And Orhan Pamuk’s Snow is a novel more than worthy of being called Kafka-esque, capturing absurdism as well as it does tragedy. I think of the worried, tight-jawed Anthony Perkins (who had just come off playing Norman Bates when he starred in Orson Welles’ crepuscular The Trial in 1962).īut Kafka is also seriously funny. I think of Jeremy Irons (who played Kafka in Steven Soderbergh’s eponymous 1990 film but I might have thought of Jeremy Irons even if that film had never been made). I think instinctively of a sallow-faced, sunken-cheeked man with a haunted expression, condemned to spend eternity in a drab office where nothing ever gets done. Most of us don’t think of Kafka in especially funny terms. Not that I’m any sort of expert on this topic, but I think Kafka-esque is an overused word, often applied to just about any noirish work of anxiety, and ignoring one of the most distinct elements of Franz K’s claustrophobic worlds: his very particular, absurdist black humour.
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