Google Honors Franz Kafka (and me, by proxy…)

Okay, the title of this post is a bit misleading. Google isn’t honoring me by proxy or by anything. Google is honoring Franz Kafka, specifically his novella The Metamorphosis. This strange story, about a man who turns into a cockroach, was a huge influence for my novella As a Machine and Parts.

Why is The Metamorphosis Google-doodle worthy? I’m sure there are plenty of cultural and literary reasons, many of which are beyond my contemporary, America-centric grasp. The story of a human man—a traveling salesman—changing into the most reviled household insect pest ever is certainly a commentary on something.

More important to me, though, is how The Metamorphosis affected my reading and writing aesthetic. Specifically, the idea of an un-acknowledged—and in this case, origin-less—change. There’s something magical (Magical Realist, some might say, others might not) about a surreal event that garners the level of non-reaction it does in The Metamorphosis. A similar example that immediately comes to mind is Gabriel García Márquez’s short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” in which the titular character, a very old man, has enormous wings. The magical element—in this case, the enormous wings—are treated as a very real element to the characters in the story. In other words, the magical becomes the real. “Oh, that old man has enormous wings…what’s for lunch?” Or in the case of As a Machine and Parts: “Oh, I’m changing into a machine…got any more pot?”

If you enjoy the strange, the slightly twisted, the magical realist, and have (or hell, have not) read Franza Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, give As a Machine and Parts a try. It’s a short read, but a damn good one, I must say. I even stole Kafka’s opening line, massaged it, and stuffed it later in my book:

“The Metamorphosis”:

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

As a Machine and Parts

I awoke from unsettling dreams, as they say, to find my left elbow replaced by a rotational hinge joint.