/lit/ - Literature

>>4203779
>tfw Gregor

>>4203784
>tfw

he's cool. if he was in my english class and was like a literary genius I would develop a homosexual crush on him

He was betrayed by his best friend, I still don't see how people let that slide.

>>4203826

>Implying Kafka didn't want his manuscripts published

tip top kek

>>4203827
But he didn't.

>>4203826
sauce

boring random edgy stuff

Zweig >>>>>>> Kafka

>>4203829

" Kafka was a lawyer. He knew very well what a binding legal document looked like and that neither of these supposed wills was remotely a real one. Brod claims that he’d even told Kafka flat out, at the time of his first will, that he wouldn’t carry out the instructions.

Brod was Kafka’s best friend and greatest fan. Brod had helped to establish Kafka’s reputation as an author, and it was ironic to ask him to destroy the works. Kafka had shown Brod The Trial and back in 1919, Brod even joked with Kafka that Brod would finish it when Kafka’s publisher was demanding novels instead of stories from Kafka.

Kafka was a master of irony. His request to Brod, understood in the context of his work, diaries, and letters (much of which, even more ironically, were subject to his request to burn), is typical Kafka. He was asking the man whom he knew never would burn his papers to do so. He could have asked others to carry out his bidding, but he chose Brod."

>>4203839
Buzzati >>>>Knut Hamsun>>>>>Some Zweig >>>>>Kafka>>>>>Other Zweig

>>4203839
Kafka
>boring
>edgy
yikes
>>4203826
This is a joke, right? The friendship between Brod and Kafka was very sweet and beautiful.

One of my favorite authors. In the Penal Colony is a great mockery of legalistic justice and one of my favorite short stories.

>>4203880
>>4203839
define "edgy"

>>4203839
Given that there's hardly any gratuitous violence, sexuality, or overt teenage nihilism in any of his stories, I don't know how Kafka qualifies as edgy.

>>4203913
edgy seems to be pretty much exclusively used in the sense of "teenage edginess" on 4chan

so a sort of vapid pretentious quality solely for the purpose of looking important

I want to read Kafka, where do I start?

>>4203986
don't read it. It's old, boring, dusty and edgy as fuck. Go read Zweig, Sándor Márai, Musil or even Schnitzler.

>>4203989
Bad advice. Good recommendations. Ironic that in accusing Kafka of being edgy, you, yourself, become guilty of the highest order of edginess.

>>4203986
Even if you don't like Kafka, like the guy above, you should still read him. All his works are short and very easy to read.

Not that it's a big deal, but you'll have very little credibility in the modern lit discourse if you aren't familiar with his works.
Start with his short stories.

>>4203994
>Start with his short stories.
I recommend Michael Hofmann's translation of Metamorphosis and Other Stories. It's readily available in several editions. Collects all of his best short fiction, imho.

>>4203994
>>4203997
Thanks, m8!

Lel I'm a cockroach today, it's a metaphor and an allegory xD I want to fuck my sister. The society is bad! So kafakesque bitch.

>>4204001
>>4203997
>>4203994
>Two editions from Penguin avaible
>One has 30 pages more
>One costs 2€ more
WHICH ONE DO I PICK

I think the that costs 2€ more is a deluxe edition from Penguin.

>>4204007
It really doesn't matter. They'll be the same, just with different print size or formatting, hence the page difference.

>>4203779
>Kafka
>all those intense feelings of isolation, alienation, and anxiety

now after reading his works I'm actually scared to finish college, because then I will have to live in the real world and try to get a job, and god it doesn't look easy

>>4204005
>it's a metaphor and an allegory
I'm so sick of this. I know you're trolling, but it needs to be said... We're no longer in high school, kiddies.

I find the following quote instructive/insightful regarding the matter of interpretation:

"...Do you realize that people don’t know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), et cetera. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself... Kafka’s novels are a fusion of dream and reality; that is, they are neither dream nor reality. More than anything, Kafka brought about an aesthetic revolution. An aesthetic miracle. Of course, no one can repeat what he did."
-- Milan Kundera (Paris Review Interview)

>>4204017
>I'm actually scared to finish college
I have my last class ever on Thursday. I'm fucking terrified of what comes after that. I've never been without the structure of an educational institution. I'm afraid I'll spiral into a depression without it, especially since my job prospects are so abysmal (English major).

>>4204019
>Of course, no one can repeat what he did
Murakami repeated it. In fact, he improved on it.

>>4204019
Milan Kuntera is really a retard.

>>4204024
Murakami is like Coehlo trying to write some Kafka fanfiction.

>>4204024
First of all, that's dumb. Second, I bet you haven't even read Murakami in the original Japanese. I also bet you haven't read any Kafka beyond the Metamorphosis, if that. I feel safe in placing these bets.

>>4204025
Guy who posted the quote here.

Sure, you don't have to like Kundera. It doesn't make the quote any less true. Or your contribution to the discourse any less banal (retard, really?). Even Nabokov's analysis of Kafka was tedious, academia just doesn't know how to teach Kafka and students, as a result, do not know how to read him. I stand by that.

>>4204030
>learning other languages

Translations are very strong these days, it really isn't necessary.

>>4204028
I don't know Coehlo, but gather that his is a populist writer? Not sure how you can compare Murakami to that sort of thing, he's clearly writing for a literary audience.

>>4204032
*tips fedora*

>>4204043
epic.

>>4204048
Right? That guy is so just full of himself because he followed a class about Kafka.

>>4204028

Who is Coehlo?

>>4204035
>he's clearly writing for a literary audience.

Then how come Murakami's fans are the least literary readers out there?

>>4204035
>he's clearly writing for a literary audience.
U fkn wot? Any popular magazine reader can pick up Murakami.

>>4204978
Wrote a book called The Alchemist, which apparently everyone on /lit/ hates (I've never read it). From what I've read it's a story whose moral is something trite like "Follow your dreams, if you believe strong enough they'll become reality" or something like that.

>>4204990
Why do you think that?

The Kafka's In The Penal Colony is impressive! Has anybody used it in a movie yet?

>>4204035
>he's clearly writing for a literary audience.

what lmao, murakami books are like reading a bad anime

Are there even writers who are similar to him? I've never read something like his work before.

>>4205185
Read the thread you duck.

>>4205185
Kobo Abe
Italiano Calvino
Jose Louise Borges
Donald Barthelme.

>>4205191
>Italiano
Not sure if intentional or not.

>>4205191
I thank you.

>>4205191
>>4205193
>Jose Louise
I think he's being an idiot on purpose.

>>4205139
As far as I know, nope. And yes, it's an amazing shoet story, it's surprising no one has adapted it to a short film yet.

>>4205139
I loved that, holy shit.

Can someone explain to me the appeal of The Trial? I have enjoyed all of Kafka's short stories but I'm having trouble getting into The Trial.

>>4206498
what translation are you reading?

i never made a succeasful thread before, how do i save this? OP here ofc

>>4203779
his prose was Kafkaesque

>>4206570
Kafkaesque

>>4204035
I get that you're not familiar with the works of Akutagawa, Oe, Kawabata, Soseki or Tanizaki, hence why you think Murakami is worth saving, but go ahead, get acquainted with them, and then come back here saying that Murakami is any bastion of japanese writing.
The best description would be
>>4205142

>>4206630
>the works of Akutagawa, Oe, Kawabata, Soseki or Tanizaki
No one has heard of any of those writers. And Murakami's name often comes up in discussions about the Nobel Prize for literature. You're just being contrarian.

>>4204019

he's on the right track but deleuze actually nailed it:

http://www.englweb.umd.edu/englfac/KChuh/D%26G.pdf

>>4206637
I've heard of those writers and I read fuck all literature.

>>4206630

>oe bro

wow finally. he is my absolute favourite author, some nice nods to kafka sometimes i think

I'm currently supposed to be writing a post-structuralist analysis of A Hunger Artist but I don't understand post-structuralism. Kafka's pretty neat I guess

>>4206640
>Deleuze
>nailing anything, ever

>>4206713
>I'm currently supposed to be writing a post-structuralist analysis of A Hunger Artist but I don't understand post-structuralism

I know this feel very well. I'm supposed to be doing the same thing except with Kafka's The Trial. I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing.

>>4204043
This asshole must have an agenda or he really thinks he's "trolling".
Stop it please, you're just shaming yourself.

>>4206730
>being this pleb

>>4206730

well i guess he never does any directly because a straight line is too territorialised, but that's why he understands kafka properly. kafka prevents any final designation of meaning, you can only ever approach him obliquely and provisionally.

>>4206741

“language stops being representative in order to now move toward its extremities or its limits.” In Kafka’s work this is demonstrated throughout his animal stories where he “deliberately kills all metaphor, all symbolism, all signification, no less than all designation” to the point where, as Benjamin realises, “you look up in fright and realize that you already far away from the continent of man.”

Kafka's motto: “[t]o hate all languages of masters.” The first line of The Metamorphosis is a testament to such disobedience with the word “Ungeziefer” resisting any determinate meaning. It has been translated as “bug”, “insect”, “vermin”, “cockroach”, “dung beetle”, “beetle”, as well as “unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice”. This ambiguity corresponds with Kafka’s intention of not labelling Gregor as any specific thing and his insistence that “[t]he insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance.” In this way Kafka preserves a line of escape from signification, a tactic which also has political implications for minorities who wish to elude being labelled and contained by the majority.

>>4206750
Where is this quote from?

>>4206763

an essay i wrote about >>4206640

>>4206768
You plagiarized your own work?

>>4206776

yes, 4U

>>4204019
>>4204025
>>4204032

Denying the allegorical and symbolic aspect of Kafka is just retarded. If any writer is doing either of those things, and doing it well, it's him. It's not in a simple, crack the code, get the answer, kind of way, but a complex, the code has multiple exclusive solutions, incomplete solutions, or no solution, kind of way.

>>4204032
>>4206794

Also you find this tedious?!:

Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled. "To take upon us the mystery of things"—what King Lear so wistfully says for himself and for Cordelia—this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol's "The Greatcoat," or more correctly "The Carrick"); another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka's "The Metamorphosis)—so what? There is no rational answer to "so what." We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. If Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers.

>>4206796

but you can't take it apart. you don't even know what he is. >>4206750

>>4206796
Did you also read the part where he talks about what specific kind of insect Gregor is?

>>4206797
I don't care whether or not you agree with Nabokov, what I'm shocked at is that you find that prose tedious.

Also I'm very doubtful that Kafka can't be looked at in such a way that we can't see "how one part of the pattern responds to the other." The whole spiel about the eluding signification strikes me as academic hyperbole. If he was really doing that, we wouldn't understand him in the way we don't understand a lot of modernists. What he is, is masterfully ambiguous on the small scale, leading to a vagueness on the large scale. But if you take all the ambiguities and look at all their possibilities, and draw the implications of each, then, look at how all these things handing in the air affect, you get something like what Nabokov is talking about.
Which, incidentally, is something familial to what you're trying to do with that paper, I think, though you're using the wrong words to do it. I'd rather not really argue much because I feel it's a little semantic in the bad way.

>>4206824
Different guy.

>>4206810
he actually has a very cool observation though

gregor has wings under his armored back but never realises it

Kafka sucks. People can't turn into bugs, it's so unrealistic. I read this for class and it sucked.

It's always been said that he was influenced by judaism but where exactly can you see it in his works?

>>4204005
Well you see, Gregor didn't exactly turn into a cockroach. It's been poorly translated and thus has led to numerous misinterpretations by readers of the translations. In the German original it says "Ungeziefer" which means something like abomination but this still doesn't do it justice.

>>4207489
Ehhh
It's more of a...
Imagine a man, with insect parts
which is more insect but man
and gradually turns more and more into an insect...
You are right. It is tough to translate.

Kafka subscribed to magazines with pictures of beetles blowing dudes and shit. Just saying.

>>4207446
something of that in the trial i guess

>>4206900
You do realize that turning into a bug was a metaphor for hating Jews, right?

>>4207554
don't be so authoritative, it can be read a multitude of ways and fixating on the jewish aspect of the text is doing violence to it

>>4207496
I believe the technical translation is "Kamen Rider".

>>4203818

What a good looking fellow. I'm surprised he didn't get all the ladies. If only he had more confidence.

>>4207698
>I'm surprised he didn't get all the ladies
Franz Kafka was the ladiest ladies' man there was, you uninformed pleb.

K.'s wooing of Fraulein was probably based on a true story.

>>4207554
this pleb

>>4207733

>ladies man
>heavily frequented brothels and was consumed by sexual desire

Nope.

>>4203779
he is ok, kind of a one trick pony tho

but what writer isnt

>>4205191
It's Borge Luis Jorges, you idiot.

>>4207810
The latter is no point at all, all ladies' men are at least secretly tortured by sexual desire.

And the former is no refutation either, as Kafka had many affairs and relationships throughout his life despite his visitations of brothels.

i get stories but publishing your dead best friends letters and diaries is pretty assholey. i don't care how you swing it about ironic wills.

>>4208440
Kafka is dead, who gives a shit? Not him.

>>4204024
>>4204025
>>4206640
>>4206794
Kundera has a big ego. He says that because he is afraid that people start to looking about his life after he dies and realize how insecure he was and how he doesn't even know how to fuck or anything like that.

To understand this read his Immortality. It is a good book, I think.

I read a book of Kafka's short stories about animals compiled by a jewish editor. It had an appendage where he explained every short story . It was basically
>It's obvious, he's talking about judaism.
It pretty ruined it for me.

Personally I want to think about Kafka like this (>>4208655) rather than this (>>4209269).

>>4204035
Murakami is making a more accessible form of magic realism/kafka sorta stuff. He commercialized and inherently noncommercial style. Not to say he's bad, it's the same thing david bowie did with underground rock music/warhol aesthetic, and both are good artists with shitty fans.

Sorry for the Bowie analogy, I'm not fluent enough in authors to namedrop another author who did that.

>>4205061
Most boring book ever. Cohelo is a boring author.
Even the Dark Tower series by Stephen King is less boring.

>>4209269
Can you give an example?

>>4204023
>I've never been without the structure of an educational institution.


/lit/ everybody

also the OP drawing is by robert crumb who drew a comic book biography of Kafka

>>4205185
Heathcliffe

>>4206637
Except that both Oe and Kawabata actually ARE Nobel Prizes of literature?
Is this guy serious

I like this version of the Metamorphosis more.

>>4208655
>afraid that people start to looking about his life after he dies and realize how insecure he was
That's a pretty banal thing to assume. The same has been said of every author at one time or another. Insecurity leads them to make pronouncements, apparently. But who are we to say? Not saying it isn't true in Kundera's case. Could well be. But that doesn't necessarily refute his claims about the way we read Kafka.

>>4210031
I think I just got this really bad joke for the first time

>>4204023
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M98x-FLp7E

>>4210016
I'm 21 years old, and have thus never been outside an educational institution. Pretty standard experience.
I'd say 21 is the average age of most culture-based 4chan boards, not just /lit/. So I'm not sure what you're implying.

>>4210395
Well, that makes me feel worse. Thanks.

>>4210394
Explain?

I've read a lot of his works. He is a true genius and a visionary. And he is unique. I doubt anyone will ever reach the deal of uniqueness he had (considering his time.)

>>4210002
"Jackals and Arabs", for example. The editor says that jackals represent the jewish people and arabs are just arabs.
He says Kafka doesn't mean any offense when he refers to jews as "jackals" because he liked dogs a lot.

Then he says "A Report to an Academy" is about Kafka talking in a podium to other jews about becoming a good jew or something.

I was furious. I should have never read those appendages. The name of the editor was Jordi Llovet.

>>4210209
I have something like that

>>4211099

>>4203779
I've only read this, but god damn I was not dissapoint.
http://www.amazon.com/Metamorphosis-Other-Stories-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143105248

>>4203779

I loved to read about his daily rituals and the difficulties he had to conciliate his career as a lawyer and as an writer (the lack of time, the sleepiness, the boredom of the office, the lack of space, etc..). I feel very much like him in that respect, although my style is totally different from his.

Here:
Begley is particularly astute on the bizarre organization of Kafka's writing day. At the Assicurazioni Generali, Kafka despaired of his twelve-hour shifts that left no time for writing; two years later, promoted to the position of chief clerk at the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute, he was now on the one-shift system, 8:30 AM until 2:30 PM. And then what? Lunch until 3:30, then sleep until 7:30, then exercises, then a family dinner. After which he started work around 11 PM (as Begley points out, the letter- and diary-writing took up at least an hour a day, and more usually two), and then "depending on my strength, inclination, and luck, until one, two, or three o'clock, once even till six in the morning." Then "every imaginable effort to go to sleep," as he fitfully rested before leaving to go to the office once more. This routine left him permanently on the verge of collapse. Yet

when Felice wrote to him...arguing that a more rational organization of his day might be possible, he bristled.... "The present way is the only possible one; if I can't bear it, so much the worse; but I will bear it somehow."

It was [Max] Brod's opinion that Kafka's parents should gift him a lump sum "so that he could leave the office, go off to some cheap little place on the Riviera to create those works that God, using Franz's brain, wishes the world to have." Begley, leaving God out of it, politely disagrees, finding Brod's wish

probably misguided. Kafka's failure to make even an attempt to break out of the twin prisons of the Institute and his room at the family apartment may have been nothing less than the choice of the way of life that paradoxically best suited him.


It is rare that writers of fiction sit behind their desks, actually writing, for more than a few hours a day. Had Kafka been able to use his time efficiently, the work schedule at the Institute would have left him with enough free time for writing. As he recognized, the truth was that he wasted time.

The truth was that he wasted time! The writer's equivalent of the dater's revelation: He's just not that into you. "Having the Institute and the conditions at his parents' apartment to blame for the long fallow periods when he couldn't write gave Kafka cover: it enabled him to preserve some of his self-esteem."

>>4211140
Good man.

>>4211099
>>4211118
Hilarious

>>4203844
Yeah but he asked his girlfriend to burn half his writing's and she was like 'sure thing.'

>>4206750
wow

>>4206796
>There is no rational answer to "so what." We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. If Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers.

>feels good man

>>4206730
I heard he nailed your mom a few times, but who hasn't?

>>4206637
>No one has heard of any of those writers.
>He's on /lit/ saying this

>>4206796

>spines that remain unkindled

Holy shit, that is terrible. Just terrible. And I don't even care about this thread, I only came here to post this. And also that "beauty plus pity" is a god-fucking-awful definition of art.