In July of 1883, an average middle-class Jewish family in an average suburb of Prague (then in Austria) ushered into the average world a new creature: Franz Kafka. He would never forgive them for this unnatural act of torture. Franz kept his neurosis quietly to himself throughout his childhood, r

Absurd, Anxiety, Dreamy, Dystopic, Existentialist literature, Hallucinatory, Hypnotic, Intense, Modernist literature, Neurotic, Profane

Marcel Proust wrote one novel. It took a transformation from aristocrat to hermit, long nights in a cork-lined room (to drown out the bustling clamor of the Paris boulevards below), and more than ten years to write it. He called his opus, a tomb replete with half-page sentences and sinuous revelation

Aestheticist fiction, Anxiety, Excessive, Layered, Modernist literature, Neurotic, Overflowing, Perverse, Sensual

Anxiety, Catastrophe, Ecstatic, Epic, Existentialist literature, High realism, Joyful, Manic, Psychological

Todd Haynes' biography reads as if he were an unlikely mix between Cheech Marin, John F. Kennedy Jr., and Quentin Crisp. Haynes was born in Los Angeles and educated at Brown University, where he was awarded an honors degree in Art and Semiotics in 1985. He is also the first -- and possibly only -- ar

Anxiety, Funny, Neurotic, Queer