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Franz Kafka's The Castle
Note - This is not the novel by Franz Kafka! For the novel see The Castle
59 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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August 15, 2008
There is a lot of talk about Kafka and nightmares – and with good reason. However, his nightmares are never quite what you might expect - expectations are always a problem when reading Kafka, firsst they get in the way and then they get dashed. In Metamorphosis there is the ‘yuck’ factor of the main character becoming an insect – but that is hardly the ‘nightmare’ of that book. In The Trial the point is in being accused of something, but never being told what it is you have been accused of, but still needing to defend yourself in some way all the same.
The Castle is even more of a nightmare again. This book was never finished and the version I’ve just finished reading ends where Kafka abandoned it, mid-sentence, with yet another new character about to say something terribly important to the central character ‘K’.
You might think that this would be a bit of a pain – in fact, the book ending was a relief. Like waking from a nightmare it really is okay that it is over. There was never going to be a happy ending to this book.
That might make it sound like I didn’t enjoy reading it – and that wouldn’t be the right impression to leave you with. This is a remarkable book and one that has much to say about how we construct our reality and how we interpret the realities constructed by others to explain how their world ‘works’. That is what the book is 'about' - and a sensitive reader will be struck by how often they interpret what is going on around them with as little 'proof' to try to make sense of the world.
Of course, the book could be a guide book on how to construct a totalitarian regime – if such a guide book was ever needed. Let’s face it, we humans, even the best of us, are remarkably innovative when it comes to constructing nightmares for others to live in and really don’t need any instructions from fiction. I mean, Abu Ghraib anyone? No, I think not.
The way to construct a Kafkaesque nightmare – if you are ever in charge of such things and are feeling a little bored – is to add endless levels to society and virtually no real communication between any of these levels - except, of course orders that must be followed - but must be first interpreted by those who receive them. Then create bizarre rituals (investigations or committee meetings or such) that either have no meaning at all or infinitely more meaning than can be guessed from them. These can take place in bedrooms, so they appear to be informal, but actually are the opposite. Make sure minor decisions that seem to have no import end up being life altering in ways that are completely unpredictable. In fact, make sure that just about every outcome can’t be predicted prior to it happening.
Yes, I know, it all sounds a bit like home…
Which is the problem with reading Kafka – it is very familiar, it is the familiar turned up loud. But then, aren’t those always the worst kind of nightmares?
The Castle is even more of a nightmare again. This book was never finished and the version I’ve just finished reading ends where Kafka abandoned it, mid-sentence, with yet another new character about to say something terribly important to the central character ‘K’.
You might think that this would be a bit of a pain – in fact, the book ending was a relief. Like waking from a nightmare it really is okay that it is over. There was never going to be a happy ending to this book.
That might make it sound like I didn’t enjoy reading it – and that wouldn’t be the right impression to leave you with. This is a remarkable book and one that has much to say about how we construct our reality and how we interpret the realities constructed by others to explain how their world ‘works’. That is what the book is 'about' - and a sensitive reader will be struck by how often they interpret what is going on around them with as little 'proof' to try to make sense of the world.
Of course, the book could be a guide book on how to construct a totalitarian regime – if such a guide book was ever needed. Let’s face it, we humans, even the best of us, are remarkably innovative when it comes to constructing nightmares for others to live in and really don’t need any instructions from fiction. I mean, Abu Ghraib anyone? No, I think not.
The way to construct a Kafkaesque nightmare – if you are ever in charge of such things and are feeling a little bored – is to add endless levels to society and virtually no real communication between any of these levels - except, of course orders that must be followed - but must be first interpreted by those who receive them. Then create bizarre rituals (investigations or committee meetings or such) that either have no meaning at all or infinitely more meaning than can be guessed from them. These can take place in bedrooms, so they appear to be informal, but actually are the opposite. Make sure minor decisions that seem to have no import end up being life altering in ways that are completely unpredictable. In fact, make sure that just about every outcome can’t be predicted prior to it happening.
Yes, I know, it all sounds a bit like home…
Which is the problem with reading Kafka – it is very familiar, it is the familiar turned up loud. But then, aren’t those always the worst kind of nightmares?
October 10, 2007
„The Castle“ was the first book by Kafka I read. It was winter at that time and I had a fever, two aspects that certainly intensified this unique reading experience. The book puzzled me a lot back then and it kept me thinking and I tried to solve the mystery surrounding it.
Much has been said about the symbolism in the book; the castle and its complex system of clerks and competences, is often seen as a symbol of the horror of modern bureaucracy, K, the lonely antagonist, stands for the struggle of the individual against the society, theological connotations have been found, etc. To cut a long story short: I don’t believe that any of these theories is entirely correct. The story starts cryptic and also ends like that. We do not know if the castle authorities really assigned a land-surveyor as K claims. We do not know anything about K’s past (except for a tiny fragment) neither do we know his real name. Not only remains the castle mysterious for us, but also K himself. Nevertheless, we automatically try to find an explanation or an analysis for the events and the characters we encounter in the book. I once heard the theory, that Kafka’s texts can be seen as a kind of Rorschach-Test; every interpretation you give, reveals more about yourself than about the text. I have come to the conclusion that this might be true or at least part of the truth.
“The Castle” is the only book that managed to captivate me for such a long time. I still find myself thinking about it and dreaming of it, even though I haven’t read is again lately. I actually hope no one will come up with a comprehensible explanation or analysis of this book, because that might destroy the magic around it.
Much has been said about the symbolism in the book; the castle and its complex system of clerks and competences, is often seen as a symbol of the horror of modern bureaucracy, K, the lonely antagonist, stands for the struggle of the individual against the society, theological connotations have been found, etc. To cut a long story short: I don’t believe that any of these theories is entirely correct. The story starts cryptic and also ends like that. We do not know if the castle authorities really assigned a land-surveyor as K claims. We do not know anything about K’s past (except for a tiny fragment) neither do we know his real name. Not only remains the castle mysterious for us, but also K himself. Nevertheless, we automatically try to find an explanation or an analysis for the events and the characters we encounter in the book. I once heard the theory, that Kafka’s texts can be seen as a kind of Rorschach-Test; every interpretation you give, reveals more about yourself than about the text. I have come to the conclusion that this might be true or at least part of the truth.
“The Castle” is the only book that managed to captivate me for such a long time. I still find myself thinking about it and dreaming of it, even though I haven’t read is again lately. I actually hope no one will come up with a comprehensible explanation or analysis of this book, because that might destroy the magic around it.
July 8, 2019
My (woefully short and inadequate) review of the novel is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
October 3, 2014
This is my favorite book that I've never actually finished. But then Kafka never finished it either.
January 7, 2008
I feel like I've been reading this book for 6 months when in actual fact it has been just under a month and after much struggling and determination I just can't keep reading it anymore and yet a part of me wants to keep reading it even though it's a torment. I feel as though if I stop reading I'm letting myself down and missing something. Perhaps it's because I want to know what's so good about Kafka. Why do I always seem to hear Kafka praised and nothing badly said about his writing? I have no idea, especially after reading this. I won't go as far as to say this was a waste of my time or a bad read it's just after reading 250 pages you'd like there to be some sort of point reached or what seems like a way to the point being made but I didn't feel like that. The characters are all mental and I felt that they were all just going around in cirlces. Then there's the dialogue. These are the longest conversations about the same thing said in a different way every few lines that I have ever read. Torment is the word for it and torment isn't the reason I read.
August 4, 2009
On the one hand, this is a book I cannot praise enough. I recommend that everyone who hasn't should read it immediately. It's one of those books that reminds you what fiction can be and can mean. It's the first book that I've read through twice in a row since Infinite Jest. On the other hand, I have to warn anyone who intends to read it that it's likely to drive you insane. The story makes your brain itch. If I had to describe it in one word I'd go with tantalizing. And that might be okay if Kafka had finished the thing. But it's only a fragment of what would have been a much larger entity, ending mid-story, mid-narrative, mid-sentence. You are left with the sense that it was heading somewhere life-altering, that all the intriguing seeds planted throughout were about to blossom simultaneously, but that you will never, ever get to see that harvest. I read it the second time in hopes of gleaning something more from the parts of the story that do exist, and I did pick up on several new subtle details, but that ultimately left me even more frustrated. In the end, I still think everyone should read it. But don't say I didn't warn you.
April 24, 2009
Kafka is a hell of a humorist, morbid as he is. The overarching irony in reading The Castle, is that we remain excluded from the castle. The characters that Kay (the protagonist) encounters are constantly supporting or denouncing one another, vying for plebian positions in the village of an unnamed, backwards European country. The rules of etiquette and means by which one gains distinction there are ever-changing.
Somewhere nearby looms the castle whose inner-workings are unclear and whose overall significance unknown. It is undoubtedly the location of a revered elite, and yet this elite is so inaccessible to the village where Kay is, one begins to wonder if the castle really has anything to offer—or is even tempted to consider that there may (for all intents and purposes) be no castle.
The discourse in the villagers interactions is so highly rationale, that Kay (and by extension Kafka) is either completely OCD or savant—and yet, the whole situation itself is utterly absurd: he is in a land he knows nothing about, bearing a title he has no specific skill to justify, and attempting to stand firm as a man, though his perceived status and alliances that change by the hour.
The distinguished, utterly absent gentleman of the castle, Klum, whom it becomes Kay’s sole ambition to speak with, is spoken of as if he were an emissary of God. The castle, like Klum, is inaccessible to Kay and yet I have a hunch that if Kay were to gain entrance, he may realize how little distinction there really is between the castle and the village.
It is only through absence that the castle seems to control the village. The cloak of mystery around its representatives who venture to and from the village keep the villagers in a state of fear and awe.
The castle is a flexible metaphor, if it is even meant to be one at all. It could be seen as the church, or a communist party, or any elite beyond the grasp of the common people.
One of the more entertaining things about the novel is the antics of Kay’s cartoonish assistants, who bring comic relief and yet unease, given their disgenuine, reptilian ways. Frequently abused by Kay, they eventually turn the tables on him, revealing themselves to be working for the castle. Meanwhile, his girlfriend who has hitherto been outspoken about how repulsed she is by the assistants soon falls for one…. It’s in this sort of manner that everything in Kay’s life is turned inside out once or twice every twenty pages, but he keeps pace with his fortune through strong will within his bizarre backdrop of constant unrest.
The situations of Kay in The Castle are characteristic of Kafka. Like in his novel Amerika, his main character is entirely out of context, succeeding to momentarily gain a footing of security only to slide back into states of insecurity. Ha ha...ha? Okay, existentialism: there're no assurances. See also: Metropole, All the Names, The Palace of Dreams
Somewhere nearby looms the castle whose inner-workings are unclear and whose overall significance unknown. It is undoubtedly the location of a revered elite, and yet this elite is so inaccessible to the village where Kay is, one begins to wonder if the castle really has anything to offer—or is even tempted to consider that there may (for all intents and purposes) be no castle.
The discourse in the villagers interactions is so highly rationale, that Kay (and by extension Kafka) is either completely OCD or savant—and yet, the whole situation itself is utterly absurd: he is in a land he knows nothing about, bearing a title he has no specific skill to justify, and attempting to stand firm as a man, though his perceived status and alliances that change by the hour.
The distinguished, utterly absent gentleman of the castle, Klum, whom it becomes Kay’s sole ambition to speak with, is spoken of as if he were an emissary of God. The castle, like Klum, is inaccessible to Kay and yet I have a hunch that if Kay were to gain entrance, he may realize how little distinction there really is between the castle and the village.
It is only through absence that the castle seems to control the village. The cloak of mystery around its representatives who venture to and from the village keep the villagers in a state of fear and awe.
The castle is a flexible metaphor, if it is even meant to be one at all. It could be seen as the church, or a communist party, or any elite beyond the grasp of the common people.
One of the more entertaining things about the novel is the antics of Kay’s cartoonish assistants, who bring comic relief and yet unease, given their disgenuine, reptilian ways. Frequently abused by Kay, they eventually turn the tables on him, revealing themselves to be working for the castle. Meanwhile, his girlfriend who has hitherto been outspoken about how repulsed she is by the assistants soon falls for one…. It’s in this sort of manner that everything in Kay’s life is turned inside out once or twice every twenty pages, but he keeps pace with his fortune through strong will within his bizarre backdrop of constant unrest.
The situations of Kay in The Castle are characteristic of Kafka. Like in his novel Amerika, his main character is entirely out of context, succeeding to momentarily gain a footing of security only to slide back into states of insecurity. Ha ha...ha? Okay, existentialism: there're no assurances. See also: Metropole, All the Names, The Palace of Dreams
April 3, 2010
one of my fav
February 5, 2021
It’s tough to review a book that was never finished and meant to be destroyed. How much of this novel would have been edited out? What would have been added to make it whole?
I did not enjoy this unfinished manuscript. I love Kafka and I’d hoped to grow my love of his writing here, but nothing grows inside the castle except for discontent, it would seem.
I did not enjoy this unfinished manuscript. I love Kafka and I’d hoped to grow my love of his writing here, but nothing grows inside the castle except for discontent, it would seem.
March 18, 2010
Reading Kafka's "The Castle" is like being trapped inside the head of a mental patient. It's irrational, stifling, claustrophobic, and filled with the sound of an unrelenting inner monologue that is helplessly compelled to analyze even the minutest occurrence for significance. The voice is ponderous, implacable and unremitting in its droning monotony. I almost agree with the author himself who requested the manuscript to be burned upon his death.
There was, however, one glimmer of an interesting thread in which the character Olga recounts the disgrace of her father after villagers choose to shun the family (from fear and self interest) following an altercation with an emissary of the castle. Though the castle takes no overt actions against the father, his livelihood and social standing is destroyed. In an attempt to seek redemption he appeals to the castle for forgiveness. Oblivious as to the nature of the offence the castle is unable to grant a pardon resulting in the father being forced into a position of first having to petition them of his guilt.
The absurd scenario of being forced to confess ones guilt to an entity one has not offended in an effort to obtain a pardon from said entity which is incapable of granting it is reminiscent of the Catholic Church and its confessional and highlights the ridiculous nature of both (though it’s possible Kafka had other allusions in mind).
With that one exception, I found the book to be a laborious and dreary read.
Note: Reading other GoodReads comments you’ll see that most find the book less than enjoyable, yet consistently rate the book highly. This incongruity can likely be explained by the general perception that an author’s fame is in every instance deserved, coupled with a herd mentality and desire for personal conformity.
There was, however, one glimmer of an interesting thread in which the character Olga recounts the disgrace of her father after villagers choose to shun the family (from fear and self interest) following an altercation with an emissary of the castle. Though the castle takes no overt actions against the father, his livelihood and social standing is destroyed. In an attempt to seek redemption he appeals to the castle for forgiveness. Oblivious as to the nature of the offence the castle is unable to grant a pardon resulting in the father being forced into a position of first having to petition them of his guilt.
The absurd scenario of being forced to confess ones guilt to an entity one has not offended in an effort to obtain a pardon from said entity which is incapable of granting it is reminiscent of the Catholic Church and its confessional and highlights the ridiculous nature of both (though it’s possible Kafka had other allusions in mind).
With that one exception, I found the book to be a laborious and dreary read.
Note: Reading other GoodReads comments you’ll see that most find the book less than enjoyable, yet consistently rate the book highly. This incongruity can likely be explained by the general perception that an author’s fame is in every instance deserved, coupled with a herd mentality and desire for personal conformity.
June 27, 2016
He said it wasn't finished, but Kafka's self-doubt was chronic--a mental illness after all. The picture Kafka paints is a curiously amusing inconvenience, turned Sisyphean nightmare--a man's professional and personal spiral around an unmajestic building representing the constructs of meaninglessness and absurdity. He could've stopped anywhere, at a short story or a novella, and the story would have held profound meaning to me personally; but as the perfectly unresolved novel that it is, I am grateful that it exists. To be honest, I'm at a greater loss in reviewing this book than any on my list, because of the meaning it held to me when I read it, and the meaning it holds now--that life is an unresolved journey, and the harder one at odds tries to find his way in, the more elusive and maddening it becomes. Here's a quote--I could just open it up and point, but here's a quote about the building itself: "...as he came closer he was disappointed in the Castle, it was only a rather miserable little tower pieced together from village houses, distinctive only because everything was perhaps built out of stone, but the paint had long since flaked off, and the stone seemed to be crumbling."
July 8, 2008
Kafka is one of the most challenging authors to read. It is a tribute to his skills as a writer that one can sit and read his books, and be enthralled, although nothing ever happens in any of them. Kafka drags his reader through a world that makes no sense, and with each page as a reader your frustration and impatience grows at the circumstances the main character finds himself in. Yet, always even more annyoing is the main character's acceptance of playing by the absurd rules of the wacky society he is in, when the reader is literally begging for a rebellion, for a bucking at the rules, for action.
The Castle fits the mold of the typical Kafka book. The pleasure of his stories is not what happens, because nothing does in the perpetual circle of frustration, but in the imagery Kafka creates as the reader rides this merry-go-round. To sit here and give you the plot details of this book would be ridiculous, because they don't factor in when recommending a Kafka book to another. Simply put, if you like Kafka, you'll enjoy this book. If you like challenging books, you'll enjoy this book.
The Castle fits the mold of the typical Kafka book. The pleasure of his stories is not what happens, because nothing does in the perpetual circle of frustration, but in the imagery Kafka creates as the reader rides this merry-go-round. To sit here and give you the plot details of this book would be ridiculous, because they don't factor in when recommending a Kafka book to another. Simply put, if you like Kafka, you'll enjoy this book. If you like challenging books, you'll enjoy this book.
May 30, 2011
I'm not going to conceal that it was a bit tiresome to read The Castle but nevertheless Kafka’s work proved to be as brilliant as always.
The Castle represents red tape grotesquely exaggerated; all the pour villagers are humble part of society which doesn’t belonged to the elite but worships every step taken by anyone remotely belonging to the Castle.
Though I would say that bribery isn’t emphasized enough in order the bureaucracy would be shown in its ugliest form.
It doesn’t disappoint that the book ends mid-sentence for it’s not K’s fate we are concerned about but the main purpose of the book which is to ridicule the rotten system not alien to every government. So much was unravelled in typical Kafka’s absurd way and at the same time nothing could suffice to the extent of the problem. Thus author’s frustration is absolutely comprehensible.
The Castle represents red tape grotesquely exaggerated; all the pour villagers are humble part of society which doesn’t belonged to the elite but worships every step taken by anyone remotely belonging to the Castle.
Though I would say that bribery isn’t emphasized enough in order the bureaucracy would be shown in its ugliest form.
It doesn’t disappoint that the book ends mid-sentence for it’s not K’s fate we are concerned about but the main purpose of the book which is to ridicule the rotten system not alien to every government. So much was unravelled in typical Kafka’s absurd way and at the same time nothing could suffice to the extent of the problem. Thus author’s frustration is absolutely comprehensible.
April 14, 2012
Tako je opet pošao dalje, ali to je bio dug put. Ulica, to jest ova glavna seoska ulica, nije vodila na brijeg, nego samo u blizinu brijega, a onda je kao namjerno vijugala i premda se nije udaljavala od dvorca, nije mu se ni približavala. K. je stalno očekivao da ulica skrene prema dvorcu i kako je to očekivao, išao je dalje. Očigledno, onako umoran on se nije usuđivao napustiti ulicu, a i čudio se dužini sela, koje kao da je bilo bez kraja, stalno iznova kućerci sa zaleđenim prozorskim oknima i snijeg, a nigdje ljudi.
Potpuno fikcijsko djelo, bez naročitih prjelaza u začuđujuće, radnja samo teče i teče, a birokracija ostaje.
Potpuno fikcijsko djelo, bez naročitih prjelaza u začuđujuće, radnja samo teče i teče, a birokracija ostaje.
May 29, 2013
This is the second Kafka book I have read (after the trial) and from what I can gather, Kafka was a neurotic and insecure man, no surprise given his nationality and antecedence. His books follow a theme of looking for clarity, fairness and rationality in an unfair world.
While i greatly appreciate the way he captures and conveys the irrationality of the system and bureaucracy, it is incredibly hard to read. Particularly if you have had a past of similar thoughts surrounding nihilism and misanthropy.
I will leave metamorphosis on the shelf for a while I think.
While i greatly appreciate the way he captures and conveys the irrationality of the system and bureaucracy, it is incredibly hard to read. Particularly if you have had a past of similar thoughts surrounding nihilism and misanthropy.
I will leave metamorphosis on the shelf for a while I think.
August 25, 2011
The castle is again a marvellous product of the taverns of arcanity kafka had ventured into, as is reflected from the character who decides to fight something which he is unable to understand. The castle functions as a non-interpretable institution with unexplainable functions as it increasingly serves an apathetic and insensitive bureaucracy. It is a timeless classic and is still very applicable in today's time. The movie Brazil also went along similar lines exploring similar issues
July 17, 2011
I am told this is a masterpiece of existentialist and absurdist literature, and the influence on modern art is unmistakable. Having said that, reading Kafka is like watching a prolonged Mentos commercial, it inspires a puzzled frown and the quizzical thought, "Is that German?"
October 14, 2011
رواية عجيبة جدا.. فهي يمكن أن تفهم على أنها سطحية ومجرد سرد عبثي، وفي نفس الوقت يمكن فهمها بشكل عميق وببعد فلسفي خالص.. هذا يعتمد على كيفية قراءتك لها. فرانز كافكا كاتب له عالمه وتوجهه الخاص الذي يختلف عن كل شيء قرأته مسبقا.
قرأت النسخة العربية منها، وهي جديرة بالقراءة.. فرانز كافكا - القصر.
قرأت النسخة العربية منها، وهي جديرة بالقراءة.. فرانز كافكا - القصر.
December 28, 2015
Weird trippy book; loves led odfiqcdoxk this is stupid dumb review over
Read
April 29, 2017Inspiring book
August 26, 2009
In several conversations with Sarah Lawrence's best instructor I attempted to distinguish between what I then called "phrase-" and "sentence-level" virtuosity. I don't think I ever articulated the distinction very well. But midway through another Kafka novel, and having recently read Bernhard's Yes, I find myself thinking about this stuff again, and in the shower this morning I was struck by a much better way to frame the discussion:
In this case (and perhaps in only this case), I think it may make more sense to think like a linguist than a writer. (If you're an actual linguist and happen to have stumbled across this post, please don't send me an incensed response outlining my ignorance of your field.) Rather than talk about a writer's "virtuosic" handling of phrases and sentences I'd like to consider what it actually means to achieve effects on the reader at either of these levels.
At the phrase level are the writer's decisions about individual words and his meticulous shaping of phrases -- let's call this work "lexical manipulation." This is where the writer (particularly, by the way, the writer following the Lischian model of ruthless reduction that's pretty common in MFA writing laboratories) scrupulously resists the stale, rejects the easy or the familiar, and discards reams of what is ultimately deemed unnecessary.
Beyond lexical concerns, though, the writer can also work a variety of effects through the pattern or shape, not of single words or phrases but of whole clauses, the makeup of the sentences those words and phrases are strung together to form. This is syntax, of course -- and the writer's handling of it I'll call "syntactical manipulation," (logically enough).
These categories obviously correspond to the "phrase" and "sentence" of my old working definition, but I think the distinction is easier to grasp when it's spelled out plainly like this. The lexical maestro surprises you with his ingenuity of phrase, or even the piquancy of an oddly apt single word; the master of syntax may not stun you with his phrasings (a car may "swerve" into the next lane, rather than, say, "sharking" into it), but there's something else happening -- to which I'll return below.
First, I'd argue that the essential mark of lexical mastery is that it defies or really flat-out rejects successful translation.
The easiest way to demonstrate this is to cite a writer whose effects achieved by lexical manipulation -- phrasings, wordplay, the poetics of his word-by-word prose -- would be very difficult to transfer undiminished into another language. I can come up with a bunch, but let's begin from the other side: Madame Bovary is typically held up as an archetype of iridescent prose. Flaubert was painstakingly scrupulous, I'm told, merciless in his insistence on the diamond-hard perfection of every word of every polished phrase. And certainly the edition I read had its share of word-precision and nicely buffed phrases; however, I have no idea what Flaubert actually accomplished in the French, because much of that accomplishment could only have been accomplished -- or rather it represented the uniquely Flaubertian accomplishment -- in French. Readers who have read English-language stylistic virtuosos whose virtuosity obtains primarily in the manipulation of the English lexicon, of its cadence and sound, the array of poetic devices available (a la alliteration and all the others whose names I'm not going to remember here), the syllablery, the beats, the color and feel of the English tongue as it's spoken and heard and rendered on the page, may intuitively grasp that it would be difficult to transmit these effects to a reader unfamiliar with the language's nuance.
I would go further and suggest that in order to truly appreciate a Nabokov or an Amis a reader would require an absolute mastery of English lexicon -- a mastery matched by a tiny portion of the populace and only substantially bettered or outstripped by the very authors whose virtuosic ultra-mastery this mastery enables a reader to appreciate, admire, be stunned by, or enjoy. (Joyce's career sort of makes this point concrete, as I think the achievement of each successive work in the Dubliners–Portrait–Ulysses–Finnegans sequence is to better its predecessor, at least as a measure of phrasal virtuosity, by the precise degree to which Joyce's ultra-mastery has increased.) In other words, I am able to appreciate Amis exactly to the extent that I am myself a skillful manipulator of English phrasings and able to discern how badly my mastery is embarrassed by his. (N.b. I'm using "I" in the generic sense as a sort of singular "we" -- not suggesting that I personally, i.e. Jonathan Callahan, am such a prose master, or implying anything about you if you don't happen to think Martin Amis is all that great.)
(But as an experiment try watching 2001 sometime with someone accustomed to, say, Michael Bay.)
This is what I mean by lexical mastery: an ability to reconfigure the molecules of expression in a given language in such a way that the reader is pleased insofar as he is able to appreciate both the comprehensive grasp and relentless ingenuity, the sheer creative lust required for such legerdemain, and to enjoy the effort of decrypting meaning from language that, if not utterly foreign (a la Finnegans Wake), is challenging and fresh. Lexical mastery is a mastery over the intercourse between the language's words and the physical world they're asked to approximate or, in the best of cases, represent. Lexical mastery is lyricism.
And the reference to Flaubert is relevant, I think, because, as the myriad translations of Bovary make manifest, lyricism is very difficult to fully communicate across borders between languages, because much of what makes the writing lyric comes from a thorough familiarity and absolute engagement with the language itself. Another way of saying this would be to suggest that a passage of writing is lyrical (or evinces "lexical mastery,") to the precise degree that it would resist being uprooted from the language it was not only conceived in but is -- the degree to which it would lose value in translation. The measure of its lyricism is the measure of what would be lost. The only person who could satisfactorily translate Nabokov was Nabokov. (And even he had a tough time.)
Other examples of writers I've read and would lump into this category (evincing varying degrees of mastery -- this list is supposed to be illustrative, not evaluative or remotely comprehensive; we haven't even gotten to what I actually want to discuss) would be Joyce, Barthelme, the Pynchon of parts of Gravity's Rainbow, the Faulkner of Sound and the Fury's fourth act, Don DeLillo, the young Cormac McCarthy, John Hawkes (and, though he's not working in prose, John Ashberry). . . . The common quality is that lexical masters can at every phrase surprise the reader into a kind of satori-like insight or new understanding because of the surprising newness of the phrasings themselves.
*
Since I don't speak any German, I'm compelled to read Kafka and Bernhard in translation. Each author may or may not have flaunted in his native tongue the kind of audacious lexical-mastery I've attempted to define above -- I have no way of knowing either way. Whatever rhythmic phrasings like the ones Don DeLillo uses to carve his effects into the walls of the literary sector of my brain Kafka may have relied on to similarly scar the German reader are largely (necessarily) absent in my translation, because I have no idea what those effects would have looked like in the first place. I don't know what prosaic German prose would look like; how can I begin to imagine what its antithesis would be? In trying to communicate Kafka's brilliance to me, even an incredibly gifted translator is restricted access to an entire portion of the palette first deployed by the author during composition.
So what's left? Something must be, because I (and I'm obviously not alone here) am profoundly affected by both of these authors' works, even though I know I may be missing a lot.
Well, what's left is syntax. Now, I'm not overlooking the obvious point that certain syntactical aspects of a language will not survive translation (I'm not interested in discussing in depth comparative clausal structures of the two languages, not least because, as I've already noted, I have zero German, but, for example, there is a grammatical construction in Japanese such as in the sentence Watashi wa, Dan ni biru o nomareta, which is a passive statement that roughly means I was in some way bothered or affected by the fact that Dan drank beer, but which literally translates to something more like I was beer-drinken by Dan where "beer-drinken" is the rough equivalent of "I was rained on," only instead of being rained on I had beer drunk by Dan, which behavior of Dan's I for some reason am acutely distressed by), but the case I'd like to make for reading an author like Kafka or Bernhard in translation is that you can be absolutely positive that what you won't be getting is what I think Nabokov had in mind when he said something to the effect that reading in translation is like drinking hot water from a samovar, or maybe I made up that quote -- namely that even if sentences cannot be transposed word-for-word across languages, shades of an author's syntactic style can survive translation where much of his lexical manipulations may not. Consider the following passage from late in The Castle
The little cart halted before most doors, which generally opened, and the relevant files, sometimes only a single sheet -- in cases like that a brief conversation arose between the room and the corridor, the servant was probably being chided -- were handed into the room. If the door remained closed, the files were carefully stacked on the threshold. In such cases it seemed to K. that the movement of the doors in the immediate vicinity was not lessening, even though the files had already been distributed there as well, but increasing. Perhaps the others were peering longingly at the files on the threshold, which still hadn't been picked up and were, incomprehensibly, still lying there; they couldn't understand how someone who had only to open his door to gain possession of his files could possibly fail to do so; perhaps it was even possible that any files left lying there were later distributed among the other gentlemen, who by making frequent checks were already trying to establish whether the files were still lying on the threshold and whether there was therefore still hope for them. Besides, most of the remaining files were in especially large bundles and K. assumed that they had been temporarily left there out of a certain boastfulness or malice or even out of justified pride, as a way to encourage the colleagues. Confirming him in this assumption was the tendency every now and then, always just when he wasn't looking, for the pile, after it had been on show for a sufficiently long time, to be suddenly and hastily pulled into the room and then the door remained as quiet as it had been earlier; then the other doors in the vicinity also calmed down, disappointed or even satisfied that this object of constant annoyance had finally been disposed of, but they gradually started moving again.
The emphases of the emboldened clauses are mine. I've selected them so as to compile a certainly not exhaustive list of instances in this tiny passage, which is more or less representative of Kafka's syntax throughout the novel, wherein the winding, wily, unpredictable, abruptly hilarious movement of Kafka's thought seems to me fairly apparent. I've deliberately chosen phrasings that are pedestrian (there is, e.g., nothing remarkable about "therefore still hope for them" except perhaps for its complete plainness), yet that nevertheless achieve marked effects, in order to illustrate that the strength of Kafka's sentences and -- to broaden back out to the case I'd intended to make back when I sat down to dash out this Goodreads review, several days ago -- in writing that survives translation generally, lies not in their individual phrasings but in the deft arrangement and manipulation of those phrases in the larger context of sentences and even whole paragraphs.
I suppose what I'm arguing is that it isn't easy and may even be impossible to translate lexical mastery, but syntactical mastery -- which is essentially a roadmap of the author's patterns of thought -- can remain largely intact, at least some of its broader effects can, which is why i enjoy Kafka even though his pages, as rendered in the editions I am forced to read, are full of phrases like "finally been disposed of," "being chided,""a certain boastfulness," and so forth. To return to that conversation I had with that Sarah Lawrence instructor: I think it was a reflection of a predilection I have as a reader plus an ongoing frustration I have as a writer -- namely, that I'm in my bones much more interested in the way sentences and long paragraphs can thrash and kick, just like actual thought (my thought, at any rate) does, than I am in seeing each facet of those sentences polished to an immaculate, unobjectionable gleam.
The argument I want to make is not merely that Kafka could never have written Nabokov's sentences, not in a million years, he simply lacked the lexical mastery; or that it is also the case that precisely because of an author like Nabokov's tricky handling of the words and phrases of his prose, he could never achieve the kind of breathless, rumblingly insane ravings of a vintage Kafka or Bernhard passage; but that if someone were to have tried, if, say Martin Amis were to take a crack at composing the above-quoted bit, he would not have been able to replicate what I love about Kafka, even though, word for word, phrase for phrase, I don't doubt that Amis could write circles around Kafka (at least the Kafka I get to read in English) -- and that for this reason, I submit that it is extremely dangerous for a certain strain of writer to find himself in the company of phrase-obsessed lexical manipulators (or would-be manipulators), because the focus of their criticism and advice will be as irrelevant to this hypothetical writer's work as would be a suggestion to Kafka that he find a fresher or cleverer way to say "hope."
In this case (and perhaps in only this case), I think it may make more sense to think like a linguist than a writer. (If you're an actual linguist and happen to have stumbled across this post, please don't send me an incensed response outlining my ignorance of your field.) Rather than talk about a writer's "virtuosic" handling of phrases and sentences I'd like to consider what it actually means to achieve effects on the reader at either of these levels.
At the phrase level are the writer's decisions about individual words and his meticulous shaping of phrases -- let's call this work "lexical manipulation." This is where the writer (particularly, by the way, the writer following the Lischian model of ruthless reduction that's pretty common in MFA writing laboratories) scrupulously resists the stale, rejects the easy or the familiar, and discards reams of what is ultimately deemed unnecessary.
Beyond lexical concerns, though, the writer can also work a variety of effects through the pattern or shape, not of single words or phrases but of whole clauses, the makeup of the sentences those words and phrases are strung together to form. This is syntax, of course -- and the writer's handling of it I'll call "syntactical manipulation," (logically enough).
These categories obviously correspond to the "phrase" and "sentence" of my old working definition, but I think the distinction is easier to grasp when it's spelled out plainly like this. The lexical maestro surprises you with his ingenuity of phrase, or even the piquancy of an oddly apt single word; the master of syntax may not stun you with his phrasings (a car may "swerve" into the next lane, rather than, say, "sharking" into it), but there's something else happening -- to which I'll return below.
First, I'd argue that the essential mark of lexical mastery is that it defies or really flat-out rejects successful translation.
The easiest way to demonstrate this is to cite a writer whose effects achieved by lexical manipulation -- phrasings, wordplay, the poetics of his word-by-word prose -- would be very difficult to transfer undiminished into another language. I can come up with a bunch, but let's begin from the other side: Madame Bovary is typically held up as an archetype of iridescent prose. Flaubert was painstakingly scrupulous, I'm told, merciless in his insistence on the diamond-hard perfection of every word of every polished phrase. And certainly the edition I read had its share of word-precision and nicely buffed phrases; however, I have no idea what Flaubert actually accomplished in the French, because much of that accomplishment could only have been accomplished -- or rather it represented the uniquely Flaubertian accomplishment -- in French. Readers who have read English-language stylistic virtuosos whose virtuosity obtains primarily in the manipulation of the English lexicon, of its cadence and sound, the array of poetic devices available (a la alliteration and all the others whose names I'm not going to remember here), the syllablery, the beats, the color and feel of the English tongue as it's spoken and heard and rendered on the page, may intuitively grasp that it would be difficult to transmit these effects to a reader unfamiliar with the language's nuance.
I would go further and suggest that in order to truly appreciate a Nabokov or an Amis a reader would require an absolute mastery of English lexicon -- a mastery matched by a tiny portion of the populace and only substantially bettered or outstripped by the very authors whose virtuosic ultra-mastery this mastery enables a reader to appreciate, admire, be stunned by, or enjoy. (Joyce's career sort of makes this point concrete, as I think the achievement of each successive work in the Dubliners–Portrait–Ulysses–Finnegans sequence is to better its predecessor, at least as a measure of phrasal virtuosity, by the precise degree to which Joyce's ultra-mastery has increased.) In other words, I am able to appreciate Amis exactly to the extent that I am myself a skillful manipulator of English phrasings and able to discern how badly my mastery is embarrassed by his. (N.b. I'm using "I" in the generic sense as a sort of singular "we" -- not suggesting that I personally, i.e. Jonathan Callahan, am such a prose master, or implying anything about you if you don't happen to think Martin Amis is all that great.)
(But as an experiment try watching 2001 sometime with someone accustomed to, say, Michael Bay.)
This is what I mean by lexical mastery: an ability to reconfigure the molecules of expression in a given language in such a way that the reader is pleased insofar as he is able to appreciate both the comprehensive grasp and relentless ingenuity, the sheer creative lust required for such legerdemain, and to enjoy the effort of decrypting meaning from language that, if not utterly foreign (a la Finnegans Wake), is challenging and fresh. Lexical mastery is a mastery over the intercourse between the language's words and the physical world they're asked to approximate or, in the best of cases, represent. Lexical mastery is lyricism.
And the reference to Flaubert is relevant, I think, because, as the myriad translations of Bovary make manifest, lyricism is very difficult to fully communicate across borders between languages, because much of what makes the writing lyric comes from a thorough familiarity and absolute engagement with the language itself. Another way of saying this would be to suggest that a passage of writing is lyrical (or evinces "lexical mastery,") to the precise degree that it would resist being uprooted from the language it was not only conceived in but is -- the degree to which it would lose value in translation. The measure of its lyricism is the measure of what would be lost. The only person who could satisfactorily translate Nabokov was Nabokov. (And even he had a tough time.)
Other examples of writers I've read and would lump into this category (evincing varying degrees of mastery -- this list is supposed to be illustrative, not evaluative or remotely comprehensive; we haven't even gotten to what I actually want to discuss) would be Joyce, Barthelme, the Pynchon of parts of Gravity's Rainbow, the Faulkner of Sound and the Fury's fourth act, Don DeLillo, the young Cormac McCarthy, John Hawkes (and, though he's not working in prose, John Ashberry). . . . The common quality is that lexical masters can at every phrase surprise the reader into a kind of satori-like insight or new understanding because of the surprising newness of the phrasings themselves.
*
Since I don't speak any German, I'm compelled to read Kafka and Bernhard in translation. Each author may or may not have flaunted in his native tongue the kind of audacious lexical-mastery I've attempted to define above -- I have no way of knowing either way. Whatever rhythmic phrasings like the ones Don DeLillo uses to carve his effects into the walls of the literary sector of my brain Kafka may have relied on to similarly scar the German reader are largely (necessarily) absent in my translation, because I have no idea what those effects would have looked like in the first place. I don't know what prosaic German prose would look like; how can I begin to imagine what its antithesis would be? In trying to communicate Kafka's brilliance to me, even an incredibly gifted translator is restricted access to an entire portion of the palette first deployed by the author during composition.
So what's left? Something must be, because I (and I'm obviously not alone here) am profoundly affected by both of these authors' works, even though I know I may be missing a lot.
Well, what's left is syntax. Now, I'm not overlooking the obvious point that certain syntactical aspects of a language will not survive translation (I'm not interested in discussing in depth comparative clausal structures of the two languages, not least because, as I've already noted, I have zero German, but, for example, there is a grammatical construction in Japanese such as in the sentence Watashi wa, Dan ni biru o nomareta, which is a passive statement that roughly means I was in some way bothered or affected by the fact that Dan drank beer, but which literally translates to something more like I was beer-drinken by Dan where "beer-drinken" is the rough equivalent of "I was rained on," only instead of being rained on I had beer drunk by Dan, which behavior of Dan's I for some reason am acutely distressed by), but the case I'd like to make for reading an author like Kafka or Bernhard in translation is that you can be absolutely positive that what you won't be getting is what I think Nabokov had in mind when he said something to the effect that reading in translation is like drinking hot water from a samovar, or maybe I made up that quote -- namely that even if sentences cannot be transposed word-for-word across languages, shades of an author's syntactic style can survive translation where much of his lexical manipulations may not. Consider the following passage from late in The Castle
The little cart halted before most doors, which generally opened, and the relevant files, sometimes only a single sheet -- in cases like that a brief conversation arose between the room and the corridor, the servant was probably being chided -- were handed into the room. If the door remained closed, the files were carefully stacked on the threshold. In such cases it seemed to K. that the movement of the doors in the immediate vicinity was not lessening, even though the files had already been distributed there as well, but increasing. Perhaps the others were peering longingly at the files on the threshold, which still hadn't been picked up and were, incomprehensibly, still lying there; they couldn't understand how someone who had only to open his door to gain possession of his files could possibly fail to do so; perhaps it was even possible that any files left lying there were later distributed among the other gentlemen, who by making frequent checks were already trying to establish whether the files were still lying on the threshold and whether there was therefore still hope for them. Besides, most of the remaining files were in especially large bundles and K. assumed that they had been temporarily left there out of a certain boastfulness or malice or even out of justified pride, as a way to encourage the colleagues. Confirming him in this assumption was the tendency every now and then, always just when he wasn't looking, for the pile, after it had been on show for a sufficiently long time, to be suddenly and hastily pulled into the room and then the door remained as quiet as it had been earlier; then the other doors in the vicinity also calmed down, disappointed or even satisfied that this object of constant annoyance had finally been disposed of, but they gradually started moving again.
The emphases of the emboldened clauses are mine. I've selected them so as to compile a certainly not exhaustive list of instances in this tiny passage, which is more or less representative of Kafka's syntax throughout the novel, wherein the winding, wily, unpredictable, abruptly hilarious movement of Kafka's thought seems to me fairly apparent. I've deliberately chosen phrasings that are pedestrian (there is, e.g., nothing remarkable about "therefore still hope for them" except perhaps for its complete plainness), yet that nevertheless achieve marked effects, in order to illustrate that the strength of Kafka's sentences and -- to broaden back out to the case I'd intended to make back when I sat down to dash out this Goodreads review, several days ago -- in writing that survives translation generally, lies not in their individual phrasings but in the deft arrangement and manipulation of those phrases in the larger context of sentences and even whole paragraphs.
I suppose what I'm arguing is that it isn't easy and may even be impossible to translate lexical mastery, but syntactical mastery -- which is essentially a roadmap of the author's patterns of thought -- can remain largely intact, at least some of its broader effects can, which is why i enjoy Kafka even though his pages, as rendered in the editions I am forced to read, are full of phrases like "finally been disposed of," "being chided,""a certain boastfulness," and so forth. To return to that conversation I had with that Sarah Lawrence instructor: I think it was a reflection of a predilection I have as a reader plus an ongoing frustration I have as a writer -- namely, that I'm in my bones much more interested in the way sentences and long paragraphs can thrash and kick, just like actual thought (my thought, at any rate) does, than I am in seeing each facet of those sentences polished to an immaculate, unobjectionable gleam.
The argument I want to make is not merely that Kafka could never have written Nabokov's sentences, not in a million years, he simply lacked the lexical mastery; or that it is also the case that precisely because of an author like Nabokov's tricky handling of the words and phrases of his prose, he could never achieve the kind of breathless, rumblingly insane ravings of a vintage Kafka or Bernhard passage; but that if someone were to have tried, if, say Martin Amis were to take a crack at composing the above-quoted bit, he would not have been able to replicate what I love about Kafka, even though, word for word, phrase for phrase, I don't doubt that Amis could write circles around Kafka (at least the Kafka I get to read in English) -- and that for this reason, I submit that it is extremely dangerous for a certain strain of writer to find himself in the company of phrase-obsessed lexical manipulators (or would-be manipulators), because the focus of their criticism and advice will be as irrelevant to this hypothetical writer's work as would be a suggestion to Kafka that he find a fresher or cleverer way to say "hope."
June 27, 2023
Właściwie to nic nie wiem o tej książce. Niepowtarzalna intryga tajemniczości. Szanuje K. za odważna walkę z bytem boskim tzn biurokracji
May 21, 2009
I haven't read Kafka in a while, except for the Penal Colony story that I sometimes go back to, and I had almost forgotten what the experience is like. This book does not benefit much from paragraphs, though it is divided into many chapters. It has a strange yet delicate way of going about punctuation marks. And the beautifully composed dialogues are inseparable from the text, as they straddle conversation and inner voices of the characters.
I very much enjoyed the way Amalia's story is juxtaposed with that of Frieda, as both stories elegantly describe the intricate ways in which power/knowledge works within the village, and set contrasts to each other. I would like to read more about how Foucault has been influenced by Kafka, as this book serves almost as a case study for the definition of power that Foucault seeks to provide in his work. The ways in which Barnabas describes the offices, as having no clear boundaries, spaces in which you never know how much you know, how close you are to the center, etc, is fascinating. The Klamm character, setting up an unidentifiable, unknown Real, is also beautifully described, especially in the paragraphs where Olga pictures the transformations in his appearance depending on where he is, like an animal that makes every use of camouflage. Even when you see him, Olga says, you are never sure of what you have seen. And this is exactly what K. experiences when looking through the peep hole, at a man who seems to be working behind his desk with much paper work in front of him, only to find out that this is how officials sleep, for most of their days.
Accordingly, the way space and time operate within the novel is very dreamy, and intangible. K. spends around seven days in the village, and yet so much happens within these seven days, including an engagement, and a break-up. Although these seven days are marked by failed attempts, there is almost no idle time, rather the novel is infused with constant activity, which does not lead K. into the castle, but instead to the dark chambers of Gentleman's Inn. The space in which all this happens, is described to be a snowy village, where paths lead nowhere, and that is exactly what happens to K., as he becomes slowly immersed within the labyrinth of the village, at once declaring that he is to stay there for good. His occupation as a land surveyor further emphasizes the undecipherable spatial qualities of the village, which once again serve to conceal or at times manifest power relations within this unnamed place.
In reflecting on my own work, I very much enjoyed the below passage, as it clearly discloses the ways in which one has to persistently seek for further approval, further opportunities to have access, etc.
"Dealing directly with the authorities wasn't all that difficult, for no matter how well organized they were, they only had to defend distant and invisible causes on behalf of remote and invisible gentlemen, whereas he, K., was fighting for something vitally close, for himself, and what's more of his own free will, initially at least, for he was the assailant, and he was not struggling for himself on his own, there were also other forces, which he knew nothing of, but could believe in because of the measures adopted by the authorities. By mostly obliging him from the start in some of the more trivial matters -and no more had been at stake until now- the authorities were depriving him not only of the chance to gain a few easy little victories but also of the corresponding satisfaction and the resulting well-founded confidence for other, greater battles. Instead they let K. wander about as he wished, even if only in the village, spoiling and weakening him, barred all fighting here, and dispatched him to this extra-official, completely unclear, dull, and strange life."
On another note, it could be argued that this book is a beautiful ethnography, from an ethnographer who is trying to speak with people who are concealed behind multiple layers of professionalism.
I very much enjoyed the way Amalia's story is juxtaposed with that of Frieda, as both stories elegantly describe the intricate ways in which power/knowledge works within the village, and set contrasts to each other. I would like to read more about how Foucault has been influenced by Kafka, as this book serves almost as a case study for the definition of power that Foucault seeks to provide in his work. The ways in which Barnabas describes the offices, as having no clear boundaries, spaces in which you never know how much you know, how close you are to the center, etc, is fascinating. The Klamm character, setting up an unidentifiable, unknown Real, is also beautifully described, especially in the paragraphs where Olga pictures the transformations in his appearance depending on where he is, like an animal that makes every use of camouflage. Even when you see him, Olga says, you are never sure of what you have seen. And this is exactly what K. experiences when looking through the peep hole, at a man who seems to be working behind his desk with much paper work in front of him, only to find out that this is how officials sleep, for most of their days.
Accordingly, the way space and time operate within the novel is very dreamy, and intangible. K. spends around seven days in the village, and yet so much happens within these seven days, including an engagement, and a break-up. Although these seven days are marked by failed attempts, there is almost no idle time, rather the novel is infused with constant activity, which does not lead K. into the castle, but instead to the dark chambers of Gentleman's Inn. The space in which all this happens, is described to be a snowy village, where paths lead nowhere, and that is exactly what happens to K., as he becomes slowly immersed within the labyrinth of the village, at once declaring that he is to stay there for good. His occupation as a land surveyor further emphasizes the undecipherable spatial qualities of the village, which once again serve to conceal or at times manifest power relations within this unnamed place.
In reflecting on my own work, I very much enjoyed the below passage, as it clearly discloses the ways in which one has to persistently seek for further approval, further opportunities to have access, etc.
"Dealing directly with the authorities wasn't all that difficult, for no matter how well organized they were, they only had to defend distant and invisible causes on behalf of remote and invisible gentlemen, whereas he, K., was fighting for something vitally close, for himself, and what's more of his own free will, initially at least, for he was the assailant, and he was not struggling for himself on his own, there were also other forces, which he knew nothing of, but could believe in because of the measures adopted by the authorities. By mostly obliging him from the start in some of the more trivial matters -and no more had been at stake until now- the authorities were depriving him not only of the chance to gain a few easy little victories but also of the corresponding satisfaction and the resulting well-founded confidence for other, greater battles. Instead they let K. wander about as he wished, even if only in the village, spoiling and weakening him, barred all fighting here, and dispatched him to this extra-official, completely unclear, dull, and strange life."
On another note, it could be argued that this book is a beautiful ethnography, from an ethnographer who is trying to speak with people who are concealed behind multiple layers of professionalism.
July 7, 2010
I'm a huge lover of Kafka but I was somewhat bored by most of this book, even though the general concept and backdrop is intriguing in its very Kafkaesque fashion. One must remember the book was not published, so unlike most literature, it suffers from the lack of polish that we would find had it been edited or intended for publication. The book is interesting enough for its originality, with the setting of an obscure and enigmatic village where the main character K has arrived on official business on account of the all-powerful and mysterious "Castle". You could just read a hundred pages of it and that would suffice for getting the gist of it-- the inextricable, uncompromising and menacing web of bureaucracy that dictates every facet of life under the Castle and creates the perplexing quagmire in which K becomes involved, seemingly without end. And unfortunately the book, not only unpublished, is also unfinished. So the reader does not get the full exposure to what Kafka's idea was with this bewildering story.
June 8, 2019
I bought this book because I watched the film,but according to me, the writer as nobody has told the bureaucracy so clearly until now.
The translation of this publishing house was very bad it made this reading, which was already boring, even more boring. The message in the movie was clearer.
The events that the cadastre has experienced bring people out of the wilderness
but those who are caught in the gear of the bureaucracy will understand very well. You see how the position of the officer changed him and it can be comforting to see that it has changed a little these days.
You will find the film interesting. I would recommend the film, which is based on three works by Kafka: Castle, Change and Daze.
Sincerely, @kitapdiari
The translation of this publishing house was very bad it made this reading, which was already boring, even more boring. The message in the movie was clearer.
The events that the cadastre has experienced bring people out of the wilderness
but those who are caught in the gear of the bureaucracy will understand very well. You see how the position of the officer changed him and it can be comforting to see that it has changed a little these days.
You will find the film interesting. I would recommend the film, which is based on three works by Kafka: Castle, Change and Daze.
Sincerely, @kitapdiari
March 24, 2008
It's hard to summarize Kafka, but here goes. K, the mysterious main character, has been summoned to do some land surveying for a nameless town. He's contracted by the Castle, the faceless bureaucratic organization that runs the town. The entire story follows K's increasingly desperate attempts to contact the Castle and begin his work. Kafka, not one for subtlety, fills the book with circular passages about the myriad bureaucratic processes, all ultimately futile and time consuming, that keep K where he is. In the meantime, K's personal life goes at lightning speed.
The process of reading Kafka is part of its point. As K goes nowhere, so too does the book. It's really quite maddening, but I respect it.
The process of reading Kafka is part of its point. As K goes nowhere, so too does the book. It's really quite maddening, but I respect it.
December 4, 2011
When I was in college I loved Kafka.
I probably still do. This book, however, did not connect with me.
The beauty of being a fortysomething is that I do not have to finish every book I start. The truth is, that maybe, just maybe, my disdain for a canticle against bureaucracy is that it seems to strike too close to home. I have dreams that resemble Kafka. I have clients whose rules and regulations create more problems than they solve; and yet others who fear rules so much that they create nothing.
[image error]
At some point, I might wish to be enthralled again with the originality of language and image that is Franz Kafka. Right now, however, I think I will leave the rhapsodizing to others.
I probably still do. This book, however, did not connect with me.
The beauty of being a fortysomething is that I do not have to finish every book I start. The truth is, that maybe, just maybe, my disdain for a canticle against bureaucracy is that it seems to strike too close to home. I have dreams that resemble Kafka. I have clients whose rules and regulations create more problems than they solve; and yet others who fear rules so much that they create nothing.
[image error]
At some point, I might wish to be enthralled again with the originality of language and image that is Franz Kafka. Right now, however, I think I will leave the rhapsodizing to others.
August 1, 2009
The fact that Kafka died before he resolved the plot made this novel more of a mystery to me. The plot is slow; a man enters a city and wishes to speak to the head of the castle, yet cannot seem to break through the bureaucracy to even get a foot in the door. Towards the end of the novel, he actually seems to be getting somewhere (although not through the proper channels) and it abruptly cuts off as it gets to the good stuff! I felt that the main character's struggles are so analagous the the everyday struggles we face in dealing with our government that I was really hoping to see what happened. Oh well. Still both frustrating and enjoyable.
November 7, 2012
Tireless, tiresome, and tired characters sleepily roam town trying to gain footing towards illusive Castle that may or may not effect every nuance of life. Rather baffling journey of the protagonist yields some lol absurdities at times. As these segue towards predictability, an eeriness takes over. I regret reading the prologue, so skip it if you have the opportunity and go in fresh. Foreignness, machiavellianism, illusion, absurdity. And the mixed virtue/folly of completely violating social decorum in order to suss out the whole truth. I'd give it 3.5
November 22, 2021
In my opinion, one of the best and most interesting books ever written.
Franz Kafka is a genius on its own and its unique writing style shows that in this book. The way the authors keeps you invested in this confusing romance about a man who gets lost in the immense bureaucracy of a snowy town lost in the mountains is nothing short of amazing.
If you ever wonder the meaning of "Kafkaesque" or if you are looking for a book to discover the genius of Franz Kafka, then I strongly recommend you give The Castle a chance!
Franz Kafka is a genius on its own and its unique writing style shows that in this book. The way the authors keeps you invested in this confusing romance about a man who gets lost in the immense bureaucracy of a snowy town lost in the mountains is nothing short of amazing.
If you ever wonder the meaning of "Kafkaesque" or if you are looking for a book to discover the genius of Franz Kafka, then I strongly recommend you give The Castle a chance!
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