Franz Kafka Books

The "Introducing..." series is quite uneven: there are some great books in it, but also some very dull ones. In general, books about authors are good, since they can combine the life of the writers with part of their stories. I love the one about Proust and the one about Camus; those about Joyce and Tolkien weren't so good on the other hand. The one about Kafka is one of the best, and this is due in no small part to the drawings of author Robert Crumb, who was able to bring to life (sorry about the cliche) Kafka's perverted imagination (yes, perverted is the right word) as probably few other artists would. Strongly recommended.

INTRODUCING KAFKA is a great way to enjoy R. Crumb artwork without feeling slimed by his unfortunate obsessions with perversity, and you will learn a lot about the life of the very famous author named Kafka, too.

Most of the pages have more space given to the artwork than the body text, drawn in the typical R. Crumb style, cute with edgy content.

Overall, after reading this book, I realized that I no longer am interested in the type of work done by Kafka, which is story writing that is VERY depressive and dreary, though imaginative.

I used to be a much more involved reader of R. Crumb, but I have since lost interest in his pornography overloads, so this INTRODUCING KAFKA book is a nice little souvenir of R. Crumb that I can safely keep in the house, without fear of upsetting anybody if they should ever find it.

There is very mild "adult" content in R. Crumb's artwork, especially mild compared to R. Crumb's independent, anything goes, usual work.

This book is a perfect fit for a biography of oddball author Kafka, presented and illustrated with R. Crumb work, doing a rare, non-offense project, for most mainstream readers' sensibilities.

Crumb was definitely the perfect illustrator for this book. Wow! The stories are "broken down" and visually interpreted, which really enriches the reading experience of the actual stories later (if you choose to do so). Overall, a very interesting look inside the life of a mysterious, dark-minded writer that most people don't know too much about. I'm really glad I read this book, I learned a lot!

For those who came to look at/buy this book via Ian Buruma's passing mention in the New York Review of Books (4/6/06), in which he states the "the book does [Crumb and Kafka] both a disservice": Don't believe it. As another reviewer said, I found this book strangely moving; and the Illustrated Classics reference is unfortunate. The enforcement - sometimes passive - of the high-low cultural dichotomy is very boring, very 20th-century, and not of much use in reading a book like this.

I dug this book and I recommend it to everyone out there. Fans of Kafka and/or Crumb should really enjoy this.

I recall the first time I read Kafka's "The Metamorphosis", I was in my early twenties. I really hated it. I didn't really get it, nor did I desire to spend any time and mental energy trying to get it. Then again, what do you expect from a twenty-five year old bachelor? Enlightment? Nah, think again. Come to think of it, the only reason I read it in the first place was to impress some girl I was dating at the time. Needless to say it was a challenge for me trying to stay awake while reading it. I mean for one thing, how in the hell are we supposed to get excited, let alone even interested, about some guy who wakes up one day only to find that he's transformed into a giant bug. YAWN! Anyway, I did finally finish the book, however that was the first and last time I dared to pick up a novel by Franz Kafka again. The guy was just too damn doleful and morose for my taste. If I want to be depressed I'll start watching daytime television.

So anyway, about three weeks ago I was checking out this used book store in San Luis Obispo and just so happened to come across this little book. Now I have to tell you up front that I have never been a huge fan of Mr. Crumb's salacious sketches. No doubt about it, the man is one talented artist, incredibly original and a unique innovator. However, like I said, he just doesn't quite do it for me personally. So the million dollar question is - 'why would I purchase this book if I am not a fan of either artist?' The answer is simply because I have been promising myself for a while now that I need to try and tackle Kafka one more time (after all, I am so much more enlightened, open-minded, & mature now than I was fifteen plus years ago. At least that's what I keep trying to convince myself, others, like my wife for example, may beg to differ with me). Ergo, I was hoping that this short, breezy bio would educate me a bit on this rather unconventional writer. Also, I enjoyed the fact that this book was designed to be a bit humorous as well (hence Crumb's irreverent illustrations). God knows that Kafka is depressing enough, so this bit of humor (the author David Mairowitz also deserves credit for this as well) certainly helps.

All in all, this turned out to be an excellent little read. It's not going to blow your mind. It's not abstract or esoteric by any stretch. However, it is interesting. It is a tad educational as well. To sum it all up in one cliche line - it's a clever, pithy, picturesque little bio that is sure to assist anyone who is brave and intelligent enough to tackle Franz Kafka.

Well written by David Zane Mairowitz. And of course the illustrations by Crumb are absolutely amazing and for him, very, very tame. PG-13 tame in fact. This is the first book of this introductory series I've read so far, I am definitely interested in checking out the others in the series real soon.

Enjoy!

But read the reviews, it is true, the gentleman from Ontario is priceless, and I agree with Erica as well. I've read the two-volume edition of his diaries and they seem to be much more touching and emotional -- sensitive to beauty -- than most of his published work. Though I would say the published work is also funny, "Investigations of a dog," for example. I think the diaries give a good, new angle on the published work. And I don't think they were "written for publication."

To face the prospect of religion without religion.
To face the prospect of death head on.
To be truly fearless in the face of human terror, folly, and weakness.

To scribble all this courage into a modest little notebook, without the need for fame or immortality, without the pretense of literature or art.

Just a great man working through the miracle of his life.
It takes courage just to read it.

First off, to the reviewer here from Ontario: I laughed until I started to hiccup while reading your review, and since I'm a substitute librarian, well...you can imagine. You've caught his tone exactly.

Now, the Octavos. If you're a Kafka obsessive, they're required reading---first, to tease out his private code (the aphorisms). Secondly, one finds many of the shorter pieces Brod lifted for other releases, and what Brod chose---and what he left---says a lot about how his friend interpreted this author, and how FK would be misinterpreted for the next fifty years.

Another reason to read Octavos is this: at least two of the shorter pieces here are so funny you'll want to collar friends and force them to listen. "I am a clerk at the town hall!" boasts one of his personae repeatedly...before collapsing into snarls about dignity and the office cat. Another is a wry send-up on the self-important manifestos floating around Europe at the time: Kafka's version is released anonymously to an indifferent apartment population, and proposes an absurdist Social-Contract arrangement between the manifesto writer, the thronging public, and five broken toy rifles--all sonorously written in starving-revolutionary comeradese. Of course, to the manifesto writer's chagrin, no one shows up.

The Octavo Notebooks are where Kafka recorded a few of his most delicate, poetic and aching shorter pieces. They're also where he goofed up, wrote himself into a corner, admonished himself, lied to himself. In short, they're a small window into this complicated writer's heart. Nothing here is so essential that you can't enjoy Kafka's more formal work without them, but if you're a fan, they humanize the man immeasurably.

Like the notebooks of Nietzsche, Camus, Andre Gide, and Wittgenstein...
this book of discovered notebooks is a sharp and wonderfully illuminating glimpse into the deep-thinking mind of a master of his literary craft. A Great Read!

When I first bought this book, it wasn't blue either. But when I brought it home and put it on my shelf, things changed irrevocably. Now when I am sitting and writing late in the evening, out of the corner of my eye I can see the book, sitting amongst its faithless companions, gleaming blue like a blue lamp from a lighthouse, shining out from its shelf. While all around the rustling of the mice. But then, when I turn and look straight at her, she isn't blue anymore.

I find the thought almost unbearable.

Yes, yes, I know it's odd to describe Kafka's writing as comic, but he really was one of the funniest writers of the Twentieth Century. His outlook on life reminds me so much of Charlie Chaplin's famous mantra that life is a tragedy in close up, in long shot it's a comedy. Kafka is loved by millions because he is the most universal writer of them all. High on the peaks of Twentieth Century literature features the brilliant stylistic prose of Nabokov, the pyrotechnics of Joyce, the pitch black comedy of Beckett, the sublime little observations of Proust. But right at the summit sits the unlikely figure of the wretched, kvetching tortured sick soul and body of Kafka, the world's greatest underdog. With these diaries chronicling his dreams, his awareness of the fragility of his physical body, his anguished relations with his family and friends, the daily nightmare of his office job and the time it stole from his creative pursuits, Kafka speaks for us all. For instance, a single paragraph sentence from 1913 reads:

I'll shut myself off from everyone to the point of insensibility. Make an enemy of everyone, speak to no one.

Now anyone who has ever been a teenager will feel a burning empathy with that sentiment!

Then some bits are brilliantly, nightmarishly extraordinary, like this musing, also from 1913:

To be pulled in through the ground-floor window of a house by a rope tied around one's neck and to be yanked up, bloody and ragged, through all the ceilings, furniture, walls, and attics, without consideration, as if by a person who is paying no attention, until the empty noose, dropping the last fragments of me when it breaks through the roof tiles, is seen on the roof

I read this part on a train, and snorted with laughter. Kafka is such a lovable tortured genius, carrying the weight of his misery around like an anvil on his back. Such a warped brilliant imagination.

Keep a copy of these diaries on your bedside table for those moments when you are fed up with the wretched pressures of the world, can't stand other people, and want to selfishly wallow like a pig in the mud of your own self pity. Priceless.

The Diares of Franz Kafka reveal him to not just be the disturbing and clever author, but a genuine philosopher in his own right. Because he never published huge tomes of philosophy, he is completely overlooked. Kafka tends to address only himself in his diary, but he grapples with universal problems of the human condition. My copy of the Diaries is underlined, highlighted, and circled on almost every page. He puts into words, even in the translation, so many important and elegant ideas that have not been adequately expressed before or after him. If you have even the slightest interest in Kafka or philosophy, or alienation, buy this book. Buy two copies, in case you lose the first one. Once you've read it, you will not want to be without access to it, ever. Incredible.

Franz Kafka's 1910-23 diary entries are essential reading for anyone who seeks a better understanding of the author's literary world. This 1988 printing contains all the surviving Kafka diaries in one comprehensive volume. More revelatory than any biography, the diaries remain as compelling as his fictional work.

The diaries reveal that Kafka was not only the one-dimensional character of the disturbed, alienated, and melancholic man that contemporary literary analysis presents him as, but a person with a complexity of feeling, humor, and distinct moments of happiness and joy.
The segment where he vacillates, through an organized list, as to whether he should marry his fiancé or not I found most enjoyable, and it is also fascinating to watch the diaries darken as Kafka ages, and to long for the unfinished fragments of stories and the gaps in narrative as he struggles against tuberculosis.
History claims that he was the prophetic bearer of images of totalitarianism and social suppression, but it is often forgotten that Kafka was also an ordinary man leading a rather ordinary, if not emotionally tempestuous, life.
These diaries are indispensable in understanding the underlying philosophy and thought behind his literary works, and in coming to know more intimately the author who created them, rather than relying upon a preconceived notion of Kafka as an isolated, miserable apparition.

Franz Kafka's diaries were never meant to be published. Yet his diaries are spread across the internet, the actual published diaries translated into many languages and countless printings. These dairies are very personal, and the gentle Prague Jew would certainly be appalled.

Why do we continue to find these writings so fascinating?

Well, simply, they're terribly honest. Kafka never meant for these diary entries to be published, let alone read by another person. For those interested in the mechanics and soul of writing, Kafka's diaries are a source of true wonder. A confessional of a gentle soul, a man trapped in an insurance job, staying up through the night writing his heart-out, his thoughts, pains and acute observations of a time on the brink of great and terrible change, the death and cruelty of two world wars.

When reading Kafka, there is an overwhelming darkness, loneliness, a strong shadow that continually hovered around him, a "something" he tried to rid himself of through intense self reflection, which the reader of these diaries will discover.

Kafka's life story is, for the most part, a tragedy. A painful experience as one, sometimes, can feel his self consciousness, that subtle pain at the back of the neck, when, you know, you're being stared at...and his continued bad health.

I've attempted to read Kafka's diaries many times, and only now, for some reason, can withstand the pain of his perceptions, his precarious relationship with his father, and the few women he loved and the true love he never married.

Kafka is a man that loved writing for writing's sake, an artist who experimented daily, till dawn most nights, to pick up his little brief case and begin his work as an insurance lawyer in a semi-official insurance institute.

A strange yet moving entry:

21 February 1911
I live my life here as if I were entirely certain of a second life, as if for example I had entirely gotten over the failed time spent in Paris, since I will strive to return soon. Connected to this, the sight of the sharply divided light and shadow on the street paving.
For a moment I felt myself covered in armour.
How distant, for example, are the muscles of my arms

Kafka's writing was for the act itself without pretension or grandious dreams, (though his success during his 40 year lifetime was no disappointment) an act of instinct, pure and natural. Kafka is the true writer's writer.

This is not as advertised the most comprehensive selection of Kafka's writings ever published. But it is a very good selection , and includes some of the most important of the shorter work, the stories, the parables, the diary entries. The uncanny power of Kafka's writing is present line- by - line. And with this power is that tremendous suggestibility which seems to lend his work open to so many different kinds of interpretation.
One travels with Kafka very often into a strange world which resembles our own and may even provide at times a much deeper perspective of our own than we ordinarily have, but almost always too leaves us with a feeling of irresolution, of enigma, of what is often a terrifying beauty and strangeness .
Reading these samples one comes into contact with one of mankind's great literary geniuses. One can be grateful for this while at the same time understanding, that this particular genius, does not make our lives or our understanding of the world, any easier.

As a freshman, I had read The Metamorphosis in a course of basic English composition. How I wish I could take the day back! I was wrong, so wrong to force my Jungian dream analysis perspective onto my poor professor. In the autumn of my childhood, I was a two-bit psych major looking for a cheap thrill by Tuesday morning. I targeted Kafka like a teenager parallel parking a HumVee at his driver's license test. I argued with brazen naiveté that the spilled apple represented a mandala! Ok, so I wasn't a prodigy.

This time around, however, I decided to take Kafka literally--pardon the pun. Also, other personal writings packaged inside this volume are immensely helpful in refining my Metamorphosis road map. For instance, in the section heading "Selections From Letters To Felice", Kafka talked about his difficulty getting to sleep, writing long into the morning. In parenthesis he noted his demand for dreamless sleep. Metamorphosis may be nightmarish, but there is no merit to the dream hypothesis. The more I know about Kafka, e.g. his loathing of bureaucracy, the better equipped are we to make clear observations and intelligent interpretations of this complicated story.

The problem with understanding Metamorphosis is that it isn't formulaic. That doesn't mean we can't predict the Samsa family will succeed in coming together again after the unfortunate Gregor's death. It took us a long time to get to that point, and most of what was in between were frustrating obstacles. We have to ask why Kafka would treat his protagonist thusly, is his a sick mind? What he's trying to show us isn't of his own devising; Kafka's calling is equally unfortunate, for he had been called to the ungrateful duty of revealing the ugly side of industrial based culture.

Nobody cares for anybody else in this story, if they have no material economic use. If you are sick, your supervisor will appear at your doorstep at 7:00 in the morning, before you can get out of bed. Your immediate family will try, but eventually their patience and resources will also expire. The key to this story, I believe, is Gregor's younger sister.

This story is really about Grete, who was enthralled by her big brother Gregor, as baby sisters are known to be. Sniffle. Gregor's resemblance to an older brother fades, and little sister must learn now to take care of herself, which she does. I'm reminded of the Pink Floyd song See Saw, "she grows up for another boy, and he's down". Grete didn't exactly meet another boy, but she did grow up, and her big brother finally "bugged" her enough that she had to leave him.

Metamorphosis is the story of Grete growing up, and more interestingly, her growing into replacement part status in the cogs of industrialized Europe. She, too, dispatches Gregor with decisive haste, cutting her losses as cruelly as the three lodgers beg to sue Mr. Samsa, the senior, over Gregor's outrageous appearance. The irony of Metamorphosis occurs in the phenomenon of the "family tie". The magic and power of the family tie is diminished between Gregor and the other Samsas, until Gregor is free to die in order to prevent further devastation to his family. But the family tie was also the Samsa's salvation, prevailing in the end to give the Samsa's some ground on which to rebuild their lives together.

Finally, I see in Kafka's short prose writing, whether they are his stories or letters, elements used by Kurt Vonnegut, as exemplified in his Welcome to the Monkey House. This could be in the brevity of his stories, his common vernacular, absurd, imaginary elements. I wanted to say sci-fi, but I don't think it's so much science as it is Kafka or Vonnegut saying, "look, give me this one posit of nonsense, and I promise the rest of it will make sense".

I picked this up solely for the diverse spectrum of Kafka's writings that it covers, and it's really a pretty darn good sampling of the authors works. Most of the other reviewers have covered the book well, but there are a few important points I would like to stress with this:

The translation is not the outdated, biased, Willa & Edwin Muir translation. They were the original translators of Kafka into English, and were somewhat inclined to pigeonhole his works into their interpretation. I haven't had any qualms with the works as they are in here.

But I would recommend skipping Erich Heller's introduction if you haven't already read a lot of work on or by Kafka. Don't let this spoil the beauty of being able to feel out your own interpretation of the author as you read him. In fact, avoid all criticism and interpretation until you're looking specifically for something like that.

I would highly recommend, though, if you're looking for some perspective on what to consider when reading and interpreting this, the book (several different titles for several different publishers) Kafka/Introducing Kafka/R. Crumb's Kafka, a graphic-novel sort of history of Kafka and his work by Robert Crumb(!!) and David Zane Mairowitz. It's excellent and gives a fair perspective on the Kafka and his social/historical/psychological context.

Kafka has exerted tremendous influence on a great many writers and communities of writers around the world. Although most of his writing comes from a 10-year span of his life just before he died, the impact of that writing on literature, cinema and many other elements of our culture can't be denied.

He embodies a complex writer whom you'll either love or you'll hate. I picked up my copy of this edition back in 1990, and have kept it a part of my essential library ever since.

I'm well aware there are better translations, better editions, etc. out there from a Kafka scholar's perspective.

But for my purposes it's more than adequate as an encapsulation of the man's writings. This may be pure sentimentality on my part of course.

For anyone who wants to read more than the old standbys of the Metamorphosis and the Trial, and to see some great examples of Kafka's total work, this volume is a wonderful gateway.

Its size is particularly useful for travelers and the very sorts of people who might populate Kafka's world.

In particular, I rather like Poseidon.

This edition gets a very positive recommendation for first-time Kafka readers, and even those who have a little more experience with him.

Introduced to Kafka by a news section comparing American Military Tribunals for Afghani POW's to Kafka's work "the trial", provoked me to pick up a copy of The basic Kafka from the local library's annual book sale. Realizing that this book didn't have the story "the trial." I put it down for a few months, eventually picking it up again and reading the most enjoyable short stories I have ever read.

The highlights of this book are "The metamorpheses", "Josephine the Singer", and "The Hunger Artist" all of which contain a strong social statements in an almost surreal setting. The influence of existentialist thought on Kafka's writings, anyone interested in the application of existentialism on literature would be wise to begin here. Concise stories that are just as interesting as thought provoking.

There are also diary entries and letters for those who wish to delve into Kafka's personal life. I just skimmed through this section, but it was apparent he was a mysterious and intelligent man. This book is recommended to anyone whether their interest in modern schools of thought are high or not. Even if the stories dont exhibit a strong social messag, the stories themselves are interesting enough to carry you through this introductory book with ease.

Somehow this bio transcends academic pretense to present a picture of a man in a room trying to write something, anything. Any writer who has ever struggled to fill the blank white page will greatly appreciate this work. It dymstifies without being stupefying. the translator should be applauded for what appears to be a first rate translation. hopefully the same translator will be involved for the next two volumes although this is such a personal look at the writer and thinker it is hard to imagine what else could be written in the other two volumes. this is the man stripped bare before a mirror while maintaining a dignity enjoyed by few writers of his era. Kafka was truly a writer ahead of his time, so far ahead of even the most serious of philosophers and thinkers of his age that he could have easily fit into the 1950s as in the turn of the century 20th. He in an odd way predicts the very alienation we now face in our daily lives writing from an era when seconds and minutes meant little but now appear to mean so much. He predates the modern era with a life that is Dante-esque in its vision of the 20th and 21st century as the fifth circle of purgatorial existence. Complete with not one but two Beatrices to accompany his short life. BRAVO!

Leaving description to Amazon and other reviewers, I wanted to leave only a few words of praise for this fine book, which oftentimes itself reads as lovely prose. Kafka's biography unfolds clearly; parallels between his work and the occurrences in his personal and professional life (Kafka was a lawyer and civil servant in the insurance industry) are presented honestly and convincingly. The book reveals a highly neurotic man that defied early 20th century Prague jewish community conventions, in the process leaving behind a profound footprint on world literature.

I enthusiastically recommend this book!

This is a dense, but very enjoyable, examination of the life and work of one of the more intriguing minds in literary history. Every page seems to offer something extraordinary, a detail so jarring, yet right, somehow, that it might have been lifted from a tale by Kafka himself.

The description of Kafka's father's workers casually brushing asbestos off their clothes after their factory shifts, as if primping for an evening on the town, is just one compelling, Kafkaesque detail in a book that's replete with them. The result is fascinating reading.

Along the way, many myths are debunked, including the wellworn cliche of how the writer's famous story, "The Metamorphosis," was born. The oft-told story of Kafka spying a roach crossing a page at a critical creative moment is roundly dismissed. Instead, Stach offers a more plausible version, masterfully recounted, beginning with the words: "Kafka lay on his back and let his eyes wander across the walls and ceiling. It was cold, and a gloomy gray November light was creeping in, as it had for days. Condensation dripped from the window."

As this quote indicates, this volume is a sustained glimpse into a fascinating writer and mind, made even more haunting by its superb translation (by Shelley Frisch).

This book itself is superb. The writing of Reiner Stach, at least as tranlated here by Frisch, is a wholly enveloping affair: sure enough, Kafka was a pessimist. Learning of his existence through the years 1910-15, I can't but think its a down-right shame the vegetarian hypochondriac with such a fragile psychology got no more satisfaction out of life than he did. There were fleeting glimses of ecstasy but on the whole, his was a sad, tortured life which has given me pause and cause to abandon dreams of ever wanting to cling to such high aesthetic standards as did Franz Kafka. Our tall, skinny genius became enmeshed and swallowed whole - very seldom was he able to emerge from underneath his crushing ambitions of literary perfection.

Stach makes you feel for the guy without for a second resorting to pithy sentiment and thinly veiled excuse-making. This book makes me want to enjoy life in so many more ways than Kafka seemed to have denied himself. Tragic (sort of). Crushing. It seemed preventable - as though he chose to suffer for his writing - but I live in America c. 2006.

I mark this book right up there with Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky (though I got a good deal more satisfaction out of Frank's work; it could have been simply the nature of the subjects being written about). As for the book itself -- Five Stars. Certainly.

>Washington Post, November 27, 2005

>Translated from the German by Shelley Frisch

>
> Like Pascal, Kierkegaard and Baudelaire, Franz Kafka (1883- 1924) is one of the great masters of spiritual desolation. We don't actually read his work, we are harrowed by it. In German of classical directness and purity, this desk functionary of the Prague Workers' Accident Insurance Institute presents tableau after tableau of what Pascal called " la misre de l'homme sans Dieu ," the misery of man without God. All of Kafka's unfortunate protagonists -- Georg Bendemann in "The Judgment," Gregor Samsa in "The Metamorphosis," Josef K. in The Trial -- struggle against the one great, serious truth about life: Each of us is fundamentally and inescapably alone, especially in the face of death.
>
> Oh, we may hope to lose ourselves in love, family or work, but these are just Potemkin villages, little more than flimsy movie sets. They can be knocked down with a single sharp blow. After all, a man could wake up one morning to find himself transformed into a gigantic cockroach or suddenly arrested without having done anything wrong. Far-fetched? By no means. Some sunny afternoon, the X-ray will unexpectedly reveal a shadow no bigger than a baby's hand; one evening, after a pleasant dinner with wine, the phone will ring. And then, we, in our turn, will twitch and twist and finally give in to the inevitable, like the tormented prisoner of "In the Penal Colony."
>
> Kafka's stories are all parables of despair and helplessness, sorrowful emblems of the human condition. The all-important message from the emperor will never reach our ears, the hunger artist must die because he can't find anything he'd like to eat, the mole-like digger will always fail to construct a burrow, impregnable to his enemies, the door into the castle isn't ever, ever going to open. Is no redemption possible in this world? Of course it is -- just not for us.
>
> Kafka's work is, famously, susceptible to interpretations of all kinds. Nonetheless, most readers still tend to see the stories as fundamentally existential or theological, the modern equivalents to Plato's fables about caves and the origins of love or of Kierkegaard's many brief philosophical fictions. But, since the death (in 1968) of Kafka's literary executor, Max Brod, who pushed a sacerdotal view of his friend's writing, modern scholarship has turned to examining the actual life of this enigmatic artist. Certainly nobody, with one celebrated exception, actually creates ex nihilo . And so, we have now seen the careful publication of Kafka's holograph manuscripts, the scholarly editing of his every scrap, commentaries stressing his links to gesture-rich Yiddish theater and to cultural Zionism, speculation about his sexual life -- did he really have a son by Grete Bloch? -- and research into his actual daily work at the insurance office (he was a recognized authority on industrial accidents).
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> Reiner Stach's Kafka builds on much of this research. By focusing on 1910 through 1915 -- the time in his late twenties and early thirties when Kafka fell in love with Felice Bauer and began to produce his first great stories -- Stach aims to tell us all that can be known about the writer, avoiding the fancies and extrapolations of earlier biographers. The result is an enthralling synthesis, one that reads beautifully, in part thanks to the excellence of Shelley Frisch's English.

>
> Though he avoids invention, Stach knows too much simply to present the facts and just the facts. With the kind of lan we associate with European intellectuals, he actively engages with his material, commenting or reflecting on its meaning. Take the correspondence with Felice Bauer. Stach admits that Kafka would have been appalled by the publication of these letters, but he then reflects on letter-writing as "one of the essential forms of modern individuality," goes on to note that mail posted on a Saturday night in Berlin (where Bauer lived) would be delivered on Sunday morning in Prague, and that Kafka so fetishized this young woman's letters that he carried them along on business trips. All this, and more, then serves to enhance a patient presentation of an agonized epistolary romance, the central thread of these crucial years.

>
> The evening that Kafka met Bauer -- August 13, 1912 -- is, Stach asserts, one of those landmark days in intellectual and literary history, like the October afternoon in 1749 when Rousseau suddenly grasped the corrupting nature of civilization during a walk to Vincennes or the night of Oct. 4, 1892, when Paul Valry decided to renounce poetry. A few days after that casual meeting, Kafka composed -- in a single night from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. -- his first masterpiece, "The Judgment," in which a father unexpectedly condemns his son to death. Stach aptly summarizes its importance:
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> "Suddenly -- without guide or precedent, it seemed -- the Kafka cosmos was at hand, fully equipped with the 'Kafkaesque' inventory that now gives his work its distinctive character: the father figure who is both overpowering and dirty, the hollow rationality of the narrator, the juridical structures imposed on life, the dream logic of the plot, and last but not least, the flow of the story perpetually at odds with the hopes and expectations of the hero."
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> Many months go by before Kafka again sees Bauer. During this time he confesses in his letters that he lives for literature alone, that he is unsociable, fearful, sickly, unhealthily thin, self-pitying, obsessive, neurotic, without interest in children and probably incapable of sexual intercourse. He has nothing to offer her, except his devotion -- and he's not even sure about that, since it might interfere with his writing.

>
> Meanwhile, Bauer is dealing with problems of her own. Kafka doesn't know that her father once abandoned her mother to live with another woman, that her sister is about to give birth to an illegitimate daughter and that her brother is a swindler (who eventually flees to America to avoid his creditors). Bauer has compensated by becoming a serious career woman, the sales representative for a dictation system called Parlographs. Her family counts on her, expects her to make a good match. So, naturally she falls more and more in love with this loser from Prague.

> Whenever the two meet, they are tongue-tied, and yet before long there is uncertain talk of marriage, eventually followed by a painful engagement ceremony. Not surprisingly, Kafka finally realizes that he simply can't face the prospect of a wedding and suddenly calls the whole thing off, at almost the last moment. Though Stach ends his book shortly after this, in 1915, Kafka fans know, Felice and Franz eventually started seeing each other again and, in 1917, they announced a second engagement. Kafka cancelled a second time, this time for good: By then, he was spitting up blood and diagnosed with tuberculosis. Nonetheless, he still had eight years to live and, surprisingly, there would be other women, as well as work on stories like "The Hunter Gracchus" and "A Hunger Artist" and the never-completed masterpiece The Castle .

>
> I can't say enough about the liveliness and richness of Stach's book. Even his chapter epigraphs, while apposite, are delightfully original. When he discusses Kafka's official duties, he heads the chapter with a quotation from the Portuguese writer (and sometime office worker) Fernando Pessoa: "What are desires compared to a promotion?" When he discusses "The Metamorphosis," he opens with a line from the pulp detective Charlie Chan: "Strange events permit themselves the luxury of occurring." In short, every page of this book feels excited, dynamic, utterly alive. My copy is now covered with pencilings and marginalia.

>
> Above all, though, Stach repeatedly underscores that Kafka never valued incompleteness or endorsed a romantic cult of the fragment. "The opposite is true. He greatly admired perfect formal unity and was determined to achieve it, a resolution evident in every one of his endeavors. His pursuit of formal perfection meant, his literary texts had to develop organically from their fictional and visual seed. There could be no arbitrary plot twists." After reminding us of Kafka's need to work in sustained bursts, he zeroes in on the author's creative problem: "Kafka suffered not from a lack of ideas but from a lack of continuations . . . . He demanded much more from his texts than formal unity; he sought. a seamless linking of all motifs, images, and concepts. . . . Not one detail of Kafka's descriptions, whether the color of a piece of clothing, a gesture, or simply the time of day, is merely illustrative. Everything carries meaning, refers to something, and recurs." Little wonder, almost everything fell short, in this quest for perfection.

>
> Near the end of these "decisive years" Kafka was working on The Trial. By now, he had written a handful of masterpieces -- and important professional reports for his insurance company; he had fallen in and out of love with Bauer while also flirting with (or even succumbing to) her close friend Grete Bloch; he had talked with Martin Buber about Zionism, dealt with the novelist Robert Musil as his editor, and attended a ballet in which Nijinksy danced. Though we must imagine Kafka in his noisy family apartment, living on vegetables and hidden in his room, we shouldn't forget, he also traveled to Venice and once stopped in Trieste, where he could have glimpsed Italo Svevo and James Joyce. (As he had learned Italian for his insurance work, he might have spoken to them.) And even this introspective and solipsistic genius eventually noticed when Europe went to war in 1914, though not for a while. His diary entry for August 2, 1914, reads: "Germany has declared war on Russia. --Swimming in the afternoon."

>
> Could this last, I have long wondered, be an example of Kafka's wit? (He could supposedly set his friends roaring with laughter when he read some of his stories aloud.) Certainly, one suspects a smile behind this passage in a letter to Bauer from 1913: "Are you finding any meaning in 'The Judgment,' I mean some straightforward, coherent meaning that can be followed? I am not finding any and I am also unable to explain anything in it." Many feel just as puzzled even now when they first finish reading the story.
>
> Such a strange man. But, this fine book helps us better understand that apparently-inexhaustible strangeness. Right now, Kafka even seems a useful counter-example to the ongoing cult of celebrity authors and bright, edgy writing. He destroys more than he publishes, he takes art as serious and life-changing; he views writing as a vocation of dissatisfaction, unhappiness and sacrifice. As he writes to Bauer: "I have no literary interests; I am made of literature. I am nothing else and cannot be anything else." This certainly sounds grandiose and exaggerated, but, in Kafka's case, it's also true.

> Michael Dirda is a critic for Book World.

I would like to focus in this review on the final pages of this outstanding and moving biography. In it Pawel tells the story of two of the great loves of Kafka's life, Milena Jesenka and Dora Dymant. In these stories we see how Kafka who somehow more deeply than any other writer conveys anxiety in loneliness, was very much loved and respected in his own lifetime. The heroic Milena Jesenka whose courage in helping people throughout her terrible time in Ravensbruck Concentration camp where she died on May 17, 1944 is related by her friend Margeret -Buber- Neumman's outstanding memoir of their time there.She understood and was devoted to the genius Kafka. Dora Dymant was with Kafka through the painful last months of his life. Her sacrifice, devotion and love of him knew no limit.They dreamed together of traveling to 'Palestina' and beginning a new life together. She loved him with a total and true love, and remained devoted to his memory throughout her life. We owe the fact that Kafka's works were not destroyed, and in fact became known to the world through the devoted action of his best friend, writer and biographer, Max Brod.
This book is written with deep human feeling and sensibility.
I want to close this review with Milena Jesenka's obituary for Kafka which appears towards the end of the book.
" Dr.Franz Kafka , .. writer who lived in Prague, died the day before yesterday in the Kierling Sanitorium at Klosterneuberg near Viena. Few knew him, for he was a loner, a recluse wise in the ways of the world, and frightened by it. For years he had been suffering from a lung disease, which he cherished and fostered even while accepting treatment.. It endowed him with a delicacy offeeling that bordered on the miraculous, and with a spiritual purity uncompromisingto the point of horror... He wrote the most significant works of modern German literature' their stark truth makes them seem naturalistic even where they speak in symbols. They reflect the irony and prophetic vision of a man condemned to see the world with such blinding clarity that he found it unbearable and went to his death."
I believe with the years many readers would substitute for the phrase 'most significant works in modern German literature' the phrase 'most significant works in world literature'.

I really enjoyed this bio. Unfortunately my copy was very used and progressively fell apart as I neared the end. Would like to buy a decent (whole) copy for keeps.

Few twentieth century authors have had as widespread an impact on modern literature as Franz Kafka. Even fewer biographers have managed to serve their subject so well as Ernst Pawel does the eternally enigmatic Kafka in THE NIGHTMARE OF REASON: A LIFE OF FRANZ KAFKA.

If ever the term "tortured genius" was applicable to one of the giants of literary history, it was without question to the Prague-born Jewish author Franz Kafka. Born July 3, 1883, to this day Kafka is celebrated worldwide for the seemingly bizarre, amorphous, surrealistic, and yet pin-point precise writing that characterizes such classics as his novels The Trial and The Castle, and his story Metamorphosis. What most readers don't realize, and what Ernst Pawel makes so stunningly clear in The Nightmare of Reason, is that Kafka's phenomenal work represents a true-to-life rendering of the emotional trauma, religious persecution, political oppression, and physical anguish he suffered throughout his life.

In the course of weaving together the historical and spiritual threads that bound the different elements of Kafka's existence, Pawel sheds much-needed light on one of the most famous father-son relationships in literary culture. In his wisdom, Pawel illustrates how both Franz and his father Hermann Kafka were largely products of their political and social times--an era that saw the unapologetic murderous oppression of Jews in Europe, ongoing debates over Zionism, and eruptions of war around the globe. How father and son adapted as individuals to these issues created between them walls too thick and tall to work their way around. Moreover, his mother Julie's need to make herself more available to her husband as a business partner and comrade than to her only son and her daughters did little to heal the future author's sense of abandonment in a terrifyingly tumultuous world.

If Kafka had had only his family's collective angst and Prague's political instability to cope with, he would have been immersed in the same kind of life conditions that many writers revel in to create their best work. His situation, however, was a far more complex one. Despite a healthy appreciation for sexual enjoyments, he nevertheless distrusted the deeper levels of binding emotional intimacy. In addition, he was prone to contracting illnesses rarely heard of outside Biblical times and accentuated the pain of these with an acute hypochondria.

The grace with which Kafka navigated chronic illnesses, held down a demanding job as an insurance claims administrator, pursued serious literary ambitions, and compassionately addressed the needs of others, made him appear more than human in the eyes of some. That his biological clock seemed to stop around the age of 20 did little to persuade them differently. Even months before his death at the age of 40, his countenance was more that of a youth curious about whatever surprises life might hold than it was that of a middle-aged man who had weathered his share of brutal storms, not the least of which was maintaining commitment to his literary art.

In his biography of the author, Pawel allows readers to feel the full weight of pain in Kafka's life so we come to understand what it means for a dedicated writer of his caliber to struggle past the agony of accumulated wounds and transform unrelenting affliction--if not into ecstasy capable of saving the life of the writer, then at least into art capable of inspiring humanity to address the danger of its absurd and deadly vanities. Kafka once put it this way: "Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little of his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins."

As much as he was beset by demons or sorrow throughout his years on the planet, Kafka was also blessed by the company of such angels as his courageous younger sister Ottla, his legendary off-and-on-again fiancé Felice Bauer, the famed political journalist Milena Jesenska, and the passionately devoted Dora Diamant. Just as he empowered each with his knowledge and influence, so did each in turn serve as sources of strength and refuge in his many hours of profound need. In his account of their place in Kafka's life, there's never a need for Pawel to exaggerate because the humbling facts speak so persuasively for themselves.

Had it not been for his friend Max Brod, few people outside European literary circles would likely have ever heard of Kafka. It was Brod who first recognized Kafka's genius, Brod who secured publication outlets for that genius, and he who later wrote the first biography on his friend, all while producing dozens of volumes of original writings himself. His most significant role in the Kafka story as the world knows it today is that of the man who defied his friend's instructions to destroy his unpublished works after his death, which occurred at noon on June 3, 1924. Brod did the exact opposite, editing and publishing as much as he could, in the process providing the world with two of its most enduring classics. If the act may be described as a betrayal of trust, it may also be interpreted as a towering testimony to a rare kind of friendship.

As amazing as The Nightmare of Reason is for its full-dimensional treatment of Kafka, it is equally so for Pawel's examination of the roots of modern anti-Semitism. The insights gleaned from his account of the irrational fears and exaggerated accusations that eventually gave rise to the Holocaust are not without their use in 2007. Consequently, reading the book is not only an excellent way to explore the creative depths and historical substance that produced Kafka's art. It is also a powerful way to reexamine those tendencies which lead humanity to blindly destroy that which it does not easily understand, and to reclaim the ability to transform fear into knowledge, then knowledge into the power to heal, and healing into a greater capacity for love.

by Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of The Harlem Renaissance Way Down South
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File Library of American History)

Mr. Pawel's book is an articulate account of Kafka's tortured life. Though the details are interesting, it is the manner in which these details are presented by Pawel that makes this book such a pleasure to read. Pawel's style is commendable and his insight is impressive. A worthy tribute to a giant of modern literature.

Photographs of Franz Kafka at age thirty and age forty appear in the center of the book. Through the years, nothing has been subtracted from the world's consciousness of his genius. He was born in a Prague still solidly embedded in the middle ages. His father, Hermann Kafka, had clawed his way out of poverty. In 1848 full citizenship rights had been granted the roughly four hundred thousand Jews within the Hapsburg Empire. Hermann did not have to exaggerate the hardships of his youth.

The world of Freud was the world of Kafka. Kafka, named for the emperor, felt that his childhood had crippled him. Family life focused on his father's drygoods store. Hermann had a booming parade-ground voice. Kafka denounced school as the conspiracy of the grown-ups. He had life-long difficulty over face-to-face meetings with authority figures. Over ninety per cent of the Jewish children in Bohemia received their education in German. For eight years Franz attended the German National Humanistic Gymnasium. Among other things, pupils were trained to work in a bureaucracy. They did many pointless tasks.


Kafka noted that to him writing was a form of prayer. In his age literature had taken the place of faith, ritual, and tradition. The productivity of writers in Austro-Hungary was staggering. The western Jews faced a dilemma. The sons, who seemed to be out of the business game, wrote. At the university Franz moved from philosophy to chemistry to the study of law. In 1902 he met Max Brod at a student society called the Hall. Brod recognized Kafka's genius. He came to believe Kafka would become the most important writer of his time. Brod had zest for life. The young Kafka was a striking combination of innate nobility and tact. He was both a middle class Jewish law student, at least until his graduation in 1906, and an underground hermit.

Franz Kafka once compared insurance to the religion of primitive man. The Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute was part of the Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy. Kafka's superiors claimed he had exceptional faculty for conceptualization. He was granted Civil Service tenure in 1910. Franz became a vegetarian, he practiced body-building, and sought to break his creative paralysis. He began in 1910 to keep detailed notebooks. The diaries inspired him to develop working methods.

In the fall of 1910 Kafka went to Paris with Otto and Max Brod. He was ill, but returned the following year and had better luck. In 1911 he attended a lecture of Karl Kraus and in the same year he met Kurt Tucholsky. Kafka became fascinated with the Yiddish theater. Subsequesntly he became interested in Jewish history and studied Hebrew. He also followed the affairs of the Zionists and the agricultural settlers in Palestine. In 1912 he gave a speech on the Yiddish language. The speech has been preserved by the notes taken by Elsa Taussig, Max Brod's wife.

He read voraciously. Writing justified his life and his not living his life. Kafka's first novel was AMERIKA. Kurt Wolff became his publisher. In 1912 as he was preparing his manuscript he met Felice Bauer through Max Brod. The courtship lasted five years. Felice preserved the leters. His unfinished novel, THE TRIAL, arose from his involvement with Felice Bauer. Later he had tuberculosis and he determined that the illness was a reason for him to terminate the relationship.

By 1921 Kafka could not longer meet the physical demands of his job. Visits by old friends tired him and depressed him. He corresponded with another friend, Milena, and wrote THE CASTLE his most elaborately autobiographical work. At some point in 1922 he pleaded with Milena not to write him again. His letters to her have also been preserved. In the end, Kafka, who feared death, surrendered to Dora Dymant. He stayed in a sanitorium near Vienna. Dora joined him there. He died in 1924 of tuberculosis of the larynx, (hungry and thirsty).

This is my favorite collection of stories of ANY genre. The book desperately needs to be reprinted.

This is a great collection of short stories by Rudy v.b. Rucker and his math-embedded writing style. If you are not a collector looking for '57th' and are just interested in the stories, see Gnarl!, a recent (Apr 2000) collection of Rucker's short stories which include many from '57th.'

_____________________________________________
This is a very uneven collection, but has
his definitive 70's story, "Jumpin' Jack Flash": V-sex, lesnerizing & the
Pure Land:

"Flow now while I'm touching you, darling, " she breathed. I let my
head go slack, and it began sinking down thru the collar of my shirt.
Helen was fumbling frantically at our clothes... It didn't seem like she
was ever going to get them off, so I reduced viscosity and flowed out of
my left pant leg and onto the floor. She'd gotten her shirt and bra off,
and she lay down to rub her stiff-nippled breasts across me...'

-- the hottest sex-with-aliens scene I know of, & pure essence-of-Rucker
in 20 pages. Not to be missed.

Happy reading--
Pete Tillman

This fabulous book of short stories is a must have for all those who are true Rucker fans. 57th Franz Kafka contains dozens of short stories most of which were originally published in various Sci-Fi magazines at some point in the 70's or 80's. For fans of "Master of Space and Time", this book contains numerous stories about the same two main characters. I found this book of the similar integrity as "White Light". For those who did not like the 'ware series that much, this (as well as White Light) may be more your speed. Some of the short stories involve complicated mathematical concepts (big suprise!) or familar fables such as a revisitation of Flatland! If you can locate this book, I would HIGHLY recommend getting it.

I'd like to point ut to those who critocized Kafka's spelling of America that country spellings are actually different depending on where your from. If you read about where Kafka was from and look on a map you'll see it spelled as Prague. However if you go to Prague and look on one of their maps they actually spell it Praha. Therefore we are just as guilty.

perhaps it is best this novel remains unfinished......i've written and rewritten the last chapter in my head numerous times and that's been half the fun.......

I know Kafka was not American. I know that he wasn't even British and that he didn't speak English. He was Czech. He wrote in German. But "AMERICA" is spelled with a "C". I can't fault Kaca for this mistake. But his editors should have noticed it, I think.

It amazes me how Kafka has caught the American spirit so well. Since the end of World War II, Ameirican culture has become increasng hedonistic at the expense of other nations and even our own poor. But that spirit is reflected especially so in the 1990's where we seem to have forgotten what it means to look out for one another, and have lost the meaning of true hospitality and human empathy. Perhaps, Tom Brokaw in his new book, The Greatest Generation, is right; not since our grandparents has the nation cared for it's own in such an unselfish manner. That sense of caring seems to have been lost to us today.

I was drawn to this book because the author's search for Dora's life story was fascinating and inspiring. I expected an interesting biography, but ended up with a page-turner.

While the story itself has many elements of an intrigue novel (a short and doomed love story, dramatic and tragic death, escapes from the Gestapo, locales in several countries, the mysterious fate of Kafka's documents, missing diaries, and reunited long-lost relatives) the book is actually a meticulously researched biography. So,the big bonus is that "Kafka's Last Love" can be enjoyed for its historical and literary significance, or just because it tells one heck of a good story!!

I am a fan of Kafka since my high school days, when I elected to read The Trail. I picked this book up on a whim, as it was deeply discounted at a local book store, but it really was interesting and well written. Kafka's death bed scene is very poignant. I would recommend this book, as I have already read other biographies of Kafka, and I did find myself surprised by new information. I had previously only been familiar with the story Felice having read Kafka's letters to Felice. Imagine my surprise to find a "new" woman in Kafka's life.

Kathi Diamant in this work tells the story of the last love of Kafka's life, Dora Dyamant. In doing so she reveals a Kafka quite different from the standard image of him. He is revealed here as an especially magnetic, kind, humorous and playful - even loving individual. The story of his meeting with Dora Dyamant when he was already ill with tuberculosis, their falling in love, and deciding to live together, her devotion to him in the last years of his life, with him dying in her arms- is a central element in the narrative. But the story does not end with Kafka's death but rather continues following Dyamant through a series of wanderings with her ending her life in London where she was devoted to the spreading of the Yiddish language. Her one daughter would suffer a tragic fate, and die in poverty and madness.
Diamant did a tremendous amount of research in revealing new details in the Kafka- Dyamant relation, and the Dyamant story as a whole.
This is a work essential for all those who are obsessed with Kafka. But it also a story for those who care deeply about the relationship of Literature to Life.

There are many unknown facets of Kafka's life, and until any existing lost records (taken by the Gestapo, or destroyed by Kafka or Diamant) appear, the mysteries will continue. This book solves one of these mysteries, that of the intensity of Dora's brief (less than a year) relationship with Kafka, which was the defining and long-lasting event of her life. The narrative is quite fascinating, both in its revelations of Kafka, its insight into life as a European Jew in the 1st 1/2 of the 20th century, and in the depth of fixation on Kafka by Dora. Many of her distant relatives survive (apparently not the author) which provides a connection to the present. After Kafka's death, Dora's life was basically one of different intensities and levels of tragedy; a tradition followed by her only child who herself ended in madness and death. A "must read" for Kafkaphiles.

slavery in Brazil! This book is very good! It backs everything up with documentation and it shows how cruel of an institution slavery was in Brazil. It also gives the reader a good idea on the scope of slavery in Brazil. 40% of the Africans transported to the new world went to Brazil. This was a country that was totally dependent on African slave labor.

Composed of myriad primary sources, Conrad prefaces each document with a description, date and summary of the following text. Organized topically and then chronologically within each section, the format perfectly suits the researcher. Interestingly, (for my purposes) the text contains numerous accounts of quilombos in Palmares, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and others. The documents date from 1550 (approx.) through the final proclamation ending slavery in Brazil in 1888. Outstanding research tool, as well as an interesting read for those wishing to learn, first hand, about slavery in Brazil.

This book is a giant collection of primary sources collected and edited by Robert Conrad pertaining to black slavery in Brazil. We used this book in my Slaves Societies of the Americas history course and it was an invaluable asset to my research. I had learned almost nothing about slavery in Brazil prior to reading this book and it has truly showed me the horrors of the institution of slavery. Having been mostly educated on slavery in the US South, I was shocked to discover that there were vastly more slaves in Brazil and that the Brazilian slavery system lasted practically until 1890. This is a must read for those who wish to gain a better understanding of what slavery in the Americas was truly like.

this is a highly technical book with excellent historical references and obvious good research. Very educational and informative. It is very readable. A word of caution: some of the commentaries reflect US or English mindset bias, i.e. a hint of a moral superiority, unwarranted, most probably unintentional and unconsciously done, but frequently encountered in books written in the English language about other cultures, which may offend other native language speakers.