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German Kafka experts hit out against porn claims

15.08.08

The German-speaking world of Kafka scholars hit out yesterday over a British academic's claims that the writer had a penchant for hard porn, reports the Guardian.

James Hawes, a Kafka expert and novelist, claims in his book Excavating Kafka, published in Britain yesterday (14th August), that the writer was a subscriber to upmarket pornography. Furious German academics reacted by accusing Hawes of prudishness, sensationalism and even antisemitism.

"Hawes has given us a look through the keyhole of a Kafka with his trousers down ... but to call the illustrated magazines he subscribed to as hardcore porn, is like comparing a poem by Heinrich Heine with an advertising slogan for McDonald's," wrote Anjana Shrivastava, a Kafka researcher on Spiegel Online, calling Hawes a "prude". She said he had made himself a "preacher of hate" in the world of Kafka scholars.

Guardian

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By james hawes (author)

Shrivastava evidently hasn't read Klaus Wagenbach's seminal "Kafka: Biography of his Youth" (1958) where the journals in question are described as " a collection of the finest - and sometimes coarsest - erotica". Not quite Heine, then. She is, by the way, the freelance journalist SOLELY responsible for the defamatory lunacy that my book is somehow antisemitic - which Der Spiegel has now withdrawn.

28 Aug 08 13:52

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