Althouse: "I am made of literature; I am nothing else and cannot be anything else."

October 3, 2013

"I am made of literature; I am nothing else and cannot be anything else."

"My penchant for portraying my dreamlike inner life has rendered everything else inconsequential; my life has atrophied terribly, and does not stop atrophying."

4 comments:

David said...: I have not read Kafka for a long time. Decades. I wonder what I would think of his work now? It fascinated me then.

Maybe when football season is over.; 10/3/13, 6:30 PM
ricpic said...: Poor guy was murdered by his father. Let himself be murdered by his own overvaluation of his father and undervaluation of himself in relation to his father would be more accurate.; 10/3/13, 6:49 PM
George M. Spencer said...: "The Burrow" is a great, little-known short story of his.

It's about a mole (maybe) who spends the story describing his life down a hole. And the story goes on. And on. And on.; 10/3/13, 8:53 PM
Robert Cook said...: I read THE TRIAL just after I'd graduated college. I found it surprisingly great and easy to read and gripping. I read the entire second half of the book in one sitting late one night.

I read AMERIKA later and enjoyed it; it's lighter than THE TRIAL, more an overt (rather than covert) comedy.

I read a smattering of the short stories, some of which I enjoyed, some of which left me nonplussed.

I started THE CASTLE but stopped not too far in due to personal matters in my life at the time that distracted me from the book. I've never returned to it, though I intend to.

I reread THE TRIAL this past year, and I enjoyed it just as much as I had previously, but it was like reading a different book: the tone and feel and the meaning I take from events in the book are different than my younger perceptions and reactions. (On the second reading, I see that Joseph K. is, in some ways, an asshole, at least partially the author of his own fate, and less purely a mere victim of a bureaucratic tyranny.); 10/4/13, 6:48 AM