alt Hacker NewsI think the writer here is resisting Kafka's message.
In a classic adventure, the hero fights bravely against the odds and succeeds. In Kafka, the hero fights bravely against the odds and fails. Like Camus, Kafka finds vitality (not hope!) in the impossible struggle.
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I disagree with a few of the readings, too. Like the discussion of "air dogs" or "soaring dogs" in the linked translation:
> Or again, the enigma of nourishment is easily solved when one understands that the dogs are being fed by an invisible hand, throwing scraps to hungry hounds. Likewise, the Lufthunde or air dogs are the pampered lapdogs of the bourgeoisie, toted around in well-to-do ladies’ arms, or nowadays in designer pooch purses.
While that is of course correct about the food, I think Kafka was not repeating himself, because the soaring dogs come with some hard-to-explain features like being highly voluble utterers of nonsense or the narrator saying he's never seen them. Why would a purse dog utter nonsense or the narrator never see one? It seems like because of the length of the soaring dogs passage, it has to be doing something more interesting than 'unseen human hands' again and have some more clever solution. Given that the whole point of the allegory/roman a clef is the narrator misunderstanding parts of the human world involving dogs and the challenge to the reader to figure out what is really being described, my belief is that the air dogs might be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master%27s_Voice satire - too well known to need any explanation back then, but now utterly obscure.
Note this is also used by Stanislaw Lem in a similar way in his SF novel _His Master's Voice_: the dog is confused by and unable to understand "his master's voice" coming from a machine, because such technology is beyond the capacity of a simple dog to understand in full, no matter how long the dog investigates the gramophone, even if some fragments of the sound make sense.
This seems to me to be a very Kafkaesque point to make.
I think some doesn't understood what does a "hobby" make. I for myself thought again about a new hobby for myself, thinking about "walking in front of a cinema, while reading a book." -that may become a hobby, my hobby.
After the last time, someone wanted to gift me with playing in a band, while selling overpriced "percussions"... Awfuly that (given) hobby came my way while "Einstürzende Neubauten" started to gain a little more popularity. wink
Now, if that isn't Off-topic... I dunno...^^
I don't think it is necessarily true that the hero fails, or that he finds vitality in it in Kafka's work. In The Trial, our hero refuses the struggle (the opposite of vitality in it!) and gives up, dying "like a dog" in his words. In The Castle, our hero diligently tries to play the game but again finds the opposite of vitality in it; his status is repeatedly degraded. His status at the end is still indeterminate but he remains hopeful.
I think in general that if you think you've summed up Kafka with a sentence decisive enough that you can accuse others of resisting his message, then you probably prefigured your interpretation with the biases you brought into your first reading of him.