For autistic Kafka admirers

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have any of the kafka admirers here read any bruno schulz? another strange man who wrote strange stories & another fantastic writer. i think he could be classed in whatever odd miscellaneous group we might put kafka & walser.

you're welcome! there is an odd alienated atmosphere all these writers share, an ability to write about everyday things as if they are very bizarre. i might just dust off my old volume of kafka's short stories & reread - particularly the burrow.

I've never been a big fan of Kafka, but I've become quite interested. I love to read about Orson Welles, and it turns out the film he said was his favorite was "The Trial". It starred Anthony Perkins and featured some bizarre sets, some of which were real building and some were built for the movie. The fascinating thing is that Welles so identified with this odd little film. He was persecuted as being a failure, yet he's celebrated today as a genius. Did he feel that sort of Kafka alienation? Did he feel left out of 'normalcy'?

No, sorry. I am not keen on Welles (except perhaps his "Othello"). But Welles' Trial has nothing to do with Kafka Perkins is an energetic young fighter (even is he loses). Joseph K. in an internally insecure man who puts up an empty show of arrogance, knowing intimately that he is a loser. His credentials are the membership card of the cyclist associations. He is gradually being captive of the system he pretends to oppose. Every step he takes in his inane defense is a surrender to rules of the game of the system.
I always recommend Kafka's "The Burrow" to understand what is life for an autistic. There is nothing more perfect.

i'm surprised to hear that about welles. i was under the impression that he had made it because it was the only project he could rustle up funding for, & that he didn't even like kafka. i don't think it's a great movie, but the scenes with welles himself & jeanne moreau are fantastic. some of the scenes were filmed in what is now the musee d'orsay, & was then a disused train station - a very beautiful building.

It is strange that I keep coming back to this post - because when I was going to University....(which I dropped out of).... -----stupid me!! !


I met a sociology professor....through some roomates....and........

we all became friends (of sorts)...

anyway - for my birthday.....

he gifted me with Kafka's book..."The Trial"....

I was 21 years old at the time....and tried to read it.....all I remember is K.....and just could not grasp it....then...

over the years....I developed this "stay-away" kind of mentality about Kafka.....but now....

I am intrigued....I understand things differently now....I am considering him again...

I mean......Guy....(my professor friend)....PHD...from the Sorbonne....gave it to me "for a reason".....he was very intense about it....

he has long since passed away....(but in honour of his memory)....and maybe in honour of his clarity into my soul....
maybe I should try to read it again.

One thing that should be considered in reading Kafka is the "gallows humor" present in all his writings Galgen humor . One thing we might do going to the gallows or to the firing squad is to invent jokes, to poke fun at our proximate death. This is also the attitude of another great writer Thomas Bernhard. The machine of human life is a laughingstock , is ridiculous. The machine will win but is grotesque, and for us death will come anyway, both that the executioner is the machine or a sickness or an accident. The machine (production of crap) has dominated all our life. In "The trial" you have the privilege to see it in all its absurdity. Animals are no subject to the "machine" as we are and their life is not so meaningless as that of us humans. They more near to God or Life (Capital letters).
Same thing holds for Samuel Beckett, Gottfried Jellinek, David Foster Wallace and other great debunkers of human society.

Film and Franz topic

Kafka lived before film became as poular as it is now. he did enjoy theatre, expecially Yiddish language drama and comedy.

I am sure he would have enjoyed Welles, who had a dark side the K man would understand.

I just finished reading "Investigations of a Dog". That particular story had a very strong resonance with me. More than anything else I’ve ever read.

"I can understand the hesitation of my generation, indeed it is no longer mere hesitation; it is the thousandth forgetting of a dream dreamt a thousand times and forgotten a thousand times; and who can damn us merely for forgetting for the thousandth time?"

Come over to the K side topic

In his stories Kafka alluded that each individual is a prison, and is looking for a way out. Yet what will the person find when the key(s) are discovered and the right door is found?

I feel bad for the Investigating Dog. I am not sure he liked what he found.

Thanks for writing, Marshall.

If I could summarize my interest in Kafka I would say this: Kafka's
writing is an effort to draw an account of the loneliness of man in
modern society. Modern doesn't mean here the three or four last
centuries, but the whole development of a complex, and as a consequence
of complexity, morally opaque society. an effort which had started
with Flaubert, Kleist and before them perhaps with Kierkegaard (not a
chance that these authors were loved by Kafka). It is a vital reaction
to complexity+opaqueness to look for salvation in a structured
defensive system ("The Burrow" was the last piece Kafka wrote, a kind
of testamentary will). The German title is "Der Bau", the construction.
The defense against an opaque power crashing us is not utopia or
revolution, but the maximum of precision in building defensive walls.