11 - Myths and realities in Kafka biography

Summary

'We are reading a book. A novel, say, or a book of short stories. It interests us because it is new, because it is. . . novel, so we read on', says Sydney, the aspiring Kafka biographer in Alan Bennett's play Kafka's Dick, and continues:

And yet in what we call our heart of hearts (which is the part that is heartless) we know that like children we prefer the familiar stories, the tales we have been told before. And there is one story we never fail to like because it is always the same. The myth of the artist's life.

In fact, Bennett’s play centres around one of the central myths of Kafka’s life: the relationship with his father. But is the audience’s myth-making due to the fact that Kafka’s life, as Sydney goes on to maintain, ‘conforms in every particular to what we have convinced ourselves an artist’s life should be’, or is it due to biographers who have over the years conditioned us to certain stories? To answer these questions this chapter will give a brief overview of Kafka biography and look at some of the larger and smaller myths about Kafka’s life.