Culture

Kafka porn claims

by Paul Conneally | August 15, 2008 at 12:28 am

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After the Byron groupie love letters revealations we now have the Kafka porn scandel. The German literary establishment are up in arms over a new book by Oxford academic James Hawes that claims Franz Kafka subscribed to publications of what were for the time hardcore porn. Who would have thought that such claims could cause such a furore. Kafka, outside of his books, has always seemed to me to be a most boring kind of man and these new stories seem to add a racier side to him that he always seemed to lack.

True or not the claims will perhaps lead readers to relook at some of his works with a different eye.

The German-speaking world of Kafka scholars hit out yesterday over a British academic's claims that the writer had a penchant for hard porn.

James Hawes, a Kafka expert and novelist, claims in his book Excavating Kafka, published in Britain yesterday, that the writer was a subscriber to upmarket pornography. Furious German academics reacted by accusing Hawes of prudishness, sensationalism and even antisemitism.

"Hawes has given us a look through the keyhole of a Kafka with his trousers down ... but to call the illustrated magazines he subscribed to as hardcore porn, is like comparing a poem by Heinrich Heine with an advertising slogan for McDonald's," wrote Anjana Shrivastava, a Kafka researcher on Spiegel Online, calling Hawes a "prude". She said he had made himself a "preacher of hate" in the world of Kafka scholars.