Kafka-femme

indulge me a moment of personal history

Hi, why are we whispering?

Come back with me: I was the oldest of four kids, the only girl, growing up in a flat ranch house in the middle of a huge flat yard full of short, spiky mesquite trees that clawed at you when you ran through the tall dead grass, where stickers would embed deep into your heels if you were ever brave or dumb enough to go barefoot. There were fire ants, tarantulas, scorpions, horned toads, black widow spiders, and snakes. Lots and lots of snakes.

I stayed inside a lot.

Yes. In fact. This is me. I am seven. I guarantee those daisies on my head did not grow wild in this front yard. (this might also be my backyard, or my side-yard, they were all pretty much identical)

In addition to my school’s blessedly air-conditioned library, the neighboring town of Bryan, Texas had a great town library which was only about a half-hour drive from home, so whenever my parents were able to do the trip, I would travel to estates in Britain either solving murders with a Belgian detective or wandering among the titled landowners, wondering who was going to marry whom. When I got tired of England, I moved to the stars and escaped the ridiculously hot summers by traveling to other worlds, whether through furniture or down animal dens, or just in a space elevator or rocket. (The weather definitely needed escaping: it’s not a dry heat in College Station, Texas. It is a 100% humidity, wet heat with temperatures that make the vinyl on car seats scald the back of your thighs.)

Sometimes I’d also go to the mall, but not often.

At the age of 15 I was sent to West Germany, where the only Lithuanian High School in the Free World taught the West’s version of Lithuanian history within a stone’s throw of the Iron Curtain. At the age of 16, having danced for the Pope and met the last Ottoman prince, I decided to stay forever. I took my Junior year classes in German and struggled through Trigonometry and Calculus, while breezing through English Literature and German Literature - it turns out it is much much easier to notice metaphors and allegories in a language that isn’t native (or easy) for you.

Our German Lit class was assigned Kafka. Here was a guy I felt kinship towards. Growing up fluent in the awesome language of a country not his own, Franz was the oldest of four: his childhood was defined by his relationship to his three younger sisters. (Me, I was the oldest of four, defined by my brothers.) Let’s leave the similarly reverse-gendered parental analogies aside (my mother reads this blog) and move on to Kafka’s familiar themes: alienation, a struggle against capitalist thought, societal expectations, bureau-crazy, artistry, and intellectualism, rationality and useless clarity in an indifferent world gone mad… let’s just say I feel this guy in his social isolation and rootlessness. They say that socially, he was a charming, intelligent and humorous guy. His writing is bleak, bizarre and at times darkly hilarious as it casts shade on societal norms that the author found oppressive. Not to mention his work is…well…weird.

But also so cool!! and dark! and smart! (Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash)

My teachers were always shocked when I found Kafka’s work funny - but then, it wasn’t hard to shock people who didn’t want to teach students about the little fable of the cat and mouse because the ending was too depressing. (I find this tiny story hugely liberating: sure we’re all doomed to death, but what a lot of running around we can do beforehand, and surely, the world is full of incredible surprises if we only look around!)

In any event, I’m eternally grateful to Terese Svoboda, author of a million things large and small including operas, plays, poetry, nonfiction and multiple novels for her review of my story collection:

“De Voe gives you femme Kafka in A Flash of Darkness – but American style: “with noises and lights that simulate the beautiful side of violence.” The stories cruise the scene with a chess playing vicious granny and a Svetlana lounging against a furry elk, “calling to mind every vodka ad young American Jim had ever taped to a dorm room ceiling,” One swain can't hold his date's hand “though she has left it on the table: a treat between beers.”
De Voe is especially brilliant on family life, and ends the book with a quirky story about a husband and what else? Horror.” — Terese Svoboda, author of Dog on Fire

Want to see for yourself? Preorder my collection A FLASH OF DARKNESS now! Send me a review and I might even include it in this newsletter!

---

Writing News:

The cool Medium publication, CounterArts, picked up my piece “Is Geo Art?” after the city extended the installation’s presence through May. Read about it here and make your own opinions by coming to Lower Manhattan to experience the much-hyped “interactive” piece. (NB: If you’re planning ahead, you will want to allot at least thirty seconds to fully experience the entirety of the piece, “interactions” at all—perhaps even a full minute!)

Thanks for voting on my poll - 100% of you chose “Kafka-femme” as the spelling for my genre. (There was a delicious write-in vote for Kafemka which I would adopt if I thought I could keep it from autocorrecting to Kafeve.)

I’ve just written a longer essay about music inspired by a concert I attended last night.

I’m due to be on a couple of podcasts soon but schedules are being wonky. (Are you all having the problem that every morning you wake up to all the calendar cancelations and pleas for rescheduling for the things you are meant to do that day? This is every single morning for me.)

This isn’t about Writing:

If you are reading this on Sunday between 1:00 and 3pm, I am currently watching Maya Lin speak about art and environment. She is a legend. I am so lucky to live in a city where everything is possible.

This image serves as a reminder to preorder my novel. Also it reminded me of that Erma Bombeck book “if life is a bowl of cherries why are we living in the pits?” Whatever happened to Erma Bombeck? She was so funny.

---