The Castle in Never too Late to Read Classics

Feb 19, 2012 Yair Ben-Zvi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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This is a bit heartbreaking, or rather, a lot heartbreaking, but 'so it goes' said a great author. It's heartbreaking because I know the words will fail me me here as they've failed so many others and even Kafka too...though unlike most, maybe even unlike nearly all, Kafka mastered that failure even while being crushed by it to deliver a kind of literature that stands so far and away on its own that, basically, it's transcendent.

The Castle is unfinished, longwinded, confusing, boring, and deep, This is a bit heartbreaking, or rather, a lot heartbreaking, but 'so it goes' said a great author. It's heartbreaking because I know the words will fail me me here as they've failed so many others and even Kafka too...though unlike most, maybe even unlike nearly all, Kafka mastered that failure even while being crushed by it to deliver a kind of literature that stands so far and away on its own that, basically, it's transcendent.

The Castle is unfinished, longwinded, confusing, boring, and deep, dark, and heavy. But it's also funny, suffused with the best kind of melancholy one could ever hope to find in the greatest literature. And, despite its themes of alienation and general disenfranchisement, it's a novel with a beating heart and blood that runs, it is one of the most human novels you will ever read. It teases you mercilessly as it baits you with philosophical twists and sleights of hand regarding people and what they do, why they do it, and what, if any, meaning can be derived from all of that. It drags you through its labyrinths and almost like a literary case of chasing the dragon, the higher the high you seek the deeper you have to go and the darker the places become surrounding you, but you can't stop, at least I couldn't.

Suffice it to say, this isn't easy reading, at all. But The Castle, along with the rest of Kafka's oeuvre is necessary, and in fact, to me, mandatory if one wishes to get a better understanding of the nuanced psyche, the artistic psyche, and its struggles with both the world around it and the world within it as well. Like no one before and no one after, Kafka existed and still exists as the lonely child turned man of the great divide between continued attempt and eternal failure. The most alienating and cold, angry at his impotence, yet somehow the most warm and touching of the great writers, knowing that it's in that world and this life of pointlessness and meaninglessness, that the truest words are written and the deepest meaning is unearthed. Meaning derived on this world and within these pages to match the incandescence of the stars above. ...more

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Apr 18, 2015 Charlotte Clementine rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Absolument indescriptible. On frôle l'aliénation. ...more

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Jul 23, 2024 caroline rated it it was amazing

This whole book felt like when you try to run in a dream but you can’t actually get anywhere. K, the main character, comes to this small town and immediately runs into a wall of infuriating bureaucracy and inaction from everyone he meets. The whole town is incredibly suspicious of everyone and seems to spend most of their time trying to “uncover” complicated alleged schemes of others in the town. Everything feels menacing but so tedious and stagnant that it becomes ridiculous.
(view spoiler) ...more

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Sep 28, 2017 GONZA rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Ich mochte das Buch nicht, und ich bin nicht einmal sicher, dass ich verstehe, was wirklich passiert ist. Alles in allem ist eine große unnötige Anstrengung .

Il libro non mi é piaciuto, inoltre non sono nemmeno sicura di aver capito cosa sia successo veramente. Tutto sommato una gran fatica inutile.

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