Kafka and Humor

[Wayne A. Loftus]

Hmmm... I haven't read _The Mirror Maker_, and thus my ability to comment is
somewhat limited, but I feel as though I must, at least, take issue with the
bite excerpted.  
I would agree with the assertion that Kafka's "suffering [was] genuine and
continuous"... but his writing was ALSO quite funny.  The phenomena are
hardly polar, no?
It would seem that this entire list is constructed around one of the most
singular examples of that fact...

--wayne

At 08:52 PM 11/27/96 -0600, you wrote:
>	
>	Although I agree about the humor in Kafka -- particularly in
>AMERIKA -- Primo Levi dissents in his book THE MIRROR MAKER:  "I do not
>much believe in the laughter of which Brod speaks:  perhaps Kafka laughed
>when he told stories to his friends, sitting at a table in the beer hall,
>because one isn't always equal to oneself, but he certainly didn't laugh
>while he wrote.  His suffering is genuine and continuous . . ." (107).
>	I thought we were on to something, by the way, with John Mascaro's
>comments about Irigeray, Kristeva, and Pynchon's rhetoric in VINELAND.
>But I do not want to reignite any fires . . . 
>
>				Andrew Walser
>				University of Illinois-Chicago
>
>