Ending at the Beginning

by John Banville

New York Review of Books
August 17, 2017

Reiner Stach has a droll way with epigraphs, and in Kafka: The Early Years he heads his chapters with a selection of gnomic snippets from numerous ingeniously obscure sources. Chapter 1, for instance, has a tag from a song by Devo, an American rock band of the 1980s: “Think you heard this all before,/Now you’re gonna hear some more.” This is Stach’s impish acknowledgment that the present book is the first of three volumes, the second and third of which have already been published. The joke is a good one, and sends the reader off smiling on what will be a long though immensely rewarding journey. This volume completes one of the great literary biographies of our time—indeed, of any time.

The reason for the delay in the appearance of the first volume is explained in a preface by Stach’s devoted and richly gifted translator, Shelley Frisch:

This order of publication, which may appear counterintuitive—even fittingly “Kafkaesque”—was dictated by years of high-profile legal wrangling for control of the Max Brod literary estate in Israel, during which access to the materials it contained, many of which bore directly on Kafka’s formative years, was barred to scholars.

In August of last year the Israeli Supreme Court found against Brod’s heirs, and ordered that the withheld documents be transferred to the National Library in Jerusalem. Frisch states that Stach “has been able to examine three volumes of Brod’s diaries in this collection, those from the years 1909 to 1911,” and indeed it is clear that Stach did draw heavily on the diaries—so heavily that at times the book might be mistaken for a joint biography of Franz Kafka and Max Brod.

In August of last year the Israeli Supreme Court found against Brod’s heirs, and ordered that the withheld documents be transferred to the National Library in Jerusalem. Frisch states that Stach “has been able to examine three volumes of Brod’s diaries in this collection, those from the years 1909 to 1911,” and indeed it is clear that Stach did draw heavily on the diaries—so heavily that at times the book might be mistaken for a joint biography of Franz Kafka and Max Brod.

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