Do you think that Kafka's father actually was as ruthless and tough as he described...

Do you think that Kafka's father actually was as ruthless and tough as he described? Or do you think that Kafka simply was an overly sensitive boy? Personally I tend to think that his father was an asshole, but I can't come to a conclusion because I don't have enough life experience to judge how a man should treat his children.

He wasn't a monster or anything, but Kafka clearly felt alienated and confused by his father's lack of understanding.

>Kafka describes his dad as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, [and] knowledge of human nature"
>Kafka's protagonists are all betas

>Kafka's father was a professional slaughterer
>Kafka became a vegetarian

Just sayin

I ready an biography on him recently, but only one, so it's all I have to go on.

It seemed like he created the alienation with his father intentionally. A lot of his life seems to be self-imposed torment which he used as a tool in his writing.

Also his father exerted a lot of pressure on him re: working, having a family, being a man, etc., but a lot of that pressure was subtle.

>Kafka's father was a professional slaughterer

His grandfather. His father was a retailer.

Slaughtering sales like a boss. Kafka Snr. straight up murdered those annual income targets.

Look at how Kaczynski described his parents vs. how they really were.

I could imagine it was somewhat similar with Kafka.

What about dragging him out to the balcony and leaving him there all night in the cold when he was a child? What about other weird stuff his father said and did? Like Franz giving a book to his father that he wrote and dedicated to him, and his father only replying almost without any attention to him: "Lay it on the nightstand." His father also exerted power over the household and Kafka's mother.

Yes Kafka was obviously a very vulnerable person, but that does not justify his father's behaviour to him (even if he isn't the monster Kafka makes him out to be), especially considering his feelings of utter despair, fear and depression.

Sensitive narcissists always tend to embellish their own biographical narratives and those of others.

Breece D'J Pancake told everyone he was some sort of hillbilly raised on roadkill and moonshine, but in reality his parents were middle-class, albeit West Virginians.

DFW had a library stocked with self-help books about mothers who push their children to be geniuses etc, while in reality his grades were mediocre throughout childhood and he only got into Amherst because his father was alumnus.

Houellebecq claims at the end of Submission that he has never attended university, even though in reality he attended agricultural college and then film school for several years.

Or Jack London the rugged working class nature writer, who only spent one winter in Alaska before returning to California and making a career out of writing about the place.

Think of all the writers who describe themselves as having been super poor while writing their novel, who in reality were actually pretty comfy. Gareth Risk Halberg is a recent example, as he described himself in a national newspaper interview as being a "pure outsider", even though his parents were academics, he has lived his life in academia, and so on.

Writers know how to manipulate readers into thinking a certain way, and they know what sounds romantic, aesthetic and so on, so it's understandable if regrettable that so many apply their ability to write fiction to their own lives. I for example spend most of my free time edging, eating shitty food and candy, walking around alone or watching stupid videos on youtube, but I know that it is far more appealing if I portray myself as an isolated genius who spends his spare time outside of his dreary office job furiously writing and reading and expanding his already enviable intelligence. Right now I'm lying in bed wearing boxer shorts pulled up so as to make me feel like a girl with a thong-wedgie, rubbing my thighs together and semi-ironically thinking about "boys" in a homoerotic fashion. Do I know any "boys"? No. Am I even female? No. Homosexual? Not really. Just bored and lonely and pathetic. Not a single mention of this will make it to my memoir, despite its inevitable length and detail. Thanks for reading, really.

>semi-ironically

I found another fabrication in your biography.