A possible literary reference behind the Castigliani brothers, meaning, apparently, "caste people."

I've been reading through a book on Lynch, Beautiful Dark, which states repeatedly the influence the author Franz Kafka had on Lynch and his style. It was a long-standing dream of Lynch's to film Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

Kafka's last novel was The Castle. Like The Trial, it pictures the universe as a strange, vast bureaucracy. The whole scene with the Castigliani brothers is textbook Kafkaesque.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_%28novel%29

"Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is about alienation, bureaucracy, the seemingly endless frustrations of man's attempts to stand against the system, and the futile and hopeless pursuit of an unobtainable goal."

I discovered Kafka's work through Lynch and he quickly became my favourite writer. The unattainable object and the dark, anonymous forces are the common factors.

i never thought of the Lynch/Kafka connection. I don't know who it makes me rethink more.

I probably rethink Kafka more because at the time of reading The Trial and Metamorphosis, I was not aware of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or of the eastern religion ideas of afterlife journeys, etc.

Here is an interesting quote by Beckett about Kafka, I wonder how Lynch fits into these pretty subtle observations:

"I've only read Kafka in German - serious reading - except for a few things in French and English - only The Castle in German. I must say it was difficult to get to the end. The Kafka hero has a coherence of purpose. He's lost but he's not spiritually precarious, he's not falling to bits. My people seem to be falling to bits. Another difference. You notice how Kafka's form is classic, it goes on like a steamroller - almost serene. It seems to be threatened the whole time - but the consternation is in the form. In my work there is consternation behind the form, not in the form."

Samuel Beckett, interviewed by Israel Shenker
New York Times, 5 May 1956, Section II, 1, 3

That book, "Beautiful Dark" by Greg Olson, has a few of the main literary influences on David Lynch. Kafka's Metamorphosis is a major one (Lynch wanted to make a film version for a long time).

Another interesting one was a story called The Nose by Nikolai Gogol. It is apparently about a police commissioner of some sort who has his nose cut off in the middle of the night, and it mysteriously turns up baked into a loaf of bread (and later comes to life and lives autonomously from it's owner.) It's an obvious link the the severed ear of Blue Velvet.