Benjamin Balint

Reason Read: This was a moderator pick for the Jewish Book Club on GR. I chose to read it at the last minute of April going into May and it fits a TIOLI category for May. Read a biography of a favorite author. Well can Kafka being anyone's favorite author? He is dark and depressing, lonely and isolated but he also has had much influence and of course is a 1001 author with I think 3 books on the list; Metamorphosis, Amerika, The Trial. I have yet to read The Trial. This book also qualifies as a book about books. What I found most interesting is that this is the second book in a months time that touches on an author's literary legacy. Thomas Bernhard's Corrections has an unknown narrator assigned to be the executor of his friends literary legacy and the narrator contemplates the right of those that choose to take notes, etc and publish works after the author's death. In the fiction book the narrator simply records the notes as is rather than try to publish them in any sort of book. In the case of Kafka who clearly requested that his works be burned because he did not think they were good enough, his executor chose to ignore his friend's request and he published them. Many court battles resulted. This book discusses those battles over documents that were never to exist. I did not know these details, I don't think I knew that Kafka was Jewish and always thought of him as a German author. Israel claims the rights, Germany claims the rights, and Brod left them to his secretary and she left them to her daughters. Germany claims the documents as German and Kafka never stepped foot in Israel but he did study Hebrew and had an interest in Jewishness but it never appeared in any of his writing. He grew up in Prague, was Jewish, and wrote in flawless German. So who does "own the man who became an adjective?… (meer)