/lit/ - Literature

read "In The Penal Colony"

>>1417994
>>1417994

that's coming up in my book of short stories, i'm on Investigations of a Dog now, then i've got giant mole, penal settlement and one other i forget the name of.

>>1417988 it is clumsily written, with bad prose

I suspect it was the translation you read. Who was the translator?

translators were Willa and Ediwn Muir apparently

bump

and again

>>1418190
>>1418190

>>1418194

what language are you reading it in?

>>1418202
>>1418202

English

>>1418201
>>1418201

Don't you get it dawg, he could of flown away this whole time, he could have flown away dawg!

pro-tip: he wanted to fuck his sister. these thoughts turned him into a monster...........

>>1418252
>>1418252

>>1418265
Living like a bug ain’t easy
My old clothes don’t seem to fit me

I got little tiny bug feet
I don’t really know what bugs eat
Don’t want no one stepping on me
Now I’m sympathizing with fleas

Living like a bug ain’t easy
Living like a bug ain’t easy

>>1418269
I fucking love that show. I love how Jason reads the book. And in the other episodes, Jason relates what he and his friends are doing to books by Faulkner Hemingway. XD

Which translation did you read, Brownbear?

If you got it off project Gutenberg or something, chances are all translated literature will have awful prose.

>>1418308
ctrl+f 'translation' lazy-ass.

the muir one is pretty modern i think.

>>1418308
>>1418308

i've actually got this and The Trial in physical form, i picked them up recently from a charity shop.

>>1418269
>>1418269
i don't get the reference

captcha: literatur etiondic

bumping

no one wants to talk about Metamorphosis or Kafka?

ITT: Half the posts are Brownbear bumping his own thread.

Congrats on making it into my filter!

>clumsily written, bad prose
i hope you read it in russian, you fucken moron.

>>1418450
>>1418450

>implying i give a fuck
>implying this isn't /lit/ related
>you forgot your sage
>you are the cancer that's killing /lit.

>>1418456
>>1418456

yeah man i was gonna learn Russia just to read one, max two books

thanks for the tip bro

Karl is kind of a ungrateful prick. i would have been content at old gramps mansion-warehouse.

also,
>Kafka
>Russian
:O

>>1418461
>missed point

yeah The Trial is amazing must-read.

The Muir translation was the first English translation, from some time in the 1930s. My copy of the Metamorphosis is part of the Penguin Classics series, and was translated by Michael Hofmann. I thought the prose was pretty damn good, so it must be a good translation. If you don't like the prose style you're not going to like Kafka at all, so I'd try a different translation if I were you.

its not the translator; kafka is just a shitty writer. the trial is even worse then the metamorphosis

>>1418491
yeah, read some Tolkien, that's some epic prose, bro.

i just disliked pretty much everything about Metamorphosis, the prose, writing style, the characters (Gregor was an unlikeable cunt even before he was a useless waste of space)

the family were just stupid and i think the story could have been approached and ended much better.

>>1418489
>>1418489
im guessing my translation isn't great then, however my copy of The Trial is the same translation so i'm guessing that's gonna be shit too.

Kafka does seem overrated and shitty to me anyways, what did y'all think of The Trial?

>>1418507
>expecting likable main characters from Kafka

derp

>>1418514
>>1418514

>what's that Brownbear? This was your first time reading Kafka and you didn't KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT? HERPA DERPA

nice.

>>1418526
the trial is possibly the worst book i have read in the past 5 years

>>1418532
>>1418532

i might have to give it a miss then :(
thanks for being helpful bro

>>1418526
yes, but that doesn't hide the fact that you expected an easy to understand read with likable characters from a widely known postmodern author that hated himself.

ITT: casuals and teenagers.

>>1418548
>>1418548

>implying i expected any of that

>>1417988
>>1418514

Just stop reading good literature, there's a lot of good pulp fiction out there that you can read, you obviously aren't enjoying stories for their style or underlying themes and look mostly for good plot and character development.

I'm reading the trial right now, and this one line jumped out at me.

"...for what decides the sale is not the amount of the offer, but the amount of the bribe..."

Any idea what that's supposed to mean?

>>1418598
who said it to who?

I'm guessing it meant something along the lines of "it doesn't matter what goes on above the table, as long as you give me a hefty amount where no-one's looking."

>>1418590
>>1418590

>throwing subjective terms like 'good' out at literature
pic related

>>1418624
>only used the term good to show I wasn't being condescending and realizing that both groups have talented writers.

but anyway, I do always love that "it's subjective so you're wrong" attitude on lit.

>>1418609
A guard said it regarding K's clothes which would be sold after they were handed over at the depot. Any of the proceeds from the sale would be given to K, should the trial go in his favor.

"It's true that you would eventually receive the proceeds of the sale from the depot, but in the first place the proceeds are small, for what decides the sale is not the amount of the offer, but the amount of the bribe, and in the second place it's well known that such proceeds get smaller as they pass from hand to hand and from year to year."

I feel like there's some underlying aspect to that statement.

>>1418660
their going to to take his clothes and sell them for minimal prices while receiving bribes that constitute their actual price. Josef would receive the minimal payment while the people that were selling the clothes would get the money their worth in the bribes. and as such the amount that the prisoners get in regards to their items being sold gets lower and lower every year.

>>1418624
>>He has no concept of sublimity or transcendence and is likely a casualty of misconstrued post-modernism

>>1419901

holy shit nigga that was the dumbest 12 hour later post i've ever seen. you can't just throw some big words together you quite obviously do not have a full understand of, slap in some green text and expect to be the seen as intelligent.
you ain't no king of /lit/

that requires a tripcode

I got to about halfway into the book and then this nigger starts waffling about courts and shit for like twenty pages and I'm thinking to myself; this is stupid and a bad way to talk about bureaucracy. Put that shit right down.

>>1419920
you're an idiot.

That's just because you're a retarded prick, BB.