Kafka on Trial
Title: The Trial
Author: Franz Kafka
Publisher: I am reading from a paperback copy from Vintage Books published in 1969
Published in 1937 by Knopf
Length: 341 pages, including post scripts and translator’s notes
I’d like to start by saying I love Kafka, I do, I really do, I think.
I read The Metamorphosis over and over again, wrote a paper on it in high school and two more in college. I can’t count how many times I’ve read it, I just think its so wonderful. After reading The Castle and The Trial, however, I’m realizing that Kafka’s greatest skill is in writing the most frustrating scenarios a human being could be plopped into – alienation and bureaucracy. Whether it becoming a giant bug, living under mysterious and unfair authorities, or dying after a year long quest to discover what crime you have been accused of, Kafka has helplessness down to an art. I love Kafka!
I love him because his concepts are fascinating. He is the most wonderful creator of modern day myth that I’ve read. But I find that while reading his full length novels, I feel a bit as I did when reading Don Quixote – screaming at Cervantes, “I get it! Iget it! I get it already!” Halfway through Kafka’s The Trial, I groaned wondering when it was all going to stop, knowing that I knew Kafka well enough to know that peace would not be had in the end (at least not the kind brought about by resolution). I love the exasperation of the short story or novella written to drive these scenarios home. My heart can’t stand it in a full length novel. At the end of The Trial, I hate Kafka.
But the story was so good!
Kafka belongs to the world of novellas and short stories. That is where I love him best.
Anakalian Whims 
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December 9, 2013 at 9:48 pm
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