Reading Against the Grain

If you have ever watched someone reading, on a commute to work for instance, there is an odd disparity between what they look like they are doing, and what must be going on in their heads.  Readers are still, eyes dipped to the page; they are solemn, they may even look asleep.  Yet they are engaged in an activity with the words on the page, and far from switching off, they are active in their own worlds, travelling without moving.

The ways we read can themselves be active or passive.  Reading can be a more or less creative activity for the reader, much like writing can be more or less creative for the writer.  Sometimes this is due to the kind of text involved.  The way I read, for example, Kafka’s The Trial, is completely different to the way I read Iain M Banks’ Use of Weapons.  This latter is an extremely enjoyable, well written sci-fi novel, with huge, mind-bending ideas, but to a large extent I am happy to be taken along with the story as it is on the page, and not look too deeply into the mechanics of how it was written, or what real world and literary references there were in it.  The Trial however, as seen in my previous post, requires some interpretive work to be done by me as I go through it.  A passive reading of The Trial would have left only questions at the end of a long, boring book (not that it is long, but it would have felt long).  The contradictions, absurdity, and gaps between the lines of Kafka would have washed over me in a confused haze – many of them in fact still did, which is why texts that encourage active reading also encourage active re-reading.

English Literature courses don’t only teach you about the history and development of literature, but about ways of reading.  Nor is it confined to books: often they will refer to the ‘text’ that is being read.  The text can be understood as a newspaper,  a film, TV program, advert or architecture; virtually any man-made object or artifact that can be interpreted in some way.

One of these ways of reading is called reading against the grain, or resistant reading.  This kind of reading takes a text and tries to argue for an interpretation that is the opposite of what the author intended.  An elegant example of this is seen by interpreting the phrase “JFK was not a homosexual.” On the surface, the intention of this phrase is clear: the author is saying that JFK was not a homosexual. But now let’s take as our starting point the idea that the author is saying that JFK was a homosexual – how would we argue that interpretation of the phrase?

First of all, JFK’s sexuality is not, historically, something that has ever been seriously questioned.  We know (or are told) of the infidelities of Camelot, but these are all regarding young women, and no men have ever come out as JFK’s lovers.  So the author of the phrase “JFK was not a homosexual” is apparently telling us something that is obvious, that is without question.  Secondly, look again at how it is phrased: the matter of fact tone, as if we are reading from an encyclopedia or a well-researched book.  What purpose could there be to telling us something that everyone knows is true, and furthermore telling us in a way that implies someone has looked into the matter?  By writing this, the author has implied that JFK’s sexuality is something that needs proving, that there is serious doubt surrounding it.  In this way, the result of the phrase is the exact opposite of the author’s intention.

Reading against the grain can be an extremely powerful and revealing tool for people interested in looking at the mechanics of a given text.  In the next few weeks I will give further examples of this in non-book texts, starting next week with Big Brother.

THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka

"K. began to suspect there were many irritating problems to come" (144).

New readers are advised that this review makes details of the plot explicit.

The problems with The Trial are legion, not least because Kafka never finished it. It is a novel that puzzles, frustrates, perhaps even bores. It demands the reader's attention, and yet seems to offer little in the way of reward. It is perfectly possible to get to the end of this short novel wondering what, if anything, has happened. So why is it still read today, and seen by many as a classic of early modernist writing?

The novel follows Josef K., a city banking clerk who has risen in the ranks of his company quickly, and is a respected, capable man. The novel opens, "Someone must have been telling tales about Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested" (5). He goes to a courthouse to stand trial, but the identity of the organisation accusing him is never revealed, nor are his charges. Over the course of the next year he seeks advice from a number of people, including a lawyer connected with the court, and attempts to mount a defence. Finally, after dismissing his lawyer, he is led out of the city to a quarry, where he is executed by having his heart cut out of his chest.

The problems begin with the arrest: though K. is charged with the unknown crime, the two guards only place him under a nominal arrest, in that he is still free to go to work and do as he pleases. "Yes, you have been arrested, but that should not prevent you from going back to work. Nor should anything prevent you from going about your daily life as usual" (14-15). This is the first example of a trait through all of the characters in this novel: asserting one thing, then asserting another opposite or contradictory thing, with equal validation. K. is under arrest, but he is free. K. goes to the courthouse to find out more information on his trial, yet when the opportunity arises he does nothing (55). The painter believes K.'s innocence, yet his advice is for K. to imply guilt in order to draw the trial out further. The lawyer claims he is preparing his case, yet no hearings or progress happens for months (135). Finally, K. is taken by two guards to be executed; a policeman sees him being led away, eyeing them suspiciously. Rather than save himself, he pulls the men guarding him out of sight, and hastens his own death (163).

This exchange, between K. and an usher of the court who suspects his wife of having and affair with a student, shows K. reversing his position in only a few lines:

"'If that's the way things are, there's certainly nothing can be done about it.' 'Why not…give him such a thrashing he won't dare come near her again[?]'…'Why me?' K. asked in astonishment…'I'd be all the more afraid he'd probably exert his influence on the preliminary examination, if not the trial itself.' 'Yes of course,' said the usher…'But in general we don't proceed with trials we're not certain to win.' 'I don't agree with you there,' said K., 'but that needn't stop me dealing with the student, should the occasion arise'" (49).

See how each of K.'s statements cancels out the last: first he thinks it is pointless trying to help the usher, then believes it will harm his case, then he says it won't affect the case at all and he will help.

It is interesting to note the importance of belief in The Trial. Throughout the novel, K. attempts to not take the trial seriously: he believes that to do would be to make it more serious. But K. doesn't follow this logic back to his arrest. Remember that when he was arrested at the beginning of the novel, he is free to go wherever he please as before, even though he is still technically under arrest. K. comments that arrest is not so bad, when in fact he should simply deny the arrest has any authority over him at all. Later, he is the one to go to the courthouse and stand trial; no one forces or even suggests to him that he should go. He has already taken the trial far too seriously at this point, and is in this way doomed. Finally, with the execution, he goes without a struggle, and doesn't save himself, because he believes this is the will of the court, and he believes that will has a power over him. Belief has become power. Without K.'s belief in it, there is no trial, no court, and no execution. By choosing to be part of the system, he is at its mercy.

So how seriously should we, as readers, believe in The Trial? Throughout, we have no foundation upon which to hold, no authority (least of all the court itself) on which to rely. The narration is first person, and as we've seen is highly unreliable: K. does not even know what to make of his own thoughts, let alone his situation. What purchase can we get on this puzzling novel?

The character of the court is perhaps the most explored aspect of the book (better even than the character of K.). The court is neither reliably benevolent nor reliably malevolent, it is simply chaotic, literally with a mind of its own. The way it is talked about by those 'inside' (the lawyer and the painter especially) reminded me of the way economists today talk about the market. The market is nervous. The market is strong. The market will decide. 'The market' here, as with Kafka's court, is beyond the understanding of the human being, and we see that it behaves in an unpredictable way. It feels, it lashes out, it rewards. It is alive, perhaps, but it is bigger and infinitely more intelligent than any one human. The will of the market and the will of the court is, in fact, talked about in much the same way as people once talked about the will of God.

In the penultimate chapter of The Trial, K. goes to a cathedral, and there hears a sermon told only for him. The priest tells him the story 'Before the Law', a fascinating short parable which seems to encapsulate everything that K. has suffered in two pages. The priest reveals he is also part of the court, and he wants to help K. with his case. Thus the words of the court have supplanted the Word of God, and the work of the court the Work of God. In K.'s society, the court is God, just as in our society the market is God, though perhaps (Kafka throws us a lifeline) only insofar as we believe in them.

Part of the lasting critical standing of Kafka's writing must be due in part to how open he is to interpretation. Though K. is a banker, I don't for a moment think that Kafka is writing in The Trial a critique of capitalist market economics, as I suggested above. This is simply one interpretation of the story that the modern reader might see. Readers in Western Europe and America may lean towards interpreting The Trial as a parable about the consequences for a man who has nothing other than work in his life, whereas readers from the former Soviet bloc may see it as an all-too-realistic narrative of a man at the mercy of the all-seeing state. Crucially, we get to the end of The Trial with the feeling that something has happened. We may not know what that something is, but the book invites us to find out more. A successful reading of Kafka is an active, creative experience. We must try to hear in the silences between Kafka's unfinished chapters a voice, one which we may come to recognise as our own.

UPDATE: for a different, biographical reading of The Trial, John Banville's peice in the Guardian Review is worth a look.