Daisy Todd Todd itibaren Unchvan, Gujarat, India itibaren Unchvan, Gujarat, India

Up until now I’d been familiar with Kafka as a concept. The term “Kafkaesque” appears in dictionaries as meaning dreamlike and surreal. Although I’d seen a stage adaptation of Metamorphosis, Amerika is the first of his works I’ve read. And it’s often critiqued as the worst…so maybe this wasn’t the best starting place. To give a quick synopsis, 16-year-old Karl is sent to America from Germany by his parents because he inpregnanted their maid and they didn’t want to deal with the finances or humiliation (Karl remains asexual through the rest of the book). Throughout the course of the book he is both bullied and befriended, bouncing around the city looking for belonging. Enthusiasts describe it has Kafka's most cheerful and humorous book. They say it’s an insightful perspective of America, and in many ways a contradiction of the American Dream. I disagree with these claims. For one, it’s not cheerful and humorous—the protagonist, Karl, encounters one frustration after another, but not in a slapstick sort of way, just in a generic sort of way. There’s a certain degree of absurdity to the way people act, which has a certain charm to it. But does that make it funny? Not so much. Those who critique the book say that it’s disappointing because there’s no real ending (after all, Kafka died before it was complete), and that it’s unrealistic because Kafka never actually visited America and therefore gives a vague, impractical vision of the country (the book takes place in NYC). The version that I read provides fragments at the end of pieces that weren’t included in the original, one of which does have a hopeful “ending.” But I don’t expect my books to have solid endings, anyway, since I value substance and prose so much more than plot. And it’s true that Kafka seemed to be doing a lot of guesswork as to what NYC would be like, BUT it works if it’s through the character’s eyes…Karl wouldn’t realistically have identified landmarks or geography. A huge point of reference for this book is the image of The Statue of Liberty holding a sword. It’s really the only fantastical image that the book presents; everything else is hazy. I was never entirely engaged just because Karl is such a passive, unemotional character. I’m just looking forward to reading the types of works that deemed the term “Kafkaesque” something poignant enough to be in the dictionary.

Fantastic world building!