/lit/ - Literature

>kafka
>worth reading

nope

This book as i understand it, is a metaphor for schizophrenia/mental illness and full of annoying pointless buggery

>>1963438
2deep4u

I prefer The Castle to The Trial, but that's probably because my experiences with the Czech Foreign Police.

The scene where K. is asked the castle and waits all day at the gates for nothing and nobody, then goes home, is so not fiction. So not fiction.

I've read several works by Kafka, from the terrible to the slightly bad. I wouldn't say he's written anything on par, although people think he's wonderful (lol).

>>1963443

People pretend books like this are deep to make up for the fact that they're horribly written.

Not really deeper than anything twain (as in mark) wrote and much less entertaining.

Protip: the depth you see in books i mostly something you generate yourself. Or the readers generate themselves. Eventually it just becomes accepted that a book is 'really about' something other than what its about regardless of the authors intent.

>>1963467

You don't like Kafka, then?

On the topic of Kafka: I've tried to read the Trial, but it's just so dry and dull and tedious that I couldn't get through it.

Why don't you simply read it for yourself. Do you really need someone elses seal of approval to read a book? If so I think you may be missing the point of reading literature.

Much of Kafka's merit is for who he was, rather than his writing style.

He was basically a poor bastard that no one cared about, that wanted to travel but never left his country. I mean, come on, at the first pages of "Amerika" he describes the Statue of Liberty as having a sword in its hand. Fucking pathetic.

So Kafka becomes a character himself. It's him trapped in the imaginary labyrinths of the castle, or his head. Even the most trivial fucking things take like 5 pages inside the character's head.

I say why the fuck not read it, do you have something else to read? they guy wrote like 3 novels, it's not that much really. You could even read it with the impression that it will suck, and believe it all your life: Ta Da! aren't you edgy?

The Trial is better, it's almost like in The Castle Kafka was trying to resolve the absurdity of the trial but it wasn't convincing for me.

But if you liked the trial then it's almost necessary that you read it.

Reading it at the moment, about 2/3s of the way in. It's certainly denser than The Trial, not such a concise and easy read, and seems to be more 'unfinished' than The Trial as it goes on also, though personally I have no problem with that. It's also more disconcerting/weirder than a lot of Kafka's other stuff, but not in the ways you'd be used to with Kafka, it's very subtle but has perhaps a greater affect, if you get me...

One way of looking at them that I've encountered sees The Trial as essentially exploring a kind of Stalinist/post-fordist capitalist beauracracy, while The Castle explores a far more fascist configuration, if that helps you at decide at all.

I dunno anyway, it just seems like it takes more work on the part of the reader than his other stuff, guess it depends on whether you're willing to put that in, but if you are I can't see you liking it much less than The Trial.

Everything Kafka has written is worth reading. He's one of the greatest writers who ever lived.

>>1963452
>>1963452

Personally, I liked The Metamorphosis and In The Penal Colony and his other short stories better than his novels. But you should read them anyway. Like the other anon said, there are only three of them and he is one of the most important authors of the 20th century.