And, for that matter, any great writer or text:
"Impatience led to our expulsion from paradise", wrote Kafka in one of his aphorisms, "and impatience stops us returning." The besetting sin of the Kafka critic is impatience, the need to locate the mystery and then solve it, as it were, the need to move, like the man in that early story, across the text from beginning to end, not stay with it, savour it, allow it slowly to come into focus. To do this we have first of all to recognize that the best way in to Kafka is not via an idea – Kafka and mysticism, Judaism, the insurance business or the condition of modernity – but via his unique way of approaching his material.
For tech-savy Kafka fans, check out Will Self's experimental digital essay on the author.
(Photo of Kafka via Wikimedia Commons)
The Dish 