Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony and Other Stories

 

Another book that I randomly picked up way back at the Founders Club book fair and hadn't gotten to until now. Kafka is just someone who it seems like you should have read at some point and I don't remember doing so in the past so thought I'd give him a shot.

The introduction to this collection is actually very informative and certainly gave me more food for thought and made me consider the stories differently. I would probably have simply taken them as somewhat surrealistic tales, but apparently, while that is obvious, the point of the tales are metaphors for the assimilation of the Jewish people into other cultures. I am a white male, brought up as a Christian, and as open minded as I try to be, I still find myself surprised by the fact that I haven't acknowledged the variety of upbringings in the world and how people are forced to integrate into cultures other than their own or face ostracization or are considered inferior. If they can quickly assimilate and conform to the dominate culture, they are considered superior. 

Joachim Neugroschel does a much better job than I in explaining these concepts and, as he translates this edition, he also talks about how translations can vary due to the fact that often words cannot be literally translated, or have various meanings, which can be interpreted by the translator in various ways. Lots to think about and consider well before even starting the actual stories!

The first few stories are very short (a couple of pages of so), stream-of-consciousness, surrealistic prose that is not very coherent, to be frank. Not particularly poetic or linear, just kind of bizarre, which made me almost give up on the book before I had gotten very far. But then some of the actual tales started - still a little odd'n'ramblin', but lucid. The Metamorphosis is definitely surreal - a salesman turns into a human-sized insect - but is compelling, funny, and, yes, readable. The rest of the stories are generally more of this ilk - unusual but not so surreal as to be difficult. 

Certainly interesting and glad that I checked him out, but I can't say that Kafka's writings have drawn me in. As I said, the are odd without being particularly poetic and while the introduction gave me more food for thought in reference to the stories, they still didn't grab me.