Misguided Friendship: On Early Reviews

From a letter to Felice Bauer, 14/15 February 1913

A few reviews have already appeared, needless to say all of them by friends, valueless in their exaggerated praise, valueless in their comments, and explicable only as a sign of misguided friendship, an overrating of the printed word, a misunderstanding of the general public’s attitude to literature.

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From Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, ed. Erich Heller and Jürgen Born, trans. James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), p. 194. Published on Soft Union under fair use for critical context.