Since Lilly reminded me that this site still exists, though in some it's crushed and in some it's staggering, I'll go on.

I just read Kafka's The Trial. Has anyone else read it? What did you think? Here are some thoughts of mine that I'm shamelessly repurposing from another email thread. There are a few references to earlier parts of the conversation, but you should be able to get the gist of it. (The William in here is William Stewart, and the Steve is Steve Lechner, and the Jeremiah is Jeremiah Kelly, for those of you who know any of them.)

This part I wrote when I was about halfway through the book:
"As per The Trial, I kind of agree with you, William, that Kafka is kind of playing with the reader, in the same way that Melville plays with the reader in Moby-Dick. But I don't think that means you shouldn't "take it seriously." My thoughts on this are still inchoate, since I'm still only halfway through the book, but I think it's a lot more than "just a funny story (haha funny in an awful) about the awful impotence K experiences before a huge judicial system." So I'm more with Jeremiah on this one. Jeremiah, I loved your jeremiad on bureaucracy. But I think there's even more to it than just a darkly humorous satire of bureaucracy, even a bureaucracy that your life depends on. I get the sense that he is getting at this crushing absurdity in life. You find yourself on this planet and you have a feeling like there is something you're supposed to be doing, like there is some meaning you're supposed to have figured out; you get the sense that there is something that everybody understands but you, and they expect you to understand it, but when you try to understand it these same people revolt against you, therefore you're stuck in this queer ignorance, and you start to question even yourself, you start to feel guilty about you know not what, you wonder if you're really the crazy one. I don't think I'm articulating it very clearly, and I don't think it can be articulated very clearly. That's why Kafka had to write a whole book to try to articulate it slantwise. And there is much more to the puzzle, like all the women who seem to be constantly helping or hindering K. Why does K. impulsively accost Fraulein Burstner on the night after he is first "arrested" and damn near rape her? I think there is some deep psychological shit going on here. William, you're right, it's not neat and clean, and we're probably not meant to "solve" it like a puzzle, but I can't help but try--the same way that K. can't help but try to understand what he is accused of and what his case means, even though there is probably no answer and the whole thing is just absolutely 100% absurd."

And here is what I wrote after I finished:
"I just finished The Trial on the bus home from work, and wow. Wow. What an utterly bizarre and obscure story. The end caught me completely by surprise; I was not expecting anything so violent.

I have to admit, for the first half or so, I was not that into it, but it got better as it went on--or at least I started reading it more eagerly as I went on. As K. was slowly drawn into his trial, dwelling on it more and more, so I was slowly drawn into it, in parallel. (Not that it was a matter of life or death for me by the end.)

I still stand by what I wrote about it when I was halfway through. But there are so many complexities and things that seem symbolic in this book, I would not attempt a straightforward explication of what it "means." That would only lead me into the same kind of hermeneutic acrobatics and absurdities as the priest demonstrates in his discussion of the fable at the end. I believe there is nothing outside of the text, and Kafka makes that point perhaps better than anyone with this book.

However, as I was reading the book, I couldn't stop thinking about the Court as a symbol for the Church, and this impression only increased as the book went on. That could easily just be what I wanted to read into it. But I think Kafka throws off some definite hints in this direction, especially in the Cathedral scene. On the other hand, the Court cannot simply stand for the Church, in a one-to-one allegorical fashion. If it did, you would have the problem of why there is also a Church (well, a cathedral) and a priest in the book, in addition to the Court. Actually, the priest works for the Court. So the Court is bigger than the Church (or at least than the church). The Court is something universal--it is as big as life itself, or possibly bigger. And besides that difficulty, it seems obvious that interpreting the book in a one-to-one, allegorical fashion is wrongheaded. I don't think the "symbols" in it "stand for" anything in a as the symbols in Orwell's Animal Farm do. Of course, they may have stood for something in Kafka's mind; he may have known what they "meant," or at least had some obscure idea of it. But all we have is the text he chose to leave us with. Still, I don't think trying to to interpret it is a pointless exercise. If anything, it tells you more about what's in your own head than what was in Kafka's. The obscurity of this book is like a Rorschach ink blot; the way you interpret it says a lot about the way you think and what happens to be on your mind at present. So what I said about the Church may very well just be my own addition (although I think Kafka does gives a few teasing hints in this direction).

Perhaps it's not surprising that I felt this kinship between the Court and the Church, since both touch on fundamental questions of life and death, guilt and innocence--they both preside and at least claim authority over the existential questions we must face day to day. So it's almost inevitable that Kafka ended up couching the Court in religious language and imagery. At the same time, though, it must be significant that he chose a secular body, the court, as the ultimate decider of fate, rather than a religious body. It could be that he did this to avoid persecution, but I don't think so. It seems to me that the Court's secular and bureaucratic nature is essential to its meaning, whatever that is.

That's pretty much all I can say about it right now. I still feel in the dark about the function of the various women in the book (I mean, even more in the dark than I feel about the rest of it, which is significantly). Anyone have any thoughts on that?

I remember there was a pretty sizeable chunk dealing with The Trial in this book called Genesis of Secrecy by Frank Kermode, which we read for [Prof. Duttenhaver's] PLS Bible class. It's a fantastic book about hermeneutics, and I can't recommend it enough. It's also fairly short, and one of those books I would describe as "intellectual but not academic." I.e. it doesn't mess around with pedantic details. But it does dwell on significant details. In fact, the whole book kind of turns on the difference between one little sentence found in Mark and Matthew, when Jesus is explaining why he speaks in parables. The book made a big impression on me at the time, three years ago, and I've found myself returning to its many insights again and again since I read it. It's one of those books that never leaves you once you read it (at least for me). In fact, that book is half the reason I wanted to read The Trial in the first place. (Another book that it refers to a lot is Ulysses, which makes me also want to read that a lot.) So I hope to return to that passage and see what it had to say."

-Joey

Hey all,

I am, finally, reading Alasdair MacIntyre's "After Virtue".  I can now join Tavs in the "Alasdair MacIntyre Fan Club."  The book is fantastic. 

At the outset, MacIntyre argues, "Imagine that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe.  Riots occur, labs are burned down, books and instruments are destroyed.  Much later, enlightened people try to revive science, although they have largely forgotten what it was.  All they possess are fragments; parts of theories; half-chapters from books; instruments whose use is forgotten.

They lump together these fragments and continue to use the old names of physics, chemistry and biology.  They learn by heart the surviving portions of the periodic table and recite as incantations some of the theorems of Euclid.  But what they are doing is not science at all.  For everything they do and say only makes sense within certain canons of consistency and coherence- which have been lost, perhaps irretrievably."

This is exactly what has occurred, argues MacIntyre, to our language of morality.  I was quite skeptical at first, but his argument grows more and more compelling.  He also includes a Who's Who of references to many of our PLS authors (Kant, Mill, Aquinas) -- and makes fun of almost all of them.  In many ways, "After Virtue" is re-shaping a lot of my basic assumptions.

A later section decries the way that Philosophy and History have been divorced (Adam, this made me think of you, with your interest in the intersection of those disciplines):
"There ought not to be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. 

As a result of the separation between Philosophy and History, ideas are now endowed with a falsely independent life of their own on the one hand.  Political and social action is presented as peculiarly mindless on the other."

I suggest that you read "After Virtue".  If you have already read it, what do you think?  I would like to discuss it once I finish.  Perhaps over a beer.  Come visit me in Philadelphia.  All of you.

-LC