He next ties into two utterly weird characters, Delamarche and Robinson, characters more out of Beckett than Kafka! These disreputable unemployed drifters semi-force him to walk two days out of New York in futile search for work. All of this leads to Karl's meeting his uncle, a New York senator and super wealthy self-made man with whom Karl spends his first few months until disowned and driven out by his uncle in a crazy vengeful scene because Karl had gone to visit his uncle's friend against the senator's wishes. First on the ship Karl forgets his umbrella upon debarkation and ends up aiding a ship employee, a stoker, in making a case against his boss for maltreatment.

Things just go sort of crazy, mysterious and zany, yet each episode is told with craft and art as though Kafka were writing a detailed biography. Karl undergoes six very bizarre experiences which are the typical Kafka mix of reality and fantastic other worldly imagination, often dark and threatening. The Trial and The Castle, yet different in significant measure as well. The unfinished semi-comic novel which follows is both similar to Kafka's other two unfinished novels, A family house maid seduced him and threatens a paternity suit. Which is beyond even the surrealistic scenes in The Trial.įifteen year old Karl Rossmann immigrates to New York under duress. Little about the United States of the period and there is an air of fantasy The early part of the twentieth century, Kafka seemed to know that worldĪnd could describe it with power for me. Further, perhaps because I know so little about Prague of I found virtually none of these things in my other There is a tone of lightness,Īiriness, even comedy. This book seems on the surface to be so different.

Prior acquaintance with Kafka is with The Trial, The Castle and Metamorphosis. I found this to be a difficult novel to think of as by Franz Kafka's. New York: New Directions Paperbacks, 1946

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