Deskbound

Kafka's sense of strangeness to self is continuously displayed in various fictional appearances—in the bachelor; “the Russian friend” of The Judgment; the unholy, monstrous insect body; an outlandish homeland, America; the court; the burrow; "the false hands" that led him astray; the "spirits" that twist his words. What threads these modalities together is the "eccentricity" of the writer’s being. The trajectory of Kafka’s works is a history of approaches, more or less effective, to the elusive otherness of writing.

Stanley Corngold in the introduction to Franz Kafka: The Office Writings published this week.

In this book about Kafka’s work as a lawyer and bureaucrat, we are concerned with the way in which Kafka’s sense of his fate as a writer is implicated in his work life—the way in which his Beamtensein, his "official" being, is involved in his Schriftstellersein, his writerly being.

Expect in-depth coverage and debate in the mainstream press about the dastardly suppression until now of "articles on workmen's compensation and workplace safety; appeals for the founding of a psychiatric hospital for shell-shocked veterans; and letters arguing relentlessly for a salary adequate to his merit."

Mmm, articles.