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The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay
by
Louis Begley
A new biography of Western literature's most iconic writer, from the acclaimed novelist and author of "About Schmidt,"
Kafkaesque: the very word evokes tortuous bureaucracy, crushing self-doubt, and an almost unbearable inadequacy in the face of higher powers. After Kafka, it can be said, literature was not the same. In the few novels and short stories he left be...more
Kafkaesque: the very word evokes tortuous bureaucracy, crushing self-doubt, and an almost unbearable inadequacy in the face of higher powers. After Kafka, it can be said, literature was not the same. In the few novels and short stories he left be...more
Hardcover, 221 pages
Published
June 24th 2008
by Atlas Books
(first published 2008)
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Tom
marked it as to-read
Zadie Smith has interesting review of this book in most recent NYRB. She does good job of putting Begley's approach to K. in context of that taken by Max Brod, K's literary executor. In the process, Smith reveals some intriguing, and somewhat alarming, details about Brod's work as K's editor I didn't know. For example, apparently K's original manuscript of The Trial did not provide clear instructions on structuring the entire work, and so Brod decided on his own to put the famous parable "...more
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Begley’s biography is a brave one in the sense that Kafka’s biographical details, to those interested, have been so exhaustively treated that claim to new angles can only be treated with scepticism. Nevertheless, this cute little biography (I’m not being demeaning – the book is literally small) manages to resuscitate mystery in the figure of Kafka, a “marvelous man”; and if there is common ground to be found between the numerous accounts of Kafka’s life and person, it is that Kafka was indeed ex...more
This is just what I want biography to be. Historical, personal, and professional contexts are given succinctly with the essence of the subject emerging from a sum of countless moments. Beautifully constructed, the book has it's own arc but is made almost entirely of direct quotes. Worth it for the letter to Brod where Kafka says a book must be "the axe for the frozen sea inside of us".
Absolutely beautiful -- thoughtful, sensitive; successfully evokes Kafka's internal and external environment, informing a reading of his work while avoiding reductive critical analysis
Sarah
added it
terrifyingly magnificent
I'm sure there are better books on Kafka.
a good, interesting, if not particularly trailblazing, observance of kafka and his work. most of what is here is no different than any lay scholar of kafka could accumulate
Sam
marked it as to-read
This interesting review by Zadie Smith brought Begley's book to my attention:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21610
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21610
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Louis Begley is an American novelist.
Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in Stryi at the time part of Poland and now in Ukraine, as the only child of a physician. He is a survivor of the Holocaust due to the multiple purchases of Aryan papers by his mother and constant evasion of the Nazis. They survived by pretending to be Polish Catholic. The family left Poland in the fall of 1946 and ...more
More about Louis Begley...
Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in Stryi at the time part of Poland and now in Ukraine, as the only child of a physician. He is a survivor of the Holocaust due to the multiple purchases of Aryan papers by his mother and constant evasion of the Nazis. They survived by pretending to be Polish Catholic. The family left Poland in the fall of 1946 and ...more
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