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FIFTEEN “VIGNETTES” BY FRANZ KAFKA, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, AND ARTWORK BY LINDA LOWERY
Available for reservation, with shipping expected toward the end of 2024.
Franz Kafka is an acknowledged (if postmortem) master of the novel, novella, and short story. Consider The Trial, Metamorphosis, or A Hunger Artist. He remains largely unacknowledged for his efforts at “flash fiction” – or what I would prefer to call “vignettes”. Among his three novels, novella, and twenty short stories are fifty-five such vignettes which have not only failed to make much of an impression on critics or readers, but are often treated as little more than eccentric literary detritus. Many, admittedly, are not especially good, but about half sustain Albert Camus’ comment that “the whole of Kafka’s art consists in compelling the reader to re-read him.” In my estimation, one is a real masterpiece – Poseidon.
Poseidon is poignantly funny yet tender, balanced on the knife’s edge of comedy and tragedy as few works of any length manage to be.
This edition, then, is an effort to celebrate Poseidon, an exemplar of its nascent yet ancient, still nameless form. Behind Poseidon are a train of fourteen other of Kafka’s vignettes, great reads in their own right but doubling as a milieu within which Poseidon is all the more striking.
This project is years in the making. My original intention, back in 2020, was to publish a book edition of Poseidon alone – all 409 words of it. This would be a statement piece, a claim that a vignette is worthy of boards, endpapers, an imprint number. But as literary laws tend to break down at the shortest lengths, so it seems do the laws of bookmaking. The edition felt, as Mr. Baggins put it, “Thin – sort of stretched – like butter scraped over too much bread.” Two editions were fully typeset, printed, and scrapped: The first an ogre with 36-point type, the second an avante-gardette with eleven translations trailing the original German. Cheap tricks, both. Finally I decided that the thing which would justify a book form for Poseidon was, well... more than just Poseidon.
While I consider Poseidon to be Kafka’s masterpiece in the weight class of vignette, many of his others make for great reading, and, ultimately, I think, an impressive collection. Further, context fosters appreciation. You may not agree with my opinion that Poseidon is a masterpiece – you may not even agree that Poseidon is Kafka’s finest vignette – but you will admit that it is distinguished from the rest. It is different. More whole. More modern. The others here printed have something which distinguishes them from the lot, but there is no rhyme or reason to their particular selection. I like them best. They could be termed parables (see The Top) or conundra (see On Parables) or advice (see Bachelor’s Ill-Luck) or prose fiction indistinguishable from a short story but for length (see The Bridge). They are as diverse as are novels, but commonly swept up together as ephemera, (too short to be taken seriously). I failed in my own attempt to treat one of them as more than ephemeral (amidst two failed attempts to make Poseidon into a book, No Reply did manage to make a broadside of it). But there is strength in numbers.
In this edition, Poseidon gets headline billing. The vignettes are organized thereafter from shortest to longest. The shortest is 108 words, and only one is longer than 400. They are capably translated by a set of sets: Willa & Edwin Muir and Tania & James Stern. From its conception as a standalone edition, I collaborated with Linda Lowery on a suite of four portraits of Poseidon through his own private “stations of the Cross.” Up close and personal, portraits mirror the vignette form – tightly framed, capturing something elemental or even sub-elemental. That Linda had the foresight to create something beyond mere illustration of a story – artwork sympathetic with a text’s emotional chords – has given me safe passage to expand this edition from one to fifteen vignettes. They echo the artwork in both form and spirit.
Furthermore, the oil portraits are reproduced using a vanishingly rare process – full-color relief overprinting. This process, to my eye, helps recreate the depth, dampness, and grain of oil painting.
At last, then, on its third attempt at printing, I am glad to present No Reply’s twenty-eighth edition, fifteen vignettes by Franz Kafka.
EDITION NOTES
The twenty-eighth edition from No Reply.
The limitation has yet to be determined, but likely few.
Printed letterpress by hand using a Vandercook Universal I proofing press.
Velin Johannot paper mould-made in Arches, France.
Four oil portraits, reproduced in full color by letterpress using the four-toned relief overprinting method – a vanishingly rare process these days.
Typeset in Weiss, featuring three color printing throughout.
Hand-bound in a limp vellum style using Cave handmade papers.
Approximately 60 pages, measuring 6¼ by 9¼ inches.
Housed in a handmade cloth solander case.
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