weiss sets out to write kafka in a manner that lukács might have approved of and produces a pretty staggering work of art. i have never gotten as much from kafka's writings as a lot of people seem to have, but in wringing every last thematic or political aspect of the kafkaesque out weiss stages his dialogue on the relationship between art and revolutionary politics

the new trial is not quite as narratively, or even politically, satisfying as marat / sade but if i were to make assumptions about weiss' more pessimistic state of mind towards the end of his life (given how little of his works are available in english) i would say that whatever utopian moments there were in the aesthetics of resistance have been omitted here, precisely because of how thoroughly the modernist critique has been defanged and put to use within the existing order