41–50 of 66 posts
This was worth the click A man from the country seeks the law and wishes to gain entry to it through an open doorway, but the doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at the present time. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper says it is possible "but not now". The man waits by the door for years, bribing the doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the bribes, but tells…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IIRC about 40 percent of all medical expenses are administrative costs and about 20 percent is drug costs. Improving those could drop healthcare costs by nearly half, without lowering healthcare salaries. To lower medical salaries, we need to address (a) the AMA acting as a cartel, (b) residency slots being paid for by Medicare and being limited, and (c) crippling student debt problems. As an example, nurse practitio…
> Improving those could drop healthcare costs by nearly half Wouldn't you have to decrease spending on admin and drugs up to 10x which would likely bring US well below the costs in most/all other rich c I'm not sure how feasible it would be to reduce admin and drug costs by almost 10x? Edit: to be fair 10x might not that far-fetched as I might have thought, admin costs are massively higher than anywhere else: https:/…
[1] https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/88c547c97...
[2] https://time.com/5759972/health-care-administrative-costs/?a...
I somewhat dislike the line of Kafka commentary that focuses on The Trial and The Castle and then associates their bureaucratic themes with his own life experience working various office jobs. One, because his writing is about much more than this theme (in which kafkesque is too frequently confused/mixed with Orwellian ) but more because it pushes away his short stories and aphorisms, which I think are much, much bet…
Where does The Metamorphosis fall into this? That is what I initially knew him for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where does The Metamorphosis fall into this? That is what I initially knew him for.
That's a good question and I think a good illustration of what I was getting at RE: the problems with branding a writer with a single theme. Because I don't think The Metamorphosis could really be described as "kafkesque" in the bewildering bureaucratic sense, and yet it is probably one of his better-known works.
This was worth the click A man from the country seeks the law and wishes to gain entry to it through an open doorway, but the doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at the present time. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper says it is possible "but not now". The man waits by the door for years, bribing the doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the bribes, but tells…
I somewhat dislike the line of Kafka commentary that focuses on The Trial and The Castle and then associates their bureaucratic themes with his own life experience working various office jobs. One, because his writing is about much more than this theme (in which kafkesque is too frequently confused/mixed with Orwellian ) but more because it pushes away his short stories and aphorisms, which I think are much, much bet…
100% agree. I think it does so much disservice to his work. But I also don't think The Trial is primarily about bureaucratic themes either. To me it is much more about K not being able to understand the society he inhabits and the rules which govern it, and that can be extended to bureaucracy, but also obviously religion and morality, and just a blanket search for meaning. I also have read both the original German de…
In the book it is also pointed out more than once that Josef K's trial is not held in the "regular" court. Which to me indicates that the convoluted nature of the trial doesn't necessarily reflect on all bureaucracies, even if it's tempting to interpret it like that.
I somewhat dislike the line of Kafka commentary that focuses on The Trial and The Castle and then associates their bureaucratic themes with his own life experience working various office jobs. One, because his writing is about much more than this theme (in which kafkesque is too frequently confused/mixed with Orwellian ) but more because it pushes away his short stories and aphorisms, which I think are much, much bet…
100% agree. I think it does so much disservice to his work. But I also don't think The Trial is primarily about bureaucratic themes either. To me it is much more about K not being able to understand the society he inhabits and the rules which govern it, and that can be extended to bureaucracy, but also obviously religion and morality, and just a blanket search for meaning. I also have read both the original German de…
So yeah, I think there's a degree of absurdity and irony in the works as well. Less, "look at this hellish version of reality" and more, "look at this dumbfuck going along with this".
I somewhat dislike the line of Kafka commentary that focuses on The Trial and The Castle and then associates their bureaucratic themes with his own life experience working various office jobs. One, because his writing is about much more than this theme (in which kafkesque is too frequently confused/mixed with Orwellian ) but more because it pushes away his short stories and aphorisms, which I think are much, much bet…
100% agree. I think it does so much disservice to his work. But I also don't think The Trial is primarily about bureaucratic themes either. To me it is much more about K not being able to understand the society he inhabits and the rules which govern it, and that can be extended to bureaucracy, but also obviously religion and morality, and just a blanket search for meaning. I also have read both the original German de…
I read Der Process in German, but I have also looked at one of the English translations, probably the one by Idris Parry, and I didn't like it much: it seemed rough, old-fashioned and generally hard to read compared with the original, though it's partly a matter of personal taste. Wikipedia mentions six English translation of The Trial but presumably some of them are cheaper and more easily available than others so the probability that we both looked at the same English translation are greater than one in six!