Franz Kafka – Jeremy Adler
This short, copiously illustrated biography tells about the life and times of the subject in enough detail to hold the interest of but not overwhelm the non-specialist. There are many pictures of Prague and the important people in the writer’s life. Also included are Kafka’s drawings from his notebooks.
In accessible language, Adler makes the point that the Jewish Austrian-Czech writer and novelist who wrote in German tore up the blueprint for the 19th century novel. For example, he used both ordinary and implausible characters. Josef K. is an ordinary bank employee who is arrested one day for no apparent reason and put on trial. Gregor Samsa is a fabric drummer who wakes up one morning to find he has been transformed into a winged beetle. In plain language and a lucid style, Kafka creates characters that anybody anywhere can relate to.
Making the personal and private seem universal, Kafka deals with abstract concepts like “integrity,” “reality,” and “individuality,” as concepts that thinking members of all cultures must contend with in the modern world. His description of urban alienation and anxiety speak to readers who feel isolated in the world, cut off from traditional ways of thought.
The word Kafkaesque has entered our language like Orwellian and Dickensian. It usually describes being trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare of incompetent or mean or zealous (or all three) clerks, pointless protocols, and incomprehensible paperwork. But it seems unfair that Kafka’s name should be associated with such negative meanings when he had such a positive and humane soul.
Besides, given the Nazis branded Kafka’s art
“degenerate” and burned his books, that must mean he’s worth reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment