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Amerika: The Missing Person: A New Translation, Based on the Restored Text
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 like 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 bega...more
Hardcover, 299 pages
Published
November 18th 2008
by Schocken
(first published 1927)
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Chak
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Recommends it for:
angst-ridden hipsters who aren't worth the trouble to punch
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my husband... THANKS!
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Life is too short. Don't walk - RUN - away from this book. Masochist that I am, I got more than two-thirds through the book and finally could not stand it anymore. Amerika is about this 16 year old boy named Karl who gets exiled to America by his German parents after impregnating a household servant. Just as he was bewildered and passive during the aforementioned fornication (the maid overtly seduced him), Karl remained so for the rest of the book (at least what I read). Repeatedly, and wit...more
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Much like the protagonist in Roth's recent Indignation, one can't help but sympathize with and occasionally relate to Kafka's young tragic hero Carl, who, despite his efforts and good intentions is misread, slandered, and otherwise abused and molested while trying to make his way up in the world--held at bay of course by the lack of objectivity and empathy of people in power. In this case, the power mongers are rather lowly themselves: the cooks and waiters at the hotel where Carl finds himself...more
Karl Rossman seems to have what K and Joseph K. did not have, innocence and good faith. I did not find Amerika as brilliant as the trial or the castle, but it is Kafka (albeit a slightly more upbeat Kafka). Karl Rossman's battle, or rather his being dragged through random circumstance and unknown customs leads to some kind of acceptance (although it is unfinished, it does imply an optimistic ending for Karl) in an unfamiliar world (an America Kafka has imagined, as he never visited the country...more
Kafka is a fantastic writer, and I did like the story of Karl ... but there were a lot of parts to this one that dragged on and on. I quickly grew tired of Karl's failure to succeed, and his inability to stand up for himself.
That being said, there is a lot of literary value in Amerika, and it is something that I am glad to have read. I especially like Kafka's take on American society, especially since he never made it to America at all. Little wonders like the desk that could open to any size...more
That being said, there is a lot of literary value in Amerika, and it is something that I am glad to have read. I especially like Kafka's take on American society, especially since he never made it to America at all. Little wonders like the desk that could open to any size...more
Wow - I wish I would have realized from the beginning that Kafka did not finish this book! Yet, at the same time, it is an engaging and fast-moving read.
That said, it offers some great insight of some of the immigrant experience. You see the main character, Karl, have to struggle through some tough situations in a new land. He is thrust into many situations where he has to trust complete strangers, which is hit-or-miss, just as it is in real-life. Because he has no almost no fa...more
That said, it offers some great insight of some of the immigrant experience. You see the main character, Karl, have to struggle through some tough situations in a new land. He is thrust into many situations where he has to trust complete strangers, which is hit-or-miss, just as it is in real-life. Because he has no almost no fa...more
Kafka, Franz. AMERIKA. (THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED). (Ger. vers. 1927; this translation 1996). ***. This was Kafka’s first novel, but the last to be published. As far as one can tell with Kafka, he never edited it for publication, with the usual unfinished ending. It actually starts off as if there will be a story and/or a plot, but soon fizzles out to the author’s usual disoriented meandering into a variety of styles and incidents that are only loosely – if at all – interconnected. My beli...more
Franz Kafka broke off writing his first novel, Amerika, on January 24, 1913. Though one of the most famous stay-at-homes in literature, Kafka liked to read travel books. His absurdist Amerika begins with young Karl viewing the Statue of Liberty and feeling "the free winds of heaven” on his face. The United States that Kafka depicts is more based upon myth than any real experience of the place. Certain odd details reveal one Continental impression of this land at a time when so many Eastern ...more
My copy has a Preface written by one Klaus Mann in August 1940. It describes Franz Kafka's life, his very sad life. He had poor health, worked in a gloomy office, never made enough money and with a solitary romance that was "doomed to dreary frustration." He never enjoyed any spectacular success as an author. His works became famous only after he died. Drats.
AMERIKA was supposed to be Kafka's light, funny and optimistic novel. It tells the story of Karl Rossman, a poor boy ...more
AMERIKA was supposed to be Kafka's light, funny and optimistic novel. It tells the story of Karl Rossman, a poor boy ...more
As E.L. Doctorow says in a very perceptive introduction to this volume, "Kafka would always have difficulty with the longer form of the novel" (xix). This difficulty is in evidence here. I am a great fan of both Kafka's "The Castle" and "The Trial," wherein the sheer power of the psychological and, I would say, religious themes compensate richly for a somewhat clunky presentation. But in this case the compensation is not so clear. Karl Rossmann, the young "...more
Like much of Kafka's oeuvre, Amerika is all but filled with maniacally hostile figures of authority and the hopelessness of a (too) forthright protagonist attempting to stave off their machinations as soon as the slightest show of weakness is made. Then those who have stood by the protagonist are made to suffer on the sidelines as they are witness to his repeated falls. The Lift-boy sequence is quite reminiscent of the entire journey of the Land Surveyor in The Castle.
Somehow the seemi...more
Somehow the seemi...more
Kafka's ability to turn the banal and mundane into a fantastical dream world is incomparable. The mintue you delve into his own brand of sentence and grammar you are pulled away from the familiar and into its distorted mirror image. The "k" in "Amerika," is without a doubt Kafka's signature. This Amerika is the self-absorbed, work driven and character obsessed America, not the "with liberty and justice for all," America. The opening paragraph clues you in immedi...more
If you know this is Kafka's first novel (even though published last), you can see the signs everywhere. The tone is remarkably uneven, events are more upbeat and energetic, and the absurd encounters he imagines between his characters are not as organic as those found in his later works The Trial and The Castle.
But the similarities are notable as well: the same quasi-incoherent dream quality permeates the entire story, where characters don't behave quite rationally and narrative th...more
But the similarities are notable as well: the same quasi-incoherent dream quality permeates the entire story, where characters don't behave quite rationally and narrative th...more
Odd and uneven, as an unfinished novel should be, I suppose. Still puzzling over whether Kafka thought there was bridge from NY to Boston, whether it's a simple error, or if he were making some sort of surreal point about what's possible in Amerika. Some of the passages are stunningly clear and eerily beautiful, like an early one when Karl steps out onto a balcony and sees New York as though refracted through shards of glass. Other passages, with Delamarche, Robinson and others, seem strained...more
Have you ever seen that off-beat weird ass movie "Nothing but Trouble" starring Chevy Chase, Dan Akroyd and Demi Moore? This book reminds me a lot of that movie. It is a funny book, but more like creepy weird funny. I'd hate to say Kafkaesque funny, but it works so well. This book was written before The Trial and The Castle which were the companion novels and like those books this one was never finished, but it seems way more resolved than The Castle and a little less resolved than...more
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I can't compare Mark Harman's translation to the old one by Edwin and Willa Muir since I haven't read that, but I enjoyed this very much. (This is the first time the word "enjoy", rather than "admire", applies to a Kafka work in my experience.) Karl Rossmann is a turn-of-the-20th-century Pinocchio (with sleazy companions Robinson and Delamarche as the Fox and the Cat) trying to become a real person, a modern-day Candide whose innocence hurts him while standing him in good ste...more
I can see how the idea of a hermit author who's never left his side of Europe attempting to write a story set in America can be intriguing enough to get you interested. That was certainly the appeal that I saw, but I got really drawn by all the fruitless struggles that Karl goes through in his dealings with everything about America. Although if Karl didn't have the crutch of being foreign, I can't see how anybody can like him; he's kind of a pansy and really snooty, sort of like a pretentious Ca...more
I had difficulties not feeling like a tool while reading Kafka at work on my breaks. A guy with a beard and thick rimmed glasses read Amerika, just makes me feel like a parody of myself.
Kafka is one of those authors young men latch on to in high school or college and inevitably talk way too much about. I can definitely see the appeal with the themes of alienation and a system that works against the well-meaning individual. But there's something I realized while reading this book:
...more
Kafka is one of those authors young men latch on to in high school or college and inevitably talk way too much about. I can definitely see the appeal with the themes of alienation and a system that works against the well-meaning individual. But there's something I realized while reading this book:
...more
ما الذي يسعني قوله!
أن تلك الرواية تقرأ ببطء دفعة ثم تترك، ثم تقرأ من جديد و تترك كأنها جرعات على فترات
أن لها من الأثر ما يترك ترسبات في روح قارئها.. على الأقل بالنسبة لي نفسية، رغم ما سمعته أنها تعد أكثر روايات كافكا تفاؤلاً ، سعادة ، أو بهجة..
ما أفهمه هو أن كافكا قدم حياة واقعية عادية في إطار غير عادي و دون مبالغات تصويرية، و لا عجب في ذلك.. فالواقعية السحرية خرجت من تحت عباءته
.
تلك القدرة التي تجعله قادرًا على أن ينقل مشهد عادي من الحياة لا يبدو منطقيًا ليجعله ممنطقًا و...more
أن تلك الرواية تقرأ ببطء دفعة ثم تترك، ثم تقرأ من جديد و تترك كأنها جرعات على فترات
أن لها من الأثر ما يترك ترسبات في روح قارئها.. على الأقل بالنسبة لي نفسية، رغم ما سمعته أنها تعد أكثر روايات كافكا تفاؤلاً ، سعادة ، أو بهجة..
ما أفهمه هو أن كافكا قدم حياة واقعية عادية في إطار غير عادي و دون مبالغات تصويرية، و لا عجب في ذلك.. فالواقعية السحرية خرجت من تحت عباءته
.
تلك القدرة التي تجعله قادرًا على أن ينقل مشهد عادي من الحياة لا يبدو منطقيًا ليجعله ممنطقًا و...more
Only judging from the first chapter you'd think this was a marriage between Kafka and Dickens, but this rare unkafkaesque moment is quickly tarnished as the second chapter begins and Kafka returns to the form with which we are well acquainted; namely, that of a somewhat pathetic hero who cannot get any reprieve from his surroundings. With the sheer billiance of The Trial and The Castle not being overly apparent in this one, we tend to notice our hero a little more than we probably otherwise woul...more
I am not really a pessimist but if there were a real character like Karl Rossmann who is tossed out from his home at sixteen (what? puberty hit him and then dropped a fedex newsletter, to the first frustrated female around) into an entirely different country, because he was seduced by his maid and his parents feared prosecution, the adventures that followed would all be quite in line.
America, an unfinished description of Karl's life in this country of 'exile' (I think no one else would hav...more
America, an unfinished description of Karl's life in this country of 'exile' (I think no one else would hav...more
Not my favorite Kafka-- but I feel I did him a disservice. I should have known more about this novel before reading it. Like, it's notedly "incomplete" (in quotations because-- it's KAFKA...), and I think had I read the introduction thoroughly I would have known this going into it. Knowing it was literally an unfinished novel I think would have helped me like it more. ALSO, had I not read on the back of it that it was "in a comic vein", I think I also would have like it more....more
I found this to be a difficult novel to think of as by Franz Kafka's. My prior acquaintance with Kafka is with The Trial, The Castle and Metamorphosis. This book seems on the surface to be so different. There is a tone of lightness, airiness, even comedy. I found virtually none of these things in my other Kafka readings. I learned a great deal about reading Kafka from this novel. I had never consciously realized it, but I had thought that some of the odd and bizarre things which happened in The ...more
Yo quiero a mi Franz más oscuro y pesimista, gracias. Esta novela se me antoja (en comparación) como demasiado convencional, poco kafkiana.
Not as good as Process but in a same surrealist, dreamlike mood. Collected fragments of weird situations that gradually build never-ending story. I have some feeling that Kafka actually written his dreams (literally). Maybe thats the reason he was not satisfied with his work and maybe, even that's the reason he never finished his novels. He enjoyed writing in this manner that's obvious, but he might think: "Well I am fascinated with my dreams and I made them into novels, but will the other ...more
"Allora alla gente che ti prende in giro tu credi, ed a quelli che hanno buone intenzioni verso di te, non vuoi credere!"
A dire il vero sono tre e mezzo, le stelline.
Non mi ha esattamente entusiasmata, ma è una lettura scorrevole, sebbene l'angoscia non abbandoni mai il lettore che, catturato dalla vicenda, non può fare altro che seguire febbrilmente le sciagurate avventure di Karl.
Non sono riuscita ad apprezzare appieno questo romanzo perché è un romanzo incompiuto: ...more
Io e Kafka abbiamo sempre avuto un rapporto tormentato.
E’ un autore contorto, difficile da analizzare, da affrontare e da comprendere.
Fino a oggi l’unica sua opera che abbia pienamente apprezzato è stata “La Metamorfosi”, le altre mi sono sempre state indigeste, come se avessi ingurgitato per forza un cibo di cui non ne avevo voglia.
Ma, nonostante questo, non ho mai potuto fare a meno di compatire questo autore, forse perché la sua angoscia, la sua tristezza, la sua afflizione ...more
E’ un autore contorto, difficile da analizzare, da affrontare e da comprendere.
Fino a oggi l’unica sua opera che abbia pienamente apprezzato è stata “La Metamorfosi”, le altre mi sono sempre state indigeste, come se avessi ingurgitato per forza un cibo di cui non ne avevo voglia.
Ma, nonostante questo, non ho mai potuto fare a meno di compatire questo autore, forse perché la sua angoscia, la sua tristezza, la sua afflizione ...more
Îmi amintesc că primele 20-30 de pagini ale "Castelului" le-am parcurs destul de greu dar am terminat cu hotărârea de a trece imediat la America. Acelaşi parcurs l-am avut şi pentru "America", adica mi s-a parut mai greu sa intru in atmosfera, iar acum mă gândesc să iau "Procesul". :)
Nu am înţeles prea bine comentariul de pe coperta cărţii cum că în America autorul îşi permite să fie amuzant. Castelul mi s-a părut o carte mult mai amuzantă decât America:...more
Nu am înţeles prea bine comentariul de pe coperta cărţii cum că în America autorul îşi permite să fie amuzant. Castelul mi s-a părut o carte mult mai amuzantă decât America:...more
Kafka said that he really liked Charles Dickens, and "Amerika" shows this off more than any of his other stories. It seems as though it has the standard Dickens formula--youthful hero, outcast, "orphaned" or uncaring parents, sent to a new place to make his way--the Bildungsroman if you will. But of course, it's Kafka, and so this story is somewhat a Dickens' doppleganger as his hero goes on an un-Bildungsroman. You also get to see America through a Kafkaesque lens, and he's ...more
I can only recommend this book to people who consider themselves Kafka fans. It's like . . . if you really love Seinfeld, then you're willing to watch the first episodes that aren't nearly as funny or sharp.
To be fair, Kafka never intended for Amerika to be published, at least not as is, and he never titled it "Amerika" himself. The chapters are inchoate and not always well connected. Also, there is nothing recognizably "American" in the book. America (the cou...more
To be fair, Kafka never intended for Amerika to be published, at least not as is, and he never titled it "Amerika" himself. The chapters are inchoate and not always well connected. Also, there is nothing recognizably "American" in the book. America (the cou...more
It's kind of lazy, in my opinion, when people use the term Kafka-esque to describe any 20th or 21st century fiction that is a bit absurd and paranoiac, but I'm sure those same people would cry that it is a tribute to the awkward Czech writer's ubiquitous influence. I wonder what those people would think of this: Kafka's first novel, and consequently his least Kafka-esque. In fact, it's difficult to believe he even wrote it...I mean, nobody even turns into an insect (yet he reveals many "A...more
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Franz Kafka (German pronunciation: [ˈfʀants ˈkafka]) was one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century. He was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Bohemia (presently the Czech Republic), Austria–Hungary. His unique body of writing—much of which is incomplete and which was mainly published posthumously—is considered to be among the most influential in Western lite...more
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“So then you’re free?’
‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.”
—
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‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.”
