Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared)

I like Kafka.  It’s been ages since I read anything by him, but I remember really enjoying The Trial, more so than I expected from a book that’s freely hailed as an absolute classic.  So I was looking forward to Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared) and I ended up being just a little bit underwhelmed by the whole thing.    

The book tells the story, such as it is, of fifteen year old Karl Rossman, a German boy sent to America after impregnating a much older housemaid.   The novel follows Karl as he tries, and ultimately fails to settle into various roles in New York.  Each chapter acts almost as a short story, a new chapter (if you will) in the tale of Karl’s American experience that has only limited connections to the previous ones.  There is nothing wrong with the narrative style, but there are a couple of issues with the book itself, as whole. 

First of all, this isn’t a whole.  Amerika is an uncompleted book and it’s very obvious- not in the least because it ends with a section entitled “fragments” which are essentially a few pages of snippets showing us where the plot was likely to go.  Uncompleted books are always of a challenge; it’s either a case of you can still see the bigger picture and are left a bit unfulfilled because it’s not there, or all you’re left with is a hundred odd pages of directionless build up and character building that goes precisely nowhere.  Amerika falls into the latter of the two categories.  Karl spends his time milling about between people and circumstances and nothing ever quite pays off. 

On top of this, Amerika was Kafka’s first novel.  At least, it was the first he started writing, even if it was far from the first of his work published.   First novels, like unfinished ones, can be a challenge.  They tend to be rougher around the edges, tipped with potential that is shown more clearly in later books.  That’s true of Amerika too.  Karl is as effectual as any of Kafka’s later characters- as in, not all.  He drifts through his encounters in America being acted upon and rarely acting except as a re-action to a change in his circumstance.  He does not drive the narrative.  This is something that Kafka is famous for, characters being acted upon by unknown forces for unknown reasons, but Karl isn’t acted upon by unknown forces.   He meets the people who drive his destiny and, because these people are knowable, Karl seems less of a victim and more of a wet blanket. 

I don’t want to be so negative about this book; there are some moments that are pure Kafka- Karl has to leave the house of the uncle he was staying with in part because a letter is delivered late.  But… it’s undeveloped.  The letter is delivered late because a man decides to do so.  The feeling of the pointless and unbeatable bureaucracy of The Trial is missing.  It’s not America that Karl cannot fight, it’s the Americans.

My next book is A Kestrel for a Knave, by Barry Hines.