Writing and Publishing Fiction

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka speaks personally to me. On some levels, I can relate to Gregor Samsa. First, Gregor Samsa is a fictional character, and I am a fictional character. We were both human and then we changed. In Gregor's case, the change was a monstrous verminous bug that fits the description of a cockroach. I am now a mouse.

Gerald Freund, fictional character in mouse form

Gregor Samsa, fictional character
in verminous bug form

I suppose that between the two, you might think I got the better deal. That is only natural. At first glance, many would rather be a cute white and brown mouse rather than a giant cockroach. Keep in mind, however, that cockroaches can do some amazing things like run around without a head and survive a nuclear holocaust. How well do you think you or I would survive a beheading or a nuclear winter? Not well at all.

I decided to try a novel approach to a book reviews, and write a review of the reviews of the book before I have completed reading the book. Why would I do that? Do a Google search on "book reviews [novel title]," and you will find many reviews by Amazon.com reviewers and other bloggers. You could consider it a collaborative review of sorts, where different opinions build on each other, rather than another rambling, unrelenting, self-involved soliliquy. By sticking to the first 3/5 of the book, I can reduce the chance that I will spoil the novel for others that might wish to read it—although The Unconsoled is not a novel that I would expect to end with a lot of clarity. As the title of this post states, I am going to give the 3/5 review of reviews treatment to The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro. (Hopefully, I have done more justice to his name than I did for poor Nabakov Nabokov. Since most of the reviews are lengthy, I will simply take snippets with links to the larger articles. (Unfortunately, I accessed several of the articles through a free trial with highbeam.com, so it is a bit of work to get at the full articles.

When Vladimir Nabokov was asked whether he had read Franz Kafka’s The Trial before writing Invitation to a Beheading, Nabokov insisted that he had not. Having read Invitation to a Beheading, the basic premise is so similar—a man awaits execution for a crime that is never made clear—it is difficult to take his word for it. It doesn’t help that Lolita may have been intentionally or subconsciously plagiarized from a short story.

If I hadn’t had my own (possibly Jungian collective) subconscious plagiarism or influence, I would think it was fairly obvious that Nabokov had first read the trial. (Perhaps you have your own example of cryptomnesia?)