To mark the centenary of Kafka’s death next month, three compelling books – including his unedited diaries – reveal the complexity of the author’s works and why ‘Kafkaesque’ is so reductive
There is a scene in the American version of the sitcom The Office, one that achieves the buttock-clenching awkwardness of the original series, in which the protagonist, Michael Scott, breaks up in public with his girlfriend, who is also the mother of an employee. She is, he explains, just too worldly and cultured for him, filling their conversation with references that he cannot follow: “Who is Kafkaesque?” he asks. “I’ve never … I don’t know him.”
This year marks the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death, and the appearance of his name in a mainstream sitcom is a reminder that he is part of that tiny group of writers – along with Shakespeare and Dickens, certainly – whose overall style and manner is so identifiable that it has become an adjective. Just as a sooty-cheeked urchin or an exaggeratedly hearty paterfamilias is destined to be described as Dickensian, any situation characterised by over-elaborate and baffling bureaucracy that might induce manic despair when faced with its inhumane workings will summon up Kafka’s adjectival spectre, to the smug nodding of the initiated and the bafflement of the Michael Scotts of the world.
