Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka

[dogmatix]

Great story (you can't really call it a novel) and very reminiscent of The Trial. Kafka has a way of horrifying me despite (or maybe because of) his eerie scarcity of words and images. This is a work to be studied and I'd like to read at least one or two analyses to feel I've really reaped all the delicious nuggets to be found in this book.

If you're not familier Metamorphosis it's the story of a man that wakes one morning to find he has become a giant insect. Locked in his bedroom within the family's small apartment we watch as he is pitied, tolerated, and eventually rejected as a member of the family. With a scarce, dry dessert of words (virtually none) describing the emotions of the small handful of characters, somehow we are able to intimately feel the gordian knot of horror, disgust, and sorrow that plagues them all.

Is it possible to feel pity for a cockroach... well yes it really is and Kafka proves it.

[Gyre]

I embarrassed to say I have never heard of this book but after reading your review Dogmatix, I think I am going to invest in it.

Cockroaches have feelings too...

[Freewheeling Andy]

I read this with a load of Kafka short stories; the story itself is a long short story if I remember right. It's the weirdest of stories, too, like reading really well written horror.

It goes back to Kafka's usual themes of helplessness and alienation.

A long time since I read Kafka, though. I want to go back some time, after reading the suggestion (I think by Murukami) that Kafka is, in fact, just comedy. That it's not half as dark as it's portrayed and is effectively like reading PG Wodehouse, but without a Jeeves to get Wooster out of trouble. And perhaps my reading of Kafka is like when I used to listen to The Smiths as a 15 year old and think they were humourless miserable gits, where now I see all the humour.

[dogmatix]

Gosh, I don't know about that Andy. I think about K stabbing himself to death and our cockroach buddy dying from an infected apple wound. I'll have to ruminate on that idea for a bit. You may have something but I've never thought of Kafka that way.

[Freewheeling Andy]

Nor me. Trust me, it's not my idea, it's someone else's.

[Kenny_Shovel]

Apparently the first person to think that Kafka's writing was funny, was Kafka himself. He was rather puzzled that others didn’t think the same way. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t want his work published after his death?

[dogmatix]

I didn't know that. He certainly was a strange fellow.