The Castle (Penguin Modern Classics)

I came to read Kafka much later than I expected. And for reasons only half-known to myself I wrote my review even later. By then it seemed that there was no need for another review. And yet here is a review, which I find myself writing.

It is an irony that Kafka, once unknown, was considered SUCH a great literary figure by the time I came to know of him -- so much so that I expected to be disappointed with his work. And yet when I read it, I found it to be a work about disappointment!

One of the other reviewers may be correct in saying that the "Emperor has no clothes!". Yet how fine are his imaginary silks! Therein, for me, lies the genius of this novel. It never bluntly says "Look! Naked Emperor!"; instead it describes the imaginary silks with such artistic finesse that one is not quite sure if they are imaginary or not.

If this review made no sense to you, it is because I am not as great a writer as Kafka. But then that is a given, since I am merely a Reviewer and then not even one appointed as such.

Read the book and you might understand. Frustrating, no? It was for me! (Edited 6 times.)

Emperor's new clothes denounced (4/20 people found this helpful)

The story doesn't amount to much: K arrives at a village having been offered employment as a Land Surveyor by the local castle. But there seems to be no job for him, and he stumbles through a series of dreamlike days and nights trying to make sense of his new existence. The book is unfinished, and reaches no conclusion. In fact, the book could go on for ever.

The book makes little sense. K should have gone home as soon as the reality of his position came home to him. Some of the incidents are dreamlike, reminiscent of Alice. The two assistants, who seem to change shape and personality. The instant click with barmaid Frieda, engagement to her. The wealth of irrational and unexplained rules. And although the village seems very poor, no-one mentions money, and nobody ever pays for anything.

What is the author trying to say ? Is he making a point about bureaucracy ? Or about the numbing trivia of everyday life ? Whatever it is, he takes 400 pages of sledgehammer monotony to say it. Every page is leaden and uninspired. The sitcom Yes Minister told us more about bureaucracy in one 30-minute episode, and did it amusingly and watchably.

Or perhaps Kafka is complaining about the way people buttonhole you and pour out their troubles to you for hours on end without any consideration for how boring they are. This happens a lot in the book. At one point Olga talks incessantly for 14 pages to K. Kafka must have come across this a lot in his job as insurance man.

Whatever the intention, I think this book is a total failure, simply because it is so boring. There is hardly any variety in the narrative, everyone sounds exactly the same in the way they speak, hardly anything happens, and there is a minimum of description to liven up the narrative; and no-one goes anywhere except to other parts of the village.

I think it's about time Kafka's bubble was blown. I give this book a total raspberry.

One star because Kafka was an innovator. But like many innovators in literary forms, Kafka was superseded by others who improved on the form. (eg Jules Verne deserves recognition as an SF writer, even though his books are poor compared with those of his successors).

"It's so hard to tell what's what, K." (11/12 people found this helpful)

In the era of New Labour doublespeak and the extension of the paraphernalia of the State at the expense of individual liberty, Kafka has never been more relevant. His world is a blackly comic nightmare in which the individual is oppressed by the sheer impenetrability of the bureaucratic state, where all our actions amount to no more than footprints in the snow, and are open to a multiplicity of contradictory interpretations, where nothing is at it seems - but is not as it doesn't seem either! A world where our best laid plans are constantly undermined and sidetracked by the mundane minutiae of daily life, a world of complex determinism which negates any notion of blame or responsibility, where the apparent exercise of our own free will at the expense of others can be excused on the grounds that we could have made no other choice. A world where the language of officialdom turns out to be meaningless - "Sir, you interpret the letter so thoroughly that in the end nothing is left of it but the signature on a piece of paper." It is a world that is at once absurd and yet recognisable to anyone who has had any prolonged dealings with government agencies. The mysterious bureaucracy that inhabits the castle could stand in for the CSA, Inland Revenue, Tax Credit offices, or any other agencies where the decisions of junior officials, themselves insignificant cogs in a Heath Robinson machine they themselves can't understand, are able to hold sway over the lives of those that have become dependent on their seemingly arbitrary decision-making processes - agencies who cannot admit the possibility of error even as they launch interminable investigations into that non-existent possibility, while floor to ceiling piles of files crash to the ground in a comic routine of haphazard officiousness.

After another fruitless attempt to engage with the mysterious Klamm, K. refuses to be ushered away, "no longer in any hope of success, purely on principle." As the lights go out he is left feeling "as if all contact with him had been severed and he was now freer than ever before, no question about it, and might wait in this otherwise forbidden place for as long as he liked and had fought for and won this freedom as few others could have done ... but - this conviction was equally as strong - as if at the same time there was nothing more futile, nothing more desperate than this freedom, this waiting, this invulnerability."

The novel remains unfinished - Kafka had directed that it should be destroyed on his death (he might have guessed this would be taken as a request to publish!) - yet one wonders how such a novel could have ever been 'finished', tailing of in mid-sentence seems entirely appropriate.

Das Schloß... let’s get ready to ramble! (14/15 people found this helpful)

This is one of Kafka’s most impenetrable narrative constructs... a book that puts away with the stark storytelling and literary devises of the Trial and instead, broadens the more poetic aspects of the Metamorphosis - as well as drawing on his often fractured short story work - to create a surreal, allegorical parable that, in the words of another reviewer, offers everything and nothing simultaneously. The world of the novel in pure Kafka... with autocracy and bureaucracy pushed beyond their reasonable limits, infecting and affecting the characters in various ways and ultimately, creating an atmosphere of decay and paranoia that hangs constantly in the background, like a sick reminder of the character’s absurd futility.

It’s bleak stuff, made bleaker by the writer’s use of descriptions and choice of subject matter. His work is categorised as being without colour, and certainly this is true when we read his work back. The world that is conjured in our imagination is like a combination of Lynch’s Eraserhead, Gilliam’s Brazil and Soderbegh’s own film of the writer’s life and work (which saw actor Jeremy Irons portraying both Kafka and his literary alter ego K. in a stunning example of self-reflexity). We can actually see the world in which the writer abandons us - leaving us without guidance or clues for the most part of the book - as a noirish underworld populated by a cavalcade of characters, each with shadowy-ulterior motives.

The book takes in elements of black comedy and farce, which does, to an extent, lighten the mood... though the continual bombardment of surreal encounters, arcane descriptions and literary puzzles means that the humour is the last thing we respond to. As others have previously stated, this is a difficult book to get through on the first reading, requiring a great deal of concentration on the part of the reader to work through Kafka’s many multi-layered musings. Don’t despair however; this isn’t quite the bottomless pit that you might imagine it to be from my description. There is a great deal here to enjoy, it may just take a while for the writer’s world and characters to sink in. Needless to say, burgeoning Kafka fans will love it!

One of the best books I have read (11/14 people found this helpful)

Kafka's best work. This book is deaply disturbing to read. In fact it is very difficult to read because, being brought up with traditional narratives, we find ourselves yearning for sense and structure. These always seem to be appearing, but are always ellusive. This book could never have been finished and the problems could never have been resolved. It offers everything and gives nothing.

I found that the book was a struggle, but that it gained more importance with further reflection and has stayed with me more than any other book I have read. Please read it.

The Castle (Penguin Modern Classics)

Franz Kafka

Reader Reviews:

A frustratingly pseudo-Kakfaesque review? (0/0 people found this helpful)

Emperor's new clothes denounced (4/20 people found this helpful)

"It's so hard to tell what's what, K." (11/12 people found this helpful)

Das Schloß... let’s get ready to ramble! (14/15 people found this helpful)

One of the best books I have read (11/14 people found this helpful)

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