Kafka

I don’t particularly enjoy reading. Maybe it’s the fact that I am a perpetual student and have had no choice but to read numerous textbooks and journal articles. Maybe it’s the fact that I have the attention span of a goldfish.

I’ve done well with short stories and memoirs. Books like Naked (David Sedaris) and Running with Scissors (Augusten Burroughs) have kept me engaged, one a chapter at a time.

A couple months ago I was talking to an academic. At the end of our exchange, she commented on the existentialist nature of my thoughts and beliefs. So, I looked it up...enter Franz Kafka (one of the first literary authors important to existentialism).

I picked up a copy of “Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories." I’m working on it, slowly, but frequently find myself at the end of the page, wondering what the hell I just read. Perhaps this is a contributing factor...

Some sources have claimed that Kafka possessed a schizoid personality. His work, they claim, not only in The Metamorphosis, but in various other writings, appear to show medium to low-level schizoid characteristics which explain much of his surprising work.

"The tremendous world I have inside my head. But how [to] free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times [I'd] rather be torn to pieces than rather it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me."