Franz Kafka’s Dissenting Bodies

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/franz-kafkas-dissenting-bodies

by prismatic • 4 years ago

19 13 4 years ago

prospectmagazine.co.uk

gnulinux• 4 years ago

I'm not sure if this question is off-topic and if so I'm sorry, but I was really curious so I couldn't help but ask. I observe that articles about Franz Kafka end up in HN front page relatively frequently. Personally, I'm a huge fan of Kafka, I read all his novels (and some of his short stories), he's one of my favorite author, so I have no problem with this. But I can't help but wonder whether there is some kind of correlation between being an HN reader and liking Kafka's works, or whether people just see the word "Kafka" and somehow think it's related to Apache Kafka [1] and upvote. Curious about what others think about this.

When it comes to the OP article:

Vladimir Nabokov was having none of it: in his teaching copy of the novella, he drew a sketch of a common beetle.

I'm curious why Nabokov thought this would be accurate. The work itself intentionally doesn't mention what kind of "vermin" Gregor Samsa is..

[1] https://kafka.apache.org/

dnc• 4 years ago

I read all his novels (and some of his short stories), he's one of my favorite authors

That makes at least two of us. :) But, I suspect there are quite a few more HN readers who like Kafka's works and literature in general (the first is arguably very correlated to the other), judging from how often literature related articles appear on the HN front page. Often, when that is the case I also can't help but wonder the same about the correlation between being a fiction and HN reader.

blockwriter2• 4 years ago

To me, Kafka’s work is particularly axiomatic. It has an internal logic and tends toward involution. I could see how this would appeal to technically minded people, whereas Dickens, or Austen, authors whose work tends to be discursive, might seem boring or without basis.

avgcorrection• 4 years ago

But I can't help but wonder whether there is some kind of correlation between being an HN reader and liking Kafka's works, or whether people just see the word "Kafka" and somehow think it's related to Apache Kafka [1] and upvote. Curious about what others think about this.

Kafka isn’t obscure. Everyone has heard of Kafkaesque.

Why ask whether people just blindly/ignorantly upvote?

uwagar2• 4 years ago

i cant begin to tell you how pissed off i am about the name of kafka used for a software project. is it just me?

anothernewdude2• 4 years ago

It'd be a more appropriate name for Nifi to be honest.

anothernewdude2• 4 years ago

I think the kind of dystopia that Kafka wrote about is part of the zeitgeist.

uwagar2• 4 years ago

anyone feel an eastern european oppressive brown-gray stone communist vibe reading kafka?

dredmorbius• 4 years ago

Kafka's dates were 1883--1924. His experience and writing were all but entirely pre-communist, and certainly didn't reflect post-WWII Soviet Bloc eastern European experience. Rather more Austro-Hungarian / Habsburg Empire.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Joseph_I_of_Austria>

Franz Kafka’s Dissenting Bodies

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