Ep 712 - The Trial, by Franz Kafka

Summary

Overdue Podcast: Episode 712 - The Trial by Franz Kafka

Hosts: Andrew and Craig
Release Date: July 21, 2025

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Introduction to The Trial

In Episode 712 of Overdue, hosts Andrew and Craig delve into Franz Kafka's enigmatic novel, The Trial. They explore the complexities of the book, Kafka's intentions, and the challenges posed by its posthumous publication.

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Franz Kafka: A Brief Background

Timestamp [08:25] Andrew:
Franz Kafka, born in Prague in 1883 within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a German-speaking Jew who initially studied chemistry before switching to law. His career in the insurance industry, specifically in workers' compensation, provided him the stability to pursue his passion for writing. Despite being a published author during his lifetime, Kafka’s works gained significant recognition only posthumously.

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Publication History and Max Brod's Role

Timestamp [11:39] Craig:
Kafka’s The Trial was written between 1914 and 1915 but remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1924. Max Brod, Kafka's close friend and literary executor, defied Kafka’s wishes to burn his manuscripts, instead publishing The Trial in 1925. Brod’s edition was based on 161 loose pages without a definitive order, leading to debates about the authenticity and intent of the final text.

Timestamp [12:15] Andrew:
The publication process itself mirrors the novel's themes of bureaucratic opacity and control. Brod’s decision to publish Kafka’s unfinished work against his explicit instructions raises ethical questions about artistic intent and legacy.

Timestamp [13:13] Craig:
Disputes over Kafka’s unpublished papers persisted for decades, involving various estates and even reaching the Supreme Court of Israel. A significant milestone was achieved in 2023 when Kafka’s diaries were published unredacted, providing deeper insights into his life and thoughts.

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Translation Challenges and Latest Edition Insights

Timestamp [15:27] Andrew:
The latest English translation by Brian Mitchell aims to present The Trial as close to Kafka’s original manuscript as possible, unlike Brod’s earlier efforts to create a cohesive and finished narrative. Mitchell, a distinguished translator with numerous accolades, emphasizes fidelity to Kafka's fragmented and unfinished style.

Timestamp [16:41] Craig:
Mitchell criticizes previous translations, such as that by Willa and Edwin Moore, for missing nuanced legal connotations essential to the story's depth. He advocates for a translation that preserves Kafka’s intricate language and thematic complexity.

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Plot Overview and Thematic Exploration

Timestamp [29:32] Craig:
The Trial begins with the protagonist, Josef K., waking up to find himself under arrest without any explanation. The novel portrays his futile attempts to navigate a convoluted and opaque legal system.

Timestamp [34:21] Andrew:
K.'s confusion and the lack of clarity regarding his charges epitomize the Kafkaesque theme of individuals being trapped within incomprehensible and indifferent bureaucratic structures.

Timestamp [37:35] Andrew:
The narrative highlights the impersonal and faceless nature of authority, as K. interacts with various characters who offer no concrete information about his trial, reinforcing the sense of helplessness and existential dread.

Timestamp [42:39] Andrew:
K.'s interactions with the magistrate and his futile protests against the court's treatment underscore the novel's critique of totalitarian and impersonal systems of power.

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Personal Reflections and Insights

Timestamp [65:34] Andrew:
Andrew reflects on the struggle to interpret Kafka's intent, especially given the fragmented nature of The Trial. He emphasizes the difficulty in ascribing specific meanings to the novel due to its incomplete state.

Timestamp [68:20] Craig:
Craig discusses the pervasive and insidious nature of the court system depicted in the book, likening it to real-world scenarios where individuals feel overwhelmed by larger, uncontrollable forces.

Timestamp [70:22] Andrew:
Both hosts acknowledge the enduring impact of The Trial, noting its relevance to contemporary issues of bureaucratic overreach and the loss of individual agency.

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Conclusion

In this episode, Andrew and Craig provide a comprehensive exploration of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, delving into its intricate themes, publication history, and the ongoing challenges in translating and interpreting the work. Their discussion highlights the novel's profound commentary on authority, helplessness, and the human condition within oppressive systems.

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Notable Quotes:

• Andrew [02:01]:
  "If overdue Esque were to be a thing, what would you like that to represent?"

• Craig [11:39]:
  "...Max Brode published a lot of Kafka's unfinished work against Kafka's dying wishes with the goal of earning Kafka like recognition and acceptance."

• Craig [12:15]:
  "He must widely decide to do so definitely, finally and irresistibly, even if I had no single objection to raise against the validity of Kafka's last wishes."

• Andrew [35:27]:
  "It's almost beside the point to wonder whether he actually did anything or not."

• Craig [44:45]:
  "How did you... accidentally turn 'Kafkaesque' into something entirely different?"

• Andrew [65:34]:
  "...it's the disorienting feeling of there being powers larger than you."

---

For More Information:

Visit OverduePodcast.com for additional episodes, schedules, and to support the show via Patreon at patreon.com/overduepod.

Transcript

[Andrew]

This is a Headgum podcast.

[Craig]

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary. Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hey everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew.

[Craig]

Whoa, bump.

[Andrew]

If we were, if we were. If something was going to be overdue esque, what state of being would you like that to describe? Because Kafka, his is bad.

[Craig]

His is generally bad.

[Andrew]

And I don't. That's a whole nother thought experiment. Is like, would you rather have your name live on forever? But it describes something bad or be forgotten by history?

[Craig]

That's a good question.

[Andrew]

And that's a different question. But the question I'm asking you is if overdue Esque were to be. Were to be a thing, what, what, what would you like that to represent?

[Craig]

Perhaps overly Chuckly.

[Andrew]

Chuckly.

[Craig]

Chuckly.

[Andrew]

A couple of chuckle boys.

[Craig]

Yeah. And like.

[Andrew]

I think just something that is smart, but it's really stupid also.

[Craig]

Yeah, I like that.

[Andrew]

That's overdue Esque.

[Craig]

That's overdue Esque makes you think about smart things, but you didn't need to know all of it.

[Andrew]

What does that mean?

[Craig]

Like you just come away feeling smart.

[Andrew]

But you didn't come away smart. Okay, sure, sure, sure. Someone else does the work for you that's overdue. And you just had. And whatever quality of work those other people did is the quality that you have to live with.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

All right.

[Craig]

And about an hour.

[Andrew]

These are all strong.

[Craig]

About an hour long.

[Andrew]

It's about an hour long.

[Craig]

Yes. These are overdue Esque ideas here on our book podcast, where each week one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it. And Andrew, your trial this week is listening to me discuss the trial by Franz Kafka.

[Andrew]

Franz Kafka, who we've done on the show before.

[Craig]

Can you guess the episode number? Do you have it?

[Andrew]

Metamorphosis is like it's in the tens or something. Right.

[Craig]

Episode.

[Andrew]

Before that, Episode six. Episode six.

[Craig]

I overdo origins.

[Andrew]

I have not listened to this episode. I did not go back in my mind. I remember it as being one of the stronger early ones, along with like Da Vinci Code and maybe a couple others.

[Craig]

Sure. Only the books you read. That's fine. I'm sure I did a fine job.

[Andrew]

There's ones that you did that were good too. And there continue to be books that you have read. That are good, that make good episodes.

[Craig]

Fine.

[Andrew]

I don't know. I don't have any to hand, like off the top of my head, but I'm sure they must exist statistically.

[Craig]

Probably.

[Andrew]

But this is well before we were discussing author biography stuff, so I'm sure we both made a bunch of really funny guesses about things that we thought might be true of Franz Kafka, which was just the way we did these things.

[Craig]

He was a bug.

[Andrew]

He was a bug.

[Craig]

Yes. So we're not talking about the bug book this time?

[Andrew]

No, we're not talking about metamorphosis.

[Craig]

We are talking.

[Andrew]

Which was the bug book.

[Craig]

Talking about his posthumously published novel, the Trial novella. I don't know.

[Andrew]

We're talking about a book where one day a man wakes up and becomes a victim of a large system that is complicated and hard to understand.

[Craig]

It does follow the one day a man wakes up formula. Mm. I'm not sure how many of his other works follow that exact setup, but I've never read this work before. I'm excited to talk about it. As I said before we hit record, I'm sure I will be able to get like a little below the ocean line on this iceberg we call the Trial. But it is definitely a work that, you know, defies easy one to one allegorical definition and has come to mean a lot that is perhaps beyond the context in which it was written.

[Andrew]

This feels like the one like, of I, you know, all of his works, I'm sure have some aspect of this. This feels like the one that the word Kafka esque is the most about though, for sure.

[Craig]

Yep, we'll talk about that.

[Andrew]

Describing, like, pointlessly labyrinthine processes basically.

[Craig]

And like, it's a little funny. Darkly funny at times.

[Andrew]

To be darkly funny at times.

[Craig]

Just at times, though.

[Andrew]

Just a time.

[Craig]

And. But, but also there's an interesting element of it being an unfinished work that was then published against his stated wishes, that.

[Andrew]

I've got something about that, Greg.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

I've got something about.

[Craig]

That does lend itself to the like, what world are we in anyway? Kind of like, logic of the story. It's got like, it is not a meta story, but the facts of its publication and the impact on the versions that you can read of it do lend it a little extra, like, juice when you think about, like, it being a work about unknowable systems that are hard to decipher. Well.

[Andrew]

And one thing that I don't think we're going to get into that I did like the barest amount of Reading about only like enough reading to know that I, we were not going to be able to get into it. I did not do any kind. I do not understand if this is meant to be. You know, we're talking, we're talking about early 20th century. This is a tumultuous time on the, on the globe. The maps are about to have a lot of little like red arrows on them that point in different directions.

[Craig]

There are going to be a lot of board games made about this era. Yes, yes.

[Andrew]

So I do not know off the top of my head whether this is meant to critique any particular political system of which there are many in existence at this, at this time.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

But I think it's just any sufficiently large and complex political system probably you could apply this to.

[Craig]

I have some stuff on that for sure.

[Andrew]

Good, I'm glad that you do because I do not. Franz Kafka, not a bug. A man born in Prague in 1883, what was then the Austro Hungarian Empire. One of the, one of those 19th 20th century empires that I should know more about than I do like the Ottoman Empire. I don't know anything about that. Well and except that it like rises from the Byzantine Empire which was the Eastern Roman Empire. Like if you go back far enough I start to know stuff.

[Craig]

Well and for like as an American my like understanding of European history is very like west coast of Europe, like dealing with England through all the Revolutionary War stuff. All of our deals with France like Spain. Okay, whatever. But like I don't. Okay, you know, I'm sure we did stuff with Spain but I don't know it very well. And so like my, my understanding of historical vents events. Like I know about Bismarck. I know that like it went from this empire and turned into Germany and other countries. But yes, I do not have a great handle on those kind of century straddling empires that, that were sort of like, I don't know, stragglers.

[Andrew]

Maybe this is some good like, like to talk about Episode six. There's some good old overdue stuff where like we don't know anything about anything. We did, we did fill 90 seconds.

[Craig]

Read the book and we did do research. But let's spend a minute talking about what we don't know.

[Andrew]

This is one of those little middle empires, you know the ones that give the fall in between the couch. He's a German speaking Jew, Franz Kafka is. He studies law in college after studying chemistry for two weeks. Guess he didn't have. Guess he didn't have a lot of chemistry with the.

[Craig]

Oh My goodness.

[Andrew]

Subject matter.

[Craig]

I think he also spoke Czech as well.

[Andrew]

He did, yeah, he did. I did check that out.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And it, and that fact does check out. He was also able to study German and art history at school just because, you know, he. Law was kind of a means to an end and the end was like having a job and being alive. He didn't have a great passion for the law or anything but because he got to stay in school for longer to study law, he was able to make some time to study some other things. It was in college that he meets this man, Max Broad. A character who will become relevant in his posthumous rise to prominence that we'll talk about in a sec. In his lifetime he worked primarily in the insurance biz. He investigated workers compensation claims. Essentially this is a job that he stayed in because it left him lots of time to write. It also got him a deferment from writing from fighting in World War I. And then he also founded, he co founded the first asbestos factory in Prague with his brother in law in the early 1910s.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

By the late 1910s he'd been put on a pension from his insurance job because of tuberculosis, which is eventually what he dies from. Complications related to. Apparently he just couldn't eat anymore because his throat hurt too much. And they had not invented like intravenous feeding yet. So he just died from that. He was a published author in his lifetime, but he only really achieves fame afterward. So this, let's talk about the trial a little bit. This is written in 1914 and 1915. It's not finished during his lifetime. It's published posthumously in 1925. Kafka dies in 1924. The version that we had for many, many decades was gathered and put together by Max Broad, this guy that we talked about before. Broad published a lot of Kafka's unfinished work against Kafka's dying wishes with the goal of earning Kafka like recognition and acceptance. Like he, he. Kafka had this reputation as a guy who he, he doubted himself a lot. Like there, there were just like many, many books of his that we have that were only published posthumously. Was not a big believer in his own abilities. But other people who were around him were like this guy is. This guy has deep and profound thoughts and they must be propagated out into the world. This is Max Broadcast. The book originally was 161 loose pages with no indication of what order things went into or what was considered done or not by Kafka. Broad apparently just made himself feel Better for ignoring Kafka's wishes by telling Kafka that he would not respect his wishes before he died and then basically later saying, well, if he had really meant that he wanted me to burn all of his work when he died and not publish any of it, then he should have gone with somebody else to be his literary executor. Because I am not going to do.

[Craig]

That in the first. This comes from the publisher's note. In the Brian Mitchell translation I read, there's a quote from Brode that apparently went in the first edition of the trial. My decision rests simply and solely on the fact that Kafka's unpublished work contains the most wonderful treasures and measured against his own work, the best things he has written. In all honesty, I must confess that this one fact of the literary and ethical value of what I am publishing would have been enough to make me decide to do so definitely, finally and irresistibly, even if I had no single objection to raise against the validity of Kafka's last wishes.

[Andrew]

Mm.

[Craig]

I am a.

[Andrew]

But he does also have the objection I found.

[Craig]

There was an article in 2024 about fights over his legacy and fights over Kafka's like papers and things like that.

[Andrew]

There was a bunch of yeah, like there are a lot of papers and things that have not been published publicly because of just like fights between various estates about. And there are some things that were like taken by the Gestapo that like, some people hope will be found again someday. And like decisions that ran all the way up to like the Supreme Court of Israel just trying to decide like, who owns what. It was not until 2023 that we got a version of his like diaries correct were that were published without redactions because I guess Broad just went through and like anything that made Kafka or Broad look kind of bad, he was like, yeah, this doesn't even go in.

[Craig]

There's an essay in the New York Times by Benjamin Ballant from 2024 called Everyone Wants a piece of Kafka, a writer who refused to be claimed. You can read about some of what Andrew has talked about there, but I just noted this as he refers to Max Broad as close friend, betrayer of Kafka's last instruction to burn his manuscripts heavy handed editor of his diaries and unfinished novels and author of the first Kafka biography.

[Andrew]

Should be. Should be said. Three of Kafka's sisters and many of their children died in the Holocaust. Something I think we just need to acknowledge and sit with here in 2025.

[Craig]

Yes, that there's also a lot about in the, in the, in the preface from the publisher that talks about it getting picked up by the shogun. The publisher Shoken was. They were allowed to publish Jewish work, but only for Jewish audiences. And of course that just meant that it was going to get sold and passed around anyway. And so this was like this small Jewish publisher was like the initial wave of German folks actually getting exposed to Kafka. Yeah, it was pretty interesting. And Shokin still has the like, you know, rights to most of these, to at least the Trial and a couple other works as well.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, Kafka doesn't really get, you know, he is published during his lifetime, but he does not really rise to prominence until after World War II when all this stuff is, you know, because even the stuff that could be published during the war was, you know, it was published and buried. Like the scale of the publication was very small and like, as you mentioned. So yeah, this stuff is not disseminated widely until until after the war and then he, and then his reputation kind of takes off from there. The. But yeah, the Max Broad thing is interesting because Broad's project was like to get his friend recognition at pretty much any cost. And like maybe, you know, maybe if old Max broke gets a little bit of recognition too, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

[Craig]

I don't know. Fair enough.

[Andrew]

But the. So this edition that you read, which is translated by Brian Mitchell, how you pronounce his name? The description that the publisher put up on their website just says, but until this edition, English speaking readers have been able to read Kafka's masterpiece only as a. In a translation of the 1925 German edition edited by Kafka's friend and literary executor, Max Brode from an unfinished manuscript. Both Broad's edition and its 1937 translation by Willa and Edwin Moore have been considered flawed. This new edition is based upon the widely acclaimed work of an international team of experts who have restored the text, the sequence of chapters and their division to create a version that is as close as possible to the way the author left it. Which is interesting because Broad viewed his project more as like putting it together into something resembling a. Like a finished work. And then the international team of experts, their, their job was, okay, let's take this apart and try and reassemble it in whatever format it was that Kafka left it. So I'm curious to hear what feels unfinished. It sounds like, based on like the style and the subject matter that it's hard to tell what's intentional and what isn't.

[Craig]

Yeah, well, so there's actually. There is a. There's a translator's note about that from Mitchell. So this edition talks about Broad's goal, making things cohesive, only including what he called finished chapters, making minor additions to one chapter towards the end, and that the chapters.

[Andrew]

And it should be said that Broad, like Kafka, read Broad things. Kafka spoke to Broad, like, there. There's every reason to believe that Broad would have stuff in his head about Kafka's intentions and what he meant to have happen that did not exist solely on the page. We're not just impugning Max Brook on this podcast. I don't want to do that.

[Craig]

He said that the chapter sequence was based on what he remembered, based on internal logic and some textual evidence. For this edition, there's a chapter called Bea's Friend, which is a neighbor of the main character that they moved to the fragments section at the back of this edition. That was just an early chapter in Broad's version. Other than that, it's basically the same order, but it is as close to the manuscript as possible in terms of, I guess, punctuation, though that's a little hard to tell for me. I don't know German. I can't really tell what might be different. But Mitchell says, you know, he gives some of the same things that we've heard from, like, someone like Emily Wilson, which is like, all translations age quickly, but that he cops to it being an unfinished work, which does present challenges because you. If he wants to present the work as it was, he actually has to, like, make it a little less clear and try to represent the fact that Kafka, like, wrote a thing around when he, like, broke up an engagement. It was in a weird space and then, like, yeah, put it in a drawer and never wanted anyone to see it. So he didn't really edit it himself either.

[Andrew]

Yeah, Like, a lot of our favorite translators and translations are all. They all talk about the desire to, like, transmit some. Some innate, like, truth or meaning about the work. Like, and putting that above being, like, literally true to the. To the words on the page. And that is way harder to do when you do not know what the person meant to do because they died before they finished their thing. Let's just talk about Mitchell real quick. In our. In our tradition of honoring translators and all the work that they do. He's born in 1942. He's still kicking. He's a professor emeritus of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. I believe we also ran into the old IUB recently when we did our Booth Tarkington episode.

[Craig]

Oh, the old iub.

[Andrew]

And he's a charter member of the American Literary Translators association, primarily a translator of German work, including the Trial and lots of other work. For this and his other translations, he's been awarded ATAs Unger Prize, the Alta Translation Prize, the Kurt and Helen wolf Prize, the MLAs Aldo and Jen Scaglioni Prize, the British Society of Authors Schlegel Check Prize. I should have read these before I.

[Craig]

Read them on the air.

[Andrew]

And the Banff Centers Linda Gaborio Prize. Okay, and this is, this is from his page on the Indiana University Bloomington site. Just like a little thing from him that I thought was sweet. So I'm going to read it. My life as a literary translator began at the Jayhawk Cafe in Lawrence, Kansas, eating peach pie and drinking Pepsi, translating Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Death and the fool into blank verse with a friend. We were second year college German students just back from a summer in Germany in 1961, alive with enthusiasm for Hoffmansthahl's glowing language and with his message to live life to the fool before it simply passes us by. For us, that life was as much in words as it was in the world. Our translation filled almost every evening that semester. And when we were finished and we did what most would be writers did at college, founded a literary magazine and published the passages we love best, along with translations by any other German students foolhardy enough to lift their eyes above their abilities. Happily, we knew enough to include the German originals, although I can't say we always knew quite enough about copyright laws.

[Craig]

That's funny.

[Andrew]

God bless the people out here doing artistic work without fully understanding copyright law.

[Craig]

He did say, yeah, he studied with one of the guys who worked that like eight 1980s review of all the Kafka manuscripts because Broad passed away in the late 60s. And then over the next decade, the Kafka stuff comes into the hands of big Kafka heads who are like, we want to get at this stuff. And so he studied with Malcolm Paisley and he really like loved working reading Kafka before he ever got a chance to work on him. He does kind of slag the Muir translation a lot in his, in his note, talking about how they've really like because they've gone for a clarity, they've missed a lot of the additional meaning in the German, something as simple as the opening line in his Translation. Someone must have slandered Joseph K. For one morning without having done anything wrong. He was arrested, and he, you know, is like, why would you say telling lies? You're missing a legal connotation. Why would you say in the other translation, one fine morning. Why are you doing that? It's not a fine morning. He's getting arrested. That doesn't mean anything. Stop it. Like, he's just eager to, you know, drill down on what the German is expressing and not add things to it.

[Andrew]

I think that's totally fine. I think we have. When we. When we pick out the things that we don't like about older translations, I think we have to. At some point, you have to stop and ask yourself, okay, this is the reason why anybody knows what this. Yeah, that's a fair point. You do have to pay some homage to people for, like, popularizing a thing, even if they did it in a way that you personally do not agree with.

[Craig]

Yeah. A lot of what he spends time doing is being like, there are specific legal, religious, and theatrical notions in this work that they. They just kind of were like, either they were not uninterested in, didn't think were important. And he's like, no, I've been reading this forever. That's what's the. That's what it's about. So, like, here's. Here's what my translation is doing.

[Andrew]

When you do. When you do a new translation, you also have to be like, okay, why me? Necessary? Like, yeah, so me all the time.

[Craig]

Andrew, before we take our break here, I just want to share a quick link with you in our overdue discord. Patreon.com overdue pod to join Ambrose said I was a moody Kafka fanboy in my youth. Literally had a Kafka T shirt. I'm pretty sure I read this maybe 30 years ago. Talks about the dreamlike quality of the work. I just needed to know what a Kafka T shirt might be. I'm just gonna send you a red bubble link. When I searched for Franz Kafka under T shirts.

[Andrew]

All right, we got a bug. We got lots of. We got. We got the one that is just a bug that says I woke up like this, which is really good.

[Craig]

A lot of shadows of a man that are a bug. Yeah, there. I like the one that's just a pack of Camus cigarettes that says. What does it say on it?

[Andrew]

Living kills.

[Craig]

Living kills.

[Andrew]

But that's not even to do with Kafka. That's philosopher Albert Camus. Albert Camus, essential T shirt.

[Craig]

Why is this even coming up in philosophy on it? What? These are all. Why? Where's my Franz Kafka? A lot of shirts that just say RIP Franz Kafka.

[Andrew]

That's. I mean, he is dead. So that makes sense.

[Craig]

Just love the Vitruvian man. But he's a bug. I like that.

[Andrew]

I just. How many I. Boy, just. Just a lot of artists probably going uncredited on a lot of these redbubble T shirts, huh?

[Craig]

Look at this man wearing.

[Andrew]

I don't want to cast aspersions. I just feel like probably some people's intellectual property is not being respected on this.

[Craig]

Look at this. Look at the man wearing this bug.

[Andrew]

Shir.

[Craig]

Andrew, describe to me the model wearing this Vitruvian bug shirt that I sent you.

[Andrew]

He's just a man. He's just a nice.

[Craig]

Do you think he.

[Andrew]

Clicking the link? I can. I'm just looking.

[Craig]

Do you just like.

[Andrew]

Oh, he does look like he hits his jewel and then talks about Franz Kafka on the quad all the time.

[Craig]

I just think more people should wear Franz Kafka shirts. But definitely if you're buying T shirts with real art on it, I think.

[Andrew]

I think. I mean, if you go. If you click a few down. I definitely think people should wear Franz Kafka T shirts with their light wash boot cut jeans. I guess boot cuts are back now. I don't know what. I don't know what style of jean people are wearing anymore. Susanna got some boot cut jeans again. And she's like, I'm doing this because it's. Because it's the style now. But I really hate how they feel.

[Craig]

And look, don't wear them.

[Andrew]

She found one. That is that. She found that one. That was fine.

[Craig]

That's coffee.

[Andrew]

That was fine. That is coffee.

[Craig]

I hate these clothes, but I must wear them because of.

[Andrew]

Because style, because of society.

[Craig]

Anyway, go. Speaking of buying things, whether or not you want to. Let's take a quick break.

[Andrew]

Good. No, no, this is good podcasting.

[Craig]

Take a quick break and then I'll tell you about the trial.

[Andrew]

This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Craig, you know what? Doesn't have to be Kafkaesque.

[Craig]

No, everything is to me.

[Andrew]

Well, if you have a website that you want to make, Craig. Oh, that doesn't need to be a trial. That does not need to be Kafka esque. That does not need to be complicated at all because of the people at Squarespace.

[Craig]

Help me navigate this byzantine system of code.

[Andrew]

Mm. Yeah. You don't have to. You don't have to suddenly wake up one day. As a web developer, you can just get up as you are right now and go to your computer and go to squarespace.com and find easy to use templates and drag and drop tools and all kinds of other stuff to help you make a website look and act just like you want a website to look and act.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But you don't need to know any of the little bits and bytes that make it do the stuff that it do.

[Craig]

I don't want to know that stuff. So please Squarespace, you don't have.

[Andrew]

There's so much other stuff you have to know. You don't have to know how a website work because Squarespace got you.

[Craig]

But what do I need to know about what Squarespace can do?

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

I feel like you're going to activate.

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[Craig]

All right Andrew, let's get down to some Kafka esque business.

[Andrew]

Der process.

[Craig]

Their process, which Mitchell reminds us is not in. In German. That doesn't just mean the trial. It means all the stuff around the trial. And I did.

[Andrew]

I've watched enough the Good Wife to know the things that happen around a trial.

[Craig]

Fair enough.

[Andrew]

And there's a lot. There's a lot of preparation. There's a lot of yelling at the people under you to do stuff. There's a lot of sexual tension with your old college classmate and now boss.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

There's a lot of stuff that goes on.

[Craig]

Sounds like Franz Kafka's the Trial to me. There is less courtroom in this book than I perhaps thought. There's less.

[Andrew]

It's the first half of a Law and Order episode and not the second half of the Law and Order.

[Craig]

There's even less like confusing interrogations than I thought in this book. It's really different from what I expected knowing that going going in my associations of Kafka esque of like, okay, it's when the system is getting you but you don't understand why or how or how you would get out of it. From one LA Review of Books article I read, Frederick Carle described it as we view life as somehow overpowering or trapping us as in some way undermining our will to live as we wish. Sure, yes, of course. But my brain is like yeah, it means when. When there's a shadowy government that's in control of everything you do and you can't explain it or escape it. And that is sort of happening here, but in a. Milan Kundera apparently wrote about this book in an essay and like talked about how in the latter part of the 20th century, even the mid part of the 20th century, folks on both sides of the Cold War would be like happy to tell you that the trial was about the other side.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Craig]

Like it is about alienation within a capitalist society, which I think it is. It is also about the control of a totality. What if it was a communist totalitarian state? It's not a communist state, but oh, a totalitarian system of authority. That yeah, it's about that too. When you were talking about it, like what government it is depicting. I did read a little bit that the. You're still Kafka is coming out of an empire. Right. Where a. A political leader has claimed a form of divine authority. And there is a lot in this book about the notion of the law. Capital L, the law as the book puts it, that you could map that and maybe Kafka was mapping it onto an understanding of like a higher power that you cannot, you don't have access to and judges you without your, you know, permission or your ability to. To participate. So all of that any, you know, as you said earlier, any system sufficiently big enough can be the Kafka s system that you are trapped in. And in the decades of it being mapped onto real things, things as recent as, you know, the American government disappearing people. The word Kafka S comes up a lot in the coverage of the Alberga Garcia deportation and ongoing disaster. Yeah, just. Oh, you. All of the students who have had their immigration visas completely messed up and they can't appeal for them to be messed up because the government denies that they've been messed up in the first place. But you can't continue to study here anymore. That type of stuff. You'll see the word Kafka esque in coverage and it was interesting reading.

[Andrew]

All valid uses.

[Craig]

All valid uses. And so it was interesting to just go to the. And the tree that has borne such awful fruit. You know what? No, no, no, no. But like where did this come from? As I said, the book opens. Someone must have slandered Joseph K. For one morning without having done anything wrong. He was arrested on his 30th birthday. Birthday. He wakes up in his bed and two Keystone Cops have come into his house. They might be cops. He's not sure. They're guards of some kind of. And they tell him that he's arrested. They don't tell him what for, but he has been charged and there will be a trial.

[Andrew]

I think this is what 23 year olds just assume is what happens to you when you turn 30.

[Craig]

Life.

[Andrew]

It's all. It's all. It's like a big Logan's run sort of.

[Craig]

Yes. This is where. This is where all the adults went. And so they don't. They claim they don't even know what the charges are. But they are here to tell him that he is under arrest and will be facing trial. And he is confused. After all, quote, he lived in a state governed by law. There was universal peace, all statutes were in force. Who dared assault him in his own lodgings? He wonders the book never. The book never tells you that he might be guilty of anything. Mitchell kind of points out that depending on how you translate the book, you can make his innocence like completely unassailable. This translation maybe doesn't quite do that other than the fact that like there's no evidence of him doing anything criminal anywhere.

[Andrew]

But you do like you wake up the day of the. Of the charging. Like you were not. You're not following him through whatever it is that he might have. Have done. Like, is it. Are you getting the whole thing from a first person or close third very perspective? Like, would you.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Okay, so you, you would not really have access to any information other than what he is giving you.

[Craig]

Correct. And that's the point. That's the point of the way of the framing.

[Andrew]

Like it almost. It almost seems like it's beside the point to wonder whether he actually did anything or not.

[Craig]

Correct. Correct.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And I think even if there is stuff in the book like he is a little loose with women, you know, not that I think the book as.

[Andrew]

Kafka was a little bit.

[Craig]

So I don't know the book is even judging him for that. But if you want to make any. Like, oh, maybe he did some. The book is mostly like, well, it's pretty bad that even if anything in his life were being judged, this is how he's being judged. Right.

[Andrew]

That's the. Yeah. And that's the thing. That's the problem with doing like he was no angel style coverage after somebody is like accused of some wrongdoing is you always have to follow that thought to its logical conclusion. Which is like, so he deserved whatever.

[Craig]

It is that's happening to him and that's not. Yeah, this book is not really interested in that. So he wakes up and he's very confused. He's with these Keystone cops who are in his house. Well, he lives in a boarding house. He expected the, you know, woman he rents from or her maid or cook or something to bring in his breakfast. And that didn't happen. There were, you know, these guys there and they're very silly. And he at one point entertains the thought that maybe they are just playing a prank on him, which is not the case. They usher him into his neighbor's room where there is an inspector and three men from the bank where. Where K works. And that is never explained. There's lots of stuff in this book never explained. Which is the point.

[Andrew]

Right, which is the point. Yeah.

[Craig]

Just like both 2K and to you, like you're just like. There are images of like, why are there three guys from my office here? They're not saying why they're here. They're not saying if they know anything. And then you're just like. Then he just moves through the world with that knowledge. Right.

[Andrew]

The Joseph K. I just keep thinking of like the Ren and Stimpy guy, like the disgraced.

[Craig]

Oh, sure.

[Andrew]

Ren and Stimpy guy. John K. John K. Yeah. Are they related, do you think?

[Craig]

I don't.

[Andrew]

John K. I don't think so.

[Craig]

And the book mostly calls him K or air K. German. So the book, it also, like, I just read that snippet that says, like, it's a state governed by law with universal peace. I guess it takes place in a city in the Austrian, Hungarian Empire or Germany or Austria. Czech somewhere. It's really. It really doesn't care. It does. That's not the point. It's a city that. That much is important. And, you know, it is in our world because it. Italy and France exist because there are references to someone being Italian and the language of France. So. But no, the guy in the Inspector in the other room is like, hey, I don't know your charges. I don't know what they are. I can't tell you what they are. But you have been charged. You will face a trial. You will have to show up next Sunday for an inquiry. Here's the address. And you're free to go about your life. Go to work, have fun. See you there. But you're under trial. But you're in a trial now.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And so his whole life now is just like, what did I do? Why are they arresting me for it? How do I get out of it? Who should I tell about any of it? Because he doesn't want to tell people at work. Lest that be a. He works at a bank, right? He's like a. He's not a vp. He's, like, below a vp, but he's some, you know, big to do at a bank.

[Andrew]

A vv. Vvp Maybe he might be a vvp.

[Craig]

And he does, like, apologize to his landlady, who seems really like, whatever, about the whole thing. He tries to talk to his neighbor about it, and she is like, why are you accosting me so late after I came home from the theater? And then he goes to the inquiry, and it. This is when you're like, okay, what book. What book am I reading? He goes, it's not a courthouse, Andrew. It's a weird apartment building. It's a weird, rundown tenement building.

[Andrew]

Stuff can be in any building, though. Like, it doesn't like that. That bank that used to be a. Like, okay, that building that used to be a Wendy's. That used to be a bank.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

In South Philadelphia. You can just put stuff anywhere you can.

[Craig]

The. The effect that I believe Kafka was going for if he had actually wanted to publish this work Is which he did.

[Andrew]

Which he did not.

[Craig]

Which he did not. Is that whatever this court is, which, as Mitchell points out in his note, does not really map to any known court of human law, exists everywhere and is kind of in all the places you wouldn't expect it to be in, and is in places of urban decay also on top of it. I don't know what that means, but it seems important. It's in this, like, tenement apartment house. K goes in to try and find where the inquiry is supposed to take place. But he doesn't want to just knock on every apartment door and go, I'm looking for the place where I'm on trial. So he goes around asking people if. If they know. He makes up a carpenter and asks them if the carpenter lives there. I. It's kind of an. I don't know why he does this. It's very silly. And then finally he opens the door and his lady's like, yeah, come on in. And then that's the courtroom. It's this big, weird courtroom that's just a meeting hall full of people. And there is a magistrate there who's like, you're an hour late, and you're immediately like, what kind of. Is this even a real trial? What is going on? They seem to know things about him, but they're obviously not telling him anything about his case. And he spends several pages denouncing the court, you know, saying that this is. You know, what is this kind of treatment? Also, this isn't about me. This is about all the sorts of people that I know are treated this way. And while this is happening, before it can come to a real conclusion, the washerwoman that let him in is, like, assaulted by a law student in the crowd. He goes to try to stop her, and the. The crowd that has been jeering and. Or cheering him on during his big speech kind of turns on him, and he has to, like, run out of there. Left it, like, lest they, like, beat him up. It's very unclear what they're gonna do.

[Andrew]

Why did they turn. Why did they turn on.

[Craig]

I don't know. They did. They like him in the first place. He sees. He, like, sees that they're all wearing, like, pins on their chest, like they're part of some secret society. He intuits that they're all members of this shadowy court that don't make any. That hate him or something, okay? And he has to get out of there. He comes back a week later, and the court is not in session. And it's just a washerwoman There sounds like a weird.

[Andrew]

Craig. This sounds like a weird one.

[Craig]

This is a weird.

[Andrew]

Sounds like a weird book.

[Craig]

This is a weird one. I really thought. I really thought this book was gonna be, like, weird interrogation room stuff. Like, I thought it was mostly gonna be the. Like, I don't understand the charges against me.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it could be like, weird interrogation room stuff. It could be like. Like, whatever happens. Whenever a character on a TV show has to go to, like, the dmv, it just becomes like this weird, like, Parks and Rec kind of depiction of a broken system that just, like, sends you in a. In a loop over and over again. And, like, being enmeshed in the system is part of the punishment.

[Craig]

Yes, but.

[Andrew]

No, but it doesn't sound like that's what it is.

[Craig]

No, because, like, he goes back to this court and there's nobody there except the washerwoman, who is also the wife of the court usher. And she, like, seduces Joseph K. For reasons that are unknown. He gets a look at.

[Andrew]

Is he. Is he a cutie?

[Craig]

He might be.

[Andrew]

I don't know. I don't think the reasons have to be unknown.

[Craig]

Fair enough. Known to her, I suppose. Not unknown to us. K stands for cutie, I guess. I don't know. I don't know. German. The magistrates notebooks.

[Andrew]

Somebody who really, really misunderstands what Kafka esque is just like, getting on the dating apps and being like, whoa, that is them. Them hips is Kafkaesque. I could. I could get lost in that. In that system for forever. You know what I mean?

[Craig]

I do like the idea of using Kafkaesque wholly incorrectly. I like that.

[Andrew]

Just confidently, but incorrectly.

[Craig]

How did you.

[Andrew]

As every college student through has used it, you know what I mean?

[Craig]

Oh, my God, that meal last night.

[Andrew]

Kafka esque, man, that was Kafka esque.

[Craig]

The escargot, Kafkas cargo. Wow. The magistrates notebooks were all just porn. The magistrates running this weird kangaroo court, they just have porn instead of notebooks. So clearly this all makes sense. The law student that tried to assault this woman in the previous chapter, he comes back and he picks her up and puts him on his. Puts her on his shoulder and just runs out of the room.

[Andrew]

Huh?

[Craig]

Maybe he's gonna go make her sleep with the judge. It's unclear. K meets all the other defendants who are like. They're all just, like, wasting away. They. It gives the vibe of all those little heads and Little Mermaid.

[Andrew]

That weird little head. Yeah, yeah. What's the deal with those guys?

[Craig]

Very like, or the people in the.

[Andrew]

Waiting rooms or whatever.

[Craig]

The people in the waiting room had Beetlejuice. Like just like these lost souls is the vibe. He starts to feel kind of sick in the, in the building and he has to, he has to get outside. K does. And I'm like, okay, so this isn't at this point also he has kind of abandoned figuring out what he's on trial for in a, in a detective way. Like there's no sounds like he's trying.

[Andrew]

To like figure out what the next.

[Craig]

Exactly it is like what is even possible next. He is taken for granted that there is now a case that, that he is a part of and he I guess has to move through it somehow, but he's not quite sure. And he's really protective of work. He goes back to work, he opens the closet door at work and the two Keystone cops from the first chapter are being flogged by a guy for why un. Not doing a good enough job at whatever their job is.

[Andrew]

That's Kafkaesque.

[Craig]

It's very Kafka esque.

[Andrew]

That's the thing is any describing anything that happens in this book definitionally it's Kafkaesque. Just because it doesn't conform to, you know, the popular definition of the word that's true doesn't mean it's not Kafka.

[Craig]

It's all in there. Maybe it's Kafka. Ish.

[Andrew]

That's a different. Kafka is just different.

[Craig]

But he, he's like looking at this very confused. They want to stop getting flogged. The flogger won't obviously flogging them. And he comes back like the next day and it's still happening. Like it wasn't a dream. It's still going on in the closet at his bank that he works at.

[Andrew]

Geez.

[Craig]

Again, why? Nobody knows. And the imagery of it is very. Every position in this ladder of power is, you know, being oppressed by the person above it or is at least being kept in the dark by the person above it.

[Andrew]

I'm gonna just assume that we never come anywhere close to meeting the person at the top of that ladder. It's just, it's just a ladder that.

[Craig]

Up into the sky, man.

[Andrew]

Whatever. That effect, you know the, the effect in art where you like look at something and you can't tell where the endpoint is.

[Craig]

Like that's, that's like a vanishing point or a. Yeah, maybe, maybe trump lure something. Trompe delu. It's a trick of the eye. It's French it's not Kafka esque. You think it's vanishing point, but you're not sure what it is.

[Andrew]

There's just a 1971 film that's messing up the Googles.

[Craig]

I don't think it's vanishing.

[Andrew]

Yes and no. It is a point on the image plane of a perspective rendering where two dimensional perspective projections of parallel lines and three dimensional space appear to converge. Yes.

[Craig]

Okay, great. The his uncle appears and is like, hey, I heard you have a trial going. Why aren't you doing anything about it? And K is like, I don't know what to do about it. So he takes him to meet this old lawyer. The old lawyer is weird. He's like a dying weird. He's an old lawyer. He's like a dying old lawyer who sits in his bed all day and members of this court come and visit him. And also his clients come and visit him. And also he has a somewhat sexy nurse, I guess he has a nurse who is probably his mistress. And also as soon as she gets K alone in a room, they have sex.

[Andrew]

Nice.

[Craig]

And then that's Kafkaesque, baby. It makes K's uncle very mad, but the guy still takes him on as a client. So, you know, go figure how that works. The whole book takes place over the course of a year. Perhaps due to the lack of it being a finished work and perhaps due to it being very Kafka esque. The timeline is a little wobbly. Like, how long is it happening between these chapters?

[Andrew]

I'm sure it's like this feels like a thing that's not even worth, like trying to pick apart just because the intent is so unclear. Yep. Yeah.

[Craig]

The lawyer is not really making much progress. He's doing something. And eventually there is like a goal maybe of making a petition to say like this, I should not be charged with whatever it is you're charging me with. Which K recognizes would require basically writing down everything that has happened in his life and trying to explain his intention for everything he has done, because he has no idea what part of his life is on trial. He a guy comes into his office at the bank and is like, hey, I know this painter named Titorelli. He's a painter. He paints the judges at court. He has interesting access to the judges. You might want to go talk to him, see what you can learn about the court. Kay goes in. There's a bunch of weird girls running around. The narrator implies that they're attracted to the stink of trials, that they're attracted to men who are embroiled in these trials. He goes into the weird room with the Painter. It's definitely a room out of a David lynch movie. There's earlier in the chapter, there's no windows. Later in the chapter, there's one solid pane of glass against the wall. That is a bad window. Spielberg directed that scene. It's how it works.

[Andrew]

Okay, sure.

[Craig]

I mean, how did the T. Rex stand on the ground and then they just fall off a cliff? I don't know if you've seen Jurassic Park. It's very strange. Spielberg, he explains the Painter does the three possible outcomes of the trial. Andrew. Okay, actual acquittal, which is impossible. It's never going to happen. It can't happen. It's never happened.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Craig]

Temporary acquittal or apparent acquittal, which is when the judges who have the power over you in the immediate sense will, like, not bother you anymore, but they don't have the control to, like, end your case forever. So maybe in a few years, a higher court judge would be like, we should really go back and get that.

[Andrew]

Yeah. So you just, like, you. You go live your life and. But you still have this thing hanging over your head, which is pretty much the. What is happening already. Yep.

[Craig]

And then there's protraction, which is where you. You don't get that first thing, but you can just delay the trial forever as best you can delay the progress of the trial. And only the latter. Only the.

[Andrew]

That sounds like more. That sounds preferable to the second one, because at least you would feel like you're in control of something.

[Craig]

You know, think about it. I don't know. I don't know which one I would like because, like, I would like the first one, but apparently I like the.

[Andrew]

First one, but the first one's not possible.

[Craig]

The scene ends with him really struggling to be in this tiny little room with this painter because he's sitting on this painter's bed because it's a little studio. And the painter's like, hey, buy my art, please. And he does buy his art. He goes, okay, now you can leave through the door that's right behind the bed there. And he opens the door, and it's another attic in a tenement building that has law offices in it. What very Scooby Doo nonsense. There's a scene where he goes to dismiss the lawyer and instead meets a guy who's also being represented, and the lawyer makes that guy act like a little doggy and, like, bow to him. It's very weird. I don't like that chapter. The climax of the book, my opinion, the big scene is he goes to a cathedral that he's supposed to meet an Italian client from the bank at. Okay, he sits down in the cathedral. There's a bunch of bad paintings in the cathedral. And a priest starts talking to him directly knows who he is. Weird, strange, he reveals himself to be the prison chaplain. So he is also involved in the court system behind whatever this trial is. And they have a long discussion about a parable about a gatekeeper and a man from the country trying to access the law. Okay, now, this was published twice before the trial as a short story essay that Kafka wrote called before the Law. And it is like a little philosophical story that he wrote where a man from the country wishes to gain entry to the law via an open doorway. There's a little doorkeeper who says, you can't go through at this time, it's possible, but not now. And so the guy spends the rest of his life outside the door trying to get past the doorkeeper. Not, like ever fighting him or doing anything like that. Tries to bribe him, ask him lots of questions. Sometimes the doorkeeper answers questions of him, ask questions of him. But then he gets to the end of his life and he's dying. And he's just like, hey, what's the deal with this door? If everybody seeks the law, why haven't I seen anybody else come up to this door and the door. And the doorkeeper says, no one else could be admitted here. The gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it. And then the man dies.

[Andrew]

What? You can't just do that.

[Craig]

The book can. You then spends several pages with the priest examining multiple interpretations of this story and what it could mean. Oh, boy, it's wild. I won't summarize them all here, but you can kind of tell that there's like, Kafka had a real cool, like, thought he had a real cooking idea here, which I do think it is an interesting little nugget to chew on.

[Andrew]

He did. Maybe he didn't think he had a cooking idea, because maybe he had this idea and then he was like, I'm not gonna finish this one.

[Craig]

Well, no, this won't be.

[Andrew]

This won't be a problem. I'll never. I'll never put this one out there. It's not going to be an issue.

[Craig]

I think he liked the little. It had been published. I think he liked this little law story that he wrote. I've seen some interpretations of it that, like, liken it to some, like, Talmudic stories. And like, you can view the law in this little parable as becoming closer to God or some sort of divine power. But the main thing that you are taking from this story is that, like, the priest can consider all manner of interpretations of this parable also. What does he say? The correct understanding of a matter and misunderstanding of the matter are not mutually exclusive. So you can, like, that is both pursuant to one specific interpretation of the story, but also, I think is a little bit about the larger. Like, you can get what this means without actually getting what this means. And they go through a whole debate of, like, which of the two men is freer. And you're like, what am I talking about? And then, and then even K is like, I really don't like thinking about this. Or I wish I had never heard this stupid story. And he asks the chaplain for more help with his case. And the chaplain refuses. Like, okay, that, that wasn't it. Like, there's nothing else like that in the book, though. The book is kind of a series of K going to people and being like, what do I do about this trial? And they all have their own kind of one weird trick to it.

[Andrew]

And none of them seem like they really decisively fix or do anything.

[Craig]

No. And here we're gonna get to get to the end of this Kafkaesque tale here and then we'll. We'll wrap up.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

It ends on K's 31st birthday. Andrew. He is now 30 or 40.

[Andrew]

It's been a whole year of this. Yes.

[Craig]

And he's going out on the town for his birthday. Apparently. Like, the trial's still going on. It's unclear. Does he report to things? What. What is he doing? Did he fire the lawyer? These questions have not been answered because, of course the book was never finished.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Craig]

He spoilers alert for the trial. On his way out, he is taken by two well dressed men. Just taken by them. Similar to the beginning of the book. They take his stuff. They take him out to a rock quarry. They make him lie down on a slab of rock and they tell him that this is the verdict basically of his trial.

[Andrew]

Mm.

[Craig]

They start passing a knife back and forth over him. And K realizes or has an intuition that he is supposed to grab the knife and kill himself.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

And he refuses.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

And so they kill him, holding him at the neck and stabbing him in the chest.

[Andrew]

Do their work for them. Why would you?

[Craig]

Yeah. As he is dying, he thinks like a dog about how they killed him. And that's the end in my edition. Then there are the fragments, which are chapters that bro didn't, they are not finished. Like one, he like, goes to his girlfriend's house, but all that's written are like three pages of him deciding to go there. One is him going to his mom's house, and it's just the part where he gets permission from work to go to his mom's house.

[Andrew]

Stuff where you could not by any, like, definition of any word, consider them like something complete to be, like, worked into the story.

[Craig]

You would have to, you would have to come up with additional material which broad seemed reticent to do.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

And yeah, every, every reaction to this book I've seen, like, note it as a rushed ending. I think it, it is rushed in the sense that it is very quick and it is very sudden. I don't know. Rushed.

[Andrew]

Rush doesn't seem like, I think abrupt.

[Craig]

Abrupt.

[Andrew]

Rushed implies that there was some kind of authorial, Yeah, I don't know, intent or control in some way.

[Craig]

You know what I mean? Like, yeah, it feels like a complete little scene. I will say that, like the, the scene itself, I don't know how you would elongate it other than to like, maybe if you were working on this full novel for longer, you would put in more like retrospective thought from K before the knife hits him. But sure, as an, as a bit of action, it feels as complete as all of the other chapters that we've been given feel complete. And it is like this horrific sacrificial death. That's one of the things that Mitchell calls out in the translators. Note that the mirrors just said it was like on a boulder. And Mitchell's like, no, it's important that it's like a man made slab that makes it more like a sacrificial altar and that it's part of like systems that men have created. You're like, all right, dude, you read your gaft. I guess, like, all right. And there's. There's a few other, you know, fragmentary passages at the end. But yeah, I was like, I knew that it ended in his death, but I didn't know how we were gonna get there. And it is pretty shocking. And the little bit about the knife is like a really interesting detail that the system wants him to do it himself, but he does get, he does refuse. Which is interesting given how kind of completely the book has made him complicit in it. Like, he can't leave or he doesn't leave or he keeps going to work. There is this. Oh, Andrew. There is this. There is this paragraph that Feels like just. We're living. I read. I read one man. I read one, like, essay from 2020 where someone was talking about, like, early lockdown. Feeling like the trial. Okay, sure, but listen to this paragraph.

[Andrew]

Oh, go watch Eddington or whatever where he is.

[Craig]

Kay is thinking about, like, continuing to live his life while the trial is ongoing. And now he was expected to work for the bank. Now he was supposed to admit clients and deal with them while his trial rolled on. While the officials of the court were up there in the attic going over the trial documents, he was supposed to conduct bank business. Didn't that seem like a form of torture sanctioned by the court, a part of the trial itself, accompanying it? How do they expect us to just live? Andrew?

[Andrew]

There's been some part of my brain that's been like that basically since I became a dad.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

I'm supposed to keep. I'm supposed to keep doing all this other stuff, too.

[Craig]

A version of this exists for every ongoing concern in my life. Like, I have to go to work. And the Phillies are playing like this. I have to go to work. And these people are in charge in Washington. These knuckleheads, these.

[Andrew]

Yeah. These guys, these clowns.

[Craig]

I have to go to work. And the Popeye sandwich is sold out. Like, it all tracks to this, like, vibe right now.

[Andrew]

That was such a watershed moment for you. The Popeyes Chicken sandwich.

[Craig]

I just remember being, like. It was still. We were still kind of coming out of lockdown when that happened. And it was, like, running down the city streets, and people were outside, like, in line trying to get these sandwiches. It's. How do they expect us to live?

[Andrew]

Andrew, you know that. That sensation that you. This is. This is documented somewhere. Like, if you're carrying, like, heavy stuff in, like, both your hands, and you kind of have, like, your. I don't know. You're like. Your arm stuck.

[Craig]

Two milk jugs.

[Andrew]

Yes. You're carrying two heavy things, and you put the heavy things down, and then you can just feel, like, your arms, like, trying to. To rise back up because they're so used to carrying. Heavy thing. If you put my brain circa, like, 2014 into my head now. I don't. I don't know. I don't know how to not have that number of, like, cares.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Anymore. Like, I don't know what it feels like to be so unburdened. And I know. I know at the time that I felt like I had a lot of stuff going on. I did. And I know. And I've always, like, been sorted, like, struggling with, like, anxiety and depression and all that stuff. I know that that has been a constant.

[Craig]

And yet.

[Andrew]

And yet, boy, I do not like the stuff that I must have been worried about. Must have been really stupid. Like, I just don't. I just. I just would be curious to experience that sensation again.

[Craig]

Yeah. I think that's what I can't access.

[Andrew]

That I've just, like, gotten used to so many, like, successive layers of things at this point.

[Craig]

There is.

[Andrew]

I don't know how to find my way back.

[Craig]

There is an element of the frog and the boiling water to this book, I think. Right. That is, like. It does have this abrupt beginning of men, you know, coming into his house, but it's very quickly. He has, like, not accepted. But at least in the text we're given, like, he is now operating in a world where he is on trial and he will never know for what, and he will never know by whom, but that is the state of his reality now. And he has to proceed in a way that allows him to live despite that or with that. And I think that's, you know, that's what gives the book its power, even if it's a little mushy in some spots and is not, like, really concerned with being always narratively legible. Like, that is not. It is really about the. The disorienting feeling of there being powers larger than you.

[Andrew]

Yeah. It's like, it's not. They can't. It can't have intentional. Intentionality. Like, it can't. It can't mean to do anything because it is. An international team of experts set out to put this in the order that it was in when Kafka died. And so it can't be anything because he died and he didn't want. He wanted it to be burned instead of public.

[Craig]

This is a. But, Andrew. We're not typically author is dead folks on this podcast, but I think in this one.

[Andrew]

But when you didn't finish it, you can be dead. Like, if the author is. Even if the author is dead, we can still talk about what the author meant.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And in this case, it's hard to define even what the author meant.

[Craig]

I think. I know. I think we know some of what he meant.

[Andrew]

We know some of what he meant, but we don't know. Like, if he had. If Max Brode had been like, listen, dog, I know that you're dying of complications related to tuberculosis, but I'm gonna publish this anyway. If you have infinite time to set it exactly the way you would want to set it before you sent it out in the world. What would you do? Like, we just don't know what that version of the. The story.

[Craig]

No, but we do know the effect it has had, despite not having perhaps full authorial intent.

[Andrew]

That's fine. That's. It's fine to know what effect it had. I'm just saying we don't. We can't. You can't ascribe any intent to the story because you don't know. Yeah, I guess where it would have ended up.

[Craig]

You and I like to ascribe a lot of intent to stories. I think there are plenty of people who will read a story without ascribing authorial intent to it.

[Andrew]

I think we strike a balance between author is dead and Author is not, where you can be like, listen, this is what the author said they wanted to do. This is what the author said they were going for. And then also this is how we encountered the work. And I think that the American Psycho stuff was like, exhibit A and how that goes. It's like Bret Easton Ellis can say whatever he wants about how that story was supposed to go, and then we also can encounter it and be like, whoa, this is a bit much, dude. And in this one, you don't have. You don't have the benefit of knowing what Kafka's like, intent for the final form of this would have been.

[Craig]

No, but that's. You're not reading the final form of it either. You can read just, like, get things out of it.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I'm not going full, like, acting is lying on this with you. Like, I'm not trying to get into a conflict about. I'm just. I'm just saying it is. If you start talking about what the author meant to do and what the, like, the work's intended meaning is. It just gets so mushy for me because it's like you're just saying you're just taking a dead man's stuff and like, cobbling it together into something publishable. And it's always going to be hard to get to intent on that.

[Craig]

Yeah, that's fair. I think you can guess at it in this instance within the context of his other work.

[Andrew]

And it sounds like, you know, it has got a. It has got an aim, it's got a thrust that. That persists through all of it. However, like, fragmentary, you know?

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah. And I might be overselling the fragmentary element of some of it because some. It is also just so dreamlike in some spots. And what is tricky is discerning how much of that is intent. And how much of that is. We didn't get the next editing pass. Like that. That is an interesting quality of the work that is like. Well, I don't know if he meant to not give as many people names or if he met, if he didn't mean to, if he want. If he would have corrected a misspelling of that character's name or if he would have reordered these. But this is the order that we're reading them in. So what is the effect that that creates or the fact that there are these kind of, like, little fiddly. What is going on here? Moments actually do kind of accrue into a vibe that gels with what is clearly the theme of the work. But we can never really know what that was all about.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

And there's. There's also a lot of, like, this will kind of take us home, I think. There's obviously, there's the absurdist humor of the dudes getting flogged in the closet is very silly. There's. The whole thing with the painter's room is very goofy. There's lots of, like, little bits of blocking in there. Apparently Kafka used to read the first chapter of this book about the Keystone Cops and the arrest to his friends, and they would all laugh about it because it was supposed to be so silly. I think that it was this, like, highfalutin banker and all of his expectations and kind of mental machinations to explain why this was happening. And at every attempt to do so, it wouldn't work. And that's, like, a big part of the first chapter.

[Andrew]

Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

[Craig]

But then overall, it's just like this for me. The. The Kafkaesque. Why did that catch on from this thing? Is that like, yeah, the law works in this as a thing that takes over your life, that you will never see the people who have true power over it. The book takes great pains to tell you that the judges that K will ever actually see are not the judges who actually are in control. There's like, a weird little story of, like, an official who works all day, and then at the end of the day, lawyers are trying to get into his office, and he's literally throwing them down the stairs one by one. But they keep running up by lemmings to wear him down. And then they just gets tired and goes back in his office, and then they come in after him. So just like, what are we doing? The thing that will stick with me about the book is this, like, the court is not a Traditional court. It does not. It does not feel like the court of a totalitarian state from a movie that, you know, post Cold War kind of thing. It instead feels like this more pervasive, insidious backroom thing that is probably actually how shadowy awful courts work. But that's not typically how it's portrayed. And it's that. It's like you just open a random painter's door and then you're in the court again. Like, that is like a thing that will stick with me from this book.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

So, yeah, it's very Kafka esque. I don't know if I was worried of whether or not that was going to be the case, but it seems like it.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it seems like it would be on account of Franz Kafka wrote it.

[Craig]

And I definitely think that I would find some extra stuff in it on a reread. So that's the book. That's the trial. Court adjourned.

[Andrew]

Sounds like a lot. Yeah, that's my. That's my professional.

[Craig]

Your professional book opinion. Yeah, it's a lot.

[Andrew]

Sounds like. Sounds like a lot.

[Craig]

All right, well, thanks for telling me about. Thanks for letting me tell you all about this case. Let me make my opening and closing arguments to you.

[Andrew]

Of course.

[Craig]

I feel like that's what we do. If we were lawyers, we might have been able to work in more like procedural courtroom banter here.

[Andrew]

If we were lawyers, we probably have a different podcast or no podcast.

[Craig]

It's possible. Probably a different podcast.

[Andrew]

Probably a different podcast.

[Craig]

Send us an email about your Kafka esque experiences. Overdue podmail.com hit us up on social media at Overdue Pod. Thanks to Liesl, Emily, Tom and Bob. We had a baby eatsa boy, AKA Joking Guy, who sent us an Edward Packard haunted baby book.

[Andrew]

Thank you.

[Craig]

That we're gonna be looking at.

[Andrew]

We had an aunted baby eats a boy.

[Craig]

Our theme song is composed by Nick lranges Andrew. Folks wanna know more about the show. Where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue Podcast.com is the Internet website. We have the schedule for the month up there. July is kind of winding down already somehow, so we'll have the August schedule pretty much worked out. Should be up there soon. We also have a link up there to Patreon. That's patreon.com overdue pod. There's a way you support the show financially, directly. You buy us books and equipment and hosting and all the other stuff that we need to make the show go. And in exchange, you get bonus episodes early and you get some weird episodes that were never releasing to the main feed, including the. The Star Trek Deep Space Nine thing that we did and another series that we're sort of talking ourselves into doing that I'm not going to talk about. But it's. There's something in work. There's something big happening.

[Craig]

Craving a lot of bananas.

[Andrew]

There's something big happening and it's going to be. I think that people are gonna find it really despicable. And also we have the long read episodes that, that we have. We've been doing. Silly Marillion is the current series based on J.R.R. tolkien's Silmarillion. You've also maybe if you're listening to this on the main feed, maybe you've heard the first episode of Sit Me Baby one more time. All those episodes are up on Patreon and have been for months. What are you missing? You'll never know unless you subscribe. So patreon.com overduepod that's what I've got. What on earth is happening next week?

[Craig]

You are reading a book. What is it called?

[Andrew]

I am reading the book that is called Bonjour. Bonjour. How would you pronounce it?

[Craig]

Bonjour Tristesse.

[Andrew]

Bonjour Triste. I don't know why I'm putting Muzzy on it by Francois Sagan.

[Craig]

Go eat some parking meters or whatever.

[Andrew]

Mm.

[Craig]

That's what he ate, right? That's what Muzzy ate.

[Andrew]

I do not know. I did not speak French.

[Craig]

Did Muzzy eat parking meters?

[Andrew]

All right, everybody, until we talk to you next week, please try to be happy.

[Craig]

He did.

[Andrew]

That was a headgum podcast.

[Craig]

He goes to prison for eating parking meters. Very, very Kafkaesque.