Conversations With Kafka

Rating:
Summary: Deep Insights in Concise Bites
Review: Absolutely wonderful. I found this delightful book far more accessible and practical than Kafka's beautiful, but very grim, short stories and novels. Kafka's conversations with a 17 year old poet show the very human side of this literary genius. Perhaps best of all, you can open almost any page and find an insightful dialog. Kafka, like many other ignored prophets, anticipated the madness of the Holocaust caused by pervasive prejudice, a cult of bureaucratic procedures, and deep fear of exceptional souls who don't follow the official line.

Rating:
Summary: A great literary and insightful biographical work
Review: Amusing, affecting, and sometimes downright profound, the utterances of Kafka--as documented by his friend, Gustav Janouch--stand without parallel in 20th century literature. Even when read in a translation from the original German, one cannot help but be moved by the wisdom, insight, humor and poetry of Kafka's words. This book stands on par with Kafka's published novels and parables, and I give it my highest recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: A help to know a very shy and very great man
Review: Have you ever met a man who is so very shy and humble, that unlike Christ, who would take disciples, he stood alone by himself, remained unknown to all of us, till after he died, his friends started deparately publishing/telling his stories? Yet he still remained in the mystery. Not because he is lack of charm and wisdom, but because almost 80 years passed and a time that such a great soul lived has vanished so completely, we know no one that ever came close, and we no longer can recognize him. If you read the morden text-book literature ciritic, you would be so completely lost in the noise of the scholars, that you never know the truth.

I also read the first edition a couple years ago, (knowing that it was out of print for years, I photocopied the book page to page) it was also to my great surprise to see the book in print now, without knowing that the new edition has added many more flesh to the great man it described. I also found every page of it fascintaing to read, I like to have it in my reach, and randomly open one page and read. I also doubted how a 17year old can record the long comment by Kafka that he could hardly understand - so I close my eyes and try to imagine a young man in love with poetry and music, with a memory and heart that is still untainted - and I believe he can write this book.

If you love Kafka's book, I can challenge you with 99% assurance that you don't understand what he is telling you. If you follow the morden text-book critic like a dog, then you are absolutely wrong. If you still have space for truth in your mind, I challenge you to read Kafka more carefully, closer to your heart and, if you still don't understand him well, read his letters, diaries, and try this book as well. To me, this book helps greatly! It is eye opening! It is a must for any one who likes Kafka's work.

Rating:
Summary: Warm and comforting portrait of an enigmatic literary genius
Review: I'm surprised to see this book is in print. I stumbled on a copy of the 1971, revised second clothbound edition in a community college library and have never seen it anywhere else.

Kafka is a hard man to know, let alone to like, through his fiction. One feels respect, admiration, awe ... but perhaps not affection or warmth. This book, compiled by a youthful acquaintance from his memories of chats with Kafka, provides a wonderfully human, if dubiously accurate (how could he remember all these lengthy quotations?), image of the man.

At times he seems pragmatically direct, even patronising to his listener: "There is too much noise in your poems; it is a by-product of youth, which indicates an excess of vitality. So that the noise is itself beautiful, though it has nothing in common with art. On the contrary! The noise mars the expression...." Sometimes he can be sardonic, as when he refers to newspapers as the vice of civilization -- they offer the events of the world with no meaning, a "heap of earth and sand" -- and remarks, "It's like smoking; one has to pay the printer the price of poisoning oneself." (Good thing he didn't live to see TV!)

More often, Kafka comes across as some sort of Zen master: "Just be quiet and patient. Let evil and unpleasantness pass quietly over you. Do not try to avoid them. On the contrary, observe them carefully. Let active understanding take the place of reflex irritation, and you will grow out of your trouble. Men can achieve greatness only by surmounting their own littleness."

Janouch relates a story from his father that Kafka once paid a powerful lawyer-friend to help out an injured laborer with his application for a disability pension, get his rightful compensation, and beat Kafka's employer, the Accident Insurance Institution.

Give this book five stars for interest and readability, three stars for shaky accuracy, and average at four.

Rating:
Summary: Warm and comforting portrait of an enigmatic literary genius
Review: I'm surprised to see this book is in print. I stumbled on a copy of the 1971, revised second clothbound edition in a community college library and have never seen it anywhere else.

Kafka is a hard man to know, let alone to like, through his fiction. One feels respect, admiration, awe ... but perhaps not affection or warmth. This book, compiled by a youthful acquaintance from his memories of chats with Kafka, provides a wonderfully human, if dubiously accurate (how could he remember all these lengthy quotations?), image of the man.

At times he seems pragmatically direct, even patronising to his listener: "There is too much noise in your poems; it is a by-product of youth, which indicates an excess of vitality. So that the noise is itself beautiful, though it has nothing in common with art. On the contrary! The noise mars the expression...." Sometimes he can be sardonic, as when he refers to newspapers as the vice of civilization -- they offer the events of the world with no meaning, a "heap of earth and sand" -- and remarks, "It's like smoking; one has to pay the printer the price of poisoning oneself." (Good thing he didn't live to see TV!)

More often, Kafka comes across as some sort of Zen master: "Just be quiet and patient. Let evil and unpleasantness pass quietly over you. Do not try to avoid them. On the contrary, observe them carefully. Let active understanding take the place of reflex irritation, and you will grow out of your trouble. Men can achieve greatness only by surmounting their own littleness."

Janouch relates a story from his father that Kafka once paid a powerful lawyer-friend to help out an injured laborer with his application for a disability pension, get his rightful compensation, and beat Kafka's employer, the Accident Insurance Institution.

Give this book five stars for interest and readability, three stars for shaky accuracy, and average at four.

Rating:
Summary: A help to know a very shy and very great man
Review: The 1970's expanded version of this book is of questionable authenticity. The expanded edition purports to recall conversations from many decades earlier. The circumstances of the manuscript's discovery don't add up either. As for the original edition, it may be somewhat more reliable, but should be taken with a grain of salt too, especially when there are quotation marks. See ""Janouch's "Conversations With Kafka' Some Questions" in Modern Fiction Studies, Winter 1971-1972, 555-556. Peter F. Neumeyer

Rating:
Summary: "Conversations With Kafka" highly questionable
Review: The 1970's expanded version of this book is of questionable authenticity. The expanded edition purports to recall conversations from many decades earlier. The circumstances of the manuscript's discovery don't add up either. As for the original edition, it may be somewhat more reliable, but should be taken with a grain of salt too, especially when there are quotation marks. See ""Janouch's "Conversations With Kafka' Some Questions" in Modern Fiction Studies, Winter 1971-1972, 555-556. Peter F. Neumeyer