Holy Coincidence, Batman!

One of the nice things about writing a piece of blog (think of some large, complicated dessert that you can take a discreet bit of– maybe some of the bottom, a bit of crust, a glob of nuts, a smidge of the middle layer, something that protrudes from the top..) is that not only does it not have to relate to the other bits of blog (alright, so it’s the opposite of the dessert analogy, because you’re creating, not consuming it..) but it doesn’t have to be about anything much at all, sort of like those short stories in the New Yorker magazine that seem to start in the middle and come to a close well before any rational end, point or conclusion. Reading one of those pieces is somewhat like opening a door in a hotel, stepping unseen into a room, listening to the occupants for a while, then remembering that you’ve a dinner date that you have to rush off to, and popping off while the denizens are still in mid-discussion. They’ve baffled us for years, these aimless pieces, but someone must be reading them.
Nonetheless, there are interesting Things out there in the world– such as July 3rd. Falling squarely between the actual signing of the Declaration of Independence and the day that most people think it was signed, the third day of the seventh month is host to a curious trio: that of the birthdays of Dave Barry, Tom Stoppard, and Franz Kafka, three writers who have little in common save that they are authors with the same d.o.b.
Kafka was born in Prague 121 years ago, which I didn’t know until recently, and which surprised me– I had thought he was more contemporary than that. The next surprise I got was that Stoppard was also born in Czechoslovakia 67 years ago. Stoppard, one of the greatest artists in our time working in English was born Tomas Straussler in a place called Zlin? How do things like that happen?
It’s not to hard to think of Stoppard and Kafka at the same time, to hold them up and look at them at the same time, to compare them and enunciate some sort of preference or order.
But Dave Barry, only ten years younger than Stoppard, doesn’t compute– it’s impossible to hold him in the same hand with the others. It’s like comparing a Lexus to an Audi and then having someone say “What about a Toyota RAV4?” The only reasonable response is, “Huh?” It’s not that the Toyota isn’t a good vehicle, but other than having pneumatic tires and a gasoline engine, it has nothing in common with the others.
I have to confess that if I found myself stranded in an airplane with a choice of books by Kafka or Barry that I would reach for the chuckles and laughs instead of Stygnian gloom. After all, who needs it? Things are hard enough without adding to the problems we already have. Maybe Kafka contributed something to Literature, but like so much of Big L, the fun quotient in Kafka’s output is sorely lacking, the laughs are too few and far between, and the soaring bits that raise the spirit and gives hope are conspicuous by their absence.
If I haven’t dwelt much here on T.S. it’s only because he requires no dwelling upon– a genius with the black incaustum put to parchment or vellum, everything he writes seems to have it all– laughs, albeit sometimes darkish in nature, insight, cleverness, and Big L qualities that lead to his works being Studied while their author is still in the quick. We could begrudge him his intellect- Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead was a hit before Stoppard hit 30– but instead we’ll be nice, and wish him and Dave Barry a pair of happy birthdays.