VERY NEAR the top of what I have, in the past,
rather indelicately called the "cultural dung heap of reaction"
sits Franz Kafka, one of the major Olympians in that curious
shrine 'the so-called "new critics" and their Trotskyite col-
leagues have erected. Mr. Kafka is treasured as well as read;
in a dozen literary quarterlies and "little" magazines, joss
sticks are burned to him, and his stilted prose is exalted as a
worthy goal. Worthy or not, that goal is certainly interesting,
for in the creation of a shadow world, a world of twisted, tor-
mented mockeries of mankind, Mr. Kafka holds a very high
place. It is worth examining the substance of that throne.

Perhaps the most widely read of Kafka's work, here in
America, is a tale called Metamorphosis, ² which narrates in
great detail how a German traveling salesman woke up one
morning and discovered that he was a cockroach.

Now, although there is satirical intention in Kafka's tale,
he departs from the satirists of the past in the absolute
literal presentation of his point. It is much as if, having once
proceeded to put down his idea upon paper, he was carried
away by a conviction of the reality of the situation he had
conceived. Let me quote the first two paragraphs of the story
to make this plain:

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from a troubled
dream, he found himself changed in his bed to some mon-
strous kind of vermin.

-9-