Alex, it's really great that you were here. Um. Oxford reads Kafka is looking at Kafka's texts themselves, but also how Kafka has been translated,
transposed, uh, taken up by authors from across the world.
And I it's really great that we're here to talk about another great, indeed, Nobel Prize winning author, um JM Cozzi and, um, and his work with Kafka.
And instead of, as with many of the people I've been talking to, looking at one individual work,
in a sense, Kafka has accompanied him throughout his work, hasn't he?
Um, yes. I mean, I think, uh, Kafka has been amongst other modernist writers,
has been incredibly generative for Casey as a writerly interlocutor, as somebody whose work and ideas and atmosphere he has.
I am not going to say all the time, but frequently had in mind when writing his own fiction.
Um, uh, why does a writer like C cleave to Kafka?
I mean, you said atmosphere. You said he has in mind. That was an interesting phrase you used as well.
What what what is there for him in Kafka? This.
What? We might want to call, for want of a better term, Kafka's modernist aesthetic that is kind of honing down to essential features.
Um, working with the generic in order to imply the specific.
Which, um, I mean, you know, Victorian writing, 19th century, you know, British writing did the other way around.
You know, you, you, you, you hone in on the detail and you build a picture out from that.
So, um, so I think Chrissie has like that, that spare, sketchy, almost skeletal aesthetic that, that Kafka perfected in his short life.
Although Kafka is full of details, Kafka is full of concrete things, gestures.
Um, I was just at an event last night talking about the ballet of metamorphosis, and it was all about the gestures, which are all there in the text.
How do those two things go together? Well, fiction exists in in as a real world setting.
Uh, you know, it has to. To suspend disbelief and and and I too was having a, uh,
a quick look at Kafka again this past week and thinking about those very precise details that,
um, that Kafka used, for example, in metamorphosis, the sister is, you know, you know, is going to the music school.
I mean, that is that is a very, very specific desire whereby we, we,
we understand a whole world, you know, a whole world of, you know, Prague in the 19 tens, say.
Um, so Cassie does something very, very similar.
He two will, um, kind of stage universal conditions, um, say, um, you know, a character keeping alive in a,
in a complicated Civil War situation, as in Life and times of Michael K, which is one of his Kafkaesque works.
Um. But he will bring that situation to his readers with some very, very clearly evoked specifics.
So, um, there's a particular scene of lying under an ox wagon on a starry night.
And, you know, he he, the writer takes us into that and and thereby gives us a kind of, uh, uh, a whole landscape,
dry desert, like, um, in which he then situates his character like, okay, his Kafka esque character, um, like, okay.
I want to come back to Michael in a second, but, um, I mean, one of the arguments that's been made,
you mentioned Kafka's status as a modernist sort of European modernism in its most pared down sense.
And yet, in a way, see is also about the reality of contemporary life.
It's about politics. It's about, you know, really an a kind of engaged writing.
And that's one of the tensions also, isn't it? Um, for reading Coetzee.
It is, and it isn't.
I would push back a little on the word engaged, because Keats's writing is, is often at a, at a parable, like an allegorical level, the, the politics.
And this is, again, I think, something that he learns imparted Kafka's, um, feet.
Um, know others to other models too. But, you know, he implies a politics, but it's it's not ever explicitly realised.
I think somebody, um, once said of his work, you know, that the that the two words South Africa.
Which is the country where he kind of sits. Arguably his most interesting political political fictions.
Those two words don't actually feature in his creative prose.
Oh, that's very interesting. I don't know his work well enough to realise that that's that's really.
So he and and in fact, he was, uh, widely, um, you know, accused as possibly too strong,
but he was charged with being two a political at a time of political polarisation in his, in the country of his birth.
So, so the question of his being an engaged writer is, is, is, is a is a kind of a very thorny question in certain in certain contexts.
And, and and I think he has negotiated his way, um, around that how to deal with politics in fiction,
in part actually by learning from that very spare,
you know, homing in on the specifics and implying a wider world, but not actually always explicitly, uh, pointing to it from Kafka.
That makes that make sort of sense.
I mean, the thing that when I was thinking about talking to you, the thing that struck me, of course, is the obvious thing is outsiders.
Um, Kafka is, you know, famously known as the the sort of apotheosis of the outsider and deals with outsiders in almost every text.
And it seemed to me that was kind of way into reading Katz's, Katz's The Reception of Kafka to it with that.
Does that chime? Um, yes. Yeah. I mean, uh, Katz's characters, his central characters are often those who kind of refuse, who opt out.
Um, as I think I could see himself puts it at one point, um, and, you know,
tangentially referring to Michael Kay, who move through the system without being a term in the system.
Um, anarchic figures also. Um, but certainly outside of figures, um, those who do not participate,
those who stand back and live in times of Michael K is a fictional study in what it means to be such a person in a fraught,
highly polarised political situation. I mean, what's interesting, I'm just trying to think of Kafka's works.
Um, and obviously we've been talking a lot about The Metamorphosis.
Um, Kafka's outsiders, uh, suffer from that outside of, um, I mean, they are rendered outsiders, generally in society.
I'm just trying to think if if I'm remembering them all. But.
So your take on cookie is that they choose to be outsiders.
They they are, uh. Or is it. No, no, no, I mean, the system which focuses the, uh, the apartheid system,
the system of racial segregation, um, that ended in the 1990s, um, in South Africa.
His, um, his case would be that that is, um.
That that is something that the state that, um, situation is something that the system imposes and, and with refusal comes to suffering.
Um, if, if we think of another example waiting for the barbarians, the magistrate figure there, um,
reflects at length on suffering and on torture and on the consequences of not subscribing to the rules of the regime,
which, uh, which are negative consequences for him and for all others who refuse, for the, you know, for the for the, the barbarians.
Um, the word barbarians actually leads me to something I've been thinking about, although it's not quite linked, but, um, which is animals.
Um, uh. And I'm reminded of the end of disgrace.
Um, like a dog? Yes. Dying like a dog?
Yeah. Uh. Is that. I mean, I'm very struck by what kind of waves of Kafka interpretation.
And at the moment, everybody really wants to talk about the, uh, human animal, as I'm told.
Uh, we call it now the kind of post-human, the animals. And there are so many animals and Kafka.
Is that something? Is that a place that they come together as well?
I noticed that you'd also written an article on the The Creature in the burrow.
Kafka's one of Kafka's last stories.
Um, well, could see, um, is is, you know, famously, um, a vegetarian and against vivisection and, um, is very concerned with the rights of animals.
He, he writes about this at some length in the novel Elizabeth Costello,
which is based on a series of lectures that this fictional writer character Elizabeth Costello gives and where she reflects on abattoirs being the,
um, um, the kind of the torture chambers of, you know, our period.
Um, and, um, yeah, I mean, uh, I'd also like to pick up on the idea that that that you just sort of offered all of these waves of interpretation.
They are, in a sense, waves of Kafka interpretation that run across germ Katz's work.
So, um, so there is the kind of the, the, the, the human animal wave that kind of takes us from 1999,
which is the, the, the year of the publication of disgrace and which ends dying like a dog.
That Kafka esque line, um, to Elizabeth Costello, which is about 2002 and 2004, um, and, um, you know, and then there's the kind of the, the,
the pre-human animal phase, which is the spare aesthetic, the, the, the, the, the item that moves through the machine without being part of the code.
Um, and, you know, there's arguably a post, say, 2005 phase where, you know,
could say is particularly interested in refugee figures, those who kind of move across borders,
who are rejected by society, which is, um, his kind of Australian phase, which, again, can be interpreted as an engagement of a kind with Kafka.
It's amazing how many facets of Kafka actually are coming.
One of the things I noticed in this article was that I came across accidentally was his interest in the Boro was about time,
narrative time, and the business of narrative time being the time of action as well.
Does that does that strike a chord with you thinking about cuts?
Um, I'm I'm always fascinated.
And, you know, I don't want to claim that he learns this from Kafka, but I am fascinated with how I could see managers present tense writing.
He always and arguably to to to my eye, as a reader, this is something that Kafka manages in a slightly different way,
using different techniques, but also manages very, very well. Could see uses this this relentless to some readers present tense.
But what that does and I'm here I'm speaking as as a writer myself.
What that does is that it always situates us in the moment that the that the character is in, we are right there.
And so what that actually also does, going back to what we're saying right at the beginning about setting, um,
what that also does is that sort of obviates the need to do too much set up,
because if we are in the moment, in the present tense moment, this now with the character right here.
We don't need to worry too much about what is around them.
That makes a lot of sense. Um, let's have a word about, um, the life and times of, uh, Michael Kay or Michelle Carr.
I wanted to say, um, it's been ready to take on the trial.
Um, uh, but also involves Clai story.
Yes. Uh, Koolhaas. Of course. Um, and it seems to me I, I didn't really read it as the trial, actually,
to be honest, but I understand other people have, and this seems to be a way into it.
Um, and certainly there is judgement, um, and a kind of element of the penal colony.
Absolutely. Um, it seems a kind of compendium of all Kafka's major themes and perhaps the themes of modern times as well.
Yeah. I think Kafka is at a second remove to that novel in a way that the Kleist is not.
I think Kleist, you know, informs the, the kind of the, the central shape and unfolding of of of of the story.
What is to and I don't know.
Um, as much as I should about Kafka's ways of working, but, um,
the quasi archive at the Harry Ransom centre does give us a very clear sense of how could C works.
And what is really interesting to observe is how he writes and und writes, you know, he, he, he and,
and and repeatedly and um, and kind of indefatigably writes himself out of the script so that,
you know, he, he begins with, with quite, um, arguably, you know, recognisable apartheid story and,
and, and refines that sifts, refines, sifts until the Kleist frame, if you like.
And the Kafka esque motifs, say, from the trial are still there.
But the if you like the, the, the messiness of history has been completely kind of written out.
So, so that's not that's probably not a direct answer to the question, but it is um,
it is interesting how the literary struts of Katz's writing kind of remain like almost sort of,
you know, like a steel frame while the content is kind of repeatedly purged from the frame.
I mean, the vocabulary that you're using reminds me, obviously, of The Hunger artist.
Um, this eradication. Yeah, yeah.
Um, uh, does that come up anywhere directly in cuts, or is it a kind of aesthetic?
It's in the settings. Yeah, yeah.
And it's a I mean, there is a fascination in C and arguably also in Kafka with, with what we can do with the least possible.
You know, I mean, the aesthetic of bare life. You know.
Well, what are the limits beyond which we cannot go?
And what does life look like at that limit? A kind of literature of limits.
That's really interesting. Um, when you said he wrote himself out, you know, in the manuscripts, um, it reminded me.
So Kafka's manuscript of The trial, he wrote the beginning and the end, the first two chapters together,
and then every chapter in between is an attempt really to kind of write himself towards the end, and some of them tail off and in the middle.
It says in your process, your trial is not going very well.
No, it's not going very well. And he because he can't get back, you can't get to.
And so he's sort of writing himself as well. So that's does that I mean is that a bit like the the see that this is a consciousness about that.
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. There's a constant in the notebooks is a constant reflection on the process of the writing as it is unfolding.
Yeah. So that is another link with Kafka, isn't it, where, you know, this idea that literature is everything for him,
that he is totally turned towards literature as a sort of existential aspect of his being?
Yes. I think there's a there's a quote from could see that I used in a lecture the other day.
So I should get it more and more, more or less. Right. Which is something like, um, writing writes us as we write it.
All writing is life. Writing, says Casita.
Or writing is autofiction, autofiction or tra fiction.
Not autofiction, but autofiction. So are you try playing on the the French idea of auto so the other so we are constantly,
as it were, externalising ourselves in the process of writing,
but then also actually incorporating that into into how we understand ourselves through writing, writing ourselves as we go.
Yes, yes, that makes a lot of sense with Kafka as well.
It was a sort of existential experience, wasn't it? Always for him and but but it's got to the same in that regard.
It seems to me more sovereign. I think he's a maybe he's, um.
I'm not I'm not sure about this. This is sort of comes out of what we've just been saying, but maybe he's a, um,
he's a Kafkaesque writer who who found himself in a particular political situation.
Um, and now, again, with the refugee crisis globally, um, from which he could not turn his eyes as an as an ethical being.