A collection of contemporary short stories offers a refreshing range of responses to the absurdist nature of modern life
Among the most Kafkaesque of cages might be that entailed by the term “Kafkaesque” itself. Lured by Kafka’s prescient and temptingly unfinished oeuvre, many talented writers have grappled with his ghost. The best of these tributes, such as Philip Roth’s essay “I Always Wanted You to Admire My Fasting”, take the cage as a starting point for the open sky. The least successful find themselves confined by it.
Ali Smith’s “Art Hotel”, an opaque tale of a family pursued by a sinister red outline that cuts them off from their house and camper van, compounds these two tendencies into a tale of indefinite escape. Like some of Kafka’s own stories, Smith’s hovers between the unexplained and the inexplicable. Despite his menacing reputation, Kafka found his writing so funny that he would pause to laugh when reading it aloud. Some writers respond especially well to these darkly comic elements of his writing.
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