THE NIGHTMARE OF REASON: A Life of Franz Kafka

by Ernst Pawel ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1984

By far the most satisfying of all Kafka biographies (including the ground-breaking Max Bred study), Pawel's important, often-discomforting book is broadly knowledgeable, culturally secure in Kafka's worlds, refusing to see him in any single dimension. Furthermore, it pays sedulous attention to the dailiness of Kafka's life--a life which, though outwardly horrible, may have been the only one possible for this most clearseeing and honest, perhaps, of all writers. In sometimes sour and even dismissive tones, Pawel (a German-born novelist) goes to work redressing previous biographical exaggerations and omissions. He agrees, for instance, that Franz's childhood guilt was connected to the Oedipal struggles with Kafka Sr.--but he finds equal importance in the death of Franz's two baby brothers, one after the other. Less grindingly than Marthe Robert, Pawel emphasizes Kafka's suspended Jewishness: ""The father had suffered because he was a Jew. His children were Jewish because they suffered, but it was certainly not within his power to provide them with clues as to the cause of their suffering or the meaning of their Jewishness."" And, even more distinctively, Pawel skewers the pretensions of Kafka's Prague/coffee-house literary crowd--while insistently reminding us of Kafka-the-insurance-bureaucrat: ""the etiolated visionary haunting the hagiographies"" was actually quite good--and well-thought-of--at his job, which provided him with important specifics to galvanize his sensibility (The Judgement, The Trial). True, Pawel's skepticism can sometimes seem testily Olympian--but, throughout, he places valuable stress on Kafka the writer, the neo-Talmudist who gave German literature a purity of parody and an utter clarity of observation. Indeed, the Kafka here is neither Martian nor psychological cripple (despite elements of each in his character); he is, instead, in his complex way, amazing--with ""this primordial awe of the mystery of things, of the miraculous and the enigmatic inherent in every facet of what others took for granted. . . preternaturally sensitive to the visible, tangible aspects of reality."" And, perhaps most tellingly of all, Pawel is masterful in his use of quotes and excerpts from Kafka's work: they are uniformly illuminating, often shatteringly profound, the book building around them--but never so tightly as to reduce their impact. (Pawel is jaundiced about the Diaries, less so about the Letters--with special regard for the brutally frank Milena love-correspondence and the Felice letters: ""his longest novel, the only one he ever completed."") In sum: a perfectly balanced biography, with Pawel's matter-of-fact, sometimes harsh approach allowing him to come truly face-to-face with Kafka's disturbing greatness.

Pub Date: May 1, 1984

ISBN: 0374523355

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION