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THOM HARTMANN'S "INDEPENDENT THINKER" BOOK OF THE MONTH REVIEW

The Trial
by Franz Kafka
Reviewed by Thom Hartmann

"There can be no doubt --" said K., quite softly, for he was elated by the breathless attention of the meeting; in that stillness a subdued hum was audible which was more exciting than the wildest applause -- "there can be no doubt that behind all the actions of this court of justice, that is to say in my case, behind my arrest and today's interrogation, there is a great organization at work. An organization which not only employs corrupt warders, oafish Inspectors, and Examining Magistrates of whom the best that can be said is that they recognize their own limitations, but also has at its disposal a judicial hierarchy of high, indeed of the highest rank, with an indispensable and numerous retinue of servants, clerks, police, and other assistants, perhaps even hangmen, I do not shrink from that word. And the significance of this great organization, gentlemen? It consists in this, that innocent persons are accused of guilt, and senseless proceedings are put in motion against them ..."

Franz Kafka is one of the most complex writers of the past two centuries. Chronically disabled by health problems that may have arisen from his partnership in an asbestos company (or simply may have been TB and a weak constitution), he died just a month before his 41st birthday, leaving behind a large collection of unpublished and often-fragmentary works. Most of his fame as an author came after his death, when, against his wishes, his friend Max Brod -- to whom he'd entrusted his manuscripts before his death -- cleaned up a few, reassembled others, and published several, including "The Trial."

But as iconic and mysterious as Kafka was as a man (his biography over on Wikipedia is really worth the read), his novel The Trial could (and should -- I'm doing it here) be put forward as an icon of the modern American Republican Party mentality of the all-powerful Security State trampling not just the rights but the psyches of its citizens.

The Trial opens with this first sentence: "Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested."

It goes downhill from there.

Throughout the novel, Josef K. (we never learn his last name) is treated to the vagaries of a kangaroo court system that would make Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey proud. He never learns the charges against him, his lawyer is a preening incompetent who has built a mini-industry defending similarly "slandered" innocent (or maybe not so innocent -- we don't ever learn what's legal and what's illegal) men, and the reaction of the other characters in the novel ranges from mild shock to resignation to an irony that's half-comedic and half-tragic.

In the end, men he doesn't know confront him with one of the greatest of human horrors for reasons he doesn't understand and with a timing he doesn't suspect: "Was there still help? Were there objections that had been forgotten? Of course there were. Logic is no doubt unshakable, but it can't withstand a person who wants to live. Where was the judge he'd never seen? Where was the high court he'd never reached?"

Kafkaesque is a word that has become deeply rooted both in the English language and the psyche of the "free world." Having The Trial in your personal library is essential for the appearance of cultural literacy ("appearance" being a notion that fits perfectly with much of the middle of the book); but to read it is to understand how an obscure (at his death) author's last name has given birth to a powerful and enduring adjective known around the world.

The Trial is such a powerful and rich book that Orson Welles made a movie of the same name from it in 1962. He called it the best movie he ever made, and chose Anthony Perkins for the starring role, following on Perkins' success two years earlier in "Psycho."

The book is a dense and, at times, difficult -- but ultimately rewarding -- read. Written originally in German, Kafka was fond of using a style that can only work in that language of creating long sentences that ended with the powerful punch of the sentence's primary verb. This presented a considerable challenge to the series of translators who have presented Kafka to English-speaking audiences, and Breon Mitchell does a brilliant job of handling the story. His preface to the book and his explanation of his translation process is particularly enlightening, and in my humble opinion this is one of the best translations of The Trial extant. (You may want to read the preface after reading the novel, though, as it gives away the details of the ending that I've obscured in this review.)

As Mitchell notes about the German word Prozeß, the original title of the book:

The German word "Prozeß," as has often been noted, refers not only to an actual trial, but also to the proceedings surrounding it, a process that, in this imaginary world, includes preliminary investigations, numerous hearings, and a wide range of legal and extra-legal maneuvering. 'The Trial' is a reasonable translation [of the title] of the German, combining as it does the literal and figurative associations surrounding Josef K.'s yearlong struggle. Yet the shadowy and seemingly infinite hierarchy of mysterious courts depicted in The Trial does not correspond to any legal system so far as we know, then or now.

That preface was written in 1998.

As the construction of the Death Chamber at Guantanamo Bay is now nearly finished, to carry out sentences that will be rendered in secret against men who are unaware of the specific charges against them, unable to participate in the court's proceedings, whose lawyers may not see the "evidence" against them (which may be obtained by hearsay or torture), and cannot be appealed before their execution, there is no more important time than now to read The Trial -- and share it with every high school or college student you can find.

Thom Hartmann is a New York Times bestselling author and the host of "The Thom Hartmann Program" syndicated nationally by Air America Radio. His website is ThomHartmann.com. You can find information on how to listen to his program (online if you don't have a radio station that carries it) and read more about his great books.

THOM HARTMANN'S "INDEPENDENT THINKER" BOOK OF THE MONTH REVIEW


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