Without Lifting A Finger

Finished with Kafka and Felice. He gets diagnosed with tuberculosis toward the end of the correspondence. Was sort of in between texts (still am but I think I'll return to Strindberg), so I read the appendices of the Letters to Milena  (I've read the letters thrice but my new Kindle version included some extra goodies: some letters from Milena to Max Brod, some of Milena's articles/essays, and the obit she wrote for Kafka). These bits are from letters Milena wrote to Max: I really was very shocked; I didn't know that Franz's illness was so serious -- he was really quite healthy here, I didn't hear him cough at all, he was bright and cheerful and slept well. He doesn't understand the simplest things in the world. Were you ever in a post office with him? After he composes a telegram and picks out whatever little counter he likes best, shaking his head, he then drifts from one counter to another, without the slightest idea to what end or why, until he f...

I visited Kafka's grave the first time I was in Prague (roughly 20 years ago). I don't recall seeing the plaque for Brod (apparently across from Kafka's grave), but then I didn't know to look.     [From Wikimedia Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bronze_plaque_commemorating_Max_Brod,_Prague.JPG ] 

Max Brod ( Hebrew : מקס ברוד; May 27, 1884 – December 20, 1968) was a German-speaking Czech Jewish , later Israeli , author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is most famous as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka . As Kafka's literary executor , Brod refused to follow the writer's instructions to burn his life's work, and had them published instead. Friendship with Kafka Brod first met Kafka on October 23, 1902, when both were students at Charles University. Brod had given a lecture at the German students' hall on Arthur Schopenhauer . Kafka, one year older, addressed him after the lecture and accompanied him home. "He tended to participate in all the meetings, but up to then we had hardly considered each other," wrote Brod. The quiet Kafka "would have been... hard to notice... even his elegant, usually dark-blue, suits were inconspicuous and reserved like him. At that time, however, something seem...