Joseph Conrad's life is marked by the kind of outsize exploits that would be subject to skepticism were they claimed by anyone other than Joseph Conrad; so, too, does it only seem an ability unique to Conrad that the outré travails of his world's pedestrianly extravagant inhabitants appear

often with paper cuts.

Klaus Nomi was one of the most bizarre artists in the notably strange New York underground scene in the 1970s. He moved from Germany to New York in 1972, and began singing professionally after a performance in which he sang opera and disappeared in a burst of light and smoke. Nomi's style mixed po

The back jackets of much of Thomas Bernhard's English-language translations are burdened by such qualifications as "near genius" or "second only to Kafka and Beckett."  This, of course, is no small praise: there is no shame in being second to Kafka or Beckett; there is no shame in being a "ne