Franz Kafka on the kind of books we should read

    Read to be slammed, advised Kafka:

I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake with a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all. . . . What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe. (Quoted from A History of Reading, by Alberto Manguel. New York: Viking. 1996. p. 616.)

    For a brief biography of Franz Kafka, click here. For the same of Alberto Manguel, click here.

Comments

[Michael Jablonski]

I disagree with Kafka. Reasons to read books are too numerous to count. Reading a book that “bites and stings” is only one reason. I read novels because I like a good story. I read books to visit a different time and place. Books teach me. They enlighten me. Sometimes they sting me. I’d be a lesser person, however, if I read only books that bite and sting. That said, In the Penal Colony (a short story by Kafka) delivers a serious bite and a painful sting.

As to reading, please visit my website:

http://kindlepaws.com

That web site is about reading, books, and helping a local animal shelter.