Did Kafka really think his work was funny?

>Gallows Humor isn't a thing the post

Reminder you are going to end up and elderly man looking back on his worthless life as mental illness slowly takes over. And that's a fact you can take to the bank. Or you'll die earlier, leaving me with a more enjoyable world.

Thanks, user. Reading right now.

I've always felt that Kafka's daddy issues conflated with a sort of crisis of faith, like the desperate search of a nihilist to dialogue with God, which is always met with solemn silence.

Crumb is by far the most Veeky Forums cartoonist. He's done great stuff with Kafka, the Book of Genesis, Nausea, Boswell's London Journal, Psychopathia Sexualis, and so on

since this thread is up, which of Kafka's stories are "must reads"? I prefer only ones that are completed. I've only read "in the penal colony" which was okay but the ending was anti climactic

A Country Doctor is my fave

I love Crumb, I wish I lived in America so I didn't have to import his comics.

Conversation with the Supplicant

Yes but Kafka wasn't nearly as funny as Kevin McDonald.

i am all for the fact that you do need a sense of humor to write about tragedy or horror. cucaracha was straight fairytale parody any day but thats the reason he is a good writer.

kafka is funny as fuck

The part of the Trial where he finds that guy whipping the prisoner in the storage closet was pretty funny, specifically when he complains that the whip is getting stuck in the guy's fat rolls

>And then...HE TURNS INTO A BUG! AHAHAHAHAHA!

So witty.

>the Czech author
A Jew who wrote in German, so the best way to describe him is to call him a quintessentially Czech author.

But Kafka wasn't some dark, brooding person at all. He was an eccentric but quite lighthearted in company.

>when he complains that the whip is getting stuck in the guy's fat rolls
I don't remember that. Although I read a Finnish translation

you have to be pretty stupid to not grow aware of all the humorous absurdities in his works. Probably you were so intent on feeling the "kafka atmosphere tm" that everyone told you about...

The Castle is pretty funny

>But Kafka wasn't some dark, brooding person at all. He was an eccentric but quite lighthearted in company.
His humor was considered dark, he was evidently neurotic and depressed (everyone around him could see it) and he was essentially burnt out by his work ethic.
Also in his diaries he described how he literally managed to turn himself depressed. I'll give you the exact pages later, but he basically said that he lived a cheerful existence for his first 20 years of his life, then as a game (he call it this way) he tried to act depressed, and at some point the mood got locked in, and he never managed to go back to his prior worldview. He describes this process carefully, and gives great i portance to it.

Kafka is funny in the same way a prisoner might make fun of his death sentence. He laugh about it, but the implications of what he is saying are always dooming, and he was deeply aware of it.

>Fantastic small essay
Horseshit, he takes up a few pages to basically say "My students are all retards that can't understand blunt as fuck black humour."
Don't get me wrong, I love DFW and all, but that essay was fucking awful.

>be DFW
>be born in the US
>no culture whatsoever
>badly misread (but not so much) every book he reads
>this still qualifies him as a top intellectual, landing tenured positions left and right

USA, ladies and gentlemen.

Yes, he did, according to the biography by his friend Max Brod: "(...) we, his friends, laughed boisterously when he read aloud the first chapter of "The Trial". And he himself laughed so hard that he sometimes could not continue reading."
There are several funny parts in The Trial, for instance when Joseph looks into the books of the judge, and in chapter 7 when lawyers try to get past the guard.

Maybe he thought it was funny, but basically anyone who says that they think Kafka is meant to be a comedic writer is a pretentious piece of shit (e.g. David Foster Wallace). No, Kafka is not funny, unless you're talking about laughing in a psychopathic, maniacal way: if you actually understand what he's getting at, he is very depressing.
>but but muh patrician black humor!

The very fact that he can do nothing but laugh is what adds to the horror of the situation

Dude I'm a cockroach lmao

DFW tried to teach his college students how to see the comedy that is the Kafkaesque tragaedy

Go read The Metamorphosis.everything that can possibly go wrong for the protagonist -- every single thing that gives him self worth and value -- goes wrong to the most extreme degree imaginable. It's fucking hilarious, there's no other legitimate way to interpret it.

All of Gregors self worth is put into his role as care giver to the family, and we are led through the lens of his character to believe him. But as the story turns out he is holding them back, he is an embarrassment; the final nail in the coffin being the change from "the mother" yo "Frau Samsa" and so on, his family gains their own happy, unique identities without him, solidifying his worst fears.

Either the story is horribly depressing or it's a gaff on those with neuroticisims and who take themselves seriously.