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The Secret Bureaucrat

goatlockerloungelizard Wrote: Dec 28, 2012 10:08 AM
Did you not learn something interesting about a significant literary figure? Just think: The next time you're trying to make time with some hot-librarian type academic chick, you can slip in your little-known nugget about Kafka actually being a dedicated and talented bureaucrat, then just sit back and watch her heels get round. Thanks, Paul. I enjoyed your column a great deal.
CVN65 Wrote: Dec 28, 2012 12:50 PM
hahahahahahahaha Can I skip right to the part where I slip in my nugget?

Franz Kafka is one of those authors whose name has become an adjective, as in Shakespearean or Faulknerian or this dictionary entry:

Kafka-esque -- adj., referring to the nightmarish, surreal, illogical quality Franz Kafka evoked in works like "The Metamorphosis," "The Castle" and "The Trial."

No wonder Franz Kafka was able to capture the maddeningly frustrating world of the modern bureaucrat so well. He was one. And a pretty good one, too: conscientious, adaptable, public-spirited and practical. At least to judge from the latest collection of his work, which is not a volume of short stories, but office memos and other...

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