Word: kafka
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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THERE IS LITTLE to find fault with in Hayman's presentation. Sticking closely to Kafka's letters and diaries, which together form a most extensive record of his inner life, and quoting liberally therefrom, he is not obtrusive. His analytical passages seem to have been inserted into the narrative with maximum concern for short. American attention spans; they are humble and mostly insightful, free of excessive jargon-mongering, aware of the crushing bulk of Kafka criticism and content to suggest the clearest connections to the immediate moment of his life. If there are any complaints, they are that...
...Hayman's attitude towards Kafka, it is, not surprisingly, less reverential that Max Brod's; Brod's biography seemed to be written chiefly as an antidote to the view that anyone who created Gregor Samsa must have been a dark and morbid character, though Brod's work is honest and engaging, we almost lose sight of all the self-torture in the radiance of the saint-like glow. Hayman's biography is more balanced, but also admiring (as anyone must be) of Kafka's incredible lack of cynicism, even as he was dying...
...hunger artist he had created in one of his most famous and revealing stories. But yet he took pleasure in other people's pleasure, and in a somehow wondrous bit of real-life symbolism, asked other people to take deep draughts of water and beer in front of him. Kafka never hated the world like he hated himself, and his endless capacity for empathy is for Hayman, one of the earmarks of his genius...
...Kafka is world-famous celebrity, and may be he's getting the last laugh for all those years of parental disfavor. Not only is he recognized as an important stylist, but he has even been hailed as the quintessential recorder of modem alienation, prophesying in works such as The Trial and "In the Penal Colony" the rise of totalitarianism. Marxists and theologists alike slug it out in studies with titles like The Kafka Problem. The Kafka Debate and even There Goes Kafka; there has even been talk of setting up an East-West dialogue. But the splendor of his posthumous...
Ronald Hayman's biography is excruciating to read. Though the survival of Kafka's work, at lest, is consoling, all the high-school tragedy course rot about our uniquely human capacity to suffer makes it no easier to witness his writhing. Grab another beer and shake your heads. Poor Kafka. Why he clung so desperately to his father, why he endlessly romaticized him and even incorporated a piece of his shopkeeper, artist-as-vermin mentality--these are questions that Hayman knows are unanswerable. How 'bout that Gresor Samsa--transformed into a dung beetle so he kills himself with sorrow watching...