Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #138086 in Books
• Published on: 1996-07-02
• Released on: 1996-07-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Customer Reviews

Eerie parallel universe yet still relevant
As everybody already pointed out Kafka wrote this novel without ever having been to America. Allegedly his characterisation of the country is more akin to the oppressive situation in Prague, but I think you can make an argument that he stumbled on a theme of American culture that isn't often explored, or rather best described by Kafka, the whole idea of claustrophobia within a land of wide open spaces. The young immigrant protagonist, Karl, seems to follow the 'right' path that is expected of him and yet finds himself unable to advance and trapped in horrible social situations. The story is set in an America that is so slightly off-kilter as to be surreal (it's not America, it's Amerika) and with that sense of Kafkaesque dread (like the Statue of Liberty with the sword in her hand instead of the torch - a symbol of war and violence instead of freedom and enlightenment, or that neverending labyrinth of a suburban mansion that is bigger than could ever be possible) but in a way Kafka's commentary on an America he never visited is one of the most shockingly accurate depictions you'll read. It's unfinished but I kind of liked that; it was endearingly rough around the edges and that made it even more surreal. Some people have mentioned that the last chapter is an optimistic one but I really found that the carnival-like atmosphere to be menacing and the uncertainty of Karl's future in a Wide Open Country was more a feeling of unnamed dread than optimism, but you know, it is Kafka.

A descent into hell
"Amerika" looks like it was written by someone who not only had never been to America but did not even care to know what it's really like. But Kafka's style is all about transforming the real into the surreal, tainting reality and disturbing our sense of order and structure. Even in the book's very first paragraph, when a ship carrying the protagonist, Karl Rossmann, approaches New York, the Statue of Liberty is depicted as holding in her raised hand not a torch symbolizing a beacon to welcome immigrants, but a sword, ominously threatening aggression. Similarly, when later in the book New York and Boston are described as being separated by the Hudson River, one wonders whether Kafka was sincerely ignorant of American geography or deliberately distorting it to create a dreamlike effect.

Karl, a German-speaking teenager from Prague, has been sent to America by his parents to evade charges of paternity by a maidservant he has impregnated. He is to learn English and complete his education while living with his uncle Jakob, owner of a shipping business. Soon he is invited to the mansion of one of uncle's friends, where he is assaulted by this man's daughter and loses himself within the enormous house's labyrinth of dark corridors. This is a typical Kafka touch -- enshrouding a normal situation with an eerie atmosphere and a sense of foreboding.

After Karl is expelled by his uncle over an unintended act of disrespect, he takes to the road and hooks up with two rough drifters named Delamarche and Robinson. They proceed to bully and steal from him and eventually cause him to lose his job as a hotel elevator operator, and, when all three end up living in an apartment with an imperious fat woman named Brunelda, Karl even becomes their prisoner and slave. These situations of helplessness and unfairness are evidence of more of Kafka's stylistic attributes -- paranoia and persecution fantasy -- which are employed to more morbid effect in "The Trial."

Like much of Kafka's work, "Amerika" is uncompleted, and we are left with a potentially intriguing fragment in which Karl, having somehow escaped his state of captivity, gets a job with a roadshow organization called the Theatre of Oklahoma, which promises (but ultimately cheats us out of) further bizarre adventures into the heartland of America. Kafka seems to imagine American showmanship as a perverse form of public spectacle; his portrayal of a street parade for the election of a judge, which Karl watches rapturously from Brunelda's balcony, is a narrative tour de force of human chaos.

The book's subtitle, "The Man Who Disappeared," expresses an idea that many Europeans may have had about America -- that emigration there was a final and irrevocable abandonment of cultural roots. But Kafka was not like many Europeans, let alone many people, and his theme can be interpreted more accurately as a descent into hell, a severance of all family ties (Karl lamentably loses his only photograph of his parents) and an immersion into the unknown. We can only hope that Karl, having sailed across the Atlantic like the dead being ferried by Charon across the river Styx, will be lucky enough to avoid the left-hand path towards his own personal Tartarus.

"Lite" reading, by Kafkaesque standards.
Kafka's image of a foreboding land in which "no one has sympathy for anyone" and in which the statue of liberty carries a sword instead of a torch is amazingly perceptive for a writer who never set foot on the American continent. The novel's theme is unjust accusation and the willingness of others to believe the worst without knowing or caring about the facts. _Amerika_ is especially pertinent to today's America of trial TV, Dr. Laura Schlesinger and Jerry Springer -- in which the armchair sport of sanctimoniously plucking motes from the eyes of others has become a national passtime. Maybe Kafka had an insight into the future direction of American culture, or maybe we've always been this way.

Despite all this, _Amerika_ is Kafka's most upbeat work, and it ends on a fanciful, optimistic note. Beware, though: it is also Kafka's least complete work and the last chapter completely changes scene and situation without any explanation. Even given this fault, however, the book is well worth the read. Kafka does get a lot of things wrong about American culture, but he gets the important themes right and even some of the details (like our obsession with pointlessly saying "hello" over and over on every chance meeting). _Amerika_ might well be the Kafka novel for those who don't like Kafka -- a kind of Kafka lite. To those familiar with the gloominess of the Penal Colony or the Castle or the Trial, _Amerika_ will seem like PG Wodehouse by comparison.