The problem of Kafka

21 Thursday Jun 2007

Posted by in reading

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Why do I bother with Kafka?

I’m struggling my way through the Castle for the second time (the last time being eight years ago). I can’t put my finger on what draws me to him. I don’t usually enjoy him while I read him. But his writing stays with me, a haunting presence that I never shake off.

John Fowles wrote something similar in an essay in Wormholes – about how he can’t remember the plot or details of Kafka, only this sense that Kafka’s work gave him.

His work resists any easy interpretation. When I was sixteen and first tried reading him, I thought it was a parable that simply needed me to find what each element represented. I tried to read into my hazy knowledge of inter-war European political situation. A waste of time; wrong track. They’re not allegorical, or parabolical in that kind of sense.

My favourite novelists

17 Sunday Jun 2007

Posted by in lists, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

When I was a teenager, I thought favourites were forever and whenever I was taken by someone new, I thought it was because my taste up until then had been inferior.  I’ve stopped trying to get outside time now. My favourites are dependent on the stage of my life. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

1. Paul Auster

2. Ian McEwan

3. John Fowles

4. John Christopher

5. Philip K. Dick

6. John Updike

7. James Joyce

8. Thomas Hardy

9. Raymond Carver

10. Siri Hustvedt

11. Cormac McCarthy

12. Donna Tartt

13. Graham Greene

14. Hans Koning

15. J.D. Salinger

16. J.M. Coetzee

17. Jorge Luis Borges

18. Rick Moody

19. Angela Carter

20. Tim Winton

21. Geoff Nicholson

22. Jorge Luis Borges

23. Thomas M. Disch

24. Robert Silverberg

25. Patricia Highsmith

26. Gillian Mears

It’s based on me loving several works by that author – not just a single work. I feel bad I haven’t connected with more women writers, but that will come as I make a better effort to read them – affirmative action. I loved Lionel Shriver’s Kevin and Carol Shield’s Stone Diaries in the last month; I need to seek out more of their writing.  

Welcome to my blog

03 Sunday Jun 2007

Posted by in this blog

≈ Leave a comment

For a couple of years I blogged voraciously at nathanhobby.modblog.com. Then modblog went down about a year ago and it all disappeared. I don’t want to be dramatic, but I guess that gave me a bit of a taste of what will happen when I die. All those memories and words and pictures go with me. (At least as far as I’m concerned.)

 I blogged about everything in the one place – theology, quotes, reading, my writing, my personal life. I think the end result of that is that I really limited my readers. So now I’ve got heaps of blogs with quite specific focuses. So that people who want to read the quotes I’ve collected don’t have to read about a great recipe I found or that I thought The Others was a waste of time the other night.

 I don’t know if this new approach will work or not. I’m not going to have the time to blog like I once did; it stopped me working on my novel.

At the moment, I’m sort of between novels, so maybe I’ll have time to blog.