Happy birthday Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus was born in Vienna April 28, 1874.

Journalist and writer, lecturer, publisher of, to name only a few, Peter Altenberg, Trakl, Strindberg and Oscar Wilde, whom many believed he trumped in his ability to generate 'bon mots' (Psychoanalysis is the disease of which it purports to be the cure), Kraus was a one-man socio-cultural phenom.

The attention Kraus paid to language, the premium he placed on clear expression, and the disdain with which he regarded those for whom words were to be used in the service of distortion, politicial or otherwise, is well documented.

A member of Kraus's circle tells this story.

"At a time when we were generally decrying the bombardment of Shanghai by the Japanese, I met Karl Kraus struggling over one of his famous 'comma problems.' He said something like this: I know that everything is futile when the house is burning. But I have to do this, as long as it is at all possible; for if those who are obliged to look after commas had always made sure they were in the right place, then Shanghai would not be burning.

What fun Kraus would have had with yesterday's San Francisco Examiner--as photographed on the bathroom floor of this writers house--in which the front page appeared to have been 'sold' to an advertiser promoting Unlimited talk, text, web.

Karl Kraus died June 12, 1936, but not before ruffling der Fuehrer's feathers.

Happy birthday Karl.