I am a cross-genre reader and writer. I find fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction equally full of enchantment. Lately, I’m engrossed in short fiction, not only for the entertainment value, but also with hope that the magic on the page will somehow transform my own writing of short fiction.

I look to many authors for inspiration, but today I will look at Franz Kafka’s short story, “A Hunger Artist.”

 I must confess that it was the title that drew me to this story out of all of them in Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories. It is like that with short fiction: the title, especially in a large collection of stories, is critical. And so I was drawn as an artist—often hungry—to this particular story.

            I laughed at the first line: “During these last decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly diminished.” It drew me right in, as the first line to a short story must, into Kafka’s world of dark and brutally honest irony.

As the story unfolds, the reader is all but shoved into a metaphysical cage with the main character, the hunger artist, to witness inhumanity ruminate outside his cage. The hunger artist becomes a commodity for the public who “pretend to admire him,” but are “in reality so cruel.” Members of the public, “usually butchers,” are elected to govern over the hunger artist’s consumption. It is their responsibility to watch the hunger artist day and night to be sure he is not sneaking nourishment. Kafka writes “This was nothing but a formality, instituted to reassure the masses.”

 All of the characters in this story are generic representations of society, and their behavior reflects a generic order of society. Yet despite the lack of character description and development, as well as other missing details commonly employed in fiction, Kafka manages to evoke a powerful emotional impact. It is through these generalities that Kafka creates empathy for the hunger artist—for any artist—and disgust with the social order that harbors an ideology that is very much anti-artist.

The public view the hunger artist with suspicion, and even think “he had discovered a way of making it easy.” Only the hunger artist knows differently: he does this because he has to.

You would think that the pitiful existence of the hunger artist could not worsen, but it does. The crowds eventually turn their attention away from the hunger artist in favor of “the menagerie,” and the hunger artist becomes “an artist past his prime.”  

There are innumerable ways to interpret Kafka’s work, but I chose to interpret this story as an artist: at metaphysical face value. To me, Kafka wrote “A Hunger Artist” as a bitter tribute to the profession of the artist. It is passion for truth that fuels the artist—even in hunger—to complete his work.

I like to think that Kafka himself is in this story, lashing out at society for their casual disregard for art and the artist. Interestingly enough, this story was published in 1922, a time in history when the motion picture industry developed the technology to add sound to film. Could this be the menagerie, or circus that led the public away from books, from artists such as Kafka?  

It is not a light or happy read to be sure, but it is timeless in its philosophical glance at the artist and society, one that I will not forget.