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    Amerika
    Amerika
    Amerika
    Ebook284 pages4 hours

    Amerika

    By Franz Kafka

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    „E regényének a közreadó Max Brod – kissé önkényesen – az Amerika címet adta. Önkényesen, mert – bár a regény ott játszódik, és az amerikai tömegcivilizáció megannyi jegyét realisztikusan ábrázolja – ez is egy fiatalember magányáról, kiszolgáltatottságáról szól. Éppúgy "álomképekből” áll, szintén a végzetes és végletes egyedülvalóság könyve, mint A kastély és A per, de talán olvasmányosabb, még emberibb, és nem olyan elborzasztó, mint azok. Valódi emberi viszonylatok is föltűnnek benne, bár van, amelyiknek nincs folytatása, némelyiknek pedig (mint pl. a Világcirkusz angyalának) nincs előzménye. A mű befejezése is homályos – ki tudja…, akár így, akár úgy, ez a regény, Kafka Copperfield Dávidja is remekmű."
    LanguageMagyar
    PublisherContent 2 Connect
    Release dateOct 14, 2014
    ISBN9786155416828
    Amerika
    Author

    Franz Kafka

    Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a primarily German-speaking Bohemian author, known for his impressive fusion of realism and fantasy in his work. Despite his commendable writing abilities, Kafka worked as a lawyer for most of his life and wrote in his free time. Though most of Kafka’s literary acclaim was gained postmortem, he earned a respected legacy and now is regarded as a major literary figure of the 20th century.

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    Reviews for Amerika

    3.5/5

    500 ratings12 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Zeer verschillend van het vorige werk ; alleen het slothoofdstuk is echt Kafkaiaans.
    • 2/5
      After a sexual encounter with a servant girl, teen-aged Karl is shipped off to America by his parents to live with his uncle. But his uncle soon turns his back on Karl, who is left to fend for himself. Karl is shortly joined on his journey for employment by two other immigrants - one from France and one from Ireland - who prove to be false friends that lead Karl to increasingly more difficult problems.Like The Castle, this Kafka work made me feel pretty dumb. I kept feeling like there was something I was missing because I wasn't really getting a big picture takeaway from it. As far as I'm aware of, Kafka never spent any time in America himself, which is perhaps why this book doesn't feel in the least bit like a commentary on America - either good or bad. Likewise, despite what critical readings say, I didn't get a sense of the absurdities of bureaucracy in this book like in other Kafka works. True, lots of ridiculous things happen to Karl, but there doesn't seem to be a "force" causing these things to happen, it just seems like a variety of ill-mannered people acting cruelly. Not much for a takeaway message.The audio book was narrated by George Guidall, who also narrated the copy of The Castle that I listened to sometime ago. Guidall is okay as a narrator -- he does have a good variation in his voice to indicate emotions, but he lacks very clear distinctions between character voices and doesn't even attempt the various accents that should be present.All in all, this was a bit of a disappointing read. I'm glad I finally got to it, but I would steer Kafka newbies to The Metamorphosis or The Trial rather than Amerika.
    • 3/5
      Zeer verschillend van het vorige werk ; alleen het slothoofdstuk is echt Kafkaiaans.
    • 4/5
      Franz Kafka broke off writing his first novel, Amerika, on January 24, 1913. Though one of the most famous stay-at-homes in literature, Kafka read widely including travel books. His absurdist novel Amerika begins with young Karl viewing the Statue of Liberty and feeling "the free winds of heaven” on his face. Within moments he is lost in the maze of the multiple levels of the ship looking for an umbrella he left behind. While this reminded me of Alice's initial fall into the rabbit hole it also alerted me that I was in a Kafka novel, albeit a slightly different type than I had read before. The United States that Kafka depicts is more based upon myth than any real experience of the place. Certain odd details reveal one Continental impression of this land at a time when so many Eastern Europeans were emigrating. Drawing on a host of sources—including Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, and the poetry of Walt Whitman—and calling to the reader’s mind an even more formidable array of literary analogues—from William Shakespeare’s one play set in the Americas, The Tempest, to Henry James’s international novels, Kafka conjures an America more fabulous than factual. Appropriately enough, in Kafka’s America much of the action takes place in the deepest night, at the deepest levels of the subconscious and of the spirit.Kafka seemed to intuit that being someone, or anyone, in the geographical vastness of America was not altogether different from the problem of being someone in the bureaucratic vastness of German-dominated Prague. Establishing an identity was, moreover, a problem compounded by the question of home, a question that was important both to the immigrant and to the Czech. “I want above all to get home,” Karl points out early in the novel. By “home,” he literally means the house of his Uncle Jacob but, figuratively, he is referring to that dream of a familiar place where he will feel secure, understood, accepted: the garden from which Karl, like Adam, has been banished. Because of his original sin, he has been condemned to wander the earth in search not only of a home, or refuge, but of justice and mercy as well. As he comes to realize, however momentarily, “It’s impossible to defend oneself where there is no good will.” What this sudden revelation suggests is that the absence of mercy, whether human or divine, makes justice impossible. Just as important, this situation renders all Karl’s efforts not only existentially futile but—and this is Kafka’s genius—comically absurd as well. The chance encounters that characterize the novel, the arbitrary exercise of authority by those who are in power (parents, uncles, head porters, and the like),the uncertain rules and regulations, and the various characters’—especially Karl’s—precarious status constitute Kafka’s fictional world.That the Statue of Liberty holds aloft a sword instead of a torch and that a bridge connects New York City and Boston unsettle the reading by placing an essentially realist novel close to the realm of fantasy. Much of that fantasy is dark and disturbing, but by the end — first editor Max Brod says Kafka quit while on his intended last chapter — Karl has reached the wide open West, where he seems reborn as a bit actor in “The Nature Theater of Oklahoma.” Kafka would go on to write better and more labyrinthine tales, but his first novel is an intriguing vision of America.
    • 4/5
      Just getting into Kafka. He seems to be offering one large commentary on our potential lack of agency in the world.
    • 2/5
      Less weird than The Trial - but still Kafka! Ends with what must be the clunkiest metaphor in literature.Read in Samoa June 2003
    • 4/5
      Taken for what it is, an unfinished novel, Amerika is a well-written critique of the American Dream and experience. To call this work stereotypical in any way is to forget when it was written and its literary point. This novel was written decades before the immigrant story was mass-marketed as paperback and Hollywood film, so if you're believing nothing here is "new," it might just be you're forgetting many of these elements come from books like Amerika and you're missing the point. Kafka is neither extolling America, its capitalistic practises and division of social classes, or explicitly condemning them. He is presenting readers with the story of this young man and how America transforms him ideologically and otherwise. This is not a novel about how wondrous is America or how easy life becomes for European emigrants once they step off the boat. It's amusing that Kafka had never visited the country, yet managed to write a tale which details the life of an immigrant so well. Karl is someone with whom readers are able to identify no matter their backgrounds or positions in life. The characters are dynamic and whether you love or hate them, you'll find your fingers flipping through pages long after you've decided to take a break.There is a sense of feeling lost and alone throughout most of the novel which both reflects the writer himself and speaks to the experience of leaving one's home for a strange land. Certain choices made by Karl are to gain friendship or secure a situation where he will no longer be alone, yet he often finds himself worse off than before. This plays into Kafka's sense of guilt and duty as, no matter how cruel and misleading people are to him, Karl always feels as if he is the one who has done wrong. This helps show a major contrast between people like Karl who have recently arrived and people such as Robinson and Delamarche who have been in America for quite some time. This new country makes men into something entirely different than they would be in their homelands and I think Kafka might have discovered this as he continued the story, since Karl loses his blind optimism, such as the belief held by Kafka that Americans are constantly smiling and happy, and develops an ability to transcend his guilt to better his situation towards the end of the novel.Are there fantastical elements to Amerika? Yes, but that is to be expected with Kafka and one would be mistaken to discredit this novel because certain situations might appear a little hard to believe. The ending is indeed optimistic so far as Kafka goes, but I think that is what makes this a poignant, engaging story. I would almost say this might be the ending he would have chosen had he been able to finish the novel because readers are left with nothing but an open landscape and a hopeful idea of what's to come.
    • 3/5
      Maybe I don't fully understand this novel--after all, it's a European writing about his ideas of America (a country he's never really visited) in the 1920s. And here I am, an American, who wasn't even thought of back then. Furthermore, the book wasn't even finished, so I find myself hoping that the author had meant to include some more elaboration even in the beginning and middle of the book, even though those were chapters that had previously been published. I found some of the events rather odd odd, but even more odd were many of the characters in the book. I personally found the main character, Karl, rather annoying; he seemed perpetually keeping his temper in check at the wrong times, and letting it fly at even worse times. The other characters seemed mainly one-sided, only gaining a little dimension when Karl tried to analyze their ideas and actions in his own head, rather than through direct actions of the characters themselves.By the end of the novel, though, I was pretty sure Kafka achieved one thing he was aiming for: he wanted an "American novel", after all, not just a novel about America. The pacing, the childish indignation and assurance of the protagonist, and the strange and cascading trail of events mimic pretty well one of my favorite authors as a pre-teen--that is, one of the greatest American story-tellers, Mark Twain. In its current state, the book obviously doesn't really live up to Twain; but if Kafka had finished, who knows?
    • 4/5
      I disagree with Max Brod's afterword claiming that this is Kafka's lightest most optimistic and funny book. Though its subject matter is bleak, The Trial is funnier and lighter in tone overall. Amerika, perhaps because it's less "doomed from the start", offers a glimmer of hope throughout, which makes it all the more unbearable as the protagonist gets trapped into situation after situation where he is caught as a victim of absurd forces. The harder he tries, the further down into the trap he slips. It gave me a sinking feeling as I read. At the same time, it is also a very funny novel. It makes for a very weird feeling in me.Like his other novels, Amerika is unfinished. There are a few missing chapters after he gets trapped in an apartment with a few scoundrel friends. He must have escaped somehow in the missing chapters because in the last chapter, he is looking for employment with a theater company. It is the most hopeful chapter of the novel (though it's not completely positive; there are signs of foreboding in it too) and probably the reason why the novel is claimed as Kafka's most optimistic novel.But I don't buy that because the last chapter says more about Kafka himself than it does about the protagonist and his story. It feels disconnected from the rest of the novel, almost as if this was Kafka's impossible wish for his protagonist rather than what he really believed in. But how would his protagonist get to this point? Kafka himself doesn't know. In a way, this (literally) angel-filled chapter makes the novel as a whole even darker, because it seems more like an exercise in futility.
    • 3/5
      Not Kafka's best work
    • 5/5
      An absurdist look at a country that he never visited in his life. An extremely funny and strange look at life. An immigrant just wanting to make a life for himself, but his naivety and inexperience makes him make poor choices often with funny results. Definitely worth reading, a real pity that it was unfinished, the gaps really left a lot to be explained so it felt really only like a fragment (which it is). Still absolutely essential to read for anyone who likes Kafka.
    • 4/5
      Kafka never visited America; the book was entirely a product of his imagination and the resources he had to hand. However, as a nightmarish vision of what it is like for an immigrant coming to a new land, looking for work and a life, it is unsurpassed.

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    Amerika - Franz Kafka

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