PositiveOn the SeawallThe Lost Writings, a flickering collection of broken-off scenes and incidents culled from Kafka’s papers by biographer Reiner Stach and translated by poet Michael Hofmann, offers an intimate new look at the refractory relation between Kafka’s self-conception as literature incarnate and his artistic output ... The unwavering tone of this material — the unassuming invitation to listen on equal footing, as though to one’s own, distantly familiar mind — stands in marked contrast to the uninhibited caprices of its content ... Fortunately, the singularly microscopic, diaristic perspective afforded by this collection reinvigorates the struggle against this temptation. For on display here is not so much the work itself as Kafka at work ... The Lost Writings bears witness to the tremendous imaginative lengths to which Kafka ventures to avoid directly asserting his individuality ... Kafka’s ineluctable confrontation with unfinishability is here crystallized into a solemnly digestible museum exhibit.
