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Musings Report 2023-45 11-4-23 Orwellian, Kafkaesque, or Both?
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Orwellian, Kafkaesque, or Both?
This New Yorker cartoon captures the current zeitgeist: "In this corner, a man who describes everything as 'Orwellian.' And in this corner, a guy who loves saying 'Kafkaesque'" In a three-way match, we'd include the other favorite prognosticator, Brave New World's Aldous Huxley.
I'm certainly guilty of invoking Orwell, Huxley and Kafka to describe aspects of the present distemper. I'm reading Kafka's last novel, The Castle, and it's broadening my understanding of 'Kafkaesque.'
Kafka is known for his story of exclusion, The Metamorphosis, in which a man awakens to discover that he's been transmogrified into a 6-foot cockroach, who is now treated with revulsion.
His novel The Trial establishes many of the themes we consider Kafkaesque: a hidden, capricious power whose actions and intentions are obscure; the complications of romantic / sexual attractions / relations, the inherent ambiguity of the circumstances, and the flailing powerlessness of those subject to the capricious power.
All of these are also elements in The Castle. I last read Kafka decades ago in school, and what strikes me in this current reading is its dream-like nature.. As in a dream, each scene is set with a few details, and the protagonist is frustrated at every turn; there is no narrative per se, just a series of frustrating dead ends. For example, the protagonist K. starts up a road which he expects will take him to the castle, but it leads back to the village.
Also as in a dream, characters appear and do things and say things which don't serve a conventional plot narrative. K. attempts to make sense of these interactions but is left uncertain about the intentions of the character. K.'s goal is to gain access to the castle to clarify his employment status and gain approval to marry his new lover in the village, but this proves impossible.
There are many such dream-like elements. The bureaucrats in the castle are both numerous and busy; when you call the castle on the phone, you hear a background buzz of constant telephone calls going on. Yet you don't know who answered the phone, as the bureaucrats typically don't bother answering calls from the village; they only take calls as pranks or randomly, and you might get an anonymous clerk in a division who mishandles your request.
In other words, very much like dealing with the IRS or the California DMV. I spent months a few years ago trying to get these agencies to do very basic things: change my address, and register a vehicle in storage. The process required constant correspondence with anonymous clerks, correspondence that twisted and turned but never reached the intended goal.
Where Orwell describes an oppressive authoritarian nightmare, Kafka describes the dream-state of confusion and frustration: you forgot to go to class and so you'll miss the final exam, you can't reach your destination, you're in a maze of streets and can't get home, etc.
Kafka is careful to call every character's true intentions into doubt. Much like Melville in his marvelous novel The Confidence-Man, Kafka has characters express their sincerity and frankness while spinning an account that may or may not be true, and that may serve to mask their real intentions.
As in The Confidence-Man, the listener starts out highly skeptical and ends up persuaded that the other person is indeed sincere. Yet their account may be entirely specious; the protagonist has no way of knowing.
In The Castle, K. discovers that the one fellow who treats him with friendliness is deemed an outcast by the other villagers.
The Castle reminded me of Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor, and I later found that Kafka drew inspiration from Dostoevsky.
The key difference between The Trial and The Castle is the protagonist in The Trial is arrested and held against his will. In The Castle, K. is free to leave, but he takes getting access to the castle's unreachable, anonymous occupants as a challenge. The plot of the novel boils down to K. attempting to reach those in power and being frustrated at every turn.
As in a dream, K. seems incapable of awakening to the impossibility of reaching his goal. Those in the castle are in a caste that is off limits to the villagers. K.'s lover allows him to peek through a peephole at the castle's representative in the village, but K. is not allowed to visit this official, much less speak to him. There are intermediaries, who seem to have some authority but are revealed as powerless.
This calls to mind the dilemma of those living in the USSR as it crumbled, an experience described in the book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More by Alexei Yurchak. Those who simply wanted to enjoy their lives to the fullest possible measure shunned both the Communist Party zealots intent on rising up through the Party bureaucracy and those actively resisting the system, as both posed risks with very little gain.
Instead, people were nominally members of Party organizations so they could meet up at museums and cafes, get together to make banners for a parade, etc.--in other words, access the personal freedoms of movement and time granted to party members in good standing.
Others took menial jobs so they could goof off, read, etc. and still qualify as trouble-free citizens.
In other words, when enmeshed in a system either Orwellian or Kafkaesque, refusing to challenge the authorities is a more fulfilling option than fighting a battle that cannot be won.
This is very reminiscent of the Taoist texts written in China's Warring States era of civil strife. Taoist authors describe earnest young bureaucrats intent on reforming the system, and Taoist sages mocking their grandiose delusions of seeking power to use in an idealized fashion.
Kafka worked as an insurance agent, and so he had firsthand experience of how bureaucracies function. He understood the facelessness of both those with power and the powerless seeking redress.
Unlike Orwell's authoritarian nightmare, there is no enforcement of the castle's authority. The authority's power rests entirely in the beliefs of the villagers. They are bound to obey not by coercion but by their belief alone.
This is the unifying theme of Kafka's The Castle: we're imprisoned by our acceptance of and belief in a power structure. Our world is both Orwellian and Kafkaesque. As in Orwell's nightmare, we are exposed to coercion and the constant rewriting of history to suit the currently accepted narrative. But Kafka's work exposes the other half of the mechanism: we are bound by our belief in the system's rules and goals, and the beliefs of those around us that reinforce our compliance.
Like Natsume Soseki's equally ambiguous masterpiece, Light and Dark, The Castle ends abruptly, as the author died before he could complete the novel. The Castle ends with this line: "She spoke with difficulty, it was hard to understand her, but what she said...."
The story of the next decade is as yet unwritten. I suspect it will be eventful and tumultuous.
Highlights of the Blog
How Much Do You Spend on Food? 11/2/23
We're Eating Our Seed Corn 10/31/23
The Counterculture Everyone Forgot 10/29/23
PODCAST
Is a 70% Consumption Economy Sustainable? (43:53 min)
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
While on vacation in Thailand last December, I had a unique dream. I was with Paul McCartney, who was at his piano. We chatted and he noodled on the piano, and came up with a short melody. I awoke and recorded the tune on my phone lest I fell back asleep and forgot it.
McCartney famously dreamed the complete song "Yesterday" and awoke reckoning he'd heard the tune somewhere. After spending a few weeks asking friends if they'd ever heard this melody before, and finding no one had, he concluded it was in fact an original melody that had come to him in a dream.
He also reported having a peaceful dream of his long-departed mother saying to him, "let it be." This was the inspiration for the song Let It Be. Clearly, dreams are powerful sources of creative work.
My little ditty is no masterpiece, but it was interesting to dream a melody, and so I slowly filled out the tune with lyrics, chords, opening riff, etc. Thanks to the creative arranging and orchestration of my friend Tommy Tabasco, a finished song has emerged. I call it "My Mr. McCartney Dream Song," or simply "My Dream Song." (3:33 min)
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Many links are behind paywalls. Most paywalled sites allow a few free articles per month if you register. It's the New Normal.
Hotels are so dirty that this business traveler books consecutive one-night stays: ‘It’s not like they are giving me a bulk discount for staying for five nights’ (via Cheryl A.)
IJBOL (pronounced “eej-bowl”) actually stands for “I just burst out laughing.”
Prominent pathologist at Johns Hopkins on leave, facing bullying claims.
The Secrets of Retirement No One Tells You. -- maybe not quite secrets, but some good points that are often overlooked....
I Couldn’t Afford the U.S., So I Left it. Maybe You Should Too: The United States is a fantastic place, if you can afford it. Thankfully, there are other options.
Global Resource Observatory: the road to Dr Apocalypse.
Study: Foods like ice cream, chips and candy are just as addictive as cigarettes or heroin.
Diabetes Rates by Country 2023.
Incident type 2 diabetes attributable to suboptimal diet in 184 countries--per the Chinese saying: "disease comes through the mouth."
Accidental Genius: A blow to the head can sometimes unmask hidden artistic or intellectual gifts.
Brain Gain: A Person Can Instantly Blossom into a Savant--and No One Knows Why.
The Beatles - Now And Then (Official Music Video)-- The Beatles' "last song," 60 years after they hit the bigtime...
"Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old." Franz Kafka
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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