A book of provocative ideas, about art and artists, Variations In The Key of K is an artfully constructed collection of stories. Franz Kafka, Pablo Picasso, and William Blake are among the many artist lives reconceived here. A book of cautionary histories, on one hand. An irreverent celebration of the graces of the creative life, on the other.
Explanatory Preface in the Form of a Fiction 12
VARIATIONS IN THE KEY OF K
Kafka’s Fire 16
The Kafka Sublimation 19
Kafka on the Podium 22
KAFKA’S FATHER
At Home in Prague 28
Provocation and Dislocation 38
Kafka’s Literary Estate 41
Kafka on the Stage 46
The Bucket Rider 48
Kafka’s Wedding 52
An Alternate History of the Kafka Notebooks 55
Kafka’s Transformation 60
Kafka the Athlete 65
DA VINCI’S ENTOURAGE
Devils in the Head of the Poet 76
Artaud in Paris 80
Carrara 84
Blake’s Cottage 88
The Paranoia of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 91
Swift’s Epitaph 95
Shakespeare’s Raven-Haired Lady 99
The Young Man from the Fountain 104
Editor Lange 107
THE PICASSO MUSEUM
In the Picasso Museum 116
Three Paintings 120
Picasso and His Investors 123
The Painter of Fires 128
A Vision of Grace 132
A Brief Biography of Picasso 134
Picasso, Around Midnight 136
Can’t Lose for Winning: A Story about Picasso 139
A Bridge that Spans the Seine 142
INSIDE THE WALLED CITY CALLED HISTORY
Illnesses and Recoveries 144
Three Paintings 146
His Spanish Blood 148
A Tiny Bellows 149
Picasso, at 85 151
Breaking with Breton 152
