Franz KafkaBeloved writers often get reclaimed for a new readership. Oscar Wilde, best known for being a wit in his own time, would become a gay icon in ours. Long after his death, the Romantic poet Lord Byron would receive the diagnosis of manic-depression. Rudyard Kipling would be embraced during the British Empire and then criticized as imperialist and sometimes racist as the Empire collapsed. Ernest Hemingway, a beloved, swashbuckling figure in his day, would later fall out of favor for a time as a chauvinist.
Now it’s Kafka’s turn. In a new book, “Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life” (St. Martin’s Press), James Hawes, a British lecturer and satirical novelist, considers the man behind the literary myth. According to Mr. Hawes, the myth is all penniless failure and tubercular despair, struggle and saintliness. The man is more dashing. He held a high-paying job, visited brothels and enjoyed some popularity, romantic liaisons and literary admirers in his lifetime.
Oh, yes, and smut. A bit of a provocateur, Mr. Hawes, whose book is titled “Excavating Kafka” in its British edition, explores a hitherto uncelebrated “porn” stash kept in a locked bookshelf by the great writer. No, the magazines in question haven’t been hiding in a Prague garret. As academics already knew, they’re archived at the British Library and the Bodleian Library at Oxford. But no one mined them for publication until Mr. Hawes chose to now — which probably says more about who we are today than it does about who Kafka was.
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