Franz Kafka

[Eric]

Whether he's Czech or Austrian or Austro-Hungarian or Jewish or whatever, there is quite a lot about Franz Kafka in today's Die Welt literature supplement (i.e. 28th June 2008). This is a German daily.

See:

http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article2156043/Franz_Kafka_war_einer_von_uns.html (http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article2156043/Franz_Kafka_war_einer_von_uns.html)

http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article2156042/Kafka_und_die_gestrenge_Tuerhueterin.html (http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article2156042/Kafka_und_die_gestrenge_Tuerhueterin.html)

http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article2156044/Neue_Buecher_von_und_ueber_Kafka.html (http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article2156044/Neue_Buecher_von_und_ueber_Kafka.html)

[Irene Wilde]

Well, Eric, now you have to translate for the monolinguistic American.

[Eric]

The Translators Association, part of the Society of Authors in London, recommends ?85 per one thousand words translated. That's for literature. For commercial or legal texts, you have to pay more. So, it pays to be bi- or tri-lingual...

The joke continues when I step into the local newsagent's shop. While The Guardian, the Times, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, or any other British daily costs between three and four euros, it's cheaper to know German, French, Italian, Spanish, or just about any other language. Most papers in those languages only cost up to about two euros. There are also weeklies from Eastern Europe.

So it is literally cheaper if you can read things in "Continental" languages, as opposed to relying on Brit&Yankspeak.

I read the first of the three Kafka articles in the print edition of the paper, only afterwards looking up the URL. It's a good, well-informed, survey article. Maybe the literati of London are all scrambling to get it translated, as it's the 125th anniversary year of the birth of Kafka. And all those dumb journos with no imagination read in the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook that this is the anniversary, so they all rush to write derivative articles about works they've heard about but never read.

[Irene Wilde]

The Translators Association, part of the Society of Authors in London, recommends ?85 per one thousand words translated. That's for literature. For commercial or legal texts, you have to pay more. So, it pays to be bi- or tri-lingual...


I suppose I'll have to wait until the dollar comes out of its free-fall before I can afford your services.

[Eric]

I was only teasing in my previous post. Obviously, no one could be expected to learn a language overnight, just to celebrate the anniversary of a writer.

But there is, luckily, a whole industry of Kafka commentary in the English language. This started years ago, and I'm sure there'll a few new book-length works about Kafka appearing in English, this year too.

The first article I mentioned was, in fact, a review of Reiner Stach's 728-page book called simply "Kafka". This appeared in a slightly shorter English translation in 2006:



KAFKA
The Decisive Years.
By Reiner Stach.
Translated by Shelley Frisch.
Illustrated. 581 pp. Harcourt. $35.


There is a review in the NYT at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/books/review/01roth.html

The Wikipedia lists the following other works about him:



Works about Kafka

Brod, Max. Franz Kafka: A Biography. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995. ISBN 0-306-80670-3

Brod, Max. The Biography of Franz Kafka, tr. from the German by G. Humphreys Roberts. London: Secker & Warburg, 1947. OCLC 2771397

Calasso, Roberto. K. Knopf, 2005. ISBN 1-4000-4189-9

Citati, Pietro, Kafka, 1987. ISBN 0-7859-2173-7

Coots, Steve. Franz Kafka (Beginner's Guide). Headway, 2002, ISBN 0-340-84648-8

Deleuze, Gilles & F?lix Guattari. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (Theory and History of Literature, Vol 30). Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 1986. ISBN 0-8166-1515-2

Glatzer, Nahum N., The Loves of Franz Kafka. New York: Schocken Books, 1986. ISBN 0-8052-4001-2

Greenberg, Martin, The Terror of Art: Kafka and Modern Literature. New York, Basic Books, 1968. ISBN 0-465-08415-X

Gordimer, Nadine (1984). "Letter from His Father" in Something Out There, London, Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-007711-1

Hayman, Ronald. K, a Biography of Kafka. London: Phoenix Press, 2001.ISBN 1-84212-415-3

Janouch, Gustav. Conversations with Kafka. New York: New Directions Books, second edition 1971. (Translated by Goronwy Rees.) ISBN 0-8112-0071-X

Kwinter, Sanford. Architectures of Time: Toward a Theory of the Event in Modernist Culture. Cambridge, MIT Press, 2002. ISBN 0-262-11260-4

Murray, Nicholas. Kafka. New Haven: Yale, 2004.

Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. New York: Vintage Books, 1985. ISBN 0-374-52335-5

Thiher, Allen (ed.). Franz Kafka: A Study of the Short Fiction (Twayne's Studies in Short Fiction, No. 12). ISBN 0-8057-8323-7



And most of his actual works have been translated at least twice into English. Given the fact he lived a relatively obscure life, he is amazingly well documented by any standards.

The Wikidpedia article is at:

Franz Kafka - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka)

[Mirabell]

He is easily one of my favorite writers, I love how he moved in his work, in very short time, from easy, self-pitying melodrama (Das Urteil) to the concision of his later prose.

As you haven't said anything about his work, Eric, what do you say? Do you have favorite texts? I have an essay on Heimkehr somewhere but I cannot find it.

[Eric]

No, Mirabell, 'tis true, I haven't said anything about his texts. But I have read his three longer works in English and hope one day to re-read them in German. I did read the novella Beschreibung eines Kampfes for the first time in German recently, which I have always had a weakness for. It is a curiously bitty work, but I remember when I first read it over 30 years ago that it was weird and interesting. I didn't know what Modernism was in those days.

I was corresponding with someone recently who was indeed reading his shorter works. I bought a selection of them some months ago, also entitled Beschreibung eines Kampfes, and containing about 30 of his short-stories, fragments, etc., such as Der Bau, Der J?ger Gracchus, Der K?belreiter, Das Stadtwappen, and other short works I remember once having read.

When I do get round to re-reading his longer works, I want to read principally Das Schlo? and Der Verschollene. Everyone talks so much about Der Proce? (as the title is eccentrically spelt in a recent Fischer reprint; a restoration of the original spelling, as I believe) that I want to give that one a miss, initially.

What I like in Das Schlo? is his zany, low-key humour, an aspect of Kafka that often gets forgotten when people discuss the Angst and misery in his books.

[Mirabell]

a restoration of the original spelling, as I believe

Not just the spelling. In the past decade (since 1995 I think, not sure and too lazy to check) faith in the old BRod editions has declined rapidly, as Brod did his friend the same disservice so many editors of Emily Dickinson did her marvellous work: he 'corrected' it, not just the spelling, but also punctuation and even (re)arrangement of textual fragments and even paragraphs within finished works. So now most people use an edition based on Franz' handwritten manuscripts, faithful to all sorts of things down to orthography, I believe, which explains the eszett in the title.

Yes, Kafka is very funny and yes, in my experience, too, that gets overlooked frequently, especially we in Germany tend to read everything drily and as devoid of humor. Beckett who is an incredibly funny writer has the image of a dour prophet of doom here, and, as an American who has taught at several good universities here, complained, Germans tend to read even a text as hilarious as Tristram Shandy with a straight face and without any recognition of its humorousness.

[nnyhav]

New NYRB has Zadie Smith on Louis Begley on Franz Kafka (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21610).

[Heteronym]

The Metamorphosis is one of the greatest works of literature ever written. No other book I've read has elicited from me such horror and disgust. I still feel a tingle of fear whenever I remember the creepy descriptions of Samsa's insect-like arms twitching in the air, how he hides under the blankets to observe the maid who comes in to clean his room, or how he crawls across the ceiling.

And no other book has ever provoked in me such compassion for the protagonist. I nearly cried over the ultimate fate of Gregor Samsa; ostracized by his family, struggling between his humanity and the freedom of giving in to his new bestiality, finding solace only in his sister's music. When he's done away with and the family breathes a sigh of relief, it's so disturbing, like all their feelings for him were gone.

Still I wouldn't consider Kafka a favorite writer. I loved The Trial, loathed Amerika so much I couldn't finish it, haven't read The Castle yet. I own his collcted short-stories and I enjoy a couple of them: 'In The Penal Colony,' 'The Great Wall of China,' 'A Message from the Emperor,' 'The Next Village,' 'Prometheus'...

But I don't enjoy his writing style. It lacks rythm, lyricism, beauty. I can't immerse myself in the simple pleasure of reading his prose like I can with Saramago or Garc?a M?rquez. I've stopped reading many of his short-stories because his style is uninviting and after a few sentence it becomes a chore.

[Mirabell]

But I don't enjoy his writing style. It lacks rythm, lyricism, beauty. I can't immerse myself in the simple pleasure of reading his prose like I can with Saramago or Garc?a M?rquez. I've stopped reading many of his short-stories because his style is uninviting and after a few sentence it becomes a chore.

could that be a question of translation? do you read both kafka and gabo in translation or just one of them...?

because you're quite wrong, you know, about his language.

[Heteronym]

Hm, I've read The Process and The Metamorphosis, which I've liked, in Portuguese. M?rquez I also read in Portuguese. The short-stories, which I mostly dislike, are from the collected English edition. You may be on to something, it may be one of those cases the English translation is just no good.

[Eric]

I was pleasantly surprised at Zadie Smith's essay-review-article in the New York Review of Books on Kafka, that Nnyhav mentions. She certainly puts the boot in, regarding the Brod editing. She does rather give the reader the impression that Brod was the archetypal groupie: sycophantic while the object of his awe was alive, a ruthless control freak, once he was dead. Also a little blow below the belt at Andrew Motion and Philip Larkin in that article. She praises Begley and his tackling some of the more paradoxical aspects of Kafka, e.g. his Jewish anti-Semitism and the complexities thereof. I must admit that Smith review-essay-article is much more sophisticated than what I found yesterday in Die Welt.

As for the German sense of humour that Mirabell alludes to, we non-Germans have to tread carefully when discussing the phenomenon. But it does strike me that "German humour", in its oxymoronic guise, is a Germanic thing, not confined to Germany itself. I see clear signs of this over-seriousness in Sweden, Finland, Estonia (which was run for centuries by Baltic-German barons), and the Netherlands. Where countries have been fortunate enough to have Jews to bring a touch of laughing gas to the culture, things have improved markedly. Jewish humour can be self-deprecating, and is certainly both sly and witty. Germanic humour, on the other hand, can descend from the pedestals of pomposity too piss & shit slapstick, at which the Germanics laugh themselves silly, whilst those from without that cultural zone can find it embarrassingly boorish. I cannot imagine an Aryan Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, Seinfeld, Phil Silvers, and a hundred other comedians.

[Paul]

I'm a great fan of Kafka. I've read the three novels and have three collections of short stories.

I really do rate The Trial over any of his other work, even Metamorphosis. That book to me feels much more polished.

I do think that The Castle, had it been finished completely and given a proper edit, could have been even greater than The Trial, though. It has all the themes of the Trial, but they are taken to a greater, more extreme level of frustration and fruitlessness. And it contains much more of the humour that's been mentioned.

The main problem I have, like Heteronym, is with Amerika (or The Man Who Wasn't There). I either simply didn't understand it, or it was just a bit of an ill-conceived attempt. There are scenes (the large hotel/restaurant for one) that felt like being real Kafka, but mostly I had a weird feeling that someone else had written it. It does pain me to say it, as I like his writing so much, but I thought it just wasn't very good. Perhaps someone with more knowledge than me could defend that book, because I really do want to be wrong about it and I?m happy to re-read it with a new outlook.

I love many of the short stories, too. His imagination (and humour) really flies in them.

There is the issue of whether it was a good idea to actually publish some of the very-unfinished work and the various fragments. I think most authors would feel pretty unhappy about having to include their aborted attempts and literary doodles when their entire career is being judged. But, personally, I quite like them, and can easily forgive a lack of polish in some stories when we also have such a rare and interesting mind being displayed.

[Eric]

Just out of interest, in #7 I used the German names, most of which are familiar to everyone. But one of his three novels has two titles: Amerika (America) but also Der Verschollene which translates as "missing person" or "missing presumed dead", which gives an interesting twist to the tale. So whether the English title The Man Who Wasn't There is an exact rendering is an interesting question. Reminds me of the William Hughes Mearns poem:

As I was going up the stair
I saw a man who wasn?t there
He wasn?t there again today
I wish that man would go away.

I'm looking forward to re-reading a few of the Kafka stories.

[nnyhav]

More from NY (via Dan (http://danpritch.blogspot.com/) of Pen&Anvil):
Michael Wood on Louis Begley on Franz (http://www.nysun.com/arts/king-of-infinite-space-louis-begleys-kafka-book/81462/)
Eric Ormsby on Franz's letter to father (http://www.nysun.com/arts/man-and-his-maker-kafkas-letter-to-my-father/81457/), delivered in English by Howard Colyer

... and from Israel, Brod's hoard (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999621.html) (via Literary Saloon)

(And I disagree with Scott's premise (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/blogosphere/2141-max-brod-sheds-light-unfortunates.html), but over at his premises (http://www.conversationalreading.com/2008/07/max-brod-sheds.html).)

[Sybarite]

I read The Trial a couple of years ago and found that I wanted to fling to book at a wall in lieu of being able to grab the central character by his throat and shake him. At that point, it becomes irrelevant (to me) how good or otherwise the writing is.

I commented to someone the other day that I probably should try Kafka again, but such an experience doesn't fill me with optimism.

The Brod hoard (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7498824.stm) (BBC).

[Heteronym]

I understand your feelings about K. It doesn't look like he tries very hard to survive, does it? He just strolls passively through everything and then dies.

[Sybarite]

I understand your feelings about K. It doesn't look like he tries very hard to survive, does it? He just strolls passively through everything and then dies.

I think you've hit the nail on the head, Heteronym. It's difficult to feel any level of sympathy with a character who is so passive – pathetic, really. I had a similar response to Winston in Orwell's 1984 and, albeit to a lesser degree, Meursault in Camus's The Stranger (although I personally found that easily the best of the three books mentioned).

How does one create that sense of helplessness – without creating characters that are so pathetic that readers don't care about them or even, as I did with 1984, actively feel a sense of 'good – serves you right', at the end?

Crossing media, I'd suggest that that is perhaps best achieved in Terry Gilliam's film Brazil (jointly penned with Tom Stoppard), with the character of Sam Lowry, who isn't particularly effective, but does make an effort.

I have told myself that I'll try Kafka again – there's always the feeling, with a writer like him, that you worry whether or not you're the one who's 'wrong' if you don't 'get it'. For different reasons, I have a similar response toward Hemmingway: I should like (revere) his work but find it a drag.

[Heteronym]

Meursault doesn't strike me as passive, more emotionally detached from everything; he just tries to live according to a complex standard of freedom which rejects any ties: family, friends, love.

One problem might be that these characters are more ideas than people: they're personifications of the authors' worldviews. Kafka, who lived a very submissive relationship with his father and lead a monotonous life as a clerk, sees Mankind as a weak, helpless lot against a rapidly-changing, dehumanising, bureaucratic world. For Camus, Meursault is the ultimate free man, who lives without deceit and according only to his decisions.

In both novels it seems the the authors invented the characters to prove their theses instead of inventing a story to fit their characters. I'd say it works better in The Trial than in The Stranger.

Now in 1984 how can you not like Winston, who is willing to kill, lie, steal and throw acid into peoples' faces for freedom?

[Sybarite]

... Now in 1984 how can you not like Winston, who is willing to kill, lie, steal and throw acid into peoples' faces for freedom?

Quite easily. I think he's pathetic. I detested the book (only read it a couple of years ago) and found it completely unsympathetic. It's good to know where all the famous phrases ('Bog Brother', 'hate week', 'Room 101') come from, and Orwell's predictions of a surveillance society are worryingly coming true.

But I didn't enjoy the writing and there was not a single character that I felt anything for.

I think that Winston doesn't really make informed and considered decisions about what he's doing but simply gets drawn along on a tide of events.

[fausto]

Well, it's sort of the point, isn't it?

[Sybarite]

Well, it's sort of the point, isn't it?

Indeed. But as I said, I can sympathise with Sam Lowry in Terry Gilliam's Brazil ? so it is possible to illustrate the helplessness etc, but without losing sympathy for the person caught at the centre of it.

[Heteronym]

But Lowry isn't passive: he's a cog in a well-oiled machine; and he gets in trouble because he starts working out of tune. His problem, much like Winston's, is that his actions don't ever amount to much.

[Sybarite]

But Lowry isn't passive: he's a cog in a well-oiled machine; and he gets in trouble because he starts working out of tune. His problem, much like Winston's, is that his actions don't ever amount to much.

I just personally find him massively more sympathetic. I don't think that the issue is what actions amount to (in this context) but how much he attempts to take action. And there is an extent to which everyone is a 'cog' in the machine ? K is in the Kafka too. Such a story has to begin with someone who is inside the system in order to show the nightmarish nature of the system itself.

I came to 1984 only having previously read Orwell's Animal Farm (which I like a lot) and expecting much. I was hugely disappointed. I finished it, but really didn't enjoy it one iota. I thought Winston utterly wet.

[Eric]

Next time I'm having a pee in a public lav, I'll remember that: "Bog Brother is watching you".

I think Kafka and Orwell are rather different beasts. As I always claim, the biography, nationality and background of a person is usually very relevant to their writings.

Orwell is greatly respected in Eastern & Central Europe for seeing through the rhetoric and lies of the Soviet system. He had his fill of Commies in Catalonia: they wanted to get rid of Franco, but then started their own purges in the ranks. But Orwell is still a bit of a Burmese policeman (maybe the r?gime needs a few now...). His humour points outwards - he is criticising Communism, something "out there" which didn't affect his everyday life once Erridge, as parts of him are called in the Anthony Powell novels, gets back to Britain. He was a good observer.

Personally, I think that while Animal Farm is a comic caricature, 1984 does examine the more creepy aspects of a totalitarian system, like thought control, censorship and state lies. And the erosion of private life. The last paragraph of 1984 is an excellent reflection of how people, after torture or mistreatment (e.g. a decade in the Gulag) ended up loving Stalin in the Soviet Union, because it was the easiest way out psychologically. Even today, there are veterans of WWI alive who think that the sun shone out of Stalin's arse. They cannot see that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the mass murder of key Russian generals by Stalin will have made WWI a much tougher fight. Orwell picked up this mentality and reproduces it well. Orwell is a good author to read when thinking about life in North Korea today.

On the other hand, Kafka's experience of the Yiddish theatre and the sheer absurdity of everyday life in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, gave him a more zany outlook on life. He is more the self-deprecating Jewish clown, like so many American comedians. Even at his blackest, Kafka is still somehow humorous. The Absurd is writ large in his books and stories. His take on all this is much more from the inside - he was living in Prague, not on Jura.

[Stewart]

There's an essay in the Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/08/09/bokafka109.xml) by Zadie Smith regarding his "biographical aura".

[cuchulain]

The first article I mentioned was, in fact, a review of Reiner Stach's 728-page book called simply "Kafka". This appeared in a slightly shorter English translation in 2006:


Excellent book. I bought it recently. Already had Pawel's and Calasso's book. Pawel was the Kafka bio for me. Also excellent. Really places him as a minority among minorities among minorities. Also, Kafka, Love and Courage, about Milena Jesenska is fascinating. Her own life, and her time with Kafka.

I loved The Trial and The Castle . . . and have read most of his short stories several times. I think his short stories are his strength. His endless search for perfection hurt his longer works. He could never finish them. Like a painter who paints and overpaints and turns everything to a shade of gray. Well, no. Not like that at all, really.

Of course, even unfinished, Kafka's two major novels are masterpieces. But I think his temperament was for the short work. Like Borges and Pessoa. Sprinters rather than marathon runners.

(Murakami takes that to a whole new level as he actually runs marathons. Says it helps his writing . . . . )

All in all, I think Kafka is the most important writer of the 20th century. Not necessarily the best. But the most important. He tapped into the zeitgeist in an unprecedented manner, before it was even there in full. Really, when there was just a hint about it. He was perhaps more prophet than novelist, more oracle than master of the longer form. He's a giant either way . . .

[Eric]

I agree about Kafka. But you should beware of too many superlatives:



All in all, I think Kafka is the most important writer of the 20th century.


I would be more inclined to say "one of the most influential writers of the 20th century", as that avoids singling out one writer at the pinnacle. Remember, all ratings of this sort depend on translations into many languages. If Max Brod had burnt more, or the Brits had turned their noses up at Kafka, he might never have had the widespread influence he had. And his reputation depends on the fact that he was translated into a lot more languages than English only.

A giant, fair enough, but the most important writer? This implies a kind of pyramid, where there's only room for one author at the pointy top.

[Mirabell]

I agree about Kafka. But you should beware of too many superlatives:



I would be more inclined to say "one of the most influential writers of the 20th century", as that avoids singling out one writer at the pinnacle. Remember, all ratings of this sort depend on translations into many languages. If Max Brod had burnt more, or the Brits had turned their noses up at Kafka, he might never have had the widespread influence he had. And his reputation depends on the fact that he was translated into a lot more languages than English only.

A giant, fair enough, but the most important writer? This implies a kind of pyramid, where there's only room for one author at the pointy top.

For once, I agree with Eric.

[Ellen]

The problem is that I did only read his book "The Metamorphosis". "The Trial" is still on my to-do list.

[rabbitfast]

I've only read The Trial (just finished it a couple of days ago) but I definitely plan on reading more. I read K. more as someone who refuses to conform to the norms that are clearly absurd than simply a passive man who doesn't try hard enough to survive. Maybe I'm misreading but certainly one of the messages I get from the whole thing is "conform or die"...a metaphor for life almost. One might find the world and its norms absurd and pointless... and yet, one has to conform to a certain extent in order to survive. I'm not sure that I'm making sense. :o

[Eric]

Both The Trial and The Castle deal especially with the absurdity of man-made rules. But protagonists are on a kind of journey through a maze of illogical events. The settings also reflect this. I imagine that Kafka drew a lot of his inspiration from real life in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Wikipedia article gives a good all-round view of him:

Franz Kafka - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka)

The section on his style is illuminating:



Style of writing

Kafka often made extensive use of a trait special to the German language allowing for long sentences that sometimes can span an entire page. Kafka's sentences then deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop - that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of certain sentences in German which require that the verb be positioned at the end of the sentence. Such constructions cannot be duplicated in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text. One such instance of a Kafka translator's quandary is demonstrated in the first sentence of The Metamorphosis.

Another virtually insurmountable problem facing the translator is how to deal with the author's intentional use of ambiguous terms or of words that have several meanings. An example is Kafka's use of the German noun Verkehr in the final sentence of The Judgment. Literally, Verkehr means intercourse and, as in English, can have either a sexual or non-sexual meaning; in addition, it is used to mean transport or traffic. The sentence can be translated as: "At that moment an unending stream of traffic crossed over the bridge." What gives added weight to the obvious double meaning of 'Verkehr' is Kafka's confession to his friend and biographer Max Brod that when he wrote that final line, he was thinking of "a violent ejaculation." In the English translation, of course, what can 'Verkehr' be but "traffic?"


This shows two things that the translator has to wrestle with: long sentences and ambiguity.

[Stewart]

I managed to have a flick through Kafka's The Office Writings (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0691126801/) yesterday. If you don't know about it, then it's pretty much the last translations of Kafka's work. And in this sense work is exactly what it is. It's four hundred pages, or so, of the writings he made whilst working at the Prague Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute. Aside from official documents and the like it also contains letters written to different bodies about safety issues and the like. In theory, it sounds interesting, but probably more as one you would dip into sporadically rather than devour from cover to cover.

[A Common Reader]

I enjoy reading writers who follow in Kafka's footsteps, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Themes such as

Wandering through cities never quite getting your bearings
The sense of needing to be somewhere else but unable to get there
Having done something wrong but not quite knowing what it is.

Examples among many:

The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt - Wilhelm Genazino
Metropole - Ferenc Karinthy
The Game of Cards - Adolf Schroder
The Unconsoled - Kazuo Ishiguro
Missing Persons - Hartmut Lange

If anyone knows any more perhaps they could let me know as I'd like to read them.

Tom

[nnyhav]

I enjoy reading writers who follow in Kafka's footsteps, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Themes such as

Wandering through cities never quite getting your bearings
The sense of needing to be somewhere else but unable to get there
Having done something wrong but not quite knowing what it is.

You surely know of the more direct takes by Murakami and Coetzee, for example.

So, some perhaps less familiar examples of defamiliarization:
Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading
Lem, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
Robbe-Grillet, Topology of a Phantom City, Recollections of the Golden Triangle
Lispector, Hour of the Star (cf kpjayan (http://kpjayan.blogspot.com/2007/02/hour-of-star-clarice-lispector-brazil.html))

[A Common Reader]

Thanks nnyhav

I don't know any of those books and will look them up.

Tom

[nnyhav]

An Alienation Artist: Kafka and his Critics by Alexander Provan (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/provan/single?rel=nofollow)

What is the Kafkaesque? It is the scene described in Kafka's story "A Report to an Academy," in which an eloquent ape candidly recounts his arduous path toward civilization: "There is an excellent idiom: to fight one's way through the thick of things; that is what I have done." It is, Begley suggests, that familiar existential predicament so often played out by Kafka's characters, who "struggle in a maze that sometimes seems to have been designed on purpose to thwart and defeat them. More often, the opposite appears to be true: there is no purpose; the maze simply exists." It is the explosion of the international market for mortgage-backed securities and derivatives, in which value is not attached to the thing itself but to speculation on an invented product tangentially related to (but not really tied to) that thing. It is FEMA's process for granting housing assistance after Hurricane Katrina: victims were routinely informed of their applications' rejection by letters offering not actual explanations but "reason codes." It is the Bush administration's declaration that certain Guant?namo Bay detainees who had wasted away for years without trial were "no longer enemy combatants" and its simultaneous refusal to release them or clarify whether they had ever been such. It is, as Walter Benjamin wrote, "the form which things assume in oblivion." "Kafkaesque," in other words, is a phrase that has come to represent very much about modern life while signifying very little.
(via (http://www.conversationalreading.com/))

[Cavalier Bizarre]

I would implore those interested in Metamorphosis to read Nabokov's lecture (Nabokov's Metamorphosis (http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vermeer/287/nabokov_s_metamorphosis.htm)) on it, or watch it as wonderfully acted and delivered by Christopher Plummer (YouTube - Vladimir Nabokov - The Metamorphosis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boSFjzWJXcU) -- note: part two is in related videos), if they have not already.

Besides Metamorphosis, The Trail, The Castle, I find myself really enjoying his short stories, notably A Country Doctor, A Hunger Artist, and The Vulture.

I highly recommend Koji Yamamura's visual adaptation of A Country Doctor of the same name, which is, in my opinion, the best Kafka adaptation to any visual medium. The animation style is deliciously surreal and Yamamura clearly comprehends the story on a high level, which is very likely about the birth of psychoanalysis and Freud's use of his own personality to spark its beginnings. I have an article, Kafka, Freud, and "Ein Landarzt," by Eric Marson and Keith Leopold that explores the subject in depth; if you are interested in it, let me know and I will send it to you.

Prevrashchenie, a Metamorphosis adaptation directed by Valeri Fokin, is another film I would recommend to you.

Does anyone have any thoughts on The Vulture? This story intrigues me very much.

[Heteronym]

That's a pretty disturbing story, but it has everything that defines Kafka: the incomprehensible horror, the useless cry for help, the sense of loneliness. I was tempted to call it a parable, but of what? A parable must refer to something common in human behavior. But the final moral I get from it is, endure suffering alone for a long time rather than have it kill you in a moment.

Maybe that's life: you must go through it alone and in the end no one can help you. Maybe the vultures are time, consumming the man little by little.

[Bookmaniac]

The Castle is surely one of the most disturbing books written. A good translation that emphasises the alienation, dislocation and spiritual loss of life in this century and probably the next.

[Miriam]

Kafka is one of the strangest authors I dare to say. I like his short stories (I haven't read his novels or really great books yet). To my mind to understand Kafka one have to read him very carefully. No one author has been so difficult to read and to understand, as for me...

[Omo]

I love Kafka's writings, his dry, bureaucratic language, free of all dialect and the oppressive situations he creates, that picture inner life in modern times so exactly. My favourite work is Das Urteil, from his novel fragments I prefer Amerika (Der Verschollene).

When I first read his works, around the age of 12, 13, I thought Kafka's K. was related to Bert Brecht's Mr K (from "The Stories of Mr Keuner") in some mysterious way. Does anyone share this association?

[miaka]

i read kafka's metamorphose (if i wrote right :) ) and it was awesome. he is very talented to reflect the utmost inner world of a lonely man as he was.

[David J]

I read translations of Kafka when I was younger. I remember his prose as being so limpid and pure, even in translation. A unique writer, very hard to pin down. An angelic writer. A lot of people would say that his only limitation is that he excludes the social from his work but this essentially is his purity. It is amazing that a writer can produce such a substantial amount of great work without real engagement with this huge sphere of human reality. Looking forward to reading him again.

[Backwords]

Oddly peculiar that there is no Kafka thread or am I missing it? Alas, with this guy once the applecart is overturned there can be no righting it, not ever.

Correction:
didn't see the second page in the archive search... :O

[beelzebubbles]

Oddly peculiar that there is no Kafka thread or am I missing it? Alas, with this guy once the applecart is overturned there can be no righting it, not ever.

Correction:
didn't see the second page in the archive search... :O

Now that you have been oriented, do you care to elucidate on your applecart metaphor or make it murkier? Whatever makes you comfortable. Proceed.

[Backwords]

It's only that there is a certain relentlessness in Kafka, no? At the start of The Trial something goes wrong, a man wakes up to find himself... and then two hundred pages later without any relief he dies (To stretch a metaphor: Unable to gather up the apples, to put them in a basket or a cart as it were that would comprise his fulfilled and ordered life.. or whatever. Instead the apples get lost, roll around and rot.).

On a side note-
I came across a book about him a few years ago that suggested his life was far from Kafkaesque. The gist of the little biography was that Kafka was the playboy son of an industrialist who earned perhaps the equivalent of three hundred thousand a year for working part time hours in an office. On is tempted to add that he was only able to write such "unfortunate" stories, with sincerity and conviction, precisely because they had little to do with his own experience.

Personally I think he must have taken a good deal out of Kierkegaard, remolding the material in a sort of atheistic vein to achieve an "existentialist" texture, as Dostoevsky did with the biblical text.

[beelzebubbles]

That sounds like an odd biography for Kafka. Was there nothing about his troubled relationship with his father or his physical frailty and anorexia due to tuberculosis or the woman who loved him, who he needed but who did not seem to inspire his ardor?

Still it is our own relationship to the material that is most important. I can only take Kafka in small doses. I find dealing with paranoia on the larger scale of The Trial and The Castle difficult. I prefer the short stories. They are like a dream that is easy to wake from the novels feel like a trap.

I was only ever interested in one writer as a human being and that was after I had made my own use of his work.

[Backwords]

Of course I know those bio bits too and read all that stuff years ago and his personal diaries. This book purported to dispel those myths. Maybe I'll track it down, I saw it at U.C. Berkeley a few years ago.

I think I will be long dead before I understand the notion of a writer being separate from his work, so superficial and evasive does the notion seem to me.

Amendment:
http://www.amazon.com/Should-Read-Kafka-Before-Waste/dp/0312376510 "The focus of British novelist Hawes's (Speak for England) book is to debunk these myths of Kafka, an ambitious, earthly lawyer and literary figure who lived an adjusted life—and even enjoyed "expensive porn." Taking a satirical approach, Hawes intends to reveal the truth beneath the image academics and critics have maintained"

And - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/29/franzkafka.civilliberties

[learna]

I've read the most famous novels - The Trial and The Castle by Kafka. They are classic examples of the literary searching (modernism, magical realism and existentialism) of the period when Kafka lived.

[Bjorn]

Interview with 106-year-old friend of Kafka (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=franz+kafka&itemNo=1144293)


"Kafka was a slightly strange man," Sommer recalls.

[Clarissa]

Battle over Franz Kafka archive kept for decades in cat-infested flat - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/7037101/Battle-over-Franz-Kafka-archive-kept-for-decades-in-cat-infested-flat.html)

Came across this in yesterday's Daily Telegraph.

Kafka asked Max Brod to destroy all his writing - I, for one, am glad Max Brod managed to save Kafka's work. After reading Das Schloss, Das Urteil, Die Verwandlung and his posthumous unfinished Amerika, I found his diaries provided a great insight into the tortured man he must have been. One only has to look at his photo. TB is not the only reason for that expression.

His inner loneliness, his victim of fate attitude are apparent in all his writing. In his books, the protagonist never makes things happen, they happen to him.

I read him in German but I find Metamorphosis a much better title than Die Verwandlung!

[Eric]

I just saw the article about Kafka and the cats as well. It's a minor miracle that there is still anything left of Kafka's unpublished work. It's sad how it can go with the posthumous papers of some writers: the university scholars are eager to get hold of them, but the family is either indifferent or wishes to preserve the memory of the author in their own way (e.g. covered in cat piss).

Despite everything, there is a kind of wry absurdist humour in Kafka's work. Whether he was a bundle of laughs down the pub (the Czechs have excellent beer) is another matter.

[DB Cooper]

Big fan of Kafka, a truly singular author.

[Eric]

I too am a fan of Kafka, although I've not read anything for ages. I did start "The Castle" again, noticed the humour there, but then broke off for some reason. I stand more chance of reading his short prose, which Beelzebubbles also likes, than his novels, given my reading (and translating) commitments. I do think that Beelzebubbles overstates her case with regard to Kafka's being a deeply morbid consumptive, compulsive bachelor insurance clerk, with a thousand hang-ups.

One thing I'm very glad about is that Kafka's major works have been reconstructed and subsequently retranslated into English, so we can appreciate the text maybe as Kafka wanted it to look.

[Manuel76]

I liked The Process and some of his short stories, but started twice The Castle and both times stopped near the middle of the book (even if I liked it).

It can last 100 pages or a million. It's very depressing (even his sense of humour is depressing) you recognise at the beggining the atmosphere of a nightmare but after a while you start wondering in which planet it takes place.

But of course you can admire his intelligence and narrative style (even translated). It reminds me Poe but with less literature, and more straight to the point.

[DB Cooper]

So far Ive read The Trial and The Castle. Havent yet purchased his short story collection or Amerika. It would be difficult for me to say which of his books I prefer, but right now the answer would be The Castle by a hair.

[Heteronym]

Despite everything, there is a kind of wry absurdist humour in Kafka's work. Whether he was a bundle of laughs down the pub (the Czechs have excellent beer) is another matter.

I think everyone knows the story of Kafka reading the first chapter of The Trial to an audience of friends, and everyone laughing including the author :D

There's humor in the novel alright, but it's a humor that undermines any possibility of tragedy. Everytime the novel is tyring to become tragic or serious, in comes the absurd to remind the reader of the fragility of Joseph K's life. He can't even have the satisfaction of being a tragic figure. Anyone interested in this matter, should read Kundera's books on literary theory. He spends a few chapters exploring the way humor works in Kafka.

[Thit Soe]

Kafka is the most unique writer in the world I have ever read_he stood on the weaker side of human lives _ and it is why he has been unforgotten in many parts on earth,I think.

[Daniel del Real]

I liked The Process and some of his short stories, but started twice The Castle and both times stopped near the middle of the book (even if I liked it).


Same thing happened to me Manuel. Lot of years ago I read Metamorphosis, The Trial and some other short stories and truy loved all of his works, specially The Trial.
Last year I bought The Castle, and left it in the middle. It's not I didn't like or that I couldn't get into the story; I guess it wasn't the right time to read and it and that's why I dropped. Hope to re-take it later this year,

[Raphael Lambach]

I like Kafka, however his words are hard and ruge. Everytime I read him I feel depressed. I don't know why but he's really tiring (not boring or bad). He had a a style of writing that only he had, it made him very original. I don't guess he's bad, instead, he was good - but even this, he's tiring.

[titania7]

Same thing happened to me Manuel. Lot of years ago I read Metamorphosis, The Trial and some other short stories and truy loved all of his works, specially The Trial.
Last year I bought The Castle, and left it in the middle. It's not I didn't like or that I couldn't get into the story; I guess it wasn't the right time to read and it and that's why I dropped. Hope to re-take it later this year,

Perhaps, the translation was the problem, Daniel. Which translation of The Castle was it?

~Alexis


"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~Aristotle~

[Manuel76]

Last year I bought The Castle, and left it in the middle. It's not I didn't like or that I couldn't get into the story; I guess it wasn't the right time to read and it and that's why I dropped. Hope to re-take it later this year,

For me both times didn't seem to be the right time...I started to think there was something strange with the book...

My translation is from D.J.Vogelmann into spanish, but it seems to be allright, after all I liked the art I read.

[Daniel del Real]

Perhaps, the translation was the problem, Daniel. Which translation of The Castle was it?

~Alexis


"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~Aristotle~

Have no idea, but it was a translation to Spanish by Alianza Editorial. Don't think that was the problem, it was more that I didn't wanted to get on a book like that when my life was pretty much the same at that time.

[Raphael Lambach]

Have no idea, but it was a translation to Spanish by Alianza Editorial. Don't think that was the problem, it was more that I didn't wanted to get on a book like that when my life was pretty much the same at that time.

I guess Kafka's work has all possible darkness inside them.I get bored everytime I see Kafka's pic. I admite, I like his texts, but they're not perfect, they have some beauty, however -.

[sirena]

I read "The Trial" long time ago, but I remember that it was like as I walked in someone elses nightmare.

Few years ago I returned to Kafka and read "The Castle" and I liked it. It's similar to "The Trial", but somehow less confusing.

On my shelf I have "The Metamorphosis" waiting and longing to be read, for a long time now.

I've heard that Kafka's short stories are pretty good. So, could you recommend me something?

[Daniel del Real]

Few years ago I returned to Kafka and read "The Castle" and I liked it. It's similar to "The Trial", but somehow less confusing.


For me it was just the opposite. I first read The Trial and loved it. Then a few years later tried The Castle, and couldn't finish it. For me that was the confusing one :p

[sirena]

For me it was just the opposite. I first read The Trial and loved it. Then a few years later tried The Castle, and couldn't finish it. For me that was the confusing one :p


Really. I've always wondered how The Castle would end if only Kafka had lived longer.

[waalkwriter]

The Metamorphosis is a truly disturbing work, but it does ring to people doesn't it? Because how often have we felt that way? I certainly felt that way while working as a Senate Page. It's beautiful, terse, and contained work that speaks to multitude of interpretations while still being populated by these horrifically realistic passages and very eerily realistic characters, including a main character you can't help but support. The story is always true to itself, and it's impact on other writers cannot be understated.

Many have spent the last 80 years trying to recapture that sense of horror and alienation. No one has done so.

[Clarissa]

Found this depressing from every angle...

BBC News - Israel in legal battle over Kafka's papers (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8545157.stm)

Common knowledge - Kafka wanted his unpublished work destroyed. Max Brod went against his wishes and, thanks to him, we have the 'unfinished' works that belong to the greats of the literary canon worldwide.

This vulturelike tearing apart of his literary remains would not have been in accordance with Kafka's wishes. One can only hope that new work will come to light and perhaps enlighten the readers a little more about this strange, fascinating, immensely gifted writer.

[Eric]

Well, Clarissa, not so depressing as all that. I read this in the Telegraph, which in turn refers to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

Unpublished Franz Kafka story 'discovered' - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/7903352/Unpublished-Franz-Kafka-story-discovered.html)

[ExplodedHeights]

The biggest little Eureka since Jung's Red Book. Good snaggle from the presses :eek: :) ;) the enforced entombment of those treasures is near as criminal as that businessman's aim to be cremated with the Portrait of Doctor Gachet. What a wild story, about the secretary of Max Brod; such dedication and the hand of the state tsk tsk telling us what is for our good before we ourselves can know it! Bad example for the kinder (in Yiddish children).

[Eric]

Please, ExplodedHeights, respect the other members of this forum and engage with us. Some things are funny as a joke, but begin to pall when continued for too long.

[ExplodedHeights]

Good try at being covertly obnoxious. There are Jokes and there are Eric.

[Liam]

There are Jokes and there are Eric.Yes, "jokes" in the plural (the rest of us here at the WLF), but Eric... he's our one and only!

[ExplodedHeights]

Yes, but I think he is something of a multitude. :confused:

[Eric]

Well, I'd rather be covertly obnoxious than covertly nutty.

Has no one got anything to say about the fact that they're opening vaults in Israel and finding unpublished Kafka material? I find that rather big news, really, considering the fact that Kafka is regarded as rather important if you want to write an essay at university on Modernism.

But then again, aren't we supposed to boycott all news from Israel?

Headline:


Scribbles by Prague Jew found in the Zionist Entity. Grumbly old descendants of Max Brod sulking. Who cares?

[abecedarian]

Well, I'd rather be covertly obnoxious than covertly nutty.

Has no one got anything to say about the fact that they're opening vaults in Israel and finding unpublished Kafka material? I find that rather big news, really, considering the fact that Kafka is regarded as rather important if you want to write an essay at university on Modernism.

But then again, aren't we supposed to boycott all news from Israel?

Headline:


I saw this in my local paper this morning and thought of this discussion. Whether Kafka wanted his unpublished materials burned or not, here they are. The chance to understand him more fully is an amazing opportunity.

[ExplodedHeights]

Yes, I must be this 'no one' like Odysseus before me as I am the only one to comment on the article. He acts as if he did not even read it.

[Eric]

Haaretz had this article:

Kafka correspondence with other writers discovered - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News (http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/kafka-correspondence-with-other-writers-discovered-1.303495)

The newspaper, published in the Zionist Entity, says the following:



The safe deposit boxes contained a huge number of Kafka and Brod's letters and manuscripts, including a never before seen handwritten anuscript of a previously published short story by Kafka. The handwritten manuscript is of great research value since Kafka's publications over the years had been edited by Brod, who was also the author's executor.

The safe deposit boxes' content was released for publication after a Tel Aviv court earlier this week rejected a gag order requested by Eva Hoffe, the Israeli woman who inherited the documents from her mother, Esther Hoffe.

Brod left his estate to Esther Hoffe, who had served as his secretary. The literary treasure was discovered during the trial that has been underway for two years over Brod's estate, whose contents were held in a number of safe-deposit boxes in Israel and Switzerland under Eva Hoffe's control.


Perhaps one should be glad that the Kafka material wasn't deposited in the Gaza Strip. You can make a lot of roll-ups from the paper used to create Kafka manuscripts and letters.

I am not responsible for the Haaretz neologism "anuscript" which sounds like a rearguard action.

By the way, we tend to call him "Ulysses".

[Utopia]

I'm in love with Kafka. ;)
When I first read the "Prozess" I could really feel the mood. It was so frightening but awesome. It's hard to describe, in Kafkas novels is always a sad and frightening mood, which I particularly like. Kafka is a special writer.

[Liam]

A boxed set of "new" translations (http://www.amazon.com/Kafka-Collection-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199655677/ref=sr_1_118?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332959119&sr=1-118)of Kafka's major works from Oxford World's Classics. Not sure how new these are, but looking at the list of translators I only recognize Anthea Bell.


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41OTf7WCAUL._SS500_.jpg