Books I read last month, with the usual quotes and commentray. Crossposted to cfk's bookflurries, plf515's Friday book post, eenrblog, and the usual bibliophilic alphabet soup.
In this edition: Kafka, Sarah Vowell, Al Franken, Jack London, Aubrey's Brief Lives, Twilight and much more!
Learned Helplessness #1: The Castle, by Franz Kafka :
We replied with thanks to the order that I’ve mentioned already, saying that we didn’t need a Land Surveyor. But this reply doesn’t appear to have reached the original department—I’ll call it A—but by mistake went to another department, B. So Department A remained without an answer, but unfortunately our full reply didn’t reach B either; whether it was that the order itself was not enclosed by us, or whether it got lost on the way—it was certainly not lost in my department, that I can vouch for—in any case, all that arrived at Department B was the covering letter, in which was merely noted that the enclosed order, unfortunately an impracticable one, was concerned with the engagement of a Land Surveyor. Meanwhile, Department A was waiting for our answer, they had, of course, made a memorandum of the case, but as excusably enough often happens and is bound to happen even under the most efficient handling, our correspondent trusted to the fact that we would answer him, after which he would either summon the Land surveyor, or else if need be write us further about the matter. As a result, he never thought of referring to his memorandum and the whole thing fell into oblivion. But in Department B, the covering letter came into the hands of a correspondent, famed for his conscientiousness, Sordini by name, an Italian; it is incomprehensible even to me, although I am one of the initiated, why a man of his capacities is left in an almost subordinate position. This Sordini naturally sent back the unaccompanied covering letter for completion. Now months, if not years, had passed by this time since that first communication from Department A, which is understandable enough, for when—which is the rule—a document goes through the proper route, it reaches the department at the outside in a day and is settled that day, but when it once in a while loses its way then in an organization so efficient as ours its proper destination must be sought for literally with desperation, otherwise it mightn’t be found; and then, well, then the search may last really for a long time. Accordingly when we got Sordini’s note we had only a vague memory of the affair; there were only two of us to do the work at that time. Mizzi and myself, the teacher hadn’t yet been assigned to us, we only kept copies in the most important instances, so we could only reply in the most vague terms that we knew nothing of this engagement of a Land Surveyor and that as far as we knew there was no need for one.
The above passage is but a small part of a non-explanation to said Land Surveyor as to why he has been made to travel many miles to a remote village, in winter, where no one seems to know whether his services are wanted, or not. For the rest of the novel, said Land Surveyor goes from official to official, doing just about anything other than land surveying.
This is one of those books in which everything that happens is absurd, yet bears just enough resemblance to that horrible encounter you once had with the DMV, or the IRS, or Child Welfare, or [insert mind-numbing bureaucracy here] that you groan in sympathy for the hapless protagonist. Or at least you might if the protagonist was drawn as a clear character himself instead of as a formless everyman, and if he acted more sensibly himself, for instance, if he made some attempt to leave this utterly depressing, absurdist village in which everyone is either contemptibly, intolerably condescending and cruel, fog-enshrouded, or unable to give a straight answer as to why he cannot or will not tell the protagonist how to get what he wants. And all of them deeply enthralled to the castle overlooking the village, where the officials have the morals and courtesy of gila monsters yet are treated like living saints. Were one of us in this village, we’d do whatever we could to leave. If exit was impossible and this was some sort of existential nightmare where the whole world behaved like this to us, the time would come where we would cease to care or to try, or else we would go mad and have tea with the doormouse. Because nothing you do has a predictable result.
People say that The Castle is an allegory. But they don’t agree on what the allegory is. Maybe it’s religion, and the Castle officials are cruel Old Testament Gods and the protagonist is trying to get to heaven. Maybe it’s political, and the officials represent the stultifying effect of bureaucratic red tape on the human spirit (this is the explanation that makes the most sense to me). Maybe it’s Freud-Jung-Joseph Campbellian, and every character represents an element of the collective unconscious and the castle represents a return to Mommy and the womb. Maybe it’s a commentary on the sinister effects of mindless obedience to authority, any authority. Maybe it’s all absurdist, since each of the common explanations makes sense in light of a few episodes in the story, yet utterly fails when brought to different chapters.
At least, the book, like a bad dream, makes one glad to wake up out of it and find oneself in a world where at least some things have predictable results and at least some people you encounter will be kind and helpful, or at least will make sense. A good tract for navel gazers, but not very useful as philosophy, pleasure, or even insight on how to navigate the world.
Burning Man:Presumption of Death, by Perri O’Shaughnessy :
Wish took one stumbling step towards him.
And saw several things. Danny, disappearing into the white soup. A wall of fire rearing up like a tsunami in front, bigger than Wish, ready to take him down.
And then two blackened hands reaching out from behind the tree trunk right next to him, holding up a big sharp rock with white stipples and granite lines. He saw the fingers raise it up. He saw the rock crash down toward him.
Wish lurched to one side. He howled, but the noise he made got lost in the belligerent, ripping, tearing fire. Losing his balance, he toppled to the ground.
Perri O’Shaughnessy is the pen name of two sisters who write legal thrillers about the adventures of Nina Reilly, fighter for the underdog and tenacious adopter of lost causes, who hopes that she herself will not prove to be a lost cause. Most of the books I’ve read in the series so far have been set in the Lake Tahoe area; however, this one takes place in Carmel. Also, since the previous volume, Unfit to Practice, the books have taken on a plot arc such that it’s difficult to comment on the story to people who haven’t read, not just this one, but the whole series. Too many spoilers. Suffice it to say that this tale concerns a series of arson fires, a charred corpse, a probably wrongly accused defendant, and a quirky neighborhood of locals and newbies united in their opposition to techno-tacky development and whose numbers may include—gasp—a killer! Empty mind candy, but I keep coming back for more.
Learned Helplessness #2: Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreisser :
After he had all the money in the hand bag, a wave of revulsion seized him. He would not do it—no! Think of what a scandal it would make. The police! They would be after him. He would have to fly, and where? Oh, the terror of being a fugitive from justice! He took out the two boxes and put all the money back in the safe. In his excitement he forgot what he was doing, and put the sums in the wrong boxes. As he pushed the door to, he thought he remembered doing it wrong and opened the door again. There were the two boxes, mixed.
He took them out and straightened the matter, but now the terror had gone. Why be afraid?
While the money was in his hand, the lock clicked. It had sprung! Did he do it? He grabbed at the knob and pulled vigorously. It had closed. Heavens! He was in for it now, sure enough. The moment he realised that the safe was locked for a surety, the sweat burst out upon his brow and he trembled violently.
Good God, I should never have read this book! The title is misleading. While there’s a Carrie in the story, she’s neither a nun nor does she have a sibling of any importance, and she’s not even the main character. Her story is a subplot about a country girl from the midwest flirting her way to stardom on Broadway or something. I barely noticed it. The real story is about the slow, excruciating fall of George Hurstwood from comfortable Babbitlike retail manager to unbearable, gut wrenching poverty following episodes like the above, in which fate pronounces judgment and execution on him before he’s finished wrestling temptation. It’s like chewing on tinfoil for several hours of reading, and brought back all my own poverty nightmares. Yes, Dreisser does it very, very well, but what he does causes intense pain to the reader.
It’s not that Hurstwood is a compelling and sympathetic character; he’s really a colorless nobody who gets kicked around as much due to his own fecklessness as due to the hostility and indifference of the cold, cruel capitalist world out there. However, the amount and degree of suffering he goes through I’d have a hard time wishing on anyone who isn’t downright evil. Similarly, it’s hard to have a feeling of rejoicing at Carrie’s theatrical career, since it just sort of drops into her lap, with no description of any training or actual talent on her part. Hence, fate happens to the characters regardless of what they deserve. I’d go mad or stop trying in such an environment.
A Ripping Sea-Adventure: The Sea Wolf, by Jack London :
"Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favor. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. He was worth nothing to the world. The supply is too large. To himself only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was, being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself. He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies. Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of seawater, and he does not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone. He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss. Don’t you see? And what have you to say?"
"That you are at least consistent, was all I could say, and I went on washing the dishes.
The narrator is a pointedly effeminate, unathletic ivory tower scholar and gentleman of leisure, unaccustomed to the seamy side of civilized life. The other main character is a primeval sea captain covered in the grime of years, more beast than man. When the scholar is lost at sea and then rescued and pressed into service on the captain’s seal hunting ship, you might expect comic hijinks to ensue, or you might expect Afterschool Special music in the background as the two learn from each other’s disparate natures, and each becomes more of a whole person as a result.
No such bad luck. This is a macho sea tale, through and through, and the centerpiece of the work is the character of Wolf Larsen, the captain, whose superhuman primitive strength of body and will don’t NEED no stinking refinements. Not only is Larsen an unconquerable force of nature, but the author stacks the deck by having him also read scholarly works in the cabin and match the narrator (whose love/hate fascination with Larsen borders on the homoerotic) at philosophical discourse as well as at knot-tying and varmint-rassling. He’s Ahab without the whale, except that he gives the impression that if he and Moby Dick ever met, it would be the Great White who would end up moodily swimming with a peg-fluke afterwards.
Larsen and the crew weather storms, chases, mutinies, sharks and shipwrecks breathtakingly described by Jack London, whose specialty was gripping depictions of Man against the Elements. I almost looked over my shoulder to see if I needed to duck ocean spray in my armchair. Very high recommendations.
British Plutarch Lite: Aubrey’s Brief Lives, by John Aubrey :
Captain Carlo Fantom, a Croatian, spake 13 languages; was a Captain under the Earle of Essex. He was very quarrelsome and a great Ravisher. He left the Parliament Party, and went to King Ch. The first at Oxford, where he was hanged for Ravishing.
Saaid he, I care not for your Cause: I come to fight for your half crowne, and your handsome women. My father was a R. Catholiq; and so was my grandfather. I have fought for the Christians against the turkes; and for the Turkes against the Christians.
Sir Robert Pye was his Colonel, who shot at him for not returning a horse that he tooke away before the Regiment. This was donne in a field near Bedford, where the Army then was, as they were marching to the relief of Gainsborough. Many are yet living that sawe it. Capt. Hamden was by...the bullets went through his buff-coat and Capt. H. sawe his shirt on fire. Capt. Carl Fantom tooke the bullets and sayd he: Sir Rob. Here, take your bullets again. None of the soldiers would dare to fight with him. They sayd, they would not fight with the Devil.
Heare be a series of wee bitty biographies sayd to have been writ upon Ye Olde Cocktayle Nappykins by a lordly gentleman of leisure, who did take downe whatever scandalous gossippe he hearde at Ye Olde Bacchanalious parties for future publickayshun.
Heare be Shaykespeare, Harvey, Hobbes, Frauncis BayCon and manie lesser personnes of prominence, their lives reduced to but two or threee payges apiece, with the emphasis on the most whimsicall and fancifull anecdotes rather than on their great deedes or wurkes. More attention, for example, is payd to Hobbes’s hair than to his greate wurke Leviathan, as iffe Aubrey were but a school chylde, calling out, "Nice hair Thomas , ye wee dumbe shytte!" The pox of a local bawde be discussed in unpleasante detail, and also the distressing facte that when one subjecte had been buriede some time and his coffin unearthed later, it were full of a likwid, and the men of science did drinke of it for experymente!!!
Nonethelesse, a goode booke for grazing. I did keep it bye me for when I were wayting on line or for other odde momentes, as the sectionnes are quyte briefe and mayde for short burstes of readinge.
Al Franken, Scumbucket: Why Not Me?, by Al Franken:
SCRIPT FOR "TERRI" CAMPAIGN COMMERCIAL
Open on: Slo-mo of Terri running through "Iowa" field (corn? Soybeans?). Terri is wearing tank top.
ANNOUNCER (VO): Look at her—young, beautiful, healthy, in the prime of life. But over the next fifty years, she’ll use an ATM machine...
(As Terri runs, money falls out of her clothes, leaving huge cloud of bills trailing behind her)
ANNOUNCER (VO)...literally tens of thousands of times. And every time she uses one, she’ll be wasting money. Money that could be spent on food.
(CUT TO: Terri about to bite into sandwich. Sandwich disappears a la Bewitched.)
ANNOUNCER (VO): Or clothes.
(Terri’s clothes disappear a la Bewitched and Basic Instinct. Terri is nude, stalks of corn(?), soybeans (?) covering her nipples and pubic hair)
ANNOUNCER (VO): Vote Franken.
FADE OUT
I impulse-borrowed this one from the library (I found it facing me when I turned around from looking at Galsworthy) to celebrate Franken’s real life election to the US Senate. It’s a fictional account of the Franken Presidency.
I’d love to tell you I liked it. I like Franken, and I’ve loved his nonfiction books. Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. The Truth (with jokes!). In fact RLiaBFI is to date the only book I’ve ever seen that caused me to roll on the floor laughing from reading the INDEX. Really. Just go find a copy of the book, you don’t even have to buy or check it out, just look at the index and you’ll see what I mean. Franken is capable of writing some wonderful material.
But only for TV and written commentary, not fiction. His Stuart Smalley book sucks, and Why Not Me sucks too. I’m told Franken is a nice guy in person, but for this book, he has reworked his fictional self into the Basil Fawlty of American politics, a petulant, neurotic snob who hates the voters, lies, cheats, blackmails, stages Wag The Dog events, commits adultery with the porn stars and coeds who finance his campaign with lesbian sex hotlines, and hires swishy gay men to blow kisses at Al Gore. And when he gets elected in spite of (or because of) his behavior, he immediately devolves from Machiavellian ruthlessness into quivering ineptitude, spending most of his first 100 days sulking in the White House bedroom, and resigning office not too long after that. No wonder almost half of Minnesota wanted to turn him down for a Republican.
Not quite Adam Sandler unfunny, but unfunny nonetheless. The fake campaign script quoted above is about as good as it gets. Fortunately, the real Al Franken is not the jerk portrayed in the book, and I look forward to his career as a much better Senator than fiction writer. Any bets on whether he will actually begin Senate floor speeches along the lines of "And how will this legislation affect the constituents of me, Al Franken?"
Thou shalt enjoy it: The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell :
I was in the third grade when I saw the Happy Days Thanksgiving episode. The whole cast was in Puritan garb. Joanie Cunningham complains that "being a Pilgrim sure is a draggeth." The Fonz says something like "Greetethamundo". Here is the moment that inspired the first epiphany I ever had about Colonial New England: Joanie leaves the room and her goody-goody brother Richie asks, "Father, are you letting her go out like that? Have you seen her skirt? It’s up to her ankles!" I remember sitting there watching that and realizing, for the first of many times, "Oh. Maybe the people who founded this country were kind of crazy."
Later in the episode it is revealed that the person who gave us Thanksgiving was not squanto or Plymouth Governor William Bradford, but rather The Fonz. All the Pilgrims were afraid of the Indians except Pilgrim Fonzie, who was their friend. Then Joanie gets her foot caught in one of Potsy’s stupid beaver traps (That Potsy.) Remember that thing Fonzie does with the jukebox? Where he whacks it with his fist and the music plays? Turns out that works on beaver traps, too. They open right up. But he won’t free Joanie until everyone renounces their racism and acts nice to the Indians and invites them to dinner. Fonzie? He’s the Martin Luther King of candied yams.
Mostly, sitcom Puritans are rendered in the tone I like to call the Boy, People Used To Be So Stupid school of history. Bewitched produced not one but two time travel witch trial episodes, one for each Darrin. They’re both diatribes about tolerance straight out of The Crucible, but with cornier dialogue and magical nose crinkles. The housewife/witch Samantha brings a ballpoint pen with her to seventeenth century Salem and the townspeople think it’s an instrument of black magic. So they try her for witchcraft and want to hang her.
Check out those barbarian idiots with their cockamamie farce of a legal system, locking people up for fishy reasons and putting their criminals to death! Good thing Americans put an end to all that nonsense long ago.
I need to stop now, before I transcribe the whole book. I could get carried away and do that easily.
I’ve had a schoolboy crush on Sarah Vowell ever since she appeared on The Daily Show to discuss Assassination Vacation a few years back (BTW, I have yet to be disappointed in an author whose book I discovered due to an appearance on The Daily Show. It’s a gold mine for new reading material.)
I like history enough to have willingly endured many dry-as-dust tomes by humorless academics who suck the life out of interesting events. I’ve also read and enjoyed for pleasure the work of palatable encyclopedic writers (the Durants), stylized historians with an agenda (Edward Gibbon, Howard Zinn), and the downright entertaining (I.F. Stone, Peter Ackroyd). Sarah Vowell runs rings around them all. Reading her is like being the lucky, lucky kid who gets partnered up for the big history research paper with the quiet, geeky girl who sits in the back row, and who turns out to be infectiously passionate about the subject matter in ways that draw for cultural sustenance on Scooby Doo, President Clinton, and psychological insights about that popular, backstabbing kid with the perfect hair and the soul of a coal miner’s lung.
In The Wordy Shipmates, Vowell focuses her microscope on the Puritans of early Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Along the way, she visits countless sparsely attended Colonial history museums, waxing rhapsodic not only about the illegible journals and fragmented artifacts on display, but about the kindred souls she finds among the lonely but passionate curators she interviews. She waxes equally rhapsodic about the Plymouth waterslide pool.
Vowell also has a knack for making events from 350 years ago seem significant to our times. If you’ve been politically active about the economy today, or about Measure 8, or about the war in Iraq, Vowell will explain how the attitudes that made those things what they are now were formed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. You’ll see how Roger Williams brought forth a major legal innovation by attempting to differentiate between a SIN and a CRIME, and how the Puritan court’s backlash against the attempt to curtail its power led Williams to flee to Rhode Island. Depriving a Puritan magistrate of the power to punish is like ripping the trumpet from Louis Armstrong’s hands.
This book is like a journey that you might never have thought of taking, and that you might have doubts about enjoying, but which ends up being the time of your life, mostly because you can’t help catching the enthusiasm of your guide. Highest recommendations.
Haughty, or Nice?: The Man of Property, by John Galsworthy:
To shut up a lion or tiger in confinement was surely a horrible barbarity. But no cultivated person would admit this.
The idea of its being barbarous to confine wild animals had probably never even occurred to his father, for instance; he belonged to the old school, who considered it at once humanizing and educational to confine baboons and panthers, holding the view, no doubt, that in course of time they might induce these creatures not so unreasonably to die of misery and heart-sickness against the bars of their cages, and put the society to the expense of getting others! In his eyes, as in the eyes of all Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful creatures in a state of captivity far outweighed the inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom God had so improvidently placed in a state of freedom! It was for the animals’ good, removing them at once from the countless dangers of open air and exercise, and enabling them to exercise their functions in the guaranteed seclusion of a private compartment. Indeed, it was doubtful what wild animals were made for but to be shut up in cages.
OK, fine. I get it. Having a whole lot of wealth isn’t going to guarantee happiness. That still doesn’t change the fact that poverty sucks more, no matter how you slice it.
The Man of Property is part one of the Forsyte Saga trilogy, which I vaguely remember my parents watching on Masterpiece Theater when I was barely old enough to understand English. It is about a clan of upper crust Edwardian era English aristocrats who do things like go to art museums and marvel at how much the world’s masterpieces cost. I was nearly halfway through the book before I sorted through the characters’ relations to one another. They’re all the same.
Galsworthy was supposed to be a great social reformer of his day, but it’s hard to see how from this particular book. It’s like being told by a rich person not to envy rich people because rich people have it oh so hard on the inside, do be a dear and be contented with the crumbs off our table now, there’s a good chap. And then he goes back inside and closes the door on you and the last you hear is his slight chuckle as he returns enjoying his sorry blighted existence. I wasn’t convinced. Maybe it was the culture shock...not only British, not only way beyond my economic class, but also 100 years ago, at a time when marital rape was apparently considered a fitting comeuppance for adultery. Simply repossess your wayward spouse by force, and the experience will bring you closer together. Of course.
Shiny Happy Vampires Holding Hands: Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer :
And then, as the room went black, I was suddenly hyperaware that Edward was sitting less than an inch from me. I was stunned by the unexpected electricity that flowed through me, amazed that it was possible to be MORE aware of him than I already was. A crazy impulse to reach over and touch him, to stroke his perfect face just once in the darkness, nearly overwhelmed me. I crossed my arms tightly across my chest, my hands balling into fists. I was losing my mind.
The opening credits began, lighting the room by a token amount. My eyes, of their own accord, flickered to him. I smiled sheepishly as I realized his posture was identical to mine, fists clenched under his arms, right down to the eyes, peering sideways at me. He grinned right back, his eyes somehow managing to smolder, even in the dark. I looked away before I could start hyperventilating. It was absolutely ridiculous that I should feel dizzy.
The hour seemed very long. I couldn’t concentrate on the movie—I didn’t even know what subject it was on. I tried unsuccessfully to relax, but the electric current that seemed to be originating from somewhere in his body never slackened. Occasionally, I would permit myself a quick glance in his direction, but he never seemed to relax, either. The overpowering craving to touch him also refused to fade, and I crushed my fists safely against my ribs until my fingers were aching with the effort.
I breathed a sigh of relief when Mr. Banner flicked the lights back on at the end of class, and stretched my arms out in front of me, flexing my stiff fingers. Edward chuckled beside me.
"Well, that was interesting," he murmured.
And that’s what you need to know. If the above passage struck you as moving and romantic, then Twilight is for you. If you couldn’t bear to read the passage all the way through, then Twilight is not for you.
I read this book to see what all the fuss was about. I feel like panning it, but it wouldn’t be sportsman-like. I’m not the target demographic. The target demographic is a pubescent schoolgirl who writes poems about her pet rat, and who is just now beginning to feel stirrings in her mind, heart and any other part belonging to a girl, as she dreams about a strong, handsome, dangerous bad boy whose eyes smolder enough to set off the neighbor’s smoke alarm, and who loves her so much that he almost forgets to brood!
Every time I turned the page, I seemed to hear the voice of Spike, snorting in disgust and muttering, "Oh bloody ‘ell." The damned immortals in this series are sparkly care-bear vampires who don’t sleep in coffins, don’t shun the sunlight (although they live in the Pacific Northwest, so it’s moot), don’t have a slayer chasing them and aren’t even in a band. The heroine, who needs rescuing from something or other in every chapter, considers herself an outcast even though she is plagued with boys—besides the vampires, that is—pleading with her for dates. According to a note in the back, the author believes she is drawing on themes explored inPride and Prejudice, as in, "what if Mr. Darcy had fangs and a hot rod?" Yes, really.
Enjoy it if it’s your cup of AB negative. I’ll be taking a different trip.
Learned Helplessness #3: The Trial, by Franz Kafka :
"I forgot to ask you what kind of acquittal you want. There are three possibilities: definite acquittal, ostensible acquittal, and indefinite postponement...I have never met one case of definite acquittal...
With an ostensible acquittal, the charge is lifted from you shoulders for the time being, but it continues to hover above you, and can, as soon as an order comes from on high, be laid upon you again...it is possible for the acquitted man to go straight home from the Court, and find officers already waiting to arrest him again. Then, of course, all his freedom is at an end." "And the case begins all over again?" asked K, almost incredulously. "Certainly," said the painter. "The case begins all over again, but again it is possible, just as before, to secure an ostensible acquittal.
This book has been cited by lawyers as the ultimate example of kangaroo courts and oppressive legal proceedings. I’m not sure they’ve actually read the book. It’s certainly not what I expected, even after reading The Castle. Only one scene in the whole book involves court proceedings, and that one consists of the protagonist showing up for a preliminary hearing, ranting at the officials, and then walking out. Although he has been arrested, he has neither been taken into custody nor informed of the charge against him, nor is his liberty restricted. In fact, but for being told of his status as a "defendant", nothing unpleasant happens to him at all that he does not initiate himself by running around like a headless chicken trying to figure out what to do about the charge. Until the end, when two people suddenly show up to execute him and he says, "Oh, right then", or words to that effect, and offers no resistance. They have trained him to love big brother. Somehow.
As with The Castle, the authority figure is pretty much offstage permanently, and what glimpses we have are of something shabby and ineffectual, that the protagonist treats with awe because everybody else does. The authority is also symbolic of something that the critics can’t agree on. It seems to me maybe an indictment of God or the circumstances of human life. That is: all persons, regardless of merit, must eventually die and may therefore be considered to have been born under a death sentence that will be carried out who knows when. You can spend your life fussing and trying to appeal this, or you can go about your business until the executioners come.
I put Kafka higher on my to-read list because of a David Foster Wallace essay assuring me that Kafka was FUNNY, if you looked for the jokes. And yes, he specified ha-ha funny, not "fewer cats around since the Korean restaurant opened" funny. I guess I don’t get the joke. Wallace did, and he killed himself. I shake my head at the absurdism and give thanks that my world makes more sense than Kafka’s and promises that I can actually do something to affect my quality of life, and I’m still around.