Amerika
"Franz Kafka's diaries and letters suggest that his fascination with America grew out of a desire to break away from his native Prague, even if only in his imagination. Kafka died before he could finish what he liked to call his ''American novel," but he clearly entitled it Der Verschollene ("The Missing Person") in a letter to his fiancee, Felice Bauer, in 1912. Kafka began writing the novel that fall and wrote the last completed chapter in 1914, but it wasn't until 1927, three years after his death, that Amerika - the title that Kafka's friend and literary executor Max Brod gave his edited version of the unfinished manuscript - was published in Germany by Kurt Wolff Verlag. An English translation by Willa and Edwin Muir was published in Great Britain in 1932 and in the United States in 1946." "Over the last thirty years, an international team of Kafka scholars has been working on German-language critical editions of all of Kafka's writings, going back to the original manuscripts and notes, correcting transcription errors, and removing Brod's editorial and stylistic interventions to create texts that are as close as possible to the way the author left them." "With the same expert balance of precision and nuance that marked his award-winning translation of The Castle, Mark Harman now restores the humor and particularity of language in his translation of the critical edition of Der Verschollene.
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- Demian by Hermann Hesse. I wanted to scream "Stop overthinking!" to the protagonist. Something I can relate to.
Siddharta by Hermann Hesse. Helped me understand that a perfect life is a collection of ups and downs and that one must accept it all.
Amerika by Franz Kafka. Could relate to the protagonist because people take advantage of his naivety.
Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Made me see the world in a less pessimistic way.
- I've wondered if Kafka would have the same reputation had he finished his writings. I read Amerika, and though I enjoyed the book my strongest memory of it was the sudden shock I felt when I realized it was done and the last 40 pages were an afterword. It's hard to imagine an actual ending that produced such a lasting effect on me.
- Not very related to the article, but I'd like to get some opinions from HN community (if I may). I've read quite a few books and short stories of Kafka (I think all(?) his novels and some short stories like The Metamorphisis, A Report to an Academy) but most of them were really struggling readings for me and some incomplete (I never got to the very end of The Trial). His short stories, I read cover to cover in one sitting, and they were very enjoyable readings. I also read Amerika (his first novel) cover to cover pretty fast and it was very enjoyable too. His other works, I find very challenging for reasons unknown to me. Kafka has a certain literary style that feels very enjoyable, reading it gives me so much joy, so it's definitely not that I didn't like them. It's also definitely not boredom, some Kafkaesque "exaggeratedly long" scenes were pretty interesting and reminds me of Tarantino (not that there is any direct artistic resemblance, it just gives me similar type of enjoyment). Deeper ideas argued in novels are also interesting, and I like reading other authors trying to express similar ideas. But overall, reading Kafka is for some reason really hard for me. It takes too long relative other books I read, I lose focus very easily and it eternally feels like I'm missing some pieces of both the plot and the artistic structure etc... I also read authors that have been major inspiration to Kafka like Dostoevsky and never had the same problem. Did anyone else have this problem? I'd like to hear some tips from literary folks here to help me read Kafka better.
EDIT: As absurd as it sounds, I had similar feelings when reading his letters to Milena. I read that book twice, it's one of those books I really like but I had similar problems mentioned above.
- Kafka only wrote 3 novels, all unfinished, all excellent.
"The Trial" is the conventional starter Kafka novel. It's the only one with an ending.
"The Castle" is my favorite. A good entry if you think you already understand Kafka (you may be surprised).
"Amerika", or "The Man Who Disappeared", is an under-appreciated gem but should be read 3rd because it's the least complete and you'll need the practice appreciating unfinished novels.
- here's a transcription of the "trials" sequence:
## TRIALS
TRIALS
Once a year, I take a month & I read everything I can by one author.
This year I read 4 books by Thomas Bernhard in one month.
And the year before that, it was everything by Denton Welch in one month.
But - in 2009 - see, this was very very dangerous - I read everything by Franz Kafka in one month.
I started with "Amerika."
It was August.
I read The Castle.
## READING
I read The Trial.
I read all the short stories.
I read The Stoker, even though it's (verbatim) the 1st chapter of Amerika - because I really enjoyed Amerika.
I read all the deleted stuff.
All the Blue Octavo notebooks.
The Burrows and so on.
I skimped on the letters.
(Don't care who he was outside of his own imagination.)
And when I was finished, I felt done.
It went quick.
## BURN
I finished early.
I was done.
I was decimated.
To program any more was pointless.
My programs would never live as long as the trial.
Hadn't he told Max Brod to destroy all of those books?
He had sad to burn them, my friend, to burn these books.
But look, here was Amerika, thoroughly reconstructed.
## YOUGETIT
And yet completely unfinished, in my hands.
What if Amerika was only written for 32-bit PowerPC?
Can an unfinished program be reconstructed??
Can I write a program and go, "Ah, well, you get the gist of it."
If The Trial was written for 32-bit PowerPC, Max Brod wouldn't have to burn them! He would just be like, "How do I even get this thing off the hard drive?"
## EYES
But no.
It wasn't written for 32-bit PowerPC.
It was written for eyes.
At the end of Amerika, we don't even know how Karl gets to Oklahoma.
Who cares - he's in Amerika and he goes to Oklahoma.
In that last chapter, they say, "Does everyone have their identification papers?"
And a woman pulls a large bundle of papers out of her baby carriage - her perambulator - and raises them.
Karl has no papers, he simply raises his hand.
## FAREWELL
This is good enough, so they let him by.
What if he had not told Max Brod to burn them?
What if he had just not said anything to Max Brod except, "thanks a lot," and, "A fond farewell to you!"
In fact, seems weird he didn't burn them himself.
Tuberculosis doesn't stop you from burning paper, right?
A thousand pages.
Two thousand pages.
Maybe three thousand pages.
## FIRELESS
That's a lot, but I think he could have doone it, even alone, even with tuberculosis.
Imagine Kafka's fiendish little face rubbing his hands over that fire!
Seems fun.
Or he could have hidden it inside an old 32-bit PowerPC.
No one's going to look there.
Just goes to show that you can't trust people who aren't you.
Of course he didn't want them burned.
That was just Kafka, writing his own death.
The ending has his signature on it.
Reality's kind of a medium, maybe greater than paper.
## TORN
We all want life to have the same texture that we read about in novels.
Promise me you'll never read all 3 Kafka novels in a month.
- "If we found Julius Caesar’s private diary with admonitions to not read it, would we honor that?"
Judging by modern morals, Julius Caesar would be guilty of multiple genocidal war crimes. His private diaries would be rather evidence.
"that public figures private works are often of general interest."
This argument is basically, that if only enough people want something, they get the right. Which is not something I am a huge fan about. And Garcia was no Imperator, deciding the fate of millions, but a private writer.
And the argument about dementia, if he would have been so far away in dementia, while making the decision, I do not think his sons would have judged so harshly about themself:
"We did think about it for about three seconds - was it a betrayal to my parents, to my father's [wishes]?
"And we decided, yes, it was a betrayal. But that's what children are for."
I think this is mainly a internal familiy thing if his sons decide to publish and ignore their fathers wish. But I probably won't read it.
And it is a different case with Kafka:
"Before author Franz Kafka died from tuberculosis in 1924, he told friend Max Brod to burn all of his work. However, between 1925 and 1935 Brod published his collection of works including The Trial, The Castle and Amerika."
Because he told his friend Brod before, that he will ask him to destroy his works once he dies - and Brod told him clearly, that if he will do that, he will refuse and publish it anyway. So rather a kafkaesk joke all in all and no betrayal. If Kafka really would have wanted someone destroy his works, he could have asked someone else.
