I'm not much of a reader of books. I get bored, I guess. Also: I have no capacity to understand literature at all. Metaphors, analogies, themes, characterizations, whatever -- I don't fucking get it. Two years of honors English classes followed by a year of AP English translated in me not passing the AP English test and having to take English 101.
I'm not -- or at least, I wasn't -- a terrible writer, so I was able to get by in English classes, especially the more writing-focused ones, but I just don't get literature. I wish I did -- it's one of my failings that makes me feel like a failure -- but I don't.
Franz Kafka's birthday was last Friday, July 3. He'd have been 126 if tuberculosis hadn't killed him in 1924.
I read three Kafka works in high school -- The Trial, in 10th grade, and The Metamorphosis and The Castle in 12th. I actually had to read them, and then do research on them to discover literary conventions like themes and allegories and whatnot, then write papers, with footnotes and stuff, on them.
Man, those were not good books for a depressed, self-hating teenager who was terrified of the world to spend a lot of time on. You are alone! There are forces working against you that you cannot understand and have no control over! Women are strange, and probably won't like you! If you're weird and ugly, not even your parents will want to deal with you!
At least, that's what I took away from them.
So the above-linked mentions that Kafka was really into porn, which linked to this piece that showed that, wow, he was really into porn.
Thanks to the masturbation superhighway as well as changing attitudes towards fucking, we're pretty cognizant as a society that lots of people look at porn. I'm guessing that most people -- certainly most men -- I see look at porn at least occasionally. Kids, lawyers, politicians, Jews, stoners, busboys -- most of them look at porn, especially if they have semblance of privacy and lack a willing and perpetually horny sex partner.
("SWM, 35, Tired of masturbating to porn, looking for willing and perpetually horny sex partner. No water sports.")
Porn has become more acceptable because it is so available, and because it is easily available and horny people crave it, we're aware that a lot of people enjoy it. However, when Kafka was chilling in early 20th century Prague, that wasn't the case. There was no internet, no glossy smut magazines available on the top shelf at the bookstore or the airport, and, presumably, no sex shops located adjacent to a strip club where people could wonder in and get their cellophane-wrapped foot fetish magazines and vibrating vaginas.
But where there are men, there is horniness. And where there is horniness, there is a buck to be made. And where there is a buck to be made off of horniness, you can bet you'll find someone willing to exploit themselves for it. So, yes, there was porn back then.
When I read that Kafka was into porn, I thought, "Well, he probably just had some grainy black-and-white photos of zaftig, pale ladies posing nude or having awkward-looking sex with an awkward looking dude." While of course there was real... "sexual weirdness" (defined as "any kind of sex to kinky or illegal for me"), I kinda assumed that there wasn't some sort of sordid, underground porn industry back then, at least not in Central Europe. And if there was, then Franz Kafka wouldn't have been collecting that shit.
Wrong!
"These are not naughty postcards from the beach. They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark, with animals committing fellatio and girl-on-girl action... It's quite unpleasant."
GAH! Franz Kafka was whacking it to horses giving dudes blow jobs! I mean, "girl-on-girl" action, that's cool. Hell, if he was secretly getting off to "guy-on-guy" action -- well, that'd shed some light on a facet of his personality that no one knew about. But... horses and blow jobs. Kafka fantasized about horses (well, "animals" -- dogs, pigs, cows... none of it sounds pleasant) licking his wiener. I think I saw an episode of South Park where that was part of the story.
Anyhow, normally I don't give a shit as to whatever floats your boat -- consensual sex between adults is all good. But bestiality, ugh. Really, Kafka? I mean, porn was hard for me to get when I was a kid, but homie, I was never so hard up I thought about animal porn. (Never mind the kook who got off getting photographed while having a tongue bath from a four-legged friend.)
I guess it doesn't matter. All those people (and animals!) are dead now. I wan't on planning on reading any more Kafka anyway. But his works live on for all to enjoy, free of any underlying themes of bestiality. I think. There definitely wasn't any girl-on-girl action going on in The Trial. I'd have remembered that.
(SIGH) I'm a pretty sexual liberal person and all that, but bestiality, pedophilia and rape are all really, really bad, wrong things. I do not approve!
Also: I'm not sure how much I approve of this:
I'm not sure how down I am with Seinfeld porn, either.
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