3/02/2004 09:12:00 AM|||Andrew|||Monday Recommendations (posted on Tuesday, heh)
Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis is without doubt in my mind one of the greatest stories of the 20th century. You get the isolation and alienation of the worker, the mixing and destruction of families, impotence and guilt, all mixed up into a fantastical story where you can get all these themes without really understanding that you do. Read it. Now.

With no significant challengers, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land is the most important poem of the 20th century. Everyone needs to read it at least once, preferably several times over. When printed in book form, it's only about 12 pages long, so it shouldn't take you any more than about 30 minutes to read. Nobody has an excuse not to read it. The most important thing to keep in mind while reading it is that it doesn't matter if you don't understand everything (or anything) that's going on. Even (or especially) in Eliot's words themselves, regardless of what they "mean" there is great power to evoke emotion. So if you don't understand something, just keep reading. Meditate on the words and how they make you feel if nothing else.

Enjoy!|||107824757605121871|||