A Fourteen-Hour Lesson in Kafkaesque Theosophy of Late Shakespearean Postmodernism, or How to Recognize Bullshit

Critical analysis of unethical writing

Photo by Olesia Libra on Unsplash — Piss - art installation by David Cerny in front of Franz Kafka museum in Prague. Two mechanical men urinating on a map of the Czech Republic. You can send a text message and the two men will spell it with their penises.

For one of the book clubs, I read Obsession by Clarice Lispector, and we had a very interesting discussion. I liked the story, Clarice Lispector’s style, and … wasn’t she beautiful?

For the next book club, the host chose A Fourteen-Hour Lesson in Theosophy by Edgar Garbelotto. I Googled (yes, I’m that old. I Google, not ask AI) … last day of Clarice Lispector, blah blah, something, something.

Okay. I continued my research to find out if the author was close to Clarice. No. Maybe he worked with her? No.

Okay, okay, so what then? Blah blah blah… a fantasy… oh… imagining… oh, god, please, no… the last hours of Clarice Lispector.

If there is something I don’t like in literature (is it even literature?), it’s when authors, to hype up their worthless text, use the names of famous people. And yes, it’s always poorly written. Not a single masterpiece. Maybe it has something to do with ethics. Please note, I didn’t say these authors are not successful. In the times when stupidity rules the world, it’s not difficult to convince idiots that the king is not naked. That’s why the bookstores are full of Hamnets, Kafkas on the Shore, and whatever else is there. The only good thing about people reading this crap is that more and more bookstores are opening, and sell good books too. See? I can find good in bad.

I planned to write two to three sentences, a short note for myself about why I didn’t like the story, but got sidetracked. Forgive me for this digression, but deciding to give Murakami a chance, looking for an explanation proving me wrong, I stumbled upon this* showpiece of interviewing and couldn’t help but share it.

Interviewer: Before “postmodernism” became a buzzword, Franz Kafka explored that particular condition of isolation associated with a post-nuclear, new-millennium world. Did you name your protagonist after him to draw out these themes, or were there other reasons?

Allow me to translate it into a language more understandable to uneducated and ignorant plebeians like myself.

“Why did you call your character Kafka?” wanted to ask the interviewer, but couldn’t. He had to show off, elevate the conversation to a lofty intellectual level, and demonstrate that he wasn’t stupid and knew the word “postmodernism”. To prevent the author from going off on a tangent, he asked a leading question, scattering all sorts of clever-sounding and trendy words, like breadcrumbs for Hansel and Gretel, in the hope that the writer would be able to compose a deliriously complex rationalization.

Truth is simple and straight as a utility pole. But when your job is to promote bullshit, you have to be creative, ask questions that do not make any sense because the answer is clear. You hide behind obscure and meaningless words, in the hope that their combination will sound so terrifyingly complex that the reader will rather consider himself ignorant than think he is being fooled.

Murakami: “It goes without saying that Kafka is one of my very favorite writers. But I don’t think my novels or characters are directly influenced by him. What I mean is, Kafka’s fictional world is already so complete that trying to follow in his steps is not just pointless, but quite risky, too. What I see myself doing, rather, is writing novels where, in my own way, I dismantle the fictional world of Kafka that itself dismantled the existing novelistic system. One could view this as a kind of homage to Kafka, I suppose. To tell the truth, I don’t really have a firm grasp of what’s meant by postmodernism, but I do have the sense that what I’m trying to do is slightly different. At any rate, what I’d like to be is a unique writer who’s different from everybody else. I want to be a writer who tells stories unlike other writers’.”

Oh no, all the interviewer’s pseudo-intellectual efforts were in vain. The author didn’t have the intelligence to follow the literary pathway with verbal petals carefully strewn by the interviewer.

It’s tempting to parse this entire verbal salad, but I won’t deprive the author of his dignity. Except for a few points.

How touching is his honest admission that he has no idea what the word “postmodernism” means. But has the sense that he’s trying to do something slightly different. So sweet.

His truthful answer reminds me of a line from Evgeny Schwartz’s The Naked King play: “I beg you, princess, be silent. You are so innocent that you could say the most terrible things.”

“One could view this as a kind of homage to Kafka, I suppose,” says Murakami, clearly showing that those who attempt to humanize and rationalize his disgraceful act as homage to a favorite writer are wrong.

And finishes with a pathetic dream of all narcissists: “At any rate, what I’d like to be is a unique writer who’s different from everybody else. I want to be a writer who tells stories unlike other writers.” I bet you do. And clearly use all means to achieve it.

Disgusting.

But, back to A Fourteen-Hour Lesson in Theosophy.

I only had to read two sentences of that story to understand that it’s not worth continuing. These two sentences are Clarice Lispector’s quote he used as the epigraph and the first sentence of the story.

“I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.” (Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life)

1:05 a.m.: The rain starts. I arrive; so close to her I can breathe the rain mixed with the sour smell of her scalp.

Two sentences that so clearly show the abyss between talent and mediocrity, between the beauty of writing and graphomania, between a sharp mind and stupidity, between deep immersion in the inner world and hypocrisy, disrespect for another person’s memory in the race for fame and money.

March 25, 2026

Prague

*Note: I haven’t been able to find the original interview and I don’t know who the interviewer was.