MWF 2010 authors on… Franz Kafka
I actually had Franz Kafka round to dinner just a few weeks ago and, let me tell you, it was a bloody disaster. First, he showed up late, citing some sort of problem with his carriage. He had a wild look about him and smelled a bit funny, too. I thought he was supposed to be a mild sort of fellow but, in fact, the opposite was true. He leered at my wife, told filthy stories and generally carried on like a pork chop. Late in the evening, when we were all heartily sick of him, he went to the bathroom and, when he hadn’t returned for quite a while, I went to investigate and found him slumped in the hallway snoring like an old dog. By this time we had had enough and bundled him away in a taxi. The next day we discovered that he had, in fact, stolen some of my cufflinks and a handkerchief … My wife wanted him charged but I thought a trial would be a fruitless exercise.
Angela says…
Read my post on my favourite Kafka story ‘In the Penal Colony’ over at The Gum Wall. Also, I have this photo, framed, near my bed:
Feel free to share your own responses to the topic, or to the authors’ responses, in the comments.
Posted on 21 August 2010, in Author info and tagged Angela Meyer, Chris Womersley, Franz Kafka, MWF authors on. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
Melbourne Writers Festival blog 
I didn’t think it was a sufficiently original observation to qualify for the post above, but I use a Kafka quotation as one of the epigraphs for my novel, Five Wounds, as follows:
‘All legends and songs originating in this city are
filled with nostalgia for a prophesied day when
the city would be smashed to bits by five blows in
rapid succession from a gigantic fist’.
This is from Kafka’s short piece entitled ‘The City Coat-of-Arms’, and the city in question is that at the foot of the Biblical Tower of Babel.
Make of that what you will.