
Who Owns Kafka? (2011) - djoldman
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n05/judith-butler/who-owns-kafka
======
gwern
> What no one could have predicted, however, is that a trial would eventually
> take place after Esther’s death in which her daughters, Eva and Ruth, would
> claim that no one needs to inventory the materials and that the value of the
> manuscripts should be determined by their weight – quite literally, by what
> they weigh. As one of the attorneys representing Hoffe’s estate explained:
> ‘If we get an agreement, the material will be offered for sale as a single
> entity, in one package. It will be sold by weight … They’ll say: “There’s a
> kilogram of papers here, the highest bidder will be able to approach and see
> what’s there.” The National Library [of Israel] can get in line and make an
> offer, too.’

That's a very strange auction strategy. You would think that a proper
cataloguing would increase the amount you would earn, and it could be done by
a hired gun for cheap (since Kafka experts would clamor for access). From a
game theory perspective, refusal to disclose contents should, by the
'unraveling' argument, drastically lower the value of the papers to rational
bidders since it is a strong indication that the contents are worth a lot less
than prospective bidders previously estimated before the refusal (since if the
contents were as valuable or _more_ valuable, the owners would have incentive
to reveal to ensure the price or raise it; absence of evidence is evidence of
absence).

One possibility is that they are counting on bidders being irrational and
desperate, in which case refusing to disclose keeps valuations irrationally
high and exploits the winner's curse; possibly the strategy here is to make
the Israeli National Library overpay because it is committed by
ethnonationalism to pay whatever price necessary, and revealing the contents
risks either public criticism of the National Library overpaying or scaring
away other bidders as they learn the papers are boring & losing leverage over
the National Library.

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xamuel
>In 1988 she sold the manuscript of The Trial for $2 million, at which point
it became clear that one could turn quite a profit from Kafka

To some, $2 million would be a bargain for, say, a new Kafka novel.

The conspiracy theorist side of me has often wondered whether maybe Kafka did
it intentionally. Intentionally left his novels unfinished, intentionally
started a legend that he requested them to be destroyed unpublished, etc. It
would certainly resonate with the tones and themes that permeate his works.
Perhaps he himself realized that no ending could possibly suit a novel like
"The Castle" better than the unfinished lack-of-ending he gave it, which makes
our hearts yearn so strongly for an ending, and which is such a great parallel
with the futility of the novel itself.

~~~
myWindoonn
You have it exactly backwards; Kafka was one of those artists who can only
perceive the flaws, not the qualities, of their artwork. He was ashamed and
wanted to be forgotten by history.

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ekimekim
For the curious, this trial was eventually resolved in favour of Israel's
national library, on the grounds that this was Max Brod's instructions in his
will:

"But Judge Kopelman Pardo rejected Ms. Hoffe’s claim that the papers were a
gift from Mr. Brod to her mother, instead viewing them as a trust she was to
administer. The judge noted that Mr. Brod’s 1948 will instructed that his
archive go to a “public Jewish library or archive in Palestine,” and that he
later specified Hebrew University, where Israel’s national library is housed."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/world/middleeast/woman-
mu...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/world/middleeast/woman-must-
relinquish-kafka-papers-judge-says.html)

------
gnulinux
Not very related to the article, but I'd like to get some opinions from HN
community (if I may). I've read quite a few books and short stories of Kafka
(I think all(?) his novels and some short stories like _The Metamorphisis_ ,
_A Report to an Academy_ ) but most of them were really struggling readings
for me and some incomplete (I never got to the very end of _The Trial_ ). His
short stories, I read cover to cover in one sitting, and they were very
enjoyable readings. I also read _Amerika_ (his first novel) cover to cover
pretty fast and it was very enjoyable too. His other works, I find very
challenging for reasons unknown to me. Kafka has a certain literary style that
feels very enjoyable, reading it gives me so much joy, so it's definitely not
that I didn't like them. It's also definitely not boredom, some Kafkaesque
"exaggeratedly long" scenes were pretty interesting and reminds me of
Tarantino (not that there is any direct artistic resemblance, it just gives me
similar type of enjoyment). Deeper ideas argued in novels are also
interesting, and I like reading other authors trying to express similar ideas.
But overall, reading Kafka is for some reason really hard for me. It takes too
long relative other books I read, I lose focus very easily and it eternally
feels like I'm missing some pieces of both the plot and the artistic structure
etc... I also read authors that have been major inspiration to Kafka like
Dostoevsky and never had the same problem. Did anyone else have this problem?
I'd like to hear some tips from literary folks here to help me read Kafka
better.

EDIT: As absurd as it sounds, I had similar feelings when reading his letters
to Milena. I read that book twice, it's one of those books I really like but I
had similar problems mentioned above.

~~~
xamuel
He only did three novels, so you've already finished 1/3 of them.

The Castle: The only difficulty here is some conversations take forever
(probably because they were never revised). I'd suggest just plowing through
them the first time, your eyes might glaze over and you'll miss stuff in them
but it's ok, you can pick more stuff up on later readings. I've read The
Castle many times and I still pick up new stuff from it.

The Trial: There's really only one chapter that's difficult, the penultimate
chapter set in the cathedral. You could literally just skip it, if you're
having trouble with it. You'll miss some self-contained goodies like "Before
The Law", but you can always come back later. It has been said that except for
the first and last chapters, most chapters in The Trial can be rearranged and
read in whatever order you like. I seem to recall someone even created some
sort of physical version of the book where you could literally swap chapters
around.

~~~
gnulinux
The Castle, I really liked, much more than The Trial, but I couldn't finish
that either. I don't exactly recall where was I stuck but I remember literally
struggling to read as if studying Algorithms or Machine Learning. I read it
both in English and German with similar difficulty.

The Trial was the only thing I read from Kafka that I found kinda meh and
boring-ish, again made it a bit more than half way. I tried reading The Trial
at least 3 times, maybe more, with same faith every time. (I eventually
learned its ending in a literature class, but given other works of Kafka, it
was very predictable). I'll give it a shot again and maybe skip chapters where
I lose focus and come back later.

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tutfbhuf
Also interesting but unrelated:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka)

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dgllghr
At first glance I thought the answer was going to be LinkedIn...

~~~
th3iedkid
Quoting from Apache Kafka's wiki page

> According to a Quora post from 2014, Kreps chose to name the software after
> the author Franz Kafka because it is "a system optimized for writing", and
> he liked Kafka's work Source:
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka)

