717 Einstein and Kafka (with Ken Krimstein) | Dr Johnson Helps a Friend (and Changes the Course of Literary History) | My Last Book with Fernando Pessoa Expert Bartholomew Ryan

Summary

The History of Literature Podcast: Episode 717 – "Einstein and Kafka (with Ken Krimstein) | Dr. Johnson Helps a Friend | My Last Book with Fernando Pessoa Expert Bartholomew Ryan"

Release Date: July 17, 2025

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Introduction & Special Announcement (00:01 – 02:07)

Host: Jack Wilson
Jack Wilson kicks off the episode by promoting a special literary trip to England scheduled for May 2026. This immersive experience will take participants to significant literary sites such as Dr. Johnson's house and Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub, frequented by literary giants like Dr. Johnson, Jane Austen, Dickens, and Shakespeare. Jack encourages listeners to join the journey by visiting John Shores Travel or contacting the show via email.

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Main Segment 1: Dr. Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith – A Friendship that Shaped Literary History (02:07 – 16:24)

Host: Jack Wilson

Jack delves into the remarkable friendship between Dr. Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, exploring how their bond significantly impacted literary history. Recounting a story from Boswell's "Life of Johnson", Jack narrates how Dr. Johnson assisted Goldsmith when he faced financial distress:

[08:15] Jack Wilson: "I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress... I sent him a guinea and promised to come to him directly."

Goldsmith, unable to repay the loan, spent it on a bottle of Madeira. Dr. Johnson’s intervention wasn't just a gesture of friendship; it directly led to the publication of Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield", a novel that became an English classic and influenced authors like Jane Austen.

[15:30] Jack Wilson: "This is why I love... the man just lived a kind of life I can admire even if I don't share all of his opinions or predilections."

Jack emphasizes the significance of Johnson's actions, portraying him as a compassionate and pragmatic individual whose support not only saved a friend but also enriched the literary canon.

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Main Segment 2: Ken Krimstein on Einstein and Kafka’s Intertwined Lives (17:37 – 45:20)

Guest: Ken Krimstein
Author of: "Einstein: How Albert Fell down the Rabbit Hole and Came up with the Universe"

Jackson introduces Ken Krimstein, whose expertise sheds light on the fascinating encounter between Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka in Prague during the early 20th century.

Einstein’s Time in Prague (18:05 – 25:14)

Ken Krimstein:
Ken explains Einstein’s move to Prague in 1911, accepting a position as the head of the Physics Department at the German University. This period was pivotal for Einstein as he developed groundbreaking theories that would revolutionize modern physics.

[23:10] Ken Krimstein: "It was a fortuitous time... it gave him some distance to experiment and do things."

Kafka’s Life in Prague (25:30 – 31:27)

Ken paints a vivid picture of Franz Kafka's life in Prague during the same period. Contrary to his often misunderstood persona, Kafka was a well-adjusted individual who enjoyed his job at the insurance company, engaged in daily swimming, and maintained a vibrant social circle.

[28:17] Ken Krimstein: "He was doing some really, really good things. He was 6 foot 2. He was a chronic lap swimmer every morning."

The Intersection of Einstein and Kafka (31:51 – 43:21)

Ken explores the intellectual and social milieu that brought Einstein and Kafka together. He discusses their shared engagement with contemporary philosophical ideas, particularly the influence of phenomenology and materialism.

[35:13] Ken Krimstein: "The two of them believe that there's a there there. We're just fated not to ever be able to understand it fully."

Ken posits that both Einstein and Kafka were navigating a world where traditional structures and understandings were being dismantled, pushing them to seek deeper truths in their respective fields.

Theoretical and Literary Synergy (43:07 – 45:20)

Ken contemplates the broader implications of Einstein and Kafka’s interactions, suggesting that their collaboration symbolized a union of scientific and literary exploration.

[43:21] Ken Krimstein: "I think the search for the law... Kafka was very into Brentano."

Ken emphasizes the enduring legacy of their work, noting how their innovative approaches continue to inspire contemporary thought and creativity.

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Brief Interlude: Listener Engagement & Ads (45:20 – 55:59)

The episode features brief advertisements for 1-800 Contacts and Venmo, interspersed with promotional content for other podcasts such as Totally Booked with Zibby and R and R with Courtney Act. These segments are succinct and unrelated to the main content.

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Main Segment 3: Bartholomew Ryan on Choosing "Finnegans Wake" as His Last Book (55:38 – 53:31)

Guest: Bartholomew Ryan
Expertise: Fernando Pessoa

Jack Wilson:
After a brief ad break, Jack welcomes Bartholomew Ryan to discuss his choice for his final book.

Bartholomew Ryan:
Bartholomew selects James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" as his last book, citing its complexity, musicality, and personal significance rooted in his Irish heritage. He describes the book as a "dreamscape" that embodies the collapse, fall, and resurrection themes central to human existence.

[47:09] Bartholomew Ryan: "It's full of different languages. It's totally affirmative to the madness of existence."

Bartholomew elaborates on the multifaceted nature of the book, highlighting its experimental structure and the way it celebrates the human imagination.

[52:31] Bartholomew Ryan: "They're celebrating the capacity of the human imagination... Opening up an extraordinary landscape for us."

His insights underscore the enduring influence of complex literary works and the importance of embracing their challenges to fully appreciate their artistic value.

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Conclusion & Final Remarks (53:31 – 56:11)

Host: Jack Wilson
Jack wraps up the episode by reiterating the upcoming literary trip to England, inviting listeners to join and engage with fellow literature enthusiasts. He teases future episodes covering diverse literary figures such as Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

[54:12] Jack Wilson: "We're gonna make up for it all in one week in May of 2026... We're going to have more literary podcasting goodness."

The episode concludes with final promotional advertisements, seamlessly transitioning out of the main content.

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Notable Quotes

• Jack Wilson on Dr. Johnson's Influence:

  "Grace under pressure that rescued a friend and changed the course of literary history."
  [15:00]

• Ken Krimstein on Einstein and Kafka's Beliefs:

  "Both of them believe that there's a there there. We're just fated not to ever be able to understand it fully."
  [38:23]

• Bartholomew Ryan on "Finnegans Wake":

  "If you don't understand me, read me aloud. There's a total musicality to it."
  [50:39]

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Key Takeaways

1. Dr. Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith:

   • The story of Dr. Johnson’s timely assistance to Goldsmith not only preserved their friendship but also had a lasting impact on English literature through the publication of "The Vicar of Wakefield".

2. Einstein and Kafka’s Intersection:

   • Ken Krimstein highlights the serendipitous meeting of Einstein and Kafka in Prague, exploring how their interactions may have influenced their groundbreaking work in science and literature.

3. Embracing Literary Complexity:

   • Bartholomew Ryan advocates for engaging with challenging literary works like "Finnegans Wake", emphasizing their role in expanding the boundaries of human imagination and artistic expression.

4. Upcoming Literary Engagements:

   • The promotion of an interactive literary trip underscores the podcast’s commitment to fostering a community of literature enthusiasts eager to explore literary history firsthand.

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Further Engagement

Listeners interested in joining the literary trip or learning more about the topics discussed can visit historyofliterature.com or reach out via email at [e-mail]. Support for the show is available through Patreon or direct donations at historyofliterature.com/donate.

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Thank you for tuning into Episode 717 of The History of Literature. Stay inspired and keep exploring the rich tapestry of literary history with us!

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hey folks, it's Jack. Here to promote something that's a little special. Not a thing and not a service, an opportunity for you to have an experience. The History of Literature Podcast is going on the road and you can join us. Our first stop is literary England, the land of Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen and Tolkien and C.S. lewis. Oh, and Dickens. Oh, and Shakespeare. Perhaps you've heard of him. This isn't a trip where you march from site to site checking off boxes. Seen it, seen it, seen it, seen it. This is a week plus a little more traveling with me and Emma and a group of other fans of literature. All of us enjoying our conversations, our chance to learn and grow and be inspired by these writers and their works that we love so much. With special visits along the way from past guests of the show, your favorites who will deepen our appreciation for what we're seeing. So please consider it. We would love to have you. You can learn more by going to John Shores Travel that's S H O R S and look for the upcoming trip to England with Jack Wilson. Or reach out to [e-mail] and we will tell you all the details. It's going to be in May of 2026, but act now to secure your spot. Space is limited and let's all spend some quality time together enjoying literature and enjoying life.

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[Jack Wilson]

Today on the show, some more movement, some more travel, some more serendipity. We look at an amazing story with Dr. Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, two 18th century luminaries, and then an amazing encounter with two luminaries from the 20th century, Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka as they circled one another in Prague. Our guest Ken Krimstein has done a lot of thinking about what those two meant for one another, how their ideas might have interwoven and what it means for us. Then we ask an expert in Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. That's all coming up today on the History of Literature. Okay. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for joining me. I love you all. Unconditional love for you, dear listeners, no matter what you think. That's just how it works. So we start today with an incredible story. This is why I love in addition to to you, dear listeners, I love the man, Dr. Johnson, in spite of all of his flaws. There's Nothing quite like Dr. Johnson in all of human history. I don't think there's a reason why Boswell's biography Life of Johnson is so famous. And one of those reasons is that Boswell is an excellent storyteller and writer. But the bigger reason, I think, is that Johnson is. Is just such an incredible personality and lover of life and has so much gusto. And it helps that he loves literature too. The man just lived a kind of life I can admire even if I don't share all of his opinions or predilections. So this is a story I heard. I guess I must have read it years ago when I read Life of Johnson, but I had forgotten it. I was reminded of it recently when listening to a podcast about Oliver Goldsmith, the Irish novelist and playwright who was in Dr. Johnson's circle in London. By the way, we are going to Dr. Johnson's house in May of next year, 2026 on our history of Literature podcast tour. And you can join us if you head on over to John Shore's Travel and put down a deposit to hold your spot. That's Shor's S H O R S. Or shoot me an [e-mail] and I'll point you in the right direction and say hello, how are you? All that kind of stuff. Or you can go to historyofliterature.com where there are links to the tour. You will get to see Dr. Johnson's house on this tour and then we'll walk. We'll all walk together around the corner to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, one of Johnson's favorite restaurant pubs, which is still in operation. Give you a little of that 18th century flavor and 19th century flavor because Dickens ate there too. And Agatha Christie. Ugh. It's going to be so much fun. Our group at the Cheshire Cheese will toast each other like the life embracing people we are when we are at our best. Emma, my wife Emma Wilson will be there too, and maybe a special guest will pop in. Please do join us. So where were we? Oliver Goldsmith born in 1728. Educated at Trinity college in Dublin until he was expelled for participating in a riot. Then he went to Edinburgh and studied medicine there for a few years before taking off on a walking tour, where he earned money by busking with his flute. A walking tour through Europe. Apparently the good people of the continent were eager to hear some flute music, and he obliged them in exchange for a bit of cash. He was a writer, a great poet, but also a burgeoning playwright and. And a naturalist, someone who could write about science and the human spirit with equal aptitude. And by the time he settled in London at the age of 28 and started looking for hack writing jobs, he was someone Dr. Johnson recognized as a fellow traveler. The two had a great friendship, close enough that Boswell, who came along later, was clearly jealous of Johnson's admiration and affection for Goldsmith. But this here's the story I wanted to pass along. Goldsmith was in trouble. He was behind on his rent, and they were about to send him to debtors prison. So he. He sends a message, message to Johnson asking for some help. And he and Johnson have. They go way back. Johnson loves him and respects him. And they have something else in common. They both have disfigured facial features due to childhood illness. They're kindred spirits, really, brainiac literary fiends who aren't all that socially well adjusted. Johnson was kind of a bull in a china shop when it came to social graces. Anyway, Johnson sends over a guinea immediately. A guinea's a little more than a pound. I had to look that up. What a racket that is. The guinea. Anyway, sends over a little more than a pound, gets dressed and races over to goldsmith's to see how he can help. He finds that goldsmith received the guinea and spent the money on wine, a bottle of Madeira. So Johnson puts a cork in the bottle, tries to calm goldsmith down, figure out what's going on, and then figures out a way to address goldsmith's problem. So here's Actually, the whole story is in Boswell. So let's. Here he is passing along Johnson's firsthand account of that story, including what happened next. Quote, I received one morning a message from poor goldsmith that he was in great distress, and as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible, I sent him a guinea and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merit, told the landlady I should soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for £60. I brought goldsmith the money and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill. That novel that Johnson raced over to the bookseller was the Vicar of Wakefield, a novel that would immediately become an English classic, part of the canon it still is. For a long time, it was the text used for students learning English throughout the British Empire. It was also an essential novel for Jane Austen. As she advanced the novel in her own way, it was a model for her, a bridge that spanned from Henry Fielding through Oliver Goldsmith all the way to Jane Austen, and then from her, we could say, continued the next 200 years of novels written in English. So the next time your enemy says, put a cork in it, think to yourself, well, maybe I'll do just that. If you're lucky. Like Dr. Johnson putting that cork into the Madeira, an act of compassion and empathy and pragmatism. Grace under pressure that rescued a friend and changed the course of literary history. What a story. I love the idea of Johnson and how he knew what to do. I'll send over a guinea immediately. Then gotta get dressed, of course. Then race over there and look for the literature. How to extricate you from this situation? Not, hey, do you have a watch you can sell? Maybe some silverware? But what have you written? What have you got? And he looks into it, saw the merit. He's going to be a critic, too. Of course. That's Dr. Johnson to his core. If the work was no good, he'll look for something else, because why waste time? He's not going to go run to a bookseller with some trifle. What a great friend. And Goldsmith, how vivid he is in this story, too. When the guinea comes over and he says, well, this is not going to settle my debts. Things are gloomy enough. Need a lot more than this. I might as well buy a bottle of wine to get me through the next few hours. I love Johnson putting a cork in the bottle. Enough of this. This is living, people. This is living. Even Goldsmith at the end, where he. He suddenly gets all In a high tone with his landlady for having arrested him. This is how I kind of how I want to live. Running around London, finding manuscripts, racing them over to the booksellers, cutting deals, and more than that, being helpful, being the kind of person who responds to a crisis with calm competence. Well, I can't have everything. I can't live in the 18th century, of course, and I'm no Dr. Johnson, but maybe I can live my own life, but with stuff like this happening to me all the time. In any case, I can't wait to take a trip to London to breathe in a little of that Dr. Johnson air in his home, which I visited before and found to be an incredibly inspiring experience. You really see what his life was like, what his world was like back then. This is the place where he wrote the dictionary, the first dictionary of English by himself. Place where he read so much and thought so much and did so much. His spirit is still there. Okay, let's take a break. Then we're going to hear from Ken Crimstein, who's written a graphic novel about another encounter in a different century. The year that Einstein spent in Kafka Land in Prague. What was Einstein doing there? What was Kafka up to at that point? How did these worlds collide? What can that tell us about both men? How their views and insights and belief systems do and do not mix with one another? Then we'll hear a my last book from Bartholomew Ryan, our expert in Fernando Pessoa. Bartholomew is Irish. Would he choose something by Pessoa? Or maybe his fellow Irishman, Oliver Goldsmith? We will see. But before we take the break, I will leave you with Dr. Johnson's epitaph for his great friend Oliver Goldsmith, which is on Goldsmith's grave in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. Johnson wrote it in Latin, but here is a translation. Oliver Goldsmith, a poet, naturalist and historian, who left scarcely any style of writing untouched and touched nothing that he did not adorn. Of all the passions, whether moving one to smiles or tears, a powerful yet gentle master in genius. Vivid, versatile, sublime in style. Clear, elevated, elegant. End quote. A beautiful tribute. Find a friend who can sum up your life with that much grace, and who will send over a guinea, no questions asked, when you're in trouble, and who will cork your bottle when you're in need of that. Ken Crimstein. After this is an ad by BetterHelp. Hey, it's Summer. But that can come with a lot of stress, especially for those of us who work. Workplace stress is one of the top causes of declining mental health and holidays and vacations can help, but those aren't long term solutions. Sometimes talking to a professional can help you navigate the challenges of the workday or any day so you can be the best version of yourself. BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, Having served over 5 million people around the world. You can join a session with a click of a button which allows you to fit your session into your busy life and you can switch therapists at any time. 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[Jack Wilson]

Okay. Joining me now is Ken Krimstein whose cartoons have been published in the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, Punch, and more. He's the author of the Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt and Kvetch as Kvetch Ken and he's here today to discuss his new book, Einstein in How Albert Fell down the Rabbit Hole and Came up with the Universe. Ken Krimstein, welcome to the history of Literature.

[Ken Krimstein]

Well, thanks very much. Happy to be here.

[Jack Wilson]

So let's start with what sparked your interest in this. Are you coming at this from a scientific background or do you have an interest in philosophy? Or what drew you to these two figures at this time?

[Ken Krimstein]

Well, it's, it's almost impossible not to be drawn. Well for me, to Albert Einstein when I was a child Everybody used to run around saying he was the smartest person who ever lived and equals MC squared.

[Jack Wilson]

Right? Right.

[Ken Krimstein]

Yeah. So I was like, oh, and he had weird hair and rode a bike and put his tongue out when he was riding.

[Jack Wilson]

We all had the poster and in college dorm rooms all had that poster right of him.

[Ken Krimstein]

Yeah, yeah. And as I looked, you know, obviously a little bit more deeply into it. I mean, I was pre med for a while, but I think my interest was always more in history. But I liked science and calculus didn't like me that much, but that's another story. But I did like science. And I was very curious to watch every Einstein documentary they had on Nova or whatever to try and figure out what this strange world that he was talking about might mean and how it might work. And as for Kafka, you know, again, another unavoidable figure in literature and in life as I was growing up. I mean, the man actually has an adjective, a verb, noun, a subject of brothers. His name is everything. You know, Kafka esque, as I like to say.

[Bartholomew Ryan]

He.

[Ken Krimstein]

The only person who didn't know he was Kafka esque was him at the time, when he was young. So that fascinated me. And also as a reader, I had read his stories and, and loved them. And I. I started reading his diaries again, which I loved even more than the stories because of the. The directness of the tone. My interest by this time had turned to sort of historical biography done and using the tools, the graphic novel medium, which I kind of filch a term from the French called Bon desine. They have such a respect for storytelling of nonfiction and fiction in the graphic medium that I like that term rather than comics, even though that's what people call it. So I was drawn to these two. And then the Hannah Arendt book has made quite a stir in Germany. So the German publisher said, would you like to consider another biography? And in as much as there has never been a biography about Albert Einstein, I thought, yeah, I'll do that. You know, wide open. Yeah, you and As I. But I had a take. I always try and bring my own personal obsessions, if you will, to the stories. I'm very curious about how normal people, and we're all pretty much normal people accomplish these incredible things. And it's even better when we're flawed people, and we're all kind of flawed people. So, you know, I was looking at Einstein, you know, what took this. This outsider, this man. What happened and how did it happen? So it works very well into the. Into the medium. And I wanted to look at it as I did with Hannah Arendt, a little bit from the other end of the telescope. You know, how did the light influence the thought? And when I started to go at it, I thought, well, let's look at Einstein not as a scientist, but let's look at him as a German expressionist. Because I, you know, I'm an art person and you know, he was swinging for the fences and doing things at that time. And my initial impulse, as often happens when I'm doing a book, was wrong. But it took me to a right place and I thought, well, Paul Klee, the great artist who I also love, was an exec contemporary of Einstein and they both played the violin and they both lived in Switzerland. And I thought I'll challenge myself and do a double biography. The the scientist who felt like an artist and the artist who felt like a scientist. And as I was reading up I discovered that actually Einstein had this window when he was 32 years old and then he was in this outpost of Prague and at the same time Kafka was there still working mostly at the insurance company and they were in the same circle. And I thought, okay, I love you Paul Klee, another time. And so that's what happened.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. So what was Einstein? I never realized that they were both in Prague during the same year. What was Einstein doing there in 1911 and 1912?

[Ken Krimstein]

Well, Einstein is kind of well known, couldn't even get a job teaching high school physics in Switzerland. He annoyed too many of the right people or the wrong people. But he had done some tremendous work obviously. And, but he was having life problems, his marriage was strained, he was very hard up for cash. He was very ambitious and the German University in Prague and Prague at this time was a part of the giant carbuncle on human history which is a gift that keeps giving for historians known as the Austro Hungarian Empire, which just, you know, so Prague is a German speaking outpost or a German ruled outpost and they have a German university and Einstein gets the job to become the head of the physics department there. And not only that, they're going to double his salary and they're going to kick in a brand new apartment with an elevator and electricity, electric lights. It's hard to believe. I visited the building and it's it to us it would seem like a very old building, but in those days it was new. So he said, yeah, I'll go, I'll take it, I'll go there. And it was an outpost and it, you know, there were issues in his scientific discovery. He was blocked and people were questioning him. So it was kind of fortuitous that he was in an outpost, not in the center because it gave him some distance to experiment and do things. And it was also fortunate that he was in the outpost known as Prague, which is really kind of an extremely bizarre crossroads of Europe. A layer cake of history. And all these things, you know, work together, I believe to help him have a profound breakthrough during that time.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. So you said, you mentioned that he was 32. I think Kafka was 28 or so, maybe living with his parents, still working at the job. What was his life? What did his life look like in 1911 and 1912?

[Ken Krimstein]

Well, he, he was 28. He was, you know, again, we have inherited a vision of Kafka which when I started looking into the record again and rereading this stuff again is not exactly conforming. So we think of him as this, as I say in the book, a hooded cockroach crown. Hooded eyed prophet of anime or whatever. He actually enjoyed his job immensely at the insurance company and was doing some really, really good things. He was 6 foot 2. He was a chronic lap swimmer every morning. He was a vegan. He thought his stories were funny and laughed uproariously when he read them. And actually they are funny. They're weird funny, but they're funny. And he was part of a very thriving. He had a bunch of pals, they were all really smart and took things very seriously. Max Broad, he was in the circle with Franz Verfel who went on to write the book the Song of Bernadette which became a. One of my. I think my father's favorite movie with Jennifer Jones in it. I think that's my. Why my father liked it. But a good story nevertheless. Many, many just incredible thinkers and writers and kind of modern assimilated, angry, artistically advanced Jewish kids who also hung out with some very, very progressive Czech people like the Czech brothers who were originators of science fiction. So Kafka, he did write at night. He did suffer from insomnia. He, he had gotten a couple of travel pieces published and he was working on getting a. Like a book of aphorisms published. But no major fiction or anything had been published as of yet. Just a fascinating young 28 year old man, you know, with his buddy Max Broad. I mean, I love these unexpected things that come up that humanize him. Like he and Broad, they could have been the first Arthur Fromer for if your audience remembers it, because they had. They were traveling around Europe. And they said, let's do Europe on, you know, 10 kopecks a day or whatever. And they did. They were writing this guidebook. So he was, he was intense. He was, he was starting to have relationships mostly, mostly in letters with some people, but very, very serious and committed to doing new things and learning. So that's who we meet.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, and speaking of learning, my understanding is that Einstein at this point was, although he wasn't world famous the way he would become, he was famous or well known enough that the group was excited to hear that he was coming and maybe some of them went to some of his lectures and so on. Could you talk about that a little bit?

[Ken Krimstein]

Yeah. So this is 1911 and 1905, six years before that is considered his, you know, miracle year. And it is quite a miraculous year. I mean, he really basically created modern physics and four different papers. Although a lot of people were really bothered by what he was doing with what he called the special theory of relativity. Nevertheless, he was popular. You know, he was doing some lectures, whether it was for people to throw rocks at him or not. When he arrived in Prague, there was a bit of buzz. There's a new kid in town. And one of the sources that I really relied on when I was doing the book, there's a biographer named Reiner Stock. And he wrote a little 1300 page, I believe, four volume biography of Kafka. And Stock puts them together. Kafka and his pals go to Einstein's first public lecture and you know, and Kafka and his pals went to the same salon hosted by this woman, Berta Fanta. But Stock definitely has Kafka, you know, in the, in the room with all the people with Einstein on May 24, 1911. So if that's good enough for Reiner Stock, that's good enough for me. And I think another thing that I again, to try and look at these people as people first. Because that I think makes it all the more exciting when you think about what they did. Einstein, in my modern parlance, and I'm going to digress just a second because I've taken to calling what I do vulgarizing history. But this is not in the American way of using a term, vulgar. It's actually when I was in France promoting my second book, which is called When I Grow up based on these lost autobiographies of Yiddish teenagers in France, is called Vivre, people came up to me and said, oh, you are vulgarizing history. And I was very upset. I'm like, what do you mean? And they're like, no, you know, in French, vulgarize means to make the complicated accessible. And I said, oh yeah, I knew that. That's right. That's what I'm doing.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Ken Krimstein]

But so, you know, Einstein loved to play the violin, he loved to play the piano. He, this salon, they needed a violinist. And you know, I play music a bit and I, I likened it to him. And he, he wanted to go jam, you know, and they also happened to talk about Kant. And there were very, very interesting people there, but it was a social circle that, that he was, that he was welcomed into and it was one that Kafka was very involved in as well.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. But I'm guessing that as far as source material, you don't have a whole lot of interactions between the two or, or commentary on one another and so forth. So how do you weave the worlds together? Are you imagining what Einstein would have made of how Kafka viewed the world and vice versa?

[Ken Krimstein]

Well, so I start with the question. And the question is, what happened? Or. Well, first one is, is an observation. Something happened and then what? What was the something that happened? Einstein arrives and he hasn't completed his biggest theory. There's a huge hole and Kafka is still struggling. Literally by the time Einstein departs 15 months later, Einstein has cracked the code on what he calls, quote, unquote, solving gravity. And Kafka has the basic notes to his first sort of acknowledged masterpiece story, which we call the Judgment. So what happened? Well, I look at everything that I can find. So there are instances. There are some biographers who were at the scene who said they hung out, they talked, blah, blah, blah. I don't know how reliable they were, but they were firsthand their stock. There's also mention in Kafka's biography and letters, but there are also huge gaps. And then I can kind of make it more about the social intellectual world that they were going through. So for instance, they're both intelligent, professional people. They would read the papers what happened in the world. What would be the events that they would both be noticing? Well, a couple of interesting things. The Titanic sunk. You know, Antarctica was conquered after a tragic expedition by Scott and Amundsen's race. There was so many things and, and there was a global heat wave like never seen before. Oh, and the Mona Lisa, worldwide headlines, maybe even before the Titanic. One, the Mona Lisa is stolen right off the wall of the Louv. And people would have been talking about this. And this is the world, you know, radio is coming in. So I put it within the context. And I try and see, did they have comments about the same kind of things that were happening? Thomas Edison's visit to Prague, who was very important to both of them, more important, interestingly, to Kafka. So I start connecting the dots, if you will, without invalidating anything that is in the record and spoiler alert for the listeners in case anybody's wondering about the narrative approach here. This is narrated by a 620 year old astronomical clock that rings the hour, every hour on the hour overlooking Prague. So if you can't trust that narrator, who can you trust?

[Jack Wilson]

Right, so I hear what you're saying. I think it is fascinating to kind of piece together whether they were reading the same newspaper headlines and influenced by the same things. But do you kind of take that a step further and say, well, what if Kafka let his mind go in some of the directions that Einstein was kind of leading the way and vice versa. If Einstein was kind of inspired by some of the types of things that were so heavily influencing Kafka's thought, could that have opened doors for the two of them?

[Ken Krimstein]

The answer to that is yes. And again, I'm writing a narrative, a story, a tale, a chronicle. But for myself, I can tell that I've as Einstein wonderfully, this is a direct quote from him says to his friend Paul Ehrenfest, I think I've got a piece of the truth. And I can tell that I've got a piece of the truth when ancillary sources keep resonating. So for instance, Prague at that time was really very much of a show me kind of city. And if you look at some of the intellectual godfathers, if you will, there was Ernst Machine who was a scientist who was all about like, show me. In fact, the Mach speed number was named after him because they showed, they came up with an experiment that showed how fast the speed of sound goes. But they were very much don't just be pie in the sky. And they were influenced by a philosopher who was in the town named Brentano. And Kafka was very into Brentano. In fact they were all kind of into Brentano.

[Bartholomew Ryan]

And.

[Ken Krimstein]

And again, it was a kind of materialism that said it's almost pre phenomenology, sort of. And I learned a lot of this from doing my work on Hana Rent. That's like make it so, don't just make it theoretical. And Einstein had to conquer a huge problem here where he had to actually devise an experiment to show that light itself, the fastest thing in the universe, bends when it's near a massive object had to come up with an experiment for this. And Kafka similarly, in what you might call the Zeitgeist or whatever, he's trying to do something with literature which in my interpretation was only reached almost 100 years later in, in the Seinfeld show when they said no hugging, no learning. He's trying to be direct, he's trying to tell stories without telling stories, which is why his stories, like Einstein's theories, make no sense, but make sense. And to me that was completely fascinating. And that, yes, I draw parallels between what both of them were doing and struggling with at the time, which was a world of, of modernism, but a kind of modernism in many ways that we haven't even really caught up with yet because four dimensional space and great walls of China that never end, they're continually perplexing, they will be forever. And this was their world that they were creating.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, as you were saying that it also, it occurred to me that it seems like both of them in their own respective fields were dealing with what does it mean if there is no fixed point, if we're all unrooted and things are relative and we have to make our way even without some of the guideposts and guardrails that have maybe helped previous generations?

[Ken Krimstein]

I think that's well put. I mean, I think another underlying similarity and you know, again, thanks to this wonderful invention we have called the Google or the Internet, there are people who have written very, very smart papers and things about the search for the law. And Kafka of course, being a lawyer, but he has that incredible parable about the person waiting in front of a gate to get the law and they won't let him in. And at the end the person says, well, you could have come in anytime you wanted. And Einstein's lifelong pursuit, once he had, quote, unquote, solved gravity to unify it. So the two of them are in a world where they're, where the center does not hold, so to speak. But they're trying to say there is a there there. It's just, you know, there's a great quote from Kafka in one of his, I think in one of the diaries where he says there is hope for God but not for us. And Einstein, you know, believes that there is a, you know, subtle is the Lord, but not malicious. So both of them believe that there's a there there. We're just fated not to ever be able to understand it fully. That's how I see it.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Now there is a story, I believe it's officially unsourced, and I'm not sure how reliable it is, but the story I heard was that Thomas Mann gave Einstein a book by Kafka, and Einstein gave it back to him and said, I couldn't read it. The human mind cannot possibly, possibly be that complex. Do you think that's true? Or maybe more importantly, does it ring true to you?

[Ken Krimstein]

I have heard that story. I don't know if it was Tomas Mann or somebody else had given Einstein one of Kafka's books. And he kind of said something like, I don't really have any use for this. It does ring true in a couple of ways to me. Einstein was a classicist. He thought Mozart was the be all and end all. He felt that Mozart was probably the closest. I could be wrong, but my interpretation is the closest person ever to hitting that celestial truth. That Mozart was just uncovering the sort of organic unity of the universe. Having said that, he actually. Part of the story, part of the dramatic conflict, if you will, that Einstein had to face was he had to throw Isaac Newton out. He had to throw his idol out. And as I discovered when I was working on this, Einstein, when he was in Prague, had two massive fears when he had kind of figured out how to solve gravity. The first one was, what if I'm wrong? I'll be laughed out of the scientific establishment. It'll be terrible. But the one that I think was even more troubling to him was, what if I'm right?

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right.

[Ken Krimstein]

He changes everything. And I know this because there was a fantastic quote from Einstein after he had won the Nobel Prize, some 16 years after Prague. And somebody said to him, Dr. Einstein, what took you so long? I mean, you had it in the palm of your hand, this theory of the curvature of space time for gravity. And Einstein's response was something along the lines of, well, it's not so easy to come to grips with a world where there's no there, there, no here, here, no now, you know, it's not that easy. And that was what he struggled with. And the more that he sort of doubled down on Newtonian space, the more he was hitting his head against the wall. And it was when he jettisoned the fact that, you know, we have to be able to comprehend it, but it still, it physically works that he was able to do this. So he was a classicist at heart, I believe.

[Jack Wilson]

But everything that you just said reminds me also of Kafka, that there is this feeling of, well, what if I'm about to tell you that everything you thought about, institutions and, you know, things that you. You relied on. And what if I. What if I don't even. Not even so much that I tell you this? What if I show you how things really are and in a way that people will recognize all over the world to say, yeah, this. This is how it feels to be alive in the 20th century and now the 21st century.

[Ken Krimstein]

I think you've hit the nail on the head because despite my efforts to make these two people and the other people that are right about normal, they're not. I try as hard as I can, Jack, but they're not.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Ken Krimstein]

And the question is, what is it? Is it courage? Is it stupidity? Is it what vision?

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Ken Krimstein]

Yeah. And, you know, when you read the diaries and when you read the work of Kafka or you see what Einstein was doing, you know, these people had hit something and they knew it. And yet they still forged ahead at great personal risk, I think, to get their truth out there. And I think part of the testimony Here we are 100 years after Kafka's death last year. People are still scratching their heads and getting inspiration from this. I was at Comic Con a couple of years ago. I was speaking and. But you can go to check out the panels, the other things they have there, you know, Game of Thrones, blah, blah. The most crowded thing that. That happened at Comic Con, San Diego, where people, you know, get dressed up with costumes and all this stuff, was the James Webb telescope. People talking. In other words, the realities of the universe that we don't understand. And these are, by the way, Einstein's equations are the gifts that sort of keep giving. The Webb Telescope sort of keeps validating all this stuff. This is what people are obsessed with. And you could argue that these mysteries. And I intentionally do a little bit of a shout out to Bill Watterson's book. But these mysteries are what keep us going. And I think Kafka and Einstein really went for the long ball and both of them got it over the wall out to whatever that street is in Chicago where they used Elston Avenue or whatever. They hit it out of the park.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Well, that seems like a perfect place to stop. The book is called Einstein in How Albert Fell down the Rabbit Hole and Came up with the Universe. Ken Krimstein, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.

[Ken Krimstein]

Well, thank you for having me and experience exploring this with me. Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

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[Ken Krimstein]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Jack Wilson]

And finally today we hear from Bartholomew Ryan. After he and I discussed Fernando Pessoa and his works, I asked Bartholomew this special question. Okay. I'm joined now by Bartholomew Ryan, expert in the life and works of Fernando Pessoa. Bartholomew, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.

[Bartholomew Ryan]

Oh my, you're going to sigh, but you know, I'm Irish and maybe we all have to come home at some point. Even though I've always been on the road. I'd have to say it probably would be Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. Yeah, because a number of reasons. I mean, it's just a baffling, impenetrable, almost non readable book. At the same time, 600 pages of just. I find I just dip in and dip out of it. It's full of different languages. It's totally affirmative to the madness of existence. And it starts in mid sentence, ends in mid sentence, has over 60 languages and he was from Dublin, James Joyce. And it was his last book. And I'm from Dublin. I mean, I grew up there, I was born there. And I find it very special and has so many references to all kind of the history of humans. So I would probably take Finnegan's Wake and it's awake. The title, Finnegan's Wake. It's an Irish American song about a guy who falls off a ladder. He's been drinking too much whiskey and is resurrects from the dead at the wake. The night before the funeral, someone drops whiskey on him and he celebrates again. And the book is really. It's collapse, fall and resurrection, and then full of experiment and God knows what it's all about in between. Yeah, I'd probably choose that one. I know that's mad, but there you go.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, wake has that double meaning. I mean, Joyce, if a word. If it only has a double meaning, it's not doing a whole lot of work. In James Joyce's world, usually you can get three or four meanings out of each word, but I see at least two meanings in that of the wake being associated with the funeral and the death. But also wake, like you're waking up. So it seems like it's kind of got that transitional aspect to it that might be perfect for that period in your life.

[Bartholomew Ryan]

And there's also a third meeting in wake, actually, we could add the wake, you know, the kind of the trail you leave on the water.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, right, yeah. Right. Looking back at your life. Yeah, yeah.

[Bartholomew Ryan]

And. And that's really important, the water element of Finnegan's way, because the first word is river, run.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Bartholomew Ryan]

And even Finnegan, you've got fin, Negan, like end, negating Finn. Nagin, also Finn again. Fion. Again. Fion is a mythical king of ancient Ireland. That Fion will come again. Finn is also a purifying, or it's blonde or clearing in the Irish language. So clearing again, the wake.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Bartholomew Ryan]

You can have. So we'd have plenty of time in the eternity of death to go through Finnegan's wake.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Now, do you think. I mean, do you think you will be enjoying the complexity of it and you want your mind to be thinking through all of the different permutations and the challenges and that. That's kind of the, you know, a way to, I guess, value the power of language and just the. The variety of life and so on. Or do you think that. Do you find when you read Finnegan's wake, that there's something calming about it for you, or that you feel like you're returning to your homeland and it kind of puts you in that kind of frame of mind?

[Bartholomew Ryan]

Yeah, I don't think it brings me back to my homeland because it's just so wacky.

[Jack Wilson]

It's like a dreamland. Dreamscape.

[Bartholomew Ryan]

Yeah, the dreamscape. The dreamtime of Orange is there. I think it's. For me, it's. It's kind of like experimental music, because you can be exhausted if you kind of go, okay, what does this mean? And try to read it in a normal way, because it's just really hard work and every line has a new word. Practically, or a different spelling that you haven't come across. So it's. But then when you just kind of enjoy reading aloud a passage, it's actually extremely musical. And Joyce said that if you don't understand me, read me aloud. You know, he was very inspired by Walter Pater's sentence, all art aspires to the condition of music. And I think Joyce was really trying to do that. There's a total musicality to it and you just pick it up and it's image bonkers in some parts. And then there's moments of extraordinary erudition and incredible parts of literature there. And then it's just. It's just exhausting. And you just want to put it down and say, what is this? What was the point? And I have that a lot when I look at Finnegan's Wake up. Why did you. It was a great failure. He calls it a monster as well. We didn't talk about the monster, but this is a monster that's really a monster in the Latin sense of the term mostrar. It shows, it's revealing and it's this kind of metamorphosizing thing. The language itself is alive and that's what I like about it. So you can feel different parts of it. Yeah. So I think that's kind of a longish answer to your question. There's so many ways to look at fingers Wake. I've been working on it in a while because I'm just finishing a book on. On Joy at the moment, so that would be my next book.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Well, as we discussed when we talked about Fernando Pessoa, you don't seem to shy away from the complexity in writers. You tackle the hard ones as long.

[Bartholomew Ryan]

As they have a sense of humor. And ultimately they are somehow projecting some kind of subversive joy. I'll stick with them, you know.

[Ken Krimstein]

Yeah.

[Bartholomew Ryan]

I think it's important to remember that. I mean, that's what these writers, they show us that. I don't find them arrogant sometimes. Oh, Joyce is arrogant. The opposite, actually. They're actually celebrating the capacity of the human imagination when sometimes we live in societies where we're reducing that imagination or trying to kind of. Yeah. Narrow the boundaries. And people like Joyce are dissolving the boundaries and opening up an extraordinary landscapes for us, which is so essential. And love is very much central to Joyce with all the madness of existence. And that's really important. So I think it's great we have these. We shouldn't be intimidated, but just let ourselves get lost in it.

[Jack Wilson]

That's Very well put. Martholemy Ryan, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.

[Bartholomew Ryan]

Thank you very much.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, there we go. That's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. My thanks to Ken Crimstein. Friends, come and join us for some drinks and dining and a little light travel around literary England. We're going to have a stimulating and intellectually engaging week. Was some well needed recharging of our social batteries. I haven't really gotten out there to meet listeners much in these last 10 years. Well, this is the chance. We're gonna make up for it all in one week in May of 2026. And you listeners will get to meet me and the show's producer, Emma aka Ms. Jack Wilson and some other guests of the show who are going to pop in to see how we're doing. Contact [e-mail] to learn more or head on over to John Shore's Travel. We will be back soon with more literary podcasting goodness, including some Mark Twain, a celebration of poetry, Virginia Woolf, Arthur Conan Doyle and much, much more. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

[Zibby Owens]

Hi, this is Zibby Owens, host of Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling buzziest or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to stay in the know. Get insider insights and connect with guests like Grammy Award winning singer Alicia Keys, critically acclaimed author Judy Blume and Academy Award winning screenwriter John Irving. Every single day with Totally Booked, you aren't just listening, you're part of the story. So don't miss out. Follow Totally Booked with Zibby on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now.

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