Franz Kafka's Framework

Kafka's day, reconstructed from his 1912 letters to Felice Bauer, is the clearest picture in Currey's book of writing around a job. Promoted to chief clerk at the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute, he worked the single shift, 8:30 to 2:30. Then lunch until 3:30, sleep until 7:30, exercises at the open window, an hour's walk, and dinner with the family. He began writing around eleven and continued, depending on strength, inclination and luck, until one, two or three in the morning, once until six, followed by every effort to sleep before the office. Time was short, the office a horror, the apartment noisy, he wrote. When Felice suggested a more rational day he refused. The framework splits sleep into a four-hour afternoon block and a short morning one, as he did. The chart draws the writing to six, his one-off extreme; his usual end was one to three. The side project at its most costly, and the most honest schedule here about what a job takes.