Franz Kafka Overview

In July of 1883, an average middle-class Jewish family in an average suburb of Prague (then in Austria) ushered into the average world a new creature: Franz Kafka. He would never forgive them for this unnatural act of torture. Franz kept... [more]

In July of 1883, an average middle-class Jewish family in an average suburb of Prague (then in Austria) ushered into the average world a new creature: Franz Kafka. He would never forgive them for this unnatural act of torture. Franz kept his neurosis quietly to himself throughout his childhood, reading fiendishly and occasionally writing plays for his two younger sisters. Though quite clever, the young Kafka piddled his way through grammar school and his first year at university, switching from chemistry to law to literature then back to law. He finally settled on the last because it was intellectually bland, thus leaving him plenty of time to brood on topics of greater import. To the lasting benefit of his later readers, Kafka befriended a literary fellow named Max Brod while at university. It was Brod who convinced Kafka to publish a couple of stories -- and to share other of his works more informally, by reading for the entertainment of friends at dinner parties. Rumor has it that all the guests -- including Franz -- had a good laugh at a certain black-humor piece called "The Metamorphosis." A series of banal jobs (a couple of insurance companies, running his uncle's asbestos factory) fed the cancerous growth of Kafka's mythos of the average man's inner life. His exposure of the gruesome, surreal underbelly of the quotidian humdrum in such masterworks as "The Trial," "The Castle," and, of course, "The Metamorphosis" would baffle, delight, and horrify generations -- perhaps even cause a few existential crises or nervous breakdowns. Poor, beleaguered Kafka lived at home all his short life, save for a few months of travel and several stays in sanatoria -- he contracted tuberculosis at 34. His father was unrelentingly disapproving, finding Franz, everything he did, and everyone he knew just a little too odd. Kafka had a series of passionate friendships/affairs with women, but he morally abhorred sex and never indulged with any "respectable" female. Several engagements ended abruptly due to his aversion; in any case, Kafka seems to have preferred epistolary courtships to physical. It seems that he was happy only once, for almost a year -- the "Blue Octavo Notebooks" (very rarely read) are the record of that time. On his deathbed, Kafka instructed Max Brod to burn all his manuscripts. Brod, to his credit, did nothing of the sort; instead, he edited and published every page, including Kafka's diaries. Some now say that his editorial hand weighed a bit too heavy, but let us not bite the limb that feeds! For what would twentieth-century angst be without Kafka? [show less]