Why is this book so funny?
Did I read it wrong?
Is it the translation?
(It's insanely tonally effective, I love it.)
Go to bed, David.
>>7801191
No, you read it right. Kafka thought his own stories were hilarious. In a lot of ways, I think he was the DFW of his day, or rather, what DFW would've been if he embraced the idea of a self-effacing humor of suffering instead of being a sadsack who tried to write self-help books in the guise of avant-garde fiction.
>>7801212
This post is entirely correct. DFW took the easy way and his succumb to despair (and the Americanization of his work) cheated us all from something great.
>>7801241
American sentimentalism really does ruin everything, doesn't it?
>>7801254
It's just so easy. I don't need to know what it's like to be alive. All his criticism and expression end up being entirely sterile because anyone living through it has already experienced it. You can counter that point by saying it's a work for posterity.
It leads to nothing but head nodding. Its importance or profundity is that of an inside joke. "Oh ya, I have felt that...cool". It's not interesting.
