Last month, a staging of Kafka's _The Trial_ in New York was
praised for its noir staging and emphasis: bedridden,
ill-tempered authorities located in bunker like conditions
but dictating life or death, a pretty but oddly deformed
secretary fixated on men suffering from unjust arrests, a
society under the microscope of an impersonal set of laws
resulting in brutal executions.
Kafka's protagonists are not able to break out of routines
imposed from within themselves as well as by institutions.
Their scruples weaken them, and their fellow citizens observe
their trials with indifference and contempt. When the hero
(the hunger artist, who never finds decent nourishment) dies,
the boobocracy turns in adulation to the single minded strong
man who replaces him. The hero has wounded himself by
introspection, actually, and becomes his own worst enemy as
those in power sneer at him as coarse and indecent, and
control his preening successor.
When Kafka read _The Trial_ aloud to friends, he was reported
to have laughed uncontrollably. He could not explain why he
was laughing, but it wasn't funny "ha ha." It was more like
soldiers charging onto a beachfront with bullets whistling
by, and breaking into fatalistic laughter. If Chandler, Cain,
Hammett, or Goodis, and the screenwriter for the movie
"Chinatown," had not read Kafka, I'd be surprised.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 13 Feb 2005 EST