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Title: The Castle: A New Translation, Based on the Restored Text by Franz Kafka, Mark Harman, Malcolm Pasley ISBN: 0-8052-1106-3 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: January, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.24 (45 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Very sneaky indeed!
Comment: It is a pity that it wasn't until the book's abrupt end that my interest finally piqued. So many questions unanswered. Disappointed with the verbosity and seemingly needless details throughout most of the book, I was suddenly left facing the cliff hanger of all cliff hangers! The author is dead! I will never have my pressing questions answered! It makes me wonder whether Kafka actually meant to do this. Very sneaky indeed!
I know that K. must be Kafka, but what is the Castle? Acceptance as a Jew in Nazi Germany? It seems too obvious, but perhaps a simple explanation will suffice.
Rating: 5
Summary: the greatest book half-written
Comment: There's no denying it--the Castle is fragmentary, maddeningly slow-paced, and suddenly shifts gear at repeated points, with the undeniable suggestion that Kafka stumbled across some new aspect and decided to give it a try. This is a long way from the compulsive readability of a short story like A Country Doctor, in which the sense of futility and disorientation is made incredibly visceral and affecting--there is a disorientation in the Castle, there is, beyond any doubt, the sense of futility, but it is stretched out across long, long chapters, achieving its effect more through aching weariness than through the shock of being placed in a bizarre situation. I found the first two or three chapters to be very absorbing, but once the pointlessness of K.'s venture has been firmly established, it trails off into endless repetition--for the rest of the first half of the book, prepare for situation after situation which establish nothing new and merely grind in the gloomy conclusion until (if you're like me) you actually begin to experience very discomforting emotional effects, not quite like in anything else except maybe some of Beckett, though its uniqueness hardly makes it seem any more pleasant. But, somewhere around page 160 or so, it really starts to pick up. The rest of the chapters are dominated by long monologues by minor characters, setting up brilliantly bizarre side-plots which manage to both mask and emphasize the looming futility at the same time, and, toward the end, to reinterpret the preceding events in a way which will make you question what seemed so clear before. Beyond the first couple of chapters and then certain sections in Olga's monologue, I can't say I was exactly absorbed in the story in the way I've been with the short fiction, but by the end it definitely seems like it's been a worthwhile experience. And this would be a good time to talk more about the novel's fragmentary state--it does end abruptly (though, if we can trust Max Brod, it was left off near the end, and Kafka did provide a conclusion, which you can find in most commentaries though it is mysteriously missing from this edition), and certain parts, such as the endless section from about page 80 to page 160, should definitely have been pared down or at least modified somehow, other parts should have been tweaked a little to follow what had come before, and occasionally, though the prose is exceptional for such an early draft, it is in need of some sharpening. But for what we have--I won't dwell much more than I already have on the concepts it deals with, that's something you should interpret for yourself as you read along--even considering the state that it's in, this is clearly a brilliant novel, nothing quite like it had been done before or has been done since. Someone once said that Kafka attempted to create a painstaking realism to describe the state of his inner mind in the way that Flaubert (one of his greatest influences) created his to sketch Yonville and its inhabitants down to the smallest detail, and I think there is quite a bit of truth in this. It manages to bend the rules of reality without seeming surreal, and to utilize characters as indicators of certain aspects of the inner life without having them seem like mere symbols or mouthpieces. Some people complain that Kafka left far too much open to interpretation, some even accuse him of not even understanding himself what it was he was trying to say, but I disagree, the painstaking balance one sees in this work shows that he was not stabbing in the dark but was actually paring it down to the essentials, was stating the basic situation from which many smaller issues branch out. Due to this balance, due to the issues it raises and the almost entirely new method created for doing so, the Castle is, certainly, one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. If Kafka had persevered, had made the necessary adjustments, and had come out with a work as polished as his short works, it would certainly be one of the greatest books ever written. The Castle is a book that creates a fiction which encompasses the idea of fiction itself, and maps out in incomprehensible detail the life of the inner psyche, the condition of the modern mind. It is frustrating, maddening, incomplete, but definitely a worthwhile read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Great Kafka, but not for the neophyte.
Comment: I would not buy this book if it were your first forray into the realm of Kafka. But the short stories first, then Amerika, then the trial, and then, if you could make it through the trial, try this read.
The new translation is excellent (I've read both translations) and puts an even grimmer spin on life in the village of the castle.
Please note: Kafka died before finishing the book and he never really prepared it for publication. There are sentences that run half a page, and paragaphs that run almost a whole chapter. The final page ends mid sentence.
If you are a fan of Kafka then this book is a must read, especially if you read the Muir translation of The Castle.
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Title: The Trial by Franz Kafka, George Steiner, Willa Muir, Edwin Muir ISBN: 0805210407 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
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Title: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, Nahum Norbert Glatzer, John Updike ISBN: 0805210555 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: November, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Trial: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text by Franz Kafka, Breon Mitchell, Arthur H. Samuelson ISBN: 0805209999 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Amerika by Franz Kafka, Willa Muir, Edwin Muir, E. L. Doctorow ISBN: 0805210644 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: July, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Amerika: The Man Who Disappeared: The New Translation by Michael Hofmann by Franz Kafka, Michael Hofmann ISBN: 081121513X Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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