I would read his stories consecutively, beginning with ‘The Judgment’-the earlier work is more elusive-and read his diaries and letters at the same time. What else would you identify as prominent themes in Kafka’s books? Where is best to start with him? But, on the other hand, Gregor Samsa’s responses are all too true to the Kafkaesque norm-denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance-and so, the tenuous and therefore all-too-troubling link to reality is maintained.Īnd Kafka ‘himself’? Kafka is Kafkaesque-in his view-in his inability to maintain any intrinsic or extrinsic sense of his personal identity (“I have hardly anything in common with myself”) while all the time he walks in relative safety through the streets and corridors of Prague.Īs you say, Kafka’s work often involves introducing the uncanny or the surreal into a narrative world that is, in all other respects, normal and recognisable. Certainly, metamorphosis into a giant vermin goes well past an almost-plausible-but nonetheless uncanny-violation of personal identity and so is something more (or worse) than a Kafkaesque phenomenon. Which brings us to the figure of Gregor Samsa, the man-insect. In a similar instance, my own case, it is a matter of being locked into an annual contract with insect fumigators with no way out. It is brought about by an unexpected, improper application of the law, namely, withholding the name of the crime imputed to the accused. This is largely because The Trial has exercised such a hold on the common imagination, and Joseph K.’s predicament is one at law. ‘Kafkaesque’ tends to be reserved for horrible, unintelligible interactions with the law and other similar (often faceless) bureaucracies. “In his lifetime he published only a few stories” It has features of normality, but in other respects constitutes a departure. ‘Kafkaesque’ has a certain validity as a descriptor of the case that, arising from a commonly conceived normality, does not quite belong, or is-in another word -uncanny. But here, immediately, is another exception of sorts: In Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall, a character named Pam says to the Woody-figure, “Sex with you is really a Kafkaesque experience.” Then, on seeing that her lover Alvy is upset by this remark, she hastens to add: “I mean that as a compliment.” Woody Allen is an accomplished reader of Kafka, as proved by his anthology The Insanity Defense and the certainly Kafkaesque movie Zelig, which has attracted a good deal of scholarly furor. With few exceptions, there is zero correlation between persons who employ the trope ‘Kafkaesque’ and those who have actually read Kafka. But, like ‘Orwellian’, there’s a danger that these terms drift away from their inspiration. Kafka’s work has inspired the now-famous adjective: ‘Kafkaesque’. But if, as it is said, history is a just judge of last resort, then the fame -better, genius-of Kafka’s writings does, indeed, constitute his justification. To judge from present history, he did not acquire this happiness. “I can still have temporary satisfaction from works like A Country Doctor… But happiness only if I can raise the world into purity, truth, and immutability.” But he was extremely scrupulous about the quality of the work he was prepared to publish, even writing in his Diaries (splendid texts!) this extraordinary entry: He was, again and again, asked for more of his work by leading publishers. In his lifetime he published only a few stories, but they were highly regarded by connoisseurs. He was engaged to be married twice to one woman and once to another but for the rest was consumed by a passion for writing. He had many interests, including gardening and reading Platonic dialogues with friends, but also social work, especially on behalf of war refugees from Eastern Europe. There, he innovated safety devices for Bohemian factories and advocated the founding of a hospital for shell-shocked war veterans, which was a novelty. He spent his mature days as a competent, highly valued in-house lawyer at a partly state-run institute for workmen’s compensation. For many years he visited brothels, swam robustly, climbed steep hills, and rode around the countryside on a motorcycle. Seven years later he died a terrible death from tuberculosis of the larynx. Often suffering from nervous exhaustion, on the verge of an imagined sickness, he realized his worst imaginings in 1917, when he suffered a blood gush from his lungs. He lived and died a bachelor, to his great personal grief, having believed that founding a family was the most important thing one could do on earth.
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