Franz Kafka and Coleridge Cook. The Meowmorphosis. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2011. 208 pages.
Book review Friday is back! This week, I’m taking a look at a little slice of fiction that merges modern man’s sense of alienation with kittens.
Quirk Classics pioneered the literary mashup genre. Basically, you take a classic work of literature (e.g., Pride and Prejudice), add a current pop culture trope (zombies) and you get an updated version of a literary classic (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). A few months ago I reviewed Android Karenina, and liked it, so when I saw that Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis had been Quirked, I grabbed a review copy.
It’s impossible to dislike a book that begins with the sentence “One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking from anxious dreams, he discovered that he had been changed into an adorable kitten.” Big chunks of the book are line-by-line rewrites of the original, with “kitten” substituted for “cockroach” and references to purring, playing with string, and general cuteness replacing insect-ness.
The result is an amusing read that might make you rethink Kafka’s original, which you probably read in high school or college. Kafka didn’t exactly write an uplifting book, so much of The Meowmorphosis is pretty grim, though surrounding a cuddly kitten with all of that gloominess makes for a funny contrast. In addition to taking on The Metamorphosis, the author’s also inserted some material that seems to be based on The Trial (it’s been at least 15 years since I read the original, so I may be wrong) that at least gets kitty Gregor out of that room and interacting with other cats.
On the whole, it’s a fun, goofy book that might get you to reconnect with Kafka’s work and maybe appreciate kittens a little more, too.