I'm kind of a brainlet, guys. Do you think I could read Kafka?

the castle is über comfy, like a really good anime. not even joking.

The Jews think it’s hilarious to subvert all of the Aryan’s cultural pursuits. Make a Jew the “Bravest German on the Heroic Pantheon” make a Jew Author “the greatest German writer” make a Jew the “German messiah” etc.

Franz was qt. why was he such a beta with Milena? that one photo they always use of him sucks

Watch the School of Life video about Kafka. Alain de Botton is decidedly in his favor because he too had a domineering father, but he does a good job at capitulating Kafka’s ouerve. The Trial is about what it means to feel guilt down to your core. Don’t you feel that way, user? Don’t you?

yeah he's pretty entry level, difficulty-wise
a lot of the greats are entry-level

>the world as an unending oppressive nightmare
That's exactly why you should be laughing at it.

>Trial is about what it means to feel guilt down to your core. Don’t you feel that way, user? Don’t you?

I dont think you go far enough. The main question imo is still what is he guilty of. He defo is guilty of it, he even knows it, but he still doesnt know what that is. I think he is guilty of existance and the punishment for that is quite rightly death. Everyone is guilty of that and will eventualy get simmilar sentance.

There is humour in Kafka, but Americans tend to play it up. David Foster Wallace did lasting damage with that lecture or whatever.

Yeah. He's not that hard to "get," unless you want to jump through hoops and do fancy readings of his work. Start with The Metamorphosis, read a few more of his short stories, then proceed to The Trial.

Yes - I agree with you. I like how you put it.

I remember laughing aloud through certain passages of that book.

How can you not see the humour in that novel? Dark/absurd sure, but also extremely humorous.

The Trial is also multilayered and can be interpreted in may different ways, i.e The Trial an allegory for death. So people feel smart when they figure the deeper layers out.

At which parts did you laugh? Seriously, what parts did you consider humerous?

purely epic

As this guy said, you can read him lightly or deeply. Most people only read him (including supposed artists like David Lynch) as a guy who wrote weird things as they happen in dreams, but it's actually more than that. What he writes is his way of thinking about reality. The guy was really dedicated to writing, even getting into serious fights with his dad and saying he can't marry even though he wants to because he had to write. Read his journal and letters if you want to begin to really understand him.

Not him, but two things come to my head right now
>When he is in that attic and gets stuck in some hole in the floor
>Last chapter, when the two executioners come for K and carry him through the streets squeezing him close between their shoulders to the point he is not stepping on the floor

Oh, also, the guy grovelling before the lawyer postrated in bed

I agree. I found the work to be full of humorous and absurd moments throughout. I mean some degree of humor is relevant in most of his works, such as The Castle and Amerika.

yeah but I think, IMO, its interpreted so many ways because its so vague and also it wasn't completed so we don't know how the story would have kept progressing. A lot of the stuff that could be interpreted from reading it seemed so obvious I was left feeling like I must be missing something because it can't be this simple.

except for the behind the law allegory of course. But is it one of those things thats appreciated because it can be about so many things more than it was actually about?

Guess what, the same can be said for the whole Trial. It´s unfinished state maybe does make an interpretation more vague than a finished one might have this however, does not mean that the finished novel would be less open to interpretation. Kafka finished many stories that have no clear interpretation and are even more open than his unfinished works.

>When it was nearly morning,
and he had been working for twenty-four hours with
probably very little result, he went to the front entrance,
waited there in ambush, and every time a lawyer tried to enter
the building he would throw him down the steps.

>The lawyers gathered together down in front of the steps and
discussed with each other what they should do; on the one
hand they had actually no right to be allowed into the building
so that there was hardly anything that they could
legally do to the official and, as I’ve already mentioned, they
would have to be careful not to set all the officials against
them.

>On the other hand, any day not spent in court is a day
lost for them and it was a matter of some importance to
force their way inside. In the end, they agreed that they
would try to tire the old man out.

>One lawyer after another was sent out to run up the steps and let himself be thrown
down again, offering what resistance he could as long as it
was passive resistance, and his colleagues would catch him
at the bottom of the steps.

>That went on for about an hour
until the old gentleman, who was already exhausted from
working all night, was very tired and went back to his office.

I almost gave up on Kafka entirely because I've read some short stories collection of his and most of that stuff was pretty bad.

i read it in highschool, its not that hard. just maybe tedious

I didn't remember this. Hilarious

remember that part when the two constables are being whipped in the broom closet? that was pretty funny

any examples of what you thought was bad?