Life after Kafka

It's been a weird run of weeks. My First Kafka is doing amazing. The BBC! The New Yorker! Electric Lit! Google! (Granted, the Google thing was more, well, Kafka himself than the little book that Rohan and I put together, but I'm so not complaining.)

And the same week I got some hugely awful news about a close friend, and some more pretty hugely awful news about my first book, Never Mind the Goldbergs, going out of print -- this had actually happened back in April, but Scholastic didn't tell me, and they sold all the remaining copies to some Amazon reseller, and the only way I found out was that people kept asking me why it was out of stock. (I still have a bunch of copies on my site store, which you can buy if you want, until they run out, and if they do, I'll just send you a pdf if you ask.) And then I came down with this cold that turned into a cough that didn't go away that, apparently, is pneumonia.

Anyway. it's been pretty wild. Thank you for sticking with me. The fact that I have now appeared on the same network as Doctor Who is really all I've ever asked out of life, and I've got it, and the blessings are flooding in like moldy bread.

And now it's the Three Weeks, this period in Judaism where we mourn for the burning of the Temple, and more crazy stuff is happening. I have a ton to say about it, but most of it's not really relevant -- for actual insightful stuff from an Orthodox perspective, you should totally read Rabbi Fink or Yakov Horowitz. Me, I'm just good for stories, mostly. These days I keep getting a Kafka quote stuck in my head: "The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary." (Granted, it was part of the Talmud a while before Kafka, but who am I to come down on the man for appropriation?)

It's almost two in the morning. I have a head stuffed with snot and a brain stuffed with thoughts that won't quit. But the trees look so nice out my window in the streetlights that they're actually glowing, and Brooklyn doesn't feel like an iron city but an actual place to live, and I'm going to try to sleep for a bit before I have to wake up and make video games. Like I said. I'm blessed. Thank you.

Kafka on the BBC!

I flew out to the far remote borough of Manhattan yesterday to record an interview for the BBC! They did some really cool things with it. I had a super long conversation with one of their producers, completely without knowing that they'd recorded her 7-year-old listening to (and reacting to) our version of "The Metamorphosis" being read.

Here are the oddest things about it:

a) it was in Manhattan, not London;
b) the person interviewing me was in London, and so I ended up talking to an empty chair in a completely empty room;
c) they asked me a line of questions about what my kids thought of the book, and what other kids thought of it, and then they asked a question about how Kafka's feelings about the Austro-Hungarian Empire led to his feelings of isolation. I didn't really answer that one well. Seriously, interviews make me into a deer in the headlights! Which is really odd to say, itself. I'm not used to, you know, saying "interviews" in the plural. Or being on this side of the gun. Err, the microphone.

But the producer was wonderful and Dan Damon, the host, was incredibly nice and gracious, and asked about my other books even though the interview was over and he didn't have to at all. I didn't see the real TARDIS, but I suppose they could always invite me back one day. You can listen to the whole dang thing at this link. For the next week, anyway.

Got rabbi?

In 2002, I went on tour with this crazy Australian Jewish punk band called YIDcore. We played a Jewish punk-rock ball at Wesleyan, some New York gigs, possibly Yale?, and one or two other places. I'd always hoped they would pull me on stage to sing "Just One Shabbos" with them (editor's note: this version), which never happened, but just the feeling that it could, that it might, was incredible enough to burst my chest open.

I received this email this morning:

Found an old t shirt of yours :)

Loved it after you left it at Wesleyan and wore it to death, I now think it's time to donate to fabric recycling, unless you want it back?

Geeks Vs. Nerds. Vs. Self Respect

Of the many reasons I love Eric Linus Kaplan, here is the most recent:

[–]Smalz22 1 point 8 minutes ago

I love Futurama, its one of the greatest shows written and I thank you for being a part of that. That being said, I hate Big Bang Theory and cannot stand watching it. Most of its criticism from the actual nerd community is that its a show about geeks and nerds made solely to make fun of them, not a show for nerds and geeks that partakes in humor and inside jokes that only the nerds would understand.

Do you feel like that's an accurate criticism to have? and what do you do as a writer to make the show like that/avoid that?

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[–]ericlinuskaplan[S] 1 point 6 minutes ago

I don't think that's true. It is a show about scientists. We have lots of jokes that are specifically about science. I don't think "geeks" and "nerds" should call themselves that -- it's disrespecting yourself. Say that you're scholarly, or you like to read, or you don't care about fashion. I don't know that humor that only nerds would understand means. I put in jokes about Frege and logicism -- that's humor that only people who know about that might understand, maybe. But you don't have to be a "nerd" to like science. I know analytic philosophers who dress great and love sports. Why are we allowing this hostile classification to make divisions among us?

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He's doing an AMA on Reddit now! Go ask him questions!

Inspiration: a dissection

I got a wonderful challenge in the mail from Yael Roberts, whom I met last year as one of the editors of an  Orthodox high-school literary magazine. She sent me a postcard out of nowhere -- actually, two postcards -- and asked me about inspiration for an art project. No idea what the project is going to grow into, but here's my little part of the birthing process. Here's what she wrote me (click to embiggen the images):

This is what I replied:

Heeb Magazine + Kafka

The generous folks at Heeb Magazine just put up a review of My First Kafka, and they seem to like it:

[T]here’s a sense of childlike wonder that permeates even the strangest of Kafka’s parables. That’s a tricky proposition to pull off effectively –especially for Roth, who is tasked with the unenviable job of transposing Kafka’s prose into child-sized morsels. Fortunately for weird kids (and their weird parents) everywhere, Roth is more than up to the task, reconstructing three of Kafka’s works into the sort of stories that would fit nicely alongside the Shel Silverstein’s stranger works.

My favorite part is the description of Rohan's illustrations, though: "His ‘Nobodies’ in Kafka’s “Excursion into the Mountains” call to mind Maurice Sendak’s eponymous “Wild Things”, transforming what was originally a passage about Man’s isolation into a whimsical adventure with imaginary friends. Similarly, his Gregor Samsa-bug in “Metamorphosis” is at once monstrous and sympathetic."

Okay. My day is made. Now I'm gonna go and read and stay up all night.

You, on the other hand, can read the review or buy the book (and then stay up all night with me, if you want).