Writing influenced
by Kafka.

Kafka described the world as it is. The fact that it reads as surrealism tells you something about the world.

Bureaucratic absurdism · The logic of nightmare · Prague and its gravity

Kafka is the influence in Tumbleweed Words that operates furthest from the surface — he is not there in the style, which is nothing like Kafka's. He is there in the structural assumption that situations can be simultaneously entirely logical and entirely wrong, and that this combination is not comic but existentially serious. The Prague city pages in Tumbleweed Words are the most Kafkaesque — written in a city that seems to have been constructed to prove his point.

"The situation was impossible and everyone proceeded as if it were not. This was the Kafka condition, which Kafka did not invent. He simply had the honesty to write it down."

David — Tumbleweed Words — on Kafka

Kafka's formal lesson for flash fiction: begin in the middle of the impossible situation, without explanation, and proceed with complete logical consistency. Never explain why the situation is impossible. Never break from the internal logic. The horror is in the coherence, not in the incoherence. The nightmare makes perfect sense. That is what makes it a nightmare.

David — Tumbleweed Words Flash fiction and poetry in the minimalist tradition. Published in Litro, Adelaide Magazine, Cleaver Magazine. Pushcart-nominated. Read the newsletter.