Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life [Hardcover]

James Hawes (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312376510 | ISBN-13: 978-0312376512 | Publication Date: July 8, 2008 | Edition: First Edition

Everybody knows the face of Franz Kafka, whether they have read any of his works or not. And that brooding face carries instant images: bleak and threatening visions of an inescapable bureaucracy, nightmarish transformations, uncanny predictions of the Holocaust. But while Kafka’s genius is beyond question, the image of a mysterious, sickly, shadowy figure who was scarcely known in his own lifetime bears no resemblance to the historical reality. Franz Kafka was a popular and well-connected millionaire’s son who enjoyed good-time girls, brothels, and expensive porn, who landed a highly desirable state job that pulled in at least $90,000 a year in today’s dollars for a six-hour day, who remained a loyal member of Prague’s German-speaking Imperial elite right to the end, and whose work was backed by a powerful literary clique.

Here are some of the prevalent Kafka myths:

*Kafka was the archetypal genius neglected in his lifetime.

*Kafka was lonely.

*Kafka was stuck in a dead-end job, struggling to find time to write.

*Kafka was tormented by fear of sex.

*Kafka was unbendingly honest about himself to the women in his life – too honest.

*Kafka had a terrible, domineering father who had no understanding of his son’s needs.

*Kafka’s style is mysterious and opaque.

*Kafka takes us into bizarre worlds.

James Hawes wants to tear down the critical walls which generations of gatekeepers---scholars, biographers, and tourist guides---have built up around Franz Kafka, giving us back the real man and the real significance of his splendid works. And he'll take no prisoners in the process.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Trying to deconstruct Kafka's writing is an ambitious undertaking. Kafka's stories and characters, not to mention the term Kafkaesque and its evocations, are familiar to millions of people, many of whom have never read anything he wrote. It's easy for readers to come to Kafka with a prefabricated impression—e.g., he was a genius writer, neglected in his lifetime, who ordered that all his works should be destroyed; he was lonely, stuck in a dead-end job, and tormented by fear of sex. The focus of British novelist Hawes's (Speak for England) book is to debunk these myths of Kafka, an ambitious, earthly lawyer and literary figure who lived an adjusted life—and even enjoyed "expensive porn." Taking a satirical approach, Hawes intends to reveal the truth beneath the image academics and critics have maintained and to restore Kafka for a general audience using "long-lost dynamite" never presented before. This includes reproductions of pictures and drawings, most of an erotic and pornographic nature. Despite the humorous style, this book is an original, fact-based study presenting some provocative ideas that will be of interest to Kafka scholars and students. Highly recommended for research and comprehensive literary collections.—Ali Houissa, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY
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Review

Praise for James Hawes

Praise for Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life

"A magnificent tour de force. Illuminating, irreverent, iconoclastic. Brilliant!"---Dr. Peter Thompson, Director of the Centre for Ernst Bloch Studies, and author of The Crisis of the German Left

Praise for Speak for England

“We have the British to thank for the TV reality show, so it’s only fitting that they can do a brilliant parody of the bloody thing as well. We Yanks will find it great fun.”---Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“This creative American debut novel combines the TV shows Survivor and Lost with the novel Lord of the Flies . . . a harsh satirical look at both the age of reality TV and the dangers of romanticizing the past.”---Booklist

“James Hawes has matured into a wonderful satirist . . . a comic novelist of considerable stature.”---The Guardian

“The tone of the narrative is pitch-perfect. Hawes’s most impressive achievement is the political satire which kicks in toward the end.”---The Observer

“Comparisons with Evelyn Waugh are not misplaced.”---Sunday Telegraph

“You never want to stop turning the pages . . . each page is funny, sophisticated, and soul-wrenchingly accurate.”---Scotland on Sunday

Praise for A White Merc With Fins

“A major debut novel of the year. Highly recommended.” ---Library Journal

“From first-time author Hawes, one of the most endearingly caustic---yet still deftly sincere---novels to come out of Britain since Martin Amis’s The Rachel Papers. Hawes has leapt right into a comic league all his own. Good to the last drop.”---Kirkus Reviews

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (July 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312376510
• ISBN-13: 978-0312376512
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,564,409 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Silly and small- hearted, August 23, 2008

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life (Hardcover)

Had Hawes put an entirely different emphasis on his research it could have been seen as somewhat valuable. Had he stressed that there was alongside the Kafka of the myth and legend another Kafka who managed to rise to a high-place in his firm, who did attend literary outings and had friends, who engaged in transient sexual encounters occasionally, who was liked and popular among friends, and who had also a certain reputation among a small group as a genius- then he might have balanced the picture of Kafka as lonely, suffering, outcast, haunted, driven, angst- sick genius. Instead Hawes makes of the very minor externals of Kafka's life a major truth. It is not. And we have tons of evidence which tells us what Kafka really was. It is there in his Diaries, his Journals, his great great letters to friends, to those he was engaged to Frau Bauer, to Milena. We have in Kafka's 'Letter to his Father' the expression of his true relationship to his father. All the great evidence, that which Kafka intended for publication and that which he did not makes Hawes claims simply seem silly. The real Kafka is there in all- night vigil which brought forth the 'Judgment'. It is there in the countless beautiful paradoxical and self- critical remarks which fill the 'Journals'. The real Kafka is the whose relationships with women are a constant struggle with himself, and with his conception of his own fundamental loyalty to his task as writer.
How small Mr. Hawes is in trying to downplay and debunk those very sides of Kafka which are his essence.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Puzzling Book, December 1, 2008

By 

Sean Lahman (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life (Hardcover)

If you're going to pose such a provocative question with your title, you ought to deliver a compelling answer. In this regard, the author fails. That's disappointing, because the premise was so ripe with possibilities.

The book is, I suppose, a biography of Kafka, but not one that stands on its own. It's meant to challenge what Hawes sees as the myths surrounding Kafka's life. He assumes that these stories are well known to everyone, but I don't think they are. The whole tone was a little disconcerting, I thought.

Having said all of that, this was in the end a fascinating story about the private life of a well known literary figure. Whether it offers any great new insight -- either to Kafka scholars or to the average reader -- is hard to say. I'm not sure it addresses either audience particularly well, but the book is well written and never dull.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Annoyingly over italicized and absently cited text, April 27, 2009

By 

JackDaniels7 (around) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life (Hardcover)

Every single page of "Why you Should Read Kafka Before you Waste your Life" has an italicized bit of text. Hawes uses italics for its conventional usage: to stress meaning, or call attention to an important area of information. However, he uses it on every single page, over and over again, making a read through extremely aggravating. It's as if the author had not yet developed a voice, so he overly used italics in his book to 'really show' people that he was a serious scholar with great ideas which needed to be pointed out, by him, on every friggin' page.

And then there's the lack of citations. Jesus christ, the lack of citations is appalling! I'm doing my thesis on Kafka, and I will be lucky if I could use this book even once due to the absence of a works cited page. I know some of the information in this book is accurate, but only because I have read it elsewhere (in books which used citations!!). If you are someone who has not read anything about Kafka before, DO NOT start here. Hawes is confusing, and if you ever wanted to double check a fact and consult his sources, you're out of luck.

On the brighter side, the book is funny, has nice pictures, and is unabashedly biased. Use it as a supplement to your Kafka reading, and not as a foundation.