Kafka Toward a Minor Literature

[e_dog]

[i've moved / simulposted this post to the AntiAcademy board. please put your responses there http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtop ... 1200#51200]



by Deleuze and Guattari.

this is an incredible book, somewhat difficult to read though.

on the writer's expression machine.

extra credit for those who can figure out what deterritorialization and reterritorialization (don't) mean.

there are moments of pure brilliant insight here (see the quote below) in this seemingly random collage of reflections about Kafka's life situation, novels, stories, letters, diary entries, even a lecture or too. (apparently Kafka once gave a lecture on Yiddish to an audience described by the authors as "hostile" (the audience that is).)

basically it is more a book that presents D 'n' G's theory about language, writing, subjectivity, using Kafka as a case study.

D was a philosopher, G a psychoanalyst, by profession.

here's Dana Polan's English translation of D & G's French text on the function of Kafka (the Czech Jew)'s literary operation with/on the German language:

"To bring language slowly and progressively to the desert. To use syntax in order to cry, to give a syntax to the cry." (p. 26)


"To give a syntax to the cry" is probably the best definition of poetry i have ever encountered.

[Arcadia]

I didn't read that book.
"To give a syntax to the cry" is probably the best definition of poetry i have ever encountered: Interesting!. I didn't find one yet!.

[stilltrucking]

I have never read Kafka. I have always dreaded reading him.

[e_dog]

you dread reading something you've never read?

sounds like an irrational fear, propagated by The Man.

Kafka is awesome. read a couple stories next time you go to a bookstore. i'm serious.

Kafka is to most writers what Freud is to most therapists.

on second thought, don't.

because

Kafka is to most writers what Freud is to most therapists.

[stilltrucking]

Thanks, e-dog (no sarcasm) you are right, it was a nonsensical statement... I meant I have read very little of Kafka.

I suppose he hits too close to home. It is a lack of courage on my part. He is too Jewish for me, haunting and familiar.

[Susan Marie]

Kafka is astounding. I just started the Trial and finished his Zurau Aphorisms.

I think Kafka is more inline with the soul of a writer actually, kind of like Van Gogh. That inner tortured self inflicted thing we all have going on. Yet, I would like to think he was closer to Jung than Freud.

Kafka is very much like a writer. Let down, put down, shunned, misunderstood, reclused and not minding that, actually finding solace in the reclusiveness of oneself (scary as that may be at times), finding happiness in thought, and near his end, in nature and the pure fact that he was near death and would walk hand in hand with his one true love, who never left him, his disease, his TB.

Kafka also makes fun of himself through his characters. I also would like to believe his characters are actually him. After finishing the Trial, I will post something on that. I have also read "Metamorphosis"

He is amazing. Truly.