Franz Kafka

I've decided to do a presentation on the author Franz Kafka for my class at Hamline. Before I made this decision, I'd only read The Castle. Now I'm trying to read almost everything else he did, which is hard to stomach not because of the actual writing (he actually writes quite clearly) but because the whole time you read Kafka you keep worrying that something bad is going to happen to the main character, and then sooner or later something bad does happen.

What about Franz Kafka himself?

"Kafka recognized that he had to torture himself with his failure before he could achieve something valuable. Achievement depended on anguish, anxiety, almost on literal self-destruction. He needed uncertainty, that dip into the valley of doubt and hell, in order to emerge with renewed strength....in all else, familial matters, personal relationships to women, even ordinary social intercourse, he held himself apart. He emphazied pain, inability, uncertainty, but did so to convince himself that while he was a failure of a man he was saving himself for a higher calling....'Sisyphus was a bachelor.' This for Kafka was the higest praise."

-"Franz Kafka: Representative Man" by Frederick Karl

Now there's one intense writer. Would you go down such a path to achieve one single dream, no matter how great that one dream was? Will Blogagaard one day wake up to find he has become an unfamous, unpublished version of Kafka?

Tune in to find out!