A BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF FRANZ KAFKA
1883 - 1924
A.I. is for generating Hot Franz, antidote to all the horrifically UGLY portraits his past cover artists have subjected him to. YOU'RE WELCOME!
Bibliography: Kafka Books
Brod, Max. Franz Kafka: A Biography. New York: Schocken Books, 1960.
Gray, Ronald D. Franz Kafka. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Kafka, Franz. Amerika Translated by Willa Muir and Edwin Muir. New York: Knopf/Doubleday, 1987.
Kafka, Franz. The Castle. Translated by Willa Muir and Edwin Muir. New York: Vintage Books, 1969.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. New York: Dover Publications, 1996.
Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Translated by Willa Muir and Edwin Muir. New York: Vintage Books, 1969.
The Metamorphosis
And Other Stories
When we were assigned this book in high school, I read it and thought, "Oh, well that's very good. Yes, more like this, please." And then I did not encounter anything like it nor any more Kafka for the next five or six years.
Which just goes to show... I don't know, something. Fate takes its time before it really sinks its teeth into you? Or maybe I had to mature a little bit, emotionally, intellectually, before I could fully appreciate or chase after that initial high...
Franz Kafka
by Ronald Gray
Ronald D. Gray was a scholar of German literature at Cambridge and this book is from 1973. It's really a very compassionate take on Kafka, though the cover illustration is godawful. He has another book called Kafka's Castle from the '50s and something else I'm curious about, though a little OT, called Goethe the Alchemist: A Study of Alchemical Symbolism in Goethe's Literary and Scientific Works. (There's this underlying current of alchemy references in Bosch paintings, and I think it would be cool to see how the alchemy in Goethe might manifest...? I wonder, is there any reference to alchemy in Kafka's German? Probably not.)
Franz Kafka: A Biography
By Max Brod
This feels like a biased biography. You know someone is your real homie when they flagrantly disobey your dying wishes and make off with all your most embarrassing stuff. And publish it. Again, it's as if Kafka biographies are in competition to have the ugliest cover art, making him look like a squashed Mr. Potato Head. I'm sure the man had better angles. Is it the name of the game to do Kafka dirty?? Ugh!
The Castle
This book was given to me by a philosophy professor. Not my professor — he taught inmates at San Quentin. And I thought he was probably the most profound authority on literature there ever was.
At last, here's a book that has the kind of cover design I don't object to, a rough woodcut, three colors. There's a more recent translation from the '90s I would like to try.
The only really cool edition of Kafka I've got in my collection.
The Trial
The whole book is a wild ride with strange, dreamy liminal spaces, atmosphere oppressing in its confusion and inevitability, but it's those final words that get me: "“Like a dog!” he said; it was as if the shame of it must outlive him." Big payoff. It had me shrieking and wanting to hurl the book across the room. Once again you have women leading the way, throwing themselves at him, being knowledgeable and available (startlingly forward!)
On the whole, my Kafka collection is pathetic, relative to my feelings for him. Most of what I've read of his was borrowed from the library. I don't know why this is. Maybe because he lives in my heart, maybe because so much was published posthumously...?* — but I never felt a need to own more cool editions of his books. I'm a book hoarder, so that goes against all reason. Like, I know his work is out there if/when I need it; I have faith that the right copies of his books will find themselves in my hands, when needed, when necessary; otherwise, I carry him inside me, all the time. We're practically the same person.
Although I can honestly say my social anxiety has gotten way better over time. Franz Kafka died of TB pretty young and I don't know if he ever had the opportunity to do enough healing.
One day I should really like to pay my respects at the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague.
Should I ever complete that pilgrimage, I'll be sure to update this page again. I'm tempted, too, to add Kafka on the Shore to this bibliography, because I really love Murakami's oeuvre (sadly I'm a total apologist for his tropes about women). But it's slightly OT and I'd have to re-read it and think about that some more.
Until next time, I remain, as ever, your humble and ever-loving bookworm.
* Not even I quite understand my reasoning behind that one... ↩
The above graphic is based on the work of Stanley Wyatt, which illustrates the cover of the 1962 edition of Ronald Gray's Kafka: Collection of Critical Essays — a book I would jump at a chance to lay my hands on, if ever I encountered it in the wild...
