Kafka Is Bathroom Reading.
Here's the best book review I've ever written. It's for the seven volume work 'In Search of Lost Time' by Marcel Proust. Here's the review:
It's real good.
I swear to god no one will publish this review. I've submitted it everywhere. And it's tiny! Only three words! Who doesn't have the room for a three-word review? You can stick it above some random page number for all I care, come on! But no, we can't just mumble "It's real good", even though that is the best review that's ever been written about Proust. Seriously: ever.
This is off topic, but I am so hungry for cheese dip right now. I can honestly tell you that I loathe, above all things, melodrama. I hate it. But if I don't get cheese dip within the next half hour I'll die. I swear to god I will literally die.
When I was 15 I decided that I wanted to read 'The Metamorphosis' by Kafka. I had basically spent most of my adolescence up to that point compulsively watching porn and playing video games and suddenly it dawned on me: holy shit, I need to snap out of it. I didn't like myself, what I was becoming (I crushed a moth in my hand one day and it's wings turned to powder and that scared me...the word "fragile" started to mean something), so I began to roam around for books. The requisite 'Catcher in the Rye' phase ensued. Kerouac followed. 'The Fountainhead', like shit, happened- (you know that picture you have hidden away of yourself somewhere, a picture of you from 10th grade or so and your hair style looks so incredibly ridiculous that you can't believe you consciously asked someone to cut it that way? Well, I think of 'The Fountainhead' as the literary equivalent of that photo).
Anyway, I pick up a copy of 'The Metamorphosis' and it's much larger than I had thought it would be. It's supposed to be a short story yet the book I have is hundreds and hundreds of pages long. So I open it up and find: an author bio; a translator's introduction; another introduction by...I don't know, some guy. I just know he's not the translator and that he summarizes, explains and analyzes every single aspect of the story before you even start it. This guy is an asshole. After making it through this second intro you are then subjected to the torture of several long, dull essays that deal with god knows what and you're about to start crying, you can't handle it. Finally the story begins...only it's littered with footnotes, translator notes and tiny little numbers that refer you to the back of the book where lengthy explanatory notes await. The story itself? It's only 50 pages long! I'd worked through all of this totally unnecessary academic horseshit when 'The Metamorphosis' itself was just this tiny little sliver hiding in the middle of the book. I flip back through all of the intros and essays and think, "Fuck these people." Here's who can understand Kafka: humans. Period. I want the translator to translate...but then I want him to go away. Introduction guy? Take that pretentious, over-priced calligraphy pen you sign all of your letters with and stick it in your neck. And if you happen to share an office with Explanatory Note Guy, stab him too.
I'm even more infuriated when I see all of these barnacles attached to the works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare! If, in order to the understood by people, he needed the help of clinging, mediocre academics, he wouldn't be Shakespeare. However, being who he is, I'm pretty sure he doesn't need the assist. The dude can communicate. Like Kafka, Shakespeare is not an acquired taste. Anyone can read him. I think part of the reason our best-seller lists are filled to the brim with absolute shit is that people have been brain-washed into believing that truly good books are dense and inaccessible. By elbowing it's way onto the pages of great literature, academia has sent the message: "Stephen King? Dan Brown? Yeah, read that you hillbilly simpletons. Go crazy. But Proust? Kafka? They belong to us. Human experience is our specialty. I mean Christ, it took is years to get these fucking degrees!"
I wanna see King and Brown pulled apart and dissected by the academics and I wanna see Cervantes in every single grocery store right next to the National Enquirer. Lit majors: read Anne Rice. Fatties on the beach: read Tolstoy. I will be in the world I want to live in when Chaucer is fluff and Kafka is bathroom reading.
Intellectuals, don't worry, I've got your back...here's a one word review of 'Ulysses' by James Joyce, okay? One word. Are you ready?
Flun.
I know, it's whorish. It's not even a word. Hurt me.
It's real good.
I swear to god no one will publish this review. I've submitted it everywhere. And it's tiny! Only three words! Who doesn't have the room for a three-word review? You can stick it above some random page number for all I care, come on! But no, we can't just mumble "It's real good", even though that is the best review that's ever been written about Proust. Seriously: ever.
This is off topic, but I am so hungry for cheese dip right now. I can honestly tell you that I loathe, above all things, melodrama. I hate it. But if I don't get cheese dip within the next half hour I'll die. I swear to god I will literally die.
When I was 15 I decided that I wanted to read 'The Metamorphosis' by Kafka. I had basically spent most of my adolescence up to that point compulsively watching porn and playing video games and suddenly it dawned on me: holy shit, I need to snap out of it. I didn't like myself, what I was becoming (I crushed a moth in my hand one day and it's wings turned to powder and that scared me...the word "fragile" started to mean something), so I began to roam around for books. The requisite 'Catcher in the Rye' phase ensued. Kerouac followed. 'The Fountainhead', like shit, happened- (you know that picture you have hidden away of yourself somewhere, a picture of you from 10th grade or so and your hair style looks so incredibly ridiculous that you can't believe you consciously asked someone to cut it that way? Well, I think of 'The Fountainhead' as the literary equivalent of that photo).
Anyway, I pick up a copy of 'The Metamorphosis' and it's much larger than I had thought it would be. It's supposed to be a short story yet the book I have is hundreds and hundreds of pages long. So I open it up and find: an author bio; a translator's introduction; another introduction by...I don't know, some guy. I just know he's not the translator and that he summarizes, explains and analyzes every single aspect of the story before you even start it. This guy is an asshole. After making it through this second intro you are then subjected to the torture of several long, dull essays that deal with god knows what and you're about to start crying, you can't handle it. Finally the story begins...only it's littered with footnotes, translator notes and tiny little numbers that refer you to the back of the book where lengthy explanatory notes await. The story itself? It's only 50 pages long! I'd worked through all of this totally unnecessary academic horseshit when 'The Metamorphosis' itself was just this tiny little sliver hiding in the middle of the book. I flip back through all of the intros and essays and think, "Fuck these people." Here's who can understand Kafka: humans. Period. I want the translator to translate...but then I want him to go away. Introduction guy? Take that pretentious, over-priced calligraphy pen you sign all of your letters with and stick it in your neck. And if you happen to share an office with Explanatory Note Guy, stab him too.
I'm even more infuriated when I see all of these barnacles attached to the works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare! If, in order to the understood by people, he needed the help of clinging, mediocre academics, he wouldn't be Shakespeare. However, being who he is, I'm pretty sure he doesn't need the assist. The dude can communicate. Like Kafka, Shakespeare is not an acquired taste. Anyone can read him. I think part of the reason our best-seller lists are filled to the brim with absolute shit is that people have been brain-washed into believing that truly good books are dense and inaccessible. By elbowing it's way onto the pages of great literature, academia has sent the message: "Stephen King? Dan Brown? Yeah, read that you hillbilly simpletons. Go crazy. But Proust? Kafka? They belong to us. Human experience is our specialty. I mean Christ, it took is years to get these fucking degrees!"
I wanna see King and Brown pulled apart and dissected by the academics and I wanna see Cervantes in every single grocery store right next to the National Enquirer. Lit majors: read Anne Rice. Fatties on the beach: read Tolstoy. I will be in the world I want to live in when Chaucer is fluff and Kafka is bathroom reading.
Intellectuals, don't worry, I've got your back...here's a one word review of 'Ulysses' by James Joyce, okay? One word. Are you ready?
Flun.
I know, it's whorish. It's not even a word. Hurt me.
posted by Samwick @ 9:39 AM
11 Comments:
At 11:48 AM,
Impulsivecompulsive said…
Ah, that 15 yr foray into the Great Novel.
Mine ruined me. I didn't hit The Fountainhead, I hit Atlas Shrugged. And I think that turned me off anything other than my sister's sci-fi books for years. (Those and Daphne du Maurier. For some reason, I love Daphne du Maurier.)
So yeah, I missed a decades worth of great reading thanks to Ayn Rand and her five chapter long monologues by self rightous asshole characters.
That's right, I blame Ayn.
At 12:13 PM,
Stan said…
You're very funny Matt.
And I agree with you totally. I remember reading Metamorphosis either in high school or part of an introductory college English class, and I liked it. But I never got around to reading any of the classics on my own till I was a LOT older, because most of the stuff we were fed in school was way beyond us. I remember skimming classics for any hints of sex, but of course that's now what they were about. Finally, only a couple of years ago, I read The Castle, and I was totally blown away by it. But as even a young adult I wouldn't have gotten it. And I'm still shocked by how many of the academic reviewers totally missed the point. Totally. Their tendency was to take it as a religious allegory. But in fact it's a very accurate and extremely depressing, albeit funny, description of the overwhelming power social hierarchies have on us little individuals. Especially in Germany in Kafka's day. But now too. You either fit perfectly in or you're a NOBODY.
I see now that the classics are simply books written by intelligent adults for other intelligent ADULTS to read. And enjoy. They shouldnt even be introduced to anyone younger.
Another example is Proust. To a young person, it's simpy too much. But to an adult, well, me at any rate, it's unexpectedly funny. I found myself laughing out loud quite often in it, which I hardly ever do. That's aside from the novel being amazingly perceptive, and wow, what a view of upper-crust life in those days. But a young person wouldn't get hardly any of that. And anybody who starts with the academic's reviews, as you suggest, just becomes tooo bogged down in the IMPORTANCE of the whole thing to enjoy it like it was intended to be read. Sadly enough.
At 12:17 PM,
Stan said…
By the way, they think they know who Shakespeare really was now. Did you hear?
At 7:39 PM,
Unknown said…
Funny, funny, funny. And good.
I agree partially with something Stan says. I don't agree that one should NOT be exposed at all to some of the "harder" classics at a young age. But I do agree that it is a good idea to go back and read some of the books you read as a teenager, once again in middle age. It is a revealing experience.
I don't think I will have the time or the inclination to revisit everything I read in my teens and twenties and perhaps only partially understood. But some of them I have re-read with a "mature" mind. Also, in my book club (all middle aged women) we have resolved to read at least one old time classic every year along with the "new" books. In the past seven years, we have re-read Faulkner, Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Charlotte Bronte and even Dickens. (You can tell that my friends are partial to women authors.) It will please "Impulsive" that we also chose to re-read "Rebecca." The difference in the quality of enjoyment across the years is quite remarkable.
I am glad you brought up Cervantes. Don Quixote, a book that should be carried by ALL grocery stores and Walmarts - it may well be the perfect novel. I recently read an amazing essay about the "behind the scenes" happenings surrounding the writing of Don Quixote. I wanted to write about it on my blog. But the problem is that the essay is in my "mother tongue" - Bengali. So I can't link to the original.
P.S: Sorry about the long comment.
At 9:06 PM,
Sheryl said…
Matt
I actually disagree with you on the Shakespeare notes. Shakespeare used lots of lovely puns in his comedies that are not apparent to a modern reader because the language has changed so much.
Now some Shakespeare notes are academic drivel, but I think to appreciate some of the humor in like "The Taming of the Shrew" or even "Much Ado About Nothing" you need to know what these alternative meanings of words mean. It just makes it more fun if you understand the quadruple puns and word plays.
Like in the Taming of the Shrew, I recall a great scene that went:
Katherine: "What's your crest, a cockscomb?
Petruchio: "A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen."
Katherine: "No cock of mine. You crow too like a craven."
From what I recall from the notes in my version it explained that a cockscomb was a fool, and a comb is a part of a wave. Combless also meant gentle.
I don't remember all the puns here, but my point is that I think there are good reasons to annotate Shakespeare.
Metamorphosis, on the other hand, is written in such a way that it is asking to be annotated. Anything that tries that hard to be surreal is begging for pseudointellectual interpretations. To expect otherwise is like leaving raw meat on a counter and being shocked when the flies find it.
At 11:51 PM,
Snave said…
Sheryl said "To expect otherwise is like leaving raw meat on a counter and being shocked when the flies find it."
In our case, at our house, it would be the cats that would find the meat.
At 7:29 AM,
Samwick said…
Impulsive: Ayn Rand screwed us all. Actually I never got around to reading Atlas Shrugged. And du Maurier I've never read...what would you recommend? I loves me some new people. Dadahead once summed up Ayn Rand's philosophy in one sentence: "Fuck all ya'll", and that's pretty much it.
Thanks Stan! The Castle is amazing. I think the trial is my favorite...that book blew me away, I was emotionally traumatized for months after reading it. A book I've always thought you would enjoy is Kangaroo Notebook by Kobo Abe (if you've read it I'd love to hear your thoughts on it). And I'm with you on Proust, very funny, very engaging stuff. I put off reading it for years due to it's reputation as this dense novel, but it was really quite a refreshing book. I've only read Swann's Way so far, I'm looking forward to the others.
Hi Ruchira! Cervantes really should be everywhere. Quixote reminds me a lot of a Coen brothers movie...it's satire, slapstick, it's got a melancholy tone. If someone had told me in high school that Quixote featured numerous examples of bathroom humor I would have read it in a heartbeat; I wish more effort were put into making these novels universal experiences instead of cryptic and arduous ones. Actually I don't know any of the behind the scenes stories about Quixote, your thoughts on this would be interesting. Well, ALL of your thoughts are interesting, but the context for the novel must be fascinating. I've just heard that Cervantes spent years as a slave or a captive or something, I can't quite remember. You wrote: "Sorry about the long comment". I am taken aback! Scandalized! There is no such thing as too "long" of a comment from you. I never want them to end. Write and write.
Hello Lady Sheryl. I actually agree with you about Shakespeare. I bash translator notes but they're quite necessary, they always help illuminate the text. Translators: good. It's just the wordy academics I hate...I was just afraid that if I shielded the translators from criticism that I might seem reasonable. I was wanting undermine myself a little bit...that's the beauty of a rant, they're say more about the person speaking than the topic they are focusing on. With Kafka I disagree, I think his books are utterly universal. The surreal aspects are ones most familiar to people I think...by creating odd scenes of ambiguous discomfort, he is able to generate feelings people have but are never able to articulate. When people write about things in a very concrete, straightforward way it seems so true as to be false. But when people use subterfuge and ambiguity it makes much more sense to me...humans are too contradictory to be explainable by appearances. Untruths and confusion are more tangible things (this is all opinion stuff, so I'm just rambling. Some people love Kafka, some find him to be unnecessarily abstract).
Snave: Do you write books or anything? I've always suspected that you are some sort of closet humorist, publishing under clever, anagrammical pseudonyms or something like that. I don't know why I'm saying this now, something about the cat reference made me think of musicals which made me think of T.S. Elliot which in turn made me think of Edward Gorey, who was fond of writing under pseudonyms. I've had too much coffee. Hi.
At 2:06 PM,
Sheryl said…
Hi Matt,
by creating odd scenes of ambiguous discomfort, he is able to generate feelings people have but are never able to articulate.
For me the "scenes of ambiguous discomfort" felt like a demeaning form of wallowing. But at least I am univeral about it. I felt the same way when we read "Tod in Venedig" (Death in Venice) by Thomas Mann. Or anything by Tennessee Williams or Ernest Hemingway.
It's funny because my attitudes are not normally republicanesque, but for some of these characters, I do wish they would "pick themselves up by their bootstraps," so to speak. Make the most of life.
Maybe it is just that there is so much wallowing in real life that I need something else from my fiction.
I think you can addressing wallowing without leaving that as the common denominator though. One of my favorite lines from the things we read in college was from the end of the Plague by Albert Camus:
"Dr. Rieux resolved to compile this chronicle, so that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise."
Anyway, that was just how it affected me. I shouldn't be so negative though about something you like. I was just doing that with another friend, and I am sure it did not win me any brownie points. :-(
Hope you are well.
Hugs, Sheryl
At 2:14 AM,
Samwick said…
"I shouldn't be so negative though about something you like."
Your perspective is always interesting, I don't find it to be negative at all. I don't think a pleasant exchange of ideas requires agreement, I tend to learn more when a person's point of view is different. Hope you are well, Lady Sheryl.
At 8:16 AM,
Sheryl said…
Thanks, Matt. You're cool. :-)
It's always refreshing when you can disagree with someone without threatening the person. It makes it a lot easier to be honest and natural.
Oh, by the way, Impulsive Compulsive, one of my favorite books in high school was Rebecca.
At 12:20 PM,
Snave said…
Ahhh, Matt, I can only wish I was really something like a closet humorist publishing under some absurd pseudonym, but alas... I am only John Evans, publishing weblog blather under the pseudonym Snave. I have always wanted to write humor, particularly the lowbrow/juvenile/grossout variety (i.e. Anchorman, Dumb and Dumber, etc.) and maybe someday I will find a taker for some of my scatological infantilism.
In the meantime, re. "metamorphosis" and "toilet reading", I won't describe in detail just into what my bowels are metamorphosing as I age. Nothing insectoid, at least... Let's just say that when you're 48 and almost 49, things might not be as good down there in a number of ways.
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