/lit/ - Literature

>>4855235
it's not even finished, so it's not even a full book

At least he was loyle to his capo.

>>4855235
no

>>4855235
No, The Alchemist is.

It's definitely in the top 10, though personally I have a soft spot for "das Schloss" and "ein Landarzt".

>>4855235
Not really but hell it's a good book.

>>4855235
No, the Starving Sports is.

>>4856688
>>4855308
What is it with all these unread plebs?

i never really liked kafka. am i the only one?

>>4855237
this. he never got to finish it. it's a good read, although rather uneven. the chapter in the cathedral is breathtaking though.

>>4856738
One of the main points of The Trial it's that it is unfinishable. There is always going to be something in between,like Aquiles and the turtle.

>>4856745
ur thinkin of the castle m8

>>4855235
My father always said the best book he ever read was "How to build your own outdoor grill" and threatened to read it to us if we didn't go to bed when we were told to.
I thought he was only joking but one day he sat for an hour in me and my brother's room and read loud to us and showed us pictures of different grills.

Later in life he told me that The Trial is his favourite. He is a very well-read man and therefore I believe it is safe to say that The Trial is the greatest, with "How to build your own out door grill" as a good number two.

>>4856734

hear hear

>>4856803

>>4856803
I thought he was only joking but one day he sat for an hour in me and my brother's room and read loud to us and showed us pictures of different grills.

10/10 parenting would give Father of the year award.

>>4856813
seriously, i can respect that kafka wrote some good shit but somehow i'm not feeling it.

>>4856818
I'm not sure how to judge that picture

>>4856820
He still has the book. I would post a pic of it but I'm not living at home any more.

Curiously he never buily an outdoor grill.

>>4856830
>wrote some good shit
>somehow I'm not feeling it

do you even enjoy reading or discussing literature, or are you just passing through?

>>4856848

>>4856801
The Castle is unfinished in the sense that Kafka never wrote an ending. Kafka wrote an ending to Trial before it was published posthumously so it's possible he wrote more of the story that he intended to write, barring editing and rewriting (though who can say for sure?), but a friend of his had to pore through his notes to even guess at the order the chapters were meant to appear. Many of them in the latter third of the book are virtually interchangeable (the chapter with the doorkeeper parable could appear almost anywhere in the text, and to place it as the penultimate chapter, as done in the edition I read, is a fairly large editorial assumption).

>>4856903

Hmm, the doorkeeper parable seemed very fitting to be so close to the end, I think. Ultimately it sheds a light on how K's search is futile, it helps to illustrate the bleak pointlessness of what he's been doing. I thought it was this that sort of contributed to K's finally accepting his death at the hands of henchmen of the court, where he doesn't put up that much of a fight.

>>4856697
Both of those books are God tier and you're just mad.

>>4856734
na hes overrated as fuck with daddy issues.. Should have burned his books like he intended too.

>>4855241
The resemblance is fucking uncanny.

>>4856933

That's a valid interpretation, and one that Kafka may have actually intended. Zadie Smith wrote an interesting counterpoint to the established placement that's interesting to consider (she admires Kafka and doesn't take issue with the form in which The Trial was finally published, but is discussing readers who generally took issue with Kafka's posthumous editor/publisher):

>The penultimate chapter, containing the pseudohaggadic parable "Before the Law," might have gone anywhere [in the book], and placing it anywhere else [besides in the penultimate chapter] skews the trajectory of ascension; no longer a journey toward the supreme incomprehensibility, but a journey without destination, into which a mystery is thrust and then succeed by the quotidian once more.

>>4857071
adding to this she argues that Max Brod (Kafka's publisher) had a sentimental streak and cast The Trial as a spiritual journey towards an absent God, so Before the Law would naturally find its place toward the end of the book.