Blue Octavo Notebooks

First off, to the reviewer here from Ontario: I laughed until I started to hiccup while reading your review, and since I'm a substitute librarian, well...you can imagine. You've caught his tone exactly.Now, the Octavos. If you're a Kafka obsessive, they're required reading---first, to tease out his private code (the aphorisms). Secondly, one finds many of the shorter pieces Brod lifted for other releases, and what Brod chose---and what he left---says a lot about how his friend interpreted this author, and how FK would be misinterpreted for the next fifty years.Another reason to read Octavos is this: at least two of the shorter pieces here are so funny you'll want to collar friends and force them to listen. "I am a clerk at the town hall!" boasts one of his personae repeatedly...before collapsing into snarls about dignity and the office cat. Another is a wry send-up on the self-important manifestos floating around Europe at the time: Kafka's version is released anonymously to an indifferent apartment population, and proposes an absurdist Social-Contract arrangement between the manifesto writer, the thronging public, and five broken toy rifles--all sonorously written in starving-revolutionary comeradese. Of course, to the manifesto writer's chagrin, no one shows up.The Octavo Notebooks are where Kafka recorded a few of his most delicate, poetic and aching shorter pieces. They're also where he goofed up, wrote himself into a corner, admonished himself, lied to himself. In short, they're a small window into this complicated writer's heart. Nothing here is so essential that you can't enjoy Kafka's more formal work without them, but if you're a fan, they humanize the man immeasurably.

Exquisite reading for any true Kafka fan. When Kafka's literary executor Max Brod published Kafka's diaries in 1948 he decided to omit the octavo notebooks. He personally considered their contents to be much more more literary and philosophical than the regular diaries Kafka kept so he made this decision. Later in 1953, the Octavo notebooks were included in a volume of uncollected writings which included fragments and numbered extracts. In 1954, they appeared in English for the first time in Dearest Father. Stories and Other Writings (Schocken Books). Finally in 1991,The Blue Octavo Notebooks were published in a single volume via Exact Change (1991, ISBN 1-878972-04-9). This edition FINALLY includes the COMPLETE NOTEBOOKS IN THEIR ENTIRETY along with Max Brod's notes and the numbered extracts. Bravo!!!!

Excellent transaction.

But read the reviews, it is true, the gentleman from Ontario is priceless, and I agree with Erica as well. I've read the two-volume edition of his diaries and they seem to be much more touching and emotional -- sensitive to beauty -- than most of his published work. Though I would say the published work is also funny, "Investigations of a dog," for example. I think the diaries give a good, new angle on the published work. And I don't think they were "written for publication."

The two star rating is NOT BASED ON the writings of Kafka in the Notebooks, which are great, illuminating, and if you're interested in Kafka, are a must have. The two star rating is based on THIS edition. WHY o' WHY is the font so small in this edition? Can someone answer me that? The font appears to be 10 pt font, which is the same size font as one would expect in a one volume edition of Shakespeare or Plato's Collected Dialogues. But this is a slim volume of writings! The font is ridiculously small. I am 43 years old and have healthy eyes and own thousands of books. This typeset is way to small for no good reason! And, this is the only edition I can find. I lost my older edition several months ago and had to replace with this unreadable version. Bleh!

When I first bought this book, it wasn't blue either. But when I brought it home and put it on my shelf, things changed irrevocably. Now when I am sitting and writing late in the evening, out of the corner of my eye I can see the book, sitting amongst its faithless companions, gleaming blue like a blue lamp from a lighthouse, shining out from its shelf. While all around the rustling of the mice. But then, when I turn and look straight at her, she isn't blue anymore.I find the thought almost unbearable.

To face the prospect of religion without religion.To face the prospect of death head on.To be truly fearless in the face of human terror, folly, and weakness.To scribble all this courage into a modest little notebook, without the need for fame or immortality, without the pretense of literature or art.Just a great man working through the miracle of his life.It takes courage just to read it.

Tangential colection of ruminations he probably thought would never see the light of day. Okay for a literati as far as historical curiosity; best to just read his work.

Invasive perhaps, Max Brod publishing what Kafka would have otherwise wanted in flames. Very fragmented writings throughout, various little themes, some entries akin to a diary. Nonetheless, something to be had for any Kafka aficionado around. Wonderful to see his ideas in condensed form.

So good, we bought it twice.

This is essential for anyone interested in Kafka, or just interested in life! These aphorisms put Kafka in the foremost rank of philosophical aphorists, along with Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Wittgenstein. Given that he avoids the prolixity of the first two, and the often frustrating enigmatic pronouncements of the latter, this ranks as my favourite single collection of aphorisms by anyone.The book isn't *all* aphorisms, there are a few fascinating sketches, which had one wishing he had expanded them into short stories.Although the aphorisms reveal a profound spirituality, they are based in the primacy of fact, Kafka wasn't an idealist, he's as empirical as Freud. An example of Kafka's spiritual authority I'll pick one aphorism, difficult as there are dozens of similar quality:"Believing means liberating the indestructible element in oneself, or more accurately, being indestructible, or more accurately, being."Aphorisms should provide something to reflect on that leads to profound, personal realisations. Kafka certainly does this for me.In  The Western Canon  Harold Bloom says that Kafka relects the 20th century spirit more than any other writer, and that these notebooks are the place to begin one's search for an understanding of that sensibility. I think he may be right. The Western Canon

I'd been somewhat worried that the material contained in THE BLUE OCTAVO NOTEBOOKS amounted to leavings, leftovers and scraps, of no consequence compared to the short stories, diaries and novels. But the NOTEBOOKS contain the best kind of apocrypha: personal, ruminative, fanciful, dreamy. Some stunning passages and gorgeous asides:"A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.""...the stairs leading up to my room hopped before my eyes, one after the other, tireless little waves."This isn't a mere postscript to the rest of Kafka's oeuvre; for Kafka buffs, it attains the status of essential reading.