The Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka

During my "I need to try and pretend I'm smart enough to read and enjoy this" pre-read research, I stumbled upon lengthy gushings by Vladimir Nabokov on Franz Kafka. Nabokov couldn't shut up about the quality of Kafka's prose, the genius of his storytelling, or the influential nature of his work. In reading The Metamorphosis, I could recognize all of these things. Kafka undeniably influenced the kitsch-loving postmodernist horde of hipsters reading his work now (not that there's anything wrong with those people, of course), and the absurd humor of The Metamorphosis in particular (I have yet to read anything else by him) is undeniable. I found myself amused immediately within reading the opening few paragraphs.

But as I continued into the second chapter, I began to realize I wasn't enjoying myself. So my question grew from "am I enjoying this?" into "why aren't I enjoying this?"

Kafka had a sad, depressing life. He lacked adequate feelings of self-worth, had few fruitful social relationships, was physically and mentally abused by his brute of a father, and was sexually frustrated. All of this shows in his work, and Metamorphosis perfectly captures these feelings via the medium of his storytelling. Therein lies the brilliance of Kafka. Though suppositions of allegory and symbolism persist even to today, I prefer Nabokov's view that this was a work which Kafka originally meant to be taken literally (or as literally as you can take it given what Kafka has written, at least). The story absent any intentions of subjectivity adequately imparts Kafka's feelings of hopelessness, shame, dissatisfaction with life. Of not belonging, and not being understood. Of being hated, even, or hating oneself.

And these themes are fine. Plenty of literature explores these types of things. But so much of Metamorphosis—perhaps due to Kafka's outlook on life—is relentlessly cynical, cruel, and depressing, that I couldn't enjoy it. Though very different in style, it felt like reading Cormac McCarthy—another extremely popular literary writer that I don't care for, despite my easy recognition of the wordporn qualities of his prose. To me, the core message of both is "life sucks, people are mean, and then you die". They both try and temper the hopeless bleakness of their work, of course; McCarthy tends to slip a sliver of hope into his stories, and Kafka tends towards snippets of absurd, black humor, but I could never find that the bits of levity created by either did enough to balance the level of cynicism in either.

In addition to this, much of the mode of Kafka's storytelling is simply not to my taste. I've never been a fan of absurdity and many of the tenets of the postmodernism that Kafka inspired fall flat on me. Perhaps I'm too old-fashioned; indeed I tend to prefer 19th century literature to its 20th century counterparts. Or perhaps I lack the imagination to deal with the subjectivity provided by postmodern literature. Whatever the case, I am at least able to grasp the quality of Kafka's storytelling. But it's something that simply falls well outside my taste.

So I've got to go with the laziest, safest, and lamest of all critiques: I didn't really enjoy this, but I can see the value of it. I can easily see why other people like it, and I don't fault them for it.

As I read this and thought about how I'd write my review (because I guess that's what I do now; think about my blog reviews as I'm reading like the massive internet nerd that I am), I tried to work through various different ways to apologize to the legendary late Mr. Nabokov for disliking Metamorphosis. I couldn't really come up with anything better than to admit to being a tawdry mouthbreather. And unlike Kafka, who seemed to hate himself, I'm okay with being who I am. Bad opinions and all.

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