Dung beetles

The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka | The alienation of the absurd against conformity

Inspired by Peter Mendelsund’s book cover design.

Camus is “Kafka written by Hemingway.”

Sartre disagrees with the Kafka bit. I agree with Sartre but for different, less sophisticated reasons.

Say you’re having brunch with the queen, Camus, and Kafka. The server comes in with a nesting set of cutlery and flitters his fingers through clinking metals… I’m kidding, that server would be made redundant.

He delicately picks each metal piece apart (with gloves, I presume, lest he leave fingerprints on the silverware) to position them some calculated width beside some very pristine plates a poor lady had the unfortunate task of polishing the entire morning.

You watch the silverware assemble inaudibly on a flat surface that will soon receive the food you will not only not ravenously stuff your face in, but also not eat at all because you would rather starve than misuse a utensil.

As you’re dealing with the anxiety of only having Princess Diaries for silverware etiquette, Camus picks up a single arugula leaf with, god forbid, his fingers and places it on his tongue. And Kafka… actually, where the hell is Kafka?

“Sir, would you like some help down there,” the butler offers on the other side of this mile-long table, extending his arms under its apron.

You and Camus immediately look under. Sure enough, Kafka is found face down, knees bent, in the fetal position, with the queen’s Achilles’ heel casually on top of his curved spine.

“No, thank you, I fancy being a footstool today,” murmurs Kafka.

Sartre is scrolling through Instagram the following morning and happens upon the incident captured by a maid who quite understandably got fired (though not to her distress as her reel has just gone viral).

He lowers his pipe, adjusts his spectacles, stretches his neck back, and comments: “Haha, rascals.”

If we were 3D, Camus would be 4D, and Kafka would be beyon-D

The strangeness of it all: Camus and Kafka are staples. The Heinz and Hellmann of absurdism; the Lee Kum Kee and Amoy (for those on the other side of the globe). But they’re different. Camus is more down-to-earth, Kafka is not-on-earth. Camus’s dark realism has no business meddling with transcendental affairs, his absurdism is contained in debunking “essential” meanings in the world as we know it. Kafka’s fantastical allegories are symbolic extravaganzas in the unconscious world. Kafka distorts, just enough to make you consider the plausibility of such warping as reality itself.