Customer Reviews

Kafka

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Kafka was a complex man whose genius is inseparable from his huge neuroses. So is Robert Crumb. Put the two together, as this book does, and the upshot is a book in which the distinction between author Crumb and subject Kafka tends to dissolve. The book is just as much about the one as the other. It's no mistake that Crumb is drawn (sorry for the bad pun) to Kafka.

At one level, the book is a primer on the life and work of Franz Kafka, with Crumb lavishly illustrating David Zane Mairowitz's text (warning: the text is strangely loaded with typos). The highlights of Kafka's life, including his stormy relationship with his father, his alienation from Prague, the city in which he spent most of his life, his difficulties with sexual intimacy, his self-loathing, his work at an insurance agency, and his struggle with tuberculosis, are all chronicled. Moreover, synapses of some of his best work--"The Judgment," "The Metamorphosis," "The Burrow," "In the Penal Colony," "A Hunger Artist," "Letter to His Father," The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika--are provided. Someone who knows nothing or little about Kafka will get a good orientation from reading this book.

But it's Crumb's pen-and-ink illustrations that make the book. They're eerie, dark, and at times actually frightening: perfect glimpses of Kafka's demons as well as Crumb's. In fact, Crumb and Kafka share many of the same demons: an intense need for comfort by women, but a deep-seated hostility to them; an equally intense need for public approval, coupled with an intense contempt for the crowd; a fascination with the usually unnoticed weirdness of the ordinary; a competing attraction and repulsion to the artistic, bohemian crowd; seething but repressed sexuality; a periodic yearning to disappear, to be punished, to be redeemed and reborn through suffering; an alternately bewildered and enraged dislike of Nietzschean proportions of the way in which popular culture cheapens existence (Crumb & Mairowitz's take on touristy Prague, pp. 174-75, is priceless); and a need to confess some of their darkest secrets, through their art, to the very public they disdain. In many ways, both Crumb and Kafka are hunger artists: they refuse to partake of the status quo not necessarily because they're ascetics, but simply because they don't find anything in it that whets their appetites. In gazing at Crumb's brilliant illustrations of Kafka, one can't help but think that this work, like so much of what Crumb does, is autobiographical.

Is it intentionally so? Does Crumb understand the deep connection between himself and Kafka? Is the book intended, at least on one level, as a gag: a book about Crumbka? I dunno, although I suspect that Crumb knows exactly what he's doing. But what I do know is that Kafka is about more than just Kafka. And that's what makes doubly intriguing.

This is an amazing book about Kafka. I have read some Kafka, but never in a million years would I have bought a biography of Kafka--unless I had been intrigued by the idea of it being in "graphic novel" format. David Mairowitz does a superb job of simply and clearly illustrating Kafka as a human being and dissecting Kafka's writing with great reverence for the work. As for Robert Crumb, it would be hard to imagine a better artist to illustrate a book about Kafka. Perhaps it is due to Crumb's very public neuroticism and career built on drawing the nebbish that you feel an instant sense of the "rightness" of the artistic depictions in this book.

It is a delightful, often humorous, and informative read. You would be hard pressed to find a less painful way to become more familiar with the world and work of Franz Kafka. I would highly recommend this book for any student assigned to read Kafka, or for anyone who has read something of Kafka and would like a better sense of his origins and influences. It is somehow scholarly and delightful all at the same time.

Michael Sidlofsky

Kafka scholar David Mairowitz and underground comics artist Robert Crumb team up to provide a fascinating window into Franz Kafka's brilliantly troubled mind. Mairowitz's text provides historical context and biographical information, including valuable insight into the Jewish folkloric roots of Kafka's fiction. Crumb's characteristically graphic illustrations highlight the horrific and humorous elements within Kafka's work. Together, the author and illustrator provide summaries of K's best-known short stories and novels, encouraging the reader to delve into the originals. The book's only flaw lies in Mairowitz's unfortunately condescending attitude towards Kafka scholars and fans.

R. Crumb and Charles Bukowski, now Crumb and Kafka. The drawings illuminate the text in a way that Kafka would have loved. I will never see Kafka again, except through Crumb's vision.

If you like Crumb, or if you like Kafka, find this book.

This is a complete, full-length graphic novel biography of Kafka. In less than 180 pages, the life of this complex & very influential writer to later generations, is told with a completeness that satisfies this reader. His family life, his upbringing, the loves & unrequited loves of his life, his daily work, his influences, his fears, his loves, & his beliefs are all within these covers. His novels are reprised in just a few pages for each one. Aspects of his own life are used to mirror his novels. This is one incredible biography & should already be considered a classic of the graphic novel genre.

This book is a biography of Franz Kafka. Throughout the book we get summaries of Kafka's important works and we get to see Crumb's visual interpretation of these stories. That is the best part of the book for me. The biographical side is also very good, explaining a bit of why Kafka wrote like that.

While reading the book, I felt like it is hard to call most of it a comic book, because it has a lot of prose. The parts of the book where we get to see Crumb interpret Kafka's stories definitely feel like a comic book, but the biography section doesn't. However, I thinks this works very well in the book, it makes the stories more alive when the images tell more than just being a drawing.

I enjoyed the book, it is worth reading.

If you are A Crumb Fan or Collect Crumb this is a must have. I bought it used from an approved Amazon seller and received it quickly and in very good condition! I had no idea who KAFKA was but once I picked it up I could not put it down.

i must admit that i'm a sucker for pictures and i seem to tear through graphic novels like nobody's business. i read this book in one day in between restoring my laptop. i have a shallow background in the life of kafka by way of a class project. his strange virgin-whore complex, his self-hating jew complex, his daddy complex, and how it shows itself in his writings are all discussed here in a simple, human way with eye-candy from the great man of complexes himself, robert crumb. good read, good for the novice and the art geek alike.

I read "The Metamorphosis" in high school, and found Kafka too weird. Having read this book, I now appreciate his weirdness a little better. As always, Crumb's drawings are highly amusing, right down to the authors' self-portraits on page 175.

I only got this because of Crumb and I got an unexpected and enlightening education. Kafka could be a difficult and obtuse subject, but the insightful writing and Crumb's amazing art work make it understandable and fascinating. Only R Crumb could pull this off so well.