Rasula, Jed
R 2 :20 PM
Old College 100
Franz Kafka is among the rare authors whose name has become familiar as an adjective. References to the “Kafkaesque” are almost as common as talk of something being “surreal.” Kafka himself referred to this quality as “seasickness on dry land.” Kafka has also played a crucial role in literary theory, inspiring major essays by Walter Benjamin, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Roberto Calasso, and others. A few theoretical essays will anchor the course, along with writings by Kafka and some of his successors. With this basis, we will then consider an expanding repertoire of “Kafkaesque” works in literature, film, and music. The goal of the course is to attain some perspective on the allure of Kafka for the creative imagination, and to understand the “Kafkaesque” as existential distress, slapstick humor, and theoretical provocation.
Course Materials
texts:
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Penguin) tr. Hofmann
Franz Kafka, The Trial (Schocken) tr. Mitchell
Franz Kafka, The Castle (Shocken) tr. Harman
Robert Crumb & David Zane Mairowitz, Kafka (Fantagraphics 2007) [earlier editions ok, published under the titles Kafka for Beginners and Introducing Kafka]
Paul Auster, Paul Karasik, D. Mazzucchellil, City of Glass: The Graphic Novel (Picador)
Joan Didion, “The White Album”
Olga Tokarczuk, Flights (Riverhead)
W. G. Sebald, Vertigo (New Directions)
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Unconsoled (Vintage)
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (Penguin)
José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (Harvill)
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Vintage)
Samuel Beckett, [undecided]
Essays by Adorno, Agamben, Benjamin, Blanchot and others will be circulated in class via flash drive.
note on works by Kafka:
You will need to use the editions of The Trial and The Castle listed above, based on definitive German texts and therefore different from older translations. The tales have been translated many times. Recent recommended translations are by Joachim Neugroschel, Malcolm Pasley (also an editor of the latest German editions), Peter Wortsman, Stanley Corngold, and Michael Hofmann. Any of these are acceptable. Also recommended:
The Zürau Aphorisms tr. Michael Hofmann (Schocken 2006)
Abandoned Fragments: Unedited Works 1897-1917 tr. Ina Pfitzner (Sun Vision 2012)