Can anyone explain the following quote from the short story "The Great Wall of China" by Franz Kafka: First, one must realize that at that time certain achievements were brought to fruition which rank only slightly behind the Tower of Babel, although in the pleasure they gave to God, at least by...

In Walt Whitman's poem, "The Voice of the Rain", the last two lines in paranthesis read: (For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering, Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.) What exactly does Walt Whitman mean by these lines? For reference, here's the entire poem ...

Towards the end of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí), Tereza has a dream about Karenin, their dog, giving birth to two rolls and a bee: Karenin gave birth to two rolls and a bee. He stared, amazed, at his own progeny. The rolls were utterly ser...

I'm hoping to rediscover a mystery story I read when I was very young. The body of a woman had been discovered miles from a remote lodge with no obvious means of death. SPOILER: A detective suggested that she had been trapped in a wet sheet and left in the cold to freeze. The entire icy deathtra...

Is anyone aware of a list of books illustrated by John Robbins on his PBS shows? I remember an episode in which he illustrated a story where a rabbit sought to gain antlers like a deer ("How rabbit got his horns"?); the rabbit attached some antlers he found by fixing them to his head with wax. I...