![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveDavid Zane Mairowitz "Introducing Kafka" (Icon Books)
David Zane Mairowitz thinks Kafka's writing has insufficient Jewish content, so too much of the text here talks about the Jewish situation in Prague in Kafka's time and adduces a lot of highly questionable and possibly discriminatory ideas about Jewish psychology (really? all of them with the same psychology?) such as self-loathing. Although the cover extracts Kafka's comment, "What do I have in common with the Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself," and it appears in the text too, he is undaunted, and his regret that the only person Kafka seems to have truly loved was not Jewish is palpable. His excoriation of the city of Prague, which he has established meant little if anything to Kafka, for cashing in on its native son makes for a pretty flat ending.
However, this is a comic book, not read for the text but for Robert Crumb's drawings, which have long interested me. He is a master of the horror-comic style, which here is aptly used to illustrate Kafka's stories (and perhaps depictions of his father), but also does attractive portraits of sympathetic characters and classic comic-book two-page spreads, especially of cityscapes, real or imaginary. When the text describes a character as a strapping young woman, we know the artist is home-free: those familiar with his work will know that strapping young women is a special feature of his work.
The best parts are the retelling of Kafka's stories, which include various bits of information, painlessly delivered, about the circumstances of their creation and some bibliographic details. Max Brod seems somewhat slighted, though I have to say Kafka's original title for his last work, "The Man Who Disappeared," is a better title than Brod's "America." Because of the detailed drawings with many telling and funny details, this little book takes longer to read than you'd think -- but with the stories embedded in it, it's best, and most fun, to take it in slowly.
David Zane Mairowitz thinks Kafka's writing has insufficient Jewish content, so too much of the text here talks about the Jewish situation in Prague in Kafka's time and adduces a lot of highly questionable and possibly discriminatory ideas about Jewish psychology (really? all of them with the same psychology?) such as self-loathing. Although the cover extracts Kafka's comment, "What do I have in common with the Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself," and it appears in the text too, he is undaunted, and his regret that the only person Kafka seems to have truly loved was not Jewish is palpable. His excoriation of the city of Prague, which he has established meant little if anything to Kafka, for cashing in on its native son makes for a pretty flat ending.
However, this is a comic book, not read for the text but for Robert Crumb's drawings, which have long interested me. He is a master of the horror-comic style, which here is aptly used to illustrate Kafka's stories (and perhaps depictions of his father), but also does attractive portraits of sympathetic characters and classic comic-book two-page spreads, especially of cityscapes, real or imaginary. When the text describes a character as a strapping young woman, we know the artist is home-free: those familiar with his work will know that strapping young women is a special feature of his work.
The best parts are the retelling of Kafka's stories, which include various bits of information, painlessly delivered, about the circumstances of their creation and some bibliographic details. Max Brod seems somewhat slighted, though I have to say Kafka's original title for his last work, "The Man Who Disappeared," is a better title than Brod's "America." Because of the detailed drawings with many telling and funny details, this little book takes longer to read than you'd think -- but with the stories embedded in it, it's best, and most fun, to take it in slowly.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}