Kafka was a Bureaucrat

For the first two years after college, I worked as an assistant at a megalithic entertainment agency in Beverly Hills. A big part of my job involved reading mainstream magazines like Elle, Vanity Fair, Cosmo and Scientific American to search for articles that might make good movies. This sounds like a lot more fun than it was. I almost never found anything our screenwriter clients would be interested in , and when I did, my write up went into a database that no one ever looked at. The whole thing was extremely Kafkaesque, which was why, when I came across the list below in a copy of Harper's, I cut it out and kept it.

Kafka, Esq.

From titles of briefs written by Franz Kafka for the Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia, in Prague, where he was employed as a lawyer for fourteen years. The documents are included in Franz Kafka: The Office Writings, published this fall by Princeton University Press. Translated from the German by Eric Patton and Ruth Hein.

The Scope of Compulsory Insurance for the Building Trades

Fixed-Rate Insurance Premiums for Small Farms Using Machinery

Inclusion of Private Automobile Firms in the Compulsory Insurance Program

Workmen's Insurance and Employers

Petition of the Toy Producers' Association in Katharinaberg, Erzebirge

Criminal Charge against Josef Renelt for the Illegal Withholding of Insurance Fees

Jubilee Report: Twenty-Five Years of the Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute

On the Examinations of Firms by Trade Inspectors

Measures for Preventing Accidents from Wood-Planing Machines

Help Disabled Veterans! An Urgent Appeal to the Public

I've kept this list through 7 apartments, and three different jobs. Right now, it's taped to the wall above the desk where I write. Whenever I'm grading freshman composition papers and feeling particularly sorry for myself, it helps to remember that even Kakfa had a day job.