consider adding an incestial homorsexual sex scene to generate more laughs for an audience of nervous white women, or NWW as I call them for short.
Captain, you're also right as rain. I am too hard on myself. Just yesterday I drove through a red light to blind side a bus full of Christian youth merrily singing "Yes, Jesus Loves Me" and for like an hour afterwards I felt kind of bad and refused to buy myself a candy bar.
Trauma class? Pain school? Is this some class about how you have to be miserable to to make art? And therefore, if Kafka had a pony, his life would be worth less?
I think you guys should take joyology next semester. Every week, there are kittens playing with yarn and free ice cream.
exactly, SD. My story was a parable, in a way. WRiters are a dark, brooding lot, even the comical ones.
I blame Salinger for that.
Actually, I was about to come over there with a can of Raid until I read all these comments.
Now I just know why I like you guys.
You're all fucking twisted.
Yay!
If only I could write fiction. But if I did, it would SUCK ROCKS.
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