Kafka and Humor

[Andrew Clarke Walser]

	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