Kafka, Steiner, Prose

There are one hundred and seventeen books on the list. A lot of them are quite long and so I have a tendency, especially in February, to knock off books around two hundred pages to keep my spirits up. Of course, no one says I have to read this list. The reason I'm doing it is because it finally answers the question that I've had since I read John Gardner's books on writing where he said that no serious writer (he was a serious writer) would ever read anything but serious fiction, except to help a friend. So off I went to dutifully read the Russians and great American and Canadians. But now I want to improve my own writing. Without taking a class. I'm encouraged by Prose's book, Blue Angel, where writing classes are sent up. In Reading Like A Writer, she says that Kafka, had writing classes existed in his time and place, would have said that they didn't buy that a man could be transformed into a bug. Writing classes aren't helpful anymore because they're too democratic and too vicious. Kafka would not be allowed to be the genius that he is. As George Steiner wrote, he can't wrap his head around the fact that Kafka worked in an insurance office in the daytime and wrote at night. Prose makes the point that Kafka learned to write sentences by reading Von Kleist. Thank God he didn't go take a course in novel writing.