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60

Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed

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From a speech given in March at "Metamorphosis: A New Kafka," a symposium for celebrating a new translation of The Castle. 1999. loved this one.

Foster Wallace, D. (2007). Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed. In Foster Wallace, D. Consider the Lobster and Other Essays. Abacus, pp. 60-65

coined by Danish science writer Tor Nørretranders in his book The User Illusion published in English 1998; meant to mean "explicitly discarded information"

61

Because, of course, great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communications theorists sometimes call exformation, which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient.

—p.61 by David Foster Wallace
notable
7 years, 3 months ago

Because, of course, great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communications theorists sometimes call exformation, which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient.

—p.61 by David Foster Wallace
notable
7 years, 3 months ago

(verb) build / (verb) establish / (verb) to instruct and improve especially in moral and religious knowledge; uplift / (verb) enlighten inform

62

“In the Penal Colony” conceives description as punishment and torture as edification and the ultimate critic as a needled harrow whose coup de grâce is a spike through the forehead

—p.62 by David Foster Wallace
notable
7 years, 3 months ago

“In the Penal Colony” conceives description as punishment and torture as edification and the ultimate critic as a needled harrow whose coup de grâce is a spike through the forehead

—p.62 by David Foster Wallace
notable
7 years, 3 months ago
64

[...] It’s not that students don’t “get” Kafka’s humor but that we’ve taught them to see humor as something you get — the same way we’ve taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It’s hard to put into words, up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it’s good they don’t “get” Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his stories as all about a kind of door. To envision us approaching and pounding on this door, increasingly hard, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it; we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and ramming and kicking. That, finally, the door opens . . . and it opens outward — we’ve been inside what we wanted all along. [...]

—p.64 by David Foster Wallace 7 years, 3 months ago

[...] It’s not that students don’t “get” Kafka’s humor but that we’ve taught them to see humor as something you get — the same way we’ve taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It’s hard to put into words, up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it’s good they don’t “get” Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his stories as all about a kind of door. To envision us approaching and pounding on this door, increasingly hard, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it; we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and ramming and kicking. That, finally, the door opens . . . and it opens outward — we’ve been inside what we wanted all along. [...]

—p.64 by David Foster Wallace 7 years, 3 months ago