Goethe-Institut Chicago

Dir. Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
France, West Germany, 1984
35mm, 127 min

Kafka's first novel Amerika is also his last. Never finished, it explores his trademark oppressive ideas around what it means to live in the current post-industrial age. Fertile ground for Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet to adapt to the screen, Class Relations brings to life the wandering journey of Karl Rossman as he explores Amerika. Powerful, enlightening, and deeply suffocating, Straub-Huillet adapts Kafka like never before.

Contemporary German Graphic Novel Book Club

Welcome to book*ish, our reading group for contemporary German graphic novels! Practice your German through discussing each book's main themes and the artist's stylistic choices. All are invited, whether you just started learning or are already fluent in the German language.

Our second book club session features the graphic novel 'Kafka,' written by David Zane Mairowitz and illustrated by Robert Crumb.

No writer of our time, and probably none since Shakespeare, has been so over-interpreted and pigeonholed as Franz Kafka. Jean-Paul Sartre claimed him for existentialism, Camus for the absurd, his lifelong friend and editor Max Brod convinced several generations of scholars that Kafka's parables expressed the complicated search for an unattainable God. In 'Kafka', David Zane Mairowitz and Robert Crumb have compiled the essentials about Franz Kafka: from his childhood to the posthumous Kafka cult; about the conflicts the writer had to deal with himself and others, above all with his father. Again and again, the focus is on Kafka's inner turmoil against the background of his German-Czech nationality and Jewish background. The stages of Kafka's life are complemented by letters and excerpts from his novels and short stories.

Language: The book and discussion will be in German.

Free and open to the public, please register in advance and bring photo ID for check-in.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb is an American cartoonist who often signs his work R.Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and satire of contemporary American culture. Crumb contributed to many of the seminal works of the underground comix movement in the 1960s, including being a founder of the first successful underground comix publication, Zap Comix. Inspired by psychedelics and cartoons from the 1920s and 1930s, he introduced a wide variety of characters that became extremely popular, including countercultural icons Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural.

David Zane Mairowitz
David Zane Mairowitz is an author, playwright, radio director. and translator. As a professional freelance writer for 40 years, he has collaborated on numerous books, including the successful 'Kafka' (with Robert Crumb), 'Introducing Camus,' and 'Wilhelm Reich for Beginners.' His plays for the theatre include a critically acclaimed theatrical version of Kafka's 'The Trial.' His articles have appeared in Harper's, Vogue, The Village Voice, and The Sunday Times. He lives and works in France and Berlin.