Posts Marked with the ‘Writing’ Tag

While cleaning up one of my old machines, I came across this little artifact.

My challenge was to re-write the opening paragraph of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as it may have been penned by other writers. So without further ado…

The Metamorphosis by H.P. Lovecraft

My name is Gregor Samsa, and if the world discovers this manuscript, then perhaps it can save others from the fate that even now confounds my reason and leaves me gibbering at the edge of sanity. One morning not long ago I awoke from troubled dreams filled with the otherworldly ululations of strange voices and the insistent piping of flutes from the swirling chaos at the very center of the universe, and found myself in my bed, horribly changed– dare I say it?– into an unspeakable, sanity-blasting form. I lay on what seemed to be an armour-like back, and as I lifted my head a little I could just see the brown, non-Euclidean curve of my brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. My multitudinous legs, pitifully gaunt compared with the unnaturally bloated shape of the rest of my new and terrible form, waved about helplessly as I looked on in abject horror.

The Metamorphosis by Ernest Hemingway

It was morning. Gregor Samsa awoke. He had been transformed in his bed into a cockroach. He lay on his back. He could see his brown belly, domed and divided into stiff arches. The bedding barely covered it. His legs waved.

The Metamorphosis by Walt Whitman

I sing the body carapacious;
The sprawl and fullness of its shell,
Stiff domed arches engirth my belly, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off my back until I embrace them, accept them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.

The expression of the face defies description;
But the expression of a man made a bug appears not only in his antennae;
It is in his many legs also, it is in the joints of his carapace,
It is in his crawl, the carriage of his thorax, the flex of his abdomen–
The bedsheets do not cover it;
The strong, thin legs he has strike through the bedding;
To see him conveys as much as seeing a cockroach, maybe more;
You linger to see him on his back, waving his legs at you.

O my Body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of parts of you;
Head, neck, hair, ears, eyes, mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, nose, cheeks, forehead, chin;
And not head, thorax, abdomen, carapace, mandibles, antennae, compound eyes!

The Metamorphosis by E. Allen Poe

Mr. S___ was in one of his fits — how else shall I term them? — of enthusiasm. His brother Gregor had in his sleep transformed into an unknown bivalve, and, more than this, he had been hunted down and secured; he was now clearly visible as a scarabaeus which was believed to be totally new, but in respect to which S___ wished to have my opinion on the morrow.

“And why not to-night?” I asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and wishing the whole tribe of scarabaei at the devil.

“Ah, if I had only known you were here!” said S___, “but it’s so long since I saw you; and how could I foresee that you would pay me a visit this very night of all others? As I was coming home I met Lieutenant Gentarme from the fort, and, very foolishly, I lent him the bug– that is to say, my brother; so it will be impossible for you to see him until the morning. Stay here to-night, and I will send down for him at sunrise. He is become the loveliest thing in creation!”

The Metamorphosis by Kahlil Gibran

And a man said, “Speak to us of metamorphosis.”

And he answered saying:

You would know what it is like to awaken, transformed, from a troubled dream.

You would gaze with compound eyes on the naked curve of your brown belly.

You would touch with your antennae the slight bedding that barely hides your form.

You would kick with your many legs and free yourself from the prone position you find yourself in.

But let there be no helpless waving and fearful scurrying from the light.

For like the soul, the insect is a creature boundless and beautiful.

Say not, “I have metamorphosized into a bug,” but rather, “The bug has metamorphosized into me.”

For the soul walks upon all paths, whether on two legs or six.

I don’t remember what initially inspired this, but I’m pretty sure that a combination of alcohol and IRC were involved.

Update: I submitted this to McSweeney’s and got a very nice rejection letter:

This is fun, but I’m afraid we’re not going to use it. We ran a piece about Kafka and another about Lovecraft not too long ago and we’re not quite ready to return to them. Thanks for giving us a shot, nonetheless.

I haven’t attempted to submit anything non-technical for publication since I was a teen, because I don’t handle rejection well, but hopefully I’m old enough now to deal with it. I’m going to try again sometime. For real.

It’s taken almost a year of on-again, off-again effort, but my book is finally ready for the world! For those of you who do not know, last year I took my grandmother to Poland to visit her childhood home. She had not been back since World War II. I kept a journal and took nearly 600 pictures during our emotional, 10-day trip. This afternoon I finally completed turning them into a book. It’s called Kehr Wieder, which is German for “return”.

From the introduction:

When I was growing up, I spent hours listening to stories that my grandmother told about her childhood in Danzig, Poland. Her early years were idyllic and full of adventure, a stark contrast to the horror that World War II would bring to her corner of the world.

Like so many others in Europe, the war changed everything for her family. Almost overnight, their hardworking but happy lifestyle changed into a daily struggle for survival as the nations of the world fought at their very doorstep.

By the time the war was over, her remaining family had been scattered across the continent and had lost practically everything. Ever the fighter, my grandmother pulled herself out of the ruins of her stolen childhood and started a new life and a new family in America.

But although she made a good life for herself here, she has always been haunted by the memories of her home.

In celebration of her 85th birthday, and in thanks for everything that she has done for me, I took my grandmother back to Germany and Poland in 2007 to see the place that she came from one more time.

This is the story of our journey home.

You can preview the book online and even buy a copy if you’re so inclined. Thanks to Blurb.com for their free bookmaking software, bookstore, and on-demand press.