Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories
by Franz Kafka
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.98 You Save: $9.02 (53%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.24 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories
Book Review: Five stars isn't enough
Summary: 5 Stars
Kafka was perhaps the greatest writer ever to live and this volume shows it. Every story, even every sketch of an idea that Kafka wrote down comes filled with brilliant emotions and deep meaning conveyed through simple and serious language. Shakespeare has none of the lyrical abilities of Kafka, and Homer could only dream of equaling Kafka's mastery of plot. Kafka out-psychoanalyzed Freud, and wrote circles around Joyce. His stories seem modern even by today's standards, the things that haven't come true yet in his works I believe will eventually, while I don't believe him to be a prophet he certainly had a great understanding of humankind and knew where it was headed. "A Country Doctor" is in my opinion the greatest short story ever written, a dark dream sequence with all kinds of slimy worms writhing beneath the surreal surface plot, sticking out through the rotted boards that Kafka puts down to allow us to see what we're standing over. "The Judgement," a purely perfect work of psychology, Kafka dipping deeper and hitting more nerves than in any of his other stories, giving us a picture of what it's like to be a genius controlled by a domineering, and a nonunderstanding father. And of course there are the smaller works from "Meditations," little snippets of images that flash through the mind, a kind of literary whispering in the ear while sitting in the dark. "The Burrow," another favorite, perhaps the most claustrophobic work of fiction ever conceived, the darkness of the tunnel affecting your mind for days.
Read this book, in it the greatest treasure a writer ever gave us shines, a golden nugget, hidden deep within a dark pool that seems unswimable. Take the swim, and I garantee that you will find the nugget. Ignoring Kafka is like denying yourself the best there is.
Book Review: A provoking volume
Summary: 5 Stars
Until you read Kafka, many of us think we know Kafka based perhaps on anecdotal items we pick up in the media or from others. The mere fact there's the term "Kafkaesque" perhaps causes us to think we know what it means. But it is only when one reads Kafka do you begin to gain some insight into one of the most mysterious and yet hallowed writers of the 20th century.This volume is really the place to begin. For in it are three of his more widely known novellas: In the Penal Colony, The Judgement, and Metamorphosis. But it is with the other stories that the reader that peruses rather than skims will undoubtedly begin to ask questions. What is Kafka trying to say in such a circuitous manner? What conflict tears at him to write these unusual tales? Because I think most readers will begin to wonder the same, realizing that Kafka felt passionate about something, but chose a metaphoric manner to present his idea so ingenious and subtle that I fear it is lost upon most readers. Clearly, Kafka struggled with something deeply personal. He was engaged twice to the same woman, and called off the engagement twice. And he prefered to live an uneventful, unnoticeable and undemanding life. He ridiculed the bureaucry, yet chose it as his vocation. To me, that is a key element to understanding his stories. And these more obscure tales do more to reveal what is meant by "Kafkaesque" than the grandiose volumes of The Castle, or Amerika. It is clear why so many of his prose strikes one as unfinished (besides the fact most of it was unfinished), because Kafka's own metamorphosis was incomplete. Had he not died from tuberculosis, perhaps he would have solved the conundrum of his personal life. Instead, we are left with these beautiful and mysterious tales that whisper something to us.
Book Review: more estranged than any stranger
Summary: 5 Stars
Kafka can be a difficult figure to approach for some. His presence looms for some readers as foreboding as that strange unapproachable structure in The Castle looms for the character in that book. One way to get around this is to learn a little about Kafka's own life, especially his relationship with his father. And also to learn that his economical & concise way with language he learned as a student of law and his fascination to the point of paranoia with bureaucracies of various kinds he may have picked up in his career as an office worker in an insurance company. Kafka may never become all together human to some readers. To those who share his particular temperament, however, he will seem very human and become a favorite though a kind of quiet one that lurks in the fringes of your bookcase. These stories are a great introduction. Though they are all prose works in some cases they seem to possess qualities more often seen in parables than in twentieth-century prose ie: use of symbols & layers of possible meanings being more evocative(though sparse) than specific. His work is certainly pessimistic, his landscapes are oblique, and chances are you will have your own way of looking at Kafka the more you read(and there are a vast array of ways to interpret his work). One interesting reader, Jean Paul Sartre, characterized Kafka's work as "the impossibility of transcendence". His exaggerated worlds(Swift was one of his own favorite authors) do provide interesting glimpses into that very often written about terrain alienation but few have ever delved into it so deeply. After Kafka you may be lead down one of the more interesting paths in the history of literature which includes Nabokov, Borges, Cortazar, Calvino and many many others.Book Review: Kafka's Complete Shorter Works
Summary: 5 Stars
This book contains almost all of Kafka's literary works, save his full length novels.
Kafka's writing is representative for a large portion of modern literature. Although one can classify his works as dealing with alienation, assimilation, inferiority, and insecurities, they are, on some level, impenetrable by interpretors. His prose is clear and easily readeable; however, the implications of his story remain troubelsome and confounding.
Kafka's writing style betrays expected norms of literature. In the metamorphisis, the protaganist Gregor Samsa awakens from his sleep to find himself changed into a beetle. The story is about the ramifications of the event, and the expected pinnacle, his transformation itself, is barely attended too. Furthermore, Samsa seems to take his transformation in stride. He recognizes the uniqueness of his case, but thoughts of his own insanity, nor the impossibility of the situation are hardly voiced. By giving us the absurd and simultaneously sidelining it, Kafka is able to focus on other issues. Samsa's "otherness" as a beetle, now being an existential given, leads us to explore how being "other" works in relationship to family and other acquantices.
Kafka is a truly marvelous writer, and if his writing seem paranoid and absurd, it adds to their literary quality. His concerns are not so unique as the positions his literary creations often find themselves in, and he provides an interesting voice on the conditions of modernity.
Book Review: good stories,
Summary: 5 Stars
an under appreciated writer who knew what he was talking about it.
John Updike's introduction was one of the only things I read inside the contents.
John: the coming of something. The significance of a future, greater writer.
Well, there's what, two or three years, according to some sources, until the end of the world? def good 4the head.
SO mix in a little this, a little thas, a little thistlewood, a little thatsit,boys.
The point,
What is the point?
The point is the sharpest location. Everyone has a point. Some points stab.
What is a point?
A point is a joint down 31st street near toids and doinks. The popular vote may be popular now, but will
it tomorrow? Honestly, the tomorrows keep coming! Foilinque.
Janet is
. . .Janet is searching right now for somrshething more than a point you know something better by ten
times fivefourthreetwo or any of those digits. Haly wedded to the source of the spring of freshly
brewed Arabian camel milk tastes like it was milked from a snake. Weusly, the snake departs.
It happens in a leisurll, virtuoely fashion. Not the east bit leastly ambunkshush.
. . .Lots of the scary stuff in there tonight. The notsopleasant AH!YOU'rerui ning my
MeDITAtioN!! Which is basically people stuff.
-Eschillion Key, published free online (google: Eschillion Key)