I could listen to this bibliophile intellectual all day! So wonderfully and unashamedly deep and thoughtful.

@sherlockholmeslives.1605

3 жыл бұрын

@@Johnconno Lol! He is clever though.

@funkytransport

Жыл бұрын

imagine being that smart, it must be amazing...especially on drugs

Great Presentation Will. Very enjoyable. I find the wit and pertinence of 'The Castle' reminiscent of C S Lewis, with a sarcasm for reality which is charming and beautiful. If a reader is getting only misery from Kafka, they are simple not 'getting' Kafka.

Brilliant talk - had it playing while stewing in the bath. As I began to wash my crown jewels I increasingly found myself agreeing with Self. With every nod of the head a gush of water splashed limply into the dirty pool. I was entranced. The only sound I could hear was Self himself. Even his image appeared before me, right over the tip of my... For a moment I thought he had joined me in the bath. There was room enough. It was certainly possible. Alas, not so: my surprise was less traumatising. As I rose to leave, grabbing my towel from the towel rack , I glanced down to find that I'd turned into an insect; Self's own "Kafkaesque" cockroach. So this is what he meant! Wise ol' thing.

@Desmerosdoft

Жыл бұрын

Very funny! Cracked me up for real, and very well put - regarding Will's brilliancy, of course.

Will Self is important to me because he really got me into reading. Thanks Will!

@uploaderofmonkeybath.mp4761

3 жыл бұрын

couldnt think of a greater waste of time lol

@gerryb154

3 жыл бұрын

@@uploaderofmonkeybath.mp4761 Reading?

@uploaderofmonkeybath.mp4761

3 жыл бұрын

@@gerryb154 yes

@gerryb154

3 жыл бұрын

@@uploaderofmonkeybath.mp4761 I'm sure if you tried really hard you might think of a greater waste of time.

@uploaderofmonkeybath.mp4761

3 жыл бұрын

​@@gerryb154 i have a backlog of memories, all you will have are books, may as well be playing video games, accomplishing about as much.

Was listening to this last Friday when I got the call that my father had died from Covid. I just want to remember, though I doubt I’ll forget.

I found this very interesting; my favourite work by Kafka is The Castle; also The Burrow; approaching Kafka's creativity from my psychological dimension one is perhaps limited by thoughts that the intense introspection of Kafka was essentially schizoid; like two other major schizoid writers - Emily Bronte and Samuel Beckett - this creative schizoid stereotype certainly within just these three writers one arrives at major differences in their presentation of 'burrows' and 'castles'. One hears so much about bipolar creativity yet it is perhaps the schizoid mind that creates the uniquely greatest and most simply complex of human fantasy worlds. Thank you Mr Self; much appreciated.

I've never heard better commentary on Kafka than from Will Self and V. Nabokov.

@HughMorristheJoker

2 жыл бұрын

Read in the case of the latter

Friend of mine showed me a photo of an imagined cover of a kafka novel, the title: "Brexit". I laughed until i stopped.

I think Kafka was just a comedian, Will, a dark one for sure but he made his friends laugh, they always wanted more and he was happy to oblige. Similar characters created "The Goons", Spike Milligan et al., disillusioned Services survivors of WW2 whose dark comedy they played out at The Windmill Theatre - the "stand-up" of their day - and who were soon adopted by BBC Radio's Light Programme. Kenneth Horne & Kenneth Williams had a similar fate - "Round The Horne" - although their general direction was "camp". "Ooooh! Stop messin' about!" 😉 (Green Fire) 🌈🦉

@geoffreynhill2833

10 ай бұрын

PS: If you had a supernatural experience today would you dare tell a psychiatrist? 🤔

"I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costume party; and I attended with my real face." Franz Kafka

Love Kafka

Proud that I always found Zeno funny.

Very interesting. I've never discussed Metamorphosis with anyone so your talk was much appreciated. I read it about 50 years ago.

wait what's the third element of hofman's 'Kafka-time'?

40:33 is this a A) Brechtian analysis of Kafka B) Not Brechtian analysis of Kafka or C) An acknowledgement that Kafka's characters - as points of awareness - influenced Brecht. Only, it sounds a lot like Brecht and his representitive Gestus acting etc.

I think Kafka is best consumed as a child. It cuts the fluff, presents ideas upfront, and goes with it and plays with it. It's one of the few things i actually enjoyed reading as a child, no page long expositions before you get to the meat of the idea, just here you are, this is now the reality you're in. Will feel forever fresh.

@kerrylattimore2684

4 жыл бұрын

Me too. I can't remember how I picked up the book. I was a sophomore in HS.

@HughMorristheJoker

2 жыл бұрын

I think the best age is 26 to read Kafka, because that's when I read it.

Fascinating observations on Kafka, especially the parts about his manipulation of time, belatedness, and so on. You mention that your Hofmann has "vermin" instead of "cockroach"; I'm very puzzled by this because my Metamorphosis Hofmann (Penguin Classics) does indeed opt for "cockroach"! Hofmann even justifies his use of the word in the introduction, where he also chides Nabokov, who diagnoses Gregor's precise species of beetle (and argues all other translations are "wrong"), for insisting on an overly entomologically correct approach. Hofmann writes that "Ungeziefer" (vermin), is "a flat-out rejection that denies all possible scientific curiosity." Presumably, therefore, Hofmann thinks that any nasty old bug will do, so he opts for "cockroach" for effect. But now after viewing your video I'm a bit confused; has Hofmann updated his translation?

Good post.

John Berger criticised Francis Bacon for how the worst has already happened in his paintings - as if this were a limitation of the possible horror, therefore that somehow Bacon had blown it, made an oeuvre based on spoilers. Kafka certainly puts the lie to that one.

So this is what talking to Will Self on skype is like

Ratatouille - Anton Ego?

I am an ear-wig. Wiggle wiggle. 🐜

I am Kafka.

@michaelkittler9104

2 жыл бұрын

@Divita Jain no me.

@HughMorristheJoker

2 жыл бұрын

Very Kafkaesque

There is a slight misunderstanding of what Kafka meant to Kundera. Franz Kafka was Milan Kundera's George Orwell - the poet of totalitarianism. There is a rhetorical question that Milan Kundera makes in his reflections on Kafka (on Kafka's Das Schloss, to be more precise): Why there are so many professions in and around the castle but no policemen? Milan Kundera goes on to argue that it is so because there is no need for the policemen at all, since every citizen in the village beneath the Castle is already a policeman, reporting on his fellow citizens (the allusion to the communist regimes and their notorious ways of control). When it comes to the talk itself, in general, there are lots of flaws, factual errors, unjustified improvizations, and the lack of novel insights. All in all, not particularly illuminating, especially for those who have read and studied Kafka's work in depth and with passion.

@jonharrison9222

9 ай бұрын

The danger is that people read the implications of his work rather than the actual work. The backdrop to The Trial is Edwardian, not Soviet.

so good interesting . Longitude 127 Seoul Okinawa Soul Axis -- Bahai Faith Rael Jesus Huh kyung young Great veritas .

Hahahah! 47:29 😜

That this is the same man from the Hernia Hotline sketch MAKES NO SENSE. Or maybe it makes perfect sense.

mate get a professional microphone....

Caaalf ka. Kafkaism. Caallf ka.Kafka. Make your mind up.

didn't think he was jewish

@jonharrison9222

9 ай бұрын

?

@ricksteves1973

9 ай бұрын

@@jonharrison9222 I didn't think Will Self is Jewish.

Okay after 5 minutes I gotta say GET BACK from the damned camera. I'm trying to listen but he's so "up in my face", and when he looks down I gotta lean back because I do not want to be that close to ANYONE's scalp that aint family. Do it Again Will; only this time show some damn respect for personl space.

@andrewmartin6445

4 жыл бұрын

It is awfully off-putting, isn't it? It feels like he is trying to head-butt us with his balding pate and all the lurching about and hand flailing is enough to make you seasick.

@rhetoric5173

4 жыл бұрын

You twats

Ask him about how he treated his dying wife.

@PeppyOoze

4 жыл бұрын

what a nasty comment to post.. you sound like a depressing person.

The truth is ugly! Realization of this simple fact makes people try to escape in either various fantasies or to various despair of Kafkian style. To me, it looks like denial of the truth by turning it into meaningless senseless reality and then looking down to it from the height of ones own ability to realize the ugliness of truth.

@HughMorristheJoker

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, sort of look at the world with disdain, superciliously

@jonharrison9222

9 ай бұрын

Rephrase for people who don’t speak waffle.