You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Reading Kafka and Writing Fiction
Kafka is a strange case. I love reading him. His writing is so interesting that it doesn't really matter if nothing happens!
And you rarely understand what happens. And like much art that is hard to comprehend, I worry a lot of projection might be going on with those reviewers and/or critics you mentioned.
Then again, they might offer compelling arguments for their interpretation, I wouldn't know. But in stories like Kafka's, you can read in them quite a lot that may or may not be there.
What's the story's (Unglücklichsein) title in English, so I can find it?
Yes, this ability to be engaging even though it's unclear what happens, and things changes in the blink of an eye without the reader noticing, somehow - that is really genius.
The story is 'Unhappiness,' available here.
Just read it. It's not the Kafka I remember. Must be one of his earlier stories maybe. It does benefit greatly from a second reading! I was trying to guess what was happening the first time I read it, but failed. The second time things become much clearer.
I would say that even though nothing much happens in the story itself, in the traditional sense anyway, but things happen in the reader, who slowly comes to realize certain things, and even get a kind of creepy feeling maybe like an Edgar Poe story.