ReadySteadyBook - a literary site

Friday 17 October 2008

Bingham Bryant says...

I really would like to agree with you Hawes, but it's difficult when you deliberately misinterpret the sources you quote.
"Kafka’s name has become a journalistic cliché, calculated to evoke nightmares, injustice, the perversions of bureaucracy, surrealism, mental breakdown and the uncanny."
The Ft review is referring to the phenomenon of the "Kafkaesque", a term that is thrown about haphazardly by any high school student who has read the metamorphosis, and a few who haven't. It's talking about the way he's been pigeonholed as a writer, not as a man, about the fact that he's seen as all cockroaches and threadbare jackets, never as a writer who had a wonderful sense of humor. "Kafkaesque" is now a word that applies only to starving men sitting in labyrinthine offices, and as the words definition has narrowed, so has the general consensus on his writing.
It does not refer to Kafka himself, unless you're going to break your own rules and equate man and work. I doubt any Kafka scholar would describe Kafka's life as nightmarish, unjust, bureaucratic, surreal, mad and uncanny. Which leads me to believe that you may have picked the wrong target. Instead of going after the Kafka scholars, who, believe it or not, probably aren't read by all the dimwits who have "Kakfaesque" as part of their everyday vernacular, you should go after public opinion of the man itself. The best way to do that? Write a biography. And we're back to square one,because as Murray has pointed out, all the recent biographies have already unveiled all the dirty secrets you want to bring to light . Almost Kafkaesque, isn't it?