tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post5827117089094484548..comments2024-03-18T16:55:31.971+00:00Comments on This Space: The Stroker? Kafka's "porn" stashStephen Mitchelmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-10521857805557458122009-06-04T10:32:40.107+01:002009-06-04T10:32:40.107+01:00Indeed Rich, but Hawes wishes to make a fuss about...Indeed Rich, but Hawes wishes to make a fuss about its apparent repression in the record and that he was, as you say, just like any other writer and not the Saint Garda of Max Brod legend. So, your surprise is not the issue. To repeat, the legend itself has long been dismissed by Milan Kundera whose famous essay, as reported by the review I refer to, is not mentioned in this book.Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-33216433620520574032009-06-04T10:26:29.682+01:002009-06-04T10:26:29.682+01:00So he liked some erotica. Big deal. So did Shakesp...So he liked some erotica. Big deal. So did Shakespeare who was even more sexually adventurous and unconventional than Kafka, as were a lot of other writers. It doesn't make him any less a great writer. Tolstoy had some strange and even unhealthy attitudes (by modern standards) towards sex but this doesn't make him a lesser writer either. We've all got our dark sexual sides so why be surprised and judgemental if writers are 'discovered' to be no different?Rich Philipshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16610321569645430878noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-18259229123918419102009-06-04T10:17:17.469+01:002009-06-04T10:17:17.469+01:00I'm pretty sure that if porn/erotica had been ...I'm pretty sure that if porn/erotica had been freely available in his day, Shakespeare would have been into it, as evidenced by the sexual wordplay and allusion that permeates his work as well as his own powerful sexual nature (brought out in Peter Ackroyd's biography). It doesn't make him any the less of a great writer. <br />Many other major writers like Goethe, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme and James Joyce have strong sexual references in some of their works. It doesn't make them 'perverts' (whatever that is) as some holier than thou moralists claim.Rich Philipshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16610321569645430878noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-14749638121492536102008-09-25T09:49:00.000+01:002008-09-25T09:49:00.000+01:00James Hawes is wrong: look at any biographical stu...James Hawes is wrong: look at any biographical study of Kafka in the past five years, including my own biography of 2004, Jeremy Adler's Penguin life, Ritchie Robertson's "Very Short Introduction" etc etc and I defy you to see it asserted that Kafka was unpublished and unknown in his lifetime. [Ritchie, by the way, an old friend who read my book in typescript would presumably have shouted: "Oi,Nick!" if I had proposed anything so silly.] Also, I am baffled by this porn-prurience from someone whose blurb boasts that his novel is being "reworked" by Andrew Davies of all people. We know what that will mean for some young female member of Equity.Nicholas Murrayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07189263209323471368noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-46618667697486997152008-08-28T17:44:00.000+01:002008-08-28T17:44:00.000+01:00Nicholas Murray is wrong: the myth of Kafka's bein...Nicholas Murray is wrong: the myth of Kafka's being "unknown" is still so widespread that in 2004 Britain's top Kafka-man, Prof Ritchie Roberston of Oxford praised Germany's top Kafka-man, Prof Peter-Andre Alt of Berlin (they both helped me with the book, by the way) for fighting against "the notion, still widespread, that Kafka was largely ignored by colleagues and reviewers". And the standard day-by-day biographical reference work for researchers, the "Kafka-Chronik" (Wagenbach, 1999) has on its back jacket the hoary claim that Kafka was "almost unknown in his liftime". Of course Murray knows otherwise - just as Murray presumably had seen what was in Der Amethyst but chose not to publish it, and knew that Kafka's half-winning the 1915 Fontane Prize was a blatant literary insider deal but chose not to say so. The trouble is precisely that people who DO know better have not dared to directly challenge the many myths about Kafka. As my book makes plain, I use the porn (and porn it undoubtedly is, by the way, pace my outraged German critics, as Wagenbach pointed out right back in 1958) simply as a little charge of undeniable truth to set the myths toppling. And as for John Self's accusation that "Rancid Aluminium" is pisspore: I take the fifth and point out merely that that book was last millennium whereas my last led The Guardian to say that I'd "matured into a wonderful satirst". So there.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-69172635181437762062008-08-27T15:34:00.000+01:002008-08-27T15:34:00.000+01:00Well, Hawes is a pisspoor novelist (Rancid Alumini...Well, Hawes is a pisspoor novelist (<EM>Rancid Aluminium</EM>, anyone? A book which had intrinsic qualities so immutable and essential to its being that when the film came out with a different plot, Hawes rewrote the book to avoid confusing new readers), so I never expected him to be any better as a 'biographer' (if that's even what he's aiming at).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-14095022490958377782008-08-26T02:01:00.000+01:002008-08-26T02:01:00.000+01:00"The Stroker"... marvelous!"The Stroker"... marvelous!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-19498758375923745642008-08-19T16:53:00.000+01:002008-08-19T16:53:00.000+01:00Scott Horton has a Q&A with Hawes today in Har...Scott Horton has a <A HREF="http://harpers.org/archive/2008/08/hbc-90003426" REL="nofollow">Q&A</A> with Hawes today in <I>Harper's</I>.<BR/><BR/>Asks Horton: "Do you really think the label 'pornography' is fair? Are you trying to suggest by it that there was a prurient side to Kafka's personality? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to applaud his repudiation of turn-of-the-century prudery and sexual repression?"EJIhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05785572811586563892noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-86653390429343307532008-08-18T00:45:00.000+01:002008-08-18T00:45:00.000+01:00Blimey, Steve, you should see the Observer's revie...Blimey, Steve, you should see the Observer's review today. Kevin of Lincoln's gift for lit crit is spreading from comments sections to the actual paper.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-54775113094393924582008-08-17T13:57:00.000+01:002008-08-17T13:57:00.000+01:00The problem with this book (having read it) is tha...The problem with this book (having read it) is that it sets up a supposed "K. myth" to which no serious reader or biographer or critic any longer subscribes and then proceeds at length to demolish it. NO-ONE believes that Kafka was unknown in his lifetime so why spend your first 50 pages trying to prove the point? It has occasional insights which are valuable but overall it is an exercise in futile polemic.Nicholas Murrayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07189263209323471368noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-30210841125737324232008-08-17T12:51:00.000+01:002008-08-17T12:51:00.000+01:00Biographical information is all one surely needs t...Biographical information is all one surely needs to 'understand' the various insidious forms of that undemocratic world of art. Who do these artists think they are, hovering in some world of 'profounder truths'. All this pretentiousness needs to be dragged down to the filthy gutter where humanity belongs. As John Carey said, or wrote, or perhaps even thought, What good are the arts? Fuck all good.<BR/><BR/>Though I will occasionally confess to a nagging doubt that art-works are sufficient to themselves, and if Kafka's works were merely known to us as the unattributed works of an anonymous author, the identical words would exist on the otherwise naked pages. Though I reiterate that this Kafka figure might have been a human exhibiting behavioural traits characteristic of humans is a great victory for humanity. And means his works are not what some thought they were. Because humans are simple one-dimensional entities incapable of the swarm of inner complexity that some of these 'artists' wish to imagine to be the case.Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11708539533684206357noreply@blogger.com