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Post by keelycorrigan on Oct 20, 2013 0:01:34 GMT
"Head over to the forum to respond to the article. I said I was going to post a prompt, but I lied. One of you get the ball rolling."-- Mr. Parris
So, I guess I really want to know what your responses were to the article. What do you think David Foster Wallace is trying to get at and do you think he's right?
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Post by mattagritelley on Oct 20, 2013 5:30:07 GMT
When I first read David Foster Wallace's article, I felt like I was interrupting a telepathic communication between Foster Wallace and Kafka. I imagined Wallace saying, "Kafka, you truly are a funny guy." Obviously, there is something about the word "humor" that I am missing. While I did not find any part of The Metamorphosis funny, I acknowledge that its absurdity has a comical aspect to it. However, after reading Foster Wallace's article, I feel like I've missed the mark entirely.
He postulates that Kafka's humor possesses both joy and sadness simultaneously. His fundamental assertion centers on the idea that humor is intangible, similar to the premise in Siddhartha: if you try to seek you will not find. "And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka's wit inaccessible to children whom our culture has trained to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance. It's not that students don't "get" Kafka's humor but that we've taught them to see humor as something you get. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke -- that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle." It is evident that Gregor's unrelenting attempt to gain acceptance and provide for his mistreating family is the reason he is portrayed as a cockroach. His struggle eventually becomes part of who he is as a person, resulting in a flawed, dejected and jaded human being. The implications of becoming a cockroach and all of its unveilings are in many ways horribly saddening (for how can I find amusement in learning of one's rejection and loneliness), yet Foster Wallace argues that the circumstance through which the situation unfolds is inherently humorous.
Furthermore, I cannot agree or disagree with Foster Wallace. He is right in his assertion that our concept of humor is very much molded by popular culture. For this reason, I am still slightly ambivalent whether to accept Foster Wallace's usage of the word humor or suggest an alternative in its place. I vacillate between glimpsing my own perception of "funniness" and losing it in the darkness of the story.
While I may not laugh or even comprehend the level of humor that David Foster Wallace claims to experience, I will admit that there is an intangible ironic hint, perhaps humorous in its infallibility and hopelessness, which pervades Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Foster Wallace may view this response as comical, but for me the feeling is much more ambiguous.
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Post by Lacey Doby on Oct 20, 2013 6:01:46 GMT
It sounded to me as though he is simply saying that Kafka's humor is very complicated and unusual to an American audience, but it's general theme of life being a horrific struggle is still very relevant. I'm not so sure about life being a horrific struggle. Though Wallace seems eager to convince the reader that Kafka's ideas about life and the role humor plays in it ("a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.") apply to all of humanity, I disagree. Seen through a separate lens, life could just be a game that people enjoy playing until it is over. Or, on an even different level, life happens then death happens so it goes.
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Post by kevinle on Oct 20, 2013 17:12:18 GMT
I was somewhat surprised to think Kafka's writing is supposed to be humorous. I've read two pieces by Kafka now, and neither of them seemed funny at all. They did have the frustration and depression elements to them, though. This leads me to disagree with Wallace. I don't think something can be universally funny, because people have differing senses of humor. Heck, I don't think anything metaphorical/hidden/not-literal can have a universal interpretation. There are seven billion humans on the planet and billions more animals. Who is to say something should be __________ (funny, depressing, exciting, etc.) to the rest of us?
However, I believe literal elements of stories can have universal interpretations because they are... literal. I agree very much that we do too much metaphorical-ization. If the author writes, "The road was dark and quiet," we could interpret it as a depressing undertone to the story. But maybe the author just wants to describe the sensory elements of the setting and there are actually kindergarteners having a fiery kick-the-can tournament in the street. We inject too much from the outside into the inside. Whether this ruins or enhances the story for the reader I cannot determine, but it definitely changes the meaning like Wallace says.
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Post by jessicalee on Oct 20, 2013 17:13:34 GMT
It is obvious that what I find humorous and what David Foster Wallace finds humorous are on two extremely different spectrums. Wallace says so himself, "There's no recursive word-play or verbal stunt-pilotry, little in the way of wisecracks or mordant lampoon. There is no body-function humor in Kafka, nor sexual entendre, nor stylized attempts to rebel by offending convention... Perhaps most alien of all, Kafka's authority figures are never just hollow buffoons to be ridiculed, but are always absurd and scary and sad all at once..." Most of these qualities are ones in which the average "American kid" would find funny. Wallace, however, acknowledges that Kafka carries none of these traits in his stories. So, what then makes Kafka's stories so humorous to Wallace? Personally, the funniest quality is the absurdity of the entire situation. To most, turning into a giant cockroach seems like an event that can not, does not, and will not ever happen. Yet, it does- in the story, at least. Wallace mentions, "The only halfway effective strategy I've come up with for exploring Kafka's funniness in class involves suggesting to students that much of his humor is actually sort of unsubtle, or rather anti-subtle. The claim is that Kafka's funniness depends on some kind of radical literalization of truths we tend to treat as metaphorical." The notion of the "radical literalization of truths" serves as a gateway for the literal and metaphoric to merge into one. In "The Metamorphosis", Gregor both metaphorically- in the sense that cockroaches are seen as "gross" bugs that people typically do not like- and literally turns into a cockroach. This merge, although ludicrous, highlights the unfortunate struggles that Gregor has to go through, and perhaps it is not until he turns into a giant insect that people will finally pay attention to him. This ability to combine a preposterous event with an underlying tragic meaning is sheer genius.
It could be that Wallace is correct in his notion that "[Kafka's] wit is too subtle for U.S. students." I think, however, that Kafka's humor lies in the absurdity of the entire situation. But, I also acknowledge that Kafka uses this comical situation to call attention to a truly dismal story.
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Kasey
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Post by Kasey on Oct 20, 2013 17:28:58 GMT
I'm probably biased because I think DFW is hella cool, but I agreed with him. American humor is a lot different than European humor. Allow me to make a gross generalization: American humor is often much more jabby, more punchliney, more haha for haha's sake. European humor (or at least what I know about it, which is limited) is more subtle and plays more on coincidence, hidden meaning. When I took a German 150 class at PCC, we watched this movie called 'Kebab Connection', which is supposed to be a comedy, but I definitely missed about 90% of the humor, even with English subtitles on. I hear Scandinavian comedy can be outright gruesome, dealing with serious life issues like death and drug abuse. We as American's just aren't trained to think that way. I think we might be taught to take life more seriously, too seriously to really get the (I use the following word lightly) "humor" in death or drug abuse or depression or a man turning into a giant bug. I definitely found the metamorphosis funny after looking at it through a (very untrained) "european humor" lens, but its not like a "laugh out loud" funny. It's more of the humor that things like irony have: "thats unfortunate". I don't know how to explain it.
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Post by betsyrahe on Oct 20, 2013 18:29:50 GMT
I very much agree with the beautiful Kasey. Although like many others I had not realized Kafka wrote humor and it definitely made me think of Metamorphosis in another way. I was not expecting this handout to be about humor in anyway; I thought it would be more like the stuff we read on O'Connor. What stood out to me was the last few phrases,"They're adolescents, and they're terrified, and they're dealing with their terror in a distinctively American way. Those naked boys hanging upside down out of their frat-house's windows on Friday night are simply trying to get a few hours' escape from the stuff that any decent college has forced them to think about all week." It made me think about Gregor, and I had always imagined him as a young adult adolescent. He's not partying at frat parties like stereotypical Americans. He was working for his family, and they were very much held back by their dependence on him. Usually, young adults are dependent still on their parents helping pay tuition or to do their laundry.
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Post by hannahlewman on Oct 20, 2013 18:31:38 GMT
I found the article interesting because I think it is fascinating to see how college students learn to look at Kafka, but one line in particular jumped off the page for me. I just love it when DFW writes, "'There is hope, but not for us" -- is _not_ what his stories have got going on." This line is absolutely perfect because it captures the essence of my emotions upon reading "The Metamorphosis." The whole time I was reading I felt this conflict between laughter (I mean come on, the giant cockroach in bed, the apple in the back, that's some good stuff), and a really crushing level of sadness. I felt actual, not metaphoric in any way, nausea wash over me after thinking about Gregor's struggle between form and self, a sad but universal struggle. I had this deep conflict between "ha this is pretty funny" and "oh god am I this terrible of a human being? Can I ever stop being this terrible?" It's an emotion similar to, but a little darker than, laughing really hard at a joke that's really dark and just a little too inappropriate and then feeling bad afterward. DFW perfectly describes how Kafka plays with the tension between humor and darkness, and how he creates a duality of the two rather than a dichotomy. Reading DFW's article definitely made me appreciate Kafka's style and how carefully crafted the Yin and Yang of laughs and cringes are in "The Metamorphosis."
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Post by juliamoreland on Oct 20, 2013 19:20:03 GMT
I agree with the Kasey, because I enjoyed how Wallace recognized the different humor styles in different nations. The "American perspective" is treated as the truth almost every day. It is refreshing to see a new perspective. One line that stood out to me was when Wallace writes about students trying to critique Kafka's work, "the literary equivalent of tearing the petals off and grinding them up and running the goo through a spectrometer to explain why a rose smells so pretty" (2). I absolutely love this comment. I see the purpose of criticism and of picking apart the subtle details in certain literature, but half the time all I want to do is appreciate the beauty of literature without tearing it apart to little shreds and pieces. Love you AP English, but sometimes I just want to read and not over analyze. Wallace also puts us students into a box. He targets almost exactly what we brought up in class and sheds light onto some of the difficulties we had. Its odd having someone predict your every move, but in this case, Wallace helped me understand why I was struggling with this story. The "anti-subtle" humor is difficult, but also fascinating. I wish I was not so stuck in American humor so that I could appreciate it more. Wallace's article was illuminating, but also realistic about high school and college students (as seen in Betsy’s comment). Without this article, I don’t think I would have ever seen the humor in Kafka's work, although I do enjoy the story.
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amychen
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“But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!”
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Post by amychen on Oct 20, 2013 19:51:28 GMT
VS I'm honestly surprised that I didn't see the humor in Kafka's work before reading this article. I read The Trial over the summer and read The Metamorphosis three years ago and, of course, last week. David Foster Wallace notes that "Kafka, of course, would be in a unique position to appreciate the irony of submitting his short stories to this kind of high-efficiency critical machine." Looking back at my summer reading journals on The Trial, I realized that I had been taking the book too seriously on the analytic side, and hadn't taken time to connect with how I felt about the messages it sent---with both pieces of literature, I tried to find some deeper meaning which, for both, resulted in some religious struggle (the main characters both strive to achieve some goal but have no means to obtain this goal). This is what Wallace describes as "a religious humor" and "the really central Kafka joke--that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle."The main reason why I'm surprised that I didn't catch on to the humor is because now that it has been pointed out, the humor in Kafka's work seems like a more serious version of humor that I do enjoy. For example, I am in love with the show Adventure Time. I know, I know. "Amy, that show is made for kids. There's not way that show has anything to do with Kafka!" Once you get past the humor that we consider "American," however, you get to the basics of the characters' situations. Adventure Time takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. The main character, Finn, is a lone human in a world of mutants---some of the characters are made out of pastries and candy, others out of fire, and still others, made of pretty much anything you can think of. The backgrounds of the characters are hinted at---most of the characters speak English, and sometimes characters will slip in a bit of German or speak entirely in another language. What makes the world Kafkaesque is how the cause of the characters situation is largely ignored. Like Gregor and Joseph K, the protagonists aim at becoming good people, trying to find sense in a situation that doesn't make sense. The reason why Kafka's stories are not seen as very humorous while Adventure Time is, is the presentation of the situations. While in Kafka's stories we observe the struggles and the pain of the characters, Adventure Time ignores how the situation would play out in reality. We become more sympathetic to Gregor and Joseph K, making us want to not believe that their lives are some cruel joke. If Adventure Time presented Finn the Human in a similar way---perhaps had him struggle with the pain of the insane case of cancer the radiation would have caused or how to maintain his "humanity" in a world where nobody else is human---we might also ignore the humor in his situation, and find the "American" humor in the show inappropriate. We wouldn't appreciate the humor in having people made of candy in the same way that, from what I understand from the rest of the posts, most of us don't appreciate the humor in Gregor's situation as a cockroach and Joseph K's situation as a mysteriously condemned man.
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Post by sheridanf on Oct 20, 2013 21:04:06 GMT
The major reason why we don't find depression or death or the absurdity of life very funny is because we can't laugh at ourselves. If you've ever seen America's Funniest Home Videos, a good 90% of the videos are of people accidentally hurting themselves- and we all laugh because, well, it's funny. But it's harder- though not impossible- to find it funny when it's you falling off of that trampoline or landing face-first into the ground after trying to pull off some motorcycle trick. In reality, this sort of thing should be funny whether we got hurt or not. I feel that sometimes, we take ourselves too seriously, so we don't find some things funny. We don't find the absurdity life all that funny because that's something we have to deal with- while we can laugh at the failed snowboarder because we don't mess up a snowboarding trick every day. In The Metamorphosis, we don't find Gregor's situation very humorous because we're afraid we'll experience something similar to that (metaphorically). If we could laugh at ourselves more, we'd probably "get" Kafka's humor.
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Post by austinellerbruch on Oct 20, 2013 21:04:47 GMT
I express particular interest in the following quote: "The claim is that Kafka's funniness depends on some kind of radical literalization of truths we tend to treat as metaphorical. I opine to them that some of our deepest and most profound collective intuitions seem to be expressible only as figures of speech, that taht's why call these figures of speech "expressions." With respect to "The Metamorphosis," then, I might invite students to consider what is rally being expressed when we refer to someone as "creepy" or "gross" or say that somebody was forced to "eat shit" in his job." According to Wallace, Kafka tends to take metaphorical expressions and make them reality in his writing. If I were to pick some metaphors to identify Gregor, "creepy," "gross," and "eating shit" would be good choices to display his lifestyle with a miserable job while caring for an unthankful family. Kafka made the metaphorical Gregor real by turning him into a cockroach, the greatest visual representation of the metaphors which we identify him by. The use of the realistic metaphor is what makes the humor discussed by Wallace, but most would not find it humorous because it is not readily apparent and not considered laughable to most Americans. Kafka makes is humor through the way he morphs the literary style we are accustomed to. Now that I ponder on Kafka's style, I do find it quite playful and humorous, but I did not find it that way initially. I think that we generally look for humor in what is presented in the text rather than the manner in which it is presented.
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Post by davidqin on Oct 20, 2013 21:34:01 GMT
DFW's article helped me see a new dimension to the humor contained in Kafka's crazy nonsense. Like Amy, I read The Trial over the summer and I was far too analytical when I read it. My three journal responses (which I am looking at now) show that I suffered when I fell into the trap of seeing The Trial from a completely serious perspective. Of course, that's not to say Kafka's novel is supposed to be comedy, but it accomplishes comedy while still presenting a grim story. Having read a critical article on Kafka's writing (I venture to say this is reader-response criticism because DFW discusses exformation), I'm now able to see the humor in The Trial much better. In the past, I still understood many of the surreal situations here or there, such as how K. nearly faints in the oppressive atmosphere of the court offices; Post-criticism, I am now better-equipped to see K.'s struggle against the court not only as something that doesn't make sense and feels very foreboding, but as a comedy focused on our transient nature and our inability to recognize our inevitable fate.
Going off of what we had read about O'Connor's writing, I think Kafka also does not write for the "tired reader." Therefore his unique style of humor is difficult for tired readers in the form of sleep-deprived high schoolers to grasp. DFW seems to argue that the American brand of humor is catered exclusively to the tastes of people who want easy entertainment without too much thought. Kafka's works appeal to a deeper level, the "unconscious and almost sub-archetypal, the little-kid stuff from which myths derive," as DFW calls it. I think that Kafka's writings play on the contradictions in our self - the self we discussed in context of Siddhartha and Parris's nephew - and therefore provoke some thought as to why we act the way we do. Therefore, his literature is harder to read not only because it has to be deciphered in context of our unique identities, but because they may lead us to some very unhappy realizations about the nature of our lives. However, going back to my point that started this paragraph, Kafka writes to create brilliant works of literature, not stories that people want to read to make themselves feel warm and fuzzy. In terms of literary criticism, I believe his works are great because they do not stoop down to please the masses; they are meant to get us to think about ourselves and how the text relates to us, which is an expression of reader-response criticism in itself.
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Post by amysohlberg on Oct 20, 2013 22:36:09 GMT
Wallace has a good point. If somebody asked me about The Metamorphosis, I probably wouldn't say, "It was really humorous!" but I think we've been trained to look at humor in a specific manner. In his words, "...our culture has trained [children] to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance." A lot of the humor we're exposed to these days focuses on the mundane and the average (the office, parks and rec), humor that is focused on making the boring parts of our day something to laugh at. We've been sucked in to a humor that reassures us. Either it makes gentle humor out of the everyday or it makes us laugh uproariously at the absurdity of a situation. The Metamorphosis is neither. Kafka uses humor that is rather a form of deep irony that isn't supposed to make you laugh. I would argue that Kafka's humor is his way of pointing out the absurd truth of our lives, "That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home." I never thought of humor as a powerful tool for revealing profound truth, but I think Kafka uses it in The Metamorphosis to show us his beliefs about conditional love. Maybe his family still loves Gregor, but they concluded that they would be better off without him. It certainly doesn't make us laugh, but Kafka uses Gregor's transformation and interaction with his family ironically to produce a dark truth.
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Post by Lauren on Oct 20, 2013 22:40:51 GMT
I really liked what DFW had to say about Kafka's jokes and especially how he said it. I loved the rose metaphor because sometimes that's exactly what it feels like to analyze literature. In order to get to the meaning often you have to dissect the literature, which leaves it in a drastically different state than it used to be in. But in Kafka's writing, you have to do the dissection yourself, because as DFW said "there is no quicker way to empty a joke of its peculiar magic than to try to explain it". It's deeper than it seems at face value because of its "comedy is always also tragedy" aspect. Kafka's writing can be more difficult to unpack because of how different the style and language is. His literature is amazing though, because it takes work, but once you break through it means you really need it and you can find what's been missing.
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