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The Devil and Franz Kafka Who Else Hates Him?

#1 User is offline   Bond Icon

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Posted 05 August 2007 - 07:03 PM

Is it just me, or am I the only person to detest the assorted works of Franz Kafka? The man was obviously disturbed. Also, his writing, like Christopher Paolini's, shows all the hallmarks of an amateur besotted with his own writing skills. Because of such, I can't stand the fellow. angry.gif

It seems to me, however, that he would have felt right at home consorting with emos. Anybody else get this vibe? sick.gif

So, does anyone agree with me? Disagree? sad.gif
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#2 User is offline   Emu Icon

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Posted 06 August 2007 - 08:32 AM

the man was rather besotted with angst, for which, given his health situation, you can't really blame him....but in any case, as I mentioned in another thread, I started to read The Castle, and then promptly gave up on it. why? because by chapter n, (where n is somewhere between 1 and (length of the book) / 3), I had gotten the idea. The dude is in a predicament. The people in the town are obnoxious. Bureaucracy sucks. He's never going to get to talk to the person he's looking for and complete the task he set out to do. doubly so, because Kafka never actually finished the book. and I didn't see the story taking any turns for the slightly-more-interesting, just more of the unfortunate protagonist trying but failing to cut through the customary bureaucracy of the castle. I also expected there to be some humor in the irony of the story, but there just was none. if there had been, it may have been incentive to keep reading.

Someone who does a good job at what Kafka was trying to do was Douglas Adams. take the parts of H2G2 about the Vogons. it's a short part of a larger story in which you get the full idea - that he's making fun of and criticizing excessive infatuation with bureaucracy - and he does it in a hilarious way. and then he moves on to other parts of the story. and that's that.
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Posted 06 August 2007 - 05:13 PM

QUOTE (Emu @ Aug 6 2007, 08:32 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Someone who does a good job at what Kafka was trying to do was Douglas Adams. take the parts of H2G2 about the Vogons. it's a short part of a larger story in which you get the full idea - that he's making fun of and criticizing excessive infatuation with bureaucracy - and he does it in a hilarious way. and then he moves on to other parts of the story. and that's that.


I'm a fan, myself. wink.gif

Also, it was probably a good thing that Adams, unlike Kafka, was not mentally ill when he was writing... tongue.gif

Just a question: Have you read Kafka's short story The Judgment? It's the most damn-near obsure thing I ever read, yet Kafka seemed inordinately proud of it. Just goes to show you... angry.gif
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Posted 07 August 2007 - 03:43 AM

I tried to read The Castle and The Trial, but the lack of paragraphing (what the hell was he thinking?) was a major turnoff. Makes it even more tiring to read.
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Posted 07 August 2007 - 03:48 AM

Yes, I know; even his short stories were tedious... angry.gif
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#6 User is offline   Emu Icon

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Posted 07 August 2007 - 08:06 AM

I haven't read The Judgment, and I can't really say I had been planning to, after The Castle. why was it the story he was proudest of / what's it about?
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Posted 07 August 2007 - 11:04 AM

It's basically about a guy who has a friend in Russia he's keeping his engagement from, and then his ill father inexplicably declares that he has told the friend and goes batshit on him. Then, in an even stranger turn of events, the father orders the son to go drown himself, and he dutifully does. The hell? angry.gif

In his diary, the morning after writing The Judgment, Kafka wrote this:

This story, "The Judgment," I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o’clock at night to six o’clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs out from under the desk, they had got so stiff from sitting. The fearful strain and joy, how the story developed before me, as if I were advancing over water. . . . How everything can be said, how for everything, for the strangest fancies, there waits a great fire in which they perish and rise up again. . . . Only in this way can writing be done, only with such coherence, with such a complete opening of the body and the soul. . .

I think it's pretty damn obvious that he had an Oedipal complex. dry.gif

This post has been edited by Bond: 07 August 2007 - 11:05 AM

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Posted 08 August 2007 - 04:11 AM

The guy was one huge (and overrated) collection of complexes.

This post has been edited by David-kyo: 08 August 2007 - 04:12 AM

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Posted 08 August 2007 - 12:22 PM

Indeed; why so many literati worship him, I cannot say... sad.gif
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Posted 08 August 2007 - 02:14 PM

Because the artsy bloke said it's a cool thing to read Kafka, so that makes him a literary genius.
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Posted 08 August 2007 - 02:19 PM

A title which he, most assuredly, does not deserve to claim. angry.gif
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#12 User is offline   Emu Icon

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Posted 08 August 2007 - 06:02 PM

wow, The Judgment sounds quite odd, but not too far off from his other work I am familiar with (namely a handful of pages from The Castle). Castle came enthusiastically recommended to me; I intend to ask the recommender why exactly she thought it was so great, because now I'm curious.

This post has been edited by Emu: 08 August 2007 - 06:02 PM

Head Gunner for the Royal Sloop Crimson Steel, Queen of the Dead, Instigator of Chaos and Confusion, Knight of the Grand Recursive Order of the Lambda Calculus, and also The Non.

Remember Emu's face, people; one day it's going to be on the news alongside a headline about blowing some landmark to smithereens, and then we can all sigh and say, "She was such a normal person".....
....We'd be lying though.
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#13 User is offline   Bond Icon

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Posted 08 August 2007 - 06:06 PM

He or she was probably parroting the literary establishment.

You know, there's only one Kafka story I even like. It's a story fragment about a cross between a cat and a lamb, and I'm just a sucker for animal stories. tongue.gif
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Posted 09 August 2007 - 02:29 PM

*shakes fist* Damn you, literary establishment!

I think Kefka is read because he seems to put multiple layers of meaning into his writings, and gives dark social critiques. I've only read The Metamorphisis, and it was merely OK. I haven't read anything else yet.

Wikipedia likes his style which has apparently "come to embody the blend of absurd, surreal and mundane which gave rise to the adjective 'kafkaesque'."

And just because someone is arrogant or whatever doesn't mean that he wants to kill his father and sleep with his mother. Poor Oedipus gets such a bad rap, when all of that mess was due to accidents and mistaken identies, and the gods really hating him. He didn't know it was his father he killed, or his mother he fathered children with. sad.gif

I know what Kafka was talking about in that quotation of him penning a story. It is a remarkable experience to be swept up in a sea of creativity, and I don't see any "Oedipal" urges or other such Freudian ridiculousness.
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Posted 09 August 2007 - 02:36 PM

QUOTE (Slade @ Aug 9 2007, 09:29 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I think Kefka is read because he seems to put multiple layers of meaning into his writings...


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