In addition to starting to listen to podcasts again, I signed up with DailyLit to receive books in installments by email. They recently went all free. Each installment is just a few pages long. I can read literature in just 5 to 15 minutes a day.
For this book, I had the email delivered at 5 p.m. I thought that would be a signal to me to close up my work for the day and then read. But that just didn’t work out. I’d usually want to get to a breaking point
and by that point (usually several hours later), I had other things that needed doing, like making myself dinner. So I’d usually get two or three days piled up before I got myself a-reading. For the next book, I think I’ll choose delivery in the morning and see how that works out.
I did read all of the book on my new Motorola Droid though. I’ve had limited luck with the ebook readers on the Android simply because most recently published ebooks are DRMed all to hell, and Android doesn’t deal well with DRM right now. But reading in email in short burst worked just fine. I found the text version of the email worked better on Android rather than the HTML version. Android will reformat HTML to fit the screen, but it preserves margins. So you have to move the viewport to the right to get the text into it and the margin off the screen, and then try like hell to keep the finger scrolling action straight up and down. With text email, everything flows much better.
I can’t actually recall having read The Metamorphosis before. It’s standard only many high school literature curriculums. Perhaps I read it but didn’t recall it. I knew the gist of the story though. Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to discover he’s turned into a giant bug. Part 1 deals with the day of his discovery including his discussions with his family and boss when he refuses to leave his bedroom (and in fact would have some difficulty doing so given his bug form). Parts 2 and 3 consist of Gregor’s increasingly strained relationship with his family.
I’d love to know the ins and outs of a culture that produces such a convoluted family relationship. Gregor’s sister initially takes charge of beetle Gregor’s care, but she is also the family member who breaks first to want Gregor gone. Gregor is the family’s major income support, but they seem tied to him only out of duty and family bonds. Gregor on the other hand feels something more than duty. Pride, worry, concern. He’s got all sorts of selfless things going through his head. Gregor’s mother seems the only family member to have actual qualms about Gregor’s condition. Father and sister worry about how a live-in bug will affect the family’s status and their ability to get on without working.
Gregor also seems to have a very mixed reaction to being a bug. Partially practical: how to get out of bed, how to get through a doorway, what to eat. And he seems somewhat repulsed by his bug form. I say somewhat, because most of his concern is for others feeling revulsion. He never (to my recollection) expresses disgust with being a bug. For a while, he enjoys crawling on walls and ceilings. But he hides under blankets and furniture when others enter the room. In his mind, he is rightfully disgusting to them.
I haven’t the foggiest what kind of psychological insight can be gained from the book about Kafka, nor do I have the background to understand if any of this is really a metaphor for something else. Perhaps. It’s also a pretty interesting tragedy.
Title: The Metamorphosis
Author: Franz Kafka
Imprint / publisher: DailyLit
Format: Email installments
Length: 22 installments
