David, thank you so much for being willing to talk about Kafka today.
Um, I know you're not a Kafka expert, but you are someone who knows a lot about humour,
and it seems to me that one of the really interesting things about Kafka is he's associated with nightmare and dark and Kafkaesque and so on.
But actually the texts have a lot of comedy and a lot of humour, or at least one can read them like that.
And I was hoping that we might tease out some of those things. Does that strike a chord with you at all?
Well, the thing is that you just have to blink with Kafka and it's clearly comic.
I mean, metamorphosis being the most obvious example, right? Uh, but you can imagine.
Let's imagine, uh, Gregor Samsa with the face of David Mitchell.
Right? Which is not impossible. Right? He's a kind of nerdy guy who's, you know, anxious about his work and all the rest of it.
And, uh, I can see a sketch quite easily, actually, on is not on anymore, but Mitchell and Webb's sketch show in which,
you know, let's say he's living with Robert Webb, which is slightly odd because that's more peep show.
But anyway, Robert Webb comes into David Mitchell's bedroom and he's been turned into a massive beetle.
And. Well, because what I tell you, what makes it comic? I mean, I think you can see that as a surreal sketch, definitely.
But what makes it comic is that if I was writing that sketch, I would say,
okay, well, the thing is that I want the character not to be just screaming,
which is what you would actually do, but I want him to be thinking, how will I get my train to work now?
And oh, I'm sort of on the wrong way out now.
How do I turn around and like, what do I do to just to live my life now that I'm, oh, bloody [INAUDIBLE], an enormous beetle.
And that is actually the tone of much of metamorphosis. It's kind of like, oh, now I have to deal with this now.
Now, obviously built into it.
Uh, lots and lots of sort of metaphor, whatever you want to put it about alienation, about, you know, you might imagine that Kafka, uh,
as a Jew, as someone who felt very much sort of not comfortable in general in his life, but within the world of Prague at the time.
Yeah, it's that as well. But there is definitely a sense in which there's a deadpan quality to the way that Gregor Samsa reacts to being a beetle,
which feels to me comic as much as it is a riffic.
I love the idea of David Mitchell as that goes on and I thought will stay with me, unfortunately now forever.
Um, uh, I completely get what you're saying.
I mean, and actually, humour comes, doesn't it, from a kind of discrepancy between two things rubbing up alongside each other.
Um, the, uh, contradictions or, and that can be the source of terror.
But it can also, as you say, actually, it's that double take, isn't it?
Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, uh, I think it's in metamorphosis.
I think it's principally the way the reaction at the start and and the reaction of the family around him,
the sort of like, oh, God, this is really annoying. Gregor turned into a beetle towards the end of it.
It does get really grim. I think my memory is like there's a bit where and it's sort of quite funny as well,
but Olaf will get stuck in his sort of carapace and that sort of leads to him sort of rotting.
And that obviously is pretty grim. So there's something funny about that.
But like, you know, just an apple, uh, that happening to I mean, the, the obvious other, uh, sort of, um,
arena or whatever idea that I think Kafka creates in the mind is dreams, uh, is sort of because think the trial is similar to that as well.
The anxiety dreams, uh, and the trial is, uh, very much I think, that idea of, like, I don't really know what's going on, but everything seems normal.
Everything seems normal. But something is weird, I thought, going on, and I can't find the thing I meant to find.
And I don't know what exactly is happening to me. And that seems to be a door here that John altered, but it doesn't.
And obviously that's that's anxiety dreams. But they're also fun.
It I think, you know, dreams are often your brain playing practical jokes on yourself, I think,
which is why dreams often have a comic quality to them where you think like, oh no, what am I doing in my school library without my pencil?
You know what I mean? It's like night like.
And I think that that really, to use a word that's used a lot now, uh, Kafka, uh, hovers a lot of time in a liminal space.
I've used the phrase liminal space, uh, between kind of comedy and anxiety dream.
That seems to me to be almost where he sort of blackly comic ideas and and anxiety dream.
And when I read Kafka, I feel quite anxious. But I also I'm on the edge of laughter.
Yeah. And maybe it's that feeling of unsettled mist that keeps readers coming back, in a sense, in that there isn't a sort of easy answer.
You don't go away with a single kind of feeling or a single, uh,
understanding that you're you feel a kind of demand to kind of, uh, interpret as well.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, the, the point in time that he's writing surrealism is sort of happening, uh, in, in, uh, a surrealism is pretty funny.
But I think if one's immediate reaction. Then sort of the culture's immediate reaction to surrealism was that it was terrifying.
When Dali does Ocean and Lou.
Uh, its initial reaction because it seems to have sort of slightly horrific images, like a razor blade coming towards an eye or whatever.
It's that it's horrific, but at the same time, it's juxtaposing a lot of very sort of like, so these, these don't get together.
The what's happening is incongruity is incongruity being presented to you in a way that is destabilising because you think,
well, this doesn't make sense. These things don't go together in a narrative, ordinary life.
But that's what comedy often is comedy. I was saying this last night, I do a show called trolls, not the Dolls is one of three shows I'm doing.
Uh, at the moment I'm recording all my three Stand-Up shows, and the one about trolls is about saying how people on social media,
uh, want to be very literal because they're very worried on social media about saying the wrong thing.
But comedy is often about deliberately saying the wrong thing, isn't it?
So that you laugh because you think, well, that's not true, that's not right or whatever, and it's a hop, skip and a jump between there and, you know,
someone waking up as a beetle or someone being charged with a crime that they feel is never explained to them,
because that is also wrongness has entered my life.
Yeah. And the wrongness often enters the lives of his protagonists when they wake up.
I think, you know, so the beginning of the trial is him ringing for for his his breakfast in the morning or metamorphosis.
Gregor wakes up from an easy dream. So it's almost like waking up into a dream, if you like.
Yeah, that's a really good point. I forgotten about the trial, but he's.
Yes, it's very clear at the start of metamorphosis, which is waking from a nightmare.
The uneasy dreams he discover that he was in hunger.
Horror, I think is the. Is that correct? Um, anyway, he was a big, monstrous insect.
Uh, and, yeah, it's a really apparent point, but yes, it's like the dream is still going on, but it's not.
It's in your real life.
And obviously when you have dreams, sometimes when you have very powerful dreams, you can think me dreaming or am I now actually living my life?
And something's going really wrong. Uh, and I think I think Kafka was.
Yeah. Very good. Uh, exploiting that. Uh, it's, it's interesting thing, actually, because in dreams, you're aware of the absurdity.
I don't know that I've ever laughed during a dream.
I sometimes laugh when I'm explaining it in real life afterwards.
So, you know, um, I that, like, dreams about myself.
I want to hear about your dreams. But sometimes they are hilarious. But in a dream, I'm not sure.
I'm just raising this an issue. Anyone sort of laughs very often.
Actually. I have an anxiety dream quite often, which is that I'm on stage and I completely can't remember any of my material.
And so no one's laughing. Uh, that that's quite often, uh, I think academics have that dream to write.
Yeah, I think it's quite a common thing, isn't it? Um, I wanted to pick up something else.
I mean, just at the moment, uh, I've been talking, for example, about the kind of, uh, Royal Ballet version of metamorphosis.
Um, and also there's a production on at the moment, uh, let me say dramatic version.
And both of those really make a great deal out of bodily, um, kind of gestural humour.
And it's not just laid onto Kafka.
I think it's actually, uh, in a lot of the texts, um, a kind of real fascination with bodily awkwardness or, uh, bodily inappropriateness.
Um, and I'm wondering, you know, the comedy of gesture, the comedy of movement, the comedy of the body.
Is that something you sort of soaring, Kafka, or is that something that you kind of, you know, it would be important in, in thinking about this.
Yeah. Well, the word you'll, you're, you're, you're moving towards is slapstick.
Uh, you know, uh, physical comedy is slapstick again,
something that was interestingly just starting to be very around because of silent film around the time that Kafka was writing,
that was all comedy at the time, was essentially slapstick and the greatest slapstick comedians, you know,
Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and others, uh, you know, they were creating an idea that this is what comedy is.
There's often quite kind of like involving, again, a kind of situation where the character may not understand how he's ended up in this position,
but it's sort of like both terrifying and hilarious.
The obvious example of being with Buster Keaton, uh, a house falls on him, uh, and somehow he survives it.
And that's a very dreamlike experience. And he's deadpan, right?
He's deadpan, as it happens, but it's a great moment of physical comedy. It's also terrifying, right?
It's a brilliant example, the house falling on Buster Keaton of funny and terrifying and dreamlike all, all in one go.
But I think you're right that you can see that in Kafka.
You can see that in metamorphosis, in the sort of.
It's a long description, actually, right at the start, just after he wakes up of him trying to turn over, uh,
and you have in your mind an idea of a wooden house or a beetle, like how they often do try to turn over,
but then he goes right into the mind of someone who trying to do this in a way that is
both terrifying in terms of its focus on what it would feel like to be in that position,
but also comic, because someone who's fallen over and who is trying to flip themselves.
Like, imagine a tortoise doing that. It's interesting, isn't it?
Actually, sorry to race around, but in any Malcolm A book I wrote a children's book, uh, about, uh, a boy who turns into lots of.
I never thought about the Kafka elements of it, but I wrote it's about a boy who doesn't like animals.
Then he goes to a farm on a school trip and ends up turning into many different animals, and one of them is a tortoise.
And there's a whole section which I've just realised, in which he ends up on his back,
and other tortoises have to try and help him flip over to the right side.
And I promise you that is funny. Kids laugh at it, but it's very similar,
maybe even subconsciously influenced by what happens to Gregor Samsa in a way that's so interesting, isn't it?
Because it's the beetle. It's the beetle that makes it horrific because we have a terror of insects.
Once it's a tortoise, it's not that far away, and you'll often see them on their backs and they have to flip over.
It's sort of comic, isn't it? Yeah. No, that's that's completely right.
You're reminding me that the, um, I think Nabokov wrote about, you know,
the horror of Kafka because this beetle represents everything that's repulsive.
Um, whereas, of course, you know, a tortoise is domesticated.
You know, it's something here, isn't it? Whereas the Hoya, which, you know, you're quite right to point out, means the sort of monstrosity.
You know, Kafka never specifies that it is an insect.
Um, vermin. Really. It's they it's the word uncreative.
Um, and he takes pains never to illustrate it.
But it what that gap leaves is a gap for horror, actually.
Um, yeah. The horror is also quite comic. You know, there is actually a whole genre called comedy.
Horror and horror is mainly absurd, you know, at the same time as it is terrifying.
Um, I actually went to Prague. So, you know, I'm very much speaking in this interview is not a Kafka expert.
Can I be clear about that?
But I did, uh, just because I was asked to buy a radio three, I think they do a thing called Archive Hour, and they asked me and just.
There's a brilliantly interesting thing to do to go to Prague and talk about metaphor more focuses principally from the point of view of,
um, the many. What are they called? Entomologists? Uh, the many sort of beetles and insect experts.
That is the whole culture in Prague, almost all culture around the world. There are many entomologists.
But we actually went to a fair, uh, in Prague, where they had these glass glass cases with full of beetles.
And I was trying to say, which one of those is Gregor Samsa? What do you think you're from Prague.
Your Czech. You will know Kafka because there's cafes in Prague, so named after Kafka.
And and they would say, well, I think it's probably this one and it might be that one. Uh, and that was what the program was about.
We actually also spoke to Ed. Is it Conway?
Who is the dancer who did it first?
It was Ed Watson. Thank you. We also went to speak to Ed Watson, and he showed me his moves essentially to be,
uh, Gregor Samsa or uh, and yeah, the physicality of it is really extreme.
I mean, it was it was very it was pretty disturbing when he was doing it, as well as being kind of beautiful because it integrated modern dance.
I wouldn't have said that was that comic. Um, but maybe it was.
Maybe it also was. I mean, as you say, it's such a blink of an eye that something, uh, particular with the body is disturbing and horrific.
And then it's funny. Yeah, it's kind of release. I think that absolutely makes sense to me.
Um, you mentioned Buster Keaton,
and I guess I just wanted to think about the kind of influences that might have been around or that we could perhaps see in Kafka,
even if there isn't a sort of straight forward influence. Um, so Charlie Chaplin, as you said, um, also there were sort of, um, cartoons.
There's a really interesting piece by Peter Cooper in the New York Times, uh, a couple of years ago,
finding the Funny in Kafka, where he drew links with cartoons, actually, in America that Kafka would never have known.
Um, and Kafka was very interested in Yiddish theatre as well.
Um, and I'm wondering whether you see those sorts of visual things in Kafka.
Uh, well, I think the Yiddish theatre, as far as I know, I'm not an expert on that either.
Um, was very, very physical and very visual and, um, depictions like cartoons, uh, within Yiddish culture, uh,
you know, of the book, uh, and of other sort of, you know, Jewish figures of myth tend to be very, very big.
I mean, like in any culture, you know, they tend to be quite grotesque and big and physical.
And obviously, you know, they're actually films of the Yiddish films at the time and, uh, that they're just sort of mental, to be honest.
You just be like, wow, they're all of, uh, these actors doing very, very big physical movements.
Uh, I, I'm interested in, obviously, and I don't know what the latest thinking is, is how much Kafka, uh, you know, felt Jewish, as it were,
and particularly obviously, where how his alienation and how things like, uh,
metamorphoses are metaphors of feeling like an outsider within Czech society.
I mean, I think some of it is about being Jewish, and some of it is that by being Kafka, you know, being being kind of uncomfortable in his own skin.
So let me create a skin which I'm very uncomfortable in, or a character with a skin that I'm very uncomfortable in.
Some of that will be about being Jewish. Um, and some of it will be about, you know, uh, something that Kafka was not to know about because he died,
but about the fact that there's a growing anti-Semitism in Europe at that time.
And, yes, I mean, I think, um, obviously, you know, not point forward, but there was already a sort of anti-Semitic, uh, you know, atmosphere, um,
and, you know, he was a kind of double minority because he was Jewish in Prague, but he was also German speaking in a Czech speaking environment.
So there are sort of layers and as you say, then there's this, there's the goodness of it all is, uh, yeah, yeah.
I think the Kafka is what I always what I always think this sounds like very, very like I think about this all the time and I don't.
But I was reading about Proust, uh, and I don't know how much of a relationship there is, but they both seem to me to be these kind of slightly,
uh, what we probably consider to be on the spectrum now, men, uh, sort of at odds with themselves, possibly at odds with their sexuality.
I mean, certainly with perused. I'm not sure about Kafka. Uh, but, you know, they're not comfortable in their own skin.
So what they do instead is they retreat into sort of writing spaces, and they write out their discomfort,
which both in Priest and Kafka definitely have a comic element to it.
Right? I think people approach both those two is thinking, well, they're great big writers, and,
you know, they're going to be, in the one case, very grand, in the other case very dark.
But there's comedy in both of them, because I think that the mind will go there when it's trying to describe discomfort.
Sounds like you talking about comics as well. Well, how do you mean?
Like comedians? Yeah, comedians all the time, I think I think that I mean, I'm actually not very uncomfortable in my own skin.
I'm some of the old, uh, as a comic from that point of view. But what I am is I certainly see myself as someone who, uh, you know,
needs to express himself in sort of quite, uh, direct and sometimes slightly mad ways.
And I don't exactly know where that comes from. I have weird charges I sort of do with that.
Uh, and that is something which, you know, the self-expression that allows you to say, okay,
I've got these this slightly odd take on the world, uh, and I need to find ways doing it.
Yeah. Comedy is that, uh, I don't know if Kafka could have been a stand up.
That feels to me unlikely, because he feels to me like quite a shy man, isn't it?
I mean, not that some community is all shy, by the way. He was right. But although he laughed a lot, apparently reading his stories, so did he.
Yeah, yeah. Do you think that's really interesting?
I mean, I wonder if in doing this, you know, you will bring people to Kafka more because I think that is the thing is that I think when I was younger,
he sort of sat with camera and a few others, and the camera is quite funny, I think.
But but a few others, uh, in terms of like, oh yeah, these are the pretentious ones.
These are the ones that I will refer to as a sort of 19 year old to show that I'm dark and important and gothic and blah,
blah, blah, uh, whereas in fact, you know, it would be more interesting to say, yeah, he probably is all those things.
But also, he's funny, you know, it's a way of like opening up Kafka, I think, well, that would be great.
If we could do that with this. I'd be really pleased. David Baddiel, thank you very much indeed.
Thank you Karen.