The Castle: A new translation based on the restored text
Kafka, Franz. 1998. The Castle: A new translation based on the restored text. Schocken.
Rating:
1
Summary:
A guy named ‘K’ (yep, that’s his name, maybe short for ‘K’afka?) arrives in some town on the pretense that he is a surveyor and was requested by the town/castle authorities. Once he arrives he proceeds to embroil himself in all sorts of problems and intrigues, including: finding a wife (one of the town authority’s mistresses), getting a job, and finding a way to survive (as the school janitor). For some reason K is obsessed with meeting the local authorities, something he rarely achieves; and he never makes it inside The Castle. And, well, that’s it. Yep, that’s it.
Review:
As it turns out, the book is supposed to be about the difficulties of bureaucracy. As a sociologist, I’m familiar with Max Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy and his pessimistic view that it was an iron cage with no solution (i.e., it is too effective to be done away with but is often inefficient). Despite my familiarity with the classic analyses of bureaucracy and its problems, and even given the fact that I am somewhat sympathetic to Weber’s claim, not even bureaucracy deserves a book this tedious as a “tribute”. The only way I could possibly consider this book good is if the unending and pointless conversations were intended as symbolic representations of the sometimes unending and pointless formalities of bureaucracy. Otherwise, this book is simply excruciating. In fact, it was so excruciating to listen to (I listened to it on tape), that I finally just turned it off about half way through (that’s close to 8 hours of listening).
The book basically consisted of K deciding to do something (without explaining why to the reader or anyone else; and it certainly never made sense) and then engaging in page after page of dialog with whomever he happened to encounter on his pointless endeavor. The dialogs wend intricate paths to nowhere, and carry the reader/listener down said paths. All the while, the reader/listener is hoping that, like the end of a rainbow, there will be a pleasant surprise when the dialog concludes. Instead, just like the end of the book (it’s unfinished, so you never find out what happens to K), the end of the dialogs are abrupt cliffs without vistas or even anything interesting to see – and then you’re pushed off the cliff, injured, battered, and bruised, only to land on another ledge that… leads to another boring cliff. In short, the book is boring, pointless, and tedious. I hate to say it, but perhaps this is one of Kafka’s manuscripts that should have been burned as he requested. If you have a penchant for masochism, this is your baby. Otherwise, run, run I say, run!