Chapter Sixty-Nine: Amerika

I read this story by Franz Kafka  on a recommendation from a friend, and I mostly enjoyed it.  I had only ever read Kafka's Metamorphosis, and that only because it was required reading for my college, but I liked Amerika better than I thought I would.  I for some reason was expecting it to be dry and humorless, which was really judging it before I even got to it.  In fact, there are quite a few scenes that can be described as ridiculous, if not always humorous.  I enjoyed these scenes the most.  There are also a few scenes when the protagonist, an immigrant named Karl, is really just putting his foot in it due to his lack of understanding of American culture or simply due to his own innocence--some of these were almost painful for me to read.  I found this novel a little disorienting--in particular because I couldn't quite decide on when it was set; it could've been any time from the 1880s to the 1920s as far as I could tell--and I suppose some of the disorientation was intentional, as Karl himself is often disoriented, whether or not he realizes it.  This was an interesting book, though I'm not sure I'd read it again.