Did Kafka really think his work was funny? Is it funny?

>>9912706
Yes but it was noted that this was entirely a private interpretation. His housemaid is recorded saying something to the effect that he would be upstairs in his study laughing maniacally as he composed his works. I'm pretty sure most people find his works bleak and horrifying and to the extent they might evoke some humor, uncanny.

>Scholem claimed that when he read the Czech author alongside the Pentateuch and the Talmud during a period of intensive study and feelings of 'the most rationalistic skepticism' about his area of study, "I [found in Kafka] the most perfect and unsurpassed expression of this fine line [between religion and nihilism] an expression which, as a secular statement of the Kabbalistic world-feeling in a modern spirit, seemed to me to wrap Kafka's writings in the halo of the canonical."[

What the diddly did this nigga mean by this

>>9912726
he's just trying to hype up his co-ethnic as some great writer instead of a dude who spammed random shit on the page

>>9912726
Basically that Kafka was a sadboi but he found certain value in his religious tradition that was ultimately gave way to the form of Judaism all cynical sadbois gravitate towards Kabbalah. And also that this somehow makes him good enough for the Canon

Kafka vs Bruno Schulz
who better?

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>>9912706
>>9912715
Kafka is fucking hilarious, if you're not a brainlet like

>>9912726
>>9912738
>>9912748
...well, most people.

David Wallace wrote a fantastic small essay on the matter, in fact.

https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-07-0059612.pdf

>>9912748
Nothing makes me desire the prolonged abortion of society more than seeing someone use the term sadboi.

>>9912789
spotted the sadboi cuck

Yeah Kafka was a funny, lighthearted guy.

It's why he often considered suicide and wrote about paranoid heroes who live unfulfilling lives and die in unsatisfying ways.

>>9912798
>Gallows Humor isn't a thing the post

>>9912794
Reminder you are going to end up and elderly man looking back on his worthless life as mental illness slowly takes over. And that's a fact you can take to the bank. Or you'll die earlier, leaving me with a more enjoyable world.

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>>9912781
Thanks, anon. Reading right now.

>>9912726
I've always felt that Kafka's daddy issues conflated with a sort of crisis of faith, like the desperate search of a nihilist to dialogue with God, which is always met with solemn silence.

>>9912706
>>9912809
Crumb is by far the most /lit/ cartoonist. He's done great stuff with Kafka, the Book of Genesis, Nausea, Boswell's London Journal, Psychopathia Sexualis, and so on

since this thread is up, which of Kafka's stories are "must reads"? I prefer only ones that are completed. I've only read "in the penal colony" which was okay but the ending was anti climactic

>>9912824
A Country Doctor is my fave

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>>9912823
I love Crumb, I wish I lived in America so I didn't have to import his comics.

>>9912824
Conversation with the Supplicant

Yes but Kafka wasn't nearly as funny as Kevin McDonald.

i am all for the fact that you do need a sense of humor to write about tragedy or horror. cucaracha was straight fairytale parody any day but thats the reason he is a good writer.

kafka is funny as fuck

>>9912706
The part of the Trial where he finds that guy whipping the prisoner in the storage closet was pretty funny, specifically when he complains that the whip is getting stuck in the guy's fat rolls

>And then...HE TURNS INTO A BUG! AHAHAHAHAHA!

So witty.

>>9912726
>the Czech author
A Jew who wrote in German, so the best way to describe him is to call him a quintessentially Czech author.

>>9912798
But Kafka wasn't some dark, brooding person at all. He was an eccentric but quite lighthearted in company.

>>9913251
>when he complains that the whip is getting stuck in the guy's fat rolls
I don't remember that. Although I read a Finnish translation

you have to be pretty stupid to not grow aware of all the humorous absurdities in his works. Probably you were so intent on feeling the "kafka atmosphere tm" that everyone told you about...

The Castle is pretty funny

>>9913324
>But Kafka wasn't some dark, brooding person at all. He was an eccentric but quite lighthearted in company.
His humor was considered dark, he was evidently neurotic and depressed (everyone around him could see it) and he was essentially burnt out by his work ethic.
Also in his diaries he described how he literally managed to turn himself depressed. I'll give you the exact pages later, but he basically said that he lived a cheerful existence for his first 20 years of his life, then as a game (he call it this way) he tried to act depressed, and at some point the mood got locked in, and he never managed to go back to his prior worldview. He describes this process carefully, and gives great i portance to it.

Kafka is funny in the same way a prisoner might make fun of his death sentence. He laugh about it, but the implications of what he is saying are always dooming, and he was deeply aware of it.

>>9912781
>Fantastic small essay
Horseshit, he takes up a few pages to basically say "My students are all retards that can't understand blunt as fuck black humour."
Don't get me wrong, I love DFW and all, but that essay was fucking awful.

>>9913480
>be DFW
>be born in the US
>no culture whatsoever
>badly misread (but not so much) every book he reads
>this still qualifies him as a top intellectual, landing tenured positions left and right

USA, ladies and gentlemen.

>>9912706
Yes, he did, according to the biography by his friend Max Brod: "(...) we, his friends, laughed boisterously when he read aloud the first chapter of "The Trial". And he himself laughed so hard that he sometimes could not continue reading."
There are several funny parts in The Trial, for instance when Joseph looks into the books of the judge, and in chapter 7 when lawyers try to get past the guard.

Maybe he thought it was funny, but basically anyone who says that they think Kafka is meant to be a comedic writer is a pretentious piece of shit (e.g. David Foster Wallace). No, Kafka is not funny, unless you're talking about laughing in a psychopathic, maniacal way: if you actually understand what he's getting at, he is very depressing.
>but but muh patrician black humor!

The very fact that he can do nothing but laugh is what adds to the horror of the situation

>>9913529
Dude I'm a cockroach lmao

>>9912706
DFW tried to teach his college students how to see the comedy that is the Kafkaesque tragaedy

>>9913529
>>9913572
Go read The Metamorphosis.everything that can possibly go wrong for the protagonist -- every single thing that gives him self worth and value -- goes wrong to the most extreme degree imaginable. It's fucking hilarious, there's no other legitimate way to interpret it.

All of Gregors self worth is put into his role as care giver to the family, and we are led through the lens of his character to believe him. But as the story turns out he is holding them back, he is an embarrassment; the final nail in the coffin being the change from "the mother" yo "Frau Samsa" and so on, his family gains their own happy, unique identities without him, solidifying his worst fears.

Either the story is horribly depressing or it's a gaff on those with neuroticisims and who take themselves seriously.