|
|
|
Jewish World Review December 28, 2012/ 15 Teves, 5773 The secret bureaucrat By Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Kafka-esque -- adj., referring to the nightmarish, surreal, illogical quality No wonder Who knew? The myth is that Kafka the artist was drained of time and energy by the demands of his day job in A combination attorney, actuary and all-around bureaucrat, he seems to have carried out his duties with a combination of mitteleuropaisch flair and German efficiency. And even a sense of humor, no small feat in anyone with a thoroughly German education. You might even call Herr Kafka a hard-working, realistic reformer. His workaday world would seem the opposite of the nightmarish, surreal, illogical atmosphere he summoned up in his allegories about the individual trapped in a world beyond his comprehension, namely the modern bureaucratic state. Yet even this able administrator seemed to think his job was but drudgery, a drag on his calling as a writer. An artiste. A daydreamer, self-doubting and given to complaining, the sort of smart but uncollected type who's the despair of family and teachers, young Kafka finally managed to land a government job -- thanks to the connections of a friend's father. Kafka started working at the By 1911, Herr Kafka was a rising bureaucrat who, still complaining about the time his work at the office took from his after-hours writing career, could nevertheless write about his department's progress with pride, especially in light of the mess he'd found when he arrived there: "We gladly admit that until 1909 the annual reports of the Institute, with their figures documenting a deficit that seemed to spread almost like a living organism, offered little encouragement to feel excitement. Instead, these reports succeeded in damping all the Institute's hopes for the future; the Institute seemed simply to be a corpse, whose only living element was its growing deficit." Goodness. Sound familiar? But things had changed with the arrival of a new director,
Not even the editors of this latest collection of his writings may fully recognize just how talented a bureaucrat he was. They still tend to dismiss
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
© 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc. |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||||
