AUTHOR: Franz Kafka
READ: July-August
THOUGHTS: First Kafka novel I have read, enjoyed it; surprisingly didn’t keep my interest at parts. The fragmented/episodic quality works well. Found it to be unexpectedly very funny. My experience reading the book was strange. I had read pieces of Kafka before, but had never completed a full novel. Despite my lack of reading actual Kafka texts, I have probably read more 'about' him via pieces of criticisms, essays, other author interviews as well as in other fiction, etc than actually read him. Having that background it almost felt as if the actual text was a footnote for everything else that I had read about him, which made my reading of it both surprising and alienating but somehow familiar. That being said, I don't really know how I ultimately feel about this book. At parts I was surprised that it is considered the classic that it is -- the prose style seems 'authorial' in a sardonic and self-aware way but I don't know. I will probably need to read this again in five years or something, because I still feel a little confused and unsatisfied when I think about it.
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