“The Judgment”
(“Das Urteil”)
Franz Kafka
1912
(After treating a needy friend superficially for years, Georg finally pays the price.)
Crop of Charles Bridge (2009), by Paul Cook. Charles Bridge (Karlův most) lies over the Vitava River in Kafka’s hometown of Prague.
This is an existentialist horror tale about a man Georg who treats a distant friend superficially, then pays for this crime with his life. The distant friend is sick, poor and unmarried. Georg cannot think of what to say to him, so he writes only trivial things. He offers no advice or heartfelt consolation. He conceals his own prosperity and even (for a while) his own engagement. His father, meanwhile, behind his back, has been revealing the truth about Georg to the friend, and has been lying in wait for Georg to raise the situation in conversation. When Georg finally does broach the subject, his father condemns him as a betrayer of his friend and a selfish cold-hearted bum, and orders him to drown himself. As elderly as the father is, he is stronger of will than his son, who feels himself urged out of the room and to a nearby bridge. Georg flings himself to his death.
Go Down, Moses
William Faulkner
1942
(Vivid tales from the deeply rooted McCaslin family of Mississippi explore the human desire to dominate others.)
Crop of an etching by Boyd Saunders illustrating Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Courtesy of HottyToddy.com
Faulkner raises a novel, especially Go Down, Moses, like a mountain range. A small peak here, another one some indefinite distance to the side but nearer to the viewer, another apparently between them but actually much further in the distance. The slopes are irregular in grade, no shape is symmetrical, no sequence predictable. The greatest of the mountains has flanking foothills—here at least is order and intelligibility! One is prepared for the most gigantic landforms. Actually all of them, though apparently haphazardly arranged, are obviously part of a single landscape, each part depending on those around it for its qualities and significance. The suggestion that each mountain be viewed as an isolated individual, despite distinctions of personality and structure, is ridiculous. One best realizes this, perhaps, by receding somewhat from the view. For when close to it, when stumbling over craggy outcrops and struggling to circumvent gorges, the scene seems hopelessly chaotic and fragmented. Such is Go Down, Moses, a challenging and awesome range of tales.
Twain’s stories
February 9, 2015 / Leave a comment
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
1865-1890
(A champion of common sense and nonsense casually delivers his colorful yarns, witty satires, and twisty dramas.)
Sitting with Mark Twain when he’s in a storytelling mood, we get to know the man—or at least he leads us to believe we get to know him. He lets us in on private jokes; he talks to us freely and without affected polish, perhaps puffing on his pipe in the middle of a sentence; and he doesn’t mind making clever offhand remarks about even the touchiest of matters. And, to reciprocate the casual friendship, we allow him to wander on tangents, even if it prevents him from ever getting to his point; and we don’t let on that we mind when he decides not to tell us the end of a story, or when he makes fun of something that we happen to like; and, especially, we just don’t get too critical with him in general. Since Twain’s favorite literary pastime is to smirk at people who take themselves too seriously, when we take him too seriously the joke is on us! Besides, the path of his narrative, though unpredictable, is as organic and spontaneous as a stream– who can criticize a stream?
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