With a stylistic nod to the wordless novels of Frans Maserell and the expressionist drawings of Franz Kafka himself, Jason Novak’s short graphic novel Kafka’s Manuscript begins at the author’s deathbed, where he entrusts his friend Max Brod with the task of destroying his unpublished papers. Brod refuses, and what follows is the story of how Kafka’s literary legacy escaped Europe under the shadow of fascism. It is a survey of Kafka’s paranoid landscape in kinetoscopic monochrome. As a master of deadpan satire, Kafka was as eloquent with both words as he was with what was left unsaid. Kafka’s Cartoonist Jason Novak seizes upon the unsaid to comment on Kafka’s afterlife, exploring in a new way what countless books about Kafka have previously attempted to explore with words. Every epoch has its conundrums, but the qualities that unite our age with Kafka’s are a reminder that some characteristics of a culture are perennial. What better way to capture Kafka’s enduring but evasive voice than with pantomime?
