“Kafka Was the Rage” by Anatole Broyard
This is a beautifully-written memoir about the intellectual and art scene in the US in the post-war 1940s, written by Anatole Broyard.
The story took place in Greenwich Village, New York City, which strikes a similar resemblance to Hemingway’s Paris in the inter-war 1920s period that he brilliantly described in his book A Movable Feast. Just like Hemingway’s Paris, Broyard’s Greenwich Village has this same coming back to life energy, a sense of endless possibilities, and destiny arises out of a very dark period of time.
The Village was charming, intimate, shabby, and accessible, with an atmosphere almost like a street fair. The social construct of the day was also changing, with movements towards sexual freedom and abstraction in art and literature. This is the environment in which a few bunch of characters live together at one time, at a very early age of their respective careers. Characters such as Sheri Donatti, Dick Gilman, Delmore Schwartz, William Gaddis, Nemecio Zanarte, Caitlin and Dylan Thomas, and many other writers and artists.
They weren’t strangers, but familiar people. They lived in bars, on the benches of Washington Square, they shared the aspiration and adventure of becoming painters or writers. But ultimately, this is a story about Broyard himself, who had an extraordinary journey from fresh out of war, to opening his own book store, to eventually becoming a leading book critic for the New York Times.
And alongside his journey in expressing his voice and finding his place in the world, he gets to experience hope and heartbreak, excitements and disappointments, and sex scandals involving this one particular muse of his, Sheri Donatti (where nearly half of the book evolves around her).
And of course the memoir has passionate discussions around books that have since shaped the intellectual scene in the city. As Broyard remarks, “in 1946 in the Village our feelings about books – I’m talking about my friends and myself – went beyond love. It was as if we didn’t know where we ended and books began. Books were our weather, our environment, our clothing. We didn’t simply read books; we became them.”
And chief amongst them were books written by Wallace Stevens, D. H. Lawrence, Céline, and of course the one writer that everybody was raging about: Kafka.
THE CHAOS THEORY 