Franz Kafka: A Biography

This biography lets you on the inside of not only a great writer but on the inside of a close friendship between two writers and friends. It's written in a rather relaxed way, the way only good friends can be with one another. I read a biography on Kafka many years ago and it left me a bit indifferent about Kafka. This biography lets you feel the warmth and exuberance of the man, the everyday of this extraordinary writer. You can almost imagine yourself in his childhood home, meeting the family, understanding how Kafka became Kafka, how the seeds for his stories were planted and evolved. This biography had all the intimacy of an autobiography. Anyone who would like to know the tender underside of the beast, this is the biography you're looking for.

This is an excellent seller! Very accurate description and amazing packaging to protect a collectable book!

This book was a really good read. Used it for a research report and paired it with a Kafka biography written by Ronald Hayman. It arrived on time and in excellent condition. The content is also very useful and informative.

Not as in-depth as I had hoped for; but good for a quick read.

This was required reading for a class. Was informational.

Great insight into Kafkas life

Those of us who feel that Mozart might have been right, when he complained to his father about having to give music lessons for enough money to live, will find Max Brod entirely on our side in FRANZ KAFKA, A BIOGRAPHY, when it comes to "Philistines who are of the opinion that it is enough if genius has `a few hours free'--they don't understand that all the available hours barely suffice to guarantee to an even tolerably uninterrupted ebb and flow of inspiration and repose its right and proper far-flung arc of oscillation." (pp. 88-89). Kafka obtained a doctorate in jurisprudence on July 18, 1906, did a year of unpaid practice in the law courts typical for those who intend to be called to the bar, and tried to find a job with office hours that would be through at 2 p.m. each day. In July 1908, he began working at the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague. Work is tiring, so "Kafka tried sleeping in the afternoon and writing at night. That always went all right for a certain length of time, but he was not getting his proper sleep." (p. 80). With television providing entertainment at all hours, and people eating enough to produce sleep apnea to wake them constantly for another gasp of breath after we are too fat to sleep normally, it is not surprising that people find themselves in a state of mind which matches whatever Kafka was writing.I checked a few biographies to see how much emphasis had been given to Kafka's work on the job, since reading recently in a book by Peter Drucker that Kafka does not get enough credit for requiring people in the presence of falling objects to wear safety helmets. Max Brod had been a friend of Kafka in school, and worked for years in the post office while writing a book, so he was doubly aware of Kafka's attitude toward his work, because he allowed Kafka's feelings to determine his own occupation until he could no longer stand "Suffering that has been raised to a degree that can only be described as fantastic." (p. 81). Brod quotes a letter in which Kafka's attempt to describe his work is comical."people fall, as if they were drunk, off scaffolds and into machines, all the planks tip up, there are landslides everywhere, all the ladders slip, everything one puts up falls down and what one puts down one falls over oneself." (p. 87). When he was appointed a drafting clerk, all the new clerks had to listen to a member of the Board, who had "given them a talk which was so solemn, and so full of fatherly sanctimoniousness, that he (Franz) had suddenly burst out laughing, and couldn't stop. I helped the inconsolable Franz to write a letter of apology to the high official." (p. 87).By December 28, 1911, Kafka complains in his diary that, due to his family's share in a factory "they made me promise to work there in the afternoons!" (pp. 89-90). Max Brod thinks this mess is responsible for "his later absorption into the world of sorrows that finally led to his illness and death. . . . but the disaster was essentially caused by the fact that a man so tremendously richly gifted, with such a rich creative urge, was forced just at the time when his youthful strength was unfolding himself, to work day in and day out to the point of exhaustion, doing things which inwardly didn't interest him in the least." (p. 91). This must be my favorite theme, in all of literature, that people are kept so busy, they would have to be fools to take the time to see what anyone else is doing. Kafka wanted to be able to depend on others "to keep everything running in the same good order as usual; for after all, we are men, not thieves." (pp. 91-92). This biography is written with the greatest friendly involvement in the life and death issues of its subject. At the end, concerning a medical report on July 14, 1908, "that Kafka, because of his affected nerves and `great cardiac irritability' had to give up his position" (p. 248) it was only to be considered an excuse "to transfer to the semi-government Accident Insurance Institute, where the work was considerably easier." (p. 248).This biography will be most meaningful to those who are familiar with Kafka's writings. Many further items are also available. "Kafka's letters to Milena, her letters to me, and Janouch's recollections provide indispensable documentation for the period of Kafka's life in which THE CASTLE was being composed--documentation which is all the more important because Kafka's diary stops completely during the writing of the novel, and is relatively meager for the few years he had yet to live." (pp. 221-222).Chapter VII, The Last Years, has the beginning of Kafka's friendship with Dora Dymant in the summer of 1923. At the end of July he left Prague to live with her in Berlin, published four stories and used the title, "A Hunger Artist" for the collection. On March 17, 1924, Brod brought Kafka back to Prague to live with his father and mother again. (p. 203). Taken to a Vienna clinic, Kafka was then "transferred at the end of April" (p. 204) to a sanatorium, where, "cared for in every way by his two faithful friends, Kafka spent the last weeks of his life--so far as the pains he suffered allowed it, patiently and cheerfully." (p. 205).This famous biography was written in 1937. Appendixes include a chronological table which ends, 1952, Death of Dora in London (August). A postscript (p. 213) at the end of Chapter VII reveals that the first German edition ended at that point. Chapter VIII, New Aspects of Kafka, includes "we are faced with the inevitable distortion of his image." (p. 215).

Blessed with the gifts of an outstanding writer in his own right, this brief biography of Kafka from Max Brod spares you the tedious minutia that weigh down most literary biographies. What you are left with is a deeply personal and truly felt picture of a friend who sacrificed himself for his art. Kafka comes across here as a saintly martyr for literature and art-a suffering genius who found salvation and meaning in his work. Yet Brod is careful not to paint too dark of a picture; he is attuned to Kafka's tremendous humor and satirical wit. In short, he was a man sensitive to the pain and absurdity of the human condition, in all its beauty and pain. An outstanding portrait of this cutting edge artist who wrote for the crickets and is now secure in the literary pantheon.

Fascinating! The autobiography you have to read of course. The language is a bit old-fashioned with long 'curly' lines inside long 'curly' lines, but you get used to that.It is in-depth! And much more thoughtful than I ever expected, almost psychoanalytical. But also with descriptions of Kafka's lighter side (he had some of that too) and these two friends' adventures. Max Brod is a very good writer - although very different from Kafka. It's clear Brod admires Kafka a whole lot.

excellent

Just started it - not finished yet