Saturday, July 29, 2017

Companions

Karl Rossmann is working as a lift-boy at the Hotel Occidental, a hotel with thirty elevators and forty lift-boys. One of Karl’s erstwhile ne’er-do-well traveling companions finds him at work:

Franz Kafka, Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared), trans. from the German by Michael Hoffman (New York: New Directions, 2002).

Nearing the end of Amerika, I’m convinced that this novel is a Wes Anderson film just waiting to be made.

Also from Amerika
An American writing desk : A highway : A bridge

comments: 2

Chris said...

I'm re-reading this now, after a gap of probably forty years, in the older translation by the Muirs, which features the suitably dotty illustrations by Emlen Etting. More than anything else the book reminds me of Alice in Wonderland.

Michael Leddy said...

Yes, especially the theater. There’s very much the feel of silent film comedies too. And of a Horatio Alger story gone wrong.