I think the universe is conspiring against my reading any of his novels. My dog literally ate my copy of The Trial earlier this year. I bought a new copy yesterday; we'll see how it fares.

Anyway, I've read most of his short works and have liked him since I read "The Metamorphosis" in high school. Sometimes there are stretches in his prose I could see being considered boring. Sometimes it is a struggle. Generally, though, I've found his work interesting, at least for the concepts conveyed and the atmosphere. He also amuses me.
I'm not fond of the Muir translations. Sometimes the diction is just weird and they maintain certain grammar conventions that don't work as well in English, i.e. strings of clauses attached with semicolons. I'll read them if I have to, but they still irritate me.
A number of native speakers have told me that Kafka really isn't the best German stylist. He's not really a writer to read for the language.

For me, "difficult" and "heavy" literature is often worth the effort, but some works labeled as such are more entertaining than they are usually credited. When I started reading Dostoyevsky, for instance, I was surprised by how funny he could be and how vivid his characters were. Yes, there were passages in Brothers Karamazov I struggled through, but overall it wasn't boring.
Another thing is that the more difficult literature you read, the easier it gets. Sometimes you do need to take a break and read some fluff, but there's no reason to fear or dismiss it as a whole.

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my life in movies: [link]

I didn't find Kafka all that difficult. But, I can see why some people would. The absurdity and melancholy of his work does take its toll on the reader. This is the same with most 'difficult' writers.
The value of reading literature like this is just in seeing another way of telling a story. Simply because Hemingway used short sentences and was considered a genius doesn't mean that complex narratives are something to be afraid of. If anything, works like that build up your stamina for reading more works like it. Faulkner, for example, had complex novels that, when I was reading them in high school, didn't fully click with me. But, as the years went by, I finally picked those books up again and realized that there was so much I didn't catch the first time around. Who'd of thought As I Lay Dying was going to be hilarious the second time around. If anything, the more complex, the more enjoyable the book, once you're done with it anyway.

If your dog found it digestible, it can't be so bad then.

Seriously though, you're right to make the comment about Dostoyevsky. People often make the mistake that something written over a century ago, and by someone with a foreign-sounding name must, by definition, be difficult. But your mention of Dostoyevsky puts me in mind of Gogol's The Overcoat, and Diary of a Madman, both eminently readable and hugely enjoyable books.

I haven't read Gogol yet! I know he influenced Dostoyevsky, but I've still not gotten around to him.

Back to Kafka, I've read the first quarters of The Castle and The Trial and would say the latter is a much better read. I seem to recall the former was unfinished and suffers the kind of accusations made about Kafka. But I don't know, I found the bit with the twins hilarious.
Otherwise, I've heard that Amerika might be the easiest of his novels to chug through. I've read the synopsis and it sounds like fun.

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my life in movies: [link]

I don't have anything to say about Kafka.

Regarding difficult reading, though, I just finished reading Naguib Mahfouz's Beggar. His style is pretty deep and philosophical, and alot of times I end up reading some passages more than a couple of times to get the meaning, but that makes it more interesting and makes me go on. He just gives me more to think about.

Then again, I have no idea what the ending meant, and therefore I cannot a reach a conclusion about the point of the story. I'm reluctant to ask around, since I'd rather find it myself, but I guess I'll be forced to.

I'm also wading through another of his works, I Have Seen What The Sleeper Sees. 17 short chapters each detailing a dream. I'll admit that they really do sound like dreams; they're confusing and abstract enough.

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But I -being poor- have only my dreams --Yeats

How can you tell if the translation is bad? I think you mentioned the concept to me when I was reading the Idiot. I found it entirely repulsive to read, and I ran out of patience nearly half-way. If it's the translation then those must have been some horrible translators, I mean they did a good enough of job of ruining a novel by a well known author.

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But I -being poor- have only my dreams --Yeats

Judging a translation is partially a subjective thing, and obviously appreciation of a translated text may just be the content itself.
You have to take into account that there are different approaches to translation, and much of this is dependent on concerns of the time and the individual translator. It's not just precise words one is translating but a certain tone or style. This is even more precarious in the realm of poetry.
I'm not sure I would call any translation "bad" per se (though maybe I did use that term when we discussed The Idiot, I don't recall), but if you read a few translations of a work you do realize that not every translation is as readable as the next.

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my life in movies: [link]

The first I heard of Kafka was during an University English class, where we were assigned "The Hunger Artist". I wouldn't say he's too difficult to understand, but he is a good short fiction writer, that does wonders with his craft.

I remember that post in which ~TheCuddlyDevil asked you if Kafka was boring and I replied saying that I thought it he was entertaining, or something like that.

Let's see: I read The Metamorphosis when I was 16 or 17; I wasn't reading it for class, just for fun. And I liked it. I didn't understand much of it, and I still don't (I haven't bothered reading any essays yet), but I liked it for its strangeness. Most of the books I've read that could be considered 'difficult' make me feel strange, so much so that I associate the two very closely. Difficult/strange would include (for me) texts like Waiting for Godot (Beckett), The Stranger (Camus), Disgrace (Coetzee), Bitter Soil (Devi), The Idiot ( Dostoevsky), The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Kundera) - all big names in the lit world, but I like reading them simply because I don't understand all of it, the feeling of knowing I've missed something. The Idiot, for example, was my introduction to Russian literature (excluding some lovely plays by Chekhov), and I'm sure I've missed most of the difficult things about it. It's a great read; I can't believe I was afraid of Dostoevsky and classics in general.

The value of reading 'difficult' literature is probably that it's more entertaining than you think it will be. That's the first level. You can only go up from there by reading more into the text, by reading around it (i.e. similar kinds of literature, other books by the same author, etc), or just enjoying the detail of it.

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