Customer Reviews

Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The book is a Kafka-killer if read before you read Kafka and a Kafka-extender if read after you read Kafka. The author flips the beetle of Kafka industry on its back for an original and captivating de-metamorphosing of the K.-myth. While the title ("Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life") promises existential lessons, the book, as noted by another reviewer here, is an alternate biography or, rather, a supplement/addendum to the official biographies. The tone (slightly sensationalizing, with the risk of metamorphosing one K.myth into another) and the message (of normalizing the man behind the official K. myth) seem to be in a bit of a conflict - which adds to the complexity of the work itself. In reading the comments to these reviews, somebody remarked that the original title (author's title) for UK edition was "Excavating Kafka." If, indeed, so, then the author clearly excels at his scholarly mandate. In sum, my advice is two-fold: a) to stay away from the book until you've had your fill of Kafka since reading this particular about-Kafka thesis will likely bias new reader's impression of Kafka (with the idea from the Trial that "text alone" stands notwithstanding); b) if you found Kafka of interest, I definitely recommend this book as a must post-Kafka about-Kafka read). Either way, do not rush to throw away your Kafka t-shirt from Prague!

Pavel Somov, Ph.D., "Eating the Moment" [...]

Hawes book is a remarkably impoverished study. By insisting that Kafka's Jewishness needs to be ignored, by thoroughly deracinating the great modernist, Hawes fails to advance a genuine understanding of either Kafka's works or of the great modernist's complex cultural position. Readers should seek out previous studies or even two l audible recent books such as Rodger Kamenetz' wonderful _Burnt Books_ or Louis Begley's _The Tremendous World I have Inside My Head--Kafka: A Biographial Essay_ for richer insights.

The zealous title of this book gives an idea of its flaws. It really doesn't give a solid suggestion as to why you should read Kafka before you waste your life, or why your life would be wasted if you didn't read Kafka. As other reviewers here have pointed out, it is a bit thin on citations, and Hawes really likes italics. Especially in its last half, it is absolutely riddled with typographical errors (some to the point of robbing the sentence of its meaning) where the author and more probably the editor became lazy.

That said, I consider this book so important that it deserves five stars regardless. The highly negative (though clearly intelligent) reviewers seem to have missed something in the book. I will admit, however, that I am a pedestrian (obsessive) Kafka fan and I am in no way educated on Kafka.

Hawes very acutely inspects all these myths surrounding Kafka, grouped together as "the K.-myth," and he...well, solves them. Readers versed in Kafka's biography may feel that Hawes is simplifying things, but his thesis is essentially that Kafka should be approached without the assumptions that, arguably, most readers of Kafka or of works on Kafka hold. When I say that Hawes solves the myths, I mean that he makes some incredible (and in my opinion groundbreaking) connections, using the Diaries, the letters, works on Kafka, and history, that give very sensible explanations for what has historically been regarded as inexplicable.

I can imagine Hawes thinking that this title was just so delicious that he couldn't possibly bear to name this book anything else, but it's not really appropriate to what the book does. I would expect the book to be most enjoyable to people who have read Kafka and who are familiar with his life, and it's written in such a way that I could imagine a lot of it being confusing for someone who doesn't know Kafka.

This book isn't a biography of the life of Kafka, nor will it make those unfamiliar with Kafka shout, "I must read Kafka now!", and it doesn't do the usual plumbing of the depths of the twisted darkness that is Kafka's life and writing. Instead, it works out the kinks, gives fascinating and logical explanations for all the Kafka-muck that readers love to get lost in, and disproves a lot of assumptions about Kafka's life and works.

I guess it depends on what Kafka is to you: if you think you have Kafka figured out (in only the most Kafkaesque way of the acceptance of the impossibility of ever figuring him out at all), you'll probably hate this book. If you're interested in Kafka and want to get your world completely turned upside-down, it's essential.

A REVIEW OF EXCAVATING KAFKA BY JAMES HAWES

by Dr. Joseph Suglia

My goodness! Kafka was an onanist! Alert the presses! James Hawes' "revelations" here aren't particularly "revelatory" -- any self-respecting "Kafkologist" knows that Kafka subscribed to Der Amethyst, a literary and aesthetic journal that Hawes finds "pornographic." And I don't need James Hawes, failed novelist, to demystify Kafka's allegedly "saintly" image for me. Milan Kundera did that himself many years ago -- not that I am an admirer of Milan Kundera.

Has it never dawned on Hawes that perhaps Kafka was a subscriber to Der Amethyst merely because it contained contemporary avant-garde literature or because Franz Blei published that journal -- Franz Blei, who ALSO published Kafka's own Betrachtungen? (Parenthetical question: Does Hawes TRULY know German? There are very few references here, and they are largely to English-language texts.) And has it never dawned upon the author that Kafka perhaps did NOT see masturbatory possibilities therein? I am reminded of one of my best friends, who happens to be gay and who collects heterosexual pornography, which he finds intriguing from an aesthetic, political, and cultural perspective. Did Hawes find STAINS?

And so the philistinic and moralistically hypocritical James Hawes equates Der Amethyst with Penthouse, Blei with an "Edwardian Larry Flynt," Octave Mirbeau and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with back-room, dime-store pornography, Gustav Klimt with Girls Gone Wild, and a familiar passage in Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers with Kafka's Verwandlung -- as if he were the first person to see the resemblance. Oooooo... Werther imagines himself turning into a May beetle (Maikaefer)... Gregor Samsa imagines himself turning into a vermin (Ungeziefer)... Ooooooooooo... What a revelation! Ooooooooo...

Instead of engaging with the form and meaning of Kafka's writing, Hawes, failed novelist, grubs about in Kafka's life, which is the pitfall of most Kafka scholarship. Only a few philologists have insightfully commented on Kafka --- Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Stanley Corngold. Hawes, predictably, focuses upon the tabloid aspects of Kafka's life. And so Hawes, while pretending to present Kafka as a man of the world, merely reinforces the dreary, moralistic cliches about Kafka, who is often mistyped as a "dark and lonely m*******or."

James Hawes, now ***** than Kafka was when he died, releasing all of his envious venom on a great writer, is the true pornographer.

Dr. Joseph Suglia

So much writing ABOUT Kafka! But this hits the bottom.

Only an English school wiseguy could suggest the view

from that perspective! Awful waste of time and money.

A potboiler. The nerve of the guy to ride the coattails

of genius.

Read Kafka instead!

Reading Kafka can be life-illuminating, joyful, fun

and full of surprises. Inspired creations, on a par with

Chaucer, Shakespeare, maybe Joyce, for the energy that

comes across.

Pulls the rug out from under the critics' credulous portrait of a neurasthenic and prophetic genius, and puts in its place a real person, Kafka the lawyer, master wordsmith and manipulator, who made frequent use of the "tortured artist" trope as an excuse to justify his own immature, callous or outrageous behavior. Compulsively readable.

Excellent examination of what made Kafka tick.. or roach...

recommend it highly.

jp