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Forgiving the Angel: Four Stories for Franz Kafka
From one of our most thought-provoking and admired writers, a brilliant, beautiful, and sometimes heartbreaking group of stories based on a circle of real people who are held together by love of their friend Franz Kafka. The sequence opens with Max Brod, Kafka’s friend and literary executor, telling us about Kafka and Dora Diamant, their love growing stronger even as Kafka is dying of tuberculosis. Kafka talks with Brod about forgiving the Angel of Death, but Brod wonders if Franz is really talking about Brod’s forgiving Kafka for the predicament he’s put him in, having instructed Max to prove his love for Franz by burning the work Brod most Franz’s unpublished stories. Next there is a brief interlude—perhaps a lost Kafka story, or is it a story about a lost Kafka story which is perhaps itself masquerading as one of the things that in anger Brod neither burned nor published? The story that follows tells of Dora’s marriage to the militant German Communist Lusk Lask and his attempt to break the hold of the angelic Kafka on his wife’s imagination by giving her a daughter. We watch this family in its move to the Soviet Union to escape Hitler, and as Dora and her daughter flee the Soviet Union to escape Stalin, leaving Lusk behind in the Gulag. Later, when Lusk tries to connect with his daughter again, the Angel Kafka seems once again to stand in his way, a force in his daughter’s life that seemingly destroys as it sustains. In the last story we meet Milena Jasenska, another of Kafka’s lovers, and Eva, the woman who, after surviving Stalin’s camps, meets Milena in a Nazi concentration camp and is reborn in this hell through her love for her, though perhaps trapped there in memory because of that love as well. By the end, these moving love stories with Kafka as their presiding ghost have told the calamitous story of Europe in the Century of the Camps. Imbued with a gravitas and dark irony that recall Kafka’s own work, these stories nonetheless also bear the singular imaginary stamp and the keen psychological and emotional insight that have marked all of Jay Cantor’s fiction.
226 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2014
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May 22, 2014
In a fantasy, that may be true, or may be the work of the novelists imagination: Franz Kafka and Dora Diamant tell Max Brod about their dream of moving to Palestine and opening up a restaurant. Kafka would be the waiter while his girlfriend cooked the food.
”I suggest you order the soup,” Dora said.
“Particularly tasty?” Brod said.
“No, fortunately for you, we have no soup today. You see, our waiter is very likely to spill any bowels we trust him with.”
“Which is why they never give me any, even empty ones,” Kafka said. “The ghosts might fill them on the way to your table, and I would certainly pour the contents on your clothes when I cough.”
Kafka and Dora laughed...
I can imagine that Kafka thought of his writing like the soup.
The first story in this book explores why Max Brod didn't do what he was supposed to do. Kafka wished Brod to destroy his work after his death. Instead Brod published it. Just about everything Kafka ever wrote. And not just the uncompleted novels and stories that Kafka never published in his lifetime (he did publish a few), but also things like letters and diaries.
The world is a richer place because Brod didn't respect the wishes of his friend but the magnitude of the treachery is gigantic when you think that Kafka never wanted his fiction to survive and instead had diary entries of his given to the world where he talks about things like fearing that while sleeping his hand might touch his ass and then later in the night touch his face. It's a posthumous version of asking a friend not to tell anyone a secret you shared with them and instead they went out and told people the secret plus everything else you ever told them.
Some friend, right?
Without Max Brod though the world wouldn't have the writings of Kafka, and how would I have spent a good chunk of my twenties then?
Because I spent so long with Kafka, he was my go-to guy for a slew of papers in college and grad school. Have to write about something, how about compare it to Kafka, or read the text through the lens of a Kafka parable or story (Bonus material! Want an easy way to write English or Philosophy papers? Take who you are supposed to be writing about, pick someone else that you are interested in and mash them together! It doesn't matter too much if they really go together, just use some quotes and allusions! Ta-da, instant paper!).
So right, I was talking about the first story.
It's the story of Max Brod. In it Kafka would be telling him, “Burn it, burn it all, but first let me change the title of this to a better one.”
In a Christian reading (see this is how you would do this in your own paper) of Kafka (or a Kafka reading of the New Testament, your pick!) Brod is Judas (duh! No surprises there, right?), and well Kafka would be not Jesus (because “The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary”) but Jesus in John chapter one style, λόγος (or logos, aka the word (another bonus tip, use that Greek spelling in a paper, give yourself that little flair, even if you are a monolingual idiot like myself). The Christian messiah doesn't exist in the world without his Crucifixion and Resurrection. The Crucifixion doesn't take place without the duplicitous complicity of the traitor.
Now one could say along with Dante (aw shit, just throw out some other names from time to time and you're golden) that Judas is deserving of his place in the lowest of the lowest hells. Or one could see that without Judas there is no messiah (to come now, then, or a day too late). So one could say that just as Jesus (as logos, which by John 1:1 is also God) would have already known that Judas would betray him, and have to betray him, and was a necessary condition to the fulfillment of his plan; that Kafka also knew that Brod would betray him, and was even letting him know that he knew he would betray him and was giving him a little wink to let Brod know that he knew by telling him to make certain revisions to the 'doomed' work (could one maybe see Jesus in the weeks leading up to his own death dropping some hints to Judas how awesome it might be for Judas if he could just get his hands on thirty pieces of silver?).
Brod lives his life being reviled as a traitor by the same people who gather around Kafka the author (its almost as if Kafka had written this as a story).
This all didn't really have much to do about the story itself. But it's the story of Max Brod's life after Kafka. I liked it.
The second story is a story about a story purportedly by Kafka about an academic researching Kafka who uncovers a previously unknown Kafka story. By writing this story about a man finding a lost story of his Kafka would have been writing with knowledge that his work would live on after his death. In spirit it is very much like a Kafka story and it bobs and weaves the same way that Kafka does in his greatest stories always seeming to slip out of the way of letting the reader really grasp it.
The last two stories center on people who know women who Kafka had been in love with during his life. Both of them juxtapose the ghost of Kafka with atrocities of World War 2, the first mainly takes place in Stalin's Soviet Union, and the second in a Nazi Concentration Camp. These stories I didn't enjoy as much, probably because they were less concretely about Kafka and more about, well the kinds of barbarity that our last century excelled at for a while. They were fine stories, but not quite what I was expecting (oh boo-hoo you didn't get what you expected. Yup! And that is why this is my review).
My enjoyment of the first couple of stories was much more than three stars. My enjoyment of the second two was about three stars, but since they took up the majority of the book, I had to give them more weight.
”I suggest you order the soup,” Dora said.
“Particularly tasty?” Brod said.
“No, fortunately for you, we have no soup today. You see, our waiter is very likely to spill any bowels we trust him with.”
“Which is why they never give me any, even empty ones,” Kafka said. “The ghosts might fill them on the way to your table, and I would certainly pour the contents on your clothes when I cough.”
Kafka and Dora laughed...
I can imagine that Kafka thought of his writing like the soup.
The first story in this book explores why Max Brod didn't do what he was supposed to do. Kafka wished Brod to destroy his work after his death. Instead Brod published it. Just about everything Kafka ever wrote. And not just the uncompleted novels and stories that Kafka never published in his lifetime (he did publish a few), but also things like letters and diaries.
The world is a richer place because Brod didn't respect the wishes of his friend but the magnitude of the treachery is gigantic when you think that Kafka never wanted his fiction to survive and instead had diary entries of his given to the world where he talks about things like fearing that while sleeping his hand might touch his ass and then later in the night touch his face. It's a posthumous version of asking a friend not to tell anyone a secret you shared with them and instead they went out and told people the secret plus everything else you ever told them.
Some friend, right?
Without Max Brod though the world wouldn't have the writings of Kafka, and how would I have spent a good chunk of my twenties then?
Because I spent so long with Kafka, he was my go-to guy for a slew of papers in college and grad school. Have to write about something, how about compare it to Kafka, or read the text through the lens of a Kafka parable or story (Bonus material! Want an easy way to write English or Philosophy papers? Take who you are supposed to be writing about, pick someone else that you are interested in and mash them together! It doesn't matter too much if they really go together, just use some quotes and allusions! Ta-da, instant paper!).
So right, I was talking about the first story.
It's the story of Max Brod. In it Kafka would be telling him, “Burn it, burn it all, but first let me change the title of this to a better one.”
In a Christian reading (see this is how you would do this in your own paper) of Kafka (or a Kafka reading of the New Testament, your pick!) Brod is Judas (duh! No surprises there, right?), and well Kafka would be not Jesus (because “The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary”) but Jesus in John chapter one style, λόγος (or logos, aka the word (another bonus tip, use that Greek spelling in a paper, give yourself that little flair, even if you are a monolingual idiot like myself). The Christian messiah doesn't exist in the world without his Crucifixion and Resurrection. The Crucifixion doesn't take place without the duplicitous complicity of the traitor.
Now one could say along with Dante (aw shit, just throw out some other names from time to time and you're golden) that Judas is deserving of his place in the lowest of the lowest hells. Or one could see that without Judas there is no messiah (to come now, then, or a day too late). So one could say that just as Jesus (as logos, which by John 1:1 is also God) would have already known that Judas would betray him, and have to betray him, and was a necessary condition to the fulfillment of his plan; that Kafka also knew that Brod would betray him, and was even letting him know that he knew he would betray him and was giving him a little wink to let Brod know that he knew by telling him to make certain revisions to the 'doomed' work (could one maybe see Jesus in the weeks leading up to his own death dropping some hints to Judas how awesome it might be for Judas if he could just get his hands on thirty pieces of silver?).
Brod lives his life being reviled as a traitor by the same people who gather around Kafka the author (its almost as if Kafka had written this as a story).
This all didn't really have much to do about the story itself. But it's the story of Max Brod's life after Kafka. I liked it.
The second story is a story about a story purportedly by Kafka about an academic researching Kafka who uncovers a previously unknown Kafka story. By writing this story about a man finding a lost story of his Kafka would have been writing with knowledge that his work would live on after his death. In spirit it is very much like a Kafka story and it bobs and weaves the same way that Kafka does in his greatest stories always seeming to slip out of the way of letting the reader really grasp it.
The last two stories center on people who know women who Kafka had been in love with during his life. Both of them juxtapose the ghost of Kafka with atrocities of World War 2, the first mainly takes place in Stalin's Soviet Union, and the second in a Nazi Concentration Camp. These stories I didn't enjoy as much, probably because they were less concretely about Kafka and more about, well the kinds of barbarity that our last century excelled at for a while. They were fine stories, but not quite what I was expecting (oh boo-hoo you didn't get what you expected. Yup! And that is why this is my review).
My enjoyment of the first couple of stories was much more than three stars. My enjoyment of the second two was about three stars, but since they took up the majority of the book, I had to give them more weight.
July 10, 2014
I reviewed this book recently on WKAR’s Current State. You can listen to my review here: http://wkar.org/post/book-review-forg...
You can also read my review below.
-
We all leave a legacy after we shuffle off this mortal coil, but its size and influence isn’t decided by us. That power is in the hands of those we leave behind.
Few writers have made as great an impact in literature as Franz Kafka. His existential stories, filled with heroes stuck in inscrutable situations—like, for example, lost in an endless bureaucracy or unexpectedly turned into a roach—have influenced not only many other writers, but have even inspired his own word in the dictionary- Kafkaesque.
Jay Cantor is one such influenced author, and his new collection of stories Forgiving the Angel takes on the impact of Kafka’s legacy in a very unique fashion. Each of the real characters in this historical fiction is haunted by the memory of Kafka and each dilemma is reminiscent of what Kafka would put his own characters through.
Consider for example the first story, which follows the life of Max Brod. It is because of Max that we even know who Kafka is today. Kafka asked his dear friend to destroy his writing after his death, but Max didn’t do that, instead finding publication for it. No reader today would debate that as a bad decision, of course, but for Max this decision will overshadow any other part of his life and his own writing, leaving him as nothing more than a footnote in the literary history books.
Then there is the story of Kafka’s widow Dora and her second husband Ludwig Lask, who could never hope to compete with Kafka’s memory for her heart. Dora is still so infatuated with Kafka that she names their daughter Franziska without his say, and that daughter refers to Kafka as her first father. Ludwig will go on to spend much of his story in the Soviet’s Gulag prison camps, held and tortured for really no specific reason, which can’t help but make the Kafka reader remember his unfinished masterpiece “The Trial.”
Ludwig is not the only character to experience the hell of a prison camp. The last story in the collection follows one of Kafka’s lovers, Milena, whose own story takes place in a Nazi concentration camp.
As you can see, these tales, like Kafka’s, are not happy ones and capture some of the dark moments in Europe’s history.
Forgiving the Angel is a book more for Kafka fans and less for those who want to discover this important writer for the first time. Cantor’s stories are best alongside Kafka’s own fiction, stronger and more powerful when the reader knows that influence.
Kafka’s legacy over literature is vast and Cantor taps into it very well. But when it comes to the legacy he left over those he knew, it seems that it was a bit, well, Kafkaesque.
You can also read my review below.
-
We all leave a legacy after we shuffle off this mortal coil, but its size and influence isn’t decided by us. That power is in the hands of those we leave behind.
Few writers have made as great an impact in literature as Franz Kafka. His existential stories, filled with heroes stuck in inscrutable situations—like, for example, lost in an endless bureaucracy or unexpectedly turned into a roach—have influenced not only many other writers, but have even inspired his own word in the dictionary- Kafkaesque.
Jay Cantor is one such influenced author, and his new collection of stories Forgiving the Angel takes on the impact of Kafka’s legacy in a very unique fashion. Each of the real characters in this historical fiction is haunted by the memory of Kafka and each dilemma is reminiscent of what Kafka would put his own characters through.
Consider for example the first story, which follows the life of Max Brod. It is because of Max that we even know who Kafka is today. Kafka asked his dear friend to destroy his writing after his death, but Max didn’t do that, instead finding publication for it. No reader today would debate that as a bad decision, of course, but for Max this decision will overshadow any other part of his life and his own writing, leaving him as nothing more than a footnote in the literary history books.
Then there is the story of Kafka’s widow Dora and her second husband Ludwig Lask, who could never hope to compete with Kafka’s memory for her heart. Dora is still so infatuated with Kafka that she names their daughter Franziska without his say, and that daughter refers to Kafka as her first father. Ludwig will go on to spend much of his story in the Soviet’s Gulag prison camps, held and tortured for really no specific reason, which can’t help but make the Kafka reader remember his unfinished masterpiece “The Trial.”
Ludwig is not the only character to experience the hell of a prison camp. The last story in the collection follows one of Kafka’s lovers, Milena, whose own story takes place in a Nazi concentration camp.
As you can see, these tales, like Kafka’s, are not happy ones and capture some of the dark moments in Europe’s history.
Forgiving the Angel is a book more for Kafka fans and less for those who want to discover this important writer for the first time. Cantor’s stories are best alongside Kafka’s own fiction, stronger and more powerful when the reader knows that influence.
Kafka’s legacy over literature is vast and Cantor taps into it very well. But when it comes to the legacy he left over those he knew, it seems that it was a bit, well, Kafkaesque.
Read
January 24, 2014According to Forgiving the Angel, Kafka, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, thought of himself as only “a nearly nameless sailor, who…had simply held to his desk all night. His only skill…was to cling to the wood with sufficient desperation.” Likewise, the main characters in Cantor’s four, loosely connected stories either cling to Kafka’s legacy or struggle to escape its chokehold on their lives.
In the title story, Max Brod, Kafka’s lifelong friend, discovers a terrible betrayal against him within Kafka’s dying wish. "A Lost Story" follows an academic who discovers an unpublished parable of Kafka’s—or is the academic a part of the story himself? In "Lusk and Marianne", a militant communist falls for and marries Dora Diamant, only to discover that she’ll never love him the way she does her late, famous love. Proof? She names the daughter she has with Lusk "Franziska". Finally,"Milena Jasinska and The World the Camps Made" introduces us to another of Kafka’s lovers as she finds passion and hope in a notorious concentration camp for women.
Discussing a book like this is tricky as all short stories, even the ones by Kafka himself, are not created equal. The title story paints a gripping portrait of friendship and the dark side of an artist many thought of as an “angel”. "A Lost Story", however, read to me more like a writing exercise lacking in urgency and need. In "Lusk and Marianne", the former’s fight to reclaim his daughter from Kafka’s ghost is matched in poignancy by his blind loyalty to the Communist Party that imprisons him as their enemy. Meanwhile, in "Milena…" the love story between the two female prisoners is touching, however the connection to Kafka seems a bit forced, his presence superfluous.
That being said, Forgiving the AngeI is on the whole a moving and innovative read. It will be enjoyed by devotees of Kafka’s work, as well as those interested in giving it a closer look.
Speaking of which, to the uninitiated, which work of Kafka’s would you recommend they read first?
--
Review by Naturi Thomas-Millard
Check out more from this review at LitReactor (http://litreactor.com/reviews/booksho...)!
In the title story, Max Brod, Kafka’s lifelong friend, discovers a terrible betrayal against him within Kafka’s dying wish. "A Lost Story" follows an academic who discovers an unpublished parable of Kafka’s—or is the academic a part of the story himself? In "Lusk and Marianne", a militant communist falls for and marries Dora Diamant, only to discover that she’ll never love him the way she does her late, famous love. Proof? She names the daughter she has with Lusk "Franziska". Finally,"Milena Jasinska and The World the Camps Made" introduces us to another of Kafka’s lovers as she finds passion and hope in a notorious concentration camp for women.
Discussing a book like this is tricky as all short stories, even the ones by Kafka himself, are not created equal. The title story paints a gripping portrait of friendship and the dark side of an artist many thought of as an “angel”. "A Lost Story", however, read to me more like a writing exercise lacking in urgency and need. In "Lusk and Marianne", the former’s fight to reclaim his daughter from Kafka’s ghost is matched in poignancy by his blind loyalty to the Communist Party that imprisons him as their enemy. Meanwhile, in "Milena…" the love story between the two female prisoners is touching, however the connection to Kafka seems a bit forced, his presence superfluous.
That being said, Forgiving the AngeI is on the whole a moving and innovative read. It will be enjoyed by devotees of Kafka’s work, as well as those interested in giving it a closer look.
Speaking of which, to the uninitiated, which work of Kafka’s would you recommend they read first?
--
Review by Naturi Thomas-Millard
Check out more from this review at LitReactor (http://litreactor.com/reviews/booksho...)!
February 9, 2014
The four interrelated stories in "Forgiving the Angel" all center around people who Franz Kafka loved and their fate and the fates of the people around them in Stalin's Gulag and Hitler's concentration camps. The first story is about Kafka's dying and Max Brod's famous dilemma about how to handle Kafka's dying wish that all of his unpublished work be destroyed. The second is a fragment of a story Kafka is supposed to have written. The third is the longest in the book, more of a novella of its own, about Kafka's widow's remarrying a German communist, the daughter they have, and his inability to compete with the presence of the ghost/god of Kafka in both women's lives even as he is sent to the Gulag and eventually returns. The final story takes place in the concentration camp where Kafka's translator/chaste lover Milena has been sent and describes a love affair she has amidst the horror, with once again Kafka looming right over the surface.
The stories themselves draw some of their style and mannerism from Kafka, like the accretion of small details, but unlike Kafka they are much more rooted in a very real and painful world--and also have more love and sentiment. Overall the effect is one of a circle of friends that surround Kafka for decades after his death and keep him alive in their worlds and their memories.
At times I found the book absorbing, but it was not uniformly so and parts of it felt unnecessarily obscure, at least to me. But overall would recommend it.
The stories themselves draw some of their style and mannerism from Kafka, like the accretion of small details, but unlike Kafka they are much more rooted in a very real and painful world--and also have more love and sentiment. Overall the effect is one of a circle of friends that surround Kafka for decades after his death and keep him alive in their worlds and their memories.
At times I found the book absorbing, but it was not uniformly so and parts of it felt unnecessarily obscure, at least to me. But overall would recommend it.
January 5, 2014
My first exposure to Kafka's writing was in a class on the uncanny in Spring 2012. One of the stories assigned to us was The Metamorphosis and, as you can imagine (or perhaps have experienced), I was understandably both confused and perturbed at the same time. As I read that story, and the others assigned in that class, I couldn't help but wonder about the author. What would it be like to live in his head, to experience the ideas and then follow through into writing them down. But, like all busy college students, I had neither the time nor the inclination to scout out more information and so that story faded away into a memory that, every now and then, emerges when I see Kafka's name. Jay Cantor took that idea further and, in Forgiving the Angel, he explores Kafka not from inside of Kafka's head, but rather through the relationships formed around him.
Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on Jan 6, 2014.
Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on Jan 6, 2014.
June 7, 2014
I think that this collection of stories can only be appreciated by Kafka fans. I was excited as I began, hearing the genius' voice in a new story. The term "Kafkaesque" is over used and difficult to define but you know that frustrating state when you see it. The author was effective in evoking Kafka's voice (all the parenthetical comments) and style of the master as well as anyone could. The friends and loves of his life already lived out horrors of nazi Germany and Stalin's camps so the fictitious drama became a little much even for Kafka. But the fiction came together well enough to history. I think this was particularly difficult to write and a treat to read.
June 2, 2014
"She had a sense of completeness about her."
February 9, 2014
Started off promising, even brilliant. Died somewhere around page 100.
November 1, 2017
Review TK.
February 14, 2015
3.5 is my actual rating.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews