About this title: Kafka's exploration of the psychological terror inherent in everyday life is both allegorical and stunningly realistic. A bank employee named Joseph K. is accused of a crime he not only did not commit but doesn't even understand. He is released, but thereafter enslaved to a legal system that requires him to continue to go to court to defend his ...
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Schocken
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780805209990ISBN:0805209999
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. read more
Description: Good. 1999-Paperback-Cover shows some minor shelf-wear. ---Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. 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
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Schocken Books, New York, NY, USA
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780805209990ISBN:0805209999
Description: GOOD. Minimal pencil underlining on 4-5 pages; 2-3 more pages have creased corners; remaining text is clean, unmarked, and flat. No previous owner names. Spine has a few creases but all pages are firmly intact. Cover has tiny corner creases and minor edge rubbing; no tears. 103109gs. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Schocken
Date Published: 1999-05-25
ISBN-13:9780805209990ISBN:0805209999
Description: Like New. 1998 paperback no marks and is in great condition All of our products are cleaned with an disinfectant for your protection before shipping. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Schocken Books
Date Published: 1999-06-01
ISBN-13:9780805209990ISBN:0805209999
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780805209990. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Schocken
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780805209990ISBN:0805209999
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. 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: Good. Only lightly used. Book has minimal wear to cover and binding. A few pages may have small creases and minimal underlining. Book selection as BIG as Texas. read more
Description: Good. 0805209999 US STUDENT EDITION. BOOK IS A GOOD CONDITION. WILL SHIP WITHIN 24 HOURS WITH DELIVERY CONFORMATION AND TRACKING NUMBER. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Schocken
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780805209990ISBN:0805209999
Description: Good. --All NEW items are exactly as provided by the publisher. All USED items are in Good condition or better, and copies may contain store stickers, highlighting, etc from normal use by previous owner(s). One-time use supplements (e.g., access codes, tear-out flash cards, reference cards, etc) provided with new copies are NOT guaranteed. --Professional booksellers: inquiries always welcome. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Schocken Books
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780805209990ISBN:0805209999
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean inside out, tight binding, good cover. Text in English, German. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 304 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
"The painter made a leap for the door, opened it a little-K. could see the imploring, outstretched, clasped hands of the girls-and said: "If you don't stop that noise I'll fling you all down the stairs. Sit down here on the steps and see that you keep quiet." Apparently they did not obey him at once, for he had to shout in an imperious voice: "Down with you on the steps!" After that all was still. "Excuse me," said the painter, returning to K. again. K. had scarcely glanced toward the door, he had left it to the painter to decide whether and in what manner he was to be protected. Even now he scarcely made a movement when the painter bent down to him and whispered in his ear, so that the girls outside might not hear: "These girls belong to the Court too." "What?" cried K., screwing his head round to stare at the painter. But Titorelli sat down again on his chair and said half in jest, half in explanation: "You see, everything belongs to the Court." "That's something I hadn't noticed," said K. shortly; the painter's general statement stripped his remark about the girls of all its disturbing significance. Yet K. sat gazing for some time at the door, behind which the girls were now sitting quietly on the stairs. One of them had thrust a blade of straw through a crack between the planks and was moving it slowly up and down.So much has already been said about this book, I won't bother to dissect it. I have no interest in pulling it apart. What can I say? It's just a ridiculous tale, really.
So, here's a list of my favorite inside jokes and running gags that endear this little charade to me (in order, from most-piquant to still-quite-loopsy):
1. Eating other people's breakfasts. ("He stuffs himself with the breakfasts of all the people he arrests." - p. 106) 2. Predicting the verdict from the shape of one's lips. ("He said afterwards that he saw on your lips the sign of his own condemnation." - p. 218) 3. A dwarf Judge who has been painted to normal proportion. ("Only an Examining Magistrate again," said K. in disappointment. - p. 135) 4. Paintings of moors and heaths. ("Here's a companion picture." ... But it was not merely a similar study, it was simply the same wild heathscape again. - p. 204) 5. Lawyers in attics. ("Didn't you know that there were Law Court offices here? There are Law Court offices in almost every attic, why should this be an exception?" - p. 205) 6. Legs where there should be no legs. ("If you stumbled through the hole your leg hung down into the lower attic, into the very corridor where the clients had to wait." - p. 145. See also: the bed that is always stepped on.) 7. Talking about talking. About how one is going to talk. ("I never listen to preambles," said Fräulein Bürstner. "That makes it easier for me," said K. - p. 32) 8. Making progress, only to destroy everything with a laugh or look. ("Nothing more would be needed now to produce a good impression, but he spoils it all again by his laughter which puts people off." - p. 87. See also: "You have thrown away all of your advantage." - p. 60) 9. Josef K. becoming suddenly alluring now that he's accused. Leni goes so far as to throw a plate against a wall to get his attention. ("If you have the right eye for these things, you can see that accused men are often attractive. It's a remarkable phenomenon, almost natural law." - p. 229) 10. AND, OF COURSE: A joiner called Lanz (aka The Captain.) A fellow boarder, this character is never seen and isn't really known by Josef K., but he often pretends to be looking for him. ("Many seemed convinced that it was highly important for K. to find the joiner Lanz, they took a long time to think it over, suggested some joiner who, however, was not called Lanz, or a name which had some quite distant resemblance to Lanz, or inquired of their neighbors, or escorted K. to a door some considerable distance away, where they fancied such a man might be living as a lodger, or where there was someone who could give better information than they could." - p. 46)
Of course there are more: the cushions the people use to keep their heads from bruising, the subtly sexy picture that's inside the Examining Magistrate's law book, the washer woman's husband who wants to squash a guy flat ("Just beside this card.") and so on.
One really nice scene comes from this fragment, originally deleted from the opening chapter by Kafka, which appeared just after Josef K. has met with the inspector.A soldier was doing sentry duty up and down before the house. So now they had even put a watch on the house. K. had to lean out very far to see him, for he was walking close to the wall. "Hallo!" he called out to him, but not loud enough for the man to hear. However it soon became apparent that he was only waiting for a servant girl who had gone across the road to a public house to fetch some beer, for she now appeared in the lighted doorway. K. asked himself if he had believed even for a moment that the sentry had been meant for him. He could not answer the question."
"This book is insightful enough on a literal level--capturing the pettiness and senselessness, the ability to wear you down with endless details, the inability to see the forest for the trees, of governments and offices and corporations and institutions and agencies. The seeking of power over others, the manipulations of relationships, the obsessive thought and behaviors that cause us to lose control. How secrets and lies undermine security. How the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. How rules and procedures often have no relation to the situation, how you can be stonewalled by technicalities and never get near to a solution or answer, how often no answer is even desired by those in charge and will never be provided. How blame is passed along, how responsibility always seems to reside somewhere else with some other person. The parallels to actual experience go on and on.
And then there are the allegorical connections that can be made...starting at the top with Life and Death and God and Politics and moving out from there in every direction.
Consider only the Zen-like parable of the Doorkeeper and the Man seeking entrance to the Court of Law. There's enough food for thought in that alone to keep the reader's mind occupied for quite awhile.
This is another of my "read agains" 40 years on. I didn't recall it as such an amazing book, though I'm sure those years are part of what gives it more width and depth to me now. I also didn't remember Kafka's illustrations at all--they are an additional revelation."
"It is not often I finish a book and say "Wow!", but that is what happened this afternoon. While "Wow!" has the advantage of being an honest and immediate response to this book I thought I should try and martial my thoughts and try and be a little bit more precise.
Now that I think of it the only other time I can think of that I have used the word "wow" is as a youngster; if someone was trying to impress us by passing on some supposedly exciting information, we would respond with a sarcastic "Big wow" to demonstrate how underwhelmed we were.
I don't know anything about Kafka. I read Metamorphosis recently and thoroughly enjoyed it. I had developed an understanding of the word Kafkaesque over the years, presumably by contextual inference (if there is such a thing) since I hadn't read any Kafka.
I suppose that is the first thing that struck me about this novel; that it did not quite fit in with my (mis)understanding of Kafkaesque.
My Penguin Modern Classics edition has a quote on the cover from the Daily Telegraph "This compelling, prophetic novel, anticipates the insanity of modern bureaucracy". I don't think that this is what the book is about at all. I had expected a man railing against the system in some sort of bureaucratic dystopia a la 1984. In fact for the first half of the book I imagined K as John Hurt's Winston Smith in the 1984 film (was it released in 1984?). The more I read, however, the more it seemed that the book was not about an oppressive state, or legal system, not a sociological treatise nor a prophetic warning. It seemed to me to be much much to do with the internal, than the external.
It is of course true that K finds himself caught up in a legal bureaucracy he can not understand or effectively combat, but this is Kafka, not Orwell.
It is perhaps somewhat ironic the supposition that K's predicament relates to the internal since he does not seem to have much of an internal life. Yes we see him thinking to a certain degree but his thoughts, feelings and motivations seem to me to be very superficially dealt with. There seems to be very little, if any, development; things happen, then more things happen and then - wouldn't you know it- some more things happen. In particular, I don't think we are given any insight into how K changed from someone who makes such an indignant fuss at the start when disturbed in his bed by the visitors, and continued to "fight his case" throughout the length of the book to someone who, apparently in full knowledge of what was to happen, quietly goes of with the two top-hatted gentlemen at the end. So, not a lot of discussion of K's internal life.
I was struck by how polite everyone is. The court officials seem to be going out of there way to make things easy for K. K is concerned not to offend people. He frequently has an outburst - or what amounts to an outburst for him - then then backpeddles and tries to smooth things out. He is very concerned about what people think of him, how he is seen at the bank. This suggests to me that rather than being about bureaucracy or dystopia the book is more about social expectations, fitting in / not fitting in, avoiding social gaffs, treading with trepidation in fear of embarrassing blunders. I was reminded of metamorphosis where the concern, after turning into a cockroach (was it a cockroach?) was about what other people would think - social embarrassment.
The next thing that struck me was the woman. All the women, and there are quite a few, are instantly attracted to K, want to help him and have a hard time keeping their hands off him. Mmh?
As I said, I don't know anything about Kafka, his private life or sexual problems. Who was it said that all writer's have problems with women - especially the female ones?
I certainly came away from this book thinking that here was a writer who had problems with women, or perhaps just problems with sex. It seemed to me that this confusing world that K had been thrown into was the was the world of adult sexuality. Existential angst? No. Just your common or garden sexual angst. He is an adolescent entering a world he doesn't understand, he is frustrated and afraid affecting bravado. He is very conscious of what others think of him, is afraid of showing himself up. Every woman wants him i.e. he wants them, all of them, any of them and like every naughty boy he has to be punished, and he knows it.
I thought there was something seedy about this legal system. It's officials are a bit unpleasant and disreputable, not the sort you would bring home to tea. Yet these people are all over the place, the infest just about every loft. It is just like sex. It is all over the place. Behind every facade that looks out prim and proper on the street there is a whole lot of dirty business going on.
Just a thought.
I was reminded of Monty Python, or rather of Spike Milligan's absurdist humour from the Q series, when K, hearing a noise from behind a door in his office, opens a room he has never been in to find two men about to be whipped, he eventually closes the door and leaves them to it.
Like many of the Q sketches I felt the book ended rather abruptly; a lengthy parable the a quick walk with the top hatters. It felt unfinished to me, a bit rushed. Still if Milligan can eschew the punchline I'm sure Kafka can too.
Certainly a book worth the reading. If it wasn't for the fact that I have sworn not to buy another book till I've finished the ones I've started I would have bought more Kafka. In fact in a moment of weakness I had a couple of books in my hand this very evening, but I put them back on the shelf and left the shop with nothing. As I was leaving the bookshop, without any purchases, I fancied I heard a noise coming from a broom cupboard. My old understanding of kafkaesque would have lead me to suspect that the noise was made by those state employees who have been recording my every move. With my new understanding, however, I realised that it was just two bookshop employees having sex."
"The Trial is a Franz Kafka novel that neither the author nor I will finish.
Like much of Kafka's work, The Trial was incomplete at the time of his death, but contained enough to be published posthumously. It opens with two men arresting K., a senior bank teller, on the morning of his thirtieth birthday. The crime is unidentified-as is the agency the men work for-and K., allowed to remain free while his trial progresses, soon learns that the more he tries to understand the power threatening to punish him, the less his trial makes sense. Though this surreal tale initially intrigued me enough to muddle on-opening the novel with a great sprint, impressively setting up the plot within a few pages-it soon slowed and flat-out laid down alongside my slain desire to keep reading.
Additionally, Kafka often took advantage of German language traits to craft sentences that would sprawl over an entire page. Though there's an attempt to recreate this effect in English (pages often had no paragraph breaks, even when there was dialogue), it's just one more part that didn't translate over to me. None of the characters are likeable, either, and K.'s interaction with women is akin to a cheap cologne commercial, with each of them throwing themselves at him like his crime was dropping Spanish Fly. With the exception of "The Whipper" chapter, I didn't care what verdict K. received, and found myself actually hoping for the worse, so I pulled out the bookmark at the halfway point and reminded myself that life's too short to waste on books that aren't making the cut. One star."
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