Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Kafka, that’s who.
I left them out of my list of twenty-five writers that influenced me. Rimbaud and Baudelaire had very particular influences on me. They were the first (and only?) poets I read in French, with some difficulty, and then I had this longish phase of trying to write to prose poetry.
Kafka made me write short stories. Very bad short stories, but anything’s better than nothing. I remember the thrill of hearing people say that such-and-such portion of my short story was very Kafkaesque. After remembering, I think, “What does Kafkaesque mean, other than, ‘sort of like Kafka’?” Here’s what I got out of Wiki:
Kafkaesque, adj,
1. reminiscent of the literary work of Franz Kafka
2. marked by a senseless, disorientating, often menacing complexity
3. marked by surreal distortion and a sense of impending danger
4. referring to intentional distortion of reality by powerful but anonymous bureaucrats
5. referring to an existentialist state of ever-elusive freedom while existing under unmitigable control
6. nightmarish
Fascinating. We use the word quite loosely. In future, when I think something is Kafkaesque, I’m going to say, “This is very nightmarish.” I wonder if the writer would appreciate it.
You know, it’s funny. I can’t read French but I’ve read so much French lit. (I learned a few words and sentences in France, but they amount to things like “sortie” and “Je voudrais…”).
And yes, Kafkaesque is pretty broad. I would use a few of those lines as my definition, that is something that is not quite real in a disorienting fashion that occurs in a world with a controlling bureaucracy, i.e. Brazil is very Kafkaesque.
Well, I’ve been reading lots of Japanese stuff and I don’t know any Japanese, so I think it’s OK. : )
Heh, at the Wiki article, there’s a link to IMDB’s list of Kafkaesque movies and I remember seeing ‘Brazil’ there.
I’d be bloody chuffed to have my work referred to as nightmarish. Especially by you! (:
Aw, ‘nightmarish’ sounds rude, but I promise I will use ‘Kafkaesque’ to describe your work at the earliest possible opportunity. : P
The Metamorphosis is nightmarish. Dude turns into a beetle, is ostracized, attacked, and dies.
I’m sure if I said, “Your writing is nightmarish, like The Metamorphosis” it wouldn’t be rude, but what if I just said “Your writing is nightmarish”?
I know one who would.
Who?