I have already dug out my various editions of “The Complete Works of Franz Kafka” and added “almost” in Sharpie.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8837821.stm

Milan Kundera’s Testaments Betrayed is the most vicious portrait of Max Brod I’ve read, though I’m sure there’s worse. In ‘The Castrating Shadow of Saint Garta’, Kundera writes:

Max Brod created the image of Kafka and that of his work; he created Kafkology at the same time. The Kafkologists may distance themselves from their founding father, but they never leave the terrain mapped out for them. Despite the astronomical number of its texts, Kafkology goes on elaborating infinite variants on the same discussion, the same speculation, which, increasingly unconnected to Kafka’s work, feeds only on itself. Through innumerable prefaces, postfaces, notes, biographies and monographs, university lectures and dissertations, Kafkology produces and sustains its own image of Kafka, to the point where the author whom readers know by the name Kafka is no longer Kafka but the Kafkologized Kafka.

The key notion here is that Kafkology is exegesis rather than criticism. It makes of Kafka’s work a series of parables and codes rather than concentrating on the formal innovations which characterize the real substance of Kafka’s work. In other words, it treats Kafka as if he were no more than Orwell. Kafka’s debt to the Talmud is more about the how than the why, as my GCSE English teacher would say.

So what are we to make of the notion that these newly discovered works are  - because of their neglect hitherto – probably aphorisms, and almost certainly fragments?

What are we to make of Banville’s claim that Kafka’s aphoristic pieces are more valuable than his aborted novels? & what of the notion that these pieces may somehow transform our understanding of Kafka?

What if The Castle not only has an ending, but it’s rubbish?

My own feeling is that, in the event of (positive or negative) complications, Brod will get the blame. He always does. If there are difficulties in our immediate reception and response to Kafka, Max will step in and shield poor Franz from the slings and arrows. Brod is Kafka’s own version of Godwin’s Law. The interesting thing will not be the new Kafka texts, but the possibility that – between Brod’s secretary and her two daughters – a new Brod may emerge to stand in our light while we try and read Kafka.

This superb piece by Bryant Urstadt, over at New York magazine, is full of goodies like:

“It is my vision to create uniforms for the future: pure, sophisticated clothes that work like a common language for a global community.”

and:

Uniqlo is a company that prescribes, records, and analyzes every activity undertaken by every employee. [...] To some extent, management science is an element of all international companies, but Uniqlo’s obsession is more like a turbocharged version of kaizen, the Japanese concept that translates roughly as the continuous search for perfection.

and:

While he was working on the design, Katayama focused his thoughts by making a poster from a photo he had found of a store in London that had covered a five-story building with raincoats.

and:

This morning, 30 “advisers” (as Uniqlo calls its employees who help customers) stand at the bottom of the stairs leading to the lower floor, with notebooks open and pens poised. Each is instructed to carry a notebook at all times, and to write down everything any manager tells them.

and:

Cashing out is a timed art at Uniqlo, too; advisers must complete every transaction in less than 60 seconds.

and:

“We tell advisers that you have to smile until you feel like you’re crazy.”

It’s brilliant. Well worth the time.

The Economist has reimagined Europe. Highlights include:

Germany can stay where it is, as can France. But Austria could shift westwards into Switzerland’s place, making room for Slovenia and Croatia to move north-west too. A welcome side-effect of these changes will be to make space for previously fictional creations such as Anthony Hope’s Ruritania, Hergé’s Syldavia and Borduria, and Vulgaria, the backdrop for “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”.

and

In Britain’s place should come Poland, which has suffered quite enough in its location between Russia and Germany and deserves a chance to enjoy the bracing winds of the North Atlantic and the security of sea water between it and any potential invaders.

It’s a splendid idea, though I’m sure there is still room for improvements. I note the lack of Narnia with some dismay.

Two great reads – long-form:

Matthew Teague’s Double-Bind is a thoroughly researched long-form piece about British episonage during the Troubles. It’s pretty long, but I dare you to start reading – impossible not to get hooked.

On a cheerier note, Dave Mothersole blogs on the origins of Goa Trance over at Bleep43. Scan-read until you get to the bit about DJ Laurent; then check out the only surviving video footage of him DJing. What a sound! And this is the mid-eighties? It’s Aphex Twin on R&S a decade early!