How to Read Kafka

By Mark Haber

“There’s only one correct way to read Kafka,” began my speech at the National Hippodrome in Munich, where I’d been invited to speak. I wanted to be blunt, not cruel, but likewise not convoluted or obtuse when the reason I was invited was to illuminate what’s been hidden in the shadows for the past century, and that was how to read Kafka correctly.

It was the last day of the symposium, and I was giving the keynote lecture: “On Reading Kafka Correctly.” Dozens of the most serious Kafka scholars and Kafka thinkers were in attendance, many with their luggage packed and at hand, prepared to leave directly after my address to attend the Kafka Jubilee in neighboring Johanneskirchen with its mud baths, brothels, and Tuberculosis Parade. No serious Kafka scholar would’ve missed my speech since word of my book, Reading Kafka Correctly, and its imminent publication, had been announced. My agent had assured the organizers of the symposium I would read from the book’s preface as well as answer questions. From the stern Czechs to the sterner Germans, from the lazy Americans to the aggressive Latvians, every Kafka specialist was present and each inching closer to the stage, trembling in anticipation of my lecture and all having one thing in common: not understanding how to read Kafka.

Munich was in the midst of a heat wave and I cared not a whit. I was decked out in my infamous velvet suit complete with hunter’s cap and ostrich plume, and not a woman I passed refrained from looking in my direction, relishing the handsome figure I cut, taking in the curves of my elegant form in voluptuous gulps. I’d gained some weight but belonged to that privileged tribe where weight gain not only accentuates the ass but gives the face and shoulders a fuller, more robust contour. Renowned now for this outfit, I’d begun wearing the velvet suit in my thirties when my career as an original and important thinker had begun to blossom. During those early years I refrained from giving serious thought to the hordes of scholars incorrectly reading, analyzing, and writing about Kafka, first for professional reasons since my field didn’t belong to that inane and reckless pursuit known loosely as “Kafka Studies,” and second because it wasn’t my business if a renowned professor, lauded and celebrated throughout the world, didn’t understand shit about Kafka, namely, reading Kafka correctly. I had more important things to think of, mainly my burgeoning career as an important thinker, as well as spending my free time enjoying reading Kafka the right way.

“To be sure,” I began from the podium, ignoring my prepared notes, “just as there are a million ways to incorrectly read Kafka, there’s one and only one way to correctly read Kafka, just as there’s only one proper way to comprehend and appreciate Kafka and because of this difficulty in grasping Kafka everyone has forever been reading Kafka incorrectly and I’m on this stage,” I confessed, “not out of the generousness of my heart but from the frustration and aggravation that’s followed me my entire life since first discovering the correct way to read Kafka, maddened by the fact you all claim to love Kafka and adore Kafka but fundamentally misunderstand and misconstrue Kafka, thus approaching Kafka, reading Kafka, and thinking about Kafka all wrong. It’s wrongheaded, vexing, perhaps even dangerous. I’m going to clear things up,” I declared. “Trust me, I’d much rather be home, reading Kafka or sitting in a small café, in Trieste for example, or Rome, listening to the patter of the rain or observing the locals whilst sipping a Riesling having just finished jotting down my personal insights about Kafka, relishing the feat in which all of you are incapable: reading Kafka correctly.”

“Only lowbrows find Kafka funny,” I’d said earlier at the reception, besieged by a group of academics and celebrated German-language savants, many on my heels, to touch my handsome velvet suit I suspect, as well as to hear me say illuminating things about Kafka, namely reading him correctly. Everyone knew my book was weeks from getting published, and perhaps they hoped their proximity and my deep understanding of the writer would rub off. “Lunatics and heathens find Kafka prophetic,” I continued, “thieves and imbeciles find him enigmatic. But there is only one way to correctly read Kafka and correctly comprehend Kafka, and not one of you understands how to do that. All of you have endlessly read Kafka, spent years poring over his dairies, short stories, and novels, written enormous tomes about Kafka, enjoyed successful careers because of Kafka, but neglected the most clear and fundamental task, which is understanding Kafka, because once you understand Kafka and appreciate Kafka’s works the world becomes incandescent; however, you must first understand how to do this because the opportunities for reading Kafka incorrectly are everywhere. Every Kafka book is an invitation to read him in a horribly disastrous way. For instance, I’ve seen people in bookshops and airports reading The Trial or The Castle and from their posture alone know they’re reading Kafka the wrong way, thus not understanding him. Posture matters,” I said, beckoning the closest waiter for another crab cake. “Posture and attitude count, as does context. One would never read Kafka on a commute, on a train, say, or a bus or a plane, Jesus, not in a million years!”

The crab cake was sumptuous, but I’d squandered the only napkin I’d been given and couldn’t find another waiter, forced to rub the crumbs on my magnificent velvet trousers. I hoped to find an occasion before my lecture to return to my room and change because I always traveled with a bevy of velvet suits in all manner of color, burgundy to canary yellow, plum to pistachio, my favorite being the turmeric I’d worn for this very occasion but now regrettably soiled with crab cake crumbs.

To the acolytes surrounding me I gave a litany of who was best positioned to understand Kafka, reciting from memory the fifth chapter of my forthcoming book, Reading Kafka Correctly. “A Jew understands Kafka,” I began, “a converted Jew even more. A converted Jew recuperating from tuberculosis who appreciates Yiddish theater, forever overcome by terror and guilt, understands Kafka better than anyone else on the planet, better than Kafka himself. A German will never understand Kafka and if they accept this in their hearts, they will have inched closer to understanding Kafka and thus approached something resembling enlightenment.” A waiter appeared offering a fingerling potato, which I happily accepted, forgetting to ask for another napkin. “Australians possess the ability to understand Kafka but approach the matter with pomposity and pretense, thus disqualifying themselves from ever understanding him. They arrive at the table with no humility. Same with the Italians. Same with the French. A native of Prague takes for granted their so-called inherent relationship to understanding Kafka, but this belief is misguided and backward. Being born in Prague, growing up in Prague, does not freely enable you to understand the enormous, mile-high obelisk that is Kafka’s body of work. Proximity is not a free pass. In fact, a person born and raised in Prague is at a huge disadvantage in understanding Kafka merely from their geographic familiarity, which ultimately works as a hindrance; it’s not unlike staring at a portrait too closely, thus missing what’s most crucial and necessary even though it’s touching your face, perhaps breathing on your neck or, in Kafka’s case, standing on it.”

The spotlights on stage were unrelenting and perverse, pressing rays of light onto my retinas; the silence in the auditorium, however, was a testament to the audience’s single-minded interest. “I assume none of you know how to read Kafka correctly or you wouldn’t be here,” I stated from the podium, and not in a particularly pleasant tone, becoming, against my better judgment, combative. The lights in the Hippodrome were warm and fierce; I was sweating beneath my velvet suit. It was hard making out the faces of the attendees in the audience, so-called colleagues and so-called literary types who could read Kafka in theory but still not possess the slightest notion of what they’d read. I’d forgotten to remove my speech, the preface of my book, folded and stuffed inside the pocket of my velvet blazer, now drenched in sweat; besides the crumbs from the crab cake I now had to reckon with the blazer, sodden with perspiration, soiled completely, the entire suit desecrated, and I was becoming heartsick and indignant, harried by the spotlight, outraged by the faces observing me like cattle, thinkers praised and celebrated throughout the world, looked upon as having the highest intellects and most original thoughts, yet begging me to explain the most rudimentary thing in the world, understanding Kafka.

I’d completely forgotten the purpose of my being in Munich, which was, of course, to promote my book, which was another way of saying I was in Munich to explain how to read Kafka correctly. Instead, I’d begun berating the audience, denouncing their inherent lack of understanding Kafka because quite frankly the subject infuriated me. The heat of the spotlights and the stage, the heat inside the Hippodrome, outside the Hippodrome, the blistering streets of Munich, unseasonably warm said the forecast or, to quote the television in my hotel that morning, ungewöhnlich heiß. It felt like the earth was melting and I was at its center.

“No,” I said with great emphasis, “if you could read Kafka the way you’re supposed to read Kafka you’d be home reading Kafka this moment because if you knew how to read Kafka you wouldn’t waste your time analyzing Kafka or writing about Kafka or studying Kafka, but simply stay at home reading Kafka as Kafka intended. But you’re here,” I said, “blathering about the great writer when you yourselves know nothing at all about the great writer, perhaps the greatest writer in history, though that’s a subject for another time and a different symposium, but all of you sit there knowing full well you’ve been misunderstanding the great author your entire lives and not feeling a single iota of shame, and the fact that you realize your ignorance and continue, that you knowingly misread him and still persist to write and think and pontificate about Kafka, leads me to think you’re heathens, ill-bred and ill-suited to decipher the cosmic puzzle that is Kafka.”

The heat was causing my words to slur and coalesce. Once more I remembered the preface of my book folded inside my jacket, but, afraid of looking foolish, I considered turning and parading my heavy buttocks for the crowd in order to reach inside my blazer and retrieve the pages, to take advantage of my newly acquired weight, the lovely abundance of legs and torso shimmering in the velvet suit, saturated now with sweat, to pivot around and beguile the audience with the largesse of my flanks and ample backside while I retrieved the speech from the inside pocket, a real necessity, because the preface of my book was absolutely essential as it laid out the fundamental steps necessary for reading Kafka correctly, something I learned at nineteen, recovering from a car accident where, one cold evening, alone in the hospital, drifting between the miasma of consciousness and unconsciousness, I had a holy vision that shared the soul and viscera of Kafka, the same traits and beliefs, the same blood and nucleic acids, the very same heartbeat, and with that we merged, Kafka and I, and since that moment, recovering from a grade 3 concussion, I’d understood every word Kafka ever wrote with mythic lucidity.

There were disturbances in the audience. Like an ocean awaiting a storm, I saw agitation riding the rows like waves, from the front to the back to the front again. Isamu Tanaka, the Japanese Kafka scholar, stood and yelled something, difficult to make out besides the word sham. Encouraged by Tanaka’s outburst, Kafka scholars and Kafka specialists stood and shouted, haranguing me and my perfect understanding of Kafka, even though I hadn’t even begun reading the preface to my book, Reading Kafka Correctly. The crowd was emboldened, venturing to shout louder, more indignant things, none of which I could make out. I raised my arm in mock defense, felt the crab cake and fingerling potato climbing the back of my throat. The spotlights grew in proportion to the heat, and I stumbled, sank, tried in vain to strut my glorious velvet suit, sweat stained and saturated, worthless now on the secondhand market, before succumbing, falling to the ground and passing out.

“Kafka is not open to interpretation,” I told the German medics after being revived, “he’s impervious to interpretation. Kafka soars high above the toxic cloud of interpretation like a glorious hawk. Listen closely,” I said, “you can hear his tubercular coughing, his Czech laughter, his suffering glee at our universal foolishness.” The medics tried appeasing me but were more interested in finding a vein for the IV; with all the weight I’d gained, finding veins was tough business, and I told them as much. I also explained the difficulty in seeing things no one else saw, that transcribing the holy, expressing the inexpressible, was a fool’s errand, a suicide pact, and the medics didn’t understand or were disinterested or, more than likely, both. Once more I felt nauseous and lightheaded and I was brought back to that night in the hospital room at nineteen, the tattered edition of The Castle left by the previous patient, spotting the author’s name and the title, which promptly entranced me, then the darkness within its pages, a darkness without hope, a darkness so fierce it was blinding, a darkness that enveloped the universe entire, a book that introduced me to Kafka then instructed me how to read Kafka, ideally on one’s back, in a hospital room, when the nurses had finished their rounds and were enjoying a sandwich or a cigarette, when the earth had taken a brief moment to sigh and in the moment of that sigh and the accompanying silence, lasting no longer than a single second, Kafka could be understood in the language of despair, and with that I was returned once more to the Hippodrome, now enveloped in that acute and singular Kafkaesque darkness, and like angels the medics floated away and for the first time in days the cold had arrived, for me and Munich and the rest of the world.

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Mark Haber was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Florida. His debut novel, Reinhardt’s Garden (2019), was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His second novel, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss (2022), was named a best book of 2022 by the New York Public Library and Literary Hub. Lesser Ruins, his third novel, comes out in October 2024. Mark was recently appointed a Visiting Professor at Freie Universität Berlin at the Peter Szondi Institute during the 2024/2025 winter semester. Mark’s fiction has appeared in Guernica, Southwest Review, and Air/Light, among others. Mark lives in Minneapolis.

Illustration: Kevin Sampsell.