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This is quite a controversial book in the sense that Kafka did not live to finish it. It was finished by those close enough to him to believe they knew how he would have ended it. Some of the controversy pertains to whether Kafka would have finished it at all, even had he lived longer.

In what seems to have been a labor of love, his friend Max Brod finished the work for him, and proceeded to have all of Kafka's works published, against the wishes of the latter, who requested to have his work burned upon his death.

Since Kafka's work The Metamorphosis has in the meantime become iconic of the surrealist movement and of surrealism in literature, it is hard to imagine a literary world sans any Kafka in it.

This brings up an interesting question: "Should authors' works be published posthumously even if doing so would be going against the author's wishes?" It would be an interesting point for us to discuss - I'd love to hear your opinions on the matter.

Traveller wrote: "This brings up an interesting question: "Should authors' works be published posthumously even if doing so would be going against the author's wishes?""

I am so very on the fence about this. When an author dies, the impulse is to save everything we can that's left. But the editing process is very much a part of the creative process, as is suppression . Tolkien would arguably have been better off if he had burned all his notes and papers before his kids got hold of them (although I haven't read that Beowulf yet, so I may change my mind). But as you point out, Kafka ordered all his works burned, not just this unfinished one. That makes me cringe.

Traveller wrote: ""Should authors' works be published posthumously even if doing so would be going against the author's wishes?" "

That assumes their wishes are certain - which isn't the case with Kafka. He told Brod more than once to burn his unpublished works, Brod told him he wouldn't, and still Kafka made him literary executor. That implies ambivalence at the very least.

If one is certain an author didn't want something published, then morally, I think that should be respected, but as a reader, I'm not so sure. Think of all the private letters that biographers find so useful.

Tricky.

It's very tricky indeed, especially when the emotional state of the artist tended to fluctuate.
...but also, many a work that had originally been rejected by the world become prized works of art or literature later on, so I'm inclined to want to look at the artists's reasons for wanting it destroyed.
If because they thought the work was bad/ would be poorly received, publish anyway. If because of deeply private content, rather respect their wishes for privacy.

Aplogies that I'm running a bit late with the discussion itself, but here's a good start: tra·duced
1
: to expose to shame or blame by means of falsehood and misrepresentation
:D

I find that the novel starts off in more of a fairy-tale-like vein than I remember Kafka's style from The Metamorphisis, which although surreal in content, seemed rather dry in style, if you know what I mean.

Traveller wrote: "It's very tricky indeed, especially when the emotional state of the artist tended to fluctuate.
...but also, many a work that had originally been rejected by the world become prized works of art or..."

To build on Traveller's point, it was my impression that Kafka was not in his right mind at the end, and it would be fair for Brod to overrule him.

Phil wrote: "Traveller wrote: "It's very tricky indeed, especially when the emotional state of the artist tended to fluctuate.
...but also, many a work that had originally been rejected by the world become priz..."

Hmm, I'll have to read more of the copious material available about Kafka. I can't help wondering; on the one hand, he lived such a short life that one wishes he were given more time to live and write, but on the other hand, he might have destroyed the unusual works that were published later by Brod, had he lived longer - after all, some of it is pretty weird.
So once again, a double-edged sword...

In any case, I had wanted to comment on how very thoroughly we are introduced in the first chapter to K.s "otherness" and status as an outsider. Everybody is trying to get rid of him, and his goals keep seeming elusive. I know it's too early in our discussion really, to surmise on this, but was it based on feelings that Kafka experienced in his own life?

Of course, although one tends to think of Kafka in terms of the surrealist qualities of his more "unique" work, Kafka is regarded as an important modernist. I've just stumbled across his name in a definition of modernism, which might be salient to this thread.

In Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms edited by Roger Fowler, Malcolm Bradbury defines modernism (as an art & literary movement) as follows:

‘Modernist art is, in most critical usage, reckoned to be the art of what Harold Rosenburg calls “the tradition of the new��. It is experimental, formally complex, elliptical, contains elements of decreation as well as creation, and tends to associate notions of the artist’s freedom from realism, materialism, traditional genre and form, with notions of cultural apocalypse and disaster .…We can dispute about when it starts (French symbolism; decadence; the break-up of naturalism) and whether it has ended (Kermode distinguishes “paleo-modernism�� and “neo-modernism�� and hence a degree of continuity through to post-war art).

We can regard it as a timebound concept (say 1890 to 1930) or a timeless one (including Sterne, Donne, Villon, Ronsard). The best focus remains a body of major writers (James, Conrad, Proust, Mann, Gide, Kafka, Svevo, Joyce, Musil, Faulkner in fiction; Strindberg, Pirandello, Wedekind, Brecht in drama; Mallarmé, Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Rilke, Apollinaire, Stevens in poetry) whose works are aesthetically radical, contain striking technical innovation, emphasize spatial or “fugal”as opposed to chronological form, tend towards ironic modes, and involve a certain “dehumanization of art”�� .

Actually, I feel that one can take that definition and consider how each aspect mentioned as a characteristic of modernism, applies to The Castle - what would you all say? Perhaps we should do that in a later thread ; but it is something to look out for.

(I have bolded the salient bits).

Trav, what does "elliptical" mean to you in this context?

Michele wrote: "Trav, what does "elliptical" mean to you in this context?"

Hi Michele, how lovely to see you around here again! :)))

Well, I would think that perhaps one meaning of elliptical would refer to the structure of the work. You know, things end again where they had started off. The "place" where things start off, could be physical or figurative.

Off the top of my head, I'm reminded of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, a modernist work that I tend to see as an interesting "structural" work in the sense that it's a very geographical work, but also one with a lot of patterns in it that one could actually sort of plot on paper.

For example, it starts at Mrs Dalloway's house in the morning, and it moves through London geographically on a plottable course as if someone is walking around London viewing the story as it happens, and then it ends again, late the evening of that day back at Mrs Dalloway's house.

But besides moving through space and around the clock in an elliptical sense, it also moves from the present, back in time, and then back to the present again. At this stage, we wouldn't know if The Castle conforms to any such elliptical patterns, and I am not saying (yet) that it does. Let's decide at the end of the book.

..which reminds me that I need to make a new thread. See you there! :)

There's actually still quite a lot to be said about chapter one, but let's move on a bit - we can always come back!

Next thread here : /topic/show/...

So far, for the next thread, you need only to have read mainly chapter 2 and perhaps a bit of chapter 3, as for this discussion, to allow for more in-depth discussion, I am going to ask for spoiler tags when we refer to the later parts of the book.

I was planning to pick up the book and join this discussion a couple of weeks late. But I can't find my copy, and although I could get another, I'm in the mood for something different now. But one day, I may return and necropost. (I'm not very good as a "group" person.)

Ok, I wonder if Michele is still around; then she and I can continue alone. If not, I guess we can always do The Castle later, or maybe we'll get more takers for The Trial.

I'm still here but that dreamlike quality of The Castle is a little bit over the top crazy for me. I might like The Trial more.

Hi Michele. Hmm, well, I don't think The Trial is all that much different from The Castle, and I suspect The Castle, having a bit of a love story, is slightly more enjoyable.

I realize that Kafka is not for everyone. Maybe I'll keep pecking at the book and make comments as I go along, and then whoever wants to, can comment if/when they feel like it.

No worries, Michele, I'm sure there must be other books we have on our crazy schedule that you'd be interested in? We've got a bit of everything lined up. :)