In my limited understanding, both Kafka and Twain wrote fiction, but one is a writer and the other a philosopher ???
1 month ago
so why both not philosophers? You sometimes can't read a Twain chapter without thinking "there's no story reason for this he's just making a philosophical point". · 1 month ago
@lykso Exactly. Mark Twain was one of the foremost thinkers of his time, and one of the foremost American thinkers of all time. He did way more than write Huck Finn. · 1 month ago
Twain also wrote a lot of essays in addition to the fiction he's commonly known for. He was generally more forthcoming with his opinions than Kafka was, and traveled the world as a lecturer as well. Kafka, while a brilliant writer, struggled with self-doubt so much that most of his work was lost; he burned an estimated 90 percent of it himself, and he requested all his works in progress be burned when he died as well. (His request was ignored, without which we would have been denied some of his best known work, such as The Trial.) · 1 month ago
Mark Twain did a lot more than write fiction · 1 month ago