HORIZONTALS AND VERTICALS

Full of the cross-hatchings of Robert Crumbs pen drawings illustrating the streets of Prague this book is perfect for those who are both familiar and unfamiliar with Kafka’s life and work. Crumbs illustrations and comic episodes draw the reader into the story and create a rich visual experience from beginning to end. Perhaps this is the reason why for a fairly small paperback (The hardback would be preferable), it seems like a substantial book once read.

The book opens with an investigation into the often used phrase ‘Kafkaesque’ dispelling the many false uses of the word. Trying to give more dimensions to Kafka than the Kafkaesque notion allows this book will give those readers who use the K word more to think about. It then proceeds to explain the often forgotten humorous side to Kafka’s writing. Crumbs drawing is ideally suited to visualising this while still conveying the intensity and claustrophobia of Ks’ life and writing.

Behind the humour though there still lurks the very real sufferings of Kafka’s life. Ks’ continuous fantasies of doing away with himself by various extravagant means, and the extreme horrors and institutional cruelties are illustrated in Crumbs comic strip of ‘In The Penal Colony’ where the strange torture contraptions are brought to life. This together with an Illustrated study of all of the novels including the short story ‘The Hunger Artist’ bringing to life in sequential panels the dwindling audiences of the Hunger artist whose brave fastings are in vain being replaced by in the end by a fearsome Jaguar to entertain the crowd. Drawing upon Ks collected letters Crumb is able to visualise Kafka’s relationships with Felice, Melina, Dora Diamant and his Father.

Crumb shifts between Comic strip for the fiction and loose document panels laid on the page for biographical material. David Mairowitz accompanies Crumbs drawings sensitively and makes the case for linking Kafka’s real life with his fictional one in a convincing way. The female relationships in Kafka’s life are linked with the women that distract his characters in ‘The Trial’ and ‘The Castle’ and his relationship with his father looms over the whole book.

Crumb has been able to combine Kafka’s life and art in visual way, intoning the black humour and absurdity found in Ks’ writing. It is a format that deserves to be repeated more for adult readers. Crumb is able to visualise the complexities of Kafka's life and in doing so is able to integrate visually aspects of Kafka's life, bringing you closer to Kafka as a person existing in time and space and away from being an abstract phrase. This publication follows in a line of recent celebrated comic documentary/biographical novels including ‘Maus' by Art Spiegelman and ‘Palestine’ by Joe Sacco.