BOOKS
FRANZ K.
CONVERSATIONS WITH KAFKA.
By
Gudav Janouch. New Directions.
$8.50.
This remarkable book, itself the result of a miraculous dis–
covery of material believed lost, is one of the most exciting works–
fiction, nonfiction, poetry - I remember having read. To say why
it is "exciting" and why I am assured thousands of other readers will
find it so, is difficult; one has to
think
of what Kafka means to us, to
all but half a dozen of us, writers and people to whom writing is very
important, one
has
to think and then rethink, to realize just how much
Kafka does mean to us . . . because he means more, really, than we
can consciously know. (Though our kinship with Kafka is, at last,
coming into consciousness: becoming honest. Consider the current issue
of
New American Review
[13] which, apart from stories and poetry
and things in 'between that might not have been written, as they are,
without Kafka - I'll be generous and mention only Borges, who would
freely admit his kinship - there are two stories in which Kafka himself
is actually present, one rather uncharacteristically touching story by
Leonard Michaels, the other "Seven Sketches" by F. G. Tremallo. A
third story, my own ''Others' Dreams," is really "The Metamorphosis"
redone - but the editors of
N
AR
thought it best to change the title,
believing that Kafka's story is a tough act to follow. That was in a
way part of the point of my story, but I rarely argue with editors.
So: in one magazine, in one single issue of that magazine, Kafka
all over.) He would have been terrified at his influence, his power. He
would have thought it a Kafkaesque horror story; and, before he died,
he would have been able to use the adjective "Kafkaesque."
But there is another reason why this book is so important, and
that has to do with the repeated assaults on our expectations, the almost
predictable revelations of ugly, nasty, roach-sized egos behind the great–
est works - and the not so great works, but those we have come to
idealize. We cringe to read of the real Dostoevsky, the real Tolstoy,
