(no subject)

Happy birthday, donnaq!

'If Kafka and Henry James had had a love-child, who collaborated with Dickens...''

Some while ago I posted about the Kafka papers imbroglio. According to this piece by Judith Butler in the London Review of Books, the plot has thickened even further since then. I think besides applying the obvious 'Kafka-esque' to the situation, there are elements there that suggest that the shade of Henry James (The Aspern Papers, 'The author of Beltraffio', etc) is also in the mix, and that, paging Mr Dickens, we are in for legal complications on a Jarndycean scale.

I am sure other authors might also reasonably be invoked - who knows what dark and occult secrets lurk in those papers and might tempt Dan Brown?

(*Revenge of the Giant Cockroach: Gregor Samsa is back, and this time it's personal*)

I have never, ever, heard of documents being offered by weight:

[H]er daughters, Eva and Ruth... claim that no one needs to inventory the materials and that the value of the manuscripts should be determined by their weight – quite literally, by what they weigh. As one of the attorneys representing Hoffe’s estate explained: ‘If we get an agreement, the material will be offered for sale as a single entity, in one package. It will be sold by weight … They’ll say: “There’s a kilogram of papers here, the highest bidder will be able to approach and see what’s there.”

This honestly makes me wonder if my earlier hypothesis that what actually remained in Esther Hoffe's hands by the time of her death was pretty much Kafka's tram-tickets, laundry lists, and similar ephemeral impedimenta may actually be true.