Each of the books in Bloom's "Biocritiques" series consists of a series of essays on a prominent writer. These essays include a biography, an original essay that considers the author's works in historical and cultural perspective, and a few previously- published literary critiques that focus on some aspect of the authors works. Contrary to what one might expect from the series title, the books do not necessarily interpret the authors writings in terms of his or her biography (given that such interpretation is not a very active area of effort in academic scholarship); further the critical essays do not necessarily relate to the "Biocritique" theme. Consequently, readers of the volume on Franz Kafka may be disappointed to find that the book does little to explain the author's enigmatic writings in the context of his own life.

This volume (like all of the other books in the series) begins with Harold Bloom's 5 page essay "The Work in the Writer" (which focuses on Shakespeare), followed by an "Introduction" on Kafka which is identical with the one Bloom published in his "Major Short Story Writers". These are followed by a 54 page biography of Franz Kafka by Neil Heims, representing about 40% of the volume. Next comes a 34 page essays "On the Works of Franz Kafka" (by Portia Williams Weiskel). These are followed by three previously- published contributions: a 10 page essay "Kafka's Europe" (by Julian Preece), a 20 page one "Hunting Kafka Out of Season" (by Ruth V. Gross), and a 16 page one titled "Reading Kafka" (by Ronald Speirs and Beatrice Sandberg). These are followed by a chronology of the writer's life, a list of Kafka's written works, and a bibliography.

Having read 10 Kafka biographies (including Reiner Stach's magisterial 3 volume set), I found Heims' account to be reasonable but pedestrian, somewhat flawed due to with questionable interpretations and small errors. Heims tends to take Kafka's own diary entries and his famous, unpublished letter to his father at face value, instead of acknowledging their subjective (and therefore questionable) origins. Likewise, his account contains several errors in fact, ones that will be apparent to alert readers of the book-length biographies. Weiskel's essay explores themes of his major works, but falls short of the goal of interpreting them in historical and cultural perspective. I was interested to note the author's acknowledgement that "Readers interested in other reader's responses will encounter multiple -- and sometimes incompatible -- interpretations, as if the text in question were a Rorshach test inviting each person's intuitive and critical categories of understanding." (This happens to be a conclusion I reached some time ago, from having read several divergent and contradictory "interpretations", ones that say more about the literary critic than his subject).

Preece's essay usefully considers Kafka's writing in the context of geography, history, and culture (though with nothing that I've not read before). Gross' essay takes an interesting approach, arguing against previous attempts to make his works fit a particular interpretation. "Whether read as modern, postmodern, existential, surreal, or what you will, Kafka's works have been interpreted to explain ways of looking at the present moment, be it 1925, 1965, or 2000." She speaks of "endless readings that are either more plausible (if often less interesting because they raise the question of whether the meaning is worth the effort) or more far-fetched" ….with readings that "seem to rival the text in ingenuity and surprise". The Spiers & Sandberg essay likewise notes the difficulty of interpretation of Kafka's writing: "it will probably never be possible to arrive at a single, demonstrably correct or exhaustive reading of his stories or novels," as forms of interpretation go in and out of style.

For my part, I gained little from this work other than small satisfaction that some professional literary critiques acknowledge the near- futility of attempts to interpret Kafka's more enigmatic writings. I find it a bit surprising that these particular essays were chosen for the volume, given Harold Bloom's views Kafka as "the post-Biblical Jewish writer". But then again, it's an open question as to whether Bloom chose the essays or left them entirely to the sizable cadre of graduate students and other staffers who actually edited the many hundreds of volumes that bear his name. For an account of the Bloom publishing juggernaut, see my review of another of the ten (!) short books on Kafka interpretation that bear Bloom's name: http://www.librarything.com/work/16867665/reviews/162913487 ( )