/lit/ - Literature

>>3774693
ok fuck you very much and the ivory tower that is rammed up your privileged ass
and i don't give a fuck about what u might consider adequate knowledge of the world

I was just expressing my confusion on how classifying something as "modern" only means it expresses rejection at earlier traditional norms , by that stantard the bible is modern but no i am sorry it wasn't written after the 1900s. i resent the fact that if something was written yesterday its modern even thought the ideas expressed in it have been expressed since we climbed out the trees. if i wrote a book declaring a monarchy and slavery as the proper order of things it would be modern because the traditional norm is democracy and liberty

and thank you for responding with your very insight full answer to what modern means

>>3774526
>this is not some marxist critique but merely an artistic interpretation of the modern condition

i suppose this is exactly why i am turned off by Amerika. It is not a critique but just a depiction of what the author find distasteful and unfortunate. I suppose i am disappointed because i was expecting something and when i put the book down i felt i gained nothing.
Also i don't really get what people mean buy modern.(as opposed to what Victorian?) what makes this anymore modern then Huck Finn?

>>3774526
I do want to express gratitude for further discussing this with me. i wanted to talk about kafka since i read Amerika but no one i know reads any books.
also i am not categorizing Warhol and Dali together Dali was an artist Andy Warhol was a publicist.

>>3774520
>you seem very juvenile
i don't take offense much of what i wrote was in a passion and some was irrelevant to get a rise out of people but in my defense i comprehend things in the literal and the abstract just seems unnecessarily vague.
>deliberately includes the absurd
i have heard that before but i don't see it maybe "Hunger artist" and "Amerika" were particularly down to earth works. I don't see anything absurd besides the characters apathy. Maybe its because i take things too literal but the hunger artist while a amusing notion was not more absurd then a hindu ascetic and in Amerika the only absurdity i can point to would be the coincidences that lead to his meetings. The train in the end that is something that he took from history. The notion that we walk through a world we cant control and ponder questions that will never be answered is just the default state of humanity.

>so terrible of a writer that they don't even have the foresight to give their characters adequate reactions to problems?
I didn't say that, i meant the characters apathy(if a theme of its own) only instills apathy in me. If the character feels no passion, love, or fear then how am i to feel those things for them. The only emotion the protagonist portrayed was disappointment that things didn't go his way. Is the apathy of the characters the absurd part? because its sad to say the world is full of apathetic people.

>This is the atmosphere we speak of, only with an extreme sense of weirdness, like being a bug or having guards that arrested you one morning being beaten in the closet of your own office.
sry i don't get what u are saying here

>he achieves the affects of surrealism by examining ordinary aspects
Ya what i mean to say is i dont see anything surreal about it but the bluntness of it. Nothing requires a stretch of the imagination. When i think surreal i think Salvador Dali when i think of Kafka i think more Andy Warhol's paintings of Campbell soup cans

>>3774235
that is a good point
but in my defense i cant read half the amount of books people tell me to read
also
no one here said "Amerika" was any good
so i guess i am right it sux

>>3774029
well thank you for your time and attention but
>the connections between....
Ya i don't really see any unique connections that kafka makes
I have been convinced that i need to read more of his work but i no longer view him as much better the JD Salinger (but with more adult topics)
If the almost limitless theater was only a reference to a utopian world where u can be anything you want then it might as well be heaven cause i wont see it in my life time

but in full disclosure i haven't read much i thought was worthy of the praise it received

No one handed it to me i found in a box that some people were tossing for trash and i will give trial a read since kafka is too well known for me to write him off as a fluke
>>3774010
wow really enjoyed reading that
but i didn't mean innocence as a distinction of morality or exemption from a criminal act rather a blank slate (like a child who just born may be covered in filthy but still be unsullied). I didn't feel that the corruption or taint in the other characters was something they gained from the rules and systems of the society but rather a rot originating from their own apathy to the inequality that they witness. an example is the uncle couldn't abide disloyalty, the vagabonds wouldn't accept individuality, and the girlfriend wouldn't abide him telling her of the unknown(Prague). Each one had a thier own system and they wouldn't conform to his unique thoughts but wanted him to assimilate to then so by each meeting the protagonist was stained with the prejudices he acquired from his last encounter.
I didn't feel like anyone in the story felt guilty about anything and most certainly not the protagonist.
By existential guilt i have to assume you mean the person feels a debt to society or a burden of responsibility from the very fact of their existence (if i am wrong plz correct me).

>>3773939
I loved your response the most i reread it a couple times but i still don't get what Kafkaesque means.
I totally feel like kafka was smacking me with apathy but i didn't think the information to be unexpected. His characters did all accept the fate of life even if asinine but i didn't see that to be a comment, metaphor, or critic but laziness on the writers part.
>There is an atmosphere, a metaphysical property
don't see it sry
also i did find the story to be similar to the journey a immigrant would have once in America but i just cant accept that someone who travels around the world to change his life is going to be content letting fate lead him by the nose and make no actual decisions. If so why not stay in Germany and be that engineer he was never going to be.
>It is surrealistic without being surreal
what the fuck? so what his work is ironic but without the irony?
>He takes ordinary things and layers them in such odd ways that it chokes the reader in an existential limbo
I don't think he layers anything its like he takes a deck of cards lays it flat out so u can see every card and tells u its a magic trick then when u ask wheres the trick he says "the trick is you were programmed to pick a card"

I got on a bit of a rant sry am i explaining my self properly?

>>3773963
i will give you that

>>3773948
>Reading comprehension
so almost changes the meaning how? if he didn't mean afterlife or some other metaphysical crap then what?
I don't find the problem with the piece to be the ending or some missing chapter the problem is that people see a reflection and think the water must be deep because they cant get past the surface

I am pissed because the character starts bydisappearing from Germany when the responsibility of a child arrives
then disappears from his uncles comfy living because he wont do whats expected
then abandons his vagabond friends for a stable blue collar life but disappears from there because he wont listen to management and keep it in his pants
then joins the circus because why not and the disappears from the face of the earth
I am pissed that the character didn't develop the plot didn't develop and the societal critics were weakly socialist with little alternatives presented

>>3773912
ok i get that his pen did have a fancy stroke, but people need to stop saying he was the first to do anything he wasn't. I liked the dialogue it was witty and some what realistic but what rubbed me the wrong way is there is no progression the character starts of naive and pennyless and dies naive and pennyless

>>3773907
ya all that means is he died and found his place in Heaven, the "limitless theater"
All the people are actors the world is but a stage and god is our only audience in a theater where the seats are to be filled with our past relationships there is nothing original or unique about that.
He stopped the work where he did because he was short on thought and long on bullshit he got to the point where the character disappeared and he figured the ending was dramatic enough that the "last chapter" was superfluous but he needed a good boot licking so he would distract people with the same great effect he always had

>>3773874
define profound and what about Kafka's critic makes it worthy of such an evaluation PLZ

For those who don't know "Amerika: the man who disappeared" is the journey of a man who disappeared

>>3773874
No i like the idea fine and his choice to depict it in Hunger artist as a starving artist was unique and at the same time a well known cliche but in "Amerika" the Automaton state was manifest in the characters uncle whose rejection resulted in a vagabond life that ended. The character wanted to blame all these ill woes in his life on the nonsense of the system that he found himself in but at every step it were his own actions or inaction that lead him down the road to destruction not the self sustaining system.
Plz Tell me where i misunderstand

>>3773868
through his inner monologue u mean?
and by atmosphere do u mean how certain characters seem to have auras of selfishness, lewdness, or depravity and the main character is always some degree of innocent?
plz more detail i am just curious

>>3773858
already graduated and i wasn't a English lit major

Since no one is responding with their opinions i must deduce that either you all agree with me and kafka is a hack that is only noted by hipsters that never read him.
Or none of you have read him so i will inform you by giving you a brief summary of what is a very brief story.

Why they fuck does everyone on /lit/ assume everyone else on /lit/ is either a philosophy or English lit major?

>>3773844
yes i am implying that all collage professors use the same reading lists
because i assume i am not the only person who has heard his teachers praise Kafka or use the word kafkaesque

>>3773827
>>3773819
>>3773818
>>3773811
I don't hate Kafka nor wanna debate. i want a fan to come forward and tell me what it is they enjoy and what ideas i might have missed that validate why our professors have so much praise for him.

>>3773811
I don't mean to be a dick but people only respond to you here if you are vulgar and rude

The reason Kafka's works are all so short is because he couldn't fully grasp a thought larger then his ego or tell a story that conveyed more then small talk

I will stop bumping this when someone explains what is Kafkaesque or why they enjoyed his works
thankyou

>>3773811
why should i read more of his shit if even u cant explain why its good

Fuck Franz Kafka
he has no insight past the surface

>>3773731
I loved Animal farm i read it when i was deep into Left wing Ideology and it really woke me up
Right wing books?
I think most writers are left wing so the amount of books is small
I liked the Ideas Ayn Rand presented in the book but the story was weak and i found the characters pretty flat. i found the depiction of the Cheating husband, mistress, and wife a cliche out of a feminest mistress's fantasy.

I loved the relationship between transportation, manufacture, and raw material production. The extortion by the government and the depiction of political pull as a kind of capital are right on the nose. I think the story suffered because it wasn't very pleasant to read but the ideas inside it make me gitty

Kafka is ass. He uses his pen as a blunt object to bludgeon his readers into a malleable and naive minds. Who think every passing notion of skepticism is grand insight. His fans are generally people who have failed at life or are currently failing and are all too eager to announce that this is the fault of society and individuals other then them selves

I will bump this by insulting Kafka till someone responds and enlightens me

>>3772978
I cant prove a negative the same way u cant prove your not a fag