3:AM Magazine

A review of James Hawes‘ Excavating Kafka — the one that caused the porn fuss — in the Spiked Review of Books:

Franz Kafka. Writer. Born 1883, died 1924. Published works include The Trial, Metamorphosis and The Castle. Many consider him the greatest writer of the twentieth century.

These are the bald facts. But Franz Kafka, the man, or better still the noun-phrase, conjures up far much more than that. The K-word evokes a beautiful soul tortured by human relationships; a lonely seer too saintly for this rank, sunken world; and consequently, a tragic genius for whom art beat life, every time. ‘I am literature and nothing else’, he once proclaimed. Beside ‘Franz Kafka’ all earthly creatures pale.

There’s more. As a German-speaking Jew adrift within a Czech-speaking enclave of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, we are told, his profoundly estranged perspective drove him to the darkest of insights. Persecution, dehumanisation, and torture; in Kafka, the Europe of the Gulag and the gas chamber found its baleful prophet.

And it’s all captured in the brooding, melancholy image of Kafka, the one which appears on his books, the one which sustains the international Kafka industry – the one, in other words, that everybody knows. And as James Hawes seeks to show in his wonderful Excavating Kafka, it is completely misleading. The ‘K-myth’, as Hawes calls it, is pure spin.

So what, you might ask? When reading, it’s usually possible to do so without knowledge of the author’s life intruding too much. Which in many cases is just as well. But the K-myth is strange. It does more than just footnote Kafka’s work – it engulfs it. The Trial ceases to appear as the tale of Josef K’s arrest, drawing on the inquisitorial as opposed to adversarial nature of European legal proceedings; it is instead presented as a forewarning of the Holocaust. The Metamorphosis stops being read as a black comedy in which Gregor Samsa wakes up as a giant bug and worries about how he’s going to get to work, and becomes instead a critique of anti-Semitism. Indeed, such is the potency of the K-myth that it has even generated its own adjective – Kafkaesque – to refer to anything that resembles oppressive state bureaucratic persecution.

This isn’t to say that such readings of The Trial are wrong, just myopic. And the cause, as Hawes argues, is the K-myth. It transforms Kafka’s works into pre-read, pre-packaged prophesies of totalitarianism, baleful intimations of the Shoah. The K-myth ‘makes people – even highly educated German scholars – incapable of reading what Kafka actually wrote’. ‘Superb writing’, says Hawes, is lost to idolatry.

For this reason, Hawes takes a ‘hammer’ to the idol, smashing the K-myth with the mundane reality of Dr Franz Kafka. The figure that emerges from this retelling is, thankfully, a little more down to earth.

Further: The Telegraph’s review / The Observer review / ‘Tumbling the author myth’, James Hawes in The Guardian.

Charles Burns @ the Adam Baumgold Gallery, 5 September – 12 October + From Paul Gravett’s introduction to The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics: “If your only real exposure so far to crime comics has been the Sin City graphic novels by Frank Miller or maybe their faithful big-screen adaptations, you’d better fasten your seat belt, you’re in for a foot-to-the-floor ride through this compendium of the cream of crime comics. Along the way, you’ll see how several of Miller’s acknowledged masters and peers enthrall with their pacing, atmosphere and verbal and visual panache. You’ll also see how Miller’s battered, bandaged Marvin belongs in a long line-up of lean, mean machismo going back to the Thirties and before, when gangsters fought the cops for control of America’s cities.” + “Three of the elder statesmen of comic books — Neal Adams, Joe Kubert and Stan Lee — have joined forces to combat what they see as a real-world injustice. The men are lending their talents to tell the tale of Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, who survived two years at the Auschwitz concentration camp by painting watercolor portraits for the infamous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele. Some of the artwork also survived, but it is in the possession of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland. Now 85 and living in California, Mrs. Babbitt wants the artwork back, but the museum has steadfastly refused to return it.” + The Morning Star review A People’s History of American Empire: A Graphic Adaptation by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle, “an eye-opening, empowering volume [that] deserves a prominent spot in every school library in the land.” [h/t Andrew Stevens] + The First Post preview pages from Adrian Tomine’s Sleepwalk [h/t A.S.] + Boldtype review Lynda Barry’s What It Is: “Lynda Barry is the queen of hermits. A Wisconsin neo-Buddha, she lives on a remote farm with a wood-burning stove and only her husband around for company. Who better, then, to talk artists out of self-effacing holes than someone who has forged a warm home at the very heart of solitude? Barry studied under Marilyn Frasca at Evergreen College, where she befriended Simpsons creator Matt Groening. Her career burgeoned soon thereafter with the creation of Ernie Pook’s Comeek, but her later decline in popularity prompted a period of total withdrawal. That is, until boutique Montreal publishing house Drawn & Quarterly rediscovered her and released What It Is.” + A Comics Reporter interview with Sammy Harkham, “genius” and Kramers Ergot editor: “Matt [Groening] is known as a huge alt comics fan, totally still engaging with new work coming out, and he is someone who I have seen around at different conventions and local places a lot. I knew he would like the ideas behind the book. I found it out odd that despite doing a great weekly strip for years and years, he never comes up much in alt comics conversation, and never seems to be asked to be in anthologies much. I told him about the book, and he happened to have an idea for a very dense single panel cartoon that he was unsure how he was going to run in the paper at the usual space they give him. So it was perfect timing.” + An interview with Dan Clowes: “I don’t want people digging into my personal desk diary. I would rather have the work speak for itself. I read a funny interview with Art Spiegelman, the author of Maus, who’s been doing interviews since the late 1960s. He said people are always throwing back quotes that he said in 1974 that are just diametrically opposed to the way he feels now. … You say things that just occur to you on the spur of the moment and then 10 minutes after the interview, you think, “I guess I don’t really believe that.”" [via Journalista!] + More on the Tintin movie + Electric Politics’s podcast with R Crumb [via Journalista!]

Always partial to a bit of the Boosh round these parts and the forthcoming Mighty Book of Boosh, previewed on the Creative Review blog, sounds quite decent:

While it’s common knowledge amongst Mighty Boosh fans that the surreal TV show’s spaced out Shaman, Naboo, is played by Noel Fielding’s brother, Michael, it’s less well known that the man inside Boosh character Bollo’s gorilla suit is actually a graphic designer and photographer. Bollo’s design skills (his real name is Dave Brown) are showcased in the forthcoming Mighty Book Of Boosh, published by Canongate on 18 September. Brown, has art directed and designed the book and contributed the bulk of the photography therein.

[..]

“I’ve been trying to get a book of Boosh stuff together for a long while,” admits Brown, “but it’s been a combination of having the time to dedicate to it and getting a publisher interested in letting us do what we wanted to do that means we’ve been able to do it this year. We didn’t want to produce a run of the mill, piece of shit comedy book - like you see in the shops. We needed a publisher to invest in it the way we wanted, we’re all very creative people. Noel pretty much draws everything from character costume designs to some of the stranger characters’ faces. I’ve got over ten years of photography of Boosh exploits from day one.”

And the Mighty Book of Boosh is stuffed full of Brown’s photos of Vince, Howard, Naboo, Bob Fossil and various other Boosh characters. Brown has also designed dozens of graphic devices to bring various Boosh jokes to life in print - such as a poster advertising the fight from the very first episode of the first TV series between Killeroo and Howard Moon - or the front page of a newspaper with the story of coy carps dying due to Howard Moon crying into their pond (referencing another first series episode in which Howard’s unrequited love for Mrs Gideon causes him to cry repeatedly into a pond).

There are also several books within the book, notably Vince Noir’s Childhood Tales From The Jungle and Howard Moon’s A Trumpet Full of Memories - for which Brown has created covers and layouts.

Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, as seen on 3 Quarks Daily.

“Well, I dislike Surrealism – I think it’s a form of psychiatric policing; they promote the idea that the unconscious is a friend to us; it’s not – it’s an animal … But look at TV adverts today, a mere 60 years after Hoffman synthesised LSD. Consider how readily we accept the manipulation of hallucinations, the creation of flashbacks. Anything is permissible: a man hectomorphs into a milk bottle and the folks at home lap it up.”

Will Self visits the Chapman Brothers for Art World Magazine (online here).

Further: Francis Bacon revisited, (II), (III) / The Peter Saul Manifesto / Bathroom Art by Christoph Niemann / Infoviz Art / The welcome death of the hipster? / the theatrical release of Beautiful Losers / Amanda Visell @ Swindle / Alarm magazine shine a light on Just Seeds collective / Lens Culture featuring Jeff Cowen, Joachim Schmid and Yenny Huber / Lacanian Ink’s articism / Bomb Magazine talk to Catherine Sullivan and Meg Stuart / Steven Campbell retrospective @ Glasgow Print Studio plus the always remarkable Dreaming Methods.

Should Tao Lin’s intern work for Gawker? * The new issue of Open Wide magazine is out, and now it’s free! * The Wyndham Lewis revival. * Pictures of the 2008 edition of the Mermaid Parade. * The weird world of book signings. * Tony Duvert is no more (see here). * Edo Bertogolio talks about Face Addict, his documentary chronicling the NYC downtown scene of the 70s and 80s. * Keith Haring’s protégé. * The best literary prize ever? * Netherland author (and Man Booker favourite) Joseph O’Neill lives at the legendary Chelsea Hotel (more here). * An interview with Raymond Queneau (video). * The Oz trial revisited. * Are you old enough to remember when clothes were exciting? Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren and Johnson’s (both Kensington Market and King’s Road). * Dandies. * Ze binge drinking. * Brandon Stosuy on American black metal bands in the Believer. * 3:AM’s Steve Finbow interviewed in Word Riot: “I think, in 2008, under the current climate of uncertainty, and if they were writing today, novelists such as BS Johnson, Ann Quin, and even Samuel Beckett would have difficulty finding a publisher”. See also their interview with Billy Childish. * The great Geoff Dyer on the Pompidou Centre’s Miroslav Tichy retrospective (see pix here, there and everywhere): “…Tichý began photographing with the most basic Russian-made camera — and this was the technological high point of his career. Thereafter he became a scavenger, modifying and building his equipment with whatever came to hand: a rewind mechanism made of elastic from a pair of shorts and attached to empty spools of thread; lenses from old spectacles and Plexiglas, polished with sandpaper, toothpaste and cigarette ash. His telephotos were cobbled together from plastic drain pipes and empty food tins. He also made his own enlarger, out of cardboard and planks. Tichý’s make-do-and-mend philosophy extends to his own, um, wardrobe. Recent photographs show him holding his DIY camera, wearing a filthy sweater, stitched together with what look like dead beetles. …So, what did Tichý do, once he was kitted out with his homemade arsenal? Put as simply as possible, he spent his time perving around Kyjov, photographing women. Ideally he’d catch them topless or in bikinis at the local swimming pool; failing that, he’d settle for a glimpse of knee or — the limitations of the camera meant the framing was often askew — ankle. That is the least of the pictures’ defects: most are under or over-exposed as well. Michael Hoppen is currently exhibiting a small selection of Tichý’s at his London gallery. I asked him how many great Tichý’s pictures there were in total. “In focus?” he replied, as if that were a personal preference, and not a prerequisite for photographic adequacy. “Maybe two or three hundred.” In some of these, the ostensible subject is all but blanched out of existence by a blaze of intruding light.

This is, however, the most orthodox phase of Tichý’s working methods. Once developed and printed, the pictures were subjected to a protracted form of editorial hazing: left out in the rain, used as beer mats or to prop up wobbly tables. Where the definition was not sharp enough, Tichý would pencil around breasts or hips like an enthusiastic but unqualified cosmetic surgeon. Sometimes he’d frame the pictures with a specially chosen mount: a garbage sack, say, or a bit of squiggled-on card. One of the works at the Pompidou has been gnawed by the rats with which the artist shares his home. It may be hard to resist the conclusion that Tichý is a few frames short of a roll — but he’s shrewd with it: “If you want to be famous,” he has said, “you have to be worse at something than everyone else in the world.” …Different men tend to be attracted to different physical types of women: thin or voluptuous, blonde or brunette. For Tichý anything in a dress was great — though without a dress was even better. He sees a hefty, middle-aged-looking woman in an unflattering calf-length skirt bending over to talk to someone in a car — yep, that’ll do. …”

(Thanks to Susan Tomaselli and Andrew Stevens.)