“Someone must have slandered Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.” So begins Franz Kafka’s The Trial, a book as melancholy and claustrophobic as it is funny, and one that only seems more mordantly insightful to me with each reading. A friend who thinks The Trial is a legalese-ridden mess blames my legal . . .
The latest issue of Tin House, “Fantastic Women,” includes new writing from Aimee Bender, Judy Budnitz, Kelly Link, and others. (Via.)
Edmund Gosse’s 1907 memoir of a troubled childhood could teach today’s writers a few things, says Ben Yagoda.
Commitment insurance: “If she ever leaves me, I get to keep all her books. If I ever leave her, she gets mine.”
Justice Clarence Thomas compares himself in a new book to victims in Native Son and To Kill a Mockingbird. (See also.)