Additional information
by Franz Kafka (Author), Stanley Corngold (Editor), Jack Greenberg (Editor)
Franz Kafka: The Office Writings brings together, for the first time in English, Kafka's most interesting professional writings, composed during his years as a high-ranking lawyer with the largest Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute in the Czech Lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is commonly recognized as the greatest German prose writer of the twentieth century. It is less well known that he had an established legal career. Kafka's briefs reveal him to be a canny bureaucrat, sharp litigator, and innovative thinker on the social, political, and legal issues of his time. His official preoccupations inspired many of the themes and strategies of the novels and stories he wrote at night.
These documents include 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. In adjudicating disputes, promoting legislative programs, and investigating workplace sites, Kafka's writings teem with details about the bureaucracy and technology of his day, such as spa elevators in Marienbad, the challenge of the automobile, and the perils of excavating in quarries while drunk. Beautifully translated, with valuable commentary by two of the world's leading Kafka scholars and one of America's most eminent civil rights lawyers, the documents cast rich light on the man and the writer and offer new insights to lovers of Kafka's novels and stories.Back Jacket
"This volume is an important addition to our understanding and appreciation of Kafka and his work."--Harold T. Shapiro, president emeritus, Princeton University
"This carefully edited book is one of the best things to have happened to Kafka scholarship in decades. It debunks the naïve but widely accepted myth of Kafka the poet, whose work in real life had nothing to do with his literary oeuvre. Just as importantly, the book is a valuable research tool for anyone who studies the impact of modern technology on the social, legal, and political spheres in Western Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century."--Wolf Kittler, University of California, Santa Barbara
"The book adds significantly to a new image of Kafka, one that goes beyond the isolated prophet of existential despair. It reestablishes him as an important commentator on a wide range of topics, such as social institutions, political changes, and technological innovations in high industrial capitalism. It is a major contribution to cultural studies approaches to Kafka, working out the intriguing ways in which a leading modernist writer represents the spirit of his time for our own."--Rolf J. Goebel, University of Alabama, Huntsville
"Kafka's office writings, appearing here together in English for the first time, constitute a fascinating discovery. Corngold and Wagner treat readers to a surprising, new Kafka: a high-ranking, confident bureaucrat, whose legal and literary labors were closely intertwined."--John Zilcosky, University of Toronto
"This lucid and convincing book is a major contribution to the scholarship on Kafka, and on the relationship between literary creativity and professional life."--Russell Berman, Stanford University
Author Biography
Stanley Corngold is professor of German and comparative literature at Princeton University. Jack Greenberg is the Alphonse Fletcher Professor of Law at Columbia University. Benno Wagner is a professor in the Department of Literature, Media, and Culture at the University of Siegen in Germany.
