Comments on Best Back Cover Text of the Day

"Kafkaesque" I can live with.

"Seussian" I cannot.

I do not like it.

Paul Constant: I want to hug your brain.

how can the guy not be like himself? i feel chico in a marx brothers episode...

the word pedantic comes to mind

No need for intellectual distinctions in Mr. Constant's world. No examination of what kafkaesque has come to mean. No witty analysis on the function of such constructions. No siree bob. Just keep it simple, superficial and sarcastic.

@1.: how do you feel about a word to describe things that are like things written by Kurt Vonnegut? I've actually read the word Vonnegutian on a number of book jackets, but I'm kind of fond of the word "Vonnegutteral," which I have coined but not yet put in print.

I approve of, and intend to find reasons to use, Vonnegutteral.

Credit will be given.

Well, a word like Kafkaesque can take on a meaning outside of kafka, one in which it is meant to capture certain of Kafka's characteristics, but not necessarily to comprise everything he does. Like a skinny woman can't be rubenesque even if she's in a painting by Rubens.

@6: Have you read Steve Almond's book *Not That You Asked...* He has a chapter about being obsessed with Vonnegut, that cracked me up.

He calls the Kurt's witticisms "Von-nuggets" or something like that. There really should be a term.

franz capra? didn't he write 'it's a miserable life' and 'meet-a-morphosis john doe'?

Palahniukian sounds about right for his crap, though PalahnupChuck will also be accepted.

Does "a German-language text produced by a team of international scholars" make anyone else suspect it'll be a horrific read in a generic, non-Kafkaesque sense?

@5: If you spend too long pontificating about the ramifications of the word Kafkaesque, which is a shorthand for "something that seems almost like it could be written by Kafka," you're a total wanker, or a graduate student, or possibly both.

@9: That's a great essay.

@10: L, as the kids say, OL.

Can I play too? What about Dostoevskyian?

@1 But, do you like green eggs and ham?

Let's calm down. "Sex with you was really a Kafkaesque experience." was a throw away comedy line from Woody Allen's Annie Hall delivered by Shelly Duvall (1977.) Freshman pseudo-intellectuals that infested my early university years adopted the phrase and, for some reason, it became a legitimate description of "weird stuff." It has now come full circle where Kafka himself has now become "Kafkaesque." Damn the popular culture!

Nobody linked to this?

I always thought Kafka was very Lynchian in a Gilliamesque sort of way.

This post is ridiculously pedantic. It's not that weird to say something kafka did or write wasn't kafkaesque. When he drank coffee was that kafkaesque? It's a ridiculous thing to even think about.

A word can mean something that is separate than the person it was named for. In physics, "Newtonian" doesn't mean "related to Newton" nor does "Euclidian", mean "related to Euclid".

Is it that weird that Kafkaesque could ean something different than "written by kafka"? The word wouldn't mean much if it only refered to things written by Kafka rather than things with the bizarre qualities that make things "kafkaesque".

It's funny how they say that the original German text has been rehashed by a team of international scholars so that it is "more faithful" to Kafka's original manuscript--yet what we are talking about here is a translation. Translations are separated by leaps and bounds, necessarily, from the original material and are highly dependent on the translator's or translators' interpretation, which may or may not be "faithful." Since the original is no longer copyrighted, the "new, faithful" translation (unlike the old, unfaithful translations) serves mainly as a vehicle for royalties.

In the end, if you want to understand Kafka in your own way, you're going to have to learn some German and read it in the original...

Paul,

Now let's you remember this: The Beatles were never "Beatlesque." There was no such thing as "Beatlesque" until the advent of Our Musical Saviors. Remember you that basic objective fact.

Having said that, if Kafka was so great, how come you can't buy his books in a supermarket?

Um, Mr. Constant, you do know that "Kafkaesque" means surreal / malevolent / insane / incomprehensible, right? It does not mean "written by Franz Kafka."

Once you grasp that, sure, Kafka can write things that are not Kafkaesque. I doubt that his shopping lists were Kafkaesque, though I suppose it is possible.

Do you want to take the word Kafkaesque as "of a style reminiscent of Franz Kafka, does it have to engulf all of the range of Kafka's work, or just a stereotype of it? Can someone describe "Jersey Girl" as being the least Kevin Smith-like Kevin Smith movie? Cinnamon Bun as the least Ben and Jerry-ish ice cream flavor? Or Re-Ac-Tor as being the least Neil Young-like Neil Young album?

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