5 ms·

A Hunger Artist, by Franz Kafka (brought to mind by "How to be a loser")

20 points by nonrecursive 17y ago

nonrecursive 17y ago
In this story Kafka presents a character whose profession is to go hungry. I was reminded of it by the last bit of "How to be a loser": Thoreau said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. It seems that that’s true, but with the following proviso: some men do eke out contentment, and they get there by gradually ratcheting down their expectations. Their appetites fade. They compromise, and rationalize, and eventually settle. I think Steve Jobs said something similar: "Always stay hungry."
- neilk 17y ago
  I don't see what Kafka's hunger artist has to do with such bromides. You give me an idea though. The genre of famous-author-gives-anachronistic-business-advice has never been done with Kafka before. I see a great need.
  - mtts 17y ago
    I would wager that Kafka has never been used for that because his work tends to concern itself with failure rather than with success. But I agree with you. More business types should read his work, if only to develop a more realistic outlook on life. The sky is not the limit, petty bureaucrats in the castle you're never, ever going to be allowed into for no discernable reason at all are.
    - neilk 17y ago
      Oh I don't know. Surely "The Bucket Rider" can tell us something about dealing with bad customers. It's clear to me that Kafka meant this as a tale about how to be a sharp businessperson. http://old.tcfreenet.org/people/hale/articles/bucket.htm http://old.tcfreenet.org/people/hale/articles/bucket.htm
      - mtts 17y ago
        I do hope there was a tongue somewhere in your cheek when you wrote that.
  - akamaka 17y ago
    I see the original poster's point. The punch line of the story is that the hunger artist has simply given up on finding food that he likes. Instead of continuing playing the game of trying new foods, a game at which he has always lost, he's given up, and learned to find some small contentment with constant hunger. I didn't see that angle myself when I read the story, to be honest. It just goes to show how great writers can touch our psyche in deep ways that bring out our personal feelings about hunger, fame, or isolation.
    - mtts 17y ago
      That would be stretching it, I think. If you read the context of the sentence "because I couldn't find the food I liked" you'll find it's not about desperation but about fame. The hunger artist says he has finally learned that he should not receive admiration for what he does as his artistry is simply a consequence of his never having run into food he wanted to eat. His fasting is not a skill but a circumstance. This interpretation is consistent with the rest of the story, which mostly talks about fame (well, and the artist's loneliness amidst all the admiration, of course). Nowhere in this story does Kafka mention "quiet desperation" or "ratcheting down [....] expectations." An interpretation that tries to read that into this story is therefore, I think, invalid, as there is nothing in the text to support it.
- mtts 17y ago
  Read the story again, but this time without your myopic web startup goggles on. Because, really, those seem to have caused you to truly spectacularly misread what is essentially a story about loneliness as yet another piece of entrepeneurial feel good fluff.
  - nonrecursive 17y ago
    It seems like you liked the story, and I'm glad for that. If you haven't read it before, then I'm especially happy that I introduced you to it. It's one of my favorites, and I've probably read it at least 30 times over the years. However, it seems like your comment was only intended to shoot down what you perceived as my interpretation of the story, and to do so in an insulting manner. I'd like to know why you think the story is essentially about loneliness and what you think it says about loneliness, and I'd appreciate it if you did so in a way that's not insulting.
    - mtts 17y ago
      My response was less than civil, yes. Your bringing Steve Jobs' "Always stay hungry" into it struck me as exceptionally shallow and myopic and since I happen to be a big fan of Kafka's work, more bile went into my response than would have been proper, I guess. The comment you've posted since (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124805 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124805) seems a lot more sensible. So it appears I have misjudged you, though, reading it over again, I'm still not convinced that I did that with your original comment itself.
      - nonrecursive 17y ago
        Yeah I did see that in your comment - "wow this guy really likes Kafka, that's awesome." :) In my original comment I should have written something like "It's interesting to compare what jsomers wrote / Steve Jobs said to what Kafka has written, though for now I'm reserving my opinion." I remember reading something along the lines of, "people rarely understand each other, and when they do it's usually by accident." Anyway, I'm sorry I wasn't clearer originally.
gnosis 17y ago
Knut Hamsun's "Hunger" is also excellent (better even than Kafka, but less well-known): http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8hngr10h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8hngr10h.htm
nonrecursive 17y ago
In my original comment I was trying to be neutral when I said "I was reminded of this story by this other thing that was on Hacker News." I was not trying to imply that the original essay, "How to be a loser", and Kafka's story have the exact same message. My intention was only to point out what specifically spurred the association without giving any analysis or opinion. Evidently I didn't do a good job, and I wish I had. But here is my opinion on the story, if only to disabuse mtts of the rather presumptuous notion that I wear "myopic web startup goggles" and think this great story is "another piece of entrepreneurial feel good fluff": I've loved this story since I first read it 9 or 10 years ago. It's emotional, mysterious, and ambiguous. It lives up to Kafka's claim that "A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside your soul." I think I can see what mtts is saying when he says the story is essentially about loneliness, but I'd love to hear more. Because I think the story is about other things as well - about ambition, about art, about being misunderstood, and about greatness. Kafka's hunger artist is a man who feels like he has never reached his potential. He's always convinced that he can accomplish more than is allowed, and has a troubled spirit because of it and because he perceives that his management and public are keeping him from reaching his potential while at the same time completely misunderstanding why he feels as he does. Yet when he finally is left to fast for as long as he wants, at the end of it he says "You shouldn't admire it. Because I have to fast, I can't help it. Because I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else." Why would he say that? What's Kafka trying to say? It seems like Kafka means to communicate that great artists aren't admirable, that in fact there's something wrong with them. In the end, their constant hunger isn't a noble trait, it's not an acquired virtue. It's a defect, a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder of the soul. This is probably why the public reacts to the hunger artist as they do. They find him fascinating, and culturally he's celebrated to an extent, but the public can't truly value what he does. It's horrifying. It's inhuman. So, I in fact brought up this story because if it's related to the "How to be a loser" essay, it's as a contradiction. jsomers presents constant hunger as something admirable, and those who are content as people who are only fooling themselves into believing they're not living lives of "quiet desperation". The other way of looking at "winners" and "losers" is to say that "winners" are so compelled to satisfy their hunger that they're not capable of being normal, healthy, content humans.

20 points by nonrecursive 17y ago

In this story Kafka presents a character whose profession is to go hungry. I was reminded of it by the last bit of "How to be a loser": Thoreau said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. It seems that that’s true, but with the following proviso: some men do eke out contentment, and they get there by gradually ratcheting down their expectations. Their appetites fade. They compromise, and rationalize, and eventually settle. I think Steve Jobs said something similar: "Always stay hungry."

neilk 17y ago
I don't see what Kafka's hunger artist has to do with such bromides. You give me an idea though. The genre of famous-author-gives-anachronistic-business-advice has never been done with Kafka before. I see a great need.
- mtts 17y ago
  I would wager that Kafka has never been used for that because his work tends to concern itself with failure rather than with success. But I agree with you. More business types should read his work, if only to develop a more realistic outlook on life. The sky is not the limit, petty bureaucrats in the castle you're never, ever going to be allowed into for no discernable reason at all are.
  - neilk 17y ago
    Oh I don't know. Surely "The Bucket Rider" can tell us something about dealing with bad customers. It's clear to me that Kafka meant this as a tale about how to be a sharp businessperson. http://old.tcfreenet.org/people/hale/articles/bucket.htm http://old.tcfreenet.org/people/hale/articles/bucket.htm
    - mtts 17y ago
      I do hope there was a tongue somewhere in your cheek when you wrote that.
- akamaka 17y ago
  I see the original poster's point. The punch line of the story is that the hunger artist has simply given up on finding food that he likes. Instead of continuing playing the game of trying new foods, a game at which he has always lost, he's given up, and learned to find some small contentment with constant hunger. I didn't see that angle myself when I read the story, to be honest. It just goes to show how great writers can touch our psyche in deep ways that bring out our personal feelings about hunger, fame, or isolation.
  - mtts 17y ago
    That would be stretching it, I think. If you read the context of the sentence "because I couldn't find the food I liked" you'll find it's not about desperation but about fame. The hunger artist says he has finally learned that he should not receive admiration for what he does as his artistry is simply a consequence of his never having run into food he wanted to eat. His fasting is not a skill but a circumstance. This interpretation is consistent with the rest of the story, which mostly talks about fame (well, and the artist's loneliness amidst all the admiration, of course). Nowhere in this story does Kafka mention "quiet desperation" or "ratcheting down [....] expectations." An interpretation that tries to read that into this story is therefore, I think, invalid, as there is nothing in the text to support it.
mtts 17y ago
Read the story again, but this time without your myopic web startup goggles on. Because, really, those seem to have caused you to truly spectacularly misread what is essentially a story about loneliness as yet another piece of entrepeneurial feel good fluff.
- nonrecursive 17y ago
  It seems like you liked the story, and I'm glad for that. If you haven't read it before, then I'm especially happy that I introduced you to it. It's one of my favorites, and I've probably read it at least 30 times over the years. However, it seems like your comment was only intended to shoot down what you perceived as my interpretation of the story, and to do so in an insulting manner. I'd like to know why you think the story is essentially about loneliness and what you think it says about loneliness, and I'd appreciate it if you did so in a way that's not insulting.
  - mtts 17y ago
    My response was less than civil, yes. Your bringing Steve Jobs' "Always stay hungry" into it struck me as exceptionally shallow and myopic and since I happen to be a big fan of Kafka's work, more bile went into my response than would have been proper, I guess. The comment you've posted since (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124805 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124805) seems a lot more sensible. So it appears I have misjudged you, though, reading it over again, I'm still not convinced that I did that with your original comment itself.
    - nonrecursive 17y ago
      Yeah I did see that in your comment - "wow this guy really likes Kafka, that's awesome." :) In my original comment I should have written something like "It's interesting to compare what jsomers wrote / Steve Jobs said to what Kafka has written, though for now I'm reserving my opinion." I remember reading something along the lines of, "people rarely understand each other, and when they do it's usually by accident." Anyway, I'm sorry I wasn't clearer originally.

gnosis 17y ago

Knut Hamsun's "Hunger" is also excellent (better even than Kafka, but less well-known): http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8hngr10h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8hngr10h.htm

nonrecursive 17y ago

In my original comment I was trying to be neutral when I said "I was reminded of this story by this other thing that was on Hacker News." I was not trying to imply that the original essay, "How to be a loser", and Kafka's story have the exact same message. My intention was only to point out what specifically spurred the association without giving any analysis or opinion. Evidently I didn't do a good job, and I wish I had. But here is my opinion on the story, if only to disabuse mtts of the rather presumptuous notion that I wear "myopic web startup goggles" and think this great story is "another piece of entrepreneurial feel good fluff": I've loved this story since I first read it 9 or 10 years ago. It's emotional, mysterious, and ambiguous. It lives up to Kafka's claim that "A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside your soul." I think I can see what mtts is saying when he says the story is essentially about loneliness, but I'd love to hear more. Because I think the story is about other things as well - about ambition, about art, about being misunderstood, and about greatness. Kafka's hunger artist is a man who feels like he has never reached his potential. He's always convinced that he can accomplish more than is allowed, and has a troubled spirit because of it and because he perceives that his management and public are keeping him from reaching his potential while at the same time completely misunderstanding why he feels as he does. Yet when he finally is left to fast for as long as he wants, at the end of it he says "You shouldn't admire it. Because I have to fast, I can't help it. Because I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else." Why would he say that? What's Kafka trying to say? It seems like Kafka means to communicate that great artists aren't admirable, that in fact there's something wrong with them. In the end, their constant hunger isn't a noble trait, it's not an acquired virtue. It's a defect, a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder of the soul. This is probably why the public reacts to the hunger artist as they do. They find him fascinating, and culturally he's celebrated to an extent, but the public can't truly value what he does. It's horrifying. It's inhuman. So, I in fact brought up this story because if it's related to the "How to be a loser" essay, it's as a contradiction. jsomers presents constant hunger as something admirable, and those who are content as people who are only fooling themselves into believing they're not living lives of "quiet desperation". The other way of looking at "winners" and "losers" is to say that "winners" are so compelled to satisfy their hunger that they're not capable of being normal, healthy, content humans.