"Alas," said the mouse, "the world is growing
smaller every day. At
the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and
running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right
and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the
last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I
must run into."
"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.
--Franz Kafka, A Little Fable
A Kafka-esque Experience
Mel attends an evening of tribute, reflection and re-examination of the work of Franz Kafka, Town Hall, New York City, March 26, 1998
When I saw the line-up for this night of tribute to Franz Kafka, I was a bit overwhelmed: Thulani Davis, E.L. Doctorow, Cynthia Ozick, Paul Auster, Susan Sontag... and, my dream-hunk, David Foster Wallace, I was thinking this is like a literary Lollapalooza! And one of the early ones, when they still had good line-ups... Well, I was psyched. Even here, in the supposed mecca of cultcha, an event like this is a once in a lifetime thing. Still, even I was unprepared for the mob scene outside Town Hall that evening. It was like when Nirvana played their surprise show at Roseland! People milling all over the sidewalks, professional ticket scalpers... it was craziness! Happily, we already had tickets.The evening began with a few opening remarks from David Remnick, then right into Thulani Davis reading from The Trial. Ms. Davis has a wonderfully powerful and resonant voice, however, I found that her phrasing and rhythm rendered this passage ponderous. I just re-read The Trial, and it's actually very funny up until the end.
That brings us to David Foster Wallace. I was so happy to see in the program that he was going to discuss the humorous aspects of Kafka, something I too think alot of people overlook. The exact title of his, uh, thing, was called A Series of Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Not Enough Has Been Removed. Mostly he discussed the difficulty of teaching the humorous aspects of Kafka to students, because when you deconstruct humor you render it un- funny. He read A Little Fable (see above), explained the humor, and it was funny. He's just a funny guy. And for those keeping score, yes, he had a bottle of water.
E.L. Doctorow also discussed the fluffier aspects in his lecture, called Kafka Lite, where he pointed out the absurdist aspects of Amerika. Cynthia Ozick, after all that funny stuff, reminded us that if Kafka hadn't died at 41 of tuberculosis he most likely would have died in a concentration camp like his sisters did. Whoa. She called her lecture Kafka and His Two Sisters, so you get suckered in thinking she's going to be funny like everyone else...
Christopher Plummer reenacted a scene from a show he did where he played Nabokov lecturing his students at Columbia; this particular lecture was on The Metamorphosis. Compelling I think is too trite a word to use here. I was riveted. The other highlight of the evening was Susan Sontag, who has the most fabulous hair, reading from Kafka's Diaries 1910. This particular passage was six re-writes of the same beginning to a story which he never finished, each opening paragraph becoming more descriptive, more intense, and funnier.
The oddest part of the evening was Mark Harman reading from his new translation of The
Castle. He was going on. And on. And on. And it was a bit stuffy, and we were about three
hours in at this point and lot of people were walking out, and suddenly, at the end of a passage,
but clearly not at the end of his reading, people just began to applaud. Spontaneous applause.
They just wanted to go. He looked shocked, then gave a little wave and walked off. Kafka-esque
indeed.
back to the home planet