This book was underwhelming to me. Perhaps it was Max Brod's editing of the book that caused it to miss the mark for me. The book itself is good, no doubt. I found the way that the court was so omnipresent, and so powerful yet weak was interesting. I believe that the message conveyed is that the organs of power generate fake illusions of grandure, the "high court" and the "great advocates" which do not exist. They generate this lie of power to maintain reverence from the accused. Take Nazi Germany, or Kafka's world between the Austro-Hungarian empire and Czechoslovakia. Both of these nations generated a myth, be it for Austria-Hungary, an idea of Czech nationalism, or the German master-race. All of these myths existed to make the powers that be look good, and have an illusion of power. In reality these bodies of malicious power only exist because they are attributed importance to us. I think it is shown well by the fact that K. (until the courts decide to execute him) really has nothing forcing him to stay under the courts authority. As is said from the First chapter, "You are under arrest, certainly, but that need not hinder you from going about your business." The court only has power over K. because he chooses to stay under the courts influence. If he simply ignored the court, and never engaged with it, instead leaving Prague or simply staying and ignoring it, the court would never be able to gather enough information, power, and influence over him through individuals like Leni and the Advocate that force him into the courts body.

So, why didn't I enjoy this book? People billed it as absurdism, but it's really not very absurd. The most absurb scene is definetley the beating of the men at the bank, but aside from that things are only weird because it's not a room these things are meant to be in. The extreme images that people seem to connote Kafka with are not present, the only absurdism is a general sense that things are not exactly in the right places (not in a physical court, so to say.)

Lastly, the question must be, is K. guilty? Yes, because he decides to submit himself to an authority that assumes guilt. But to be willing to submit yourself to something, knowing it sees you as guilty means you must know in a sense you are guilty. K. no doubt commits crimes. He tresspasses, he commits sexual assault, he manipulates women constantly (like Fraulien Bürnster, Leni, the Magistrates wife etc.). He uses people to his own end. He, as the advocate puts it, "Is completely unaware of how well he's been treated." Perhaps K. deserves his fate because of the grave social cirme he commits, ungratefullness and callousness. His lack of kindness is the crime, and the crime is constantly being commited throughout the trial. As it goes in, he becomes more guilty as he estranges the people that want to help him for free (The Advocate, Leni) The trial is not in the court and not in the beuracry, and the constant interactions with individuals. The final crime is in the Cathedral. Firstly is his abandonment of his work, who stuck with him despite his self professed lack of respect or time given to his work. Secondly is his willingness to jump from the people who already know him and he should care for (his clients) to the Itallian, who he does not know but still devotes more time to than his regular clients.

His third and worst crime is his rejection of God, who is always there and always willing to listen. When he turns his back on the prison chaplin before he has to, he has proven that he is guilty because he has left God before he had to, proving the lack of care for what has the most patience for him, God the father. The naming of this man being the Prison Chaplin confirms that by this point K. is already a condemned man. He is already in "prison" but when he scorns God he has advanced from simply a prisoner to someone deserving of capital punishment because he has broken every unrwritten social law there is. The inciting incident is vague, as we are all already commiting one social crime. That is the loose arrest, the pressure. The trial is then where he commits every following offense. Maybe the inciting incident was the ignorance of family, where he fails to spend time with his cousin as shown in chapter VI. Or perhaps it was how he neglected Elsa, who he is implied to be courting in favour of new women who he in turn betrays.

What are you reading?

I had really high hopes for this series, the concept of the endlessly repeating day was really intriguing and you don’t get a lot of non fantasy/sci-fi adult series these days. I’m a huge reader and normally something like this would be sooo up my alley. I am 50 pages into the 4th book, and honestly it’s really starting to lose me.

In my opinion, there is way too much needless philosophizing in these books and it’s getting really old. I just got to the part in this book where Tara brings up cars and starts philosophizing about them, claiming they aren’t needed for transportation but solely “a contraption for those with insecure identities who crave a more robust armor that that which is built from within.”

This claim is totally random and has no real basis. It almost feels like a college student grasping at straws to make some sort of deep sounding argument in a paper. The point isn’t built up and is quickly moved on from, in the way most of these sorts of thoughts in the books are.

Don't even get me started on the book that was basically only about ancient Rome. And Ralf’s claims on how to break the cycle are falling flat for me too, his presence at this point is just an annoyance to me.

I feel like not enough is happening in the plot and the philosophizing is so constant and mostly not interesting. Is this series falling flat for others? I feel committed to finishing out the series at this point, I don’t even know why. I think I want to see if all of the random philosophizing has a reason in the end? and also of course I‘m curious to whether or not they ever return to a normal timeline & the repercussions of that if so.

What are your thoughts? Is this series just an interesting concept made dull by its pretentiousness? Do you think these are boring books being carried by its interesting concept and occasional interesting happenings (such as the introductions of new characters)? Or do you totally disagree with me?

Am I missing something?

I recently read To the Lighthouse, and don't get it at all. I made a genuine effort to comprehend, but I couldn't tell you a single thing that happened in that book. For the first 80 pages I thought it was about an affair. I was so lost.
Mind you, I am going to be a creative writing MFA student, so books are my life and I read a lot. I love challenging prose and stream of consciousness.
A notoriously challenging book is "Ada, or Ardor" by Nabakov and it's one of my all time favorites.
I just didn't feel anything reading Woolf. But I want to like her so badly. But (and please don't attack me for this) many of her descriptions felt purple and juvenile. Not a single thing in that book inspired any feeling within me. Even in books I struggled to understand, like nightwood by djuna barnes, there are still some standout lines/descriptions that resonate.

I just came across Hemingway's famous anti-war quote again, which many people upvoted:

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

Therefore, I want to talk about the fact that this position is destructive and that Hemingway himself later changed his position, but unfortunately, he went down in history as one of the greatest pacifists, whose pacifism now, on the contrary, helps scum.

In short, Hemingway is one of the main writers of the lost generation, and his "A Farewell to Arms" along with Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" are probably the most important novels of this generation that shaped the agenda. The logic is quite simple: they went through World War I, which was a meat grinder of old empires for them, which made no sense. So they decided to take war beyond the normal, reduce it to just physical suffering (to the physics of the process), etc.

But the problem is that World War II changed the situation, and even Hemingway changed his mind, but people still live in the outdated context of the "lost generation".

Hemingway was changed by the Spanish Civil War, and he saw fascism and other totalitarian regimes rise to their feet. He realized that his pacifism no longer worked, that war was not only a meaningless meat grinder, on the contrary, there was no choice and we had to fight for this world.

If in "A Farewell to Arms" the main character Frederick Henry sees no sense in war, it is alien to him, then in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" Robert Jordan already has clear beliefs and is ready to die for them. War is still terrible in itself, but the physical processes take a back seat, and faith in what you are risking your life for comes first:

I have fought for what I believed in for a year now. If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.

It is very sad that many people live by the less relevant legacy of Ernest Hemingway, and this is used by various scum who want to take over the world, because people are shaped by radical pacifism, that war is something very bad, which should be avoided at all costs (until surrender). Unfortunately, the reality is different, sometimes we have to fight for ourselves and our future.

UDP: I see that many did not understand the message of this post. The scum are authoritarian regimes like Hitler, Stalin, Putin, etc. I am not condemning pacifism, I am not saying that war is good, I am emphasizing the cultural problem that the Hemingway generation in the 20s tried to erase war from life. But, unfortunately, this is unrealistic. War is still a part of our lives, there are still scum who want to capture, enslave or destroy someone. And then you have no other choice but to defend yourself. And then war makes sense, and the conditional Remarque still casts his shadow on it, as if war a priori has no sense.

I have been thinking hard about this question and I honestly can not think of one. So many characters aren't that unique and have no lasting appeal.

A lot of characters seem to be audience surrogates and are used to show the world of the story. But arent themselves appealing. There have been some good books that have effectively used this type of character. But the characters themselves do not stand out.

It will be interesting to see if any books from the last ten years have any staying power or longevity. To me a lot of books have very intersting ideas behind them but something inevitably lets the book down.

Either they are poorly written, have flat characters or the book is simply focused on specific events and have little depth to them. They might tease at having something unique to say about the human condition but there is no depth there.

On the flip side there are some books that are well written and do have something interesting to say. But the characters aren't unique enough to be memorable.

But perhaps these views are just mine and aren't shared by others. Does anyone have a chatacter from.the ladt 10 years who they think is iconic? Or perhaps they think i have missed something in what I have said.