SOURCE: “Why Read Kafka?” in Modern Language Review, Vol. 76, No. 2, 1981, pp. 357–66.

In the following essay, Swales rejects biographical, philosophical, and theological interpretations of “The Judgment,” maintaining that Kafka's story should be examined within a strict framework.

In The Observer of Sunday, 23 July 1978, the television critic Clive James produced a splendidly trenchant onslaught on Ken Russell's two-part film about Wordsworth and Coleridge. In the process, he makes the following observation:

Apart from outright hysteria, the highest common factor uniting Ken Russell's films about great art is the way you never get any idea of the great artist sitting down to work. One of the things that make great artists great is their capacity to escape the confines of their personal lives and speak for us all. But in Ken's view a great artist's art is always just his personality intensified. Brave, committed and adventurous though he be, Ken is...