What makes Kafka’s works a must read?

No idea. We had to read one of his stories in college – I found it impossible. He’s not on my list of influential authors.

What do you mean by “a must read”?

To me, that phrase itself sounds like a mistake.

I got a degree in Literature without ever having had to read any significant amount of Kafka.

But Kafka is a great author and well worth reading.

He had great perception (at the start of the 20th Century) into the cultural conflicts between people as humans versus the inhuman forces of our societies, ways of thinking, laws and conventions.

I’d say that’s as relevant as ever, and the contrast seen from an early-20th-Century brilliant Czech author would tend to be useful.

It will make you appreciate the movie “Cube”.

Kafka inspired the genius of Frank Zappa to write the song “Concentration Moon”. Perhaps Kafka inspires people to think outside the norm and or actually think for them selves and not eat the BS and slime that the news media and internet is constantly feeding us.

Concentration Moon
Over the camp in the valley
Concentration Moon
Wish I was back in the alley

With all of my friends
Still running free
Hair growing out
Every hole in me

American way
How did it start?
Thousands of creeps
Killed in the park

American way
Try and explain
Scab of a nation
Driven insane

Don’t cry
Gotta go bye bye
Suddenly die, die
Cop kill a creep, pow pow pow

Kafka does a great job of showing how we have been overcome by bureaucracy and have lost our collective souls in the process. For example, in the Metamorphosis nobody expresses surprise that Gregor has been transformed into a giant insect. Gregor’s initial reaction is about not being able to show up for work. This would all be extraordinarily absurd if it did not strike an emotional chord.

He is the master on spinning the sarcastic irony dogging the human condition.

Thanks jellies. Kafka now on reading queue.