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Review
'A thorough demolition of the myths that surround one of the greatest writers in the German language' Times.
'Hawes's Kafka is a canny, funny, worldly man and the book's galloping prose is highly entertaining... witty anti-biography' Observer.
'Superbly irreverent book debunks prevailing myths about the author... His flippant style is hugely entertaining, but he is also unwavering in his appreciation of Kafka' Guardian. 'This absolutely brilliant and utterly infuriating book has a simple purpose: to demolish a number of myths and misconceptions about the life and work of Franz Kafka... Hawes is one of the most audacious, obsessive and endlessly inventive critics of an author with whose work he is clearly and wonderfully obsessed' Ian Sansom in the Guardian.
'Hawes loves Kafka and his combination of zeal and cynicism is irresistible' Daily Telegraph. 'This wonderful book, a revelation and a scream... wonderfully irreverent' Scotsman.
'Literary biography usually reduces the work to the peccadilloes of its author: Hawes' glorious piece of iconoclasm uses the same technique to save it' Spiked.com.
'Settle in to enjoy Hawes' galloping, lucid prose' Observer.
'Hawes's Kafka is a canny, funny, worldly man and the book's galloping prose is highly entertaining... witty anti-biography' Observer.
'Superbly irreverent book debunks prevailing myths about the author... His flippant style is hugely entertaining, but he is also unwavering in his appreciation of Kafka' Guardian. 'This absolutely brilliant and utterly infuriating book has a simple purpose: to demolish a number of myths and misconceptions about the life and work of Franz Kafka... Hawes is one of the most audacious, obsessive and endlessly inventive critics of an author with whose work he is clearly and wonderfully obsessed' Ian Sansom in the Guardian.
'Hawes loves Kafka and his combination of zeal and cynicism is irresistible' Daily Telegraph. 'This wonderful book, a revelation and a scream... wonderfully irreverent' Scotsman.
'Literary biography usually reduces the work to the peccadilloes of its author: Hawes' glorious piece of iconoclasm uses the same technique to save it' Spiked.com.
'Settle in to enjoy Hawes' galloping, lucid prose' Observer.
Product Description
Kafka's features, and that dreaded word, Kafkaesque, are known to millions who have never read serious literature. Generations of academics and critics have maintained the image of Franz Kafka as a tortured seer whose works defy interpretation. In Excavating Kafka James Hawes reveals the truth that lies beneath the image of a middle-European Nostradamus with a typographically irresistible name. The real Franz Kafka was no angst-ridden paranoid but a well-groomed young man-about-town who frequented brothels, had regular sex with a penniless-but-pretty girl and subscribed to upmarket pornography (published by the very man who published Kafka's first stories). Excavating Kafka debunks a number of key facets of the Kafka-Myth, including the idea that Kafka was the archetypal genius neglected in his lifetime; that he was stuck in a dead-end job and struggling to find time to write; that he was tormented by fear of sex; that he had a uniquely terrible, domineering father who had no understanding of his son's needs; that his literature is mysterious and opaque; that he constructs fantasy-worlds in which innocent everymen live in fear of mysterious and totalitarian powers-that-be. Written with the panache of a supremely gifted comic writer, Excavating Kafka is an engaging and involving reassessment of a major figure of literary modernism that will be welcomed and enjoyed by students of Kafka and by general readers alike.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
James Hawes is passionate about Kafka but believes that the bulk of modern scholarship is misguided in painting him as a lonely, heroic figure, bullied by his overbearing father, ignored in his lifetime - a "fair unsullied soul" almost saintly in his appeal. Excavating Kafka is his attempt expose the "K Myth" and to inject a note of reality into the study of Kafka, a man of his times who as we might expect had all the usual foibles and failings as the rest of us - and a few unique to himself for good measure.
The first thing to say about this book, is apart from the writer's attempt to correct other Kafka scholars, its actually a very readable biography of Franz Kafka, written in an amusing style and imparting vast amounts of information in a relatively compact package. I think you'd have to read a substantial biography and then a couple of books of literary criticism to get quite as much information (unless of course you favour the cartoon approach!).
James Hawes certainly makes no attempt to cover up some of the more unattractive part of Kafka's personality. A whole chapter (Into the Locked Bookcase) is devoted to his hobby of collecting exotic pornography and it is not difficult for Hawes to demonstrate that Kafka was a frequent user of brothels, often with a degree of obsessive compulsion, and an at times callous disdain for the women concerned.
I enjoyed this book, not only for the information it provides about Kafka but also for the entertaining way in which it presents his life-story. It gives a wonderful flavour of life in Kafka's Prague haunts, like the Café Corso. It is illustrated by many photographs and facsimiles of papers and documents which present a vivid sense of the times.
The first thing to say about this book, is apart from the writer's attempt to correct other Kafka scholars, its actually a very readable biography of Franz Kafka, written in an amusing style and imparting vast amounts of information in a relatively compact package. I think you'd have to read a substantial biography and then a couple of books of literary criticism to get quite as much information (unless of course you favour the cartoon approach!).
James Hawes certainly makes no attempt to cover up some of the more unattractive part of Kafka's personality. A whole chapter (Into the Locked Bookcase) is devoted to his hobby of collecting exotic pornography and it is not difficult for Hawes to demonstrate that Kafka was a frequent user of brothels, often with a degree of obsessive compulsion, and an at times callous disdain for the women concerned.
I enjoyed this book, not only for the information it provides about Kafka but also for the entertaining way in which it presents his life-story. It gives a wonderful flavour of life in Kafka's Prague haunts, like the Café Corso. It is illustrated by many photographs and facsimiles of papers and documents which present a vivid sense of the times.
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A REVIEW OF EXCAVATING KAFKA BY JAMES HAWES
by Dr. Joseph Suglia
My goodness! Kafka was an onanist! Alert the presses! James Hawes' "revelations" here aren't particularly "revelatory" -- any self-respecting "Kafkologist" knows that Kafka subscribed to Der Amethyst, a literary and aesthetic journal that Hawes finds "pornographic." And I don't need James Hawes, failed novelist, to demystify Kafka's allegedly "saintly" image for me. Milan Kundera did that himself many years ago -- not that I am an admirer of Milan Kundera.
Has it never dawned on Hawes that perhaps Kafka was a subscriber to Der Amethyst merely because it contained contemporary avant-garde literature or because Franz Blei published that journal -- Franz Blei, who ALSO published Kafka's own Betrachtungen? (Parenthetical question: Does Hawes TRULY know German? There are very few references here, and they are largely to English-language texts.) And has it never dawned upon the author that Kafka perhaps did NOT see masturbatory possibilities therein? I am reminded of one of my best friends, who happens to be gay and who collects heterosexual pornography, which he finds intriguing from an aesthetic, political, and cultural perspective. Did Hawes find STAINS?
And so the philistinic and moralistically hypocritical James Hawes equates Der Amethyst with Penthouse, Blei with an "Edwardian Larry Flynt," Octave Mirbeau and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with back-room, dime-store pornography, Gustav Klimt with Girls Gone Wild, and a familiar passage in Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers with Kafka's Verwandlung -- as if he were the first person to see the resemblance. Oooooo... Werther imagines himself turning into a May beetle (Maikaefer)... Gregor Samsa imagines himself turning into a vermin (Ungeziefer)... Ooooooooooo... What a revelation! Ooooooooo...
A difference between the old guard of Kafkology that Hawes pretends to assail and Hawes himself is that the former don't see the relevance of this "scandal" to philological research. Instead of engaging with the form and meaning of Kafka's writing, Hawes, failed novelist, grubs about in Kafka's life, which is the pitfall of most Kafka scholarship. Only a few philologists have insightfully commented on Kafka --- Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Stanley Corngold. Hawes, predictably, focuses upon the tabloid aspects of Kafka's life. And so Hawes, while pretending to present Kafka as a man of the world, merely reinforces the dreary, moralistic cliches about Kafka, who is often mistyped as a "dark and lonely masturbator."
James Hawes, now older than Kafka was when he died, releasing all of his envious venom on a great writer, is the true pornographer.
Dr. Joseph Suglia
by Dr. Joseph Suglia
My goodness! Kafka was an onanist! Alert the presses! James Hawes' "revelations" here aren't particularly "revelatory" -- any self-respecting "Kafkologist" knows that Kafka subscribed to Der Amethyst, a literary and aesthetic journal that Hawes finds "pornographic." And I don't need James Hawes, failed novelist, to demystify Kafka's allegedly "saintly" image for me. Milan Kundera did that himself many years ago -- not that I am an admirer of Milan Kundera.
Has it never dawned on Hawes that perhaps Kafka was a subscriber to Der Amethyst merely because it contained contemporary avant-garde literature or because Franz Blei published that journal -- Franz Blei, who ALSO published Kafka's own Betrachtungen? (Parenthetical question: Does Hawes TRULY know German? There are very few references here, and they are largely to English-language texts.) And has it never dawned upon the author that Kafka perhaps did NOT see masturbatory possibilities therein? I am reminded of one of my best friends, who happens to be gay and who collects heterosexual pornography, which he finds intriguing from an aesthetic, political, and cultural perspective. Did Hawes find STAINS?
And so the philistinic and moralistically hypocritical James Hawes equates Der Amethyst with Penthouse, Blei with an "Edwardian Larry Flynt," Octave Mirbeau and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with back-room, dime-store pornography, Gustav Klimt with Girls Gone Wild, and a familiar passage in Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers with Kafka's Verwandlung -- as if he were the first person to see the resemblance. Oooooo... Werther imagines himself turning into a May beetle (Maikaefer)... Gregor Samsa imagines himself turning into a vermin (Ungeziefer)... Ooooooooooo... What a revelation! Ooooooooo...
A difference between the old guard of Kafkology that Hawes pretends to assail and Hawes himself is that the former don't see the relevance of this "scandal" to philological research. Instead of engaging with the form and meaning of Kafka's writing, Hawes, failed novelist, grubs about in Kafka's life, which is the pitfall of most Kafka scholarship. Only a few philologists have insightfully commented on Kafka --- Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Stanley Corngold. Hawes, predictably, focuses upon the tabloid aspects of Kafka's life. And so Hawes, while pretending to present Kafka as a man of the world, merely reinforces the dreary, moralistic cliches about Kafka, who is often mistyped as a "dark and lonely masturbator."
James Hawes, now older than Kafka was when he died, releasing all of his envious venom on a great writer, is the true pornographer.
Dr. Joseph Suglia
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