Murray, Kafka

Kafka: A Biography by Nicholas Murray Review by: Peter Zusi The German Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 2 (Spring, 2006), pp. 278-280 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of German Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27675938 . Accessed: 19/12/2013 18:38 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Wiley and American Association of Teachers of German are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The German Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 144.82.108.120 on Thu, 19 Dec 2013 18:38:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 278 German debates children involving Quarterly of African diers in the French occupation Book Reviews a decade then mothers, Spring 2006 of the Rhineland later, when sol African fathered children with German women. Tobias Nagl's where industry, symbols, focuses on Blacks "on display" in the entertainment contribution they especially were as individuals, their names economically marginalized of Germany's colonial past. Thus, after yet sought seldom appeared as in the credits and they often played multiple characters in the same film series. Louis Brody, an exception, found fame and financial security even in the Nazi period. Nagl deftly chronicles Brody's improbable 1915-1950 career, deconstructing Brody's roles such as the servant inGenuine (RobertWiene, 1920) whose offer of his own blood to a white female vampire is refused in disgust as a racially impure body fluid. Heidi Fehrenbach compares three films starring Elfie Fiegert, who took to calling herself "Toxi," the name of her title character in her first film, produced in 1952 during the wave of interest in the eldest of the 3,000 (Black Gl-fathered West German) Besatzungskinder Afro-German school reaching are children age. repeatedly Fehrenbach "assigned observes rightly a homogenous even that racialized group today's identity that assume [s] their affinity for things African, or more typically, African American" without regard to their fathers' ethnic/national heritage (137). Randall Halle situates Alles wird gut (AngelinaMaccarone, 1997)within the non-art film Germany Comedy Wave aswell aswithin queer cinema. His analysis of the film's Afro-German insights succeeds in breadth and depth but many sentences suffer from awkward phrasing that should have been caught in editing. in traces Leroy Hopkins the 1980s. He the history steinfeger (1999), the most Harriet Beecher Stowe, of Afro-German others, among analyzes, Hans Onkel is even Toms H?tte the term's Neger, since that of as a station enshrined coining Schorn Neger, book in Germany discussed Black-themed whose since literature Massaquoi's in Berlin's U-Bahn system. Anne Finally, Afro-Germans. Black Adams History Month, on reflects She highlights Kwanzaa, how the ways the African several and aspects the broader echoes diaspora of African-American use of "sister" culture, and "brother," among such as have been embraced by their community,which pointedly uses this English term. May Ayim andWE.B. DuBois, two diaspora voices invoked throughout this collec tion, journeyed toAfrica late in their lives. The shifting mosaic of Afro-Germans in the 21st century portends a furtherwave of scholars of this subject from Germany, Africa, and North America. Jason Owens SouthDakota State University Murray, Nicholas. Kafka: A Biography. New Haven: Yale University 432 pp. 31 illustrations. $30.00 cloth. of Franz Kafka Biographies a whose self-evident: sub-genre Gone are the days when have further become so common propagation requires that no their Press, 2004. publication particular seems explanation. a Kafka biography needed to rationalize its existence by point This content downloaded from 144.82.108.120 on Thu, 19 Dec 2013 18:38:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEWS: 20th and 21st Century Literature and Culture 279 ing out the limitations of existing works and the originality of its new approach. The as its title hints, does not book, generic or otherwise new surprising perspectives present sions, introduce revi any major discoveries, is known about Kafka's to what life. (The press release justifies the book as "the first biography of Kafka in English for 20 even but years," duced this an excellent is not correct.) Nonetheless, for the general book: well and highly informed, sensitive, reader Murray readable. has pro The major strength of this biography lies in the pervasive fairness and sound judg ment no of its account. small Those characteristics to maneuver feat between sound may the or old-fashioned, but it is that have accumulated modest and myths stereotypes around Kafka's life.Murray does thiswith considerable skill:Kafka appears here neither as the man nor as the of alienation, prophet impending neurotic. is a fascinat Kafka Rather, Murray's catastrophe, guilt-ridden was individual who able to out of and works of genius ing and attractive produce on: his complex emotional constitution. tone is set This despite refreshing Murray early as a someone writes that "... to see Kafka who knew neurasthenic, quivering only how to suffer, would be a travesty. much he was tormented fears [...] However by private representative nor social and Certainly, condescension when he he was anxieties, the fears lonely and and observations his occasionally own emotional romantic bold failures contact but Murray a corrective more of Kafka's of his into are all here, incidents with some of came all who by fletcherizing follows such accounts about view loved the often balances merciless of modernist as a ascetic a (4-5). avoids scrupulously as such comment, of Kafka's litany him" habits with personal or balances Kafka's (48), encounters with with very real accom plishments at particular moments (79 and 153). This fairness extends to those figures who often cut a less than flattering figure in Kafka biographies; thusMurray ends a description of the Letter to theFatherwith the laconic remark: "Onewould very much like to hear from the other side" (37). are occasional There that jar. the socio-cultural of late glosses Describing make-up writes for example, Murray that "the rural Sudeten Germans Bohemia, [...] Hapsburg were alienated from the Prague Germans and their justas much probably cosmopolitan, avant-garde tastes aswere the Czechs" (24), implying that Czech society produced only nationalism self-engrossed The later, implicit equation rabbinical side of Kafka" a text within exceptions account Murray's no and had of Kafka's is also (211) characterized is highly or artists of its own. avant-garde of Felice Bauer with "the "hectoring" out as But such moments stand cosmopolitan remorseless unfortunate. by assessments. balanced remarkably focused on the figure of Kafka himself. While accurate succinct and (for the most sketches provides part) texts when this is a "life" rather than "life and times" needed, even Max Felix Weltsch, friends?Oskar Baum, Brod?appear of social or historical biography. Kafka's only when he con closest absolutely necessary for the account of Kafka. Titling the divisions of the book after the names of women who Murray bibliography. themselves. This is well "Felice," "Milena," those women into informed he although influential particularly "Prague," as transform account Kafka, were are sections does not of recent flaunt his at certain and symbols are canonical: In general his sources to exclude the decision Gustav clearly reflects of the biography's of Kafka's not the phases in the developments research. Footnotes Even streamlining periods "Dora"?does life?the so much of Kafka's secondary are terse, and the diaries, Janouch being widen major the life. literature there on is no letters, and primary works as a source is unsurprising. intended for a general reader This content downloaded from 144.82.108.120 on Thu, 19 Dec 2013 18:38:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 280 German rather ship than a audience. scholarly Book Quarterly the general Indeed, readable account of Kafka's lifewill Peter Zusi Harvard University findMurray's Spring 2005 Reviews reader for a fair and looking biography extremely rewarding. Sokel, Walter H. TheMyth of Power and the Self: Essays on Franz Ka?a. Wayne State University Press, 2002. 334pp. $39.95 hardcover. The mark of great criticism is its timelessness. as relevant It remains and Detroit: fresh when you read it twenty, thirty, even forty years after itwas first published, as itwas when it first appeared. Somany ofWalter Sokel's essays on Kafka fit this description, and that is why the appearance of his TheMyth of Power and the Self: Essays on Franz Ka?a was greeted with such enthusiasm by theworld of Kafka scholarship when it appeared in 2002. to the essays significant them "Franz Kafka," In addition Kafka's work, that have "Kafka's among essential become Poetics on commentaries of the Inner Self," "Freud and theMagic of Kafka'sWriting," and "FromMarx toMyth: The Structure and Function of Self-Alienation inKafka's 'TheMetamorphosis,'" Sokel has completed his volume with three previously unpublished pieces that bring us some new insights, which are often modifications and expansions of his favorite topic of study. Sokel's grasp of Kafka is total. His affinity for this author has led him to knowledge of every detail inKafka's work. Although one of the first principles of teaching Kafka to students is to explain that there are no definitive readings of this highly enigmatic Sokel's author, and elegant erudite essays come as close to that as is possible. absolute His deeply personal first chapter attributes his desire "to get to know the secret of Kafka's In this chapter, benefited. to his response power"?a his becoming a Germanist, first reading the cause "The Metamorphosis"?as of a result from which we, his colleagues, have profoundly Sokel also explains his overarching view of Kafka's oeuvre and why the present volume is a companion to his masterful first book from the early 1960s, FranzKa?a: Tragik und Ironie,which was never translated into English. In that first book the concept of Kafka's was writing understood as primarily a negation of the self and an undoing of selfhood. In that way Kafka's writing process was interpreted as having a negating function serving to undo the individuated being. With re-readings and by to responding the theoretical approaches like poststructuralism, intertextuality, cultural studies, and reader theory that have emerged in the decades since his first study, Sokel has come to see Kafka's to his earlier Contrary view, writing Sokel now as to the true actually given expression having that for Kafka understands writing self. is an affirma tive process that helps the author find his true ego. Kafka's innerworld is the self escap a censor the realm of truth. Sokel and thus becomes ing from method that he prefers and always work-imminent presents continues close to adhere readings to the of the actual Kafkan text. Each of the essays is thus both comprehensive and detailed at once, presenting the readerwith invaluable and illuminating insights into the theory and practice of a master critic. This content downloaded from 144.82.108.120 on Thu, 19 Dec 2013 18:38:58 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions