'If Kafka and Henry James had had a love-child, who collaborated with Dickens...''

[oursin]

Some while ago I posted about the Kafka papers imbroglio. According to this piece by Judith Butler in the London Review of Books, the plot has thickened even further since then. I think besides applying the obvious 'Kafka-esque' to the situation, there are elements there that suggest that the shade of Henry James (The Aspern Papers, 'The author of Beltraffio', etc) is also in the mix, and that, paging Mr Dickens, we are in for legal complications on a Jarndycean scale.

I am sure other authors might also reasonably be invoked - who knows what dark and occult secrets lurk in those papers and might tempt Dan Brown?

(*Revenge of the Giant Cockroach: Gregor Samsa is back, and this time it's personal*)

I have never, ever, heard of documents being offered by weight:

[H]er daughters, Eva and Ruth... claim that no one needs to inventory the materials and that the value of the manuscripts should be determined by their weight – quite literally, by what they weigh. As one of the attorneys representing Hoffe’s estate explained: ‘If we get an agreement, the material will be offered for sale as a single entity, in one package. It will be sold by weight … They’ll say: “There’s a kilogram of papers here, the highest bidder will be able to approach and see what’s there.”

This honestly makes me wonder if my earlier hypothesis that what actually remained in Esther Hoffe's hands by the time of her death was pretty much Kafka's tram-tickets, laundry lists, and similar ephemeral impedimenta may actually be true.

Comments

[libskrat]

Uh, is it bad if I actually kinda wanna see that roach movie?

[kore]

Only if you won't share your concession stand haul.

[em_h]

My crazy aunt tried to sell her papers by weight. Since she was a published, though minor, author, it is not impossible that a university library might have wanted to acquire her papers, but they were not about to buy them by the kilo, especially as much of the weight was, in fact, empty envelopes from the telephone company, etc.

[oursin]

Heh: as archivists we're always trying to head off at the pass individuals and institutions who just want to unload the unsorted contents of the filing cabinets or storage areas. Otherwise you do literally end up with cartons full of their old cheque-stubs and ephemeral financial records.

[sara]

This honestly makes me wonder if my earlier hypothesis that what actually remained in Esther Hoffe's hands by the time of her death was pretty much Kafka's tram-tickets, laundry lists, and similar ephemeral impedimenta may actually be true.

I am not wondering about that so much as I am inclined to think it is the case.

[tree_and_leaf]

This honestly makes me wonder if my earlier hypothesis that what actually remained in Esther Hoffe's hands by the time of her death was pretty much Kafka's tram-tickets, laundry lists, and similar ephemeral impedimenta may actually be true.

Don't forget the dead weight of the giant cockroaches between the leaves, too!

[schemingreader]

This Butler essay is ridiculous. It's a long argument that Kafka's papers shouldn't be in Israel because he was so ambivalent about his Jewish identity and didn't identify as a Zionist. She calls Kafka "arguably Jewish," and then lists a fraction of his Jewish interests (the Yiddish theater, the Zionist meetings Brod dragged him to, and so on and so forth.) At the time of his death, Kafka was reading Yosef Haim Brenner's Breakdown and Bereavement--which always makes me giggle, since reading Brenner is like sticking yourself with pins, and his Hebrew isn't exactly easy.

I don't know, arguing about Kafka's choking metaphors as a way of asserting that maybe his friend's secretary's daughter was right to sell his manuscripts to Germany...it's lame.

[wolfinthewood]

She calls Kafka "arguably Jewish"

As I read the article, it is Jewishness as a category that, for Butler, is 'arguable' - as opposed to essential. Kafka is 'arguably Jewish according to the rabbinic laws governing the Law of Return'. So is Butler herself, I believe.

Moreover, I cannot find anywhere that she '[asserts] that maybe his friend's secretary's daughter is right to sell his manuscripts to Germany'. On the contrary, her comments on the arguments coming from the German side are devastating: 'The argument of the German Literature Archive effaces the importance of multilingualism for Kafka’s formation and for his writing. ... So although Kafka was certainly Czech, it seems that fact is superseded by his written German, which is apparently the most pure – or, shall we say, purified? Given the history of the valuation of "purity" within German nationalism, including National Socialism, it is curious that Kafka should be made to stand for this rigorous and exclusionary norm.' And so on.

[schemingreader]

Perhaps I got flummoxed by her weird attempts to trouble (further!) Kafka's relationship to Judaism.

But now I'm even more flummoxed to realize that Judith Butler seems to have grown up in my synagogue. She's from my hometown, she's Jewish (or OK, arguably Jewish) and I'm reading an article from Ha'Aretz interviewing her and recognizing her description of the rabbi.

It's a whole discussion of how she doesn't like separatism (which makes a lot of sense if her real point in the Kafka essay was to assert that no one really owns his identity.) I don't usually read Butler because I don't really get all these intentionally created ambiguities. I think I got through one chapter of Gender Trouble and threw in the towel.

(Or maybe, I'm looking at the Kafka piece and realizing that it could just be an excerpt? Did I have to go through a subscription wall to see the whole thing? It was awfully long for an excerpt...)

[schemingreader]

OK, now I have created a temporary login on the website and I'm going to print the entire article to a .pdf, because it's obviously too long to read in the 24 hours the free login gives me. Perhaps I will feel very silly for having misjudged Butler. I already feel silly for thinking that the excerpt was a whole article because it was too long to be just an excerpt.

[schemingreader]

Yes, you're right. Now that I've read the whole article, this is an argument about whether any aspect of Kafka's identity is central, not only about his connection to Israel (the excerpt was only that bit.) Though Butler has a lot to say about Israel seeking legitimacy through Kafka, and something invested in the papers going to Germany since she's boycotting Israeli academic institutions at the moment.

I guess the problem of a discussion of Kafka's "poetics of non-arrival" is that we'd all like Kafka's papers to arrive, somewhere.

[oursin]

While I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with the way literary papers have migrated about the globe (I can reliably boggle people by telling them I went to Illinois to consult the papers of H G Wells), it's not as though this isn't a situation we have to live with. What one hopes is that the papers end up somewhere that conforms to the relevant standards and criteria of good practice for storage and curation, and will make them available to researchers (ideally, of course, by a well-resourced digitisation project, but baby steps first).

[wolfinthewood]

This honestly makes me wonder if my earlier hypothesis that what actually remained in Esther Hoffe's hands by the time of her death was pretty much Kafka's tram-tickets, laundry lists, and similar ephemeral impedimenta may actually be true.

I wouldn't be at all surprised.

[kore]

In theatres this year: GREGOR...IS....THE SAMSANATOR!


....by weight? What, like potato salad in the deli or something?


omg Moi REMEMBER TO LOG IN

[caulkhead]

IN A WORLD... where nothing makes sense...

IN A WORLD... where there is no way out...

IN A WORLD... where no-one's shape is safe

ONE COCKROACH needs to find some answers. Fast.

Coming soon to a theatre near you, GREGOR SAMSA is...

BUGGED.

[kore]

//dies

DUDE. HIGH CONCEPT. HOLLYWOOD IS CALLING.

'BUGGED'

The sequel: BUG OFF

The end to the trilogy: BUGGERALL

The first prequel: EGGED


archy: 'i give this film six thumbs up!'

[mswyrr]

:D

ILU

[caulkhead]

Come to think of it, that undergrad essay about Kafka would have been a lot better if I *had* written it like that. I'd never have dared, but I should have done.

[wolfinthewood]

In your previous piece on the Kafka papers you quoted the Guardian as noting: 'Authorities in Tel Aviv have warned that the papers, with their high sulphuric acid content, may have stood up poorly to conditions in Hoffe's damp flat in the centre of Tel Aviv and to the hordes of cats and dogs which she kept...'

So maybe what has survived is a wodge of insanitary papier-maché. Awful thought.

[oursin]

It sounds to me as though it definitely needs preliminary sorting by someone in protective gear - gloves, facemask, etc

[kore]

Oh Jesus, one cat of mine pissed on a box full of papers and we wound up just wrapping it in acres of plastic and guiltily tossing it in the dumpster because you could have used it as a biological weapon. Urk.

[mme_hardy]

That would explain the "selling by weight" bit. Half-evaporated cat urine: priceless!