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:

Kafka would have made fun of them.

More than one critical discussion I've read mentions how the humor of Kafka often didn't translate. Humor is tricky when it comes to older works. To even get the jokes, you have to have some sort of notion that jokes are expected. It's the same way ironic jokes fail is the listener assumes you're an idiot. It's hard to see the humor in a lot of Kafka's work unless someone points out that the man would often read his work with a wry, smart-ass sensibility.

The Trial and the Metamorphisis both could work as dark comedies seen through the right lens.

Amerika serves as a pretty effective Rosetta Stone to understanding this. It's an outright whimsical comedy, full of over-the-top shenanigans and bizarre characters. It could easily produce a film in the style of the Coen Brothers' movies.

An odd sort of internal logic is required to make surreal and weird humor work, a tactic Kafka was the outright master of. The man had a supreme capacity to keep his strange dream-logic fueled worlds glued together. Its part of what makes it captivating for me, I never know what's going to happen next, but it never strays into feeling abitrary.

If you know anyone who never shuts up about the darkness of his work, who throws around the term "Kafkaesque with an excessive frequency, I recommend getting them a copy of this book.