The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man: Essential Stories

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IN ENGLISH, the word that usually follows ‘Kafkaesque’ is ‘nightmare’. Hardly the thing to make you think, ‘Hurray, a new translation. No Netflix for me tonight.’ And in truth, Kafka’s work is respected far more than it is loved.

Potential book buyers sense that reading one of his novels might be unpleasantly similar to appearing in it: boring and painful at the same time. Like a circle of hell reserved for bureaucracy and anxiety dreams, where you fill in meaningless forms until the end of time, and then discover the pen is actually a beetle. That feeling only gets stronger when you flick to the back of The Castle and see how many pages there are.

I can’t say I really disagree. There’s no question about how startling Kafka’s vision is, nor about how, despite the surrealism and the grotesquerie, it all feels so familiar. But are the novels a great read? I have my doubts.

Not so about the short stories. There, the ideas that can feel interminable in the novels are quick, funny, strange and sad. Some are fables, some are jokes, some seem placid at first then throw you out the window, some put pictures in your mind that no one but Kafka ever could and that will keep resurfacing for years afterwards as metaphors for your lived reality. Some you read and think, oh I see, this is Kafka, this is why Kafka was such an earthquake, this is why he’s unforgettable.

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