Franz Kafka
Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Looking for a bit of light reading in Balham library having finished a Nabokov book I saw this and thought I should read it. I'm sure I must have read some of his stuff years ago but can't remember any of it. Jumped straight to Metamorphosis which is very weird and heavy going, at least trying to figure out the meaning. I see it as a comedy with dark humour as to why the main character (or is he?) has become a cockroach (that's hardly a spoiler) which is hardly a metamorphosis as he is one from the very start of the story. There's a lot of farce and probably comments on social niceties and values as of the time that it was written. It may be that the roach man symbolises a life of drudgery and that this is a way to stop that and to take on another life but he's just not creative enough to take the risk or he's just too tied to his family as the breadwinner. The changes within the story are his father who finds that he can hold down a job and the same for his sister who blossoms into a nubile (translators wording) young woman. Even his mother has changed probably for the better. Next I went through the Contemplations which has Kafka considering various things or at least describing them vividly. The rest of the stories are either descriptions of things and people that may have been relevant at the time but meaningless to me and to be honest just got very boring. A couple of odder stories such as the execution machine with the victim not knowing what he's done wrong but, again, excellent descriptive writing but a farcical story line and a bit so what. Maybe I'm not getting the inner meanings but to me it's speaking to a time long past. Some interesting jump off points into Wikipedia though including hunger artists.
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