Conversation With A Drunk from Description Of A Struggle by Franz Kafka – author of the quintessential The Castle http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-castle-by-franz-kafka.html The Process and The Collected Stories, all three included on the list of 100 Greatest Books…Conversations with a Drunk is part of The Collected Stories, you can read it online (with more than seventy years of age, it is in the public domain) here https://books.google.ro/books?id=-mXlYwEJr0sC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=conversation+with+a+drunk+kafka&source=bl&ots=wFJgkcOdF1&sig=ACfU3U0bQT-7Xg6W5f0WDFcTVCW0QsTRsQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiE7ILd9rf-AhVIgv0HHT4mBkEQ6AF6BAhKEAM#v=onepage&q=conversation%20with%20a%20drunk%20kafka&f=false 8 out of 10

 Conversation With A Drunk from Description Of A Struggle by Franz Kafka – author of the quintessential The Castle http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-castle-by-franz-kafka.html The Process and The Collected Stories, all three included on the list of 100 Greatest Books…Conversations with a Drunk is part of The Collected Stories, you can read it online (with more than seventy years of age, it is in the public domain) here https://books.google.ro/books?id=-mXlYwEJr0sC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=conversation+with+a+drunk+kafka&source=bl&ots=wFJgkcOdF1&sig=ACfU3U0bQT-7Xg6W5f0WDFcTVCW0QsTRsQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiE7ILd9rf-AhVIgv0HHT4mBkEQ6AF6BAhKEAM#v=onepage&q=conversation%20with%20a%20drunk%20kafka&f=false

8 out of 10

 

 

In quite a few ways, Conversation with a Drunk sounds very familiar here, Kafkaesque is the atmosphere we live in, besides, drunkenness seemed to be a way to escape the hardships of the commie regime (adding most often to the problems, of the liver, mind, social and otherwise) and hence you could often meet drunks (not on the scale of Russia, where I have read somewhere that a diplomat vising centuries ago was saying that drink is the aim, and folks of all sexes, classes, ages fall under the table, inebriated)

 

Together with Conversations with a Supplicant aka Conversations with a Worshipper http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/04/on-conversation-with-worshipper-aka.html  this very short (we could call it a flash story, as it only has a few pages) is part of "Description of a Struggle"  which ‘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.[1] 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.

It often seems bizarre to read Kafka, as mentioned before, this is the air we used to breathe, and the Kafkaesque inheritance still marks society in this part of the world, where bureaucracy and absurdity go together, private ‘enterprise’ is often managed along the lines of the dystopian, not according to the rules of the market place – take this example of a company that has entered the realm some twenty years ago (by the way, even multinationals enter the universe of Kafka, once they step into regions like this one, we have a few Americans, Dutch and other nationalities living in this gated community and they act like in The Trial http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/note-on-process-adapted-from-franz.html one of them walks his dog with the animal on one street, and the owner on another, who is taking the feces, well this is not a problem for this expat) that acts as if it is all in for the money, exclusively

 

When you enter the Kafkaesque premises, albeit this is a ‘Hospitality’ outfit, you see that they have taken out chairs (now they have half of what had been there some years ago) and to add insult to injury, a corner, maybe 20 percent of the places are reserved for…employees, when something does not work, they blame the clients, be they saunas, Jacuzzi, and when it is not the guests, then it is the Radisson hotel (which itself is a proof of Conversation with a Drunk, I mean how could a firm like that disregard what service or disservice their clients get in the spa which is included in their services) that has closed the outdoor Jacuzzi.

 

You want the employees to show respect, say hello, you better forget about that, because the Games People Play there are extracted from the same Franz Kafka, when you enter the sauna, you find…employees inside (once upon a time, some seventeen years back, the Swedish manager said ‘we have a policy to allow our employees to use the saunas during off peak hours…only they come in at peak hours, when the instructors finish their kick box class, they come in) just like they utilize the Jacuzzi, the gym, often at moments when clients do not have access to a treadmill or some other gear…

The way they communicate is they send emails with invitations to buy some new package for swimming lessons (incidentally, they had had a lane for fast swimmers, which they now use for lessons, in a reversal of policy which means that guests have to abandon the plan to swim, because you have lanes with too many inside, while the lessons have one or two, but these latter bring in new cash, so that is the priority, not some foolish utilitarian philosophy, Bentham utopia) but at the same time, they ignore clients on practical, important matters: when the pool was closed (and nothing happened to the period that was missed due to the company’s lack of service) I have received no warning (just like others) and came at six in the morning to find I have nothing to use there, and when it was reopened, no message came.

 

Absurd, surreal as it seems the fault was mine, the client is again held responsible, because I have taken the offer made at another outlet, part of the same chain of gyms, paying the top dollar to get access Downtown, only I did not send the cash to them, per se, and that was because they had this annoying way of ignoring messages, climbing into a silence that became insulting – when I asked about the missing period, the one when the poll was closed, the answer came without hello dear customer or anything, just the blunt and rude ‘not me, and another address, where I sent an email and three months later, no reply came, which means it will never happen- so you will only get nudges to buy more, no useful information

Relating this to the one in ‘charge’, the reply was along the same ‘Conversation with a Supplicant’ – where the role of the one asking for miracles and impossible benefits was the under signed – and then she insisted on the lack of accountability, there are many problems, no saunas, no Jacuzzis (for the inside one, she even comes up with a rather disgusting excuse, a client vomited inside, and ok, there are awful customers, but in this case, when we were taken out, there had been no vomiting, it was early in the morning and we saw that nobody had done that, it is just some terrible thing, that had taken place maybe a few years ago, but has become a mantra, credo, look what contemptible clients we have) but the culprits are always from outside the premises, customers, hotel, and…the higher hierarchy, which is stupefying and so lamentable, because the justification is that the CEO, or the owners do not approve expenses, investment and thus the saunas, the stoves are not replaced, upgraded, repaired and when I indicated the minor changes that require only some care, interest from local decision factors, such as changing the battery for the scale, the small part that is hanging in the hammam, which has been rusty for about eight years http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world

 

Note written by Realini, who tried to contribute to the end of the Kafkaesque system in 1989 – this is the link to a page in the Newsweek article that mentions the small contribution to the fall of Ceausescu http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html