Read the article at NYT online (via my wiki): "A New Work in in Word: Kafakesque" - What are your views on the article now that you have read over half of the novel?
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Due: Wednesday, November 16 before 10 PM
5 comments:
After reading a majority of "The Trial," it is apparent that there is no beginning or end. This view is supported by a statement made in the article, New Work in a world: Kafkaesque. The writer of this article says, "the whole point of the new edition,...is to let readers see how Kafka put in a period and sometimes took one out... "The Trial" as work in progress,instead of a linear story with a beginning and an end." This comment illustrates how the reader struggles with the difficult nature of Kafka's work.
All of the edits Kafka makes explains to the reader why the sentences and paragraphs are so long and confusing. The fact of the matter is that nothing is simple with Kafka. It is not surprising that the article discusses that different scholars have different views on what the correct order of the chapters in the book are. Clearly the confusing style of the flow of the book creates difficulties for many readers.
This article gave a good overview of the book so far. The editors' goal was to make the reader's experience of The Trial seem as if it is still a work in progress. I feel that they were successful in achieving this goal because even though each chapter doesn't come to an end with a cliffhanger, it still leaves the reader thinking about what to expect will happen next.
As said in this article the editors don't want this book to be "a linear story with a beginning and an end." What I think they mean by that is the book shouldn't have a clear beginning and end. The very beginning of this book seems to have a somewhat clear start of the day before K. was arrested. If the editors wanted each chapter to not have a clear beginning and end, they accomplished that goal in every other chapter in more than half of the book.
The article we read discusses the various disputes people have had over publishing new versions of Kafka’s work and making minor tweaks to the work in order to make it more of what Kafka wanted. The newer editions of The Trial have been created to show that the story was never officially complete. Although Mr. Brod put The Trial in the order he believed Kafka wanted it, Mr. Reuss and Mr. Staengle wanted readers to understand that the story was never meant to have a set structure and was more like a work in progress rather than a complete novel. I believe that it is important to understand that Kafka never completed The Trial, however, it is unnecessary to change your own viewpoints on the novel because of the various interpretations of it. Despite Mr. Reuss’ and Mr. Staengle’s small tweaks to The Trial, the minor changes should not affect one’s opinions and own theories about the story. I believe that although some deem it necessary to recreate the work with their own vision in mind, it is extremely important to allow your mind to produce its own vision of the story and analyze The Trial freshly with your own beliefs. If one does not allow the constant theories and ideas for new ways to present The Trial to hinder his own thinking process and understands how the work became what it is, they are experiencing Kafka in an enriching way rather than allowing facts to create their own path in the reader’s mind.
Kafkesque a complicated and sophisticated style of writing. Every piece of writing written by Franz Kafka was written in such a way that is confusing , yet pleasurable to read. Even though a reader may be confused as to the main message of a novel or story, they will be intrigued to continue reading. Every detail introduces new thoughts to continue the message of the novel. The way the article “ New Work In a Word” explains the way Kafka used periods , and the way he was still making changes to the novel “The Trial” as it being an unfinished story with no known beginning or end. This makes the novel more confusing and unknown to a reader, going through each chapter unaware what is happening , and if it is the right sequence of events.
Not knowing the correct timeline of events in the story created a challenge for the story to have been put together into one concise novel. While reading the book each reader needs to take that into consideration, along with the style of Kafkesque and use this knowledge to interoperate the novel.
The way Kafka felt that “In general a spoken sentence starts with its capital letter with the speaker, bends out as far as it can to the listeners and then returns with a period to the speaker. But if the period is omitted, then the sentence, no longer constrained, keeps flying right out to the listener at full length." I feel this quote helps to explain the long chapters and paragraphs throughout the novel. Depending on the events of each chapters, each character may be having long personal thought processes , that do not need periods in between them. People could also be voicing their ideas and opinions to other characters during events like this throughout the novel.
Over all they style of Kafkesque is a very interesting style of writing. It provides a new style, that is unlike any other writer. Each story has a deeper meaning and uses details of mood and environment to help portray these meaning. The rules Kafka created, help with each of the main ideas of any Kafka story, the style now known as Kafkesque.
After reading the article i learned why the book had periods at such odd intervals and I came to fully understand how hard it must have been to try to preserve all of Kafka's works, however the article is rather disjointed and confusing. In the article there are no complete paragraphs, each sentence has it’s own line, but most importantly the paragraphs just stop mid thought. In addition to there being incomplete paragraphs, the paragraphs often seem to have started from nowhere. I feel that if the author were to merge all these sentences together and make sure that one event flowed nicely into another, I would be able to read this article and understand it better. For example if you were to merge two of the paragraphs on the bottom of the article (the third and the fourth from the bottom), you would get a single cohesive thought.
All in all, I found this article very informative even though it was utterly confusing to read at times and even though it had some paragraph structure problems. I also feel that whoever wrote this article did not give it their full attention and most likely tried to cover everything in as few words as possible. If I were to have written this article, I would have made sure that everything gelled before submitting it to a newspaper.
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