Forgiving the Angel: Four Stories for Franz Kafka

“ . . . a multivoiced attempt to represent the universality and truth of Kafka’s narratives. . . . the literary equivalent of observing the waves made by a stone dropped in water.”

Forgiving the Angel is a collection of four short stories that recount the lives of people involved with one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th century, Franz Kafka.

Jay Cantor builds this fictitious work on biographical facts and anecdotes surrounding the life of the writer’s real persona. It tells the story of Max Brod, Kafka’s closest friend and illicit publisher of his posthumous works, imagines how an eager academic finds a lost short story in Prague, depicts the life events of the later husband of Kafka’s last girlfriend as well as the tragic relationship between a concentration camp prisoner and another one of Kafka’s former lovers.

In a surprisingly honest manner, these four stories differ considerably in the sentiments they express about Kafka as a person and writer, ranging from inexhaustible admiration to sheer indifference and even resentment.

Notwithstanding the prominence of the figure in question, the wide range of emotions chosen to portray his social, societal, and romantic legacy by all means strikes a realistic balance. Yet even though they are neatly and consistently developed through the respective plots, they often seem one-dimensional and remain unchallenged by both the protagonists and the narrator.

Max Brod, the ever adoring Kafka sidekick, exhibits a particularly obstinate obsession that persists even in the gravest moments of doubt. Feeling guilty about his refusal to burn Kafka’s manuscripts after his demise, his love for him is unshaken even when he suspects that he has been manipulated. “That he’d been Kafka’s friend had been his greatest honor; more than that, Kafka had been . . . Max’s true love in his life, the only one to whom he’d wanted to be faithful; and this one true love, this Kafka, had betrayed Max by forcing him to betray Kafka . . . It was hard to die feeling like that about Franz, maybe because to lose faith in him was to lose consolation altogether.”

The whole first story appears to be written, as Mr. Cantor himself says, “at Brod’s expense for loving Kafka too much.” Knowing this devotion to be an empirical fact, this portrayal does not ring untrue; however, the language that constructs it is repetitive, idolatrous and intemperately sentimental. One might of course argue that this is exactly what is to be expected of a narrator so close to Brod’s persona. And, after all, the quote in the last paragraph shows the struggle that ensues when the friendship is called into question.

Yet as this challenge—and others in the stories to follow—fails and Brod remains the ever loyal devotee, Forgiving the Angel seems to imply that every attack on Kafka is bound to be of no avail. While faintly touching, this attitude is too lacking in critical reflection to feel authentic.

Irrespective from Brod, Cantor renders a very delicate and congenial account of what might have been Kafka, and the few words he lets him speak or write are among the most beautiful in the book. It may be because of the very reserved and subtle involvement in his fate that he becomes a much more likable character than those who readily serve this man, his work, and his wishes—to the detriment of their own.

Such reverence is a dominant theme in this collection. The scholar in Prague compares himself incessantly to the writer and thinks “his life was a story narrated by Kafka.” By disrupting this pattern the third story is the most inventive contribution to this book, which composes the future of Dora Diamant, Kafka’s last love. After his death, she marries the Communist activist Lusk who loathes Kafka’s lasting impression on Dora and her lifelong devotion to him. She defines her existence in the same fashion as Max Brod, and one can relate to Lusk’s resentment of this worship. Still he, as so many others of Mr. Cantor’s characters, cannot prevent to be consumed by an all-encompassing Kafkaesque storyline.

Contrary to the first impression, Forgiving the Angel is not about individual stories; it is a multivoiced attempt to represent the universality and truth of Kafka’s narratives.

Cantor does not generate real characters but puppets made to relive the confusion, solitude, and poverty of those Kafka created himself. Given the variety of personalities he features, it is indeed an impressive achievement.

Yet his work is self-referential and lacks subtlety in its style; too often are his four stories equated to nothing less than four Kafka stories; too obvious are the parallels to A Hunger Artist, the collection of four stories that Kafka worked on before his death in 1924.

While novels that reimagine the lives of famous people are not uncommon, Forgiving the Angel is a literary tribute of a completely different magnitude. We do not get to know a writer’s world; instead we are presented with the world he leaves behind, one that has his imprints all over it. This work is clearly based on extensive research, and it picks up on the important issue of adoring literary figures to the point of fetishization, but it does so a little naïvely. A tribute, surely, should also be the place for scrutiny—not least because continuous praise is not enjoyable to read.

Cantor’s book is the literary equivalent of observing the waves made by a stone dropped in water. It may demonstrate some depth and create a beautiful motion, but as so many other images of this kind, it does not avoid the ballast of kitsch.