Arnon Grunberg

Amateur

Legal

While working on a piece on Kafka I came across this quote by Rivka Galchen:

‘I have come to the conclusion that anyone who thinks about Kafka for long enough inevitably develops a few singular, unassimilable and slightly silly convictions. (The graph may be parabolic, with the highest incidence of convictions – and the legal resonance is invited – found among those who have spent the most time thinking and those who have spent next to no time thinking.) My own such amateur conviction is that the life of Franz Kafka reads like a truly great comedy.’

(Read the article here.)

Maybe in general, thinking too long about any author or any artist or any subject (God) will lead to silly convictions.

Kafka’s life a comedy? And his work a comedy as well? His work more than his life I would say.

Hannah Arendt names Kafka, Chaplin and Heine as examples of Jews who had managed to escape the faith of the parvenu.

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