Does this constitute snobbery?

[Dave2002]

I am COMPLETELY ignorant of mathematics. In my defence, my maths teacher at school was also the deputy headmaster. This meant that our maths lessons were constantly interrupted by pupils requesting permission slips and other sundry matters. Alas, our lessons suffered by this and I for one found this subject to be a complete mystery.

I see no shame in admitting that - as long as you don't use that as a badge of pride.

One of my daughter's primary teachers, when we had a query about the maths exercises, which had clearly not been marked appropriately, said something like "Oh, it doesn't really matter. I wasn't too good either and it's never done me any harm". I'm afraid one of us just about exploded at that, and the teacher might have been lucky to get out alive (I exaggerate - of course ...). She was a very nice person, but was doing enormous damage by her approach, or lack of it.

I have come across other people who seem to think it gives them extra prestige - and a form of inverse put down - to admit that they were no good at maths.

[jayne lee wilson]

A writer's work can be great for many reasons. Leaving aside my towering regard for Kafka's fictions and letters themselves, we should remember how resonant the term Kafkaesque became during the 20th Century to evoke needlessly complex and cruel political administrations, whose applications caused unnecessary suffering. I imagine no-one needs to spend too long on why that became the case - and how relevant and very prophetic Kafka's fictions were in respect of that. In fact its use became so prevalent I suspect it has fallen out of use to some extent - now ironically viewed as a bit of a cliché itself.
(Welles' film version of The Trial with Anthony Perkins is well worth seeing, BTW...the very ending is changed - but shockingly and very effectively!)

It is perhaps a shame the two unfinished works, The Trial and The Castle, only in existence now because K's friend Max Brod ignored K's instruction to destroy them after his death (when they were still unpublished) are always focussed upon; the shorter works are at least as mesmerisingly great and resonant: most especially Metamorphosis, In The Penal Colony, Investigations of a Dog and The Hunger Artist. (The Collected Short Stories are highly recommended.)

Many of these works prefigure and inspired sci-fi and other themes in 20th C film e.g. body horror, parasitical transformation (itself a metaphor for disease): In the greatest and longest story, Metamorphosis, a neat and tidy, conventionally-behaved travelling salesman awakes to find himself transformed into a giant insect - the story develops as a study of family attitudes to normalcy, outsiderdom, serious disease, acceptance and tolerance of differences. What is Love? It has an unforgettably haunting end. What do you do about a family member who is unlike nice, respectable people?

No wonder K-for-Kafka''s work has always carried such depth for those who found themselves rejected, whether on ethnic, sexual or social grounds. Why do you think K finds himself arrested at the start of The Trial for no obvious reason, rather than later on after wrongdoing? (Consider those disabled people disallowed their benefits because they failed to attend interview, or because of the current, cruel points system judging them fit for work; this has even been applied to the terminally ill.How very cruelly and essentially Kafkaesque....)

Has there ever been a more devastating evocation of the Oedipal power of parental-child relations than The Judgement? So much impact from so few words. Your first encounter with this is something you'll never forget.
He's a great writer, one of the very greatest, of any century; but it is easy not to know about him (or any given figure) or be unaware of the range and influence of his achievements, given the very economically-focussed, vocational diversification of education now, and the vast 21st Century proliferation of cultural artefacts.

What I found in Kafka, reading him in the 1980s, someone else may just as readily discover in film.

[Joseph K]

(The Collected Short Stories are highly recommended.)

I started reading the complete short stories but gave up out of frustration when I came across quite a few times '6 pages missing'. I guess you could say it is a little too complete. However, I have the Penguin book of a selection of his stories, waiting to be read. I've read all three of his novels - the Trial resonated somewhat, I read it a few months into being psychotic (though of course I didn't know I was at the time...) I remember reading that the Trial actually wasn't entirely meant to be all doom and gloom, that Kafka actually laughed at various points while reading it aloud to people. There's humour in absurdity.

[Richard Barrett]

I remember reading that the Trial actually wasn't entirely meant to be all doom and gloom, that Kafka actually laughed at various points while reading it aloud to people. There's humour in absurdity.

Orson Welles, whose film of The Trial is the best work he ever did in my opinion, regarded Joseph K as "guilty as hell"!

[Joseph K]

Orson Welles, whose film of The Trial is the best work he ever did in my opinion, regarded Joseph K as "guilty as hell"!

I'm not a film person but I'll make a note of this for possible future viewing...

[doversoul1]

I'm not a film person but I'll make a note of this for possible future viewing...

Days when I desperately hope to find a cinema that was showing the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAMUZREgAlU

Going back to the question of a snob: I used to know a woman who was running a successful business, spoke fluent French (her ex-husband was French), very good looking, had a successful husband and two high-flying daughters, and a house in one of the best areas in the town. Yet she was desperate, in her own words, to ‘be cultured’. She would buy paintings, sculptures and asked me what I thought. I mumbled something like I didn’t know much about those things. She collected CDs entitled Famous Opera Aria and Piano Music Under Candlelight and the like. She often asked me what I was reading. I again mumbled some like ‘oh, bits and pieces between digging the garden’. When she asked me what music I liked I muttered ‘something like early music’. She brightened up and said ‘Gregorian Chant!’. When we were talking about something that she thought I could do with more 'knowledge’, she recommended me an article to read which turned out to be from a women’s magazine. When she asked me later what I thought, I made the garden as the excuse. She was a genuinely nice person and I felt I was a terrible snob.

[Alain Maréchal]

Although we cannot all know everything about everything, revelling in one's ignorance and dismissing the subject as not worth knowing is perhaps real snobbery.

[pastoralguy]

I see no shame in admitting that - as long as you don't use that as a badge of pride.

Oh no! Absolutely NO pride at all. Nothing but embarrassment. Mind you, I could sight read some pretty complex music so I must have some arithmetical abilities.

[richardfinegold]

I read the Penal Colony sometime in the last two years, after reading a review of an Opera based on it, can’t remember by what Composer. I enjoyed it and meant to read more of the stories in the collection but Ithink I had the similar experience that was mentioned upthread, where so many of the stories exist in fragmentary form that it was offputting.
Until that recent exposure, I hadn’t read any Kafka for decades, but two of his stories have long stayed with me, namely the Trial and Metamorphosis. I read the Trial in College At a time of great uncertainty in my life, when I was applying to Professional School, having great uncertainty about my prospects and upon what criteria I was to be judged. I sympathized greatly with the protagonist. Later as I read more about Totalitarianism, as Jlw has mentioned, I marveled at how well Kafka’s work nailed it
Metamorphosis resonated with me later, as I saw many families that would become devastated by the unexpected illness and incapacitation of the main breadwinner. The protagonist could have been a middle aged man, King of the House but struggling with multiple familial responsibilities, who suddenly has a stroke and now has become a burden to his family. Everyone else learns to adapt to the change in circumstances but gradually they begin to wish to be free of the familial burden. After witnessing that scene a few times Kafka’s story acquired new meaning.

[richardfinegold]

I read 'The Trial' sometime in my teens (despite never having had a university education) but I think I can be 100% confident that none of my work colleagues will have even heard of him and remain entirely ignorant of classical music. I, on the other hand, know nothing whatsoever about pop music, or the reality TV shows that constitute most of the office conversation.

Am I snobbish if I know that they are, in Bernard Levin's memorable phrase 'merely scrabbling at the foothills of pleasure'?

As it happens two of my closer friends will be certain to have heard of Kafka (one is a retired librarian) and may even have read him. I'll ask the question.

I guess the revelation that you have not had a University Education reveals my snobbishness. I have always been impressed
By your knowledge andtaste in Music, History and Literature et.al. and always assumed that must have a Graduate Degree from Oxbridge or something similar. Why do I think that a University background is essential to acquiring erudition? Most of the non Professional knowledge that I’ve acquired has been due to curiosity rather than formal teaching.

[Pulcinella]

I guess the revelation that you have not had a University Education reveals my snobbishness. I have always been impressed
By your knowledge andtaste in Music, History and Literature et.al. and always assumed that must have a Graduate Degree from Oxbridge or something similar. Why do I think that a University background is essential to acquiring erudition? Most of the non Professional knowledge that I’ve acquired has been due to curiosity rather than formal teaching.

I don't see why.
That's not snobbishness (in my book).
You just made a false assumption.

[Petrushka]

I guess the revelation that you have not had a University Education reveals my snobbishness. I have always been impressed
By your knowledge andtaste in Music, History and Literature et.al. and always assumed that must have a Graduate Degree from Oxbridge or something similar. Why do I think that a University background is essential to acquiring erudition? Most of the non Professional knowledge that I’ve acquired has been due to curiosity rather than formal teaching.

To understand why this is so you have to know about a 1960s education in the predominantly working class English Midlands. University wasn't for the 'likes of us' and it was very difficult, if not impossible, to break out of the stereotyped straitjacket of the time. The opportunity was simply never there. Instead, I've largely taught myself most of what I know about music, literature and history aided by a natural curiosity and a desire to continually know more. I've always been a voracious reader and that, I think, has been the key.

[Richard Barrett]

To understand why this is so you have to know about a 1960s education in the predominantly working class English Midlands. University wasn't for the 'likes of us' and it was very difficult, if not impossible, to break out of the stereotyped straitjacket of the time. The opportunity was simply never there. Instead, I've largely taught myself most of what I know about music, literature and history aided by a natural curiosity and a desire to continually know more. I've always been a voracious reader and that, I think, has been the key.

I agree. I did have a university education, unlike my parents or their parents etc., but in a subject quite remote from what I ended up doing with my life.

[Conchis]

Well you can’t ask him ‘cos he is dead! Y

Erm....I did rather imply that when I said it was too late to ask him.....

[Conchis]

Rightly or wrongly, I consider people with a natural facility for mathematics and science (as well as languages) to be 'intelligent'. I'm no good at any of those things, though I suppose I have strengths in other areas.

I have tried with Kafka: I enjoyed Metamorphosis but when I read The Trial recently, I found it be .... well, a trial, I'm afraid. Somehow, it didn't come across as as claustrophobic and terrifying as I'd been led to expect. I read a 1990s translation, which is highly rated by some critics. Did JLW read it in the original German, I wonder?

Kafka's Dick is one of Alan Bennett's better plays, but it suffers because of its extremely off-putting title.