The Castle: Introduction by Irving Howe (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series)

Found my old copy. So I gave the new one to my son Brendan. Thx 🙏🏻

Very Kafkaesque.

Stands the test of time

Classic!

Classic Account of Alienation and AbsurdityReview of "The Castle" by Franz KafkaThis book made me into a Kafka admirer. He brings life to characters in otherwise drab situations and makes them seem very real. The reader feels the frustration, absurdity, the pettiness and the powerlessness in a personal way. You feel the haughtiness and aloofness of the Castle staff as if they were a part of your own community. You feel the pettiness and delusional gossip of the townspeople as if you were seeing it first hand. The story is riveting and the pace seems fast even when there is little action.The story starts with the protagonist (identified only by his initial, K.) walking to what sounds like a routine surveying job. Soon he is frustrated by a very confusing series of obstacles. As the story develops the obstacles become more chaotic. K.'s original purpose in going to the castle is never fully elaborated and his motives seem lost or stolen. The forces acting upon K. are shrouded. It seems as if some invisible force has plotted to test K. to the limit of human endurance of tolerance of ambiguity.Kafka combines the themes of:social class commentary,alienation from a heartless social system,absence of any protective power,salvation,redemption,fear of strangers,fear of change,search for the meaning of life,inscrutability of authorities,indifference of forces ruling human fate,persistence in the face lost purpose,abuse of powerandacceptance of pointlessness goals.As the plot progresses it takes on a surreal nightmare quality. Is the protagonist having a nightmare, going insane or confronting the reality of his situation?There is no end to the frustration. We are never told if K. is having a nightmare or going insane. We never discover why K. is so determined to enter the castle that he would tolerate and even join in to the absurdity. His original purpose of doing a surveying job could never justify his struggle to gain admittance. We are left seeing K. as a perpetual outsider. Perhaps Kafka is telling us that there is no end or limit to frustration, alienation and absurdity. Those seeking an answer to the ageless enigma of existence will never find a simple resolution.This is a disturbing work that challenges conventional notions of plot and character development while testing the readers conception of his/her purpose in life. The Castle will confront the reader in unexpected ways and raise emotional personal issues that would otherwise be repressed.See:The MetamorphosisThe TrialAmerikaCollections:The Diaries of Franz Kafka (Schocken Classics Series)Collected Stories (Everyman's Library)The Zürau Aphorisms of Franz KafkaBlue Octavo NotebooksKafka's Selected Stories (Norton Critical Edition)Give It Up: And Other Short StoriesGreat German Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)I highly recommend this book.

Now that I have read Metamorphosis and The Castle, I feel that I have been Kafka-ized. I now understand what is meant by Kafkaesque. Definitions of Kafkaesque that I have found include "bureaucracies overpowering people, leaving them with a sense of helplessness". Yes, that fits The Castle; but only if otherwise seemingly intelligent people suspend all rationality and are unable to walk away from their helplessness despite there being no barriers to doing so other than some mysterious hold the Castle seems to have over them, a hold that is never explained. Even K., an outsider who should not have been affected by this senselessness, was incapable of circumventing the ridiculous, if not non-existent, barriers and marching up to the Castle himself. Nothing actually happens in the novel. There is no real plot or action; just people spinning their wheels and going nowhere. Perhaps that fits the definition above re: the Castle (representing bureaucracies) creating a sense of helplessness in the people. Just when you think someone is about to explain something, the next several paragraphs or pages of so-called explanation explain nothing! And what are we to make of the ending where the hotel manager's wife is showing K. her closets full of beautiful gowns? No doubt, some (pseudo)intellectual will try to put great meaning to scenes such as this and maybe they are right. But from comments that I have read by other authors re: The Castle, I don't think that I am alone in wondering what we were supposed to get out of it. If star rankings are based solely on how enjoyable a novel is, then I would have given The Castle two stars. But I don't think that this novel was meant to be "enjoyed" per se. Perhaps it was intended to provoke thought, but about what I am not certain. I now feel compelled to read The Trial. Perhaps I will know more then - you think???

Perhaps when it was first published in 1926, two years after the author's death, "The Castle" must have been seen as something wondrous and mythic, and readers must have had heated discussions over its meaning. In his introduction to the Everyman edition, the English critic Irving Howe discusses how this labyrinthe tale of a man named K. who's trying to find his place in the labyrinthe bureaucracy that is the Castle is a metaphor for the individual's religious alienation: K. relentlessly and desperately seeks to confirm his faith in God. I think that's a fair interpretation, but a more accurate interpretation would have been to take the author literally. Mr. Howe has never worked in a bureaucracy because he would at once recognize the inverted nonsensical logic, the instinctive mechanical fanatical devotion to detail and form and protocol, the perverse crushing of the human will and spirit, a nebulous and abstract and hidden overwhelming power to be the trademarks of a bureaucracy.K. is a land surveyor who has been hired by the Castle, and when he arrives in a village to await his commission he is instead thrown into bureaucratic limbo. For the rest of the book (there's an endless debate as to when the book ends, if not that K.'s search and confusion never end) K tries to contact the Castle authorities, and confirm his professional identity. He is confounded at every turn, and is toyed with, even being forced to work as a janitor. If this sounds a bit too metaphysical, abstract, and somewhat pointless it's because the novel really is.I felt like K., and I desperately tried to look for something concrete to hold onto and confirm my identity as a reader of something relevant and important. Where is this novel going? Is Kafka toying with me? Does this novel actually exist? The novel reads like a nightmare, and after struggling to finish it (I found myself skimming pages, a bad habit I try to avoid) I awoke to found the nightmare to be irrelevant and pointless.

Unlike "The Trial" (a stunning masterpiece), this lacked much of the dark menace that is Kafka. It still has the nightmare feeling of being out of control and unable to determine a clear path through the bureaucracy, that is both stated and understated; that which is logical and that which is hidden. So, why my low score? The translation seems too literal and becomes unEnglish and I constantly had to think of what Kafka originally meant to convey. I gave up.

The Everyman's Library Classics Edition books are, in my opinion, the best quality books available in the price-range. They are quality bound, with acid-free paper, dust jacket, and ribbon page marker.There are also a great range of authors available in this collection, and they are very reasonably priced.

The book reached in a perfect condition and well within two days. The best part about Everyman's Classics, apart from the quality, is the extremely informative Introduction and the little but significant insights in the author's lifetime that might have influenced his/her writing. It need not be said that Kafka's work is great, it's universally acknowledged.The quality of the book is simply good. The binding is elegant, the print is exact and font size is as big as it should be. The book was also priced reasonably when I bought it. Thanks Amazon!

Le Château de Franz Kafka est un roman complexe, mystérieux et inachevé. David Zane Mairowitz et Jaromir 99 se sont lancés dans une entreprise difficile. Le résultat est magnifique. On retrouve le style de Jaromir 99 qui a fait son succès avec Alois Nebel : un noir et blanc à fort contraste, un trait épais qui rappelle parfois la gravure sur bois, des effets de contraste ou de montage intéressants. Son personnage ressemble à de célèbres portraits de Kafka lui-même.L’intrigue est bien connue : le personnage de K. arrive un soir dans un village ; il doit être engagé comme géomètre pour le Château. Seulement son arrivée n’est pas celle qu’il espérait, personne n’est au courant, il ne peut accéder au Château, ni à aucun responsable, et la vie s’enlise et s’éternise dans ce bourg au fonctionnement illogique. Seuls quelques personnages lui apportent leur aide ou leur amour. Mais, comme dans d’autres œuvres de Kafka, auteur immense, le personnage principal ne parvient pas à dénouer cette trame usante.L’ouvrage n’est pas encore traduit en français. La version originale est en anglais chez SelfMadeHero (2013), en allemand (chez Knesebeck Verlag), langue d’écriture de Kafka, et en tchèque, langue de Jaromir 99 (chez Labyrint).Lire la suite, photos, liens : [...]