| Product: |
America - Franz Kafka |
| Date: |
27/06/01 (93 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: interesting for Kafka fans
Disadvantages: rambling plot
America is a funny book. I can't work out whether it is more interesting for the fact that it is so different from The Trial and The Castle, or whether it just doesn't work that well.
The first chapter is actually entitled America, and was first published as a short story in its own right. It details the journey of the hero Karl Grossman on a ship to America after disgracing himself with a servant, and the strange characters he uncovers there. In the rest of the novel, he drifts around the country, never fitting in with the disparate characters he meets having been rejected by his uncle.
It is longer than the Trial, but far less cohererent as a whole. The usual themes of isolation, wanting to fit in, and so on, are all still there, but there are differences. Unlike the Castle or The Trial, the hero does not keep returning to the eponymous institution, but drifts apparently aimlessly. The novel is less dark and gothic, more rooted in the apparently everyday but running wild at times. It is long, it rambles, and I don't think it is a good starting point for Kafka study.
Maybe that's the thing to recommend it. If you know a bit about Kafka, and have read his other two novels, read this one to see the difference. If you don't know Kafka, I would start with the Trial
Summary:
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Last comments:
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- 04/12/01 The first chapter was, I think, also called the Stoker - after a character who takes Karl under his protection on the ship.
On your suggestion about the differences, isn't America itself the 'institution' around which the book revolves? Time and again it seems to have accepted Karl, only to send him fleeing in disgrace. A similar series of hopes and disasters to the Trial of Castle. And Karl is equally bewildered and ignorant of his circumstances. Of course, the humour is far more obvious (heavy-handed even), but there are common moments of ridicule or irony. |
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- 19/11/01 have to reread this one too...i remember liking it....unfinished though surprise surprise |
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- 02/10/01 Hello, big Kafka fan here (see 2 ops). I have never read this but always meant to. It sounds extremely like a short story that Kafka also wrote - perhaps called "the stoker"? Not sure offhand, but it's about a young boy who, indeed, sails to America to escape servant-related shame. It's only about 15 pages long. Have you read this one, and, if so, how does it correlate with the storyline of the book? Amazingly as it might sound to some people reading these comments, I would actually like to know. Sad but true! C-L. |
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