Konundrum by Franz Kafka

In this new selection and translation, Peter Wortsman mines Franz Kafka's entire opus of short prose--including works published in the author's brief lifetime, posthumously published stories, journals, and letters--for narratives that sound the imaginative depths of the great German-Jewish scribe from Prague. It is the first volume in English to consider his deeply strange, resonantly humane letters and journal entries alongside his classic short fiction and lyrical vignettes  Composed of short, black comic parables, fables, fairy tales, and reflections, Konundrums also includes classic stories like "In the Penal Colony," Kafka's prescient foreshadowing of the nightmare of the Twentieth Century, refreshing the writer's mythic storytelling powers for a new generation of readers.

Goodreads description

This is a collection that every lover of magic realism should go out and buy. You will find here Kafka's greatest short prose works, including The Metamorphosis (here titled Transformed) the story that inspired Gabriel Garcia Marquez to adopt magic realism in his work. But there is much more here. Many of the short stories were completely new to me and helped me put The Metamorphosis in the wider context of his writings and view of the world. I had previously wondered whether Kafka was more of a surrealist than a magic realist, but I found those thoughts vanishing as I read.

I was struck by the variety in the fiction in this collection and orginality of thought and treatment. Who would think to write a piece where a bridge is the central character and narratior? Or would portray Poseidon as an accountant? Or start a story with the lines:  
Honored gentlemen of the Academy!
You have accorded me the honor of inviting me to present a report on my past life as an ape.

Also included in the collection are non-fiction pieces. Some are only a few lines, some extended meditations, The subject matter includes the role and nature of parables, writer's block, office life (Kafka worked for an insurance company), childhood and more.

I have not and could not read these stories in their original German, but it does seem to me that the translator Peter Wortsman has been able to create a sense of Kafka's own voice in this book - a voice that is humane and at times humourous, that presents the surreal as if it was the normal. As Wortsmann says in an afterword, he gives us these precious nuggets of a gold miner in the caves of the unconscious. 

Kafka's works featured in this collection are:
Words are Miserable Miners of Meaning
Letter to Ernst Rowohlt
Reflections
Concerning Parables
Children on the Country Road
The Spinning Top
The Street-Side Window
At Night
Unhappiness
Clothes Make the Man
On the Inability to Write
From Somewhere in the Middle
I Can Also Laugh
The Need to Be Alone
So I Sat at My Stately Desk
A Writer's Quandary
Give it Up!
Eleven Sons
Paris Outing
The Bridge
The Trees
The Truth About Sancho Pansa
The Silence of the Sirens
Prometheus
Poseidon
The Municipal Coat of Arms
A Message from the Emperor
The Next Village Over
First Sorrow
The Hunger Artist
Josephine, Our Meistersinger, or the Music of Mice
Investigations of a Dog
A Report to an Academy
A Hybrid
Transformed
In the Penal Colony
From The Burrow
Selected Aphorisms
Selected Last Conversation Shreds


I received this book from the publisher in return for a fair review.

The Inner City by Karen Heuler

Heuler’s stories dart out at what the world is doing and centre on how the individual copes with it. Anything is possible: people breed dogs with humans to create a servant class; beneath one great city lies another city, running it surreptitiously; an employee finds that her hair has been stolen by someone intent on getting her job; strange fish fall from trees and birds talk too much; a boy tries to figure out what he can get when the Rapture leaves good stuff behind. Everything is familiar; everything is different. Behind it all, is there some strange kind of design or merely just the chance to adapt? In Heuler’s stories, characters cope with the strange without thinking it’s strange, sometimes invested in what’s going on, sometimes trapped by it, but always finding their own way in.

Goodreads Description 

  

One of the joys of writing this blog is that I read books I would not normally have considered. The Inner City is just such a book. I had not come across Karen Heuler's work before reading this collection of short stories, and having read it I intend to read more. Although some of the stories in the collection are not magic realism, many are and even those that aren't show a magic realism influence. Heuler clearly identifies herself as writing magic realism on her website: it was Marquez’s freedom that influenced me the most. In his world, people levitated. Literature was moving out of Minimalism and into Magic Realism, and that’s where I was moving too, whether at the front of the crowd or in the rear didn’t matter. 

Although Heuler speaks of the influence of Marquez, her stories put me in mind of the tradition of the European magic realists - Gogol, Ayme, and most definitely Kafka. There is a sense of alienation from modern society, or rather a sense that there is something out of kilter in the modern world. In the book's title story the inner city is revealed to be a place hidden within/beneath our own from where malignant puppetmasters manipulate our lives just for the fun of it. The Hair had me laughing out loud at the satire on business report presentations: Mindy wore an iridescent pearl-coloured body stocking with a long pearl-coloured skirt with tremendous slits.... "Fine fractals advanced to 78 by knocking out the middle," she said and did a split, her arms thrown upwards. But as in Kafka's work, the humour is tempered with a personal tragedy.  

After Images starts amusingly, satirising the use of opinion polls and sociological studies, but follows a logical path to a bizarre study photographing of the eyes of the dead in an attempt to reveal what people see when they die. This focus on the afterlife is most noticeable in The Great Spin, which centres on a young man whose family believe in the imminent arrival of the Rapture. 

There are several stories that deal with environmental themes. In Down on the Farm the subject is the sinister use of genetic manipulation and in Creating Cow a vegetarian creates a Frankenstein's monster. The Large People is a less disturbing environmental story with the message that Nature always takes the long view and the long view had no sorrow.  

Throughout the book there is the theme of change in identity. Whether it is the man who finds he can float in How Lightly He Stepped In Air, the transformation or, should I say, metamorphosis of children into other animals in The Difficulties of Evolution, or the loss of identity through the theft of physical attributes in The Hair, Heuler is excellent at portraying the sense of bewilderment at change. 

I enjoyed this book tremendously, and whilst I liked some stories more than others, there was not one that I thought weak. The book, as you can see from this review, was full of metaphors and the unexpected - magic realism at its best.

Note: this book was given to me by the publisher in return for an unbiased review.

by Zoe Brooks

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

A masterful mix of horror and absurdity which tells the story of travelling salesman Samsa who wakes up one day to find out he has turned into a giant insect. This change in circumstances makes his previous way of life impossible and causes his family to turn on him. "Metamorphosis" is one of the most remarkable stories ever written. Kafka's surrealistic approach shocks us into a new appreciation of a basic truth: when we have outlived our usefulness there are no longer any certainties. But there are many different levels on which to understand events. 

Amazon description

We writers are told to start our books with a killer opening paragraph which will hook the reader. There are few books whose opening sentences are as good as this one. In my translation (by Karen Reppin) it reads When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect. In that one sentence we capture the surreal situation that triggers the story.

I read this book while in my Czech house and I was surprised by how Czech it is. Much is made of the fact that Kafka was a German-speaking/writing Jew living in Prague, but I was struck by a dark surreal humour that pervades the story, which seems very Czech to me. Kafka isn't usually associated with humour but it definitely is there in this book - for example Gregor's reaction to his metamorphosis is not "Oh my god I've been turned in to a monster bug," but "I'm going to be late for work." I could see that scene (in fact the whole story) being performed by Monty Python.

The story is nevertheless a sad one, as we know the best humour also has that edge of tragedy. Gregor has been used as a meal ticket by his family, but once the transformation takes place he is ignored and despised. Arguably Gregor's social and emotional metamorphosis started when he had to give up his dreams and identity to serve his family. Only his sister continues to show some affection, but by the time the story finishes she too has undergone a transformation and not for the better. Gregor's continued concern for his family despite his affliction counterpoints what the reader sees to be the reality. The story could be seen as an allegory for how people who are suddenly unable to work, whether through accident, illness or misfortune, are treated by our society. An allegory painfully relevant in these times of cutbacks to welfare and healthcare.

But the allegory can be taken to mean many things. The exact translation of the opening sentence refers not to an insect but "einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer" which literally means "unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice". Only later does the cleaning lady refer to Gregor as a dung beetle. What the German word Ungeziefer sums up is Gregor's own alienation and possibly Kafka's own. Ungeziefer was a term used by the Nazis of Jews, and  the novella was published in 1915 when anti-semitism was already rife in the Austro-Hungarian Empire of which Czechoslovakia was part. Towards the end of the novella his sister argues that the family must get rid of it (Gregor) "If it were Gregor, he would have realized long since that it isn't possible for human beings to live together with such a creature". The permutations on interpretation for this books are endless. That is what makes this such a great novel.

And is the book magic realism? Yes most definitely - Gregor's metamorphosis is not explained or seen as remarkable, it just is. Is it influential - you bet - it not only influenced the magic realist writers that followed him, but all those movies such as The Fly in which man is transformed into another creature.

See also my post on Kafka's Prague

by Zoe Brooks