The Trial
Franz Kafka
1925
Around 250 pages
Poor Franz Kafka. His last request was that everything he left behind be burned, unread. I wonder if it would be a comfort to him, knowing everybody thinks he's a genius. I'm not sure obsessively trying to complete a list is proper justification for invading his privacy. But like teenagers in a horror movie who've killed a homeless person and dumped the body in the ocean, I've come too far to turn back now.
Josef K., a cashier at a bank, is arrested by two agents of an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. On his birthday no less. He's permitted to remain "free" but must appear at court on a Sunday, without being told the time or room.
So basically, it's everybody's worst nightmare. I saw a critic refer to Kafka as the Dante of the twentieth century, which I think is an apt description. Bureaucracy is modern hell. You can relate to this novel simply by picking up the phone and calling Budget.
It's unfinished, so the ending is abrupt, but I actually thought it was perfect for the story. Well done.
RATING: ****-
Interesting Facts:
Heavily influenced by Crime and Punishment, and Kafka even called Dostoyevsky a blood relative.
Adapted in 1962 by Orson Welles, with Anthony Perkins in the lead.
UP NEXT: The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide. Another pedophile, gag.
5 comments:
"Kafka-esque" I think is even in the dictionary nowadays, to denote something with an ominous, labyrinthine bureaucracy. But I didn't think this was the point of the book at all (based upon a mini-library of one single Franz Kafka book I've read). The bureaucracy was a sideshow, an incidental tool to express how he feels that everyone he met was judging him.
Marvelous book, though. I must double the size of my mini-library some time.
BTW: No recent comments list on the books blog? So no way of knowing who might have replied to my insightful remarks and begun a scintillating debate about literature with me? (Or who's told me I'm talking out of my hind passage again).
Recent comment section added! Interesting about you saying bureaucracy was a sideshow, I've always thought it was central to his main point. But I guess you're right, it's bigger than that, it encompasses the entire struggle of the individual.
Comments - Whoop! Whoop!
Why on earth is there no Franklin W Dixon on this list? I trust there's at least a dozen of his great works still to come?
Unlike the movie list where I like to think I'm your equal, on books I bow down before your greater knowledge and expertise. So forgive my misguided ramblings...
Sniggering from the back of the classroom and they must be laughing at me. I catch the eye of someone walking the other way on the street and know that they've instantly worked me out as the loser I am. My choice of clothes is exposed as incorrect the moment I step out of the door. I walk into a bar and everyone in there knows I don't fit in.
It's the basis of all insecurity, that everyone has judged me, and yet there's nothing I can do about it. What exactly I have done wrong, what evidence proves it, who the judge and the jury might be, who can help and what I can do about it are indistinct at best. The only clarity is that I am in a perpetual state of trial and judgement.
And so the bureaucracy was a metaphor for this feeling of being lost? I do mean to read more Kafka. Maybe on the balance of more than one book I would assess it differently.
Or Carolyn Keene! Pretty much the 20th century Scriblerus Club. Not misguided ramblings, great point! I guess I zeroed in on the bureaucracy, just because that particular experience is so relatable to me. Like dealing with US healthcare, insurance, taxes, it saps the life out of you.
Post a Comment