THE KAFKA STUDIES DEPARTMENT

by Francis Levy ; illustrated by Hallie Cohen ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A collection of bleak and amusing literary short stories from Levy.

The assorted stories in this collection tend to involve people in situations that are, in one way or another, desperate. “The Sprinter” features a nameless runner who literally exercises to death. He is engaged in “an odd form of suicide that masked itself as self-improvement.” “The Night Man” features 65-year-old Joe, who, reluctantly, retires from his position as a “night man” at an apartment complex. The story from which the book takes its title, “The Kafka Studies Department,” is about a small collection of powerless academics who study the famous author; the only one in the department with any reputation in the outside world dies rather suddenly. Many of the pieces involve well-to-do families: “Company History” is concerned with the merger of two wealthy families; “Profit/Loss” is about a power couple with a less-than-spectacular child. Both parents die in their 50s despite “all the energy they’d put into leading healthy and productive lives.” Simple black-and-white sketches by the illustrator, Cohen, add to the bleakness; “The Night Man” concludes with a drawing of the lonely exterior of Joe’s building, while “The Book of Solitude” includes an image of someone holding a volume titled The Book of Solitude. The stories in the second half of the book feature a protagonist named Spector, who spends his time mulling over the unfairness of life and preparing a hit list of people he hates. “Sleep” illustrates how Spector used to spend his weekends…sleeping. When success at his job launches him into the higher echelons of society, he is not quite sure what to do with himself. He suffers from a fear “about being discovered, about having it all taken away.”

The desperation and despair are played for laughs. When the humor succeeds, it does so in a stinging way: Those who make up the Kafka Studies department are, of course, ripe for mockery. That they have one among them who is unlike the others sets the stage. That this maverick meets a swift end is made funny by the pleasure it gives his closest rival. The rival is so passively pathetic that he ultimately removes his “Hush Puppies of the impoverished scholar” and wears the dead man’s shoes. “Profit/Loss” likewise exudes an entertaining darkness. The central couple, who have done everything right, manage to raise a boy who loves nothing more than “commercial television.” The narrator laments, “If only they could have a child they could be proud of!” If only. Other stories do not quite have the same twisted appeal. The protagonist of “The Sprinter” is as perplexing as his antics. It seems silly that he wears the same Golden Wok T-shirt every time he exercises, but his actions are more puzzling than comical. Each entry, including the installments featuring Spector, is indeed short, coming in at no more than a few pages. The prose is kept as minimal as the illustrations—at one point, Spector’s routine is described as “work, exercise, visits to his therapist.” When Spector comes into a fair amount of money, he finds that “With nothing out of his grasp, everything had lost its allure.” The book is full of such finely tuned lines, some more humorous than others.

A dark, sometimes funny, meditation on the absurd trials of life.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 9781956474275

Page Count: 110

Publisher: Heliotrope Books

Review Posted Online: July 14, 2023

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | SHORT STORIES | GENERAL FICTION