The Meowmorphosis (Quirk Classics) [Paperback]

Franz Kafka (Author), Cook Coleridge (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 10, 2011 | Series: Quirk Classics

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that he had been changed into an adorable kitten.”

Thus begins The Meowmorphosis—a bold, startling, and fuzzy-wuzzy new edition of Franz Kafka’s classic nightmare tale, from the publishers of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! Meet Gregor Samsa, a humble young man who works as a fabric salesman to support his parents and sister. His life goes strangely awry when he wakes up late for work and finds that, inexplicably, he is now a man-sized baby kitten. His family freaks out: Yes, their son is OMG so cute, but what good is cute when there are bills piling up? And how can he expect them to serve him meals every day? If Gregor is to survive this bizarre, bewhiskered ordeal, he’ll have to achieve what he never could before—escape from his parents’ house. Complete with haunting illustrations and a provocative biographical exposé of Kafka’s own secret feline life, The Meowmorphosis will take you on a journey deep into the tortured soul of the domestic tabby. 

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Highly recommended for connoisseurs of the bizarre.”—Publishers Weekly

“Takes meta-fiction to dizzying new heights.”—The Huffington Post

About the Author

 
Franz Kafka is one of the 20th century's most influential authors. His novella "The Metamorphosis" and his novels The Trial and The Castle are regarded among the most original works of modern Western literature. Coleridge Cook, writing under a different name, is a beloved fantasy novelist and blogger as well as the winner of several prestigious literary awards.

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Quirk Books (May 10, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159474503X
• ISBN-13: 978-1594745034
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #321,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I Can Has Kafka? YES! March 23, 2011

By I Hear Vine Voices VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

"One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that he had been changed into an adorable kitten."

In less capable hands, such a prompt would have resulted in a book that simply replaced the word "insect" with "kitten." But Quirk Books wisely commissioned an extremely capable fantasy writer to re-imagine Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis as a work of gonzo literature. I'm happy to report that "The Meowmorphosis" (published by "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies publisher" Quirk Books) is more than the one-note parody its early detractors feared.

While the initial chapters stick close to Kafka's well-known novella, the book spirals out of control (in a good way) when Samsa leaves his parents' home to relieve them of the burden of caring and feeding for such a large, adorable kitten. Samsa's adventure is both hilarious and horrifying to witness, and takes meta-fiction to dizzying new heights. The new co-writer absolutely nails Kafka's voice; the new passages integrate so well with the story that it's hard to believe the book isn't entirely written by one author.

Co-author Coleridge Cook (a pseudonym for an award-winning fantasy novelist) describes Samsa's feline behavior in detail, and not a page goes by in which a piece of furniture is not scratched or perched on. Bowls of milk are lapped at, and humans are snuggled with.

Will cat-lovers enjoy "The Meowmorphosis"? Yes -- there's no doubt in my mind that cat-lovers will find Samsa just as cute and cuddly as his sister does in the story. I'm a dog person, and even I was LOL-ing by the book's end.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars It could've been five stars, but . . . March 24, 2011

By J. Roberts VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I love these homages/ripoffs of classic literature. I started with Pride Prejudice and Zombies and have been keeping up with Quirk Classics' output ever since. I think Meowmorphosis would have to rank near the top of that genre.

First of all, it's pretty gutsy. Many of the books they've lampooned previously are classics with a long, classical pedigree, that've had film adaptations, miniseries, modernizations and bowlderizations aplenty. Taking something like Kafka's Metamorphosis, a book that's so much the province of deep thinkers, intellectuals and grad students, and putting in lolcat jokes is a move that's more than a little shocking.

And it works, on almost all levels. The book maintains the unsteady paranoia, that creepy feeling that what you're reading might just as well be a long hallucination as a description of actual events. The overall themes remain as well - the futility of modern work, man's disconnection from himself, being a stranger in your own family's house - but it is this very faithfulness to the source material that betrays the book from time to time.

The original Gregor was turned into a bug - this Gregor was turned into a kitten. At times, the book wants us to believe that kittens and bugs behave in almost exactly the same way, which just isn't so. This is most striking in the early part of his transformation, where Gregor is having difficulty getting to his feet. The scene plays out well in the original - "like a beetle on its back" is a common enough phrase for being greatly inconvenienced and unable to act - but with a kitten, it just doesn't make sense. And it's not as though the scene couldn't be rewritten to indicate that the problem wasn't one of anatomy, but rather one of a kittenish sleepiness....

This creeps up less as the story goes on, although it returns when Gregor is rooting through garbage and in his reactions to some of the other characters in the book.

If there'd been a little more attention paid to these few scenes, this book would've earned a solid five stars. As it is, it's a highly entertaining read and a strongly recommend it. Read more ›

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars A terrible failure of a parody September 14, 2011

By M. Cromwell

Format:Paperback

"The Meowmorphosis" starts with a potentially amusing idea, and then completely fails to develop it in any of the ways that would actually make it amusing. Coleridge Cook's modifications end up flat and boring in some places from too closely copying the original, and in other places they deviate so far from the spirit of Kafka that the entire work loses coherence. Cook makes it evident that he despises Kafka, and this disdain for his co-author inevitably ruins the book. What could have been exquisite in the hands of a skilled satirist ends up as a pathetic wreck after being mangled by Cook.

I borrowed this book from a friend after taking a glance at a few random passages. It seemed promising. I've read "The Metamorphosis" and generally like Kafka, but don't take him so seriously that I see him as above parody, or satirizing his works as sacrilege. So I went into "The Meowmorphosis" with a generally optimistic feeling that I might read something witty, something that would both lampoon Kafka as well as pay tribute to him. The experience was completely contrary to my expectations. About a third of the way into the book, I was disappointed with how boring and flat the parody was. Midway through it, I was frustrated and baffled by Cook's extensive deviations from the story, and put off by his insulting attitude towards Kafka. I only finished it by force of will.

Cook fails his task in different ways in different parts of the book. For the early and later parts of the book, the text closely follows a public domain translation of "The Metamorphosis" by Ian Johnston, with little more than the selective replacement of insect-related concepts with those appropriate to felines..... Nothing else substantial is added or subtracted, so that there is little gained from reading this alternate version. Instead it was simply tedious, because the story was identical to the original "Metamorphosis," only with some slight changes in vocabulary. So he's a cat instead of a bug--the concept is amusing, but it's hardly worthy to appear as a published parody when executed this way. It could have been done by anyone else with a minimal amount of intelligence, and required no special creativity or insight.

In contrast to how unimaginatively and mechanically Cook deals with the beginning and end, in the middle of the book he goes wildly in the opposite direction, adding a totally new episode that deviates wholly from the original "Metamorphosis." This section is based loosely on "The Trial." Such an insertion wouldn't have necessarily been bad per se, but Cook takes it upon himself here to engage in a kind of free-form parody, in which it becomes extremely obvious that he does not understand nor like Kafka. This section consists mainly of lengthy monologues by various characters, including the cat Joseph K., whose speeches drip with Cook's obvious disdain for and distaste for Kafka's writing.

For example: "I took you for an educated tom, sir, in which case you would have read your German classics and be quite accustomed to a narrator who only loves to hear himself speak--you must admit I speak very well, with many masculine and robust sub clauses, romantic dashes, and surprising punctuation--and forgets what the purpose of telling the story was in the first place something like two-thirds of the way through. This is considered traditional!"

There is much more of this. Most of the writing in this section is terrible and clumsy, and does not capture the spirit of Kafka at all. It is has a boisterous, over-bearing and excessively dramatic flamboyance in it that is wholly absent from Kafka. Apparently Cook thinks that in order to write like Kafka, one must simply construct long, bombastic sentences with many clauses and pointless digressions. But this is only superficially like Kafka, and only captures the crudest features of his writing. Cook's writing is abrasive, and ostentatiously absurd. Kafka's is none of these things. When Kafka writes an extended monologue, it may be pointless and absurd, but it is a much more subtly crafted and seductive absurdity. It does not shout itself at you the way Cook's ham-fisted parody does. Love it or hate it, Kafka's style has nothing in common with Cook's misconceived imitations.

My impression is that Cook really hasn't read much Kafka, or didn't read Kafka very carefully. Anyone reading these middle sections of "The Meowmorphosis" who hadn't read Kafka first would come away with a very inaccurate impression of what Kafka's writing and ideas are like. Now, as a parody, of course "The Meowmorphosis" shouldn't emulate Kafka too closely. But a good parody needs to preserve some essential core of its target in order to be satisfying...

... that is to say, if the parody hopes to engage readers who have any fondness for the original. As I said, it seems clear to me that Cook dislikes Kafka intently (the mock biography at the end--based largely on Kafka's Wikipedia entry--makes this even more evident). In this case, Cook's terrible attempt at lampooning Kafka's style makes a little more sense. I can see how it might be considered funny by those who dislike Kafka. Those who have read Kafka and come away angry and confused, who complain that Kafka is boring, pointless, and pretentious, might gain some pleasure at seeing Cook skewer Kafka, since they will not realize nor care that the skewering is inaccurate; they will just enjoy the visceral pleasure of seeing their object of scorn mocked. But this is the worst spirit in which to make (or receive) satire. Seen in this light, "The Meowmorphosis" is nothing more than an angry rant.

Needless to say, I do not recommend this to anyone, whether you enjoy Kafka or not. But if you still do feel inclined to read it, at least read some genuine Kafka first. Read more ›