
How to read Kafka: part I - agronaut
https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2018/10/how-to-read-kafka-part-i
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hprotagonist
David Foster Wallace's talk "Laughing with Kafka" is very insightful as well.
[https://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-...](https://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-07-0059612.pdf)

 _For me, a signal frustration in trying to read Kafka with college students
is that it is next to impossible to get them to see that Kafka is funny ...
Nor to appreciate the way funniness is bound up with the extraordinary power
of his stories. Because, of course, great short stories and great jokes have a
lot in common. Both depend on what communication-theorists sometimes call
"exformation," which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from
but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of
associative connections within the recipient.

This is probably why the effect of both short stories and jokes often feels
sudden and percussive, like the venting of a long-stuck valve. It's not for
nothing that Kafka spoke of literature as "a hatchet with which we chop at the
frozen seas inside us." Nor is it an accident that the technical achievement
of great short stories is often called "compression"-for both the pressure and
the release are already inside the reader.

What Kafka seems able to do better than just about anyone else is to
orchestrate the pressure's increase in such a way that it becomes intolerable
at the precise instant it is released._

~~~
newman8r
Good article. I've only read The Metamorphosis but I think this makes sense.
Looking back on it, the 'three lodgers' in that book present a funny, absurd
scenario.

I prefer reading relatively short and simple classics like The Metamorphosis -
if anyone has some recommendations I'd be interested.

~~~
mturmon
My very favorite _extremely_ short piece of Kafka's writing - just one magical
sentence:
[http://franzkafkastories.com/shortStories.php?story_id=kafka...](http://franzkafkastories.com/shortStories.php?story_id=kafka_the_wish_to_be_a_red_indian)

The other short anecdotal pieces linked in that page are also wonderful.
Here's one:
[http://franzkafkastories.com/shortStories.php?story_id=kafka...](http://franzkafkastories.com/shortStories.php?story_id=kafka_the_street_window)

And another, which (to me) is one of many counter-examples to the "Laughing
With Kafka" notion:
[http://franzkafkastories.com/shortStories.php?story_id=kafka...](http://franzkafkastories.com/shortStories.php?story_id=kafka_resolutions)

That is, the final piece above is truly despairing in a way that DFW, perhaps,
could identify with.

~~~
david927
Wow! I've never seen these works and they're brilliant. You've made my day!

And, yes, the final piece is _perfectly_ what DFW was talking about.

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platz
For me, The Metamorphosis was not very illuminating.

However, I very much liked Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_the_Singer,_or_the_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_the_Singer,_or_the_Mouse_Folk)

which I thought had very rich and subtle layers of complexity.

I also enjoyed "The Great Wall of China" (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wall_of_China_(short...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wall_of_China_\(short_story\))
) , even if I didn't quite understand it completely at the time that I read
it, because it felt and reminded me very much like a Borges short story with
it's detail and speculation.

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namirez
I read The Trial a few years ago and found it a true masterpiece. I can
understand that everyone doesn't share my opinion, but for me Kafka's stories
hit too close to home. Many of us have been socially conditioned to have a
false sense of autonomy and control, but this is not a universal and timeless
phenomenon. If I were to chose my all time favorite authors, they would be
Kafka and Camus.

~~~
hprotagonist
Kierkegaard is pretty great too. And much in the same vein.

~~~
AmericanChopper
I’m not sure Kierkegaard would appreciate being compared to Camus in that way.
They both worked on the same issues, but Kierkegaard was at the radical
opposite end of the spectrum from Camus when it came to beliefs.

~~~
hprotagonist
yes. they serve as nice counterweights for existentialism.

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lurquer
Probably my favorite author. The article and comments are dead-on: Kafka is
humour. It's absurdist dead-pan humour. To 'get' Kafka, imagine it being read
by a very stern and serious John Cleese.

~~~
dang
Max Brod: _When Kafka read aloud himself, this humor became perfectly clear.
Thus, for example, we friends of his laughed quite immoderately when he first
let us hear the first chapter of The Trial. And he himself laughed so much
that there were moments when he couldn’t read any further. Astonishing enough,
when you think of the fearful earnestness..._

[http://web2.law.buffalo.edu/faculty/westbrook/KafkaLaughter....](http://web2.law.buffalo.edu/faculty/westbrook/KafkaLaughter.htm)

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ismail
Wow shows how my thinking has changed. I own a few Kafka books that are
probably in a box somewhere. Was an avid reader in my teens.

Yet when i read the title I expected a technical article on Kafka the software
system. I last read Kafka so long ago I had completely forgotten about him.

Thanks for the reminder :)

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lubujackson
I always think of Kafka's writing as human logic vs. inscrutable systems,
usually some bureaucratic organization. When people want an answer for how to
read Kafka, the lack of a simple meaning seems to be the entire point, almost
like the challenge of a koan.

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econnor
Great article. The entanglement of The Enlightenment in everyday thinking is
the source of much confusion and irony. I imagine we'll grow out of it.

I'm reminded of a 1980s BBC film of Alan Bennett's "The Insurance Man" in
which a Dr Kafka struggles with a claim and eventually end up helping his
client by getting him a job at his uncle's factory. The ending is stunning: we
linger on the beautifully photographed dust-filled air of the factory. Feel
happy for the man. And learn that the uncle is in the asbestos business.

------
anotherevan
If I were wanting to start reading some of Kafka's works, what would you
recommend I start with to ease into it?

~~~
xamuel
"The Metamorphosis" is the usual short story appetizer (often assigned in high
school). "The Trial" is typically the introductory novel, though if you want
to be a rebel you could start with "Amerika" instead. "The Castle" is the best
novel but probably too difficult to start with unless you're already well-
read.

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chenggiant
Not the Kafka I thought...

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galaxyLogic
The analysis of "Castle" in this article brings to my mind most religion.
Religion offers us an absolute truth what you have to do to get saved and
there is no room for doubt because then it could not be the absolute truth. If
you start asking religious people what we should believe their religion truly
claims to be the truth you will discover that they are just individual people
who base their beliefs on their shared mirage of there being a single doctrine
that is the truth. That is just make-believe but many people believe it and it
takes on a life of its own and their beliefs govern their lives because they
believe that other people above them in the hierarchy KNOW the truth.

It is not only that religion is a set of falsehoods, the belief that religious
people have that there is a single true doctrine of the religion, and that
there actually are people who truly believe and "KNOW" what that truth is, is
also a falsehood which they willingly want to believe in order to gain some
peace of mind in this universe.

So I wouldn't say that Kafka is anti-enlightenment, rather he is part of it,
just version 2.0 of it.

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m00dy
Is it only me expecting Kafka streams instead of Franz Kafka ?

~~~
dang
Doubtless not, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

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aportnoy
I've read The Trial and couldn't help but think that Kafka is overrated.

~~~
wjnc
Honest questions: are you an avid reader? What kind of writers do you prefer
that usually fall in the Kafka-catergory. The Trial was my first Kafka and it
bound me from the beginning. The scenes where he is picked up they were
gripping and intense and tragi-comic at the same time. Interesting that it
doesn't work for everyone. That was my first thought at the OP top: who
wouldn't get Kafka? Perhaps this is a subtle cultural effect at work.

~~~
aportnoy
It's a toy novel that sure does put you through a cool psychological
experience.

But there's no additional depth to it, I see it as a horrors-of-
bureacracy/system-vs-individual-themed amusement park attraction.

~~~
xamuel
>no additonal depth

I disagree. It has many different layers of meaning. Besides the plain reading
on the face of it, you can also read it in the context of Kafka's own
relationship with his father. Or you can read it through the Christian lens,
where suddenly instead of an innocent good guy in a dystopic nightmare, the
protagonist is a stubborn sinner who refuses to admit his guilt and submit for
redemption. And so on and so forth. You can even read the chapters out of
order, with the exception of the first and last. It's really a remarkable
novel!

