About this title: Karl Rossman has been banished by his parents to America, following a family scandal. There, with unquenchable optimism, he throws himself into the strange experiences that lie before him as he slowly makes his way into the interior of the great continent. Although Kafka's first novel (begun in 1911 and never finished), can be read as a menacing allegory of modern life, it is also infused with a quite un-Kafkaesque blitheness and sunniness, brought to life in this lyrical translation that returns to the original manuscript of the book.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Date Published: 1962
ISBN-13:9780811200752ISBN:0811200752
Description: Etting, Emlen. Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Satisfaction Guaranteed, please feel free to ask any questions! Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. B000K02SFK Paperback book with clean front & back covers showing only minor shelf-wear on edges and corners. Binding is tight and square but may be creased from being read. Inside pages are clean and free from markings and/or highlighting. Book is in stock and ready to ship from Phoenix, Arizona same or next business day. Select Expedited Shipping and receive your book within 3-5 business days. Buy with confidence! Please leave feedback after your purchase. It helps other buyers ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: schocken
Date Published: 1976
Description: Fair. Published in 1974. Paperback. Fair condition. Pages are clean and unmarked. Top of book has foxing(yellow spots). Cover is soiled has edge wear and several small creases. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Schocken Books
Date Published: 1974
Description: Like New. Beautiful like new/as new paperback. Could pass for brand new. Tiny signs of being on shelf causes us to list as like new, rather than brand new. No markings, no real wear to report. Very cool 1960s style period piece from the old House of Omega in Mendocino (where the 60s have never ended). Psychedlic cover and other illustrations by Otter G'Zell. Mendopower Employment Services immediately and carefully packs each book in high-quality bubble lined, envelopes. We appreciate your ... read more
Description: NEW YORK NEW DIRECTIONS 1962 xviii, 297pp NO DUSTJACKET SOFTCOVER, TRADE PAPER BACK. 5TH PRINTING COVER MILDLY SUNNED WITH MINOR WEAR AT FOOT OF SPINE VG/- read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: New Direction Book
Date Published: 0000
ISBN-13:9780811200752ISBN:0811200752
Description: Very Good. This book is in very good condition. The binding is tight and pages are clean. It appears to have had little use. The cover has bumps, scuffs and rubs. It has been corner and edge bumped. There is no creasing on the spine. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: New Directions, [New York
Date Published: 1962
Description: Very good. No dust jacket. Text in English, German. xviii, 299 p. illus. 18 cm. A New Directions paperbook, 117. Includes Illustrations. read more
Description: FINE-/paperback. Excellent paperback edition of Kafka's famous novel about America, the first U.S. printing. Unused condition, clean, straight, bright, no creases or curls. Name whited over only. 1956, Anchor paperback, 301 pp, 1st printing. read more
Edition: 1st Edition, 11th Printing
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: New Directions Books, New York, N.Y. U.S.A.
Date Published: 1962
ISBN-13:9780811200752ISBN:0811200752
Description: Very Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Amerika is Kafka's dream, a strange blend of fantasy and realism. Its hero is Karl Rossmann, a young immigrant who comes to New York to seek his fortune. He no sooner lands than his troubles begin, a series of misadventures, some comic, some pathetic, all mysterious, which suggest the riddles of our own dreams or subconscious fears. Some stains and minor crease on back cover. read more
"Kafka wrote this without ever setting foot in America, and that might be the best part about it. The sixteen year-old Karl finds himself pin-balling between rogues, benefactors, devils and angels. Oh yeah, and an enormous snorting opera singer who takes off her clothes all the time. The book was unfinished, and I could imagine myself really loving it if only it hadn't been so fragmentary"
"Just as Karl, coming last, quietly took his seat several of them were rising with upraised glasses, and one of them toasted the leader of the tenth recruiting squad, whom he called the "father of all the unemployed." Someone then remarked that the leader could be seen from here, and actually the umpire's platform with the two gentlemen on it was visible at no very great distance. Now they were all raising their glasses in that direction, Karl too seized the glass standing in front of him, but loudly as they shouted and hard as they tried to draw attention to themselves, there was no sign on the umpire's platform that the ovation had been observed or at least that there was any wish to observe it. The leader lounged in his corner as before, and the other gentleman stood beside him, resting his chin on his hand.- p. 293The 'k' in Amerika stands for "Franz Kafka," pretty cool, huh! Because this guy IS the letter K! (The letter K is way Kafkaesque: consider how it splits on the right side, dividing a man's isolation into-you got it-equal parts guilt and paranoia!)
And this ain't no America. I mean, yeah, it's got a fair share of fat people like the real America, yet it's all whack: the politicians are waking people up in the wee night hours, climbing up giants and screaming, waking people up and basically launching T-shirts into the hotel balconies. And the way Karl gets rowed to shore-yeah right!
But, ahem, 'scuse me, back to my main point: who THE HELL is Fanny?
Both introductions (this book came with two) made a point of illustrating how Kafka builds an alternate America, based on nothing but slight research and personal whims. The more succulent side of the book, to me, though is the part left out. What happens between chapters 7 and 8? And where does Karl get this idea that his name could be Negro?As soon as he had a place here, no matter how small, and filled it satisfactorily, they could have his name, but not now; he had concealed it too long to give it away now. So as no other name occurred to him at the moment, he gave the nickname he had had in his last post: "Negro."His last post? So, previous to chapter eight, he has a job somewhere and acquires this nickname. But why? Is he a slave? Does he pretend to be a slave? Or does Delamarche stoop to calling him that? Ah, that's a safe assumption. Kafka can't have planned to add more than another hundred pages to this, can he?
Although, he did refer to this book directly as "a plain imitation of Dickens," in which case the book could have been deliberately planned as a pastiche. At the time he was reading David Copperfield, which weighs in at nearly 700 pages.
If so, I ache that this book could be only half its intended size."
"I can only recommend this book to people who consider themselves Kafka fans. It's like . . . if you really love Seinfeld, then you're willing to watch the first episodes that aren't nearly as funny or sharp.
To be fair, Kafka never intended for Amerika to be published, at least not as is, and he never titled it "Amerika" himself. The chapter's are inchoate and not always well connected. Also, there is nothing recognizably "American" in the book. America (the country and the ideal) was generally regarded as the bastion of modernism around the turn of the century -- the beginning of the so-called American Century. Knowing how Kafka felt about modernism, I see Amerika as a (failed) picaresque of modernism and the society that championed it. So, I enjoyed wondering what Kafka had seen or read about America and how that would have informed his writing here, but that was about the only thing keeping me interested throughout.
Take that for what its worth. But if you're not genuinely interested in Kafka or modernism as a cultural phenomenon, then don't even think about reading Amerika. It has little redeeming value otherwise.
If you would like to get into Kafka, start with Metamorphosis and a couple other short stories, and definitely The Trial. If you like The Trial, then go for The Castle; but Amerika pales in comparison to these."
"As E.L. Doctorow says in a very perceptive introduction to this volume, "Kafka would always have difficulty with the longer form of the novel" (xix). This difficulty is in evidence here. I am a great fan of both Kafka's "The Castle" and "The Trial," wherein the sheer power of the psychological and, I would say, religious themes compensate richly for a somewhat clunky presentation. But in this case the compensation is not so clear. Karl Rossmann, the young "hero" of "Amerika," is sent by his family to America to escape the consequences of a sexual indiscretion, of which he may or may not have been guilty. What follows is a picaresque novel, but not one of wide open spaces and broad adventure, such as one would expect of a book about America. Instead, the hero moves from cramped space to cramped space: bedrooms, closets, lifts, balconies, railway compartments. Even in social relationships, he seems repeatedly trapped and misunderstood. The claustrophobia of Kafka's Prague ghetto is written onto an imagined America, just as the letter "k," which becomes in his literature the name of his most trapped, guilt-ridden characters, becomes part of the spelling "Amerika." This novel, like his others, was not finished, so one does not quite know what kind of denouement Kafka had in mind for Mr. Rossmann, if denouement he had in mind at all. In fact, one doesn't quite know how the hero extricated himself from Robinson, Delamarche, and the imposing woman Brunelda. For all of a sudden, in the final chapter, he is free and on his way to Oklahoma for employment in the world's largest theatre! Still, like all Kafka's writings, I am sure images and situations from this book will stick with me. He is, after all, the great master of absurdity, and there is a very large dose of that here."
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