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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 833.912
EAN num: 9781560978060
ISBN number: 1560978066
Label: Fantagraphics Books
Manufacturer: Fantagraphics Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 176
Printing Date: April 25, 2007
Publishing house: Fantagraphics Books
Sale Popularity Level: 159883
Studio: Fantagraphics Books
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Product Description:
Let R.Crumb be your guide in this illustrated guide through the mind and works of Franz Kafka.
'What do I have in common with the Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.' Nothing could better express the essence of Franz Kafka, a man described by his friends as living behind a 'glass wall.'
Kafka wrote in the tradition of the great Yiddish storytellers, whose stock-in-trade was bizarre fantasy tainted with hilarity and self-abasement. What he added to this tradition was an almost unbearably expanded consciousness. Alienated from his roots, his family, his surroundings, and primarily from his own body, Kafka created a unique literary language in which to hide away, transforming himself into a cockroach, an ape, a dog, a mole or a circus artiste who starves himself to death in front of admiring crowds.
David Zane Mairowitz's brilliant text and the illustrations and comic panels of the world's greatest cartoonist, Robert Crumb (himself no stranger to self-loathing and alienation), help us to understand the essence of Kafka and provide insight beyond the cliché 'Kafkaesque,' peering through Kafka's glass wall like no other book before it. The book is a wonderful educational tool for those unfamiliar with Kafka, including a brief but inclusive biography as well as the plots of many of his works, all illustrated by Crumb, making this newly designed edition a must-have for admirers of both Kafka and Crumb.
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Rated by buyers -
Kafka was a complex man whose genius is inseparable from his huge neuroses. So is Robert Crumb. Put the two together, as this book does, and the upshot is a book in which the distinction between author Crumb and subject Kafka tends to dissolve. The book is just as much about the one as the other. It's no mistake that Crumb is drawn (sorry for the bad pun) to Kafka.
At one level, the book is a primer on the life and work of Franz Kafka, with Crumb lavishly illustrating David Zane Mairowitz's text (warning: the text is strangely loaded with typos). The highlights of Kafka's life, including his stormy relationship with his father, his alienation from Prague, the city in which he spent most of his life, his difficulties with sexual intimacy, his self-loathing, his work at an insurance agency, and his struggle with tuberculosis, are all chronicled. Moreover, synapses of some of his best work--"The Judgment," "The Metamorphosis," "The Burrow," "In the Penal Colony," "A Hunger Artist," "Letter to His Father," The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika--are provided. Someone who knows nothing or little about Kafka will get a good orientation from reading this book.
But it's Crumb's pen-and-ink illustrations that make the book. They're eerie, dark, and at times actually frightening: perfect glimpses of Kafka's demons as well as Crumb's. In fact, Crumb and Kafka share many of the same demons: an intense need for comfort by women, but a deep-seated hostility to them; an equally intense need for public approval, coupled with an intense contempt for the crowd; a fascination with the usually unnoticed weirdness of the ordinary; a competing attraction and repulsion to the artistic, bohemian crowd; seething but repressed sexuality; a periodic yearning to disappear, to be punished, to be redeemed and reborn through suffering; an alternately bewildered and enraged dislike of Nietzschean proportions of the way in which popular culture cheapens existence (Crumb & Mairowitz's take on touristy Prague, pp. 174-75, is priceless); and a need to confess some of their darkest secrets, through their art, to the very public they disdain. In many ways, both Crumb and Kafka are hunger artists: they refuse to partake of the status quo not necessarily because they're ascetics, but simply because they don't find anything in it that whets their appetites. In gazing at Crumb's brilliant illustrations of Kafka, one can't help but think that this work, like so much of what Crumb does, is autobiographical.
Is it intentionally so? Does Crumb understand the deep connection between himself and Kafka? Is the book intended, at least on one level, as a gag: a book about Crumbka? I dunno, although I suspect that Crumb knows exactly what he's doing. But what I do know is that Kafka is about more than just Kafka. And that's what makes doubly intriguing.
Rated by buyers -
R. Crumb and Charles Bukowski, now Crumb and Kafka. The drawings illuminate the text in a way that Kafka would have loved. I will never see Kafka again, except through Crumb's vision.
If you like Crumb, or if you like Kafka, find this book.
Rated by buyers -
Michael Sidlofsky
Kafka scholar David Mairowitz and underground comics artist Robert Crumb team up to provide a fascinating window into Franz Kafka's brilliantly troubled mind. Mairowitz's text provides historical context and biographical information, including valuable insight into the Jewish folkloric roots of Kafka's fiction. Crumb's characteristically graphic illustrations highlight the horrific and humorous elements within Kafka's work. Together, the author and illustrator provide summaries of K's best-known short stories and novels, encouraging the reader to delve into the originals. The book's only flaw lies in Mairowitz's unfortunately condescending attitude towards Kafka scholars and fans.
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