Blue Octavo Notebooks

To face the prospect of religion without religion. To face the prospect of death head on. To be truly fearless in the face of human terror, folly, and weakness. To scribble all this courage into a modest little notebook, without the need for fame or immortality, without the pretense of literature or art. Just a great man working through the miracle of his life. It takes courage just to read it.

Like the notebooks of Nietzsche, Camus, Andre Gide, and Wittgenstein... this book of discovered notebooks is a sharp and wonderfully illuminating glimpse into the deep-thinking mind of a master of his literary craft. A Great Read!

When I first bought this book, it wasn't blue either. But when I brought it home and put it on my shelf, things changed irrevocably. Now when I am sitting and writing late in the evening, out of the corner of my eye I can see the book, sitting amongst its faithless companions, gleaming blue like a blue lamp from a lighthouse, shining out from its shelf. While all around the rustling of the mice. But then, when I turn and look straight at her, she isn't blue anymore. I find the thought almost unbearable.

Definitely not the first Kafka text one should select--but arguably the second or third (behind The Stories and The Trial.) This collection represents the closest Kafka came to helping the reader unlock the impossibilities of interpretation in his fiction. For this reason alone it's worth a look, though there are many wonderful and hilarious moments that rank with the best of K's work.And to the gentleman from Ontario (review, Oct. 18/99) who fretted over the color of the volume in question (and the publisher's good faith): you haven't been reading your Kafka. On page 35 you'll find the following: "There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie." This volume's (non) color is Kafkaesque in the best sense of the term. EXACT CHANGE should be congratulated on their superior understanding of a masterful writer!

In the last year I have fallen in love with Franz Kafka's writings, starting with "The Trial." His works are the most truthful, soul-searching, endless, funny, and haunting tales ever written. I bought "The Blue Octavo Notebooks" not knowing what to expect. Were these to be second-rate scribblings published only to profit off Kafka's name? Not at all. These journals are as brilliant, if not better, than Kafka's stories. They reveal a complex man who was constantly challenging himself, trying to find the meaning of art, goodness, evil, truth, human nature, the eternal, and life. The entries, many of them only one or two lines, are deep meditations that allow the reader to probe into Kafka's, and the reader's, mind. Even the unfinished story fragments are nuggets of pure genius. The notebooks are intensely mystical, but frighteningly real -- like everything else in the world of Kafka's literature.