“He knows that he is a thinker”

Alfred Döblin, “Astralia.” 1912. Bright Magic: Stories, trans. Damion Searls (New York: New York Review Books, 2016).

The short stories of Bright Magic are expressionist, extravagant, and sometimes sharply funny. Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) is best known for the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929).