To me, at least in his later years, Franz Kafka was our whiny man of literature. This is never so true as when he berated his family during the time of Metamorphosis and his portrayal of his family's treatment of him in the horror story. Where is the thanks and gratitude? But if you have never read it, you give it a spin.
One of the best things about Kafka, however, are his quotes on literature. Consider this one he wrote when 20 years old to his friend Oskar Pollak in January of 1904:
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide.
