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Summary: one of the world's greatest
Review: It's hard to fit a review of any of Kafka's work in such a short space, but especially a review of his short fiction (or rather parables, which is more what they are). He was a master of the short story, the likes of which we have seldom seen before or since. This volume contains most of his short stories, those that aren't included here are included elsewhere, where they are more fitting (such as "The Stoker" as the first chapter of Amerika). Kafka's short story "The Metamorphosis" is possibly the best short story ever written. It is certainly the most well known. But I'd like to draw your attention to a few other stories by him--examples of what makes Kafka great: "Before the Law", "In the Penal Colony", "A Country Doctor", "A Report to an Academy", "A Hunger Artist", "The Burrow", "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk", and "Jackals and Arabs." Read this book.
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Summary: Country doctor
Review: Just reread "Country Doctor" last night and man alive, what a thing that is. When the old man makes his comeback, it scares me visually. You want some real shock and horror? Read this guy.
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Summary: more estranged than any stranger
Review: Kafka can be a difficult figure to approach for some. His presence looms for some readers as foreboding as that strange unapproachable structure in The Castle looms for the character in that book. One way to get around this is to learn a little about Kafka's own life, especially his relationship with his father. And also to learn that his economical & concise way with language he learned as a student of law and his fascination to the point of paranoia with bureaucracies of various kinds he may have picked up in his career as an office worker in an insurance company. Kafka may never become all together human to some readers. To those who share his particular temperament, however, he will seem very human and become a favorite though a kind of quiet one that lurks in the fringes of your bookcase. These stories are a great introduction. Though they are all prose works in some cases they seem to possess qualities more often seen in parables than in twentieth-century prose ie: use of symbols & layers of possible meanings being more evocative(though sparse) than specific. His work is certainly pessimistic, his landscapes are oblique, and chances are you will have your own way of looking at Kafka the more you read(and there are a vast array of ways to interpret his work). One interesting reader, Jean Paul Sartre, characterized Kafka's work as "the impossibility of transcendence". His exaggerated worlds(Swift was one of his own favorite authors) do provide interesting glimpses into that very often written about terrain alienation but few have ever delved into it so deeply. After Kafka you may be lead down one of the more interesting paths in the history of literature which includes Nabokov, Borges, Cortazar, Calvino and many many others.
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Summary: Nothing like this before or since
Review: Kafka has to be the one of the most influential writers of the century, not just for his ability to capture the alienation and unreality of much of modern life but because his vision, which is simultaneously totally bizarre and strangely moving, freed writers to try more and more daring ways of expressing themselves. After all, if one can write a moving story about a man who wakes one morning to discover that he has been turned into a huge cockroach, what can't the writer do?The impression left by these stories is all the more interesting when one realizes that Kafka wasn't a starving, drug or drink demented artist, but a minor clerk in a German insurance firm. A dull and orderly life. Of course, if you've ever worked for an insurance company Kafka's sense of unreality and alienation might seem natural. These are unique and wonderful concoctions. Anyone who wonders what 'Kafkaesque' really means should take a peek into his world. These stories are the best place to start. Then on to The Trial for the full, gruely experience. Wonderfully horrible.
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Summary: a nice, big book
Review: kafka is a nice change from the rest of literature. he makes me think anybody with a subconcious and a mental monologue can write fascinating stories. ie: he gives hope for me, which is somehow increased by how excellently neurotic and totally directionless most of his narrative is (The Burrow is my favorite thing ever!). I much appreciate how well the shorter stories let you see his habit of writing until he came to the end of an idea, and then starting somewhere else, and maybe joining them if he felt like it. this book is obviously a definitive sort of collection, and physically it has a very satisfying heft.
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Summary: Truth's Metamorphosis Into the Inexplicable
Review: Kafka is much more then the Metamorphosis and the Trial, and this collection demonstrates why. Kafka offered much while he delivered little, meaning that he opens up a universe of possibilities while confirming nothing. Nothing materializes, everything is fog. Stories that sound as if they're going to reveal the meaning of life end up only irritating you, and others, such as A Crossbreed, bore you until the final few sentences when you suddenly realize what you've been reading, and almost cry. Here is a line from Prometheus, which seems to elucidate a main theme of Kafka's writing: "As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable."
Kafka yearns for beauty and writes for truth, but what ends up on the page is often uncertain, vague and close to demonic in its preoccupation with the grotesque. His writing came out of a desire for truth and it had in turn to end in the inexplicable. So, truth metamorphoses (if I may..) into the inexplicable.
Also take note: the book is divided into The Longer Stories and the Shorter Stories, and some of the best Kafka is in the final section, which is the Shorter Stories. Watch out for The Bucket Rider, A Crossbreed, Prometheus, Poseidon, The City Coat of Arms... too many to mention!
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Summary: Worth it for "The Metamorphosis" alone.
Review: Kafka was a seriously messed up guy, but "The Metamorphosis" is a great piece of work. The book is worth buying for this story alone.
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Summary: Five stars isn't enough
Review: Kafka was perhaps the greatest writer ever to live and this volume shows it. Every story, even every sketch of an idea that Kafka wrote down comes filled with brilliant emotions and deep meaning conveyed through simple and serious language. Shakespeare has none of the lyrical abilities of Kafka, and Homer could only dream of equaling Kafka's mastery of plot. Kafka out-psychoanalyzed Freud, and wrote circles around Joyce. His stories seem modern even by today's standards, the things that haven't come true yet in his works I believe will eventually, while I don't believe him to be a prophet he certainly had a great understanding of humankind and knew where it was headed. "A Country Doctor" is in my opinion the greatest short story ever written, a dark dream sequence with all kinds of slimy worms writhing beneath the surreal surface plot, sticking out through the rotted boards that Kafka puts down to allow us to see what we're standing over. "The Judgement," a purely perfect work of psychology, Kafka dipping deeper and hitting more nerves than in any of his other stories, giving us a picture of what it's like to be a genius controlled by a domineering, and a nonunderstanding father. And of course there are the smaller works from "Meditations," little snippets of images that flash through the mind, a kind of literary whispering in the ear while sitting in the dark. "The Burrow," another favorite, perhaps the most claustrophobic work of fiction ever conceived, the darkness of the tunnel affecting your mind for days. Read this book, in it the greatest treasure a writer ever gave us shines, a golden nugget, hidden deep within a dark pool that seems unswimable. Take the swim, and I garantee that you will find the nugget. Ignoring Kafka is like denying yourself the best there is.
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Summary: Hooray for K.
Review: Kafka's fiction occupies a strange, unique place in the canon. It is so deep as to invite a world of interpretation, yet so mysterious as to defy any attempts at interpreting it. I think it's brilliant just for its imagery -- who can forget the monstrous execution device of "In the Penal Colony," or the description of the boy's festering wound in "A Country Doctor," or the bouncing balls that torment the protagonist of "Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor," or the dead, river-bound title character of "The Hunter Gracchus" who is lost in limbo between this world and the next, or the animalistic recluse of a man obsessed with defending his home from intruders, both real and imaginary, in "The Burrow"? Kafka's use of symbolism, especially his use of animals as symbols representing various types of human experience, is unparalleled; it's easy to see the enormous influence he had on writers as diverse as Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Mann, and Flannery O'Connor. But I don't feel Kafka's goal was to shock his readers or influence future generations of writers. He was just a 9-to-5 insurance guy with unique outlooks on life and the world and who developed an original, if occasionally grim and morbid, language for expressing them. If a writer's fiction is supposed to reflect his personality, then in Kafka's case we get a distinct picture of a man who struggled every day of his life with his efforts to write, his alienation from his family ("The Metamorphosis"), his difficult relationship with his father ("The Judgment"), his religious feelings, his Jewish identity ("Josephine the Singer," of particular poignancy coming from someone whose sisters were later to die in the concentration camps), his victim status ("The Vulture"), the absurdity of being an artist trying to communicate with an apathetic or misunderstanding public ("A Hunger Artist"), man's search for the divine and order in the universe ("Investigations of a Dog"). From a technical standpoint, it must be stated that Kafka was not a perfect writer; many of the stories are structurally flawed and seem inexplicably truncated or unnecessarily lengthened. Ascribing the shortcomings to expressionistic recklessness, however, I'd rather focus on the dark beauty of the images, even though I don't expect to understand them any better than I could know the man himself.
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Summary: Kafka's genious shines through, despite translation troubles
Review: Kafka's genius lies in the intricate use of language. His sublte style conceals a world of secret doors to interpretation. The casual reader will easily glide by the well-masked portals and probably not come out the other end with much to show for it. On the other hand, the careful, open-minded reader could spend a lifetime exploring the labyrinth of interpretive possibilities within Kafka's works The only trouble with this particular book is the inherant difficulty related to translating literature. The translator did as fine a job as can be expected, considering the richness and pliability of the original text. Overall, this book belongs in the library of any Kafka afficionado.
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