The Trial (Penguin Modern Classics) Paperback – International Edition, October 8, 2015

Absolutely wonderful. 🩷🩷

Kafka goes off on tangents throughout the book which makes the story readable.In fact that is the essence of the book. I loved the way the women and seemingly random people get woven into it showing how the legal system is so corrupt and how K tries to get these seemingly superfluous characters to help him rather than going the traditional routeThe ending was a surprise to me

Water stained.

Our protagonist, Joseph K. finds himself accused of a crime and awaiting trial, although he is not formally charged and does not even know the nature of the crime he has been charged with. What follows from this absurd premise is that Joseph K. finds himself entangled in a surreal and confusing process where he is trying to defend himself not only against a charge he is ignorant about, but also a charge, that in all likelihood, he can never get acquitted for.There is no shortage of analyses on what "The Trial" is about: living with bureaucracy, understanding the nature of truth and goodness and so on, but for me personally, a psychoanalytic interpretation seems to be the most fitting analysis. Joseph K. spends much of his time pursuing women while others see that he should be pursuing his case. Those who are seeking to both defend him and condemn him seem unimpressed by his arrogance and his tendency to go around chasing women. Unlike with the absurd situation of Joseph K, society does not need always explicitly put people on trial in order to get people to conform and behave. Very often our own conscience will do this for us. Joseph K. stands on trial to his guilty conscience, yet by choosing to repress his guilty conscience, he finds himself increasingly feeling judged by the world as his repressed Jungian "Shadow" finds expression in an increasingly hostile external world. For Joseph K., the only way out of this mess is to engage in self-knowledge and self-understanding, beating the court system is not about finding a good lawyer/advocate, it is about finding a good therapist, or, as is in the case of the novel, finding a priest. Unable to understand himself, Joseph K. eventually engages in the ultimate act of self-sabotage, acquiescing to his executioners for a crime he did not know he committed.Although it is a classic, I don't feel the book needed to be any longer than it was and although it is likely there was more to this unfinished work than has been recovered from Kafka's notes, I think this novel is one that needed to be kept brief. If you want more of this kind of stuff, go read Dostoevsky. This novel seems kind of eerie when one considers that some thirty years later, Kafka's poor sisters were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps. It just goes to show that the absurdism and the cruelty of real life can be even worse than anything dreamt up in a Kafka novel.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘭 tells the story of Josef K., a successful bank manager who wakes up one day to discover he’s under arrest. The book follows Josef over the next year as he navigates through a corrupt and thoroughly absurd judicial system, trying to defend himself. What begins as indignant insolence toward the courts, Josef’s life is gradually consumed over time until he’s hopelessly trapped.Filled with symbolism, it reads like a dream, surreal and disorienting, but way more grounded than 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘴, which is thoroughly bizarre. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘭 is darkly funny, even Pythonesque (or maybe Python is Kafkaesque). It explores the feelings of futility from being entangled into the forward motions of a system for which you have no control or escape, such as life’s slow progression toward death or a trip to the DMV. What’s great about this book is that the entire story is devoted to Josef’s trial, but the criminal charges are never divulged to Josef or the reader. He simply endures shallow conversations with court officials amidst a hopeless system of incompetence, negligence, and institutionalized injustice.It’s easy to relate with Josef and his plight because we’ve all been stuck in situations like his, although maybe not as dire. I could really feel his sense of despair. My favorite part was when he was told to appear at the court for his first cross-examination, given only a date and address, which turns out to be a shabby tenement building he must search before finding the courtroom at the top floor at the back of some woman’s home who’s busy doing laundry.I was aware Kafka never finished 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘭 before his death, but I hadn't realized what unfinished really meant. For example, Chapter 8 is unfinished even though the book contains chapters 9 (which IS finished) and 10, which ends abruptly, as if late one night, Kafka suddenly realized his creative writing assignment was due tomorrow. The first nine pages of chapter 7 are a single wall of text written as a stream of consciousness describing the preposterous inner workings of the court system, and some of the story tangents dragged in the middle. It makes me wonder what editing and polishing Kafka would’ve made had he time to make a second pass at it.If you’re a fan of Monty Python, or if you’ve been feeling like you’re in the starring role of a Kafka novel lately, I highly recommend 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘭. I found it entertaining, and now I’m looking forward to watching the 1962 Orson Welles movie, starring Anthony Perkins.