When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas
by Justin Cartwright
In 1920, at the age of 38, Franz Kafka wrote a letter to his father, Hermann, accusing him of ruining his life by his dictatorial and insensitive behaviour, which left him lacking in self-belief and unable to escape his father’s dominance.
Kafka never sent this letter to his father, but instead showed it to friends.
Justin Cartwright imagines the father’s reply.
My dear Franz,
Your letter to me, which I read with disgust and sorrow, is the product of your oversensitive imagination and your weak constitution, both of which are, alas, faults with which you were born.
You are misguided on so many points, starting with the nature of a father’s duty to his children and the nature of a son’s obligations to his father, that I hardly know where to start, except to say that your spite and lack of gratitude are monumental.
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