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Kafka: An End or a Beginning?

lareviewofbooks.org

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Re: Kafka: An End or a Beginning?

#21

Post by zellyn »

StevePerkins wrote: post #19
dang wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post this sort of swipe. It's fine if you're uninterested in (Franz) Kafka; plenty of the rest of us are, and the submission is perfectly on topic. It's in HN's DNA (not to mention the opening paragraph of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ) that it covers a wide range of topics, far beyond just computing, tech, and startups and definitely including arts and letters, among other things. Hi…

On the other hand, when a title is going to mislead and confuse most readers, it would be courteous to extend or clarify the title such as: " (Franz) Kafka: An End or a Beginning? " That is, unless the goal is to mislead and feel smug about it.

On my screen, it shows up as "Kafka: An End or a Beginning? (lareviewofbooks.org)" which was all the information I needed to determine that it related to the Author before clicking through.

Re: Kafka: An End or a Beginning?

#22

Post by yolesaber »

wruza wrote: post #16
yolesaber wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! An open source distributed messaging stream is just not another Apache Java project. Kafka's made my life a lot easier at work.

>made my life a lot easier at work Was it just an enhancement or complete metamorphosis?

A country doctor recommended it to us. We put it through the trial and then went to the judgement. All in all it saved us a lot of money and we are hunger artists no more.

Re: Kafka: An End or a Beginning?

#23

Post by apocalypstyx »

andrewclunn wrote: post #8

I find that Kafka loses his zeal when the uncertainty of an unformed epistemology is removed. It's in the circular questioning of subjectivity and post modernism that his work takes hold. Move beyond that and what was once existential horror in his writing becomes trivial nuisance.

My problem with shunting Kafka into post-modernism is it becomes too much a grab bag. Just like they try to vacuum up Cervantes and Sterne, aswell. Kakfa died 40 years before post-modernism; (and Cervantes 343 and Sterne 191).

But it brings to my mind a broader point: McHale's notion:

   intractable epistemological uncertainty becomes at a certain 
   point ontological plurality or instability: push epistemological 
   questions far enough and they "tip over" into ontological questions.
(I personally prefer the epistemological/ontological definition of modernism/post-modernism, especially here where we have Kakfa who could best be define (if anything) as a modernist writer being shoved into post-modern space.)

So is the shunting of a collective and ancient epistemological and ontological uncertainty an attempt to neutralize its implications? A question I think partly arises from something about your use of 'uncertainty' and 'unformed' here, which keeps occurring to me in terms of the excess of its vital substance and becoming: too much certainty/too much form tipping over into no certainty at all/formlessness. Just as defining the question (and no matter what anyone else argues Hitchhiker's Guide is my favorite example of this in fiction) for the answer of '42' as 'How many roads must a man walk down?' provides a solution, is it any more than a placebo affect? that at its core highlights the instability of our epistemological and ontological positions more intensely than a blank answer would have (and thereby beats us all over the head with a teleological hammer).

Re: Kafka: An End or a Beginning?

#24

Post by dang »

StevePerkins wrote: post #19
dang wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post this sort of swipe. It's fine if you're uninterested in (Franz) Kafka; plenty of the rest of us are, and the submission is perfectly on topic. It's in HN's DNA (not to mention the opening paragraph of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ) that it covers a wide range of topics, far beyond just computing, tech, and startups and definitely including arts and letters, among other things. Hi…

On the other hand, when a title is going to mislead and confuse most readers, it would be courteous to extend or clarify the title such as: " (Franz) Kafka: An End or a Beginning? " That is, unless the goal is to mislead and feel smug about it.

As both zellyn and the site guidelines point out, the domain name is part of the title here, so it wasn't as ambiguous as all that.

Not spoon-feeding readers is part of what makes HN HN.

Re: Kafka: An End or a Beginning?

#25

Post by sten »

yolesaber wrote: post #22
wruza wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>made my life a lot easier at work Was it just an enhancement or complete metamorphosis?

A country doctor recommended it to us. We put it through the trial and then went to the judgement. All in all it saved us a lot of money and we are hunger artists no more.

I feel that I've missed something nice here. I'll have to read more.

Re: Kafka: An End or a Beginning?

#26

Post by justin_vanw »

dang wrote: post #13
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #3

I was looking for an article about the Kafka queue system. Is this hackernews or unemployed philosopher news?

Please don't post this sort of swipe. It's fine if you're uninterested in (Franz) Kafka; plenty of the rest of us are, and the submission is perfectly on topic. It's in HN's DNA (not to mention the opening paragraph of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ) that it covers a wide range of topics, far beyond just computing, tech, and startups and definitely including arts and letters, among other things. Hi…

I've been on HN for about 10 years now... It used to be 99.99% on topic stories about startups and technology.

Now it's just random 'interesting' things? That's what reddit is for IMO.

Re: Kafka: An End or a Beginning?

#28

Post by justin_vanw »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #17
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #3

I was looking for an article about the Kafka queue system. Is this hackernews or unemployed philosopher news?

Good coders know what they are doing is applied philosophy.

This is just a tautology, since by the same logic every activity that requires any kind of thought is just 'applied philosophy'.
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