Kafka

"The First Man," by Albert Camus, translated from the French by David Hapgood. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 336 pages. $23.Albert Camus, the French writer and Nobel Prize winner, died in 1960 when he crashed his car. In the wrecked car was the incomplete first part of what, clearly, was a much larger project, an autobiographical novel. His son and daughter have now edited and published that manuscript.To read it is to visit a tomb and find that a spring is bubbling from it. One of the themes is a search for the father who was killed in World War I a few months after Camus was born; another is a rending, brilliant evocation of the long-submerged claims that Algeria's harsh landscape and history exert on him. A third is a joyfully vivid re-creation of a childhood in the teeming port of Algiers in the 1930s, a childhood constrained by poverty but wonderfully free in exploration and sensuous discovery.

When you're looking for interesting ways to cook vegetables, think roasting. You'll have tasteful company. Oven-roasted vegetables are turning up on many restaurant menus and in cookbooks that dote on veggies."

How we take carrots for granted. We munch them unthinkingly all year long, counting on them to be ever-present at the markets as other vegetables come and go. When fall comes around, they're eclipsed by other root vegetables like sweet potatoes and parsnips, more distinctive harbingers of the season. But the common carrot still holds a few surprises. Though we think of it as bright orange, this member of the parsley family is sometimes sunny yellow or dark red or even purple. What we didn't know is that all these colors -- even orange -- have been bred in, according to Barbara Kafka in her book Vegetable Love.

The unbelievable turn of events pertaining to the Sun's editorial "Zero tolerance? Zero common sense" (May 10) is something so Kafkaesque that one would never believe it could happen in the good old U.S. of A. Franz Kafka's "The Trail" is a chilling portrayal of society that has gone totally amok and parallels the ridiculousness of Talbot County's school system findings that weapons of mass destruction are inclusive of a cigarette lighter and...

The HuffingtonPost this morning launched their live Internet video channel and it's rocking. The hosts are using Google Hangouts to hold live chats with talking heads, and collected Tweets and video recordings from their audience. This is the future -- and it's gunning for cable news' various chatterbox formats, which range from hard news to celebrity chat. The audience isn't just watching. We're engaging, too, with posting comments and Tweets and Facebook updates through the site.

Besides being films, what do the early work of John Cassavetes, the current work of Hal Hartley, Bernard Tavernier's "L.667," "The Last Picture Show," "Suture," "One False Move," "Carnal Knowledge," "Chinatown," "Strictly Ballroom" and "Chameleon Street" have in common?According to director Steven Soderbergh, whose 1989 film "sex, lies and videotape" took top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, they're all "impact films" -- the kind of "terrific, smart, ambitious" independent films that today's major Hollywood studios wouldn't interested in.He also says that they're the kind of films that Bravo's Independent Film Channel, which was launched yesterday, is interested in showing.

Yesterday's showdown between the No. 1 John Carroll girls soccer team and No. 4 McDonogh seemed destined to be a blistering shootout. After all, the game featured the three highest scoring players in the metro area - John Carroll's Ashley Myers and Jamie Zimmerman and McDonogh's Brittany Tegeler, who have combined for 33 goals this season. Instead, the game took a more defensive turn and none of those All-Metro players managed a goal as unbeaten John Carroll came from behind to take a 2-1 victory in the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference game.

EVANSTON, Ill. - -Northwestern was so dominant in the first quarter Saturday, the Wildcats barely had to flip to Chapter 2 of their playbook. Mike Kafka led three touchdown drives in the quarter and passed for a career-high 192 yards to lead Northwestern to a 47-14 victory over Towson, spoiling Rob Ambrose's debut as Tigers coach. The Wildcats (1-0) scored touchdowns on their first four possessions and then got a safety while building a 30-0 lead and never looked back. Towson simply was no match, which was no surprise.

My friend Steven is a philosopher.By that I don't mean he's the kind of guy who says "that's life" when the ATM machine swallows your bank card.No, Steven is a fully tenured professor of philosophy at a local women's college.He recently told me he was teaching Kafka this semester.L "Jennifer Kafka?" I asked, "the shortstop from Catonsville?"He said I was hopeless."Naw," I said. "I've got hope by the bus load. Hope for the downtrodden, hope for the disenfranchised, even hope for local access cable."

Even by the standards of Kafka's uncannily prophetic insights, the parable of the vulture is remarkable. Examined as a lesson for Israel in its protracted struggle for survival in the Middle East, the tale is right on the mark. Indeed, it reads as if it were written originally with no other struggle in mind.Consider the scenario. A man is being destroyed, slowly and painfully, by a fierce and predatory bird. Repeatedly, the bird hacks at its victim, immobilizing him systematically and purposefully, piece by piece.