Franz Kafka - In The Penal Colony BOOK REVIEW
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I wouldn't describe the officer as pure evil, but rather in love with something beautifully inhumane. He'd so lost in the workmanship and design of the apparatus, the fittingness of the punishment to the crime, that he loses sight of the injustice and cruelty of it. The officer even sees himself as persecuted: not given access to replacement parts, conspired against, his supporters driven into hiding, the previous commandant described as a prophet who will return to see his justice done. The officer is the pious, devoted disciple of an abominable religion. So much that he wants to be the final recipient of the divine punishment, and is cruelly denied even that, maybe in some sort of true justice.
it's great to see you putting even more effort into this. this was really well made
What wonderful channel have I stumbled upon, thank you for your amazing body of work which seems to be growing week by week, keep up the awesome reviews my friend, thanks a lot!
I know you're not a huge fan of DFW, but I think this excerpt is totally apropos for this review.
"And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka's wit inaccessible to children whom our culture has trained to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance. It's not that students don't "get" Kafka's humor but that we've taught them to see humor as something you get-the same way we've taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke-that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It's hard to put into words up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it's good they don't "get" Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his art as a kind of door. To envision us readers coming up and pounding on this door, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don't know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc. That, finally, the door opens ... and it opens outward: we've been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch."
It's interesting that you post this on the same day I finish working my way through Kafka's entire bibliography. 'Pleasantly demented' is a good description of the tone of all Kafka's writing. His novels are enjoyable but can get tedious at parts. While most of his short fiction are harrowing nuggets of mad genius. Good review.
great review! one thing that I intuited on my own was that , keeping the nature and character of the officer aside if we solely focus on his intent which might not be the main narrative theme here but as far as I think one great thing the relationship of the officer with the machine illustrates is how deeply are we bound to the things that we create. the things that we create hold our essence more than we do within our selves , it's more us and eternal than we will ever be ; hence the officer here sacrifices his life for his creation -the inscriber machine.
Another great review it i really amazing how much thinking and researching you put on single book and review
we really are thankful for your thoughtful Reviews
I haven't read any Kafka in about a year now, this was a good reminder. I think I'll start off with his diaries (I love writers diaries/notebooks etc, they are really interesting to me), and then this. Loved the review and will certainly be revisiting when I read it.
I've never heard of this guy! It definitely looks like something I will enjoy. I'm always amazed to find an author that I haven't heard of before, it reminds me that there's always something new to learn- that I'll never know enough, and the pursuit of discovering more is enough to preoccupy me for life. Thank you so much for the recommendation. :)
"It's a remarkable piece of episode"! keep going, thank you for sharing!
Once again, great review. I was wondering when I'd see some Kafka round these parts. You should check out a sort of biographical Graphical Novel on Kafka, illustrated by none other than R. Crumb, it's awesome. It's great that more people are seeing the humor in his work instead of associating him with only the bad parts of his life. On a side note, I recently read his short story The Aeroplanes at Brescia while on a 4 hour flight and I was deeply concentrated on avoiding the thought that there would be a plane crash in the story or that whatever airplane would be cursed to roam the airways for hours on end without ever touching ground. Not the best choice of reading while 40,000 feet in the air.
Would love to see you review 'The Castle', next time you come to tackle Kafka.
Taryn Allan that would be interesting. It's probably his hardest read. Also the fact that it just ends mid sentence
I love your reviews!
Please review any works by Thomas Pynchon? Perhaps Gravity's Rainbow or something easier like V?
Subscribed! OMG, this is my new favorite Channel! Happy New Year to you. 💖
Thanks for recommending Will Self's documentary, it was very rich for me as well as your video. Kafka is one of my favorite authors, after Dostoevsky, Clarice Lispector and Machado de Assis. I can never tell what I feel when I read Kafka, at times it's fun, but other times it's not very pleasant... Actually, I believe what makes me enjoy reading his stories is the comedy nesting at the core of his style. Anyway, I appreciate your work!
Kafka is my favorite writer. I recommend the book Conversations with Kafka and of course his diaries. The whole thing of ordering his books to be destroyed is rumored to be Kafka's way of immortalizing himself because he knew Max Brod (the friend that Kafka told this to) would indeed disobey him. I also recommend Kafka's The Judgement- which is my favorite short story ever.
I can’t wait to read this and The Metamorphosis this weekend. I picked it up yesterday. The Trial messed me up to the point I couldn’t read anything for like 3 days lol.
Kafkaesque - lovely word. I have also heard the word Vonnegutesque - probably even more obscure.
By the way not many know that Kafka was an adherent to a jewish branch of gnosticism that drew it's inspiration from the strange jewish prophet and self proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi, who lived in the seventeenth century. Many of Kafka's works can be interpreted as gnostic fables and may not really be about modern life and social and political structures but about liberating the soul from this fallen universe. Look up Kafka's Aphorisms, in them he speaks more clearly about his belief.
Should definitely review The Castle or the much underrated Amerika at some point.
I think Kafka is one of the few writers who’s work is tightly connected to his life, in the sense that, I believe, you can not fully
understand his work before you know about his relationship with his father (and his entire family), his need to live off his writing, and inability to do so, burying himself in the paperwork, administrative work in the insurance company…
Only after I read his Diaries, I could get back to his Trial, Amerika ... and his collection of stories (which are my favourite out of his body of work) and appreciate (understand) them more.
duso moja, ja sam procitao pisma i dnevnike... takodje biografiju na 1500+ stranica, pravo da ti kazem, volio sam ga vise kada sam znao manje. prije sam vise cijenio art-craft, a sad mi je vise alegorija. hi-hi.
Ne znam, ali ja volim da citam dnevnike pisaca. Volim da u njima vidim kako je i o cemu razmisljao pisac dok je pisao neki rad... kod nekih mozes bukvalno da vidis vise verzija neke price, i ceo postupak nastajanja (kao kada slikar krene od skice i stigne do crteza / slike). Kod Kafke sam ko sto rekoh tek posto sam procitao Dnevnike razumeo njegove price.
Secam se, mislim da sam to procitao u njegovoj prepisci sa Milenom Jesenskom, tu negde pise kako je ona govorila za njega da su jednom hodali zajedno ulicom i on je hteo da nekom prosjaku da novac, ali je hteo da mu da tacno neku odredjenu sumu koju nije imao u novcaniku i onda od toga napravio citavu pometnju...
Mozda najvise slican njemu je Kjerkegor (mislim da se Kafka jednim delom na njega i ugledao)
the hunger artist is really clever i thought
@@masterroshi6983 Yeah, especially if you know that he wrote it near the end of his life, when he was suffering from tuberculosis. He died due to starvation because tuberculosis make it so painful to eat.
I just read this last night and I loved it. Not too on the nose and is definitely, as you say, 'pleasantly demented'.
'“What do you still want to know, then?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.'
When I originally read The Trial I found it to be quite slow and even boring at times. Yet it has brooded in my mind and never left me. I now consider it to be one of the most harrowingly truthful books I have read.
One that I have read! And it is amazing!
Here's how epic you are. Here's all the thank you's you deserve:
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LOL 0:39 dou you know the hilarious sketch of A bit of Fry and Laurie about bookshelves and DIY?
7:30 is actually the archdican clode frolo from the hunchback..
Great review but I was really hoping you would talk about the ending I thought it was confusing
I've been a huge fan of Kafka for over 30 years.....I like to hear people talk about him.
I want to make a correction to your review. It is never clarified why the explorer comes to the island. The condemned man is condemned the previous night. I've always thought the he just came to that particular island for one reason or another and that he happened upon the officer who is showing him the apparatus. I could be wrong but that's how I conceive it.
I did enjoy your review. Thanks.
Jim M actually it was clarified. He was invited by the commander to watch the execution. At least in the original. Maybe it wasn't written as clearly in the translation.
although more well known and talked about, I would love for you to review Metamorphosis
I probably read it too young, was like 16, but really liked it, the imagery was impactful. Also, the canadian band Women has a song inspired by it, called "Penal Colony". Check it out, its a beautifully bleak song.
Classic DFW bookcase: big hollow cinderblocks stacken upon each other with wood slats inbetween
2:58 for me its a matter of which stream you tune the radio, and it affects every artistic form. Mainstream is coped by marketing rules. Select beauty, profound, and plenty-of-originality streams... and you certainly will find Kafka there.
Wish you had talked about the ending a little bit more. Once he finds the grave of the old commandant and decides to leave the soldier and the condemned man.
other than that, because of this review I subbed to your channel!! It’s amazing
i like the lights out better... but consider a group of grid-ed shadow boxes with books. or maybe a projected image of the book you are reviewing or its author, or a loop of people eating books, or photo of person reading a book which is placed on a buffet plate filled with food, or not.
I second the lights out as well, though maybe it's because Kafka writes darkly.
cost effective shelving: milk crates stolen from the back alley.
It is a great short storie!!
was there anything symbolic with that lights on lights out?
I'm going to let you answer that.
should i start with his shorter stories, or is it ok to jump straight right into the novels?
I like the short stories, others may have a different opinion.
"It's a remarkable piece of apparatus," great first line.
the very casual, nonchalant jordan "b" peterson reference. 2017 was a different time. love you, cliff
Have you ever considered reading any works by Phillip Larkin? I'd recommend the anthology, 'Whitsun Weddings'. It's poetry, but it's right up your street.
Blane Jones Nice! "High Windows" itself is enough for a Larkin recommendation!
I haven't read much of his later works although I am of course aware of some of his later and arguably most famous poems(which I think is in that anthology) such as 'This Be The Verse'.
How many other women wish they could have married Kafka, I do wonder.
My stories were affected by my childhood, too.
I’ve killed my sister, but only fictionally. 🤗
.
Parents can really drive home that permanent guilt, if the condemnation starts early enough.
I like authors who are realistic about human nature being cruel and absurd.
Also, I love your reviews.
And yes, Kafka is funny as hell.
Finding humor in the bad, even in your most pathetic and broken moments, is necessary for survival.
Hey,Cliff,what's your opinion on audiobooks?
How about a video on that?
Better Than Food: Book Reviews Oh hey,I had downloaded this same book in audio yesterday,but that's an even better answer to my question,thank you very much!
If you haven't already, you should look up "R. Crumb's Kafka." Some of Crumb's best work about an, as you know, fascinating figure.
I enjoyed your review. I hope to be making a contribution to your channel soon.
Will Self also has some quite good talks on TH-cam about Tarkovsky, Solaris specifically if I remember correctly
Re: shelves. Cinder-blocks + planks.
You don't seem to enjoy symbolic interperations?
If your not opposed to geopolitical non fiction, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize and is a concise summarization of the conflict in both Iraq and Syria, well worth the read.
C S Seconded, a very good read
A wild story!
Dude, please read The Nix by Nathan Hill and review it.
I loved it. Especially the chapters that focused on Pwnage's video game addiction.
Do some Donald Barthelme!
Evil starts to begin when empathy starts to end. Therefore there are many degrees of evil. Seeing humor is one way to avoid seeing horror. But it only dulls ones senses and empathy. You seem on the way to that beginning. [. . . when was the last time anyone saw you cry ?] I rest my case.
Kafka. Better Than Food. Fuck yes.
I have just finished reading it, what I am mostly missing in reviews about Kafka's books is that it is all very dream like enviroments. You are mentioning for example humour. It is ceratinly humorous but only becouse it is so incredibly ABSURD. soldier with condemned man ended up wrestling in a ''jist manner''. WTF. it is funny becouse it resembles dreams, their dark nature, and of course it is combined with characters incredibly long monologues and in fact at the present time is not happening that much. Very captivating story though.
A LOT of these writers / thinkers who have rep for being 'all dark, doom-y & deep' (Like Kafka / Beckett / Schopenhaur / Derrida etc etc) are actually oftentimes really funny guys....
....I feel like just because academic consensus has determined them to be 'High Culture' you are supposed to take their every word in full seriousness, thus often entirely missing the point imo
Terrifying book ouch
Damn it Clifford stop stealing my video ideas.
Hi, Do you review new fiction ? I have a novel that I would like to send you entitled The Fabrications, been getting rave reviews.. baret magarian
Shouldn't evil people receive evil punishment? Evil people should die by the evil they create (my words, not a quote, haha).
I really wouldn't place much store on anything Jordan Peterson has to say about anything, yes life's too short to read bullshit.
Franz Kafka and Jordan B. Peterson mentioned in a single video. Man, how awesome is that?!? Ever notice how in Kafka's many stories, the trail and punishment is voluntary and often stems from feelings of shame and unwarranted guilt? and everyone is always guilty until proven innocent? Compare that with what's happening today in universities, at protests and in the office and in parliament. And many people are too self conscious to speak.