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Kafka's Dick
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'Alan Bennett is a courageous and gifted writer: no one since Shaw has had the guts to include a finale set in Heaven which resembles some awful publishing party-cum-tea-dance at the Savoy, or mix up so many fundamentally serious ideas about the importance - or lack of it - of art and artists in our gossip-prone, disordered lives with so much engaging theatrical capering.'
...more
Audio CD, BBC Radio Collection
Published
May 1st 2004
by BBC Worldwide Publishing
(first published January 1st 1986)
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Well, I like Kafka and I do like dicks, let's make this happen. can't believe somebody wrote a play about my degenerate kink
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I love Alan Bennett's plays. They are a mixture of comedy and pathos. This play is no exception...listen to it on CD rather than reading the text.
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Kafka: Not a cockroach. You said cockroach. It was a beetle.
Brod: Will you listen to this man. I make him world famous and he quibbles over entomology.
Brod: Will you listen to this man. I make him world famous and he quibbles over entomology.
Love love love. Full review to follow.
Insane and hilarious play about the size of Kafka's genitalia and the burning of his manuscripts.
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Hilarious and quite profound in it's way. As a play, it is subject to misunderstanding. It is not about Kafka, or only secondarily. It is actually about biography, the problem of assessing another's life, especially when that person is an artist. It features Kafka because that man's life is the most extreme modern case of an artist's work being itself extremely enigmatic, but serving to further obscure his life and character rather than reveal it.
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Really enjoyed the madness of this play
I get it, but I don’t get it. I often feel that way with British humor...
Hahahaha! Funny side of Oedipus Rex.
Kafka’s Dick by Alan Bennett
Outré, but for all the provocative, somewhat outrageous title, this play has some serious topics, if approached in a jocular manner.
We have plenty of literary, at times psychoanalytical, then psychological references to Fitzgerald, Hitler, Freud, Proust and many more writers and famous figures.
From the start, we listen to a dialogue between Franz Kafka
- Max, I want you to burn all my works
- Franz, you really want to do this
- Yes, it must be done
- All right, burn, baby ...more
Outré, but for all the provocative, somewhat outrageous title, this play has some serious topics, if approached in a jocular manner.
We have plenty of literary, at times psychoanalytical, then psychological references to Fitzgerald, Hitler, Freud, Proust and many more writers and famous figures.
From the start, we listen to a dialogue between Franz Kafka
- Max, I want you to burn all my works
- Franz, you really want to do this
- Yes, it must be done
- All right, burn, baby ...more
There is a slightly stronger hint of acid in this piece than I have found in other Alan Bennett works and it doesn't sit quite as well with me. The stabs at fame are just a little petulant in places and though this may well be appropriate to Kafka's perceived wishes it feels like some of Bennett's exasperations may be getting an airing too.
The double entendre's stemming from the business of the title are just a little forced but having said all that the witty wordplay and underlying warmth do a ...more
The double entendre's stemming from the business of the title are just a little forced but having said all that the witty wordplay and underlying warmth do a ...more
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As usual Alan Bennett is witty and thought provoking at the same time
Whity, smart and juvenile. A great play, the best play of Bennet's I've read to date.
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A ridiculous but amusing play, that introduced me to Kafka. A light hearted recording that is cleverly written to incorporate humor into a play about an influential author.
Not as wonderful as "The Lady in the Van", but definitely a really delightful play.
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Alan Bennett is an English author and Tony Award-winning playwright. Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and broadcasting, and many appearances as ...more
Alan Bennett is an English author and Tony Award-winning playwright. Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and broadcasting, and many appearances as ...more
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