Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1925

The Cather is so fucking good, especially Tom Outland's story.

Been saying a while: creative writing programs would be better if Cather replaced Hemingway as a Model of Economy.

I don't think I could re-read the Trial, knowing that I didn't have the wallop of the punchline

Kafka is all punchline imo

You're not wrong, it's just funny seeing as most of his works are unfinished.

i'm still kind of on the side of "Brod was a traitor" but those books are good in ways that feel irrelevant and embarrassing to argue for, luckily they're good in other ways too

The Trial in particular wants me to say hyperbolic stuff that i wdn't use as a yardstick for books but ffs the century bent itself into his vision

The interpretive groundwork he subsequently laid, turning Kafka into an essentially religious author, was the real betrayal imo.

Y'all should watch Orson Welles' hilarious adaptation.

also the elite cadre, with Kafka at the top and Orwell quite possibly second, of writers who've stamped themselves into the imaginaire of people who've never read them

The OG Surrealists also up there.

i feel like with the surrealists that's more just misuse of the word altho i guess Avida left his mark

sorry, more than just misuse of the word and i'm rambling, but there's precious little Breton or Bunuel in mainstream unconsciousness and i'm pedant enough to centre surrealism with them

to be fair drawing a core "Surrealist" cadre without including any of the lads that got kicked out/fell out/lost interest is a pretty sisyphean job

the biggest hitters would be Magritte and Dali? neither of them really ideologically central to the ideas even if i'm being kind

excuse my ramble, just need to think this out loud, but the biggest stupidest misconception of "surrealism" was when it became a substitute word for wacky/random

The term's strength lies in its suggestive, even, uh, dream-like nebulousness.

Plus, misuse is the norm (see also: 'deconstruction').

Besides, Breton's own 'definition' wouldn't exactly pass an analytic philosopher's litmus test – a good thing, too.

oh yeah sorry i wasn't having a pop at you

and i'm not claiming a definitive definition

but i've not much interest in the surreal as a disconnect from the material, it's a revelation of the material imo

Nadja is one of my essential novels, but most of those Surrealists idealized or hated women or, to quote Whit Stillman, were a bunch of social climbers.

also the elite cadre, with Kafka at the top and Orwell quite possibly second, of writers who've stamped themselves into the imaginaire of people who've never read them

― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Monday, December 14, 2020 7:43 PM (one minute ago)

yeah seriously nothing grinds my gears like a conservative who quotes orwell

all those insects, all those buildings, all that bric a brac

the commonplace usage now is a long way from the heart of the dream

obviously words only mean what the people who use them mean but

Nadja yeah, Persistence of Memory nah

Bunuel movies are chock full of stuff, not ideas

Surrealism is more reality, not less.

xps they were terrible about women, yes, although the subsequent generation of post-surrealist female writers and artists issued some fascinating correctives to the original group's misogyny.

Breton, the Pope of Surrealism, put Dali "on trial" lol -- these dudes had no humor at all

This year has the most heavy-hitting line up so far. No one's even mentioned Gertrude Stein, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Ford Maddox Ford, Dos Passos, or Dreiser.

Bunuel is one of my top ten filmmakers, and I don't consider him a Breton-ian Surrealist.

and to swing back to vaguely what the point was, lol

Kafka isn't writing allegories, he's mapping the world AS IS

otm

Blanchot has some good bits about this, but I digress.

i think Bunuel was closest to Breton in terms of adherence to Marxism, belief in chance and materiality and not trying to create a meta-dream

Breton, the Pope of Surrealism, put Dali "on trial" lol -- these dudes had no humor at all

there was obviously a lot of rancour and dickishness but there's at least one level where calling out Dali was funny and Dali kept his shaman face a lot straighter, for money

Mark Polizzotti's Breton bio shows Dali, at his insouciant best, having his way with these fools.

The most worthwhile among them all got excommunicated.

i can't objectively call a score so fair enough, the outcome was as it was. i care about Breton's work, especially the absence of work, way more than i care about Dali, who seems quainter and way more assimilable to me

Breton's poetry is about the only "spontaneous" kind I can take.

a lot of the game play surrealist stuff isn't very interesting or good?

Nadja is amazing, i agree. i feel like Breton argued the best for not just making more stuff to shove into the art markets

and again Kafka was right if he didn't want to add to the heap of commodities in a world that was accelerating the pile of cultural commodities exponentially

i'm rambling in knots now, the Bretonian move is to shut the fuck up

On the other hand, but ignoring that, I'm suddenly struck by the thought that The Trial is a nightmare about taxonomy and its reification as filing. And taxonomy is the liberating motor of the enlightenment, and the power of its liberation derived from squishing the reality of things into the labyrinth of records, and your name is the file tag the state apparatus uses to exert its squish

Gatsby seemed like more of an idealist, a different type of American product, than Kane, Hearst or Trump, though they all four have a lot of drive...he may be an example of "The con man has to love his own bullshit," though we see the kind of overachievment this leads to (I'm sure somebody read this and thought, "Well yeah, but if he had done this that way and that this way, coulda alled work out, hmmm.")
Stein, ICB, Ford, and Drieser can be amazingly good, but I haven't read these particular books. Dos Passos's appropriately large USA kept me racing along , but I envy Scott Seward for reading it in high school; that would have been perfect.

"all worked" or woiked out, even.

ts reification as filing Yeah, he worked in an insurance office, didn't he? His father's?

oh yeah, this sounds about right: Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law on June 18, 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.

Work

At the end of 1907 Kafka started working in a huge Italian insurance company, where he stayed for nearly a year. His correspondence during that period witnesses that he was unhappy with his working time schedule - from 8 p.m (20:00) until 6 a.m (06:00) - as it made it extremely difficult for him to concentrate on his writing. On July 15, 1908, he resigned, and few weeks later found more suitable employment with the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. He worked there until July 1922 when he retired for reasons of ill health.

He often referred to his job as insurance officer as a "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills. However, he did not show any signs of indifference towards his job, as the several promotions that he received during his career prove that he was a hardworking employee. In parallel, Kafka was also committed to his literary work.
8 p.m. to 6 a.m.!
https://www.kafka-online.info/franz-kafka-biography.htm

Strange to say, there's only one thread on ilx solely dedicated to kafka

But there are two for Max Brod, vis a vis Kafka:
Thread of Max Brod Hate
where would we be without Max Brod?

None of them are on I Love Books.

I agree that Kafka is making a map of the territory, albeit at half a step removed. Even something as ostensibly allegorical as the Penal Colony has a realist weight to it. I'm sure he'd have pissed himself laughing at the notion of being a prophet or whatever but he's like Ballard in that regard: his worlds are always on the edge of becoming our own. Or vice versa.

speaking of kafka, anyone read that newly translated story in the new yorker this year? it must have sucked because it seems no one’s discussed it

There were four stories and you could read all of them in ten minutes, which may explain the lack of discussion - not to criticise them for brevity, my favourite thing I read this year of Kafka's is this aphorism:

The crows assert that a single crow could destroy the heavens. This is certainly true, but it proves nothing against the heavens, because heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.

The longest of the New Yorker stories starts with a simple proposition which rapidly descends into typical absurdity, it reads almost like a shaggy dog story with a groan-worthy punchline.

Blanchot has some good bits about this, but I digress.

― pomenitul

Blanchot has some good bits about a lot of things. I should really go back and reread some of his shit, it's so good.

The New Yorker pieces are excerpts from The Lost Writings, which I posted about on What Are You Reading?:
"It is not a barren wall, it's living sweetness pressed into a wall, bunches of grapes pressed together."---"I don't believe it."---"Taste it."---"I'm too incredulous to lift a hand."---"I'll put a grape to your mouth, then."---"I won't be able to taste it from incredulity."---"Then drop!---"Didn't I tell you that the barrenness of this wall is enough to lay a man out?"
That's from Kafka's The Lost Writings, recently published by New Directions, translated by Michael Hofmann, and selected by Reiner Stach, who also wrote the afterword.
More uses of humor than expected, to a range of effects, incl. at least one that turns out like a sketch from Yiddish theater, if not a Mel Brooks movie. Also one that involves a power figure's much younger wife, uh-oh: more about sex and gender than expected as well---been a long time since I've read him, though. (Those last two are almost as long as it gets in here, like a couple pages each.)
Don't worry, it's also Kafkaesque:
A delicate matter, this tiptoeing across a crumbling board set down as a bridge, nothing underfoot, having to scrape together with your feet the ground you are treading on, walking on nothing but your reflection down in the water below, holding the world together with your feet, your hands cramping at the air to survive this ordeal.
Those are among my favorites so far, but some don't seem to work as well, though even here, he sets the bar fairly high.

Some of the ones I didn't get at first I do now (I think): the mind has to adjust to the shifts, the climbing of trees and word-walls and bridges and so on.

also the elite cadre, with Kafka at the top and Orwell quite possibly second, of writers who've stamped themselves into the imaginaire of people who've never read them

― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Monday, December 14, 2020 7:43 PM (one minute ago)

Kafka is evading this tendancy these days, I think. "Read some effin Orwell", is how it mostly is.

Would've voted Woolf had I known it would be a landslide. Only 3 votes is criminal imo.

Shout-out to whoever voted for the Dreiser, can't honestly say I think it deserves to win this field but it packs a punch and I'm glad it wasn't shut out

ranked voting would be handy in polls with multiple worthy books, but I think Kafka still would've won.

I really want more Stein and Dreiser, also need to try Gide, but right now what an unfuckwithable 1925 lifeboat quartet:
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Mrs Dalloway by Virgina Woolf
The Professor's House by Willa Cather

The only Dreiser I've read is the Library of America volume comprised of Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, and Twelve Men: exxxcellent.

also the elite cadre, with Kafka at the top and Orwell quite possibly second, of writers who've stamped themselves into the imaginaire of people who've never read them

― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Monday, December 14, 2020 7:43 PM (one minute ago)

Kafka is evading this tendancy these days, I think. "Read some effin Orwell", is how it mostly is.

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 18:51 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just seen the following joke in The Simpsons. Lisa is outraged about something.

Lisa: This is Kafkaesque! Kafkaesque!
Judge: I've got my eye on you too
Lisa: Now it's Orwellian!

Lol fair enough though if it's a season 10+ joke then I'm not sure it counts

It was more recent than that. Of course it means nothing, but the timing made me smile