traveller

I read Metamorphosis and was absolutely blown away. Kafka had such a unique approach to writing. I like what ThePilgrim has said about the book, very similar to my understanding of the content whilst reading it.

Malone

I read the Metamorphisis, and in the forty something pages, it pretty much completely changed my ideas about what writing could be...what literature could be. The Stranger is one of the only other books I've read that compares on such a deep level. His balance of simplicity and philosophy explored through surrealism is everything I strive toward.
I hold Kafka as the most impressive writer of the impressive times he lived in. The writers around when he was alive were amazing, yet he blew them all away.
And he never even got anything published, did he? Never even tried. I think he never wanted his stuff published, then his family did it after he died. My kind of guy.
I'm working on The Trial right now. I have in as an eBook if anyone is interested in checking it out.

strangedaze

He did publish, mostly short stories in slim volumes. But your sentiment is bang on - he was reticent to publish and had to be prodded big time.

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'First I lick the mucilage - it's kind of sexy. I put the little metal diddle through the hole.'

- Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

Truth-Teller

Kafka is one overrated hack, seriously.

He should've stayed unpublished.

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When you try to impress, instead of communicating the written word, you have already failed as a writer; and if you're writing to be loved, instead of loving to write, you should not be called on.

Malone

Yeah truth teller, he's no Stephen King...so obviously you wouldn't like him.

Truth-Teller

No.

Compared to Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, Edgar Allen Poe, and even W. W. Jacobs--he suck.

Those four are the forefathers of horror, while Kafka is nothing more than a scion.

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When you try to impress, instead of communicating the written word, you have already failed as a writer; and if you're writing to be loved, instead of loving to write, you should not be called on.

Malone

I never really thought of him as a horror writer. Hmm. That's an interesting way to view it.

Soccah

Kafka is the steam rising out of a bureaucratic pressure cooker. The Blue Octavo Notebook is, in my mind, his greatest (and most reluctant) achievement--from what I understand, he wanted to burn all his work before he died.

sic_vita_esta

hm, sorry if I butcher this but I think it's via litotis, not negativism. It's not depressing, its enlightening because you have survived the text. The Metamorphosis has a lot to do with the misplacing of values, only when Gregor is able to step out of life can he objectively look at it and devalue it. The bourgeois society has everyone caught up in a cycle where money is of prime importance. Gregor's crime is not that he breaks down but that he is passively living life. just think of the "negativism" as the vehicle in which the message is conveyed.

Malone

Well said, sic.

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seigfried007

I'll ditto Malone--Well said, sic.

I haven't read much Kafka, but from everything I've heard, that sounded bang on. Haven't been able to get ahold of much of him--not sure where to look.

I think the problem with literature is that you need Socratic seminars and the presence of lots of other bright minds to fully get it. Otherwise, much of literature is 'boring' or in the case of Kafka, a solid WTF? moment.

Funny enough, I brought up wanting to read Kafka in high school English once and the teacher cringed. Another student read him for a book report (I believe it was Metamorphosis) and completely failed to get the point despite googling it and reading cliff notes. I remember thinking as I was listening to her report, "Gosh, I wish I'd read that one instead."

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Poor people are crazy, Jack--I'm eccentric

--Howard Payne

nacreous

fascinating thread. some truly marvelous comments on a wonderful author. one cannot read The Metamorphosis without devolping great respect for this man. He works reality, beautifully changing it so that it seems quite real, and yet it is not real at all. The cockroach is a symbol. Samsa is certainly Kafka. But Samsa is also everyman, everyone in this modern capitalist society of ours. We are reduced to the status of roaches, to scuttling about the floor, by the lives we choose to lead here. Samsa had chosen his money-grubbing life all on his own, and reduced himself to being a mere bug. Its not a symbol for death, dying has nothing to do with it in my opinion. Its that we choose to be insignificant, we choose petty little lives through our fear of living life fully. Few of us do what we really and truly want to do. Most of us are forced into stupid and meaningless jobs, fueling the burning, stimulating cravings and appetites for new things. Kafka saw that meaninglessness, that drift, and like the genius he was, transformed that human deformation into an utterly simple yet elegant 'metamorphosis.' You folks must read this book. If nothing else, you will see the power of suggestive description. Also pay close attention to his control of the narrator - at times, he is all-knowing, and at others, when he wanted to build suspense, the narrator is as unaware as you are about the tragic hero.

Thanks to the others on this thread. I shall soon look for "The Castle" because you folks told me to. I am sure I'll like it. Also, it was nothing at all like "The Stranger" by Camus. Yes, they were both existentialist, and yet their writings are as different and glare and darkness.

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nacreous - a type of high-flying cloud which often reflects the setting sun back to the earth long after darkness has fallen on the land.