Criticism
"Description of a Struggle" is not usually considered one of Kafka's better works and it is often dismissed by critics turned off by its fragmentary nature and lack of polish. John Updike, in his foreword to an English language collection of Kafka's stories calls it (along with "Wedding Preparations in the Country," another early story) "repellent" containing "something of adolescent posturing" and advises new readers of Kafka to skip them. Updike encourages readers to return to these early stories once "initiated" with his other works.
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.”
—Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897)