Questions In a World Of Grey part 2 (Franz Kafka in general)

Member Name: Hunting_Bears

Product:	Franz Kafka in general
Date:	20/09/02 (293 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great writing

Disadvantages: not for everybody

Franz Kafka was a genius. I first discovered the writer when my sister recommended him because she thought that the style of writing was "my kind of thing". I purchased a copy of "The Trial" from my local "Evil Empire" bookstore and read it during the lonely winter nights. I found "The Trial" to be possibly the best book I have ever read because it had such a profound effect on me. Here was a writer who created these paranoid and nightmarish visions but did not write in a long-winded way that most writers succumb to. "The Trial" is about a man who is arrested one day and never told his crime. The rest of the book describes Josef K's fight against the police, judges, a bureaucratic system and the people around him who seem ambivalent to his fate and case.

There are some wonderfully written passages in "The Trial" which seem darkly humorous but also scary. The book is about a man caught in a bureaucratic hell and there is no escape, he is caught in the great machine that reminds me of the thousands who were arrested in communist Russia (this was written before the Revolution in Russia thus serving as an eerie echo of future events).

The story's main character isn't all he appears to be because Kafka portrays Josef as a deeply paranoid man. "The Trial" in particular is a dark story but the was another side to Franz Kafka which not many people know about. He often wrote surreal short stories like "A report to the Academy" with the opening sentence; " Esteemed Gentlemen of the Academy, you have done me the honour of asking me to present a report to the academy concerning my past life as an Ape".

Franz Kafka is most famous for his "Metamorphosis" which is a short story about a man who turns into a beetle. The story opens with the sentence " When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself

tr
ansformed in his bed into a monstrous insect". Kafka used opening sentences as a hook to get the reader to carry on reading.

This is my own personal theory anyway because the guy died in 1924 and I have never read a biography, I just decided and looked at most of his opening sentences and they all have this great opening style. Most of Kafka work uses paranoid and mistrustful characters and they're never heroes or sometimes likeable. I don't often read much fiction but Franz Kafka is my favourite writer.

My favourite short story that Franz Kafka wrote is "The Aeroplanes at Brescia". It isn't really a story it was an article he wrote for Bohemia (a Czech newspaper). The account Kafka gives is of seeing an air-show in 1909 when aeroplanes were just beginning to be more than people running of piers with large wooden wings. The sheer amazement and wonder of these aeroplanes in flight is wonderfully written but also the describing the crowds and Italian taxi drivers. The article is a superb read and shows another side of Kafka.

Franz Kafka offers the reader psychological depth in the characters which reminds me of Feydor Dosteyevsky but without the rambling nature of Russian literature. But there is something poetic in Franz Kafka's stories that are nightmares and dreams. Kafka could have been influenced by the surrealist movement at the beginning of the 20th century but the stories are not out and out bonkers. They just have an air of menace with nightmarish characters and situations. It is impossible to go into any great depth whilst writing on Dooyoo because the reader would not stand for it but being a writer I may write an essay on Kafka and put it in a collection of my short pieces.

I have been writing since I was very young and my own writing seemed to improve once I had discovered Franz Kafka. I don't mean to say that I copy him but my story "A Vienna Myste
ry&qu
ot; is a
deliberate homage to Kafka but Kafka's writings showed me a world of possibilities.

If you are interested in the writings of Franz Kafka you recommend that you read

"The Trial"

"Metamorphosis and other Short Stories" there are some excellent little stories in here like "Unhappiness" and " The Aeroplanes at Brescia".

"The Castle"

Viewing

"Kafka" (1993) Directed by Steven Soderbergh

"The Trial" (1961) Directed by Orson Welles


A Brief Biography:

Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883. After studying for a Law degree in 1906 he worked for the rest of his life working at an insurance company (there is to be an autobiographical element in "The Trial". He composed his strange fiction at night and died in 1924 from tuberculosis. Only a few of his stories where published in his lifetime and since his death his three unfinished novels "The Trial", "The Castle" and "Amerika" have achieved success and ensured Franz Kafka's place in history as one the greatest writers of the 20th Century.


In summary Franz Kafka's work is unlike anything I have ever read, the poetic visuals and odd characters that somehow find sympathy with the reader. Franz Kafka' s work will endure the tests of time.

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