TWBBookClub April: Reading for writers: Short Stories by Franz Kafka

Put a group of writers together in the Discord channel of @thewritersblock and get them to decide which book to read for #bookclub… it is a daunting task. Many of the writers at @thewritersblock will focus on Camp Nano, something similar to NaNoWriMo in November each year, but with the ‘camp’ version you can set your own goal and decide what you want to be writing. The whole of April is to be about writing. So, we decided to go for a short story this time, because writing will take up a lot of time.

But then, which short story?! And by whom? Lists were produced, discussions started, but the first of April approached and nothing definite was decided. Therefore I decided myself: it will be a short story by Franz Kafka. Kafka is a great writer, he managed to change the landscape of literature forever. And as such, it is necessary to read him. And his short stories are a great place to start. He wrote many.

READ!

You can decide which story of Kafka you’d like to read. Here is a link to the collected short stories, with a great introduction by John Updike. You will also find them in your local bookstore or library. Of course if you read German, I’d recommend reading the original.

All that he does seems to him, it is true, extraordinarily new, but also, because of the incredible spate of new things, extraordinarily amateurish, indeed scarcely tolerable, incapable of becoming history, breaking short the chain of the generations, cutting off for the first time at its most profound source the music of the world, which before him could at least be divined. Sometimes in his arrogance he has more anxiety for the world than for himself.
-- KAFKA, "He" (Aphorisms)

Please choose one of the longer or shorter short stories. And think about why it is a good/great/bad/horrible/interesting/fantastic/bizarre story. What works, what doesn’t work? And why? What did Kafka do to make it so?

If you have trouble choosing, go for the first one: ‘Description of a Struggle’. And if you don’t like that one, read the next one. Etcetera.

WRITE!

And then: write about your experiences. Or use what you’ve learned to craft something of your own.

• Non-fiction: discuss the methods Kafka used, your reader-experience, something you learned from reading it.
• Fiction: can you use the same mechanics, the same approach and write a story of your own? Did you identify something, like a specific use of POV, tenses, plot, etc, and can you use that to build a strong story yourself? Please don’t write fan-fiction, at @thewritersblock we’re dedicated to original work only
• Poetry: let the setting or the story inspire you. Or write a poem about your experiences of reading as a writer. The possibilities are endless.

Good luck, and looking forward to your experiences!

@nobyeni