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Summary: Great intro to Kafka
Review: "The Complete Stories" has everything the beginning Kafka reader neads to get started. Of course this is required reading for the Kafka enthusiast.A well thought-out forward by John Updike prepares you for your journey into the amazing and complex mind of Kafka. The book is divided into two sections, one for the longer stories and one for the shorter stories (most of which only take up a page or two). The stories themselves are great. "The Metamorphisis" is included, in which Gregor Samsa awakens to find himself in the form of a rather large insect! "The Penal Colony", "The Judgment" and "A Country Doctor" are also included. There's certainly hasn't been an author since Kafka able to play upon the fears and emotions of the human mind, those thoughts playing in out head, when we realize that maybe some of this could happen to us. If you enjoy "The Complete Stories", be sure to pick up "Amerika", "The Castle" and "The Trial". These are Kafka's three novels and will complete your collection. All very much worth it!
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Summary: wondering
Review: I don't own this, but I was wondering if someone could list the stories included in this book. I've read and loved "The Metamorphosis and Other Stories," so I'm wondering if a majority of the stories in this are already included in the book I own. Or, since this is probably a far too strenuous task, if someone whom has read both could tell me if my thoughts are true or not, it'd be greatly appreciated. I know this isn't that great of a review for a book I haven't even read, but maybe there are more people wanting the same information.
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Summary: description of a struggle; or, conformity to formlessness
Review: It's hard to fit a review of any of Kafka's work in such a short space, but especially a review of his short fiction (or rather parables, which is more what they are). He was a master of the short story, the likes of which we have seldom seen before or since. This volume contains most of his short stories, those that aren't included here are included elsewhere, where they are more fitting (such as "The Stoker" as the first chapter of Amerika). Kafka's short story "The Metamorphosis" is possibly the best short story ever written. It is certainly the most well known. But I'd like to draw your attention to a few other stories by him--examples of what makes Kafka great: "Before the Law", "In the Penal Colony", "A Country Doctor", "A Report to an Academy", "A Hunger Artist", "The Burrow", "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk", and "Jackals and Arabs." Read this book.
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Summary: Truth's Metamorphosis Into the Inexplicable
Review: Kafka is much more then the Metamorphosis and the Trial, and this collection demonstrates why. Kafka offered much while he delivered little, meaning that he opens up a universe of possibilities while confirming nothing. Nothing materializes, everything is fog. Stories that sound as if they're going to reveal the meaning of life end up only irritating you, and others, such as A Crossbreed, bore you until the final few sentences when you suddenly realize what you've been reading, and almost cry. Here is a line from Prometheus, which seems to elucidate a main theme of Kafka's writing: "As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable."
Kafka yearns for beauty and writes for truth, but what ends up on the page is often uncertain, vague and close to demonic in its preoccupation with the grotesque. His writing came out of a desire for truth and it had in turn to end in the inexplicable. So, truth metamorphoses (if I may..) into the inexplicable.
Also take note: the book is divided into The Longer Stories and the Shorter Stories, and some of the best Kafka is in the final section, which is the Shorter Stories. Watch out for The Bucket Rider, A Crossbreed, Prometheus, Poseidon, The City Coat of Arms... too many to mention!
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Summary: Worth it for "The Metamorphosis" alone.
Review: Kafka was a seriously messed up guy, but "The Metamorphosis" is a great piece of work. The book is worth buying for this story alone.
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Summary: Kafka: an author who captures the epic tale of tragedy
Review: Kafka's short stories are amazing. Few authors really harness tragedy like he does. Take "The Penal Colony" for instance. Kafka invents an ultimate devise of capital punishment, making it vile and disgusting, but coaxing the reader to almost rationalize the purpose of it's existence. As you finish the story though, you realize that it's not about an inhumane killing devise, but instead one man's obsession with it, and it's historical purposes. In a sense the story is a bad-mouthed eulogy of that man. One of Kafka's biggest achievements is his ability to have the reader sympathize with the "bad guy". Few authors can really get a reader emotionally involved with the book. So take home this book and sit in an under-lighted room as you read it, but be prepared. Soon you will find yourself lost within the words of Franz Kafka.
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Summary: a great book.
Review: Kafka, because of his difficult style, can make some assume him to be a bit overrated (which he is by english teachers who prefer him over an author like Herman Hesse, who says what Kafka does a bit more simply and beautifully.) But the truth is, Kafka does have his moments of brilliance, and despite the bad english translations of most of his works, there is still a lot one can learn from them. In the meantime, if you're not ready to dive into the difficulty, pick up a book such as Toilet: The Novel, which was written by an American, and thus does not suffer from the complexities and flaws of translation, and the book itself is a tribute to the literary works of Kafka, which makes it a great introduction to an even greater writer, or for a title a bit less literary pick up one of those introductory guides to Kafka. But then, these short stories too, are also a good introduction, just make sure you read them before you jump into Kafka's book 'The Castle'. Having said that, I hope I was of some help to you.
Fare thee well.
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Summary: What are my lungs for, anyways?
Review: Kafka. What a guy. Of the 27 reviews so far, only 1 (brothersjudddotcom) has dared to give less than 5 stars. He did a good job with his review, but I feel I need to add some as well to help balance all the stars Kafka is recieving here, and giving the review browser a diferent angle always helps. As can probably be expected, the short stories are a mixed bag. There are about a half dozen good ones, and there are a few absolutely terrible ones. "The Burrow" was particularly painful. That said; I did not come into the reading with much biographical knowledge about Kafka other than that in the introduction. Quickly, however, it became apparent that the poor guy is not comfortable with life. Death, suicide, starvation, a feeling of powerlessness; these things run common among the stories. Kafka does not even feel human! His characters inhabit dogs, cockroaches, mice, apes, and some large burrowing-type creature. The "modern" world alienates man, so-to-speak; it is unnatural. bah. Modern times are the best times to be alive! Man only counts his sorrows, doesn't he? Kafka sure counted alot of them... There was some humor, but not nearly enough to overcome the pessimism. My goodness, why bother getting up in the morning? The rotting apple in the posterior = the sin of homosexuality is an interesting idea; but I think it is more significant that Gregor Samsa actually starves to death. The running theme of admiration for starvation is disturbing. Combined with the "Hunger Artist," dying because he "couldn't find the food he liked" and "Investigations of a Dog," where a dog (Kafka) does not accept religious sustenance or practical, scientific sustenance; rather choosing to starve to death (another dog *forces* him to eat something); Starving oneself becomes a noble rejection of life and all its horrible complicated troubles. Freedom, horrible, horrible freedom is bemoaned in a similar way to how Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor puts it. Freedom, however, defines modern thought. Kafkaism. Kafkaesque. Here are a few for you: "What help, then, do my colleagues find? What kind of attempts do they make to manage to go on living in spite of everything?" "I can only see decline everywhere" "the highest effort among us is voluntary fasting" "I was tortured by the fancy that I would never be able to eat again." "It seemed to me I was seperated from all my fellows, not by a quite short stretch, by by an infinite distance" "I felt so weak and unhappy that I buried my face in the ground, I could not bear the strain of seeing around me the things of the earth." "My heart hurt, for now it seemed impossible to escape from my suffering." "...It cannot be made good, not ever." (the haunting conclusion to The Country Doctor, a masterpiece... but still laden with an unreasonable pessimism. We are utterly powerless, at the mercy of a violent world. So?) And my personal favorite:
"What are our lungs supposed to do?" I shouted. Shouted: "If they breath fast they suffocate themselves from inner poisons; if they breath slowly they suffocate from unbreathable air, from outraged things. But if they try to search for their own rythm they perish from the mere search." The most curious thing is that in the introduction it says that Kafka sometimes read his work aloud to his friends, and had to pause often to laugh uproariously. I laughed possibly twice while reading this, the humor has not aged well. I think the only reason you'd read this is so you can say "I've read Kafka" and puff out your chest. If you absolutely must read something in this, read the Country Doctor. It almost has a rythm.
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Summary: The supreme art of the master
Review: These are stories that are parables, and whose meaning comes as Camus rightly said only when they are read and unread. They are among the great works of literature.
To describe a Kafka story is to describe something uncanny. It is to describe a transformation into an enigmatic world, where the precise material details of reality suggest other realities one vaguely senses and cannot really understand. It is the dwelling in a strange realm of anxiety and fear beyond the ordinary that can miraculously turn to a different direction entirely.
I cannot really say what Kafka's stories are.
I only know that whoever reads them will be in the presence of the uniquest of the unique in literature. For Kafka writing was prayer and these stories are invitations to prayer , not necessarily with him.
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Summary: interesting to say the least
Review: this book was almost everything a book could possibly be. Kafka manages to make you think more with less then a page of text then some author do with a whole book. he frustrates you with his unfinished works, his incomprehensible ones, or his simplistic, straight-foreward ones (that you know must be much deeper, but can't seem to figure out how). it is brilliant and unintelligent, it is thought-provoking, and completely void of all logic, and it is all these things at once. If this is your first trip into the world of kafka then don't be dicouraged, some of it is bizarre to say the least, and can be very frustrating, but when you find that one story that manages to change the way you think and view the world, then you will begin to see his genius. But then again that's just my opinion and it's pretty irrevilent, but read the book anyway, YOU'LL LIKE IT
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