Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/34325
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I briefly read ‘Investigations Of A Dog And Other Creatures’ by Franz Kafka; I think that he was demonstrating satire by exaggerating a point that his canine protagonist was making about the availability of food: “Life is hard, the Earth is mean.” I thought this phrase was humourous because it over-exaggerated a point about the dog’s luckless chances of being fed, despite the situation being grim, for the dog.

## What Kafka’s Stories have, rather, is a grotesque and gorgeous and thoroughly modern complexity. Kafka’s Humour is not only neurotic but anti-neurotic. ## David Foster Wallace

## I think {Joseph Epstein} misses the boat on Kafka’s Humour which is subtle, pointed. ## David L Uln

I think that both these quotes suggest that Kafka’s humour is well-hidden but also meaningful, it’s when his stories about bugs and depressed dogs are depressing in itself, so as a writer how would I know if a sentence I wrote was too blunt or could pass as hilarious on it’s own? For as long as write about short situations that are painful but a little ridiculous, would at least several have a chance of passing as comic relief?

Original score: 1