Unseen Kafka Documents Metamorphose into Literary Limelight
July 10th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
So Franz Kafka. We all read The Metamorphosis in high school.
He also wrote The Trial, Amerika, and The Castle.
I’m reading The Castle right now so this caught my eye: the secretary of Kafka’s friend and literary executor, Max Brod, recently died and now experts will be able to examine documents of Kafka’s that the secretary had refused to share with the world.
These papers of Kafka had just been gathering dust as this secretary had “doggedly refused” to share them.
Why did she refuse to share them? And why doggedly? The literary community is on the seat of its chinos. There must be something juicy in them thare parchments!
But wait.
“The authorities have warned that the damp in [the secretary's] flat and the hoards of dogs and cats she kept may have damaged or even destroyed the papers.”
What?
Gross.
Good luck to whatever graduate student or museum intern charged with this task.
No thanks.
I have been enjoying The Castle very much, thank you, despite the fact that Kafka died with the manuscript ending mid-sentence and Max Brod finishing it. These damp, moldy, urine and shit-soaked documents may provide insight into Kafka’s literary intent, but who’s to say?
The grad student in the haz mat suit with tongs. That’s who.
I told you reading is sexy. When the pages aren’t saturated with cat scat.
The “The Hunger Artist” was my first exposure to Kafka and led to reading his other works. Dark, deep and textured in a way I had not experienced before.
I have it on fair authority that the concealed works include great volumes of stories about kitties and puppies in springtime meadows, dancing and singing songs of affection.
There is also, reportedly, a children’s story about a county fair butter cow, a statue made out of butter, which comes to life and teaches the value of calcium and vitamin D to children, while dousing them with milk shakes from it’s frothing udders.