The Kraus Project

By Jonathan Franzen

A great American writer’s confrontation with a great European critic – a personal and intellectual awakening.

A hundred years ago, the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus was among the most penetrating and prophetic writers in Europe: a relentless critic of the popular media’s manipulation of reality, the dehumanizing machinery of technology and consumerism, and the jingoistic rhetoric of a fading empire. But even though his followers included Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin, he remained something of a lonely prophet, and few people today are familiar with his work. Thankfully, Jonathan Franzen is one of them.

In ‘The Kraus Project’, Franzen not only presents and annotates his definitive new translations of Kraus, with supplementary notes from the Kraus scholar Paul Reitter and the Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann. In Franzen Kraus has found his match: a novelist unafraid to voice unpopular opinions strongly, a critic capable of untangling Kraus’s often dense arguments.

Painstakingly wrought, strikingly original in form, ‘The Kraus Project’ is a feast of thought, passion and literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780007517459

Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen’s work includes four novels (The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, Freedom), two collections of essays (Farther Away, How To Be Alone), a memoir (The Discomfort Zone), and, most recently, The Kraus Project. He is recognised as one of the best American writers of our age and has won many awards. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.

Reviews for The Kraus Project

[p_s_patrick · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book contains the first English translations of two long essays by the Austrian satirist Karl Kraus. The first one of these, entitled "Heine and the Consequences", discusses the degradation of language through the popularisation of "feuilletons" - newspaper supplements originating in France and popularised in Germany by Heinrich Heine. According to Kraus, these were written in large numbers and in a style suited for readers with short attention span. Kraus blames the proliferation of this style of writing, and the public's acquisition of a taste for it, for the widespread misuse of language and resulting societal problems. The second essay "Nestroy and Posterity" discusses the under appreciation that the Austrian playwrite Nestroy has received, and analyses society through its tastes and behaviours. Nearly half of this volume consists of footnotes to the essays, in which the text is explained and interpreted by Franzen and two other Kraus scholars. While the original essays were written in 1910 and 1912, this volume was published in 2012. Franzen highlights the relevance of the essays to current times, concluding that the dumbing down of everything that is written (which perhaps finds its worse examples on the internet (blogs/twitter/facebook/online news)), was really a process beginning over 100 years ago, and most vigourously denounced by Kraus.I first came across Kraus as a frequently namedropped and admired wit in Kafka's works, and had the name in the back of my mind when I came accross this volume. He lives up to his reputation as the "Great Hater", and also to that of being a clever writer, however the relevance of some of the essays is lost due to its focus on then-contemporary events and people, as Satire usually does.This book is still interesting though for a number of reasons: for the historical aspects, the discussion of literature, the social commentary, and Kraus's style of writing. Unusual for a translated work is quite how much we learn about the translator. A lot of the footnotes embark on the autobiographical, and for pages do not abate. Franzen sees many similarities between himself and Kraus, and spent a lot of time researching him in Germany as a student. How interesting you will find these excursions though will perhaps depend on your patience. This isn't a book that I would recommend to most readers, but this is more due to its niche subject than major inherent flaws.

[dazzyj_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A noble, deeply personal, but ultimately unsuccessful project. Kraus's deliberately obscure style coupled with the utter obscurity of the objects of his incessant intramural score settling make for a very turgid read. Franzen's footnotes only occasionally rise above the level of stating the obvious in their diagnosis of the ills of our current iteration of technophilic society. And too often he meanders into indulgently personal memorising. The last few short pieces are worth reading but the longer ones will make many readers put the book aside.