Customer Reviews

Alan Bennett: Plays 2 : Kafka's Dick, the Insurance Man, the Old Country, an Englishman Abroad, a Question of Attribution (Faber Contemporary Classics) (v. 2)

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I disagree with the other reviewer: while "Kafka's Dick" is a very fine play, I found "An Englishman Abroad" and "A Question of Attribution" both more substantial and more entertaining. I've since had the chance to the TV film versions of both (produced, I think, for the BBC). If you ever get a chance to see either of these, don't pass it up. Until then, the scripts will do.

I can only comment on the Insurance Man, which was made into one of the best films (for BBC TV I think) I've ever seen - portraying a late 19th/early 20th century manual worker's attempt to get compensation for an industrial disease from a nightmare Kafkaesque bureaucracy. Kafka himself emerges as the Insurance Man of the title at the end (this was in fact Kafka's day job, and his writings reflect the sinister world he lived in).

Whether this would work as a play I don't know, and it might be hard to read on paper, but it made a great film. I only wish I could get it on video (which was how I ended up here writing this review - I was searching the web for a video of the film).

"the question of attribution" is a most brilliant juxtaposition of aesthetics and ethics, a subtle amalgam of truth and honesty explored through the power of art. "kafka's dick," on the other hand, sews the world of fiction with the crudeness of reality by bringing together a most fantastic and imaginative play. bennett remains british wit at its sublime.