Uncontrolled Inspiration – Unwarranted Advice

Franz Kafka is famous for his stories that push the limits of dealing with the “unexplained.” Almost all of his books feature nonsensical themes/motifs. A man becoming a cockroach, a god too bogged down in paperwork to explore his domain, and a man arrested and tried without explanation.

One of the reasons Kafka’s work permeates language and national boundaries is because the stories directly deal with confounding situations that are somehow still grounded in reality.

Part of this is because it’s just good writing. But also because at core of all of his stories there exists a common thread: bureaucracy.

Kafka was obsessed with the concept of bureaucracy and the idea of a bureaucrat itself. The dichotomy of something as dull as a bureaucrat and a blend of magical realism and… magic is what makes Kafka’s work memorable. However, what makes Kafka’s work literary, in my opinion, is how he treats each subject.

Aside from their introductions, the less believable parts of Kafka’s narratives are rarely explored in depth. Their effects are, of course, but aside from the scene where Gregor Samsa becomes an insect there isn’t much description about that process, just how it affects his family and himself.

However, there is an excessive amount of detail that deals with the clerk who was sent to fetch Gregor, about Gregor’s boss’s reaction to Gregor oversleeping, and how his family is going to remedy their missing money. The family cares more about how Gregor can’t help them make ends meet rather than the fact that their son has become an actual bug.

The amount of attention to the more mundane issues in Kafka’s absurdist books enables a sense of wonder that is almost immeasurable. Obviously, readers are interested in the mystery of why things are the way they are, but instead we’re given every other detail. In most literature, one can use these secondary details to piece together the answers to any question they might have, but that’s not possible in Kafka’s work, which furthers the experience that the reader undergoes.

You might be thinking, “that’s all well and good, Connor, but what on earth does this have to do with inspiration?” Well! The reason why Kafka was intensely obsessed with bureaucracy? He was an insurance salesman. He famously hated his hours, 8am-6pm, and would often complain at length about how uninteresting his work was. So, he quit, and started working for the “Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute” for Bohemia.

Here, he quickly climbed the ladder and was given more and more responsibility. Kafka still hated this job, but worked there until his health got the better of him. It was here that he found his relationship with bureaucracy, and where he began to dedicate more time to his writing.

Kafka spent eleven years of his life working jobs that he hated, but becoming extremely intimate with a concept that would eventually make him famous. Working here is what led to him finding his religion and his favorite pastimes (mainly reading Yiddish literature).

Kafka later was committed to a sanitorium due to his tuberculosis. He fought it for six years and passed away at forty.

Kafka hated his job, but found it informing his work in bulk. His relationship to bureaucracy is the foundation for his writing, and that writing generated immense cultural and literary praise. So much of mid-twentieth century literature is inspired-in-part by Kafka’s legacy, and works today reflect those stories from the 1940s-60s.

Those works all draw from one of Kafka’s main messages. Which is simply that if we lean into the absurd, one can control their destiny and shape the world around them.

Which is exactly how Kafka found motivation, and its exactly what you can do to push yourself in the right direction.

So, if you’re in a job that feels like a dead end; or you manage to find yourself drowning in seas of seemingly needless paperwork, red tape, and rules; or if you catch yourself feeling small and insignificant in the face of your own problems; then just remember that inspiration is everywhere. And the moments that you’re putting up with today, don’t inform your tomorrow and that you have ultimate control on what the next day will bring.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend filled with mystery and inspiration.